Bill of Rights: the First Amendment

Congress proposed twelve amendments on September 25, 1789, and sent them to the states. Ten of them were ratified on December 15, 1791, and became known as the Bill of Rights. This first article covers religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition in one sentence. One of the two leftovers waited until 1992, when it entered the Constitution as the twenty-seventh amendment.

Where this text comes fromSomething changed between 1787 and 1791, and you can see it in the type. The Constitution capitalizes its important nouns; the amendments ratified four years later do not, so religion, speech, press and assembly all arrive in lower case. The text linked below comes from the first volume of the Statutes at Large, the official record of what Congress actually passed, rather than from a later reprint. That edition prints an editorial heading above each article, Art. II. Right to bear and keep arms and so on, which is not part of the amendment and is not part of what you copy here.

What you might not noticeThe amendment binds Congress by its own words and nobody else. It opens with Congress shall make no law, and the long argument about whether it restrains anyone beyond the federal legislature had to be built later, on other ground. Source

What it trainsOne capital letter in 272 characters, the word Congress at the very start, and nothing after it needs Shift at all. Only the fourth amendment is as light on this shelf; the Declaration needs Shift for two capitals. Everything moves instead to the semicolon, which appears twice to separate freedoms that a modern drafter would have made into a numbered list. The longest word, establishment, is thirteen letters and sits in the opening clause, where people are still finding their rhythm. Three commas, one full stop, nothing else.

Read the full text at the publisher: Wikisource