Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
2. How does Silouee’s defense of Colonel Byrd compare with Pocahontas’s
defense of John Smith (as Smith described it)?
3. In what ways are races of men unequal, according to Jeerson? Why?
Why is the color of blacks’ skin important? According to Jeerson, what
does it signify?
4. According to Jeerson, why are Americans free from religious dissension?
Are his views logical or logically expressed? Why?
5. According to his autobiography, what motivates most of the revisions
to his draft of the Declaration of Independence? To what eect are they
made, do you think?
3.10 THE FEDERALIST
(1788)
Upon securing their independence
from Britain, the American colonies
drew up the Articles of Confederation
(1777) which stated their “rm league
of friendship,” a friendship uniting each
colony to the rest but maintaining each
state’s separate sovereignty. Determining
the need for a central authority to deal
with their united problems, a Federal
Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787
to draw up a new Constitution, one that
delineated the powers of this centralized
government. Those who supported
such a government became known as
Federalists.
Anti-federalists included statesrights
advocates, those who perceived a
bias in favor of cities over country, and
those who feared the authority of a large
government. To defend against its critics
and encourage its adoption by each state,
Image 3.14 | The Federalist
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) began
Author | “Publius” (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay,
to write a series of essays defending James Madison)
Source | Wikimedia Commons
this new Constitution, describing the
License | Public Domain
political theory on which it was founded.
Hamilton was a New York lawyer who served as George Washington’s secretary
and aide-de-camp during the Revolution; a member of the Continental Congress;
a delegate to the Constitutional Convention; and rst secretary of the United States
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