What did the Constitution say about slavery? Were there any debates in the convention about abolishing slavery? Were there any sectional differences over this issue?
What did the Constitution say about slavery? Were there any debates in the convention about abolishing slavery? Were there any sectional differences over this issue?
Reviewing the information related to the Mexican-American War, evaluate the events leading up to the war and why it happened. Consider the following questions as you respond:
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- What decisions or actions played a key role in starting the war?
- What were the results of the war?
There is no right or wrong answer. State your argument and provide evidence from the text to support your statements.
History 1301 United States History to 1865
Argumentative Historical Essay
Thesis Statements and Essay Outlines due Monday, September 21st at 5pm
Historical Essays due Monday, October 19th at 5pm Basic Details Thesis Statements and Outlines due Monday, September 21st at 5pm
Historical Essays due Monday, October 19th at 5pm
Assignment files are both turned in via upload to Blackboard
900-1100 word length (about 3-4 pages)
Use APA, MLA, or Chicago style citations for primary sources and other information.
o Please do not include any title pages, section headers, or abstracts
Any amount of plagiarism will result in a zero for the assignment.
Late penalty: 5 points per day late
Formatting Details: 12-point, Times New Roman font; double spaced; one-inch margin
Upload to Blackboard as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file only. Assignment Description
For this writing assignment you will write an argumentative historical essay. As we’ve discussed,
history is both an interpretive and an empirical field. Historians examine the evidence left to us from
the past and offer their interpretation of what happened. The quality, believability, and, ultimately, the
wider cultural acceptance of their work depend upon the convincingness of their prose and the quality
of the evidence they use to back up their argument.
For this assignment you’ll argue for your own interpretation of some aspect of the American past and
present evidence from the primary sources we’ve been reading in order to back that argument up.
For this paper you are free to choose to write about any subject in American History that
happened between 1492 and 1865. Essays dealing with content outside of this time window will
receive a 25 point penalty.
For the subject you choose, you’ll analyze primary sources about that topic. The sorts of questions that
you should have in your mind as you explore the primary sources are: What changed? Why did change
(or a lack of change) happen? Why did change happen when it did? Or why did change happen (or not
happen) the way it did? Why does the author of this document make the argument or use the language
they do here? Based on this document, what do I think is really going on here?
In the end, your goal is to write a paper that offers an argument for why things happened the way they
did. For any historical subject there are many such explanations. Your goal is to choose one
explanation and prove that it is correct using primary source evidence. Making an Argument
Your argument will be your thesis statement for the paper. A thesis statement is the main point of the
paper. Everything you say in the paper will be designed to convince your reader that your thesis is
valid. 1 Because this is an argumentative essay your thesis should be just that, argumentative. It should be
something that another reasonable person who reads the same sources might argue against. If you
simply argue that racism existed in 19th century America or that it was more prevalent in the South than
in the North, that isn’t very argumentative. You aren’t going to keep your reader interested if you aren’t
offering an argument. Don’t worry. The past, like the present, is terribly complicated. There is a lot of
room for different arguments.
Typically, a good, argumentative thesis statement answers a historical “why” question.
Here’s an example from the recent past. Which do you think will make for the best paper?
– A paper that argued that President Obama won the 2012 presidential election.
– A paper that argued that President Obama won the 2012 presidential election because he offered a
message that resonated with female voters.
Obviously, the first one isn’t much of an argument. The second answers the historical “why” question
and it does it in a way that offers a specific argument, one that could be argued against. Providing Evidence
In order to prove their thesis, the author of a paper about Obama’s campaign message will need to
provide evidence to convince the reader that his message for women was the key factor in the race.
Similarly, in order to prove the validity of your thesis, you will need to provide your own analysis of
historical evidence. Fortunately for you, you won’t need to visit any historical archives to dig up
primary source evidence from the past. Voices of Freedom is chock full of primary sources. In addition,
