APUSH 3.7

“Instead of a powerful nation-state with imperial pretensions, the government established under the Articles of Confederation was not really much of a government at all, but rather a diplomatic conference where the sovereign states, each of which regarded itself as an autonomous nation, met to coordinate a domestic version of foreign policy. It was, in effect, designed to be weak, and lacked altogether the authority to manage a burgeoning empire.”

-Source: Joseph J. Ellis, historian, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, 2007

Which of the following actions of the central government under the Articles of Confederation directly undermines Ellis’s assertions?

• regulating interstate commerce

• managing internal unrest

• instituting a single, national currency

• negotiating the Treaty of Paris of 1783

"The insurgents who were assembled at Worcester in Massachusetts have disbanded. The people at Boston seem to be glad at this event and say it was the effect of fear. But the fact is that the insurgents effected their object . . . The commotions of Massachusetts have wrought prodigious changes in the minds of men in that State [with regard to] the Powers of Government. Everybody says they must be strengthened and that unless this shall be effected there is no Security for liberty or Property. Such is the State of things in the east, that much trouble is to be apprehended in the course of the ensuing year."

-Source: Henry Knox, letter to his former commander George Washington, 1786

Which of the following groups would have been most likely to support the author’s views expressed in the excerpt?

• Patriots

• Anti-Federalists

• Loyalists

• Federalists

“All male white inhabitants, of the age of twenty-one years, and possessed in his own right of ten pounds value, and liable to pay tax in this State, or being of any mechanic trade, and shall have been resident six months in this State, shall have a right to vote at all elections for representatives, or any other officers, herein agreed to be chosen by the people at large; and every person having a right to vote at any election shall vote by ballot personally. . . .”

-Source: Georgia State Constitution, 1777

According to the excerpt, which of the following was a qualification for voting?

• Voters had to be employed.

• Voters had to be at least 18 years old.

• Voters had to be born in the United States.

• Voters had to own property.

”We found ourselves rather pressed, the Ohio Company appeared to purchase a large tract of the federal lands, about 6 or 7 million of acres— ;and we wanted to abolish the old system and get a better one for the Government of the Country— ;and we finally found it necessary to adopt the best system we could get. . . . When I drew the ordinance which passed (in a few words excepted) as I originally formed it, I had no idea the States would agree to the sixth Art. prohibiting Slavery— ; as only [Massachusetts] of the Eastern States was present—; and therefore omitted it in the draft—; but finding the House favourably disposed on this subject, after we had completed the other parts I moved the art—; which was agreed to without opposition.”

-Source: Nathan Dane, in a letter to Rufus King after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 1787

Which of the following developments best represents a logical extension of the ideas expressed in the excerpt?

• growing support for a Constitutional Convention to replace the Articles of Confederation

• growing economic differences between the North, South, and West

• growing regional differences on the practice of enslavement

• growing support for the relocation of Indigenous communities to reservations

“Instead of a powerful nation-state with imperial pretensions, the government established under the Articles of Confederation was not really much of a government at all, but rather a diplomatic conference where the sovereign states, each of which regarded itself as an autonomous nation, met to coordinate a domestic version of foreign policy. It was, in effect, designed to be weak, and lacked altogether the authority to manage a burgeoning empire.”

-Source: Joseph J. Ellis, historian, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, 2007

According to the excerpt and your knowledge of history, what was the purpose of the Articles of Confederation?

• to create a strong national government with a bicameral legislature and a single executive branch

• to create a weak national government with a unicameral legislature and no executive branch

• to create a weak national government with a bicameral legislature and a single executive branch

• to create a strong national government with a unicameral legislature and no executive branch

”When the Articles of Confederation were drafted, Americans had had little experience of what a national government could do for them and bitter experience of what an arbitrary government could do to them. In creating a central government they were therefore more concerned with keeping it under control than with giving it the means to do its job”.

-Source: Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, 1956

Which of the following best supports Morgan’s assertion about the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation?

• the grievances of Daniel Shays and other Revolutionary War veterans due to farm foreclosures

• the lack of centralized military power under the Articles of Confederation

• the decision to replace the Articles of Confederation with a new Constitution

• the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which committed US debtors to repay their British creditors

“The United States Constitution may have reflected a desire for a more republican, less democratic way of organizing governments, but those states that rewrote their constitutions between 1789 and 1791 never reduced the right to vote for adult white males. In 1789 Georgia confirmed that all free white males who paid taxes during the previous year could vote. . . . Most drastically, in 1791–1792 Delaware at last dropped its freehold qualification and enfranchised adult white male residents who had paid a state or county tax. Together with New Hampshire (which in 1791 also chose to retain its taxpaying qualification) and North Carolina, these states all maintained tax systems that made qualification easy. . . . Thus by the time of George Washington’s reelection in 1792, after the admission of Vermont and Kentucky, seven of the fifteen states had given up property qualifications in voting for their lower house of assembly.”

-Source: Donald Ratcliffe, “The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy, 1787-1828,” 2013

According to the excerpt, one major change in United States politics from 1780 to 1800 was which of the following?

• establishment of the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review

• establishment of an executive branch

• elimination of state taxes

• elimination of property qualifications for voting

”We found ourselves rather pressed, the Ohio Company appeared to purchase a large tract of the federal lands, about 6 or 7 million of acres— ;and we wanted to abolish the old system and get a better one for the Government of the Country— ;and we finally found it necessary to adopt the best system we could get. . . . When I drew the ordinance which passed (in a few words excepted) as I originally formed it, I had no idea the States would agree to the sixth Art. prohibiting Slavery— ; as only [Massachusetts] of the Eastern States was present—; and therefore omitted it in the draft—; but finding the House favourably disposed on this subject, after we had completed the other parts I moved the art—; which was agreed to without opposition.”

-Source: Nathan Dane, in a letter to Rufus King after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 1787

Which of the following developments in the 1790s best represented the continuation of the ideas expressed in the passage?

• support for abolition movements in the North to prohibit slavery

• support for the idea of Republican Motherhood as a woman’s role

• Articles of Confederation

• Support for neutrality during conflicts between the French and the British