What is the difference between the Bill of Rights and the Constitution?

The Constitution is the whole founding document — ratified in 1788 — that creates the structure of the federal government: the three branches, their powers, how laws are made, and how the document itself can be amended. The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to that Constitution, added in 1791. So the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution, not a separate document. The distinction in purpose is the key: the original body of the Constitution mostly grants and limits government power and design, while the Bill of Rights mostly protects specific individual liberties — speech, religion, arms, due process, protection from unreasonable searches — against the federal government. Several framers argued a bill of rights was unnecessary because the government had only enumerated powers; Anti-Federalists insisted on explicit guarantees, and their insistence produced the first ten amendments. Together they form one instrument: structure plus safeguards.