American Founding Toolkit

The era of the American Founding lasted from the 1770s through either the late 1780s or early 1790s, depending on one’s perspective or school of thought. For the sake of this resource, the Founding is defined as being the period from 1776 through 1789 – that is, from the writing of the Declaration of Independence through George Washington’s inauguration as the country’s first president.

During this period, the “American Mind,” as Thomas Jefferson called it, was expressed through a revolution, initial attempts at government, and finally the creation of the Constitution, the instrument intended to bring to fruition the lofty goals of the American Revolution.

Guiding Questions

1. How did American thinking about the nature of leaders and the people–the rulers and the ruled–evolve from the colonial days of allegiance to the King to the presidency of George Washington? What qualities did they believe that leaders should exhibit, how much power should they have, and why was it important that such power be checked and monitored?
2. Can we say that Americans of the founding era valued some ideals and principles more than others–security or freedom? Liberty or union? A confederated republic or a rising national empire? Or did they try to reconcile all these goals and ideals as they built a new nation?
3. How did Americans in the Founding era think about the relationship between the Constitution and the American Revolution? What had the Revolution achieved and what did it mean, and would the Constitution uphold those achievements or roll them back? Why did Federalists tend to see the Constitution as the fulfillment of the Revolution while Anti-Federalists criticized it as a betrayal? Why did the Constitution generate such diverse opinions on such a key issue? How did the ratification debate and the creation of the new government address these hopes and fears?
4. Could the broad, universal principles declared in the Declaration of Independence be limited or deferred once they were articulated? In what ways were the debates of the founding era really about extending the principles of the Revolutionary movement to more than just a few Americans—and for whom, and how fully, and how soon those rights and benefits should be conferred?

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