Week 4 Primary Source Workshop: Checking a Draft Exhibit Caption on the Stamp Act Congress Declarations

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Museum captions, websites, and chatbot summaries all retell the road to the Revolution, and many of them credit the 1765 protest to the wrong congress, say the colonists refused every tax, or treat one date as the cause of the next. This week you learned that the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 claimed that only the colonists' own representatives could tax them, while professing loyalty to the Crown. In this workshop you act as a museum researcher checking a draft caption before it goes on the wall: you source the declarations, test eight caption statements against the record, close-read the pinned fragment, corroborate it with this week's account of the Stamp Act and the crowds that opposed it, catch a chatbot making the same kinds of slips, and present your reading in one plain sentence.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What do the Stamp Act Congress declarations, adopted in 1765 and kept by the Avalon Project under a title that names the wrong congress, show about the colonists' claim to consent, what do they leave out, and which statements in an illustrative draft caption survive a check against the record?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit caption about the Stamp Act Congress declarations

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit caption written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real exhibit, and you check each one against the Stamp Act Congress declarations as the Avalon Project presents them and against Chapter 4.

• Rows: 8 statements, one row each in the audit table
• Columns: statement, verdict, which record you used, and a corrected sentence
• Records to check against: the Avalon Project's page for the Stamp Act Congress declarations, and Chapter 4

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free)
• The Avalon Project's page for the Stamp Act Congress declarations
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• One approved chatbot
• Any free audio or video recorder, or a phone's voice memo app

Ways of working

• source-a-primary-document
• contextualize-and-corroborate
• close-read-for-what-the-text-says-and-omits
• present-and-defend-the-analysis

Procedure

1. Open the Avalon Project's page for the Stamp Act Congress declarations, linked on this week's Readings & Resources page, and find the page title at the top and the declaration on consent to taxation. Keep Chapter 4, Section 6, open beside it. Tool: The Avalon Project's page for the Stamp Act Congress declarations. Check: You can find the declaration that holds the words their own consent, and the page title that names a Continental Congress.
2. Fill in the sourcing table for the document: which body made it, the year and the day its record gives, why and for whom, its type, the host that keeps the text, and what Avalon's title says compared with the body that adopted it. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All six sourcing rows have an answer, and the title row says the page names the Continental Congress although the Stamp Act Congress adopted the declarations.
3. For each of the eight caption statements, check the Avalon page and Chapter 4, then write Supported, Contradicted, or Goes beyond the source in the second column and name the record in the third. Write a corrected sentence for every statement that is not Supported. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every row has a verdict and a named record, and every row that is not Supported has a corrected sentence.
4. Count your second column by hand and copy the three counts into the tally table, checking that they add up to the number of statements. Check: The three counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
5. Search DocsTeach or the Library of Congress digital collections for the words Stamp Act, and note in your close-reading table whether the search finds a record from 1765 and what kind of record it is. Tool: DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free). Check: Your table names the search words you used and either describes the record you found or says that no record turned up.
6. Complete the close-reading table: say what the pinned fragment says, what the declarations leave out, what was happening around them, and how this week's account of the Stamp Act and the crowds that opposed it confirms or complicates them, then write one plain sentence. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: The table ends in one plain sentence that names what the document shows and what it does not.
7. Run the AI-critique step in Part 6 with one approved chatbot, or take the equivalent route printed there, and write your critique report. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: Your report quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the Avalon page, your tables, or Chapter 4.
8. Present and defend your reading: record a two-minute spoken explanation, or write its script, that sources the document, gives your close reading, names your corroborating source, and ends in your one plain sentence. Tool: Any free audio or video recorder, or a phone's voice memo app. Check: The explanation runs about two minutes, or about 250 words as a script, and ends in one plain sentence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if the Avalon Project's page will not load in your browser.

Check the caption statements against the record facts printed in the table below, which restate the Avalon page and Chapter 4 in the course's own words, and tally your second column by hand, showing that the counts add up to 8. Then complete every scaffold table, analysis question, the critique step, and the spoken explanation, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

These record facts restate the Avalon page and Chapter 4, so you can check the statements without loading the page.

