#1: What changes in American society did the revolutionary American ideas bring about in the years immediately following the revolution?

• Evolution rather than Revolution?

• Pursuit of Equality: political, economic, and religious

• Abolition of Slavery

• Republican Motherhood *

#2: What were the strengths / weaknesses of the A of C? Were the social problems of the 1780’s really due to the national government’s failings, or the aftermath of the AR?

• Constitution Making in the States

• Relocation of State Capitals

• Economic Democracy proceeds Political Democracy

• Navigation Laws | Enterprising Yankees

• Unhealthy Atmosphere *

#2: What were the strengths / weaknesses of the A of C? Were the social problems of the 1780’s really due to the national government’s failings, or the aftermath of the AR?, cont.

• Articles of Confederation | Western Territories

• No Power to Regulate Interstate Commerce

• No Power to Enforce Tax Collection

• Votes and Amendments *

#2: What were the strengths / weaknesses of the A of C? Were the social problems of the 1780’s really due to the national government’s failings, or the aftermath of the AR?, cont.

• Land Ordinance of 1785

• Northwest Ordinance of 1787

• Slavery in the NW Territory

• British Problems: no commercial treaty, shut off West Indies trade from US, continued fur trading with Indians on northern frontier *

#2: What were the strengths / weaknesses of the A of C? Were the social problems of the 1780’s really due to the national government’s failings, or the aftermath of the AR?, cont.

• Spanish Problems: closed the Mississippi and territorial claims

• Pirates of the North African States

• Crisis in 1786: British flooding of the market & Shays’s Rebellion *

#3: What really motivated the leaders who called the Constitutional Convention and worked out the essential compromises?

• Control of Commerce

• Annapolis Convention

• Philadelphia Convention

• A Convention of Demigods

• Patriots in Philadelphia *

#3: What really motivated the leaders who called the Constitutional Convention and worked out the essential compromises?, cont.

• Hammering Out a Bundle of Compromises

• Safeguards for the Constitution

• Conservative or Liberal Document? *

#4: Who were the Federalist and the Antifederalist, what were the issues that divided them, and why did the Federalist win?

• Characteristics of the Federalists . . .

• Characteristics of the Antifederalists . . .

• Criticisms of the Constitution

• Great Debate in the States

• The Four Laggard States *

#5: Should the Constitution be seen as a conservative reaction to the Revolution, an enshrinement of revolutionary principles, or both? What was most truly original about the Constitution? *