Final Paper: 400 pts
Writing Prompt:
What factors helped develop a unique American civilization between its origins (the 1600s) and 1865?
Writing Details:
- Strong answers will take into account many of the readings you completed (more than 10 different documents) and will consider several different answers to the question:
- For example,
- You might want to argue that American civilization became distinct because of its geography;
- Your essay could discuss the long distance that immigrants to America had to travel and the way their isolation from Europe affected them;
- The challenges of building a republic that covered a vast area of land;
- The ways in which Americans’ movement west both strengthened the country and challenged it because of slavery
- You could cite everything from John Winthrop to Crevecoeur to the Federalist Papers to Frederick Douglass.
- You should develop the answer that you think is best and find evidence from the readings and film clips to support it.
- This is a formal academic essay;
- Your paper must be 6–8 pages long, and it must have an argument – including, as always:
- Thesis
- Evidence
- Strong Conclusion, and
- You must cite any quotations.
The above list is just one possible way to structure your essay;
- William Lloyd Garrison on the Dred Scott decision: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/dred-scott-and-disunion/
- South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession –
- Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession –
- H. Stephen’s “Corner Stone” Speech –
- Union soldier writes to his wife, 1861-
- Letters from a Confederate Officer, 1862 –
- Frederick Douglass, Why Should a Colored Man Enlist? (1863)
- Missouri Black Soldier to His Daughters, and to the Owner of One of the Daughters, 1864
- A Southerner Remembers, 1907 –
- https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-03921-21.pdf
- The Declaration of Independence: Declaration of Independence | Teaching American History
- Gordon Wood, The American Revolution: Chapters 3–5 (pages 47–109)