Fallback model data

Record fact	Where it comes from
The declarations are resolutions adopted by the Stamp Act Congress, dated 1765, and kept by the Avalon Project.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 4, Section 6
The Avalon Project titles the page Resolutions of the Continental Congress, but the Continental Congress first met in 1774.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 4, Section 6
Delegates from nine colonies met in New York City in October 1765 as the Stamp Act Congress.	Chapter 4, Section 6
The pinned fragment reads: that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.	Avalon Project page
The declarations profess allegiance to the Crown and due subordination to Parliament, and they ask for repeal by petition.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 4, Section 6
Colonists paid taxes their own assemblies voted; they objected to taxes laid by a Parliament in which they had no representatives.	Chapter 4, Section 5
The declarations say nothing about the enslaved people in every colony or about Native nations, and slavery was legal in every colony.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 4, Sections 6 and 8
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 came two years before the Stamp Act Congress; the course explains the link through Parliament's search for revenue after the war, not by the order of the dates alone.	Chapter 4, Sections 5 and 8

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit caption about the Stamp Act Congress declarations, with columns for your verdict, the record you checked, and a corrected sentence.

Student scaffold table 1

Statement	Supported, Contradicted, or Goes beyond the source	Which record	Corrected sentence
S1. The Stamp Act Congress declarations are resolutions adopted in 1765.
S2. The Continental Congress adopted these declarations, as the Avalon Project's page title says.
S3. The Avalon Project keeps the text of the declarations that the course reads.
S4. The declarations demand independence from Britain.
S5. The declarations say "that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives".
S6. The colonists who adopted them objected to every tax, even taxes their own assemblies voted.
S7. Because the declarations speak of the colonists' rights, they show that every person living in the colonies, free and enslaved, agreed with them.
S8. Because the Stamp Act Congress met two years after the Treaty of Paris, the treaty caused the congress.

Tally your second column so you can read the audit as a small dataset.

Student scaffold table 2

Verdict	Count
Supported
Contradicted
Goes beyond the source
Total

Source the document itself, one sourcing question per row, before you read it closely.

Student scaffold table 3

Sourcing question	Your answer for the Stamp Act Congress declarations
Which body made it
When: the year, and the day its record gives
Why, and for whom
What type of document it is
Which host keeps the text you read
What Avalon's title says, compared with the body that adopted it

Close-read the pinned fragment and set it beside this week's account of the Stamp Act to corroborate or complicate it.

Student scaffold table 4

Move	Your reading
What the fragment says
What the declarations leave out
Context: what was happening around them
Corroboration: the Stamp Act and the crowds in Chapter 4
DocsTeach or Library search: words used and what turned up
One plain sentence

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your tally table, how many statements are Supported, how many are Contradicted, and how many Go beyond the source? Show that your three counts add up to the number of statements.
2. Which statement trusts the archive's page title over the document's own origin, and what does sourcing the declarations show instead?
3. Two statements misstate what the delegates asked for or objected to. Pick one and explain what the declarations and Chapter 4 show instead, using the course's definitions of representation and consent.
4. Using your close-reading table, how does this week's account of the Stamp Act and the crowds that forced stamp officers to resign confirm or complicate what the declarations show? Name the source and what it adds.
5. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things these declarations cannot tell a historian about the people living in the colonies in 1765, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Explain how the declarations' silence about the enslaved people in every colony limits what you can say their claim of consent meant.

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 4 Primary Source Workshop tables above. They check an illustrative draft exhibit caption about the Stamp Act Congress declarations. Please do seven things. First, summarize the declarations in three sentences and say which body adopted them, what kind of document they are, and when they are dated. Second, quote their line on consent to taxation word for word. Third, say whether the colonists who adopted them objected to every tax. Fourth, say whether the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War caused the Stamp Act Congress, since it came two years earlier. Fifth, say whether the Revolution and the Civil War were caused by the same things. Sixth, in two sentences, tell me how the English colonies began and who did their work. Seventh, in one short paragraph, preview how this story leads to later U.S. history through 1877.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often treat the Avalon Project's page title as part of the 1765 document, as if the archive's label were written by the delegates themselves.
• A chatbot sketching the colonial background may say the English conquered North America on the day the first colonists arrived.
• A chatbot sketching the colonial background often calls Jamestown the first European settlement in what became the United States.
• A chatbot describing the colonial economy may say Europeans brought tobacco or maize to the Americas.
• Chatbots often read the order of two dates as a cause, saying the Treaty of Paris of 1763 caused the Stamp Act Congress of 1765.
• A chatbot describing who worked in the colonies may call indentured servants slaves for a term, or treat the two as one status.
• A chatbot previewing later history may call the Declaration of Independence the Constitution, or give it the year 1787.
• A chatbot previewing later history may say the Articles of Confederation let Congress tax.
• A chatbot previewing later history may treat the Federalists who argued for ratification as the same group as the Federalist Party of the 1790s.
• A chatbot previewing later history may credit Washington with the phrase "entangling alliances".
• Chatbots often repeat the Avalon Project's page title and credit the 1765 declarations to the Continental Congress.
• A chatbot previewing later history may treat the Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty as one rule.
• Chatbots often say the Revolution and the Civil War were both fought over the same quarrel about taxes or rights.
• A chatbot previewing later history may say the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed every enslaved person.
• A chatbot previewing later history may say the 14th Amendment gave Black men the vote.
• A chatbot previewing later history may describe Reconstruction as one policy from start to finish.

