Question

“The preservation of the states in a certain degree of agency is indispensable. It will produce that collision between the different authorities which should be wished for in order to check each other. To attempt to abolish the states altogether, would degrade the councils of our country, would be impracticable, would be ruinous. [John Dickinson] compared the proposed national system to the solar system, in which the states were the planets, and ought to be left to move freely in their proper orbits. . . . If the state governments were excluded from all agency in the national one, and all power drawn from the people at large, the consequence would be, that the national government would move in the same direction as the state governments now do, and would run into all the same mischiefs [troubles].”

John Dickinson, delegate from Delaware, summary of a speech at the Constitutional Convention from the notes of James Madison, 1787


Dickinson’s concern for the “mischiefs” in the states is best understood in the context of which of the following?


Popular support in the states for making George Washington king

Option A,Popular support in the states for making George Washington king

a

The extensive power of the executive in state governments

Option B,The extensive power of the executive in state governments

b

Continued warfare between some states and Great Britain

Option C,Continued warfare between some states and Great Britain

c

The threat to state governments from popular uprisings



The principle of federalism embodied in the United States Constitution had most in common with which of the following earlier aspects of British colonial government?


The autonomy of colonial legislatures from Great Britain

Option A,The autonomy of colonial legislatures from Great Britain

a

The absence of colonial representation in Parliament

Option B,The absence of colonial representation in Parliament

b

The enforcement of commercial regulations by British officials

Option C,The enforcement of commercial regulations by British officials

c

The authority of the king over his colonial governors

Answer 1

1) The threat to state governments from popular uprisings (D).
- Dickinson was worried that popular turbulence and factional “mischiefs” within the states (e.g., the unrest that culminated in Shays’ Rebellion) would infect a national government if it drew its authority directly from the people and excluded state agencies.

2) The autonomy of colonial legislatures from Great Britain (A).
- Federalism’s division of authority most closely resembled the colonies’ long practice of substantial local self-government through colonial assemblies rather than centralized control from Parliament or royal officials.