June 8 · This Day in America
On June 8, 1789, in the first Congress of a Constitution barely a year old, James Madison stands in the House and proposes a list of amendments to it. He had once thought such a list unnecessary. He had changed his mind — the country had asked for it, loudly, as the price of its trust. So he reads out the things a government may never do to a person: silence their worship, muzzle their press, search their home without cause, jail them without a jury. "The rights of the people" against "the encroachments of the government," he calls it. The list is whittled and argued over all summer; ten survive ratification two years later. We call them the Bill of Rights. A nation wrote down, on purpose, the limits of its own power.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1845
On June 8, 1845, Andrew Jackson — general, president, and one of the most divisive figures the republic had yet produced — dies at 78 in his bedroom at the Hermitage, his Tennessee plantation. He had remade the presidency in his own willful image and left wounds, especially the forced removal of the Cherokee, that the country still reckons with. He was buried two days later in the garden, beside his wife Rachel.
Source: www.loc.gov
“I think we should obtain the confidence of our fellow citizens, in proportion as we fortify the rights of the people against the encroachments of the government.”James Madison, speech to Congress, 1789