OVERVIEW
The Short Paper: State Ratification Assignment will allow you to research and better understand the ratification conventions for the U.S. Constitution that occurred at the state level. The purpose of the assignment is to enhance the historian’s grasp of the early American founding era by investigating and interpreting primary and secondary source evidence. Also, this assignment will expose you to the relationship that history has with the present-day.
INSTRUCTIONS
Using primary source documents located in the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution resource, which is available online through the Jerry Falwell Library, you will write a Turabian style 2-3-page short research paper about the Federalists and Anti-Federalists debates at the state ratifying conventions. The paper must use a minimum of 5 primary sources from the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution resource. Additional secondary sources are encouraged and must be appropriately cited if used.
Overall, you must:
1) Select 1 of the 13 state ratifying conventions
2) Provide a well-written narrative analyzing the following three things about that state’s convention:
a. The initial position of the Federalists in the chosen state convention
b. The fears of the Antifederalists
c. The Federalist promises made to relieve those fears.
3) Also, include brief biographical material of the people involved