Thursday, December 20, 2012

Politics and Government Homework Due Wed, Jan 2

EQ: How have the courts been used to expand/inhibit liberty? 

1) Read and prepare a case analysis:

Slaughterhouse Cases

2) Read and prepare a case analysis

Schenck v. U.S. 


3)
a) Read this excerpt from the NYS Anarchy Law (Print and past into notebook if possible):
b) Prepare a primary source analysis.  In your notebook analyze and interpret the Anarchy Law.  Do you think it violates the U. S. Constitution/Bill of Rights? Why or why not?


"§ 160. Criminal anarchy defined. Criminal anarchy is the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination of the executive head or of any of the executive officials of government, or by any unlawful means. The advocacy of such doctrine either by word of mouth or writing is a felony.

§ 161. Advocacy of criminal anarchy. Any person who:

1. By word of mouth or writing advocates, advises or teaches the duty, necessity or propriety of overthrowing or overturning organized government by force or violence, or by assassination of the executive head or of any of the executive officials of government, or by any unlawful means; or,"

2. Prints, publishes, edits, issues or knowingly circulates, sells, distributes or publicly displays any book, paper, document, or written or printed matter in any
form, containing or advocating, advising or teaching the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by force, violence or any unlawful means

...Is guilty of a felony and punishable by imprisonment or fine, or both."

4) Read and prepare a case analysis: Gitlow v. NY

5) Prepare a response to the EQ: How have the courts been used to expand/inhibit liberty?  (several paragraphs)

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Democratizing Twentieth Century Homework - Due Thurs, Dec 20

Based on Zinn 398-406
Indentify:

John Lewis

1. Discuss Louis Adamic's account of an early sit-down strike.

2. Discuss the expansion of sitdown strikes in 1936.

3. What does Zinn think about the Wagner Act? Provide evidence.

4. Discuss Zinn's feelings about the National Labor Relations Board.

5. Discuss the argument made by Cloward and Piven in the book Poor People's Movements.

6. How did WWII impact the Labor Movement?

7. How did the New Deal impact African Americans?

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Democratizing Twentieth Century - Homework Due Friday, Dec 14

Politics and Government - Sample Conclusion


             
Although the framers drafted a constitution only designed to empower a small number of white male landowners, this was a rather revolutionary feat for a group of eighteenth century aristocrats.   Men like Jefferson and Madison sought to create a society in which men could rise not because of their kinship ties, but because of their virtues.  Moreover they included a Bill of Rights designed to protect basic rights—people were empowered to criticize a representative government they helped to elect.   And most importantly, the framers promoted a spirit of republicanism and individual rights that was contagious.  This spirit would come to impact slaves who sought freedom, women who sought suffrage, and gays and lesbians who seek equality under the law.   The framers planted seeds of democratic governance that continue to flourish in the twenty-first century. 

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Politics and Government - Sample Introductions for Response Essay

A)
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"The land of the free and the home of the brave." When Francis Scott Key penned those famous words, he captured the feelings of generations of Americans to come: that the United States is a land of unparalleled rights and freedoms.  And while Mr. Key did share in these great rights and freedom, many in this new nation were intentionally excluded from these self-evident natural rights, which are believed to be protected by this nation's revolutionary founding documents.  It is in these documents that the founders’ intent for our nation’s government can be found, and the truth can be rooted out.   While this nation's framers fully intended to create a revolutionary and democratic government, they failed due to the deeply embedded biases of the time.  This failure is most obvious in the treatment of women, the poor, and anyone not considered white.  

B)
 
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The preamble to the United States Constitution proclaims to protect the rights and liberties of “we the people”, but for much of this nation’s history “we” was narrowly defined within a context of patriarchy and white supremacy.  Under these conditions marginalized groups have agitated, demonstrated, and died in their endeavors to force the United States to live up to its ideals. While the achievement of full democracy has not been fully realized, the struggle to obtain it may not have begun had the Constitution’s authors not at least laid a framework for democratic governance.  Although the framers’ notion of democracy was flawed—they protected the institution of slavery failed to enfranchise women —they did intend to create a government that was revolutionary and democratic for its time.  Their intentions are best evidenced by the ability of some citizens to participate in government, the Bill of Right’s protection of civil liberties, and Jefferson and Madison’s tendency to lean toward majoritarianism and the expansion of the franchise. 




Friday, December 7, 2012

Politics and Government

Attention Students:

On Monday, Dec 10 my colleagues and a staff developer will be doing a "lab" in during my second period Poly/Govt class (sec 3).

You will have independent work time for your essays, but we will also pull small groups of students to do targeted instruction.  Can a few of you please print out your rough drafts?  If you'd prefer, you can email them to yourselves and print out in class.  You will receive some targeted support if you bring your rough draft.

Thanks,

Cope

**Everyone should have a rough draft ready by Tuesday. 

Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle toward National Ideals

Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle toward National Ideals

by James O. Horton
The fugitive slave clause in Article 4, Section 2 of the US Constitution. (GildeThe fugitive slave clause in Article 4, Section 2 of the US Constitution. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

In the summer of 1852 Frederick Douglass took the platform at Rochester, New York’s Corinthian Hall at the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. The society had asked the former slave, who had become one of the most recognized anti-slavery speakers in the nation, to deliver an oration as a part of its Fourth of July observance. Since the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday in 1852, the society moved its observance to Monday, July 5, a decision with which Douglass agreed. For years, free African Americans and many white abolitionists had refused to celebrate the Fourth of July. Their refusal was a protest against the nation’s continuance of slavery, even as its Declaration of Independence professed its commitment to human freedom. At New York City’s African Free School, for example, students vowed to use the Fourth to attack the nation’s hypocrisy. In agreeing to address the Rochester group on July 5, Douglass determined to use the occasion for his own personal protest.
On July 5, 1852, a crowd of at least six hundred filled Corinthian Hall as Douglass delivered one of the most striking lectures the residents of Rochester or any other American city had ever heard. It was, in fact, one of America’s most memorable orations, presented at a critical moment in American history. Barely two years before, in 1850, the federal government had issued an assault on the rights of African Americans in the form of a harsh fugitive slave law. The law, part of a massive compromise measure, was designed to appease the plantation South, making it easier for slaveholders to recover fugitive slaves, especially those seeking shelter in non-slaveholding states and territories. Not only did the law mandate the capture and return of fugitives, but it also endangered free blacks by requiring no legal protections or defense for anyone charged with being a fugitive. The law even prohibited accused fugitives from speaking in their own defense. It also forced all citizens, when charged, to assist authorities and slave catchers under penalty of fine and imprisonment for refusal. Such injustice was a vivid reminder that African Americans could count on few legal protections. Also, because this federal law nullified any opposing state measure, it was a jarring reminder of the fact that the law of the land protected the rights of slaveholders, virtually ignoring African American rights.



