| A | B |
|---|
| A set of principles, either written or unwritten, that makes up the fundamental law of the state | Constitution |
| Rights of all human beings that are ordained by God, discoverable in nature and history, and essential to human progress | natural rights |
| Individual who refused to attend the Constitutional Convention because he “smelled a rat” | Patrick Henry |
| A document written in 1776 declaring the colonists’ intention to throw off British rule | Declaration of Independence |
| The government charter of the states from 1776 until the Constitution of 1787 | Articles of Confederation |
| An alliance of factions | coalition |
| Based on nature or God. | unalienable |
| A meeting of delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 charged with drawing up amendments to the Articles of Confederation | Constitutional Convention |
| Powers that are given exclusively to the states | reserved powers |
| A governing document considered to be highly democratic yet with a tendency toward tyranny as the result of concentrating all powers in one set of hands | Pennsylvania Constitution |
| A state constitution with clear separation of powers but considered to have produced too weak a government | Massachusetts Constitution |
| An armed attempt by Revolutionary War veterans to avoid losing their property by preventing the courts in western Massachusetts from meeting | Shays’s Rebellion |
| Those powers that are shared by both the national and state governments | concurrent powers |
| A British philosopher whose ideas on civil government greatly influenced the Founders | John Locke |
| A series of political tracts that explained many of the ideas of the Founders | Federalist papers |
| A constitutional proposal that the smaller states’ representatives feared would give permanent supremacy to the larger states | Virginia Plan |
| A constitutional proposal that would have given each state one vote in a new congress | New Jersey Plan |
| Author of the Declaration of Independence | Thomas Jefferson |
| A constitutional proposal that made membership in one house of Congress proportional to each state’s population and membership in the other equal for all states | Great Compromise |
| A group with a distinct political interest | faction |
| A constitutional principle separating the personnel of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government | separation of powers |
| A constitutional principle reserving separate powers to the national and state levels of government | federalism |
| A principal architect of the Constitution who felt that a government powerful enough to encourage virtue in its citizens was too powerful | James Madison |
| First ten amendments to the Constitution | Bill of Rights |
| Those powers that are given to the national government exclusively | enumerated powers |
| A historian who argued that the Founders were largely motivated by the economic advantage of their class in writing the Constitution | Charles A. Beard |
