What are the contributions and weaknesses of each of the major interpretative frameworks of the American Founding?

What direction should scholarship on the Founding turn?

Should we teach the American Founding with the assumption that it the key or defining moment in American history? Do the principles of the Founding deserve some kind of independent status as "first principles" of the American regime? Are they, in other words, indisputable, foundational ideas on which the regime rests and without which it will fall?

Should we focus more on documents such as the Declaration of Independence than on other documents such as pamphlets of the revolution? Are we trying to capture the "political culture" of the period or gain insight into the most sophisticated understanding that we can of its enduring principles?

Can we justify the study of the ideas of the Founding? If so, then how? Are they motives for action? Are we examining their truth or validity?

Who are the Founders? Does everyone get included equally or are the Founders really "the Founding Fathers" - the group of patriarchal leaders of the Revolution?

What set or sets of ideas were most important at the Founding? Do these ideas form our national character? Are we an exceptional people and if so in what sense?

How democratic were the Framers and how democratic is the American Constitution?

On Federalist No. 10

What view of human nature does the argument of The Federalist No. 10 suggest?

Why does Madison abandon the goal of "removing the causes of faction?"

What is his strategy for controlling its effects?

What does Madison believe are the proper purposes of representation?

Why does Madison argue that majority factions pose a particularly difficult problem in republican governments?

How does Madison define a republican government?

Does Madison underestimate the strength and force of minority factions in the American political system?

Does Madison's theory still apply today, even as advances in technology have made it possible for individuals to communicate instantly?

How did his experience during the War of Independence turn Captain Hamilton of the NY Artillery company from the radical idealist he was in 1775-1776 into the practical realist that we see in Lt. Col. Hamilton of the Continental Army in 1780-1781?

Why did Hamilton (in Staloff's view) see the three foundations of government in Finance, Interest (as in self-interest and group interests), and Public Opinion?

Why was Hamilton so successful, despite strong opposition, in bringing about the US financial revolution as Treasury Secretary during 1789-1795?

What exactly was the financial revolution? What effect did it have on US economic growth and development?

Because parts of Hamilton's financial system were dismantled after he left the scene, some (eg, Rahe) argue that he failed. Do you agree? (Think about our current financial system, and compare it with Hamilton's.)

Toward the end of his essay, Staloff (125-26) makes two seemingly clashing points: first, "By almost any measure, Alexander Hamilton was the most important figure in the founding of the American republic," and second, "Despite his myriad accomplishments and larger-than-life legacy, Hamilton is perhaps the least loved founding father." Do you agree with both of these? One of them? Neither? Why?

What were the features of early 19th-century American materially-supported existence that led its citizens to value gentility where crudeness and crassness formerly reigned? What kind of disposition might have led Americans to begin to acquire the characteristics of gentility? Was there not some previous set of experiences that constituted a softening of temperament? Might it have been the neoteny associated with the shrinkage of the family to its nuclear form? What were gentility's religious foundations?

What caused men and women to care about the appearance and odor of the human body? What were the sources of delicacy and sensibility? Of compassion, the "pity and humanity" that Paul Rahe suggests replaced the "ferocity of the ancients" as desirable personality attributes? How were the nascent genteel set on the path toward residential development, from a big (unpartitioned) dwelling place, to a housing at least rudimentarily subdivided? What were the earliest subdivisions? What was the "I" house? How did its development proceed? How were the residential subdivisions related to personality structure? To tradition or "inner" direction? To distinctions between "public" and "private"? What came to be the attraction of the Georgian design? What was the significance of the development and diffusion of the parlor?

How did conversation relate to gentility? What happens in conversation between persons of different ages or experiential background? Between persons of similar age or experience? Which combination is likely to lead to the articulation of explicit intent? Which is likely to exhibit a "tough" speech code and which is likely to produce speech characterized by expressions of tender feeling, of gentility? Speaking of the verbal, how did the development among churches of "note singing" relate to the process of refinement?

How was the refinement of America related to the country's burgeoning economic system? In what sense might it be said that it was Alexander Hamilton's financial system, finally implemented during his incumbency as Secretary of the Treasury, that was responsible for the refinement of America? Why is the term "stratified diffusion" useful in summing up the refinement process? How might one cite the work of Richard Bushman to resolve Alexis de Tocqueville's paradoxical observation that self-interest in America "establishes habits which unconsciously turn [the will]" to virtue? How might Bushman's work explain the observation of Brigitte and Peter Berger that it is "individual responsibility and performance of duty," not greed, that brings economic success in a free enterprise society?