Baylen Linnekin: The Bill of Rights Was About Food Freedom

On September 25, 1789—exactly 225 years ago
today—Congress passed the
ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights.

Yes, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the ones
that protect everything from free speech to due process—originated
as a series of bills in Congress. They were drafted by future
president James Madison, at the time a congressman from Virginia.
Madison also wrote the text of the Constitution, which had
established a system of limited government but hadn’t explicitly
protected individual rights. With the Bill of Rights, it now did
both.

What was the impetus for these revolutionary changes? Baylen
Linnekin argues that one key element was spiraling British attacks
on colonists’ “food freedom.”

Attacks on food freedom incensed the Founding Fathers. The list
of grievances Thomas Jefferson articulates in the Declaration of
Independence includes rebukes
of King George for permitting British troops to “eat out the[]
substance” of colonists’ cupboards and for trampling on colonists’
fishing rights.

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