Assignment #6

Chapter 6
1. Read pgs. 96-113 (The Constitution and the New Republic, 1787-1800).
2. Answer #1-5 on p. 115. Your response must fully answer the question.
3. Complete “Key Names, Events, and Terms” on page 113. ID and significance of each
key term must come from the text.

Listen (and/or read the text) to podcasts #16 (Philadelphia Convention), #17 (Federalists
vs. Antifederalists), #18 (Development of the Two Party System), and #19 (John Adams).

Be prepared to use specific historical examples from your reading and independent
research to discuss the following questions in class:

1. What was really at stake in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists? Did
the Federalists win primarily because of their superior political skills or because they had
a clearer view of the meaning of the Revolution and the future of the United States? What
role did the ratification process play in the fight between the Federalists and Anti-
Federalists (and did it favor one side or the other)?

2. Why did Americans accept the Constitution with its strong national government and
powerful executive after only a decade earlier violently revolting against similar British
institutions? Why did the Anti-Federalists not violently oppose the new Constitution?

3. Why did Hamilton move so rapidly to create large financial commitments by the
federal government? Since we normally think of the federal debt as something bad, why
did Hamilton think of it as something good and necessary for the national welfare?

4. How sympathetic should Revolutionary Americans have been to the king-killing

French Revolution?

5. Why were political parties viewed as so dangerous by the Founding Fathers? Why did
parties come into being at all, and why did they come to be accepted as legitimate ways
to express political disagreement?

6. How wise was Washington's insistence on neutrality? What about the fact that, while
this foreign policy stance may not have violated the letter of the alliance with France, it
did violate the spirit of the alliance? Do you agree that, as the authors contend, "self-
interest is the basic cement of alliances"? Does a nation have an obligation to maintain
alliances previously established even when it is no longer in that nation's self-interest?

7. Contrast the Hamiltonian Federalist belief that the wealthy and well educated ought to
run the government with the Jeffersonian Republican belief that the common person, if
educated, could be trusted to manage public affairs.