As Douglass stood before the crowd, he asked the question that cut to the core of America’s national contradiction. “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” His answer was even more unsettling to those gathered to hear his words. It is, he said, “a day that reveals to him [the slave], more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” In light of its public commitment to human rights and personal liberty, America’s continued support and protection of slavery, and its oppression of free African Americans, Douglass leveled this indictment: “For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”[1]
Douglass’s charge was stinging, but hardly unique within the African American community or to any who had followed the history of race in America to that time. From long before the United States claimed its independence through revolution or established its governmental structure based on its grand Constitution, the contradiction of a freedom-loving people tolerating and profiting from depriving their fellow human beings of freedom was central to any understanding of the nation’s formation. Despite the lofty proclamations of the declaration meant to justify the national break from England, and long before its independence, America fell short of its ideals.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, the representative body appointed by the legislatures of the thirteen colonies then in rebellion against Great Britain, ratified America’s Declaration of Independence. This Congress had been meeting since the start of the hostilities that came to be known as the American Revolution. In 1781, after the American adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the original governing instrument of the new nation, the Continental Congress assumed the name the Congress of Confederation. This representative body governed the nation through the uncertain years of the Revolution until 1783. When Britain accepted the Treaty of Paris, recognizing America’s independence and bringing the war to an end, the United States of America struggled to maintain its national unity in the face of competing state interests.
One of the most contentious issues of debate was the future of America’s institution of slavery, which by the mid-1780s held hundreds of thousands of Africans and African Americans in bondage. Some Americans were struck by the obvious contradiction between America’s egalitarian Declaration of Independence and its support of slavery. During the Revolution and in its aftermath, many moved to abolish slavery, especially in northern states where slaveholdings were generally smaller and slaveholders less powerful than in the South. In its constitution of 1777, Vermont became the first of the rebellious colonies to banish slavery. In 1783 and 1784 Massachusetts and New Hampshire followed, removing slavery through a variety of legal interpretations of constitutional provisions. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed legislation that provided for gradual emancipation, and four years later Connecticut and Rhode Island did the same. Thus, by the time the Constitutional Convention met in the spring of 1787, it was clear to most delegates that the nation was moving toward a regional split on the question of slavery.


The convention gathered at the State House in Philadelphia, the same location where eleven years earlier the Declaration of Independence had been signed. For four months, fifty-five delegates from twelve states met to frame a Constitution for a new federal republic. Rhode Island, fearing federal interference with its internal state affairs, refused to send a delegate and was the only state not represented. Other states had similar concerns about the power of centralized government, but sent delegates nonetheless. In southern states, where slaves were most numerous and the institution of slavery most economically and politically powerful, regional leaders were determined to protect slaveholding interests against federal interference. These fears were heightened by the action of the Congress in July, just two months after the convention convened. Then, still operating under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, creating a new territory from the land of the United States west of Pennsylvania and northwest of the Ohio River. This was a vast region, more than 260,000 square miles encompassing the area of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the northeastern part of Minnesota. Included as part of the ordinance was a provision prohibiting the movement of slavery into this Northwest Territory. Slavery supporters interpreted this measure as an ominous sign for the future of the institution.
Significantly, many of the largest slaveholders in the United States were delegates at the Convention. Most of them were determined to guard the institution against federal interference. The Georgia and South Carolina delegations were adamant that their states would not accept any national constitution that restricted slavery. “Without [slaves],” argued Rawlins Lowndes of his home state of South Carolina, “this state is one of the most contemptible in the Union.” It was the source of the state’s “wealth, [and] our only natural resource,” he declared. South Carolina, he believed was endangered by, “our kind friends in the [N]orth [who were] determined soon to tie up our hands, and drain us of what we had.”[2]


Debate grew so heated that delegates sought to sidestep the issue of slavery whenever possible, but they could not avoid the subject. The Constitution, as accepted in the fall of 1787, protected slavery and empowered slaveholders in important ways. In the three-fifths clause, it allowed states to count three-fifths of their slave population in calculating the population number to be considered for apportioning representation in the US House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Under this measure a single slaveholder with one hundred slaves counted as the equivalent of sixty-one free people, giving the slave states increased numbers of representatives and greatly expanding their power in the US Congress. This was a compromise between delegates from non-slave states who argued that slaves should not be counted at all in determining population size for the purpose of congressional representation and slave state delegates who demanded that the entire slave population be added to state population figures. Thus, the three-fifths compromise increased southern political power, allowing for greater protection of the institution of slavery. The South’s disproportionate power in the Electoral College allowed Thomas Jefferson to secure the presidency in 1800.
The framers also wrote into the Constitution a provision that assisted slaveholders in the recovery of fugitive slaves, especially those who might seek sanctuary in non-slave states and territories. This section read, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”[3] This fugitive slave clause protected a slaveholder’s human property, making the act of assisting a fugitive a constitutional offense. The Constitution also protected slaveholders from their slaves, giving the federal government the power to put down domestic rebellions, including slave insurrections.


