It may help to approach the answer to the question by using the source of the answer as a point of departure.  For parts of the answer from the lectures, see the item and follow its link to the text of the answer.   Following the lectures is the text of answers from the reading.  And following that are sample of excellent answer from an actual exam.  

Click on the link for the text of each answer

Lectures hereafter are on the final exam  

New Regime in Pennsylvania (June 18+)
         preparations for a new state government
                       Conference (June 18)
                                composition
                                rules for state constitution convention
                                            franchise and oaths: widened and narrowed
        Pennsylvania constitutional convention
                        election to: misapportionment
                        preliminary business
                        new state constitution
                                franchise, elections, offices
                                ratification?
                        revenge of the opposition 

Meaning of 1776 and the Revolution
      "Novus Ordo Seclorum" (Meaning of Revolution, Part I)
                    Manifestos:
                        Tom Paine, "Common Sense"
                        Jefferson, "Declaration of Independence"
                 Old Order
                        hierarchy (monarchy and aristocracy)
                        hereditary status/attributed status
                        universal deference
                New Order (liberal)
                        natural rights;life, liberty, pursuit of happiness
                         particular deference and many hierarchies

          Republicanism  (Meaning of Revolution, Part II.)
                    models/history lessons: ancient republics and republicans
                    community (common good, public interest)  vs. individualism
                    republican virtues or ideals
                    property and leisure
                     agricultural society
                `   personal independence 
                    monarchical order and power vs. republican order
                                laws, courts, punishment, state church, standing army
                    conflicting values
                                republicanism and community vs. individualism and pursuit of personal happiness

           Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations"  (1776)
                    reconciling conflicting values                         

Slavery, Abolition, and the Revolution
                   slavery in the language of the Revolution
                   American responses
                            Thomas Jefferson
                                    paradoxes
                                    color, beauty
                                    racial mixing
                                            chain of being
                                            colonization
                                    nature versus nurture
                                            nature: species, monogenesis, polygenesis
                                            environmental debate and examples
                    Abolition:  "runaway" emancipation
                    Abolition in South: private and runaways
                    Abolition in North: public
                           judicial (Mass., 1781)
                           statutory and gradual                          
                                    Pennsylvania (1780)
                                            resistance
                                            the law: gradual
                                            early decline of slavery
                                    other Northern states
                    Constitution and slavery (see discussion from Colliers, Decision)
                            characterizing the framers/compromising
                            3/5 clause
                            slave trade
                            other provisions  

The Economy and Divisions in Politics and People in Pennsylvania, 1779
                          price rise
                           agitation and protests
                           price controls (May 1779)
                           protests and competing economic theories: public interest versus free markets
                           complexity of controls and factions produced
                           "Ft. Wilson" riot (Oct. 5, 1779)
                            end of controls (fall 1779)
                           division in the radicals/Constitutionalist Party
                            Paine's surprising realignment

Financing the Revolution: national versus state power
                        paper currency ($226M)
                         commissary and quartermaster certificates ($95M)
                         loan certificates (bonds) (about $60M)
                         foreign loans ($2.3M in specie)
                
                         power shifts
                                    1775-1779    national power
                                    1779-1781    state power
                                                                specific supplies, army pay, and redemption of commissary certificates
                                    1782-1784    national resurgence  
                                                                                    Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance
                                                          problem: Articles of Confederation
                                                          Morris's program      
                                                                 no supplies, pay, or redemption of certificates
                                                                 specie from states
                                                                 impost tax
                                                                 Bank of North America
                                                           outcomes
                                                                  debt collected by U.S. government
                                    1783-1787     state resurgence
                                                           dismantling Morris, redistributing the debt 

                           Constitutional convention

                            Bank of North America
                                    public and private character
                                            assets
                                    specie-backed currency
                                            fear of depreciation
                                    loan policy and practice
                                            Pa. taxes--1782
                                    European investors' and bankers' opinions
                                    jeopardy & liability of American speculators                             

`                           Constitution

                            Hamilton's program (1791)
                                     funding the U.S. debt
                                     assuming and funding the states' debts
                                     "full faith and credit" 

Ratification
                                    Pennsylvania and ratification
                                    the vote in the U.S.
                                    Hamilton (Federalist Paper, #35) and the vote
                                    Madison (Federalist Paper, #10)  and divisions                       
             

      READINGS

Martin & Lender, A Respectable Army

Had Americans been truly unified and patriotic, ready to sacrifice all for the community, the public interest, the there would have been a Continental Army that numbered as many as 75,000 men. That was never the case and the army often numbered about 12,000 men. (USE NUMBERS HERE.)  In the years 1775-1776, there was a outpouring of volunteers and the prospect of a continued supply of them. But after the Battle of Long Island, conscription was needed and even then it did not work well. Men needed to be obliged or coerced or lured into public service.  The lack of men and volunteers is symptomatic of the number of Loyalists or indifferent or disenchanted Americans, a fundamental division of the populace.  John Adams estimated that only one-third of Americas were Patriots.  Another third were Loyalists and the last third did not care about either side in the contest.

