The College Board Advanced Placement Examination
Follow the special instructions that accompany this DBQ. After following the directions on
the instruction sheet, you will write:
1) a thesis paragraph,
2) a topic sentence for each body paragraph, and
3) a brief summary/conclusion.
Use only a blue or black PEN to write your essay.
The College Board
Advanced Placement Examination
United States History
SECTION II
(Suggested writing time – 45 minutes)
Percent of Section II score - 45
Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your
interpretation of Documents A – H and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High
scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and
draw on outside knowledge of the period.
Alexander Hamilton’s desire to charter the First Bank of the United States led to an argument
in Congress over loose constructionism vs. strict constructionism of the Constitution. Was the
chartering of the First Bank by the U.S. Congress loose constructionism or strict
constructionism? Was the decision constitutional?
Use the documents and your knowledge of the period 1787 to 1820 in constructing your
response to these questions.
Document A
Source: The Constitution of the United States of America
(Article I, Section VIII, paragraph 18)
"Congress has certain implied powers:
"It may make laws necessary for carrying out the enumerated powers. To make all laws which
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other
powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department
or officer thereof."
(Article I, Section X, paragraph 1)
"No State shall...coin money, emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender
in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder...or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or
grant any title of nobility.”
(Amendment X)
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
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Document B
Source: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 33 (1787-1788).
"If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter
may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be
supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed. It would
otherwise be a mere treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a government,
which is only another word for political power and supremacy."
Document C
Source: “The Kentucky Resolutions,” written by Thomas Jefferson against the Alien and
Sedition Laws (1798-1799).
"RESOLVED,...That if those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress
the limits fixed by that compact [the Constitution], by a total disregard to the special delegations
of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their
ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence:
That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the
general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop
nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and
not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers:
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the
unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of
all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy....”
Document D
Source: Alexander Hamilton, Report on a National Bank (December13, 1790).
"The following are among the principal advantages of a Bank.
"First. The augmentation of the active or productive capital of a country. Gold and Silver...when
deposited in Banks, to become the basis of a paper circulation...they can acquire...an active and
productive quality....
"Secondly. Greater facility tot he Government in obtaining pecuniary aids, especially in sudden
emergencies....
"Thirdly. The facilitating of the payment of taxes....
"Considerations of public advantage suggest a further wish, which is that the Bank could be
established upon principles that would cause the profits of it to redound to the immediate benefit
of the State. This is contemplated by many, who speak of a National Bank, but the idea seems
liable to insuperable objections. To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears
to be an essential ingredient in its structure, that it shall be under a private not a public Direction,
under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy...It would indeed be little less, than a
miracle, should the credit of the Bank be at the disposal of the Government, if in a long series of
time, there was not experienced a calamitous abuse of it."
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Document E
Source: Thomas Jefferson, "Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank of the United
States," (February 15, 1791).
"The Bill for establishing a national bank undertakes, among other things...
"1. To form the subscribers into a corporation...
"8. To communicate to them a power to make laws paramount to the laws of the states; for so
they must be construed, to protect the institution from the control of the state legislatures;
and so, probably, they will be construed....
"The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been
delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
"1. They are not among the powers specially enumerated:
"First a power to lay taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States; but no debt
is paid by this bill, nor any tax laid...
"Second, 'to borrow money.' But this bill neither borrows money nor insures the borrowing it...
"Third, to 'regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the states, and with the Indian
tribes....'"
Document F
Source: Alexander Hamilton, "Opinion as to the Constitutionality of the Bank of the United
States," (February 23, 1791).
"It is not denied that there are implied as well as express powers and that the former are as
effectually delegated as the latter...Then it follows that as a power of erecting a corporation may
well be implied as any other thing, it may as well be employed as an instrument or mean of
carrying into execution any of the specified powers as any other instrument or mean whatever.
"The only question must be, in this, as in every other case, whether the mean to be employed
or, in this instance, the corporation to be erected has a natural relation to any of the
acknowledged objects or lawful ends of the government...[A corporation] may be erected in
relation to the collection of taxes, or to the trade with foreign countries, or to the trade between
the states, or with the Indian tribes; because it is the province of the federal government to
regulate those objects, and because it is incident to a general sovereign or legislative power to
regulate a thing, to employ all the means which relate to its regulation to the best and greatest
advantage...."
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Document G
Source: Annals of Congress, reporting on a speech by James Madison (February 2, 1791).
"It has been said, that 'general welfare' meant cases in which a general power might be
exercised by Congress, without interfering with the powers of the States; and that the
establishment of a National Bank was of this sort. There were, he said, several answers to this
novel doctrine.
"1. The proposed Bank would interfere, so as indirectly to defeat a State Bank at the same
place.
"2. It would directly interfere with the rights of the States to prohibit as well as to establish
Banks, and the circulation of Bank notes...
"3. Interference with the power of the States was no constitutional criterion of the power of
Congress...
"If, proceeded he, Congress, by virtue of the power to borrow, can create the means of lending,
and in pursuance of these means, can incorporate a Bank, they may do any thing whatever
creative of like means."
Document H
Source: John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
“The first question made in the cause is -- has Congress power to incorporate a bank?
"We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the government are limited, and that its limits
are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to
the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers
are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned
to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the
scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that
end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and the spirit of the constitution, are
constitutional. . . .
“After the most deliberate consideration, it is the unanimous and decided opinion of this Court
that the act to incorporate the Bank of the United States is a law made in pursuance of the
Constitution, and is a part of the supreme law of the land.
END OF DBQ DOCUMENTS
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