The third provision written into the Constitution concerning slavery focused on the Atlantic slave trade. Debates over this issue were some of the most contentious in the entire four months of the convention. Although arguments on this issue broke largely along regional lines, with the North favoring an end to American participation in the African slave trade and the South standing against such a policy, restricting the trade was a complex issue. Northern business often played a significant role in financing the trade, outfitting and supplying the crews, and building the ships that transported slaves to American ports. This lucrative enterprise helped create northern support for protecting the slave trade. Meanwhile, in some southern states concern about a growing black population encouraged support for limiting slave importation. During the Revolution and in its aftermath, Virginia (1778), Maryland (1783), North Carolina (1786), and South Carolina (1787) had actually closed their ports to the African slave trade, hoping to limit the size of, and thus the danger posed by, their slave populations. Indeed in an early draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had included as one of the grievances giving rise to the quest for national independence a paragraph condemning the slave trade and the whole institution of slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself” forced on the colonies by Britain. Yet, the need for labor and the increasing economic value of slavery overwhelmed these objections. It was one thing for slaveholders to limit or expand the number of their slaves, but most would never accept such a condemnation of slavery or agree to give up control of the institution. In response to the objections of his fellow slaveholders, Jefferson excluded that paragraph from the final document.


The question of the extent of state power under the national constitution was directly relevant to the question of slavery and the slave trade. Some southern delegates insisted that the federal Congress have no authority to interfere with slavery at all, but others agreed to a middle ground. More moderate delegates supported a measure to deny Congress any power to limit the slave trade for at least twenty years. To many delegates, northern and southern, this seemed a practical compromise. Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts rose to support the idea. Some were uncomfortable with any constitutional reference to the trade, but Virginia delegate James Madison raised the only voice against the compromise. He had drafted a plan for a strong federal government, which he called the Virginia Plan, and he argued that “Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from liberty to import slaves.” He then predicted that “So long a term will be more dishonorable to the American character than to say nothing about it in the constitution.”[4] Madison’s words did not persuade many of his fellow southerners who demanded that the federal government should have no right to interfere with the Atlantic slave trade. The compromise held, however. “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808,” read the constitutional provision. It also provided that “a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person,” so long as the trade remained legal.[5]


Thus, in the three-fifths compromise, the fugitive slave clause, and its twenty-year protection of the Atlantic slave trade, the Constitution dealt with the slavery question, but never by name. So controversial was the issue, that the framers consciously avoided the words “slave” and “slavery” as they crafted the Constitution. Neither word appeared in the document as accepted by the convention and submitted to the states. As an article in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer announced, “the dark and ambiguous words . . . are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe that, in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in high stations.”[6]
George Washington, one of the nation’s most revered leaders, attended the convention as a Virginia delegate and remained largely silent during these exchanges on slavery. He was a slaveholder but was also ambivalent about slavery. His experience with black soldiers during the Revolution had raised questions in his mind about the slave system, but he did not argue against it. To end slavery immediately, he believed, would be dangerous. He hoped for a gradual abolition of the institution, but he understood the delicacy of the issue and its potential danger for the formation of a strong national government. After the adoption of the Constitution he explained that he was not happy with the compromises needed to construct a document acceptable to the convention, especially those on the slavery issue. In early January of 1788, he wrote to Edmund Randolph, then governor of Virginia, “There are some things in the new form [the Constitution] I will readily acknowledge, which never did, and I am persuaded never will, obtain my cordial approbation.”[7]


Over the next half century, the Constitution was continuously used to protect the institution of slavery from federal interference and attacks leveled by the increasingly militant abolition movement. The Constitutional standing of free African Americans was ambiguous, however. Under its provisions the First US Congress passed a law in 1790 that specifically limited naturalized citizenship to white aliens. Again, with constitutional sanction, the Second Congress passed legislation establishing a “uniform militia throughout the United States,” but limited it to “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states” between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.[8]
The Bill of Rights did not protect free blacks from local and state laws that deprived them of virtually all those rights enumerated in the first ten Constitutional amendments. Despite the 1787 ordinance that outlawed slavery from the Northwest Territory, Congress provided that only free white males could vote in the decision to carve out Indiana from that region as a territory in preparation for statehood.


In the pre–Civil War years, the Constitution did not protect free blacks from the racially discriminatory actions of individual states. By 1830, free blacks could vote on an equal basis with whites only in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. In the Northwest Territory, where slavery had been prohibited during the post-Revolutionary era, territorial governments severely restricted the rights of free blacks. Some required that African Americans post a bond ranging from $500 to $1,000 in order to settle within the territory, while others prohibited black immigration all together. Some of these restrictions remained in force for much of the pre–Civil War period. Illinois in 1848 and Indiana in 1851 incorporated the prohibition of African American settlement into their respective state constitutions. In 1849 the Oregon legislature prohibited African American settlement in the territory. This restriction, paired with a ban on black voting rights, was built into Oregon’s constitution as it was admitted to statehood in 1859.


For many African Americans, a Constitution that would allow and even support individual states that enslaved them and disregarded the liberty of even those who were free was a pro-slavery document not to be respected. William Wells Brown, a former slave who, like Douglass, became an important figure in the abolition movement, was convinced that as an instrument of proslavery power the Constitution must be replaced by a new document oriented toward true liberty and human equality. “I would have the [slaveholder’s] Constitution torn in shreds and scattered to the four winds of heaven,” he announced. “Let us destroy the Constitution and build on its ruins the temple of liberty.” Many white abolitionists agreed that the Constitution was a product of pro-slavery creation. In 1843 Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison proposed that non-slaveholding states secede from the nation governed by any such proslavery document as he held the Constitution to be. He called it “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell.” Eleven years later, on the Fourth of July in 1854, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the US Constitution, pronouncing it “the source and parent of the other [American] atrocities.” As the document burned, he cried out: “So perish all compromises with tyranny!” to which the abolitionist crowd replied “Amen.”[9] Given the general denial of rights to all African Americans, free as well as slave, and the growing impatience of abolitionists, white and black alike, with the governmental support of racial injustice, Douglass’s question to his fifth of July Rochester audience in 1852 might well have been, “What to freedom-loving Americans is the Fourth of July?” Eventually, Douglass came to believe that the Constitution was not a pro-slavery document, but that it was being subverted in its intent by pro-slavery forces.


