Overview
One of the most important skills a historian develops is the ability to evaluate historical documents. This evaluation concerns asking questions of the documents that allows a historian to have insight in a particular topic or period being investigated. This week’s documents relate to the weekly module topic of culture and cultural interaction. If you still need help prioritizing your questions of the document, return to the earlier Document Interpretation Tutorial. Use the questions below to learn how to analyze various types of sources and to become a historian yourself.
Directions
In this weekly discussion assignment you will need to:
Choose one of the documents below to read.
Write a 500 word initial post and and present your interpretation of the document and the material you have been introduced to in this module. This is due by: Thursday, 11:59 pm.
Respond in 250 words to at least 2 other classmates’ interpretations. Your response is due by: Sunday 11:59 pm.
Frederick Douglass, Independence Day Speech, “Fellow citizens…” to the end of the section (The Internal Slave Trade)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments
Why would the authors of the Declaration parallel the Declaration of Independence?
What is their major demand?
Why would people reject and actively fight against the ideas of this document?
Charles G. Finney, What a Revival of Religion Is (Read only: the last paragraph of the introduction (“It is altogether improbable…cannot contain themselves any longer.”; “What a revival is” section; The third remark at the end, “You see the error of those…damnation of the world”)
The purpose of the revival was to change the individual and society. What does Finney fear in American society? What changes does he expect as a result of the revival?
What does Finney mean by “excitement”? Why would this concept bother other ministers?
John Hailer, The Way of Good and Evil (1862) (Links to an external site.) (some alt tags may be missing; let me know if you need an accommodation)
Though published in 1862, John Hailer’s drawing shares in the perfectionist zeal of the early antebellum reform efforts. What does the drawing suggest about reform, revivalism, and even domesticity?
What does it suggest about the U.S. as a place of opportunity?
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