Civil War and Its Effect to the Newly-Freed United States

1. Why did the United States feel vulnerable to international threats in the 1790S? The United States felt vurnable in the 1790’s because they were just starting out being free from Great Britain. Writing of the Constitution and its ratification, the setting up of the new government under the Constitution, the early years of Washington’s administration, and indeed the whole series of events in the post-Revolutionary War period had certain inevitability, that these things were the logical and only possible outcome of the struggle with Great Britain. Along with that idea goes the notion that American history was pretty much ordained to come out as it did, that subsequent events would have taken us along the same general path to the future, that America would become the great 20th-century powerhouse that has dominated world affairs for the past sixty years. In the 1780s, the American people met the challenge of self-government.  When they discovered that it was dangerous to give them too much power, they created governments regulated by a system of checks and balances that protected the people from themselves. The ratification of the Constitution closed an era of protest, revolution, and political experimentation.  The future seemed to belong to the free people of a strong nation.  The American people had won their sovereignty and accepted the resulting responsibility, and created a new, stronger government based on the Constitution.  Yet no one really knew whether this republican experiment would work.
2.    How did states determine who would be allowed to vote? The issue of voting rights has been continuous over the country’s history. To vote in the United States it was determined by state and federal law. Only citizens of the United States were allowed to vote. In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 declaration of independence catholic, Jews and Quakers were excluded from the franchise or from running for elections. The Delaware...