Early Challenges of a New Nation

Event Summaries:

Whiskey Rebellion: Farmers rebellion over an excise tax on whiskey they produced. Rebellion crushed by Washington and the army before it begins. Proves the strength of the new federal government.

Marbury vs. Madison: is a landmark case by the United States Supreme Court which forms the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution.

Nullification: a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional. 

McCulloch vs. Maryland: the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had implied powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to create the Second Bank of the United States and that the state of Maryland lacked the power to tax the Bank.

Virginia/Kentucky Resolutions: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (or Resolves) were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional.

Gibbons vs. Ogden: a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce, granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, encompassed the power to regulate navigation.