The Constitution, then, was a creation of the ideals, the interests, and also the racial assumptions and prejudices of those who drafted it and those who ratified it. The nation that took shape under its legal sanctions both reflected and extended its original characteristics. As the voices of anti-slavery grew louder and more strident during the first half of the nineteenth century, the constitutional protections of slavery came under increasing attack. Finally, the secession of the southern states and the coming of civil war enabled President Abraham Lincoln and his administration to remove constitutional protections for slavery, and to prohibit it with the Thirteenth Amendment. In the aftermath of the Civil War the Constitution was further reshaped to remove race as a prohibition to citizenship. In 1857 the Supreme Court had ruled that Dred Scott, a slave seeking his freedom, could not bring his case before the federal court because African American people were not and could not be American citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1868 declared that citizenship could not be withheld on account of race, and the Fifteenth Amendment ratified in 1870 sought to protect African American voting rights.


The post–Civil War amendments to the Constitution did not prevent individual states, especially those in the South, from circumventing constitutional protections for African American citizenship rights. They did, however, provide a foundation upon which the twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement could build. Despite the Supreme Court ruling in the 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson case allowing the formation of the Jim Crow segregation system, a series of court victories based on constitutional civil rights protections led to the momentous 1954 Brown decision and set the stage for the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. American racial attitudes have traditionally contradicted American professed ideals of freedom and equality. America’s Constitution has reflected that contradiction and the struggle to reconcile American rhetoric with American reality. Over the last two centuries, freedom-loving Americans have remained determined to see America live up to the Revolutionary values upon which it founded its constitutional democracy.

[1] Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1975), 181–204.
[2] Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution (New York: Walker and Co., 2005), 3–4.
[3] United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 2.
[4] Quoted in Matthew T. Mellon, Early American Views on Negro Slavery (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1969), 127–128.
[5] United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9.
[6] Quoted in Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) 501.
[7] Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1855), 9:297.
[8] Quoted in John Hope Franklin and Genna Rae McNeil, eds., African Americans and the Living Constitution (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 23.
[9] Richard Newman, ed., African American Quotations (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000), 90; Goldstone, 16; Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 445.

James O. Horton is the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History, George Washington University, and Historian Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. His books, coauthored with Lois E. Horton, include In Hope of Liberty: Free Black Culture and Community in the North, 1700–1865 (1997) and Slavery and the Making of America (2004), the companion book for the WNET PBS series of the same name that aired in February 2005.

The Antifederalists: The Other Founders of the American Constitutional Tradition?

The Antifederalists: The Other Founders of the American Constitutional Tradition?

by Saul Cornell

The Great Debate

“The Looking Glass for 1787,” a political cartoon. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-17522)Detail from the political cartoon “The Looking Glass for 1787,” which focuses on the Federal/Antifederal conflict in Connecticut, shown here as a wagon filled with debts and sunk in mud. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
The publication of the Constitution in September 1787 inaugurated one of the most vigorous political campaigns in American history. In the process of arguing over the merits of the new plan of government, Americans not only engaged in a lively inquiry into the meaning of constitutional government, they also helped make constitutionalism a central defining characteristic of American political culture. Although the Constitution had been drafted in private by a small select group of statesmen, its meaning was inescapably public. As soon as the results of the Philadelphia Convention became known, Americans began discussing the new frame of government. A week after the convention adjourned, one Philadelphian reported that “the new plan of government proposed by the Convention has made a bustle in the city and its vicinity.” Less than a month later, further west in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, another observer noted that “the new Constitution for the United States seems now to engross the attention of all ranks.” In other parts of America similar observations were made. One Virginia commentator remarked that “the plan of a Government proposed to us by the Convention—affords matter for conversation to every rank of beings from the Governor to the door keeper.”[1] The decision of the Philadelphia Convention to submit the Constitution to state ratification conventions meant that Americans from all walks of life would be drawn into a wide-ranging public debate about its merits. The Constitution was subjected to an unprecedented level of public scrutiny; every clause of the document was parsed and analyzed. Some writers approached this task soberly, invoking the classical republican tradition by adopting pen names such as Brutus or Publius. Rather than inflame popular passions, these writers pleaded with their readers to examine the Constitution in a calm and dispassionate manner. Other authors took the low road, gleefully hurling invective and insult. One writer signaled his attention to adopt this scurrilous path, by choosing to sign his name as “a Defecater.” In one of the only surviving political cartoons from this epic debate, entitled “The Looking Glass for 1787,” the outrageous nature of much of the popular debate over the Constitution comes through clearly. In this cartoon, one protagonist has dropped his pants with the intent of fouling his opponents. The central theme of the cartoon, an allegory about ratification in Connecticut, depicts the state as a wagon stuck in the mud, loaded down by paper money. Federalists valiantly try to pull the cart to a bright future, while Antifederalists impede the cart’s progress.
The debate over the Constitution was not restricted to the pages of the nation’s papers. Arguments over the merits of the Constitution were conducted in taverns, town squares, and occasionally in the streets. Federalists and Antifederalists each made use of the rituals of popular politics, parading, and staging mock funerals and executions to express their views of the Constitution. In a few instances these spirited celebrations and protests escalated into full-scale riots. Violent outbursts, however, were the exception, not the norm, in the struggle over the Constitution.


Who Were the Antifederalists?

