Honors US I
DBQ: Ratifying the Constitution
Name: ______________________
Date: _________________
The DBQ prompt is based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise. On AP
test day, you are advised to spend 10 minutes planning (i.e. prewriting, analyzing the docs) and 50 minutes writing your answer.
In your response you should do the following:
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State a relevant thesis that directly addresses all parts of the question.
Support the thesis or a relevant argument with evidence from all, or all but one, of the documents.
Incorporate analysis of all, or all but one, of the documents into your argument.
Focus your analysis of each document on at least one of the following: intended audience, purpose, historical context, and/or
point of view.
Support your argument with analysis of historical examples outside the documents.
Connect historical phenomena relevant to your argument to broader events or processes.
Synthesize the elements above into a persuasive essay that extends your argument, connects it to a different historical
context, or accounts for contradictory evidence on the topic.
Prompt:
Explain and evaluate the late 1780s arguments that the Constitution was either necessary or dangerous. In the process, be sure to
explain what each side argued was the best way to ensure liberty.
Available Documents and Information:
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Provided documents begin on the next page.
Additional documents previously provided:
o The Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist readings
o Articles of Confederation
o US Constitution
o George Washington practice multiple choice questions
Document 1
Speech on the Constitutional Convention on a Plan of Government, Alexander Hamilton, 1787
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people....
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent
share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they
therefore will ever maintain good government.
Document 2
Mercy Otis Warren, “Observations on the New Federal Constitution and on the Federal and State Conventions,” Spring 1788
“There is no security in the system [under the proposed new US Constitution] either for the rights of conscience or the liberty of the
press…. The executive and the legislat[ure] are so dangerously blended that they give just cause for alarm…. ”
Document 3
Letter from George Washington to John Jay, August 1, 1786, agreeing with Jay’s criticism of the Articles of Confederation
“Your sentiments, that our affairs are drawing rapidly to a crisis, accord with my own…. We have errors to correct. We have
probably had too good an opinion of human nature …”
Document 4
Patrick Henry, a delegate to the Virginia State Constitutional Ratification Convention, in a speech given June 1788
“…Here is a resolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain…our rights and privileges are endangered, and the
sovereignty of the states will be relinquished…. The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press…are rendered insecure.
Document 5
Amos Singletree, member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Ratification Convention, in a speech given January 1788
“These lawyers and men of learning, and monied men, that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate
people swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves…and get all the power and all the money into their own hands,
and then they will swallow all us little folks…”
Document 6
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835.
The doctrine of self-interest properly understood does not inspire great sacrifices, but every day it prompts some small ones; by itself
it cannot make a man virtuous, but its discipline shapes a lot of orderly, temperate, moderate, careful, and self-controlled citizens. If it
does not lead the will directly to virtue, it established habits which unconsciously turn it that way.
Document 7
The Federalist No. 10, James Madison, November 22, 1787.
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its
tendency to break and control the violence of faction....Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous
citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty; that our governments are too unstable; that
the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to rules of justice,
and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority....
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