According to my Encyclopedia Americana, Copyright 1970, Vol. 7, P. 663, on the "Constitution of the United States", subsection "The Bill of Rights", it states that "When the first Congress convened, it was flooded with some 145 proposed amendments. This number was reduced to 12, which on Sept. 25, 1789, were sent to the states for consideration.
This link says Jefferson left France on Sep 28, 1789, arriving in Norfolk, VA on Nov 23, 1789.
I think there's a conflict about Jefferson's compiling of the BOR.
I laid out the whole process in my Introduction to the reprint of Robert Yates' Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention to Form the US Constitution. Here's the short form of that long Introduction.
The states, in their ratifying conventions concerning the Constitution, demanded various rights be guaranteed by immediate amendments to the Constitution. Over 200 of these requests were received. North Carolina went so far as to refuse to act on ratification, until a Bill of Rights was adopted. The most common single request/demand was for a guarantee of freedom of the press.
James Madison, then a member of the First Congress (under the Constitution as ratified by 11 states at the time) was given the task of drafting the Bill of Rights from those 200+ demands. He wrote 17 Articles, which were passed by the House by the required 2/3rds vote. Of those, 12 passed the Senate and were sent to the states for ratification.
Of those 12, items 3 through 12 were adopted by the states, becoming what are commonly known as the Bill of Rights. (What is now the 1st Amendment was originally the 3rd Amendment, and so on.) The original 2nd Amendment was not finally ratified and became part of the Constitution until 1992.
And that is the honest and accurate history of the drafting and ratification of the Bill of Rights.
John / Billybob
"His mentor and close friend Thomas Jefferson chided him: “A bill or rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference” (Letter to James Madison, July 31, 1788). Accordingly, Madison assured the Virginia ratifying convention that he would work for rights amendments after the Constitution took effect. He kept his word. Within a month of being elected to the first Congress, Madison began drafting a Bill of Rights. He winnowed over two hundred amendments proposed by the state ratifying conventions down to nineteen amendments. The Congress approved only twelve. Among the ones it rejected was an amendment that would have made the Bill of Rights applicable to the state governments as well as the national."
The underlined was the only point I was trying to make.
And, Congressman Billybob, perhaps you can correct the other historical morons who insist that the first eight amendments of the BOR, when written, applied to the states as well as the federal government? (Since you seem to be in the "historical moron correcting" kind of mood.)