Choose either Phillis Wheatley’s “A Poem to the Earl of Dartmouth” (page 149-150 of the text), “Bars Fight” by Lucy Terry Prince, or “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley”. While you read this, you will answer the SOAPPS-Tone questions. Give an answer for each letter using the matrix provided. UPLOAD the assignment.
For example: Subject: 1. What is the main topic or idea of the document?
Be able to summarize the main idea in Subject in one sentence and no more!
For example: Occasion 2. What is the occasion? Where was the document produced? What was happening at the time?
Do the same with each of the following letters: Audience, Purpose, Point of View, Speaker, Tone.
While you read the primary document, have the SOAPPS-Tone rubric handy and answer to the best of your ability.
UPLOAD the assignment in word or pdf format. READ: DOCUMENT PROJECT
Black Freedom Fighters
African Americans fought for their own freedom with the pen and the sword during the American Revolution. Black soldiers joined both the patriot and loyalist forces, and both free blacks and slaves were drawn into the natural rights debates engendered by the Revolution. Slaves who petitioned for freedom in patriot courts articulated claims to the “Natural and Unaliable [inalienable] Right to that freedom which the Grat Parent of the Unavers hath Bestowed equalley on all menkind,” but black loyalists also fought for freedom.53 The following documents present black perspectives from both sides of the conflict. They include writings by the poet Phillis Wheatley and the free black soldier Lemuel Haynes, both of whom supported the patriots; an excerpt from the memoirs of Boston King, a black loyalist; and artwork depicting Revolutionary-era African American soldiers.
Born around 1753 and freed in 1773, the poet Phillis Wheatley was still very young when the war was beginning to take shape, but she kept a close eye on the Revolution’s ideological conflicts. In 1772, a year before she was emancipated, she wrote a poem addressed to King George’s secretary of state for North America, the Earl of Dartmouth, in which she supported the patriot cause while also mourning the freedom that blacks had not yet won. Two years later, she expressed similar sentiments as a free woman in a letter written to the Indian leader Samson Occom. Both pieces are included here.
Wheatley’s compositions are followed by an essay by Lemuel Haynes, a free black who was born in Connecticut and raised in Massachusetts and who served with both the minutemen and the Continental army. Although he fought with the patriots, Haynes was dissatisfied with the new nation’s political principles and called for Americans to extend liberty to blacks as well as whites.
A slave in South Carolina when the British invaded Charleston, Boston King had a very different perspective on the Revolution than either Wheatley or Haynes. He was a discontented slave whose only chance of liberty lay in joining the English forces. His memoirs, written nearly twenty years after the Revolution, describes his wartime thoughts and experiences.
Sketched by a French officer who fought with the patriots, the image Soldiers in Uniform illustrates the American opponents that King might have confronted, including French soldiers, former slaves, state militiamen, and frontier fighters, and the painting The Death of Major Peirson depicts a black loyalist fighting among British forces.
Phillis Wheatley | A Poem to the Earl of Dartmouth, 1772
Born in Gambia, PHILLIS WHEATLEY (c. 1753–1784) was only seven or eight years old when she was sold into slavery. Her masters encouraged her to learn how to read and write and were so impressed by her intelligence that they permitted her to devote her time largely to her education and to developing her gift for poetry. Wheatley wrote and published her first poems as a teenager, attracting attention and controversy as an early black author who spoke on behalf of a people whom many whites saw as illiterate by nature. What was Wheatley trying to accomplish with this poem, addressed to Britain’s secretary of state for North America? How does she go about it in the poem? READ: TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America, etc. Hail, happy day, when smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New England to adorn;
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth congratulates thy blissful sway;
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies
She shines supreme, while hated faction dies;
Soon as appeared the Goddess long desir’d,
Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d;
Thus from the splendor of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,
No longer shall thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant to enslave the land.
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat;
What pangs excruciatingly must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seized his babe belov’d;
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
For favors past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favors to renew,
Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou didst once deplore.
May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou forever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name,
But to conduct to heav’n’s refulgent fane
May fiery coursers sweep th’ etherial plain,
And bear thee upwards to the blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.
Here is a copy of the SOAPPS-Tone Primary Document Analysis- soaps_tone.pdf Download soaps_tone.pdf
acronym of analysis is
Purpose (P), Point of View (P), Speaker (S), and TONE. Typically historical primary
sources will identify the author, the date, and the occasion for the comments. These
introductory facts are followed by the document itself. After reading a
acronym of analysis is
Purpose (P), Point of View (P), Speaker (S), and TONE. Typically historical primary
sources will identify the author, the date, and the occasion for the comments. These
introductory facts are followed by the document itself. After reading any document, you
should be able to summarize the questions asked below in one line.
1.
When reading a document, determine the subject. Answer these questions
about and why is the document important or significant? Summarize actions.
2.
The occasion of the document involves its time frame (not a specific date) and the
historical context behind the document. Answer such questions
document was created, what was the specific event, what is happening in history, and
where did it geographically originated.
3.
All documents have an intended audience, which you must identify. Speakers say or
write different things to different audiences. Analysis of audience partially answers the
question of
time? Sometimes, there can be multiple audiences or hidden audiences.
4.
Critical
document. Purpose or motivation answers the question as to why the speaker said or
wrote what (s)he did. What goal did the speaker want to achieve?
5.
The second “P” is point of view or bias that colors or influences a person’s outlook. All
documents and primary source materials contain point of views. In order to interpret
documents, students must learn to recognize the speaker’s perspective.
6.
When students analyze a document, the process begins with an attribution, or who
wrote or spoke the words. Analyze the speaker’s gender, social background, economic
status, political persuasion, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and race. Who the speaker is
affects his or her reliability.
7.
Students need to be able to identify the manner of expression or mood created by the
language of the written document. What is the tone of the speaker?
After analyzing the document, what inference or generalization about the civilization and
culture can you make (if you have not read about the culture, this could be a predication)?
Additionally, what conclusion can you reach about the importance or significance of this
document to world history? Justify your answers. The question you must determine after analyzing any document is “how reliable is the document”? Do you believe it? Why or why
not? That is the job of a good historian and this is the major process by which history is
written.
analyzing any document is “how reliable is the document”? Do you believe it? Why or why
not? not? That is the job of a good historian and this is the major process by which history is
That is the job of a good historian and this is the major process by which history is
written.
