Ap History 1 Chapter 6

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Articles of Confederation

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the first constitution of the United States and specified how the Federal government was to operate, including adoption of an official name for the new nation, United States of America. The Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft the Articles in June 1776 and sent the draft to the states for ratification in November 1777.[1] In practice, the Articles were in use beginning in 1777. The ratification process was completed in March 1781. Under the Articles, the states retained sovereignty over all governmental functions not specifically relinquished to the national government.

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Land Ordinance of 1785

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adopted by the United States Congress on May 20, 1785. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not have the power to raise revenue by direct taxation of the inhabitants of the United States. Therefore, the immediate goal of the ordinance was to raise money through the sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states acquired at the 1783 (Treaty of Paris) after the end of the Revolutionary War. Over three-fourths of the area of the continental United States ultimately came under the rectangular survey. This was important because it provided easily recognized land descriptions, which in turn contributed enormously to the orderly and largely peaceful occupation of the land. The rectangular survey also provided the units within which economic, political, and social development took place[1].
The Ordinance of 1784 was a resolution written by Thomas Jefferson (delegate from Virginia) calling for Congress to take action. The land west of the Appalachian Mountains, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River was to be divided into ten separate states[2]. However, the 1784 resolution did not define the mechanism by which the land would become states, or how the territories would be governed or settled before they became states. The Ordinance of 1785 put the 1784 resolution in operation by providing a mechanism for selling and settling the land[3], while the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 addressed political needs.

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Northwest Ordinance

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an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the United States out of the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. On August 7, 1789, the U.S. Congress affirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the Constitution.
Arguably the single most important piece of legislation passed by members of the earlier Continental Congresses other than the Declaration of Independence, it established the precedent by which the United States would expand westward across North America by the admission of new states, rather than by the expansion of existing states.
Further, the prohibition of slavery in the territory had the effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for the balancing act between free and slave states that was the basis of a critical political question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War.

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Constitutional Convention

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a gathering for the purpose of writing a new constitution or revising an existing constitution. A general constitutional convention is called to create the first constitution of a political unit or to entirely replace an existing constitution. An unlimited constitutional convention is called to revise an existing constitution to the extent that it deems to be proper, whereas a limited constitutional convention is restricted to revising only the areas of the current constitution named in the convention's call, the legal mandate establishing the convention.

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Theory of State Sovereignty

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this theory states the political belief that states should have most of the power of the country, not a national government

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Know the history of state constitutions

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the state constitutions were developed after the declaration of independence, the secured much power for the states, not the national government, they contained bills of rights to protect the people's rights and the were a blueprint for the future constitution of the United States

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Society of the Cincinnati

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historical organization with branches in the United States and France founded in 1783 to preserve the ideals and fellowship of the Revolutionary War officers and to pressure the government to honor pledges it had made to officers who fought for American independence.[2] Now in its third century, the Society is a nonprofit historical, diplomatic, and educational organization that promotes public interest in the American Revolution through its library and museum collections, exhibitions, programs, publications, and other activities.

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Primogeniture

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the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings. Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females. According to the Norman tradition, the first-born son inherited the entirety of a parent's wealth, estate, title or office and then would be responsible for any further passing of the inheritance to his siblings. In the absence of children, inheritance passed to the collateral relatives, in order of seniority of the males of collateral lines.
Variations on primogeniture modify the right of the first-born son to the entirety of a family's inheritance (see appanage) or, in modern times, eliminate the preference for male over female siblings. Five monarchies in Europe have eliminated male preference: Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.

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John Woolman

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an American itinerant Quaker preacher, traveling throughout the American colonies, advocating against conscription, military taxation, and particularly slavery.

