LibGuides: Constitutional Debates: Home

A Note on Databases

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You can access any of our databases by using the login credentials available here! You must be logged into your West Orange High School Google account to access this document.

LMC Research Databases

African-American History This link opens in a new window
Covering more than 500 years of the African-American experience, African-American History offers a fresh way to explore the full spectrum of African-American history and culture. Users can start their investigation of a topic with a video or slideshow overview, use the key content called out on the home page to find an entryway into the database, or dig deep into an era through the Topic Centers. Read about key figures and events, examine famous speeches and other primary sources, and get context from the in-depth timelines.
American Government This link opens in a new window
American Government provides a complete, multifaceted examination of the foundations of our government and political system that supports any curriculum or research project focused on the government of the United States.
American History This link opens in a new window
Spans more than 500 years of political, military, social, and cultural history covering the American experience. One of Infobase Learning's History databases to assist educators and students in their research needs. Fully revised, cross-searchable, and seamlessly integrated for complete history coverage.
American History This link opens in a new window
Appreciating American history requires students to understand the implicit yet underlining role of defining moments and movements in the evolution of the America they know. By putting past events in context with contemporary realities, American History encourages students to think critically about America’s history in relation to its future.

American History surveys American history from the colonial era and American Revolution through to the nation’s rise to eminence as a global superpower, analyzing American political conflict, economic development, and changing culture and thought as they tell one continuous and continuing story of America’s history.
Biography in Context This link opens in a new window
More than 650,000 biographical entries covering international figures from all time periods and areas of study. Offers authoritative reference content alongside, videos, audio selections, images, primary sources, and magazine and journal articles from hundreds of major periodicals and newspapers. Continuously updated.
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 This link opens in a new window
European Views of the Americas is a searchable bibliographic index to books, manuscripts, broadsides and other materials printed in Europe relating to the Americas, 1493-1750. Among the topics covered by are the slave trade, piracy, French in American, British colonies, commerce, exploration, Dutch in America and the Jesuits. Other subjects include botany, shipping, natural history, mines, minerals, law, navigation and named areas like Chile, Hispaniola, Jamaica, New York, Peru and other individual countries, islands, cities, colonies and regions. The original bibliography was co-developed by John Alden and Dennis Landis, Curator of European Books at The John Carter Brown Library.
Explora This link opens in a new window
This interface is designed specifically for high school students according to their needs and search abilities. This interface is graphically rich and provides access to age-appropriate materials. Includes topic overviews that provide students with a starting point for research and 60,000 top videos from the Associated Press.
Modern World History This link opens in a new window
Modern World History offers a comprehensive look at world history from the mid-15th century to the present. Thousands of subject entries, biographies, images, videos and slideshows, maps and graphs, primary sources, and timelines combine to provide a detailed and comparative view of the people, places, events, and ideas that have defined modern world history. Focused Topic Centers pull forward interesting entries, search terms, documents, and maps handpicked by our editors to help users find a starting point for their research, as well as videos and slideshow overviews to offer a visual introduction to key eras and regions. All the Infobase history databases in a collection are fully cross-searchable.

Away from campus? Having trouble logging in?

You can access any of our databases by using the login credentials available here! You must be logged into your West Orange High School Google account to access this document.

From the Databases: Items of Note

The Constitution, 1776-1800 at ABC-Clio's American History
Learn about the rationale behind the U.S. Constitution, the debates that arose among the Framers, and the decision to strike a balance between a strong national government with protection of personal liberties.
Entries tagged with "Constitutional Convention (United States)" via Infobase's American History
A collection of articles approaching the Constitutional Convention from various angles.
Foundations of American Government at ABC-Clio's American Government
Examine core principles of government, including the basic purposes of government, key concepts like natural rights, government's impact on individual rights, and how the idea of consent of the governed is manifested in the U.S. Constitution.
The Iroquois Influence Thesis at Infobase's American Indian History
Did the Iroquois Confederacy serve as a model for the framers of the Constitution of the United States in 1787? Or were the framers so unfamiliar with the Iroquois Confederacy that it had little if any impact upon their work at the Constitutional Convention?
Slavery and the U.S. Constitution via Infobase's African American History
The Constitutional Convention has brought more than 50 delegates from thirteen states to Philadelphia in 1787, to create a new framework for the nation's governance. Slavery has been a highly contentious issue in the debates—but is the document that emerged for or against the continuance of slavery in the United States?

