US History › Section D · Building a republic › Topic D.2
How much change? Debating democracy under the Articles
The Revolution's language of equality raised hopes among women, enslaved people and ordinary farmers, but most of the old order survived. In the 1780s, state constitutions and the Articles of Confederation became testing grounds for how much democracy the new republic would allow.
In this topic
- The promise and its limits
- Women and the republic
- Slavery and the first emancipations
- Native nations and religious freedom
- State constitutions as experiments
- Worked example: two constitutions compared
- The Articles of Confederation
- Weakness and one great success
- Worked example: causes and effects of Shays's Rebellion
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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