Congress originally proposed 12 articles for the United States Bill of Rights in 1789.
The First Congress approved the proposed amendments on September 25, 1789, and sent them to the states for ratification. The proposals responded largely to Anti-Federalist concerns that the new Constitution did not adequately protect individual liberties or clarify limits on federal authority.
Only ten of the twelve proposed articles were ratified by the required number of states in 1791. Those ten became the Bill of Rights. The original first article, concerning congressional apportionment, remains unratified. The original second article concerned congressional pay and was eventually ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-seventh Amendment.
Because the surviving ten proposals are now so familiar, people often assume Congress originally sent ten. The distinction matters historically: the modern First Amendment began as the third proposed article, while the modern Second through Tenth Amendments also shifted their original numbering after the first two failed to secure timely ratification.