Spotlight on Ratification
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The document marking the Ratification of the Bill of Rights by New York State will be on exhibit downtown on the ground floor of Federal Hall from December 14 through December 18.
A spokesman for the National Archives and Records Administration, Susan Cooper said this may be the first time this document been on display in New York, perhaps since the state’s federal records moved to Washington. (Congress founded the Archives in 1934, and it is unclear if the document was displayed in the prior century.) New York City was capital of the nation as well as the location of the national legislature from 1785 to 1790, before the capital moved to Philadelphia and eventually settled farther south, on the Potomac.
Located at Wall and Nassau streets, Federal Hall was where Washington delivered his inaugural address in 1789. It held the first Supreme Court and Congress. The second Federal Hall, with its Greek Revival architecture, was built on the site of the original building in 1842, and is a museum of the National Park Service.
As the states ratified the Bill of Rights, they sent their documents to Federal Hall. Ratification of the Bill of Rights was important because it showed that the states wanted their rights “spelled out specifically,” said a professor of history at Cornell University, Joel Silbey.Among other guarantees, the Bill of Rights prevents Congress from curtailing freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. “It shows you that the U.S.Constitution was a controversial document,”said the public historian at the New-York Historical Society, Kathleen Hulser. The states “wanted a central government but were not sure how strong. Even at the birth of the nation there are conflicting ideas of how strong was strong enough, but not too strong.”
NARA is showing the document in an effort at “reaching out beyond the traditional four walls of our building” and displaying some of America’s treasures, Ms. Cooper said. Farther uptown, on Varick Street, New York has one of 13 regional archives of the national government.