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each week American history TVs American artifacts takes you to museums and historic places next we traveled to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to learn about 42 bronze statues in signers Hall and to learn about the Constitutional Convention of 1787 I'm Jeffrey Rosen president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and I'm thrilled to welcome you to signers Hall so three men at the Constitutional Convention refused to sign the Constitution Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts Edmund Randolph of Virginia and George Mason of Virginia Denman Randolph of Virginia along with George Mason was not happy about the rights that were proposed Randolph and Mason interestingly originally supported a strong central government and were supporters of the Constitution but during the course of the debates over the Constitution they both became concerned that it did not include a bill of rights and that a tyrannical central government might come to Menace the unalienable and natural rights retained by the people Mason was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights which was so inspiring and important to Thomas Jefferson that he had a copy of it beside him when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration which looks quite a lot like our Bill of Rights because James Madison would ultimately come to rely on it set out the basic natural and on alienable rights that Mason believed that governments were created to protect rather than menace and it won't be a surprise you can check it out online go to our rights interactive at Constitution Center org and compare the language in the Virginia Declaration of Rights with the ultimate Bill of Rights and you'll see how Madison essentially cut and pasted from the Virginia Declaration and coming up with the Bill of Rights you can see here in the next room an original copy of the Bill of Rights along with rare copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and you'll see how the original document does contain just 10 amendments but 12 and the first two have to do not with free speech which is our first amendment but with the size of Congress the first one says that there should be one representative in Congress for every 40,000 people which would have created a congress with 4000 people today and the second amendment says the original second Amendment says Congress can't raise its salary without an intervening election that became part of our Constitution as the 27th amendment in the 1990s so what a what a remarkable story that in this room despite the fierce divisions of principle among the delegates that these brave dissenters ultimately were vindicated and it's a reminder of the importance of dissent and political dissent was so crucial to the framing of the Constitution and protections for dissent now expressed in the first amendments are really at the heart of what makes America distinctive you