Week 7 · Primary Source Workshop

Week 7 Primary Source Workshop: Checking a Draft Museum Panel on Washington's Farewell Address

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Museum panels, websites, and chatbot summaries all retell Washington's goodbye to the country, and many of them call it a speech, give it a phrase Jefferson wrote five years later, or mix up the Federalists of 1788 with a later party. This week you learned how the first party system formed and how power changed parties in 1801. In this workshop you act as a researcher checking a draft museum panel before it is printed: you source the Farewell Address, test eight panel statements against the record, close-read its two pinned fragments, corroborate it with Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, 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 does Washington's Farewell Address, a published address of 1796, show about how he warned the country against party and permanent alliances, what does it leave out, and which statements in an illustrative draft museum panel survive a check against the record?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft museum panel about Washington's Farewell Address

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft museum panel written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real museum, and you check each one against the Farewell Address as Founders Online presents it, against Jefferson's First Inaugural Address on Founders Online, and against Chapter 7.

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 Founders Online pages for the Farewell Address and the First Inaugural Address, and Chapter 7

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free)
The Founders Online page for the Farewell Address
The Founders Online page for Jefferson's First Inaugural Address
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

Open the Founders Online page for the Farewell Address, linked on this week's Readings & Resources page, and find the dateline under the title, the sentence warning against the spirit of party, the sentence on permanent alliances, and the editors' source note below the text on the first newspaper printing. Keep Chapter 7, Section 4, open beside it. Tool: The Founders Online page for the Farewell Address. Check: You can find the dateline, both pinned sentences, and the editors' note naming the newspaper and the date it printed.
Fill in the sourcing table for the address: who wrote it and with whose help, when and whose date each date is, why and for whom, its type and how it reached readers, and the host that keeps the text. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All five sourcing rows have an answer, and the date row names the dateline and the newspaper's date as two different records.
For each of the eight panel statements, check the Founders Online pages and Chapter 7, 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.
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.
Open the Founders Online page for Jefferson's First Inaugural Address. In each of the two pages, use your browser's find command (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) to search for the word entangling, and write in your close-reading table which page contains the phrase entangling alliances with none. Tool: The Founders Online page for Jefferson's First Inaugural Address. Check: Your table names which of the two pages holds the phrase and which holds none.
Search the Library of Congress digital collections or DocsTeach for the words Washington Farewell Address, and note in your close-reading table whether the search finds a record connected to the address and what kind of document 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.
Complete the close-reading table: say what the two pinned fragments say, what the address leaves out, what was happening around it, and how the First Inaugural Address or Mount Vernon's account of the drafting confirms or complicates it, 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 address shows and what it does not.
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 Founders Online pages, your tables, or Chapter 7.
Present and defend your reading: record a two-minute spoken explanation, or write its script, that sources the address, 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 a Founders Online page will not load in your browser.

Check the panel statements against the record facts printed in the table below, which restate the two Founders Online pages and Chapter 7 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 two Founders Online pages and Chapter 7, so you can check the statements without loading the pages.

Fallback model data
Record fact	Where it comes from
The Farewell Address is George Washington's public letter to the people of the United States, printed in newspapers; he never delivered it as a speech.	Founders Online page for the Farewell Address; Chapter 7, Section 4
Founders Online heads the text United States 19th September 1796; its editors' note says the first printing, for 19 September 1796, carried a date of 17 September.	Founders Online page for the Farewell Address
The pinned fragments read: warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, generally. and our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.	Founders Online page for the Farewell Address
A word search of the Farewell Address finds no match for entangling; the phrase entangling alliances with none appears in Jefferson's First Inaugural Address of 1801.	Founders Online pages for both addresses; Chapter 7, Section 7
Mount Vernon's encyclopedia records that Madison drafted an earlier version in 1792 and Hamilton rewrote it.	Chapter 7, Section 4
In 1787 and 1788 Federalists supported the proposed Constitution; the Federalist Party formed later, in the 1790s, around Hamilton and Adams, and Madison helped lead the Democratic-Republicans.	Chapter 7, Section 2
The address never mentions slavery or the enslaved people in Washington's household; a silence shows what a document leaves out, not by itself what its author believed.	Chapter 7, Section 4

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: eight statements from an illustrative draft museum panel about the Farewell Address, 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 Farewell Address is a public letter by George Washington that was printed in newspapers.
S2. Founders Online keeps the text of the address.
S3. Washington read the Farewell Address aloud to Congress at the end of his second term.
S4. The address warns its readers against the spirit of party.
S5. In the address, Washington advised the nation to keep entangling alliances with none.
S6. The address calls it the nation's true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
S7. The Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1788 wrote the address as their party's platform.
S8. Because the address never mentions slavery, it proves that Washington thought slavery did not matter.

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 address itself, one sourcing question per row, before you read it closely.

Student scaffold table 3
Sourcing question	Your answer for the Farewell Address
Who wrote it, and with whose help on the draft
When, and whose date each date is
Why, and for whom
What type of document it is, and how it reached readers
Which host keeps the text you read

Close-read the two pinned fragments and set them beside the First Inaugural Address to corroborate or complicate them.

Student scaffold table 4
Move	Your reading
What the two fragments say
What the address leaves out
Context: what was happening around it
Corroboration: the First Inaugural Address, or Mount Vernon's account of the drafting
Word search: which page holds the phrase entangling alliances with none
Library or DocsTeach search: words used and what turned up
One plain sentence

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

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.
Which statement gives Washington a phrase from another document, and what does your word search of the two Founders Online pages show instead?
One statement gives the address to the wrong group. Explain what Chapter 7 shows instead, using the course's definitions of the ratification-era Federalists and the Federalist Party and the example of Madison.
Using your close-reading table, how does Jefferson's First Inaugural Address of 1801, or Mount Vernon's account of how the address was drafted, confirm or complicate what the Farewell Address shows about Washington's warning against party? Name the source and what it adds.
Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things this address cannot tell a historian about how Americans of 1796 felt about parties, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Explain how a public letter drafted with help from Madison and Hamilton limits what you can say about Washington's private views.

