This customized Bill of Rights has been stylized to reflect the look of the original while containing the same words, punctuation, capitalization, spelling (and occasional misspellings), etc. It's just been carefully reformatted into a modern font (versus old-style cursive) to make it easier to read. The signatures at the bottom of the original 1789 document appear as italicized names.
The item is designed to hang on the wall and comes with –
- parchment paper
- wood frame (9 ¼" x 14 ¾")
- glass pane
In the Constitutional Convention's push to strengthen the federal government to preserve the union, some felt the pendulum swung too far by not explicitly safeguarding individual and state rights. Acutely mindful of the recent struggle to "throw off" tyrannical government, many states would not ratify the Constitution without the assurance of a Bill of Rights. In response, James Madison set out to correct this oversight by drafting one which included provisions for the freedom of religion and speech, the right to bear arms, the right to due process and a speedy trial before an impartial jury and so forth. Approved by the very first United States Congress and submitted to the states as promised, ten constitutional amendments became ratified in 1791 commonly known today as the Bill of Rights.
Of note, the original Bill of Rights document never actually contained the words "Bill of Rights." It simply outlined 12 "proposed" amendments to the Constitution as "Article the first.....," "Article the second.....," "Article the third.....," etc., for the states to consider ratifying. But the first (revising the math on the number of members in the House of Representatives) was never ratified and the second not till 1992 when it became the 27th Amendment. So "Article the third....." was relabeled "Amendment I," "Article the fourth.....," "Amendment II" and so on to precisely correspond to the first ten constitutional amendments representing our present-day Bill of Rights. This was the only modification to the text of the document.