Antifederalists were never happy with their name. Indeed, Elbridge Gerry, a leading Antifederalist, reminded his fellow Congressmen that “those who were called antifederalists at the time complained that they had injustice done them by the title, because they were in favor of a Federal Government, and the others were in favor of a national one.” Since the issue before the American people was ratification of the Constitution, Gerry reasoned it would have been more appropriate to call to the two sides “rats” and “anti-rats!”[2]
No group in American political history was more heterogeneous than Antifederalism. Even a cursory glance of the final vote on ratification demonstrates the incredible regional and geographical diversity of the Antifederalist coalition. Antifederalism was strong in northern and western New England, Rhode Island, the Hudson River Valley of New York, western Pennsylvania, the south side of Virginia, North Carolina and upcountry South Carolina. The opposition to the Constitution brought together rich planters in the South, “middle class” politicians in New York and Pennsylvania, and backcountry farmers from several different regions. Among leading Antifederalist voices one could count members of the nation’s political elite—aristocratic planters such as Virginia’s George Mason and the wealthy New England merchant Elbridge Gerry. Mason and Gerry were adherents of a traditional variant of republicanism, one that viewed the centralization of power as a dangerous step toward tyranny. The opposition to the Constitution in the mid-Atlantic, by contrast, included figures such as weaver-turned-politician William Findley and a former cobbler from Albany, Abraham Yates. These new politicians, drawn from more humble, middling ranks, were buoyed up by the rising tide of democratic sentiments unleashed by the American Revolution. These men feared that the Constitution threatened the democratic achievements of the Revolution, which could only survive if the individual states—the governments closest to the people—retained the bulk of power in the American system. Finally, Antifederalism also attracted adherents of a more radical plebeian view of democracy. For these plebeian populists, only the direct voice of the people as represented by the local jury, local militia, or the actions of the crowd taking to the streets, could fulfill their radical localist ideal of democracy. The democratic ethos championed by Findley and Yates proved far too tame for plebeian populists, such as William Petrikin, the fiery backcountry radical from Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The Antifederalist Critique of the Constitution

Although there was considerable diversity among the opponents of the Constitution, the outline of a common critique of the Constitution slowly emerged as the document was debated in public. Three core issues defined this critique:
1. The omission of a bill of rights
The absence of a bill of rights was an often-repeated criticism of the Constitution. Antifederalists not only believed that the inclusion of a bill of rights was essential to the preservation of liberty, but they also believed that a fundamental statement of political and legal principle would educate citizens about the ideals of republicanism and make them more effective guardians of their own liberty.
2. The centralizing tendencies of the new government
The new powerful central government created by the Constitution would slowly absorb all power within its orbit and effectively reduce the states to insignificant players in a powerful new centralized nation state. Antifederalists feared that the new Constitution would create a central state similar to Great Britain’s fiscal/military model. The extensive powers to tax, the provision for a standing army, and the weakening of the state militias would allow this new powerful government to become tyrannical.
3. The aristocratic character of the new government
The charge of aristocracy frequently voiced by Antifederalists could be framed in either democratic terms or in a more traditional republican idiom. Thus, for middling democrats or plebeian populists, the charge of aristocracy was in essence a democratic critique of the Constitution. According to this view, the Constitution favored the interests of the wealthy over those of common people. For elite Antifederalists, by contrast, the charge of aristocracy echoed the traditional republican concern that any government with too much power would inevitably become corrupt and would place the interests of those in power over the common good.

Antifederalism and the Historians

The changing historical view of Antifederalism has itself become a remarkable historical litmus test for the political mood of the nation. Throughout American history, Antifederalist ideas have been resurrected by groups eager to challenge the power of the central government. Historians have not been exempt from the tendency to see Antifederalism through a political lens. Over the course of the twentieth century historians continuously reinterpreted the meaning of Antifederalism. These different interpretations tell us as much about the hopes and fears of the different generations of scholars who wrote about the opposition to the Constitution as it does about the Antifederalists themselves.
At the end of the nineteenth century, populists cast the Antifederalists as rural democrats who paved the way for Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy.[3] This interpretation was challenged by counter progressive historians writing during the Cold War era. For these scholars, the Antifederalists were examples of the paranoid style of American politics and were backward-looking thinkers who failed to grasp the theoretical brilliance of the new Constitution.[4] This claim was later challenged by Neo-Progressive historians who saw Antifederalism as a movement driven by agrarian localists who were opposed by a group of commercial cosmopolitan supporters of the Constitution.[5] The rise of the new social history during the turbulent era of the 1960s had relatively little impact on scholarship on Antifederalism. The many community studies produced by social historians were generally concerned with more long-term changes in American society and hence tended to shy away from the topic of ratification. Social history’s emphasis on recovering the history of the inarticulate also pulled historians away from the study of elite constitutional ideas in favor of other topics. [Thus, none of the many excellent New England town studies, for example, dealt directly with ratification. Some neo-conservative scholars actually faulted the new social history for abandoning constitutional politics entirely; see Gertrude Himmelfarb, The New History and the Old (1987)].
The Constitution was, however, of considerable interest to students of early American political ideology. For scholars working within this ideological paradigm, the struggle between Federalists and Antifederalists was a key battle in the evolution of American political culture. Some saw the opponents of the Constitution as champions of a traditional civic republican ideology, clinging to notions of virtue and railing at corruption. Others cast the Antifederalists as the forerunners of modern liberal individualism with its emphasis on rights and an interest-oriented theory of politics.[6]
Over the course of the twentieth century Antifederalism played a central role in a number of different narratives about America history. For some, opposition to the Constitution was part of the rise of democracy, for others, it heralded the decline of republicanism, while others saw it as source of modern liberal individualism. Given the heterogeneity of Antifederalism, it is possible to find evidence to support all of these claims, and more. Rather than seek a single monolithic true Antifederalist voice, it would be more accurate to simply recognize that Antifederalism was a complex political movement with various ideological strains, each of which made important contributions to the contours of early American political and constitutional life.

Antifederalism and the American Constitutional Tradition: The Enduring Legacy of the Other Founders

Historians and political scientists are hardly the only groups to show an interest in the ideas of the Antifederalists. Judges, lawyers, and legal scholars have increasingly canvassed the ideas of the Antifederalists in their effort to discover the original understanding of the Constitution and the various provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, in a host of areas, from federalism to the Second Amendment, legal scholars and courts have increasingly turned to Antifederalist texts to support their conclusions.[7] If the past is any guide to the future, the ideas of the Antifederalists are likely to continue to play a prominent role in future constitutional controversies.

