Week 9 — Growth and Its Costs: Years, a Line, and Jackson's Message — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 8 of the term — measure the years between the documents of a growing nation, read a measure and a message, and explain to someone new to history what a President's words do and do not prove.

This week you learned how the Louisiana Purchase doubled the country and tested Jefferson's own reading of the Constitution, how the War of 1812 ended, how canals and mills tied the country together and to cotton grown by enslaved people, how the Missouri Compromise drew a line for slavery, how Jacksonian democracy widened the vote for white men only, how Jackson defended removal to Congress while the Cherokee Nation and other nations were forced west, and how Jackson answered South Carolina's nullification. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's chronology, interpret each one, and explain to someone who has never studied it what a President's words do and do not prove. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Primary Source Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

Your shared data is five years from the course chronology, in order:

• 1801 — Jefferson's First Inaugural Address
• 1803 — the Louisiana Purchase Treaty
• 1820 — the Missouri Compromise
• 1830 — the Indian Removal Act and Jackson's removal message
• 1832 — the Proclamation on Nullification

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic and citing your evidence:

1. Jefferson's First Inaugural Address is dated 1801, and the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed in 1803. How many years separate the two?
2. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed in 1803, and the Missouri Compromise came in 1820. How many years separate the two?
3. The Missouri Compromise came in 1820, and Jackson's message to Congress on Indian removal is dated 1830. How many years separate the two?
4. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed in 1803, and Jackson's Proclamation on Nullification is dated 1832. How many years separate the two?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: source the Louisiana Purchase Treaty (its parties, the United States and the French Republic; its type, a treaty of cession; its year; and its host) and quote its pinned fragment word for word, then give the National Archives' figures for the purchase, about 828,000 square miles for $15 million, naming the body that gives them. Explaining why Jefferson's doubt about the Constitution tested his own strict construction is welcome but optional.
• Problem 2: state what the Missouri Compromise did about slavery (Missouri, Maine, and the line at 36 degrees 30 minutes in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase), then tell the Missouri Compromise line, drawn by Congress, apart from popular sovereignty, a later rule that left slavery to the settlers' votes.
• Problem 3: source Jackson's message (author, type of document, host, and year) and quote its pinned fragment word for word, then write the one plain sentence that says what the message shows and what it does not.
• Problem 4: source Jackson's Proclamation Regarding Nullification (author, type of document, host, and year), then quote its pinned fragment word for word. Explaining what nullification meant, as Chapter 9 does, is welcome.

Explain it to a non-expert

A coworker says, "Jackson's own message to Congress proves that removal was a kind policy, and the Missouri Compromise let the settlers in each territory vote on whether to allow slavery." Write a 3–5 sentence message that corrects both parts of that claim in everyday words, using this week's evidence about Jackson's message and about the Missouri Compromise, and names one limit of what you can say after this week (for example, that the message shows what Jackson told Congress, not what the Cherokee Nation experienced). Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend asking whether a city's press release calling a new highway "a gift to every neighborhood" shows that every neighborhood benefited. Model answer: "A press release shows what the city wanted the public to believe about its own project. It is real evidence, but of the city's case for the highway, not of how each neighborhood fared. To learn that, I would look for records the neighborhoods made themselves, such as residents' letters or meeting minutes, and set them beside the city's words. Read side by side, the release shows the claim, and the residents' records show the result."

Use that pattern for your message to the coworker, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your arithmetic and cite your evidence. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report, and check every date and quoted word against Chapter 9, without guessing which values, steps, or sources you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to the coworker, correcting both parts of the claim in everyday words and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used (the five years of the chronology), so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled timeline sketch that places the five years and marks the 29 years from the Louisiana Purchase Treaty to the Proclamation on Nullification, with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. 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.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. Take every date and every quoted word from Chapter 9, and quote only the course's pinned fragments of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Jackson's message, and Jackson's proclamation. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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