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James Madison

Fact: [James Madison] was the main force behind the ratification of the United States Bill of Rights, which enshrines guarantees of personal freedoms and rights within the Constitution.

MLA Citation: Broadwater, Jeff. James Madison : a Son of Virginia & a Founder of the Nation. University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780807835302

Quote: A separate section, including most of what eventually became the Bill of Rights, encompassed protections for freedom of speech, press, and religion; procedural safeguards for criminal defendants; and recognition of the right to bear arms, with the caveat that "no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."

Phase Three

Appleby, Joyce, et al. Encyclopedia of Women in American History. Routledge, 2002, doi:10.4324/9781315704692."This unique book looks at a wide range of issues and offers insight into how each era influenced women's lives. It looks at how women came up with 'the Declaration of Sentiments' as a female-centric version of the Bill of Rights. As a result, this source gives insight into how the declaration influenced the formation of women's rights."Lunardini, Christine. Alice Paul. 1st ed., Routledge, 2012, doi:10.4324/9780429502392."The famous life of Alice Paul, a nineteenth-century women's rights activist, is described in this book. It gives a full account of her life and how she battled for all women to be treated equally to men and to be able to vote. It looks at how the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights ensures that all citizens of the United States are treated equally, even though this was not the case for women. As a result, Paul had positioned herself as one of the most famous advocates for altering women's constitutional roles."

Phase Four

Part 1 Paragraph: The Women’s Rights Convention, the first public meeting to promote women’s rights in America, is held at Seneca Falls, New York. Leaders issue the ‘Declaration of Sentiments.’ [It is for this reason that] women would insist on exercising the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to campaigning for the right to vote.

Fact 1 Summary: Due to the government’s neglection of enforcing the Bill of Rights, the Women’s Rights Convention prompted the Declaration of Sentiments.

Part 2 Paragraph: Paul stationed Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis outside the White House gate with an enormous banner addressed to the Russians. ‘President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. . .,’ it read. ‘The women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote. . .. Tell our government that it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.' [As a result of this,] [o]n August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation of ratification [of the federal suffrage amendment], bringing an end to the historic crusade [that had] begun nearly a hundred years earlier.

Fact 2 Summary: Even though the Bill of Rights guarantees that all citizens of the United States are treated equally, women were not allowed to vote until 1920.

Article Section

The Bill of Rights had little judicial impact for the first 150 years of its existence; in the words of Gordon S. Wood, "After ratification, most Americans promptly forgot about the first ten amendments to the Constitution." The Court made no important decisions protecting free speech rights, for example, until 1931. Due to the government’s neglection of enforcing the Bill of Rights, the Women’s Rights Convention prompted the Declaration of Sentiments. Historian Richard Labunski attributes the Bill's long legal dormancy to three factors: first, it took time for a "culture of tolerance" to develop that would support the Bill's provisions with judicial and popular will; second, the Supreme Court spent much of the 19th century focused on issues relating to intergovernmental balances of power; and third, the Bill initially only applied to the federal government, a restriction affirmed by Barron v. Baltimore (1833).

The First Amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. Even though the Bill of Rights guarantees that all citizens of the United States are treated equally, women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today.