Congress submitted twelve amendment articles to the states in 1789 before ten became the Bill of Rights.
James Madison introduced a package of proposed constitutional amendments in the First Congress. Congress approved twelve articles on September 25, 1789, and sent them to the states for consideration. The proposals were intended to address concerns raised during debates over ratification of the Constitution, especially fears that the new federal government might threaten individual liberties.
The first two proposed articles were not ratified at that time. One concerned the size of congressional districts and remains unresolved, while the other dealt with congressional pay and eventually became the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992. The remaining ten articles were ratified on December 15, 1791, becoming Amendments One through Ten, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
This history explains a frequent misconception: the Bill of Rights was not originally presented to the states as exactly ten articles. The familiar ten amendments are the surviving portion of a twelve-article proposal, and the numbering changed after the first two failed to gain the required state approvals.