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Federalist Number 10

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an essay written by James Madison and the tenth of the Federalist Papers, a series arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. It was published on Friday, November 23, 1787, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. The essay is the most famous of the Federalist Papers, along with Federalist No. 51, also by Madison, and is among the most highly regarded of all American political writings.[1]
No. 10 addresses the question of how to guard against "factions," or groups of citizens, with interests contrary to the rights of others or the interests of the whole community. In today's discourse the term advocacy group or special interest group often carries the same denotation. Madison argued that a strong, large republic would be a better guard against those dangers than smaller republics—for instance, the individual states. Opponents of the Constitution offered counterarguments to his position, which were substantially derived from the commentary of Montesquieu on this subject.
Federalist No. 10 continues a theme begun in Federalist No. 9; it is titled, " The Same Subject Continued: The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection." The whole series is cited by scholars and jurists as an authoritative interpretation and explication of the meaning of the Constitution. Jurists have frequently read No. 10 to mean that the Founding Fathers did not intend the United States government to be partisan.

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Shays Rebellion

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an armed uprising in central and western Massachusetts (mainly Springfield) from 1786 to 1787. The rebellion is named after Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolutionary war.


Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck, the two main rebels.
The rebellion started on August 29, 1786, and by January 1787, over one thousand Shaysites had been arrested. A militia that had been raised as a private army defeated an attack on the federal Springfield Armory by the main Shaysite force on February 3, 1787, and four rebels were killed in the action. There was a lack of an institutional response to the uprising, which energized calls to reevaluate the Articles of Confederation and gave strong impetus to the Philadelphia Convention which began on May 17, 1787. Shays' Rebellion produced fears that the Revolution's democratic impulse had gotten out of hand.

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Virginia Plan

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a proposal by Virginia delegates, drafted by James Madison while he waited for a quorum to assemble at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.[2][3] The Virginia Plan was notable for its role in setting the overall agenda for debate in the convention and, in particular, for setting forth the idea of population-weighted representation in the proposed national legislature.

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Committee of Detail

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a committee established by the Philadelphia Convention on June 23, 1787 to put down a draft text reflecting the agreements made by the Convention up to that point, including the Virginia Plan's 15 resolutions. It was chaired by John Rutledge, and other members included Edmund Randolph, Oliver Ellsworth, James Wilson, and Nathaniel Gorham. The Convention adjourned from July 26 to August 6 to await the report of this committee. This report, when made, constituted the first draft of the United States Constitution, and much of what was contained in the final document was present in this draft.

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Nationalists vs Localists

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nationalists supported the creation of a strong, national government, while the localists called for more power to the local governments and the state assemblies

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Federalists vs Anti-Federalists

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after the drafting of the constitution, those who supported the ratification of the constitution and the creation of a stronger national government were the federalists. Those who opposed the constutition were called anti federalists and they supported keeping power away from a national government and keeping the power with the state assemblies

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Jay-Gardoqui Treaty

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The Jay–Gardoqui Treaty (also known as the Liberty Treaty with Spain) of 1789 between the United States and Spain guaranteed Spain's exclusive right to navigate the Mississippi River for 30 years. It also opened Spain's European and West Indian seaports to American shipping. However, the Treaty was not ratified under the Articles of Confederation.
Congress commanded so little, and had so little power over the states of the Union and therefore over foreign policy, that other nations either ignored the young United States or ran roughshod over its interests with little fear of retaliation. The British ignored certain provisions of the Paris agreement and kept troops on American soil long after the peace treaty. When Spain closed the port of New Orleans to American commerce in 1784, Congress sent John Jay to Madrid to achieve terms to open the Mississippi to Americans. Instead, Jay signed an agreement that ignored the problem of the Mississippi in exchange for commercial advantages benefiting the Northeast (the Jay–Gardoqui Treaty). Congress rejected the treaty, and the issue smoldered for ten more years. Congress also claimed lands in the west still occupied by the British and Spaniards, but could not forcefully challenge those nations for control of the land.

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William Paterson

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a New Jersey statesman, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who served as the 2nd governor of New Jersey, from 1790 to 1793.

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Federalist #84

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an essay entitled "Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered," is one of the Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, published under the pseudonym Publius on May 28, 1788.
Federalist No. 84 is notable for presenting the idea that a Bill of Rights was not a necessary component of the proposed United States Constitution. The Constitution, as originally written, did not specifically enumerate or protect the rights of the people. It is alleged that many Americans at the time opposed the inclusion of a bill of rights: if such a bill were created, they feared, this might later be interpreted as a list of the only rights that people had.