[1] Saul Cornell. The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (1999).
[2] Cornell, Other Founders.
[3] Orrin Grant Libby. The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787–88 (1894).
[4] Cecelia Kenyon. Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government (1955).
[5] Jackson Turner Main. The Antifederalists; Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (1961).
[6] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969); Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: The Evolution of a Party Ideology (1978); Richard Beeman, et al., eds. Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and National Identity (1987). For an early effort to frame the struggle over the Constitution in light of the perspective of new social history, see Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (1985; rev ed. 2003).
[7] Michael C. Dorf, “No Federalists Here: Anti-Federalism and Nationalism on the Rehnquist Court” 31 Rutgers Law Journal 741 (2000).

Saul Cornell is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, Fordham University, and the author of The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 17881828 (1999) and, with Jennifer Keene and Ed O’Donnell, American Visions: A History of the American Nation (2009).

Ordinary Americans and the Constitution


Ordinary Americans and the Constitution

by Gary B. Nash
Detail from the Preamble to the US Constitution, 1787. (GLC03585)Detail from the Preamble of the US Constitution printed in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

The Constitution is so honored today, at home and abroad, that it may seem irreverent to suggest that for a great many ordinary Americans, it was not what they wished as a capstone of their revolutionary experience. This is not to say that they opposed the Constitution from beginning to end. Far from it. Rather, they were alarmed at important omissions in the Constitution, particularly a Bill of Rights. Many believed that the Constitution was the work of men of wealth and prestige who meant to submerge the most democratic features of the American Revolution. This is why historians are generally agreed that if the Constitution had been put before the electorate for an up-and-down vote—a plebescite, in effect—it would not have been ratified. Considering that the suffrage was limited to about half of the adult white men (others were not qualified for lack of property), this would have been a thumping rejection of what was seen by ordinary people as a conservative, elitist-tinged document.
With this in mind, let’s consider how three large groups—African Americans, artisans, and small farmers—viewed the Constitution, and examine why these groups had deep reservations about its ability to steer the nation forward without compromising the founding principles of the American Revolution.

African Americans

Not until 1845, after Madison’s long-hidden notes on the debates of the Constitutional Convention were published, would William Lloyd Garrison, a fervent abolitionist, call the Constitution a “covenant with death” and “an agreement with hell” because of the several pro-slavery clauses embodied in the document and how the delegates to the convention put them there. Enslaved African Americans—about one-sixth of the nation’s population in 1790—knew that well enough, for the Constitution that began with the lofty words “To create a more perfect union” did nothing to release them and their children from slavery.

This was obvious as well to free African Americans, though their fragile position in the northern and Chesapeake states made it difficult for them to criticize the Constitution once it was ratified. And it was well known that among the Antifederalists opposing ratification of the Constitution, some were disturbed at the pro-slavery character of the document. One such person was Luther Martin, attorney general of Maryland, who railed against delaying the end of the slave trade for twenty years and lamented that the Constitution did not include a clause “to authorize the general government from time to time, to make such regulations as should be thought most advantageous for the gradual abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of the slaves.” In protesting the fugitive slave clause (Article IV, Section 2) shortly after ratification, black Americans again signified their understanding that northern delegates to the Constitutional Convention had bowed to southern slave owners.
It would take a half century before Frederick Douglass expressed what many of his black predecessors latently believed about the Constitution, and this feeling grew as the number of slaves increased rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century. “The Constitution of the United States—What is it?” asked Douglass. “Who made it? For whom and for what was it made?” His answer was disquieting for whites but empowering for blacks: “Liberty and Slavery—opposite as Heaven and Hell—are both in the Constitution; and the oath to support the latter is an oath to perform that which God has made impossible. . . . If we adopt the preamble, with Liberty and Justice, we must repudiate the enacting clauses, with Kidnapping and Slave holding.”

Artisans

Representing perhaps one-tenth of the population, craftsmen ranged across a great many trades, and they were far from unified in their political views. Nonetheless, most supported the Constitution. They knew that the Articles of Confederation left the Continental Congress with no taxing power, with no “energy,” with no authority to raise an army to suppress insurrections, either by black slaves or white farmers’ desperate at post-1783 demands for taxes and debt payments that they could not meet in the midst of a postwar depression. Also, they favored a shift of power from state legislatures to a federal government because it promised federal protection for the American-made goods that they produced in competition with British artisans. Tariff protection, mandated by a stronger central government, fit their needs for the public to “buy American.”
Yet a great many artisans had concerns about the Constitution. Particularly, they feared that it would usher in an era where the democratic promise of the Revolution—both in economic and political terms—would wither away.
The artisans’ economic concerns centered on equal access to capital, land, and education and the chance to achieve what they called a “decent competency.” Believing in the virtuousness of productive labor and the indispensability of laboring people to the community, many artisans deplored what they saw as a growing tendency of the rich to feed off the poor, while casting aspersions on “the sheeplike masses” and “the vulgar herd.” If the Constitution facilitated the rise of a super-wealthy commercial elite, the day was not far off before the small producers’ dream of social justice and a rough economic equality would be shattered. George Bryan, writing as “Centinel,” put it plainly. He opposed the Constitution because it played into the hands of the “aristocratic juntos of the well-born few, who had been zealously endeavoring since the establishment of their [colonial] constitutions, to humble that offensive upstart—equal liberty.”
Liberty also meant political rights. The artisans had found their voice during the Revolution, throwing off deference to wealthy leaders, and coming to play important positions on seaport committees charged with enforcing boycotts against British products. They had insisted that they were a part of the body politic—to be enfranchised, allowed to run for office, and given respect for their service to the community. At the time of Constitution-making, they were beginning to form mechanic organizations, which would soon become nodes of political consciousness. All of this seemed at risk as the ratification debates engaged the public.
In some towns, especially in the interior, artisans and small shopkeepers fiercely opposed ratification of the Constitution. In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for example, reported William Petrikin, an ordinary man, “almost every day some new society [was] being formed” to block “this detestable federal conspiracy.” A volunteer militia company that he led even pledged “to oppose the establishment of the new Constitution at the risque of our life and fortunes.” Crowd action occurred only rarely during the ratification process, but sentiments ran strong against what thousands of ordinary citizens saw as a retreat from the liberties they had gained during the Revolution.
By the late eighteenth century, most artisans had drifted away from the Federalist Party into the Jefferson-led Democratic-Republican Party because some of the features of the Constitution that worried them at the time of its creation came to the fore under the first several Congresses and the presidencies of Washington and Adams. As one New York City sailmaker declaimed at a Fourth of July celebration in 1797, “Wherever the wealthy by the influence of riches are enabled to direct the choice of public officers, there the downfall of liberty cannot be very remote.” Proud to live “by the sweat of their brows,” the artisans passed down their fears of concentrated economic and political power—the enemy of a society of equal opportunity and social justice—to industrial laborers who by the 1820s were confronting capital in its expansive, freewheeling form.