Write 3–5 sentences naming one thing the chatbot got right and at least two places it went wrong or ran ahead, quoting its words and correcting each with evidence from the Avalon page, your tables, or Chapter 4; flag any slip about later history as something the course takes up later.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The Stamp Act Congress declarations are a primary source, and so is the Avalon Project's page title, which proves that the Continental Congress adopted them in 1765. The delegates refused to pay any taxes at all, and they demanded independence. The Treaty of Paris came two years earlier, so it caused the congress. The Revolution and the Civil War were fought over the same quarrel about taxes. Before all this, Jamestown was the first European settlement in what became the United States, the English conquered North America the day they landed, Europeans carried tobacco to the Americas, and indentured servants were slaves for a few years. Later, the Declaration of Independence of 1787 was the Constitution, and before it the Articles of Confederation let Congress tax. The Federalists who backed ratification were the same as the Federalist Party of the 1790s. Washington warned against entangling alliances in his Farewell Address. The Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty were one rule, the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person, the 14th Amendment gave Black men the vote, and Reconstruction was one policy." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (an archive's later label read as part of the primary source, the declarations credited to the wrong congress, the objection to taxes without consent turned into a refusal of all taxes, a demand the document does not make, an order of events read as a cause, the two wars' causes merged, Jamestown placed before St. Augustine, contact called conquest, the exchange run in the wrong direction, servitude and slavery blurred, or a later-week confusion to flag because it comes later in the course), cite the evidence from the Avalon page, your tables, or Chapter 4, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 1 and Objective 4) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 250–350 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, submitted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All four completed scaffold tables
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis
• The two-minute spoken or recorded explanation, or its written script

Deliverable:

A short Primary Source Workshop report on the Stamp Act Congress declarations: four completed tables (the caption audit, the tally, the sourcing table, and the close-reading table), written answers to five analysis questions, a critique of a chatbot's answer about the document, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis, and a two-minute spoken explanation or its written script. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, spoken, or recorded form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Sourcing the document	All six sourcing rows are answered from the record: the Stamp Act Congress as maker, the year 1765 with the day its record gives, the delegates' purpose and audience, resolutions as its type, the Avalon Project as host, and Avalon's title set against the body that adopted the declarations.	Most rows are answered, but the host is missing, the purpose is vague, or the declarations are credited to the Continental Congress.	The sourcing table is missing, or its answers are copied from a chatbot without checking the record.
Auditing the caption against the record	All eight statements carry a verdict and a named record, every statement that is not Supported has a corrected sentence, and the tally counts add up to 8.	The audit is attempted, but one or two verdicts are wrong, a corrected sentence or record is missing, or a count is off.	No audit is recorded, or the verdicts come from a chatbot with no record named.
Close reading, context, and corroboration	The fragment is read for what it says and what the declarations leave out, set in the year of the Stamp Act, and corroborated or complicated with Chapter 4's account of the act and the crowds that opposed it, ending in one plain sentence.	The close reading is attempted, but the corroborating source is unnamed, or the reading stops at what the fragment says.	No close reading or corroboration appears.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed analysis	On either route, at least two errors are quoted and corrected with evidence from the Avalon page, the tables, or Chapter 4, later-week slips are flagged as coming later, and one correct point is acknowledged; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, errors are named but corrected without evidence, or only one error is caught.	No critique appears, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.
Presenting and defending the reading	The spoken explanation or its script sources the document, gives the close reading, names the corroborating source, and ends in one plain sentence that says what the document shows and what it does not.	The explanation is given, but one of those moves is missing or the plain sentence overclaims what the document shows.	No explanation or script is submitted.
Reflection on the limits of the source	The chosen reflection option is answered in 3–4 sentences that name a specific limit of the declarations and the evidence it would need.	The reflection is answered but stays general.	No reflection is submitted.

Quality Gate

• Every verdict in the audit table names the record it came from, the Avalon page or Chapter 4, never a chatbot.
• The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
• The declarations are credited to the Stamp Act Congress, and Avalon's title is named as the archive's label.
• Every quotation matches the pinned fragment word for word; no quotation, date, law, person, or document is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The submission says enslaved people in its own voice and states slavery plainly, never as a debate.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from the record or the chapter.
• The spoken explanation or its script ends in one plain sentence that names what the document shows and what it does not.