Notes
Causes of the Revolution
- The French and Indian War left Britain in debt. New taxes (Sugar, Stamp, Townshend and Tea Acts) and the Proclamation of 1763 angered colonists.
- Colonists demanded no taxation without representation and protested with boycotts, the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress.
- Britain responded with the Intolerable Acts. Fighting began at Lexington and Concord (1775).
Independence and war
- Common Sense built support for independence. The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) used Locke's ideas of natural rights and consent of the governed.
- Saratoga (1777) brought the French alliance; Yorktown (1781) ended major fighting; the Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized independence.
From the Articles to the Constitution
- The Articles of Confederation created a weak government that could not tax or regulate trade. Shays' Rebellion exposed its weakness.
- The Constitutional Convention (1787) produced the Great Compromise and the Three-Fifths Compromise.
- Core principles: popular sovereignty, federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, limited government.
Ratification
- Federalists supported the Constitution; Anti-Federalists wanted a bill of rights. The Bill of Rights (1791) protects individual liberties and reserves powers to states and the people.
Topics in this unit
Each topic has its own short notes and practice.
Practice
Stamp Act 1765, Tea Party 1773, Declaration 1776, Saratoga 1777.
Locke's social contract idea: government exists to protect rights, and people may replace it if it fails.
The Articles' Congress could not tax; the Constitution gave Congress that power.
Three of every five enslaved people were counted toward a state's population.
Powers not delegated to the national government are reserved to the states or the people.
Anti-Federalists feared centralized power and demanded written protection of rights.
Free response
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Free-response question
Between 1776 and 1791, Americans created two plans of national government: the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
(a) Describe TWO weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
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Congress could not collect taxes, so it could not pay debts or support an army. It also could not regulate trade between the states, and there was no executive to enforce laws.
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(b) Explain how Shays' Rebellion influenced the movement to write a new constitution.
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Indebted farmers in Massachusetts rebelled in 1786 to 1787, and the national government had no money or army to stop them. Leaders saw that the government was too weak to keep order, which built support for the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
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(c) Explain how ONE principle of the Constitution was meant to prevent any part of government from becoming too powerful.
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Checks and balances let each branch limit the others. For example, the president can veto laws, Congress can override a veto and the courts can rule laws unconstitutional, so no branch can act alone.
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