The American Spirit

Chapter 10 Thought Provokers

1) How credible is the testimony of a man like Jefferson, a bitter foe of Hamilton, as revised more than a quarter of a century after the event.

2) Hamilton had written in 1783, “The rights of government are as essential to be defended as the rights of individuals. The security of the one is inseparable from that of the other.” Based on Hamilton’s handling of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, comment on his statement.

3) In defending the bloody excesses of the French Revolution, Jefferson argued in effect that the end justified the means. Comment. After reviewing Franco-American relations during these years, assess Washington’s observation that when a nation develops too great a fondness for another, it is in some degree its slave.

4) Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge once remarked that politics should stop at the water’s edge. Comment with reference to foreign affairs in the 1790s.

5) Can the Alien and Sedition Acts be justified, especially in view of the excesses of editors Bache and Cobbett? Assuming that free speech ought to be curbed, who should do the curbing? Why is free speech necessary for the workings of a free government? It has been said that many a minority has become a majority because its foes were unwise enough to persecute it. Comment with reference to the Jeffersonian Republicans of 1798.