Small Farmers

When Amos Singletary, the rough-hewn farmer from Worcester County, Massachusetts, rose before the state’s elected convention gathered in 1788 to decide on whether to ratify the Constitution, he spoke without benefit of any schooling. But standing behind the plow, he had developed a wealth of feelings and political instincts. Singletary may have appreciated that a written constitution was in itself a landmark event in the Western world, and he may have celebrated the fact that conventions of delegates elected by their constituents were charged with deciding on the wisdom of the document. These, after all, were breathtaking innovations in putting the power in the people—or, as was the case in Massachusetts, to give a say in political matters to about half the white adult males who qualified through property ownership.
But gnawing at Singletary’s innards was something born of his lifelong experience with the men of wealth in western Massachusetts. He, like most debt-ridden farmers tilling marginal lands in New England, had just left behind a wrenching, blood-filled civil insurrection born out of desperation. “These lawyers, and men of learning, and moneyed men, that talk so finely, and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill,” he sputtered, “expect to get into congress themselves; they expect to be managers of the Constitution and get all the power and all the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all of us little folks, like the great Leviathan. Mr. President; yes just as the whale swallowed up Jonah. This is what I am afraid of.”
Singletary did not speak for all farmers and probably not for most of the commercially successful men of the plow. But he spoke for the hardscrabble families who eked out a living far from commercial markets. Such men toiled on the frontiers of the new nation, especially in the Appalachian hill country from Maine to Georgia. As small agricultural producers, they feared and hated what they regarded as moneyed, parasitical men who did not live by their own labor but handled money, speculated in land, bore hard on debtors to whom they made loans, and paid low taxes in relation to their wealth.
Many ordinary farmers did support the Constitution because they accepted the Federalists’ arguments that the nation was languishing under a government with insufficient power to levy taxes for national defense, conduct a muscular foreign policy, and devise national solutions to other national problems. The promise of the addition of a Bill of Rights, the lack of which was a bone in the throat of a majority of people, set at ease many who feared the aristocratic tendencies of the Constitution and the transfer of power from state legislatures to a federal Congress. But decade after decade, usually in times of economic stress, agrarian radicals would step forward in every part of the expanding nation to seek redress for grievances that were rooted, in their view, from a narrow, aggrandizing minority of wealthy Americans who benefited the most from the Constitution.

Gary B. Nash is professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution (1979), The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005), and The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (2006).

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT ESSAY REQUIREMENTS (AGAIN)

Response Essay

In this unit we will examine the roots of our republic. Conventional wisdom suggests our republic is democratic in nature, reflecting the democratic impulses of our "founding fathers". Historians such as Howard Zinn seem to challenge this notion. Others such as Gore Vidal and Robert Dhal have more nuanced views.  In this essay you will deconstruct the arguments of these historians to develop your own interpretation of the framers and their intentions when drafting the United States Constitution.


You will write a formal essay that demonstrates your understanding of class texts, lectures,  films, and discussions. Your essay should be 5 pages, typed, double spaced, 12 pt font. In this essay you will construct an argument that responds to the following question:

Did the Constitution's framers intend to create a revolutionary and democratic government?

Your paper should discuss at least one of the following:

- The distinct feelings about revolution and democracy held by the "Founding Fathers"

- The structure of the government and/or the democratic or undemocratic aspects of each branch.

- The manner in which different "Founding Fathers" implemented the new Constitution; the way they used their roles in government to shape domestic and foreign policy.




Your paper should contain evidence from all of the following sources:

A) Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal

B) "A Kind of Revolution" by Howard Zinn

C) How Democratic is the Constitution by Robert Dhal
 

D) Who Built America? pgs TBA (This is a class reference text. You must use workshop time in class to gather evidence from this book. You may not take it home.)

E) United States Constitution, Federalist 

F) Excerpt from Gordon Wood essay "How Democratic is the Constitution?"

G)  Class notes on lectures, films, discussions, and Constitution Center Field Trip



Rubric for Essay

HISTORICAL CONTENT

16 - Demonstrates a clear and sophisticated understanding of the historical time period and the cause and effect relationship between significant events; accurately discusses the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding several of the framers and the Constitution

12 - Demonstrates a clear understanding of the historical time period and the cause and effect relationship between significant events; accurately discusses the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding several of the framers and the Constitution

8 - Demonstrates some understanding of the historical time period and the cause and effect relationship between significant events; attempts to discuss the opinions and arguments presented by one or two historians regarding one or two of the framers and the Constitution

4 - Demonstrates little or no understanding of the historical time period and the cause and effect relationship between significant events; does not discusses the opinions and arguments presented by historians regarding the framers and the Constitution; provides a summary of events without making an argument


INTRODUCTION, DISTINCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF PRECISE CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS
4 - Introduces, distinguishes and develops precise claims and counterclaims throughout the entire essay to create a strong and nuanced argument; cites strong and thorough evidence from A-F above.

3 - States a precise claim that is developed throughout the entire essay; provides relevant and thorough evidence from of A-F; evaluates claim against some counterclaims.

