Posted
on March 2, 2015
Did you know that, about 150 years after the Bill of
Rights became a part of the United States Constitution, the three
hold-out states finally got their act together to ratify these first
ten amendments.
The
three hold outs were Massachusetts, which finally ratified the Bill
of Rights on this date in 1939, Georgia, which ratified on March 18,
1939, and Connecticut, which ratified on April 19, 1939.
Why
the long delay? And why did they finally ratify in 1939?
On
missing the boat...
Once
a constitutional amendment has passed two-thirds of both the Senate
and the House of Representatives, it is sent to the states for
ratification. Once it is ratified by three-fourths of the states
(within a set period of time), the amendment becomes a part of the
Constitution and therefore law of the land. Any state that has not at
that point ratified the amendment still lives by the amendment...and
ratification becomes a moot point.
In
many cases, when states were late to the party, so to speak, they
never ended up bothering to officially ratify.
It
turns out that the two chambers of the Massachusetts General Council
did vote to ratify most of the amendments, back in 1790 when the
other states were ratifying the Bill of Rights, but once the Bill of
Rights were adopted, the two houses didn't bother to work to
reconcile their separate lists. And Massachusetts officials didn't
bother to send notice of the amendments that passed both chambers to
the federal government.
On
“better late than never”...
Apparently,
some states who missed the boat of making an amendment part of the
Constitution end up eventually passing a “feel-good ratification”
in an apparent attempt to kinda-sorta apologize. For example,
California didn't ratify the 15th Amendment, which
outlawed states denying a citizen the right to vote based on race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, until 1962 (!), and
Mississippi FINALLY ratified the 13th Amendment, which
abolished slavery, just a couple of years ago.
Apparently,
in 1939, as a part of the celebration of 150 years of having the Bill
of Rights, the three states who still weren't on the ratification
list finally ratified. I am thinking that part of the fervor over the
Bill of Rights at that time might have been as Americans nervously
watched the doings of the Nazis...
 |
| I discovered this tabulation of the voting on the first twelve Amendments to the Constitution...written beautifully by Thomas Jefferson... And, look! Apparently the Founding Fathers found the Second Amendment to be controversial, too! Now isn't that interesting... |
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