Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 9-1: Alexander Hamilton on the Economy

Document 9-2: Mary Dewees Moves West to Kentucky

Document 9-3: Judith Sargent Murray Insists on the Equality of the Sexes

Document 9-4: A French Sugar Planter Describes the French and Saint Domingue Revolutions

Document 9-5: President George Washington's Parting Advice to the Nation

  1. How did Judith Sargent Murray's views of education and its significance compare with the sugar planter of Saint Domingue's views about “commonplaces about the Rights of Man and the Sacred Revolution”?
  2. Would Hamilton and the sugar planter agree about the division of labor according to class and race in late-eighteenth-century Western society? Did Washington believe that “the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government” extended to Murray and the sugar planter's slaves? Explain how Hamilton and Washington might have reconciled the difference between the idea of liberty and how it was put into practice in postrevolutionary America.
  3. How did the experiences of Mary Dewees compare with those of the sugar planter from Saint Domingue? How might Dewees have responded to Murray's ideas about equality?
  4. To what extent did George Washington and the sugar planter agree about the threats to liberty?
  5. Why were Hamilton and Washington optimistic about the future of the nation? To what extent did Murray and Dewees and her family share that optimism?
  6. Each of the documents in this chapter envisions liberty as a precious source of power. To what extent did the authors of these documents agree about the uses and abuses of liberty's power? As each author looked toward the future, what threats to liberty did he or she see looming on the horizon, and how did he or she believe these threats might be avoided?