Project Links

Assignment Description
Courtesy of Mr. Kelly and Mr. Edelstein!
Assignment Rubric
Courtesy of Mr. Kelly and Mr. Edelstein!

Books, Books, Books!

Catalog Search

Peruse the LMC's offerings.

Where to Browse: Notable Dewey Numbers

Dewey Decimal Number	Topic
305.8	Social Sciences - Intersectionality (Race, Gender, and Class)
306.362	Social Sciences - Gender and Constitutional History
320	Political Science (General) - Introduction to Political Science
321	Political Systems - Forms of Government
323.3	Civil Rights - Women's Rights and the Constitution
323.1196	Civil Rights - African Americans and Constitutional Rights
324.6	Political Process - The Electoral System
324.241	Political Process - Political Parties in the United States
342.073	Constitutional Law - United States Constitution
342.082	Constitutional Law - Hispanic and Latino Rights
342.083	Constitutional Law - Asian American and Pacific Islander Rights
342.085	Constitutional Law - Legal Rights of Indigenous Peoples
342.089	Constitutional Law - Rights of Diverse Backgrounds
344.73	Civil Rights - United States Civil Rights
973	United States History - General
973.3	United States History - Revolution and Confederation (1755-1789)
973.31	United States History - Constitutional Period (1789-1809)
973.32	United States History - Early Republic (1783-1829)
973.4	United States History - George Washington's Administration
973.5	United States History - Federalist Era
973.6	United States History - Jeffersonian Era
973.7	United States History - War of 1812
973.8	United States History - Monroe's Presidency and Era of Good Feelings

Search Tips and Strategies

Topic	Search Terms and Keywords	Database Subject Headings	Search-Enhancing Idioms	Considerations for Diversity and Inclusion
Constitutional Convention	Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia Convention, Founding Fathers	United States. Constitutional Convention (1787), Constitutional history	Framers of the Constitution, Constitutional debates, Constitutional drafting	African American perspectives, Native American perspectives, Women's role
Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists	Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Federalist Papers, Ratification debates	Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Constitutional history	Proponents of the Constitution, Opponents of the Constitution	Perspectives of enslaved individuals, Indigenous viewpoints, Women's opinions
Bill of Rights	Bill of Rights, Amendments, First Ten Amendments, Incorporation doctrine	United States. Bill of Rights, Civil rights, Constitutional law	Protection of individual rights, Constitutional amendments	LGBTQ+ perspectives, Disability rights, Contributions of marginalized groups
Three-Fifths Compromise	Three-Fifths Compromise, Representation, Slavery, Compromises at the Convention	Three-Fifths Compromise, Slavery and representation, Constitutional law	Southern states' demands, Northern states' concerns, Compromise debates	African American experiences, Indigenous perspectives, Socioeconomic impact
Divisions Between Larger and Smaller States	Large States vs. Small States, Virginia Plan, New Jersey Plan	United States. Constitutional Convention (1787), State governments	Great Compromise, State representation, Size-based representation	Economic disparities, Rural vs. Urban perspectives, Geographic considerations

Other Tips

Diverse Perspectives: Explore the roles and perspectives of specific individuals, such as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Mercy Otis Warren, or George Mason.
Primary Sources: Utilize primary sources like James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention, letters between delegates, and state ratification documents.
Intersectionality: Consider how issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status intersect during the debates, highlighting the experiences of individuals with multiple identities.
Critical Analysis: Critically analyze the motivations behind the positions taken by different groups and individuals during the Constitutional Convention.
Contemporary Connections: Draw connections between historical debates and current events. There are direct links between today's political debates and the Constitutional Convention!

Search Tips: Boolean Basics

General Search Tips: Boolean Basics

Constructing a good search is boring—well, the transitive verb form of “boring,” as in “boring a tunnel through the hillside.” Constructing a good search is also mining—extracting items of interest from a mass of material that, while potentially valuable, isn’t exactly what you need at the moment. Constructing a good search is boring and mining both bundled into a series of active operations. Faced with a heap of information, your job is to dig your way through and arrive on the other side, culling gems, jewels, ores, and fragments from the tunnel walls along the way. Boolean operators—AND, OR, and NOT—will help you as you go. (Just be sure to type them in all-caps to ensure they function properly!)

AND: Sometimes you’re looking for silver; sometimes you’re looking for gold. Sometimes you want both, and AND is here to make it happen (for example: silver AND gold). That said, silver and gold aren’t typically found in the same vein. When you busy yourself searching for El Dorado, you may ignore a city of silver just around the corner...

OR: Sometimes, you’ll have to include a fork in your tunnel, and that’s okay since OR lets you have it both ways (for example: left OR right). You don’t necessarily need to dig each route to completion—pursue one or the other, but just far enough to find (or realize that you aren’t finding) what you’re looking for. If you follow too many forks, you just might find yourself trapped in a labyrinth, so OR with caution!

NOT: Sometimes you’re only sure what you don’t want, and that’s where NOT comes in handy (for example: poetry NOT Shakespeare). That said, sometimes—perhaps more often than we’d like to admit—we’re sure we don’t want something until we do want it. Though it’s useful to know where not to dig, excluded areas very well may contain the slightest hint, the tiniest sliver, of whatever we’re clawing toward. NOT at your own peril!

Citation Station

Perdue OWL
For all your MLA needs.
NoodleTools
For gathering, annotating, and exporting citations.

Slippin' Slides

Open Web Resources: Primary Sources and Books

Digital Public Library of America
Discover 47,113,728 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.
Early American Sources
Archives and libraries have been digitizing their rare materials for decades. This site contains lists for many of the digital collections found in the United States. They are arranged by state/territory. All of these digital collections are open access, free to use, and include some of the best digitized sources related to early America.
Founders Online
Correspondence and other writings of seven major shapers of the United States: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Over 184,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.
Google Books
Come on, you know Google Books.
Google Images
I strongly encourage you to make use of Google Lens as you discover and explore the many digital images spread across the web.
Hathitrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
John Carter Brown Archive of Early American Images
A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.
National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.

Those valuable records are preserved and are available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family’s history, need to prove a veteran’s military service, or are researching a historical topic that interests you.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
The Smithsonian
At the center of research across the Smithsonian are the specialized branches and librarians of the Smithsonian Libraries. The collections and staff of the Libraries play a key role in helping the Smithsonian’s research and curatorial staff make sense of the museums’ almost innumerable, often unique, objects and their cultural and historical contexts. The Smithsonian Libraries are a hidden national treasure, where experts come to test and expand knowledge and where America and the world can turn for authentic answers.
Their Own Words
Their Own Words is a digital collection of books, pamphlets, letters, and diaries, dating from the latter eighteenth through the early twentieth century, that reflects the history of the United States. This collection currently contains more than 34,500 individual pages of text and corresponding transcriptions, covering a variety of topics, including: colonial American politics; U.S. politics, government, and foreign relations; historical biography and autobiography; slavery and abolition; the American Civil War; the temperance movement; foreign travel; economics; medicine; philosophy; and theology. This online resource is made freely available, and we believe that it will be of value to teachers, students, and researchers at all levels of instruction.

Open Web Resources: Constitutional Convention

5 Issues at the Constitutional Convention from the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association
When the 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, there were several major issues on the agenda to discuss including representation, state versus federal powers, executive power, slavery, and commerce.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 from the NPS
This look at the Constitutional Convention provides a glimpse into the debates that resulted in an enduring framework of government. Read day-by-day entries recording the proposals, conflicts and compromises as the men struggled to live up to the resolution that had called them to Philadelphia to "render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."
Constitutional Debates: Federalist and Antifederalist Essays via the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Throughout the ratification period, Americans debated the theory and practical applications of governance. These debates were of fundamental importance as their outcome determined the basic character and components of the federal government. The collections below explore these debates using primary sources taken from The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.
Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention from the Avalon Project at Yale University
A digitization of procedural notes originally published in:

The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United States of America, reported by James Madison, a delegate from the state of Virginia, edited by Gaillard Hund and James Brown Scott, Oxford University Press, 1920.

Constitutional Debates: Home

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Constitutional Debates

A Note on Databases

Away from campus? Having trouble logging in?

You can access any of our databases by using the login credentials available here! You must be logged into your West Orange High School Google account to access this document.

LMC Research Databases

Away from campus? Having trouble logging in?

You can access any of our databases by using the login credentials available here! You must be logged into your West Orange High School Google account to access this document.

From the Databases: Items of Note

Project Links

Books, Books, Books!

Catalog Search

Where to Browse: Notable Dewey Numbers

Search Tips and Strategies

Search Tips and Strategies

Other Tips

Search Tips: Boolean Basics

General Search Tips: Boolean Basics

Citation Station

Slippin' Slides

Open Web Resources: Primary Sources and Books

Open Web Resources: Constitutional Convention