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Very few people realize that the Bill of Rights document on display at the National Archives contains twelve amendments (not ten) that were proposed by the first congress in September of 1789.
What people think of as the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights are actually the third through the twelfth articles proposed in that document. The second of the twelve was not ratified until 200 years later as the 27th amendment. However, the very first amendment proposed has been all but lost to history; therein lies a very interesting story which is briefly introduced at:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/QHA-04.htm
That web page also provides a link to a detailed historical analysis of Article the first which can be downloaded from:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/documents/QHA-04.pdf
The text of all twelve amendments is available at
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/BoR_text.htm.
For more general information, please read
http://www.thirty-thousand.org
thirty-thousand.org is a non-partisan organization.
Your comments and questions would be greatly appreciated.
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