They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." Because all were members of the militia, all enjoyed the right to individually bear arms to serve therein. Writing after the ratification of the Constitution, but before the election of the first Congress, James Monroe included "the right to keep and bear arms" in a list of basic "human rights", which he proposed to be added to the Constitution. Patrick Henry argued in the Virginia ratification convention on June 5, 1788, for the dual rights to arms and resistance to oppression: Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. To maintain slavery Preserving slave patrols In the slave states, the militia was available for military operations, but its biggest function was to police the slaves. According to Dr Carl T. Bogus, Professor of Law of the Roger Williams University Law School in Rhode Island, the Second Amendment was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia to disarm the state militia and thereby destroy the South's principal instrument of slave control. In his close analysis of James Madison's writings, Bogus describes the South's obsession with militias during the ratification process: This preoccupation is clearly expressed in 1788 by the slaveholder Patrick Henry: Therefore, Bogus argues, in a compromise with the slave states, and to reassure Patrick Henry, George Mason and other slaveholders that they would be able to keep their slave control militias independent of the federal government, James Madison (also slave owner) redrafted the Second Amendment into its current form "for the specific purpose of assuring the Southern states, and particularly his constituents in Virginia, that the federal government would not undermine their security against slave insurrection by disarming the militia." Legal historian Paul Finkelman argues that this scenario is implausible. Henry and Mason were political enemies of Madison's, and neither man was in Congress at the time Madison drafted Bill of Rights; moreover, Patrick Henry argued against the ratification of both the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and it was Henry's opposition that led Patrick's home state of Virginia to be the last to ratify. Most Southern white men between the ages of 18 and 45 were