One of the three thematic narratives of this course is the struggle to create an American nation, with the crucial questions of how do we define the American nation? What do we mean by the term “American”? And most importantly who is an American and who has rights as an American? To help in answering these questions we will explore several primary source documents this semester.
Read the following documents in the packet provided:
Frederick Douglass, “The Composite Nation” (1869)
Chief Joseph, “Let Me Be a Free Man” (1879)
William Birney, “Deporting Mohammedans” (1897)
Primary Sources Exercise 1 Documents.pdfDownload Primary Sources Exercise 1 Documents.pdf
Identify the best evidence (quotes) from each document which would help answer the questions above. Find 1-3 relevant quotes from each document.
Create a topic sentence which needs your evidence (quotes) and analysis to prove it.
Write a well-developed essay on these three documents with a strong topic sentence, evidence, and analysis. You may use information from the text to support your analysis. You do not need to include formal citations for the documents or information from the textbook. For quotes from the documents which you use as evidence, you must state informally where the quote came from, e.g., (Douglass); or according to Birney. Any other external sources which you use must be correctly cited in MLA style.
The essay must be typed, double-spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman or similar serif font, and must be a minimum of 200 words in length. The essay must be written using MLA essay style rules regarding heading, margins, pagination, etc. The essay must be submitted either a an entry in the textbox or as .doc, .docx, or .pdf files uploaded on the assignment submission page. The essay will be scanned for plagiarism by the College’s plagiarism checker. Any essay with a similarity score of more than 15% may not be accepted for grade.
The essay will be graded on how well you use and assess the documents assigned, using quotes from the documents as appropriate and any other historical terms, events, and/or persons appropriate for the analysis (about 80% of the grade), and on how well your essay is written – structure, length, following MLA style rules, etc. (about 20%)