Confederation Challenges
Ratified in 1781, this document established the first national framework of government for the United States.
What are the Articles of Confederation?
This Revolutionary War commander presided over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Who is George Washington?
These first ten constitutional amendments were ratified in 1791 to protect individual liberties and reserve certain powers.
What is the Bill of Rights?
This first Secretary of the Treasury designed a program to strengthen national credit and federal authority.
Who is Alexander Hamilton?
Washington established the practice of consulting this group of executive department heads.
What is the Cabinet?
This former Vice President succeeded Washington as the second President.
Who is John Adams?
Under the Articles, Congress could request money from the states but could not directly impose these payments.
What are taxes?
This large-state proposal called for congressional representation based on population.
What is the Virginia Plan?
This group supported ratification of the Constitution and a stronger national government.
Who were the Federalists?
Under this policy, the federal government took responsibility for states’ Revolutionary War debts.
What is assumption?
This 1794 uprising in western Pennsylvania challenged the federal excise tax on distilled spirits.
What is the Whiskey Rebellion?
In this diplomatic scandal, French intermediaries demanded payments before American representatives could negotiate with France’s foreign minister.
What is the XYZ Affair?
This 1785 measure established a system for surveying and selling western lands, with revenue helping pay the national debt.
What is the Land Ordinance of 1785?
This compromise combined proportional representation in the House with equal state representation in the Senate.
What is the Great Compromise, or Connecticut Compromise?
These opponents of ratification feared that the proposed national government would threaten liberties and state authority.
Who were the Anti-Federalists?
Hamilton used this term for repaying federal debt at its face value, together with interest.
What is funding at par?
This 1793 declaration announced that the United States would remain outside the war between Britain and France.
What is the Neutrality Proclamation?
This agreement with Spain secured American navigation rights on the Mississippi River in 1795.
What is Pinckney’s Treaty, or the Treaty of San Lorenzo?
This 1787 measure established a process for territorial government and the admission of new states on equal footing with existing states.
What is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787?
This agreement counted three-fifths of the enslaved population when calculating representation and direct taxation.
What is the Three-Fifths Compromise?
This concept emphasized women’s responsibility to educate children in the virtues needed to sustain a republic.
What is republican motherhood?
This 1790 political bargain helped secure support for assumption by locating the future national capital along this river. Name the river.
What is the Potomac River?
In his Farewell Address, Washington warned Americans against entering these lasting foreign commitments.
What are permanent alliances?
This 1798 law criminalized certain allegedly false and malicious statements against the federal government and was used against administration critics.
What is the Sedition Act?
Led by indebted Massachusetts farmers in 1786–1787, this uprising intensified calls for a stronger national government.
What is Shays’ Rebellion?
Offered as an alternative to the Virginia Plan, this proposal preserved equal state representation in a one-house Congress.
What is the New Jersey Plan?
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson and enacted in 1786, this Virginia law protected freedom of religious belief and rejected compulsory religious support.
What is the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom?
Hamilton invoked this constitutional clause to defend a national bank as a means of carrying out Congress’s enumerated powers.
What is the Necessary and Proper Clause, or Elastic Clause?
Negotiated in 1794, this controversial agreement secured Britain’s promise to evacuate its northwestern posts but failed to resolve American objections to impressment.
What is Jay’s Treaty?
This diplomatic agreement ended the Quasi-War and terminated the Franco-American alliance of 1778.
What is the Convention of 1800?