The 13 Foundational Documents
The Argument Essay requires evidence from these documents. Note: the College Board added 4 documents effective Fall 2026 — if your prep book lists nine, it's out of date.
Declaration of Independence
Asserts natural rights (life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness), popular sovereignty, and the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that fails to protect their rights.
Unit 1
Articles of Confederation
The first U.S. constitution: a deliberately weak central government with no power to tax, no executive, and no national judiciary. Shays' Rebellion exposed its failures.
Unit 1
U.S. Constitution
The blueprint: separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, the amendment process, and — through the Bill of Rights and later amendments — the guarantees every required case interprets.
Unit 1 · Unit 2 · Unit 3
Federalist No. 10
Argues a large republic is the best defense against the 'mischiefs of faction' — competing interests check one another across an extended sphere.
Unit 1
Brutus No. 1
The Anti-Federalist case: a large republic with a Necessary and Proper Clause and Supremacy Clause will swallow state power and drift from the people.
Unit 1
Federalist No. 39
Defines the Constitution as partly national, partly federal: authority divided between levels of government limits concentration of power and multiplies access points for participation.
Unit 1
Federalist No. 51
'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition': separation of powers and checks and balances make the government control itself.
Unit 1 · Unit 2
Federalist No. 70
Argues for a single, energetic executive: unity brings decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch — and clear accountability.
Unit 2
Federalist No. 78
The judiciary is the 'least dangerous' branch — no purse, no sword — but life tenure and judicial review protect the Constitution from legislative overreach.
Unit 2
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Defends nonviolent direct action and the moral duty to disobey unjust laws, answering white clergy who counseled patience.
Unit 3
Emancipation Proclamation
Freed enslaved people in the states in rebellion; with the Thirteenth Amendment, marked the constitutional turn toward civil rights for the formerly enslaved.
Unit 3
The Gettysburg Address
In 272 words, reframes the Civil War as a test of whether a nation 'conceived in liberty' and governed by the people can endure — reaffirming equality and popular sovereignty.
Unit 1
Core Principles from The Wealth of Nations
Free enterprise: self-interest and competition, guided as if by an invisible hand, allocate resources efficiently with limited government regulation of the market.
Unit 4