Origins of the United States Constitution

Assignment 2, due Friday, February 27, 2009

In Part IV of his book, Gordon Wood offers a discussion of some of the criticisms of and problems with the Articles of Confederation. Those chapters describe the period that Holton discussed in his book.  The books obviously have a different perspective on the problems, and the resulting debates, but at the same time they have points in common. For this essay, compare the analysis in Holton’s book Unruly People and Part IV of Wood’s Creation. In your comparison you should examine the differences and the similarities of the books’ analyses. (To make this point a slightly different way, I am not interested in a comparison that indicates that both books cite Madison’s criticisms of the Articles of Confederation.  You should, instead, discuss and compare the way the way the two books use evidence like that, and the conclusions that the two books draw about what happened.)

Review the syllabus to remind yourself about the length of the papers and my expectations about deadlines.

Once again, you should not use outside sources. You may, however, use materials we have read in this class (including the Greene book) if you want.