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 7 Primary Source Workshop tables above. They check an illustrative draft museum panel about Washington's Farewell Address. Please do six things. First, summarize the address in three sentences and say who wrote it, what kind of document it is, how it reached its readers, and when it is dated. Second, quote its sentence warning against the spirit of party word for word. Third, say which document contains the phrase entangling alliances with none, and in what year. Fourth, say whether the Federalists of 1788 were the Federalist Party, and whether Washington governed under the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution. Fifth, say whether the address's silence about slavery proves what Washington believed, and describe the people he enslaved in his household. Sixth, in one short paragraph, connect this story to earlier American history and preview how it leads to later U.S. history through 1877.

Test the response for these likely failures:

Chatbots often treat a modern summary of the Farewell Address, or the editors' notes printed below it on Founders Online, as if they were Washington's own text.
A chatbot setting the long background may say the United States conquered the Ohio country the moment settlers first met the Native nations there.
A chatbot tracing Washington's Virginia back to its roots often calls Jamestown the oldest European settlement in what became the United States.
A chatbot describing the farms the Democratic-Republicans championed may say tobacco or maize came to the Americas from Europe.
Chatbots often read the address's silence about slavery as proof of what Washington believed, or read its warning against party as proof that Americans stopped forming parties.
A chatbot describing Washington's household in Philadelphia may call the people he enslaved servants who would go free after a term of years.
Chatbots often say the Farewell Address defends the Declaration of Independence as the frame of government, or give the Constitution the year 1776.
A chatbot may say Washington governed under the Articles of Confederation, or that the Articles created his presidency.
Chatbots often say the Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1788 are the same group as the Federalist Party, or call Madison a Federalist Party leader.
Chatbots very often credit Washington's Farewell Address with the phrase "entangling alliances with none", or call the address a speech he delivered.
Chatbots often give 17 September 1796 as the address's date with no source, or treat a newspaper's printed date as Washington's own dateline.
A chatbot previewing later history may treat the Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty as one rule.
A chatbot previewing later history may say the party quarrels of the 1790s were the same quarrel that later caused the Civil War.
A chatbot running ahead may say the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed every enslaved person, including those in families like the ones Washington's household held.
A chatbot listing later amendments 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 Founders Online pages, your tables, or Chapter 7; 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 Farewell Address and the editors' notes on the Founders Online page are one primary source, and Washington read it aloud to Congress on 17 September 1796, the date he wrote at the top. In it he told the nation to keep entangling alliances with none. The Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1788 wrote the address as their party's platform, and Madison led that party. Washington governed under the Articles of Confederation, which let Congress tax, and the address defends the Declaration of Independence of 1787. Because the address never mentions slavery, it proves Washington thought slavery did not matter, and because it warned against parties, Americans stopped forming parties after 1796. The people Washington enslaved were servants who would go free after a term of years. The country began at Jamestown, the first European settlement in what became the United States; settlers conquered the Ohio country the day they met the Native nations there; and Europeans brought tobacco and maize to the Americas. Later, the Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty were one rule, the party quarrels of the 1790s caused the Civil War, 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 editor's later notes read as part of the primary source, a published letter read as a speech, a printing's date read as the author's dateline, Jefferson's phrase given to Washington, the ratification-era Federalists confused with the later party, the Articles confused with the Constitution or the Declaration, a silence or a warning read as proof of a belief or a result, servitude and slavery blurred, Jamestown placed before St. Augustine, contact called conquest, the exchange run in the wrong direction, or a later-week confusion to flag because a later week takes it up), cite the evidence from the Founders Online pages, your tables, or Chapter 7, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 1 and Objective 5) 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 Washington's Farewell Address: four completed tables (the panel 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 address, 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 address	All five sourcing rows are answered from the record: Washington as author with Madison's earlier draft and Hamilton's rewrite, the dateline and the newspaper's date named as two records, the purpose of addressing the public as he left office, a published address printed in newspapers as its type, and Founders Online as host.	Most rows are answered, but the address is called a speech, the two dates are blurred into one, or the host is not named.	The sourcing table is missing, or its answers are copied from a chatbot without checking the record.
Auditing the panel 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 fragments are read for what they say and the address for what it leaves out, set in the party quarrels and foreign-policy fights of the 1790s, and corroborated or complicated with the First Inaugural Address or Mount Vernon's account of the drafting, ending in one plain sentence.	The close reading is attempted, but the corroborating source is unnamed, or the reading stops at what the fragments say.	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 Founders Online pages, the tables, or Chapter 7, 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 address, gives the close reading, names the corroborating source, and ends in one plain sentence that says what the address shows and what it does not.	The explanation is given, but one of those moves is missing or the plain sentence overclaims what the address 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 a published public letter 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, a Founders Online page or Chapter 7, never a chatbot.
The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
The address is sourced as Washington's published address, with the dateline and the newspaper's date named as two different records.
Every quotation matches the pinned fragments word for word, capitals and punctuation included; no quotation, date, person, or document is invented anywhere in the submission.
The submission credits entangling alliances with none to Jefferson, keeps the Federalists of 1787 and 1788 apart from the later Federalist Party, and compares no party of the 1790s with any party today.
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 address shows and what it does not.

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