Next, still on the army, the army became skilled, unified, dedicated, and virtuous in a ironically republican way, even as it became a professional (mercenary) army. But the army's internal unity only proves that the whole country or all Americans were not unified; the army felt alienated from the selfish general public. The soldiers had a low opinion of the public and the public in turn disparaged the men in the army, especially the officers. The army was divided from the public, and division is significantly not republican. 

The mutinies in the army--the Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines in especially--demonstrate how the public and the Congress slighted the enlisted men (over terms and length of enlistment, and enlistment bonuses) and how the enlisted men were alienated from the government and their own officers (whom they attacked and shot).  (You may add details here.)

The potential revolt of the officers at Newburg in 1783 (Major John Armstrong, Gen. Gates), in conjunction with nationalists like Robert Morris, was a sign that the country was profoundly divided and the officers alienated.  The officers felt abused and feared that the Congress would never reward them with pensions or lump sum payments.  The nationalists, especially Robert Morris, feared that once the treaty of peace was concluded, there would be no chance to create a more powerful national government. alter the Articles of Confederation.  Together the nationalists and officers plotted to use the threat of force to get payment and even to reconstruct the government in a more national model.  It was a possible coup, a conspiracy that threatened public and civilian control of the country and its armed forces. (Fortunately, Washington saw what was at sake and stopped it.)  (You may add details here.)
 

Bouton, "A Road Closed"

There existed a deep division in American between debtors and creditors, paper currency versus specie or specie currency advocates, farmers versus merchants and bankers like Robert Morris and tax collectors like John Nicholson.  In the 1780s and later, this division(s) appeared as prosecution of debtors and famers for unpaid taxes (as well as unpaid private debts to merchants).  Large portions of the whole population of taxpayers of a county were prosecuted.  Prosecutions provoked successful resistance to state authorities including even the state militia. Creditors, bankers, and nationalists were enraged at the success of resistors and at the  feebleness of state governments; they vowed to reform the situation.  Morris tried and failed (1782-1783).  But nationalists succeed with the Constitution.  However, remember, the resistance did not end in 1789; roads were closed in the 1790s too and resistance escalated to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.  The division was long and profound.

Colliers, Decision

Government and the U.S. Constitution. In the Confederation period and in the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. was thirteen sovereign states. The central government was more like some United Nations. 

In the constitutional convention, many differences and divisions were obvious and profound.  The two biggest were the differences between large and small states, and the resulting debates over representation, the Congress, the presidency/electoral college; and the second, was the division over slavery, representation of slaves, and the slave trade.  Commerce was another divisive issue.  And yet, these differences were compromised or submitted to.  [You may list the compromises, but do not go into great detail how the compromises were hammered out.  If they brought us together, that is enough said.]  One constitution/government resulted.  But it was still a federated government, with states remaining in existence and until the Civil War, a claim to sovereignty.  There were yet other, smaller divisions in the convention.   

The U.S. Constitution speaks to the problem of divisions and diversity. First is the division into 13 states. The Constitution created a national government that consolidated power or much power and diminished the stature of the states.  Madison, in the 10th Federalist, argued that great geographic scope of the U.S. and the accompanying diversity and divisions among Americans served the public interest (!) and defeated small selfish and possibly oppressive interests!  Republics did not require that they be limited to a small area with a single, homogeneous people--like one community of harmonious people.   From David Hume, Madison explained that republics would work better in a large area with diverse interests, that many interests would deter the creation of an oppressive majority.  The result would be something that could be called the public interest, or the general welfare.  For almost all wrong reasons, you got back to the "res publica" that the early revolutionaries spoke of and that Paine never explained.

Overall, the U.S. was divided in ways that no one ever anticipated or wanted, but the framers compromised many of their differences and ironically erected a government that made a virtue of divisions (viz. Madison).