This comprehensive essay Considering the topic of race relations, what roles did equality and inequality play in the United States before the American Civil War? How did individuals’ personal experiences concerning race relations shape the foundation of the country? How can we understand the early years of our nation through these accounts?
Your task is to demonstrate the ability to think like an historian by critically analyzing the types of evidence that scholars utilize to make sense of the past. To achieve this goal, you will examine a minimum of four primary sources from the period of 1492-1861 that offer different perspectives on the nature of racial equality and inequality in the United States and explain how they relate to this topic.
When examining personal documents, we cannot fully appreciate the words of people from the past without also understanding the world in which they lived. To achieve this, your essay will focus on the primary sources as well as offer the proper historical context with support from the textbook and a minimum of three secondary sources from our course (such as readings, videos, or lectures). This means that a complete paper will integrate eight sources (four primary, three secondary, and the textbook) and list them in the works cited.
A successful essay will weave these stories together along with an historical underpinning to form a cohesive explanation of the prompt. In order to accomplish this assignment, your paper needs a clear thesis statement that advances your central argument. The goal of this essay is for you to showcase what you have learned and demonstrate your comprehension of the topic by synthesizing relevant course materials into a robust paper.
Because I am solely interested in your comprehension of what we have covered, you can only use sources provided in the class: No materials or websites from outside the course are allowed, as using those will result in failing the essay.
As with all assignments, be sure to avoid plagiarism. All ideas and words in your paper need to be your own. All direct quotes need to be inside quotation marks followed by a full citation. All paraphrased content must also be properly cited. Review the sections on plagiarism and paraphrasing in the syllabus for more information.
Be sure to not extend your discussion beyond the year 1861. For instance, do not focus on the significance of the topic concerning life today, as the state of the current world is beyond the scope of this class. This assignment tests your mastery of course content and the historical period that it encompasses, so do not cover anything beyond it.
Present your essay in 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. A complete document will be at least 2,400 words of original writing: Quotations, citations, and references will push the total word count higher.
Formatting and citations need to follow an academic style guide such as APA or Chicago: The choice is yours. If you choose a format such as APA that uses parenthetical notation, you must provide not only the source, but also the page number when referencing a paginated document. Simply placing the author’s name and date are not sufficient for in-text citations for this assignment.
