Mr. Davis
United States History: Preparing for the AP Examination
Chapter 10 DBQ: The Constitution and the New
Republic, 1787 - 1800)
The ratification of the Constitution in 1788 did not end the debate over the nature and
functions of government. In fact, the disagreement between Anti-Federalists and
Federalists (and in later years between Democrats and Whigs) continued for decades until
it was more or less resolved by the outcome of the Civil War in the 1860s.
The documents presented here represent two major concerns that were expressed in the
years immediately following ratification. One concern of the white majority was the scope
of federal power under the Constitution. A second concern chiefly felt by the black
minority was that the Constitution protected the rights of whites only and permitted the
institution of slavery.
Document A (Hamilton’s View of the Constitution)
As Washington’s secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton argued that the federal
government could exercise “implied” powers in addition t the “express,” or delegated,
powers listed in the Constitution. The following excerpt is from a written argument
Hamilton presented to Washington on the question of whether or not Congress could
establish a bank.
It is not denied that there are implied as well as express powers, and that the
former are as effectually delegated as the latter. And for the sake of accuracy it shall be
mentioned, that there is another class of powers, which may be properly denominated
resulting powers. It will not be doubted, that if the United States should make a conquest
of any of the territories of its neighbors, they would possess sovereign jurisdiction over
the conquered territory. This would be rather a result from the whole mass of the powers
of the government, and from the nature of political society, than a consequence of either
of the powers especially enumerated. . . .
It is conceded that the implied powers are to be considered as delegated equally
with express ones. Then it follows, that as a power of erecting a corporation [such as a
bank] may as well be implied as any other thing, it may as well be employed as an
instrument or means of carrying into execution any of the specified powers, as any other
instrument or means whatever. The only question must be, in this, as in every other case,
whether the means to be employed, or, in this instance, the corporation to be erected, has
a natural relation to any of the acknowledged object or lawful ends of the government.
Thus a corporation may not be erected by Congress for superintending the police of the
city of Philadelphia, because they are not authorized to regulate the police of that city. But
one may be erected in relation 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.
Alexander Hamilton
Opinion on the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a bank, 1791
Document B (Jefferson’s View of the Constitution)
As Vice President from 1797 – 1801, Thomas Jefferson opposed the Alien and Sedition
Acts but did so secretly by writing the Kentucky Resolutions anonymously. (He could not
speak out openly without coming into direct conflict with President Adams’ Federalist
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Mr. Davis
United States History: Preparing for the AP Examination
government.) Jefferson’s arguments in the Kentucky Resolution provided a rationale for
those who believed that states could overrule decisions of the federal governments. In
later years, believers in states’ rights would make repeated use of the document quoted
here:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America are not
united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that
by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of
amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for specific purposes,
delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself,
the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the
general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void,
and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral
party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: That the government created
by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers
delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution,
the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties
having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of
infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. . . .
That they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidated them
in the hands of the general government, with a power assumed to bind the States (not
merely in cases made Federal) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with
their consent, but by others against their consent: That this would be to surrender the
form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its
own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-States, recurring to their natural
right in cases not made Federal, will concur in declaring these acts void and of no
force. . . .
Kentucky Resolutions,
November 16, 1798
Document C (A Letter Concerning Slavery)
Benjamin Banneker was a free (nonslave) African American from Maryland who made a
number of contributions to 18th century science. He is best known as one of the planners
of Washington D.C., the nation’s new capital along the Potomac River. He also wrote
extensively on a wide range of topics, including political issues and individual rights. His
stature as an intellectual is reflected in his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. The
following excerpt from a letter to Jefferson (then secretary of state) points out the
contradictions between the republican ideal of the U.S. government and the existence of
slavery.
Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms and tyranny of the
British crown were exerted, with every powerful effort, in order to reduce you to a state of
servitude. . . .
This, Sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a State of slavery, in
which you had just apprehensions of the horror of its condition. It was now that your
abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable
doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. . . .”
Here was a time, in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you
thus to declare, you were then impressed with the proper ideas of the great violation of
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Mr. Davis
United States History: Preparing for the AP Examination
liberty, and the free possession of those blessings, to which you were entitled by nature;
but, Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the
benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these
rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same
time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my
brethren, under groaning captivity, and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time
be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with
respect to yourselves.
I suppose that your knowledge of the situation of my brethren is too extensive to
need a recital here; neither shall I presume to prescribe methods by which they may be
relieved, otherwise than by recommending to you and all others, to wean yourselves from
those narrow prejudices which you have imbibed to them. . . .
Letter of Benjamin Banneker to
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson,
Philadelphia, 1792
Document D (Discrimination Against Free Blacks)
In every state of the Union, a number of African Americans lived as free citizens. Yet, as
the following document indicates, they were not treated as citizens with rights equal with
those of the white majority. In Charleston, South Carolina, in 1791, a group of free blacks
wrote the following the petition to the South Carolina legislature asking for an end to
discriminatory laws.
The memorial of Thomas Cole, bricklayer, P.B. Mathews, and Mathew Webbe,
butchers, on behalf of themselves and others, free men of color, humbly shows:
That in the enumeration of free citizens by the constitution of the United States for
the purpose of representation of the Southern states in Congress, your memorialists have
been considered under that description as part of the citizens of this state.
Although by the fourteenth and twenty-ninth clauses, in an Act of Assembly, made
in the year 1740 and entitled An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing Negroes and
Other Slaves in this Province, commonly called the Negro Act, now in force, your
memorialist are deprived of the rights and privileges of citizens by not having it in their
power to give testimony in prosecutions on behalf of the state; from which cause many
culprits have escaped the punishment due to their atrocious crimes, nor can they give
their testimony in recovering debts due to them.
That by the said clauses in the said act they are debarred of the rights of free
citizens by being subject to a trial without the benefit of a jury and subject to prosecution
by testimony of slaves without oath by which they are placed on the same footing.
Your memorialists show that they have at all times since the independence of the
United States contributed and do now contribute to the support of the government by
cheerfully paying their taxes proportional to their property with others who have been
during such period and now are in full enjoyment of the rights and immunities of citizens,
inhabitants of a free independent state.
That as your memorialists have been and are considered as free citizens of this
state, they hope to be treated as such; they are ready and willing to take and subscribe to
such oath of allegiance to the states as shall be prescribed by this honorable house, and
are also willing to take upon them any duty for the preservation of the peace in the city or
any other occasion if called on. . .
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Mr. Davis
United States History: Preparing for the AP Examination
May it therefore please Your Honors to take your memorialists’ case into tender
consideration and make such acts or insert such clauses for the purpose of relieving your
memorialists from the unremited grievance they now labor under as in your wisdom shall
seem meet.
Historical Commission of South Carolina,
Columbia, South Carolina, 1791
Analyzing the Documents
Short Answer
1. How does Alexander Hamilton’s view of the Constitution, in Document A, differ from
Thomas Jefferson’s view, in Document B?
2. What connection is Benjamin Banneker making between Jefferson’s professed beliefs
during the American Revolution and the continued existence of slavery?
Essay
3. The U.S. Constitution had many critics. Using Documents A – D and your knowledge
of politics in the 1790s, write an essay supporting either of two positions: (a) the
Constitution was fundamentally sound although in need of minor adjustments, or (b)
the Constitution had fatal flaws with respect to both the rights of states and the rights
of African Americans.
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