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Kelzie said:
Originally the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government not the State Governments (the states wanted to retain their own autonomy) after the 14th amendment was passed following the civil war due process and equal protection clauses changed that through the Supreme Courts incorporation of some of the fundamental rights found in the Bill of Rights upon the state governments and their legislation.
This explains it better:
The Bill of Rights is a set of laws originally intended to protect the liberties of the individual citizens and the individual states from the centralized federal government of the United States. The historical and theoretical basis for the Bill of Rights came from the inherent distrust of big government which was forged by the Colonists during the Revolutionary war of Independence against the British Empire. The Bill of Rights draws on a wide array of principles which can be found in the works of many of the great thinkers of the time starting with the spring of the enlightenment period, first we can begin with John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government which was the basis for everything which was going to follow, in fact some of Locke‘s exact phrases; such as, the guaranty to life, liberty, and property, can be found word for word directly in the 5th amendment of the Bill of Rights. Secondly, we have the Declaration of Independence; penned by Thomas Jefferson which specified the disputes the Colonists had against the tyrannical practices of the Crown of England against the right to self determination of the individual Colonies and the civil liberties of the Colonists; such as, taxation without representation on imports and exports, the rights to trade with whatever country they wished, and the suspension of Habeas Corpus and Due Process . We also have the Articles of the Confederation the precursor to the Constitution, the anti-Federalist papers and even the Federalist papers. Both the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, draw upon the concepts of individual liberty found in all of these works. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution as a compromise between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in order to ratify the Constitution.
As was specified in the aforementioned text, the Bill of Rights was at first only responsible for regulating the power of the Federal Government, because at the time the individual State Governments wanted to maintain much of their own autonomy and apply their own regulations and legislations on the rights of the individual, however, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th amendment, which was added to the Bill of Rights after the Civil War, has allowed for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights upon the state Governments through a series of Decisions regarding the Constitutionality of State Laws by the Supreme Court. -- Me