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Montesquieu – The Spirit of Laws

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a treatise on political theory first published anonymously by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in 1748 with the help of Claudine Guérin de Tencin. Originally published anonymously partly because Montesquieu's works were subject to censorship, its influence outside of France was aided by its rapid translation into other languages. In 1750 Thomas Nugent published the first English translation. In 1751 the Catholic Church added L'esprit des lois to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books"). Yet Montesquieu's political treatise had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
Montesquieu spent nearly twenty years researching and writing L'esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws), covering a wide range of topics in politics, the law, sociology, and anthropology and providing more than 3,000 citations.[2] In this political treatise Montesquieu advocates constitutionalism and the separation of powers, the abolition of slavery, the preservation of civil liberties and the rule of law, and the idea that political and legal institutions ought to reflect the social and geographical character of each particular community.[2]
Macaulay offers us a hint of Montesquieu's importance when he writes in his 1827 essay entitled "Machiavelli": "Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celebrity than any political writer of modern Europe."

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3/5 Compromise

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compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. It was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman.
Delegates opposed to slavery generally wished to count only the free inhabitants of each state. Delegates supportive of slavery, on the other hand, generally wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers. Since slaves could not vote, slaveholders would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College. The final compromise of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers reduced the power of the slave states relative to the original southern proposals, but increased it over the northern position.

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Republican

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a political culture and ideology, it represented a form of government as well as a way of life, a core ideology, and an uncompromising commitment to liberty and equality

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Benjamin Banneker

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free African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author and farmer.

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Phyllis Wheatley

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he first published African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published.[1] Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was made a slave at age seven. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and helped encourage her poetry.

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Society for the Relief of Free Negroes

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the first American abolition society. It was initially formed April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and held four meetings.[1] Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initial meetings of the Society were Quakers. Thomas Paine was among the Society's founders.

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Henry Knox

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a military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, and also served as the first United States Secretary of War.
Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he owned and operated a bookstore there, cultivating an interest in military history and joining a local artillery company. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he befriended General George Washington, and quickly rose to become the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army. In this role he accompanied Washington on most of his campaigns, and had some involvement in many major actions of the war. He established training centers for artillerymen and manufacturing facilities for weaponry that were valuable assets to the fledgling nation.
Following the adoption of the United States Constitution, he became President Washington's Secretary of War. In this role he oversaw the development of coastal fortifications, worked to improve the preparedness of local militia, and oversaw the nation's military activity in the Northwest Indian War. He was formally responsible for the nation's relationship with the Indian population in the territories it claimed, at one point arguing that the country could take by force lands that Indian tribes were unwilling to sell.
He retired to what is now Thomaston, Maine in 1795, where he oversaw the rise of a business empire built on borrowed money. He died in 1806 from an infection received after swallowing a chicken bone, leaving an estate that was virtually bankrupt.

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Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania

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a series of essays written by the Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator John Dickinson (1732–1808) and published under the name "A Farmer" from 1767 to 1768. The twelve letters were widely read and reprinted throughout the thirteen colonies, and were important in uniting the colonists against the Townshend Acts. The success of his letters earned Dickinson considerable fame.[1]
While acknowledging the power of Parliament in matters concerning the whole British Empire, Dickinson argued that the colonies were sovereign in their internal affairs. He thus argued that taxes laid upon the colonies by Parliament for the purpose of raising revenue, rather than regulating trade, were unconstitutional.
In his letters, Dickinson foresees the possibility of future conflict between the colonies and Great Britain, but urges against the use of violence:

