Scott Oliver, Group 4

Henretta chapter 7 discribes how the newly independent America is shaped into a democratic nation run by the three governmental branches; the judicial, executive and legislative. Todays government is very much like the government run by our the founding fathers. Although America stil had many problems to solve.
Land was still to be distributed, which was settled by "national domain" and by land division in the north west. A continental currency was to be stabalied and control. Which Robert Morris developed a financial system that handeled army expenditures, apportioned war expenses among the states, and centralized the growing foreign debt. These and other problems America faced led to our strong government today. But the big political crisis was what would determine the future of the United States; either following Thomas Jefferson, who perferred an agricultural nation, or Alexander Hamilton, who advised it would used the national government to stimulate trade and industry. How did both of these men effect the future of America, and how did this change the government?

Bryan Mostaffa, Group 4

Chapter 7 in Henretta is probably the most interesting chapter we’ve read in my opinion. I find it interesting to see how this group of colonist handles independence after its struggle against British control.

After a revolution fighting to gain power for the people, they question how much power the people should really have, they questioned how democratic America should be. This debate drew on for most of the rest of the 18^th century. In 1787 delegates from everywhere but Rhode Island gathered in Philadelphia, where they debated between the use of the Virginia Plan or the New Jersey Plan in their discussion. After a month of debate, the delegates chose the Virginia Plan by a slim margin. With the differences between the two plans in mind, how would the choice of the New Jersey Plan affect the final shape of the U.S government?

Also I the uprising of women in this post war America caught my attention as well. Women like Abigal Adams that accused men of having tyrant like control much. I found it interesting that America went through an entire revolution based on enlightenment philosophies but yet still gave women so little rights. Its not until the 1790's any of the state governments would even allow girls to attend public schools. America uses John Locke’s philosophies of unalienable rights to shape the constitution, giving Americans the right to choose the their own government, but yet these rights extend only to white males. What would an enlightenment philosopher like John Locke say on the subject? In the early 1800's New Jersey allows property owning women to vote. Why do you think that New Jersey is alone in this change?

Elizabeth Filkins Group 4

It seems like more has happened in the 24 years covered in chapter 7 of Henretta then the rest of the readings wi have had so far. The war has just ended and the country is trying to get things back into order and establish things they didn't have to worry about in the past. Almost every state sat down and wrote their new and individual state's constitution. The biggest problem with this was most likely establishing rules for slavery, how the remaining territories were going to be set up, and if/how school systems were going to be organized.
The Continental Congress made the desicion for dividing up the remaining land. The area South of the Ohio River was organized by Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. They did this because they thought the barrier of the Appilachian Mountains would make it almost impossible for Congress to deal with them. The Northwest Territory (land North of the Ohio River) would be divided into 6 states; Ohio, Indianna, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Why didn't the Northern states get to decide how the NW Territory was divided like the Southern states did? Could this be one of the contributing factors to the Civil War (jealousy)? Each state was then divided into townships of 36 square miles. This made it a whole lot easier to keep track of property boundaries.
Each individual state was able to write their own slavery laws. Yet Congress wrote a law that in 20 years the slave trade would stop. How were slave owners and newly aquired landowners feeling about this? They could keep on buying them for another twenty years but if they needed anymore after that their slaves would have to procreate or they would have to trade "used" slaves with another owner.
There were a few of the existing states that decided to make education mandatory. For example, Pennsylvania introduced an extensive elementary school system. After elementary school, most states didn't have any form of public education unless you went to a private school.
If no one went to school after elementary how was it possible for all the new universities established during or after the Great Awakening, like Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Brown, have kept in business with not many people going through a complete education and even some that do going off to fight in the Revolution? You would think these universities wouldn't be formally established until about the 1780's.

Mark Whittemore Group 4

Upon reading the Henretta Chapter 7 content, I found Adams Thoughts on Government to be quite intellectual in his idea of how the government should be run. It seems like his idea of having a dispersed system of authority through three functions of government, lawmaking (legislative), administering (executive), and judging (judicial) still continue to be practiced in our government today. Although this publication was well received, it did have some flaws. Many people did not enjoy that governors had the power to veto laws because it reminded them too much of the royal governors. Regardless, without this Adam's publication, would other men have stepped up and proposed the same ideas? Would our system of government be the same without his ideas? Also in this section, there is a discussion on why Congress would not allow free expansion across the Appalachian Mountains. It is stated that Congress feared that western settlers would set up separate republics and then would ally with Spain to gain a strong foothold on economic gain. In response to this fear, there were a number of acts passed dividing the region into territories, requiring surveying of the land, and creating separate territories. My question is, if these acts were not passed, would westerners actually have allied with Spain? Or did these people go through enough and have a general sense of nationalism for what they had just achieved by beating the British that they would have obeyed Congress regardless of the passage of these acts?

Looking at the U.S. Constitution, I found it interesting that in the Bill of Rights, that there was no mention of voting, yet there was included the right to bear arms. True, it was quite helpful that these colonists did bear arms during the period of the Revolution because many British generals did not expect this, allowing guerrilla warfare to reign supreme and provide Minutemen. Yet these men who bore arms for the defense of the nation still could not vote because of land requirements or financial prerequisites. First off, do you think that there should have been an amendment that gave more liberty to voting? Do you think that the right to bear arms was important? Is the right to bear arms important today?