The First Amendment combined several rights - speech, press, petition, assembly, and religion - into one fundamental law guaranteeing freedom of expression. While obliquely related to religious speech, the clear intent was to protect political speech. This, after all, was what concerned the Anti-Federalists about the power of a national government - that it would suppress dissenting views.
The Second Amendment address Whig fears of a professional standing army by guaranteeing the right of citizens to arm themselves and join militias. Over the years, the militia preface has become thoroughly (and often, deliberately) misinterpreted to imply that the framers intended citizens to be armed only in the context of an army under the authority of the state. In fact, militias were the exact opposite of a state-controlled army: the state militias taken together were expected to serve as a counterweight to the federal army, and the further implication was that citizens were to be as well armed as the government itself!
The Third Amendment buttressed the right of civilians against the government military by forbidding the quartering (housing) of professional troops in private homes.
Amendments Four through Eight promised due process via reasonable bail, speedy trials (by a jury of peers if requested), and habeas corpus petitions. They forbade self-incrimination and arbitrary search and seizure, and proclaimed, once again, the fundamental nature of property rights.
The Ninth Amendment, which has lain dormant for two hundred years, states there might be other rights not listed in the amendments that are, nevertheless, guaranteed by the Constitution.
But the most controversial amendment, the Tenth, echoes the second article of the Articles of Confederation in declaring that the states and people retain all rights and powers not expressly granted to the national government by the constitution. It too, has been relatively ignored.
These ten clear statements were intended by the framers as absolute limitations on the power of government, not on the rights of individuals. In retrospect, they more accurately should have been known as the Bill of Limitations on government to avoid the perception that the rights were granted by government in the first place.
~Reference: L. Schweikart and M. Allen's "A Patriot's History of the United States".
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