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New Jersey Plan

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a proposal for the structure of the United States Government proposed by William Paterson at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787.[1] The plan was created in response to the Virginia Plan's call for two houses of Congress, both elected with apportionment according to population or direct taxes paid.[2] The less populous states were adamantly opposed to giving most of the control of the national government to the larger states, and so proposed an alternate plan that would have given one vote per state for equal representation under one legislative body (i.e., a Unicameral Legislature). This was a compromise for the issue of the houses. This plan was opposed by James Madison and Edmund Randolph.
When the Connecticut Compromise (or "Great Compromise") was constructed, the New Jersey Plan's legislative body was used as the model for the United States Senate.[3]
Under the New Jersey Plan, the organization of the legislature was similar to that of the modern day United Nations and other like institutions. This position reflected the belief that the states were independent entities, and, as they entered the United States of America freely and individually, so they remained. The New Jersey plan also gave power to regulate trade and to raise money by taxing foreign goods.
Ultimately, the New Jersey Plan was rejected as a basis for a new constitution. The Virginia Plan was used, but some ideas from the New Jersey plan were added. In the Senate each state would be represented equally while the House of Representatives votes would be distributed according to population.

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Bill of Rights

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a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement by the government. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or unentrenched. An entrenched bill of rights cannot be modified or repealed by a country's legislature through normal procedure, instead requiring a supermajority or referendum; often it is part of a country's constitution and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. An unentrenched bill of rights is a normal statute law and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will. In practice, not every jurisdiction enforces the protection of the rights articulated in its bill of rights.
Australia is the only Western country with neither a constitutional nor legislative bill of rights, although there is ongoing debate in many of Australia's states. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has argued against a bill of rights for Australia as transferring power from elected politicians to unelected judges and bureaucrats.[1][2] Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) are the only regions of the nation's states to have a human rights bill.

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Robert Morris

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an American merchant, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly and became the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety and a member of the Second Continental Congress where he served as chairman of the "Secret Committee of Trade" and as a member of the Committee of Correspondence. From 1781 to 1784, he served as the powerful Superintendent of Finance, managing the economy of the fledgling United States. As the central civilian in the government, Morris was, next to General George Washington, "the most powerful man in America."[1]. His successful administration led to the sobriquet, "Financier of the Revolution." At the same time he was Agent of Marine, a position he took without pay, and from which he controlled the Continental Navy. He was one of Pennsylvania's original pair of US senators, serving from 1789 to 1795. Unwise speculation led to his bankruptcy in 1798; he spent several years in debtors prison.

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John Jay

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an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States (1789–95).
Jay served as the President of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1779. During and after the American Revolution, Jay was a minister (ambassador) to Spain and France, helping to fashion United States foreign policy, and to secure favorable peace terms from Great Britain (with Jay's Treaty of 1794) and the First French Republic. Jay also co-wrote the Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
As a leader of the new Federalist Party, Jay was the Governor of New York State from 1795 to 1801, and he became the state's leading opponent of slavery. His first two attempts to pass laws for the emancipation of all slaves in New York failed in 1777 and in 1785, but his third attempt succeeded in 1799. The new law that he signed into existence brought about the emancipation of all slaves there before his death in 1829.

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James Madison

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an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817) and is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
He was the principal author of the United States Constitution, and is often called the "Father of the Constitution". In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, the most influential commentary on the Constitution. The first president to have served in the United States Congress, he was a leader in the 1st United States Congress, drafting many basic laws, and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights".[1] As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.[2][3][4][5]
As leader in the House of Representatives, Madison worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government. Breaking with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in 1791, Madison and Thomas Jefferson organized what they called the Republican Party (later called the Democratic-Republican Party)[6] in opposition to key policies of the Federalists, especially the national bank and the Jay Treaty. He secretly co-authored, along with Thomas Jefferson, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts.
As Jefferson's Secretary of State (1801–1809), Madison supervised the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation's size, and sponsored the ill-fated Embargo Act of 1807. As president, he led the poorly prepared nation into the War of 1812 against Great Britain. A series of disasters at the beginning of the war damaged his reputation, but by 1814–15 American forces repulsed major British invasions, the Federalist opposition fell into disarray, and Americans felt triumphant at the end of the war despite it ending in stalemate for both sides. During and after the war, Madison reversed many of his positions. By 1815, he supported the creation of the second National Bank, a strong military, and a high tariff to protect the new factories opened during the war.

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Status of Slavery

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most slavery had been abolished in the northern states, in the western states and in a few southern states, though after the invention of the cotton gin and when southern states began to expand westward, slavery became too favorable economically to be abolished.