Thanks for nothing, North Carolina.
To be more precise: Thanks for doing nothing.
No, you haven’t stumbled upon a screed about current-day political debates. Instead this column offers genuine praise for one instance of inaction — more than two centuries ago — that helped lead to one of the most important developments in American constitutional history.
With less fanfare than it deserves, the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights recently marked its 225th anniversary. Ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, the first 10 amendments to the nation’s newly established governing document spelled out protections of free speech and religion, the right to bear arms, due process of law, and more.
It’s such an integral part of the Constitution, adopted during the earliest years of government under that document, that few people ponder the prospect of a constitution without a Bill of Rights.
But the Bill’s omission from the original document was no oversight. Many of the nation’s brightest political minds saw no need to spell out a list of protected rights.
“I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the 84th Federalist essay. “They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.”
Most delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia subscribed to the same basic idea. The document they crafted included no mention of a Bill of Rights.
Here’s where North Carolina’s inaction comes into play.
As the N.C. History Project reminds us, initial reaction to the new Constitution ranged from unanimous support in the ratification conventions of Georgia and New Jersey to “widespread criticism and skepticism” in a handful of key states. (Though viewed today as historical text, the essays that constituted the Federalist Papers were designed originally to win over reluctant New Yorkers during that state’s ratification debates.)
Skepticism proved especially powerful in North Carolina. Important Tar Heels such as James Iredell and William Davie argued that the new national, or “general,” government needed more “energy,” such as taxing authority and an army. They represented what became known as the Federalist cause.
“A strong Anti-Federalist sentiment, however, remained in North Carolina,” according to the N.C. History Project. “Many North Carolinians remembered the Parliamentary abuses before the Revolutionary War and questioned giving more authority to what would become the federal government. Tar Heel Anti-Federalists, including the influential yet somewhat reticent Willie Jones and the vocal and somewhat bumbling Judge Samuel Spencer, questioned handing any more power from the individuals and the states to the general government.”
Those objections dominated North Carolina’s initial formal attempt to ratify the Constitution. Meeting in Hillsborough over two weeks in the summer of 1788 — nearly a year after the document had first circulated from Philadelphia — the state ratifying convention refused to make a yes-or-no choice.
“The absence of a bill of rights guaranteeing personal liberties to the people further blocked support for the Constitution,” according to the N.C. History Project. “The Anti-Federalist majority concurred with delegate William Gowdy of Guilford County, when he remarked: ‘Power belongs originally to the people, but if rulers be not well guarded, that power may be usurped from them.’”
“With the hope of effecting the incorporation of a Bill of Rights,” delegates essentially punted. Voting 184-84, North Carolina’s leaders refused either to ratify or reject the Constitution.
In other words, they did nothing.
But their objections, along with those from dissenting voices in states that already had ratified the Constitution, helped convince some key Federalists to change their stances on a Bill of Rights.
Virginia’s James Madison, a key constitutional architect and an early opponent of a Bill of Rights, ended up leading the push for the Bill in the earliest days of the newly designed Congress.
North Carolina had endorsed the Constitution by the time of the Bill of Rights’ eventual ratification in 1791.
It was their decision to do nothing three years earlier that deserves our thanks.
Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.