US History Essay

Guide for Reading Primary Sources and the Primary Source Assignments

HIST2111 – Dr. Romero

Prompts and Documents:

PSA 1 (due Sunday 9/27 at 11:59pm): The American Revolution promoted a language of freedom and independence – and yet this rhetoric was quite restricted in that it only applied to a small percentage of the population. For this essay, you must read “Abigail and John Adams on Women and the American Revolution (1776)” and Judith Sargent Murray’s “On the Equality of the Sexes (1790) and consider the ways the American Revolution had an impact on the status of white women in the new United States. What do these two documents reveal about the struggles white women faced in a “democratic” government? What limitations remained on white women as a whole? And, based on these two documents, how did some women utilize the ideologies and events of the American Revolution to try and improve their status within society?

PSA 2 (due Sunday 11/22 at 11:59pm): The secession crisis and Civil War are often considered to be a “second American Revolution” by historians to describe the level of internal restructuring of this era. Consider the conditions pre- and post-Civil War and evaluate their similarities and differences. Then, read the following three documents: “The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858),” “South Carolina Ordinance of Secession (1860),” and Alexander H. Stephens’ “The Cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861).” Using TWO of the documents that you have read (you may choose any 2), answer the following questions: What role did slavery play in the Southern states? How did slavery effect their interpretation of the role of government? How did they justify the necessity of the continuation of slavery?

The documents you are required to read are in PDFs in the respective week’s module, as well as attached to the PSA directions in the Course Orientation module.

Assignment Requirements:

Using either the two sources assigned (PSA 1), or choosing two sources from the list of three for each assignment (PSA 2), answer the prompt with support from your two chosen sources. Be sure to address ALL parts of the question to potentially receive full credit. Formulate your answer in the form of an argument, or thesis statement. You will then build a case around your thesis statement.  Your argument should reflect your analysis of the document, taking into account the source’s perspective, what the author might not be addressing, and why they approached this topic as they did. Your response should be approximately 500 words (not much more, not much less). Failure to write a sufficient amount will result in significant point loss. Each PSA is worth 100 points.

Be sure to cite only the document itself, not the short introduction before each document – this is secondary information, and we are concentrating on the primary source information. Here is the citation format you are required to use:

Your sentence or quote here (Name of the document, page number).

If the document title is long, you can use an abbreviated version, such as the following for the PSA document from Abigail and John Adams:

“Quote from document,” (Women and the American Revolution, 107).

Your page number is the most important part of the citation. If you do not use the correct citation format, you will lose points.

Your response should be organized as a full essay. This means you must have an introduction (containing your thesis statement), supporting paragraphs with cited evidence, and a conclusion. If you write one long paragraph, you will lose significant organization points.

Do not use any personal pronouns (I, my, we, etc.) in your response. You will lose significant points for this, because using personal pronouns indicates an opinion, rather than what our assignment requires – analysis and argument.

What are primary sources, and why read them?

One of the key skills history students must learn is how to use primary sources. A primary source can be a document, artwork, artifact, or oral-history interview, just so long as it tells us something about the past and is as close as we can get to the past. Primary sources are those sources created by people who participated in an event, witnessed it firsthand, or at least heard about it from a credible witness.

Why read primary sources? Why read the letters of a Civil War soldier instead of just reading a recent book about the war? One answer is that no book is ever complete. A historian may offer a compelling interpretation of an event, but there is always more to learn. Another answer is that reading primary sources is training for other forms of critical inquiry. They allow us to analyze a variety of factors, including context, bias, interpretation, evidence, and argument.

• What to look for in a primary source?

A good place to start is the acronym PAPER:

Purpose and motives of the author
Argument and strategy she or he uses to achieve those goals
Presuppositions and values (in the text, and our own)
Epistemology (evaluating truth content)
Relate to other texts (compare and contrast)

Ask the questions that come under each of these headings.

Here is a brief breakdown of this acronym to apply to your primary sources for our class’ writing assignment.

Purpose

• Who is the author and what is her or his place in society (explain why you are justified in thinking so)?
• What could or might it be, based on the text, and why?
• What is at stake for the author in this text?
• Why do you think she or he wrote it?
• What evidence in the text tells you this?
• Does the author have a thesis? What is that thesis?

Argument

• How does the text make its case?
• What is its strategy for accomplishing its goal? How does it carry out this strategy?
• What is the intended audience of the text? How might this influence its rhetorical strategy?
• What arguments or concerns does the author respond to that are not clearly stated?
• Do you think the author is credible and reliable?

Presuppositions

• How do the ideas and values in the source differ from the ideas and values of our age?
• What presumptions and preconceptions do you as a reader bring to bear on this text? For instance, what portions of the text might you find objectionable, but which contemporaries might have found acceptable?
• How might the difference between our values and the values of the author influence the way you understand the text?

Epistemology

• How might this text support one of the arguments found in secondary sources you’ve read?
• What kinds of information does this text tell you without knowing it’s telling you?

Relate

Now choose another of the readings, and compare the two, answering these questions:

• What patterns or ideas are repeated throughout the readings?
• What major differences appear in them?
• Which do you find more reliable and credible?

Evaluating the Source as Historical Evidence

You’ll also want to evaluate how credible the source is and what it tells you about the given historical moment.

1. Is it prescriptive–telling you what people thought should happen–or descriptive–telling you what people thought did happen?
2. Does it describe ideology and/or behavior?
3. Does it tell you about the beliefs/actions of the elite, or of “ordinary” people? From whose perspective?
4. What historical questions can you answer using this source? What are the benefits of using this kind of source?
5. What questions can this source NOT help you answer? What are the limitations of this type of source?
6. If we have read other historians’ interpretations of this source or sources like this one, how does your analysis fit with theirs? In your opinion, does this source support or challenge their argument?

Remember, you cannot address each and every one of these questions in your presentation or in your paper, and this assignment doesn’t require you to. You need to be selective.

To sum it up, your response should include the following:

• A valid thesis
• A discussion of relevant historical context
• Use of evidence from the documents (all) to support your thesis
• A discussion of relevant factors that affect the document
• Complex understanding of the topic of the prompt.