2 - States a claim that is developed throughout much of the essay; provides relevant evidence from several of A-F.

1 - Provides some information, details, and/or evidence related to claim but does not state a claim.


USE OF SPECIFIC LANGUAGE AND VARIED SYNTAX TO LINK CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS, AND EVIDENCE

4 - Uses a variety of specific transitional words, phrases, and clauses as well as varied syntax to connect claims, counterclaims and/or evidence. Appropriately incorporates new vocabulary learned in this unit.

3 - Uses specific transitional words and phrases as well as varied syntax to connect claims, counterclaims, and/or evidence.

2 - Uses specific transitional words and phrases to connect claims, counterclaims, and/or evidence.

1 - Uses simple words/phrases to connect claims, counterclaims, and/or evidence.


OBSERVATION AND MAINTENANCE OF APPROPRIATE TONE, STYLE, NORMS AND CONVENTIONS


4 - Observes and maintains objective tone and formal style throughout the entire essay while attending to the norms and conventions of a history essay. Discusses the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding the framers and the Constitution


3 - Observes and maintains relevant tone and style throughout the entire essay; attends to the norms and conventions of a history essay in most of the essay. Discusses the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding the framers and the Constitution.

2 - Uses relevant tone and style consistently throughout sections/portions of the essay; attends to the norms and conventions of a social studies essay in specific paragraphs or sections of the essay. Attempts to discuss the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding the framers and the Constitution

1 - Uses relevant style and tone sporadically; fails to attend to the norms of a social studies essay in specific sentences or specific portions of the essay. Fails to discuss the opinions and arguments presented by different historians regarding the framers and the Constitution


PROVISION OF RELEVANT CONCLUDING STATEMENT

4 - Provides a concluding statement that follows from and supports all of the major claims of the argument while extending insight and/or prescribing further relevant action

3 - Provides a concluding statement that follows from and supports all of the major claims of the argument

2 - Provides a concluding statement that follows from and supports several of the major claims of the argument

1 - Provides a concluding statement that is somewhat relevant to the argument presented


ABILITY TO DEMONSTRATE A COMMAND OF THE CONVENTIONS OF STANDARD ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND USAGE

4 - Demonstrates command of a variety of sentence structures, phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, etc.), and clauses (dependent, relative, etc.) consistently throughout the essay; resolves issues of complex or contested usage.

3 - Demonstrates command of variety of sentence structures, phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, etc.), and clauses (dependent, relative, etc.) consistently throughout most of the essay.

2 - Demonstrates command of variety of sentence structures, phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, etc.), and clauses (dependent, relative, etc.) consistently throughout sections of the essay.

1 - Demonstrates some command of proper sentence structure, use of basic phrases (noun, verb) and simple clauses (independent and dependent).


DEMONSTRATE COMMAND OF THE CONVENTIONS OF STANDARD ENGLISH CAPITALIZATION, PUNCTUATION, AND SPELLING

4 - Demonstrates command of the conventions of capitalization, punctuation (extends to hyphenation), and spelling consistently throughout the text.

3 - Demonstrates command of the conventions of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling consistently throughout most of the text.

2 - Demonstrates command of the conventions of capitalization, punctuation (extends to semicolon/colon usage), and spelling consistently throughout sections/portions of the text.

1 - Demonstrates some command of the conventions of capitalization (names, beginning of sentence), punctuation (end punctuation, basic comma usage) and spelling.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Politics and Government - Some Helpful, Quotable Sources for Response Essay

Democratizing Twentieth Century Homework - Due Mon, Dec 10

Read Zinn Chap 15 pg 377-387


1) Take notes on the text in your notebook or type and tape into notebook. (Notes will be graded on a 4 point scale)

2) Notes should identify the text's central ideas and discuss the following:

Seattle General Strike
Establishment's Reaction to the Seattle Strike
Excerpt from The Nation
Immigration and Labor/Strikes/Strike Breaking
U. S. Policy Toward Immigrants during the 1920s
Marcus Garvey
Distribution of Wealth During the 1920s
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sinclair Lewis
Fiorello La Guardia
stretch-out

Monday, December 3, 2012

Politics and Government Homework Due Tues, Dec 4

Read Robert Dahl, chap 6 and take notes.  Notes will be graded on a four point scale.

We are going to be working on the essays this week.  I have the mobile lab reserved.  Please remember to bring anything you will need to help you work.  Also note that you must use class time to consult the reference text Who Built America.  You may not take it home and it must be discussed in your essay. 

For Thursday: Read Chapters 7 and 8 and take notes.

For Friday:  Read Appendix A and take notes.




Democratizing Twentieth Century Homework Due - Tues, Dec 4

Wednesday, November 21, 2012


QUIZZES - WED, NOV 28 - STUDY GUIDE WILL BE POSTED

Suggested terms for study will be posted by Friday Nov 23

Democratizing Twentieth Century Homework - Due Mon, Nov 26


1 - Read each of the following links and take notes.  Notes will be graded on a 4 point scale.

Comstockery in America

No Healthy Race Without Birth Control

This I Believe--November, 1953

Birth Control as an Election Issue? Why?   (this is 3 pages)

Planned Parenthood's funding is target in partisan debates (this is 2 pages) 

Veteran Lawmaker: Contraception a human right (this is 2 pages)

2 - Reflection (about a page):  What gains were won by the Birth Control Movement?  What gains do you think were sought but not won?  What limited the movement from attaining all of its goals?  Use evidence from your notes and the readings. 






Politics and Government Homework - Due Monday, November 26 2012

Read Inventing a Nation chapter 7 and take notes.  Notes will be graded on a 4 point scale.

Read How Democratic is the American Constitution chapter 4 and chapter 5 and take notes.  Notes will be graded on a 4 point scale.

Using your notes on Vidal chaps 1-7 and your notes on Dahl chaps 1-5 create a tentative outline for your essay.  If you are unaccustomed to making an outline, try using the format below.  





Claim:




Reason  1:







Reason  2:
Reason 3:
Evidence















Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence




Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence