Handout B: Setting the Scene (Jay’s Treaty)

Setting the Scene

Note: Cut the slips and give one each to five students

1. Good afternoon. In our lead story today a noisy, angry mob threw stones at the home of a Pennsylvania Senator. No serious injuries were reported, but the situation remains dangerous…
2. The Kentucky state legislature demanded an amendment to the US Constitution today. The amendment they asked for would permit the recall of US Senators.
3. All across the county today, US Senators were burned in effigy, and physically attacked in a number of public places.
4. The Secretary of the Treasury met with a crowd in New York City. He tried to address the group, but the Secretary could no longer go on after being hit in the head by a rock thrown at him.
5. A petition to George Washington called the “Memorial to the Citizens of Pennsylvania” appeared on July 28 of this year in the American Daily Advertiser. It read, in part: “The treaty is objected to first, because it does not provide a fair and effectual settlement of the differences that [exist] between the US and Great Britain … by refusing to ratify the treaty, you will, according to [our] best information and judgment, at once evince an exalted attachment to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and an undiminished zeal to advance the prosperity and happiness of your constituents.”