Assignments

Text: Divine, Chapter 6: 2/22/00

Special Topic:  Mixed Government and Utopian Republicanism
                       The People "Out-of-Doors"

Answer one of the following text questions:

• What were the fundamental challenges to creating successful state governments in the new republic?  A federal government?
• What was the place of women and blacks in the new republic?
• What were the incentives for, and obstacles to a constitutional convention?  What role did the "people" play in the ratification of the U.S. Constitution?
• What is the Bill of Rights and why was it added to the Constitution?

Choose one of the following

1) Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker, August 30, 1791

Answer at least two of the following primary source questions:

• Who was Benjamin Banneker and why did Thomas Jefferson write this letter to him in August, 1791?
• What does the letter tell us about the attitudes of white America on the subject of race at the end of the eighteenth century?
• What does it tell us about Jefferson's own attitudes on this subject at that time?
• Are there any clues in this letter about the politics of slavery in the United States?  Explain.

    Thomas Jefferson to Charles L'Enfant, Philadelphia, April 10, 1791

Answer at least two of the following primary source questions:

• What kind of a capital city did the founders envision?
• To whom did the founders (like Jefferson) turn for planning models
• What does the layout of Washington say about the kind of government the founders had in mind?
• What does it say about the relationship they envisioned between the federal government and the states?  The People?

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