Okay, so I looked up "Does Bill of Rights . . ." and auto-complete offered me "apply to the states". I'm not always a fan of Wikipedia, but this link seemed pretty user-friendly and also scholarly. It has a time-line of when parts of the Bill of Rights were "incorporated against" the States. The article says the Supreme Court in 1833 flatly held that the Bill of Rights did not apply to State governments, but to Congress.
A case in New York that was decided by the USSC in 1925, Gitlow v. New York, is said to be the first where the Court held that States were bound to protect freedom of speech because of an obligation to incorporate the Bill of Rights. Through the rest of the 20th century, more and more provisions of the Bill of Rights were incorporated to the States and localities, rather than the Federal government. Judging quickly from the names, it was mostly liberal judges supporting liberal causes, but that's not necessarily here or there.
Unless the article is completely upside-down on its facts, it would appear that the freedoms of the Bill of Rights in earlier times were defended within States and localities through the kind of "peer pressure" of other American localities. On the desired result, there's no dispute possible among real Americans. But it appears that the liberty enshrined in American civic and legal culture did not come about because of the incorporation doctrine. It seems to have preceded that doctrine by 150 years. Let me know what you think!