Twelve proposed amendments in hand, James Madison rose before the First Congress on June 8, 1789, and formally introduced what would become the Bill of Rights. Madison had resisted a bill of rights during the Constitutional Convention, believing the Constitution itself sufficient, but Anti-Federalists and skeptical state ratifying conventions pushed hard for explicit protections. He reversed course and drafted the amendments himself, pulling language from state declarations, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, and hundreds of citizen petitions. Congress debated, trimmed the list from twelve to ten, and sent them to the states; ratification followed in December 1791. Those ten amendments, guaranteeing freedoms of speech, religion, and the press, protecting against unreasonable searches, and securing the right to a fair trial, became the legal bedrock on which American civil liberties still stand, cited in courtrooms and protests every single day.