Fight Night: Federalist v. Anti-Federalist

Aim: What were the major disagreements between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in ratifying the Constitution?

Administrative Stuff:

1. One half of the class will be analyzing and annotating The Federalist Papers. The other half of the class will be analyzing and annotating a collection of works known collectively as The Anti-Federalist Papers.
2. The Papers are extensive, but you're an AP class... I believe in you!
3. You will be given two class periods only to work on this.

Directions:

1. As said above, you will be analyzing and annotating each document.  To do this, you may want to break up the papers among your group.
2. For each document, you want to annotate it and pull out its main arguments for or against ratification of the Constitution as it stood in 1787.
3. Everyone should be contributing to this endeavor.  By the end, I should be able to see comments and contributions from every student along the side.
4. Feel free to play around with the interactive cooperative features of Docs.  You should be able to reply to each other's comments to allow for multiple perspectives and interpretations.

On Monday, we will be staying in our groups and recreating the debates between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists.  Therefore, while you are working in your groups, you may also want to take some time and prepare your arguments and anticipate what the other side will be bringing to the table.  You will want to organize your arguments in a way that is persuasive and meaningful.  A debate will follow Parliamentary Style rules.

Note:  The main points of contention are

1. National v. State Sovereignty
2. The Necessity of a Union
3. The Bill of Rights
4. Democratic Principles
5. Powers of the Government
6. Powers of the Legislative Branch
7. Powers of the Executive Branch
8. Powers of the Judicial Branch
9. Responsibility and Checks in Government