Week 13 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 13 — In Their Own Words: Dating and Reading the Secession Crisis — Traditional alternative (no AI)

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

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

Assignment 12 of the term — measure the years between the week's documents, source South Carolina's declaration and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, keep two wars' causes apart, and explain to someone new to history why a document's own words outrank a guess about its cause.

This week you learned how the Whig Party fell apart and the Republicans rose to stop slavery's spread, what Lincoln and Douglas argued about in 1858, how John Brown's raid hardened both sections, why the election of 1860 led the Deep South to secede, what South Carolina's convention named as its cause, how secession came in stages, and what Lincoln promised in his First Inaugural Address. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's documents, interpret each one, and explain to someone who has never studied it why a document's own words outrank a guess about its cause. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Primary Source Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 4, where you first read the Stamp Act Congress declarations of 1765.

The task

Your shared data is five years from the course chronology, in order, with one earlier year for comparison:

1765 — the Stamp Act Congress declarations (Week 4)
1850 — the Fugitive Slave Act
1854 — the Kansas-Nebraska Act
1860 — South Carolina's declaration of causes
1861 — Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

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

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, and South Carolina's declaration of causes was adopted in 1860. How many years separate the two?
South Carolina's declaration of causes was adopted in 1860, and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address was delivered in 1861. How many years separate the two?
The Stamp Act Congress declarations were adopted in 1765, and South Carolina's declaration of causes was adopted in 1860. How many years separate the two?
The Fugitive Slave Act was approved in 1850, and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address was delivered in 1861. How many years separate the two?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

Problem 1: source South Carolina's declaration (who made it, what type of document it is, which host keeps it, and its year) and quote its pinned fragment word for word, capitals included.
Problem 2: source Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (author, type of document, host, and year) and quote the fragment that begins "I have no purpose" word for word, then say what it shows Lincoln promised about slavery in 1861.
Problem 3: name the cause each declaration names, the 1765 one and the 1860 one, then explain in one sentence why the course keeps the causes of the Revolution apart from the causes of the Civil War.
Problem 4: sort items 7 and 8 of the evidence-claims set into shows what the source says or goes beyond the source, and give the reason for item 8.

Explain it to a non-expert

A coworker says, "South Carolina left the Union over tariffs, and Lincoln had promised to end slavery in the South, so of course it left." Write a 3–5 sentence message that corrects both parts of that claim in everyday words, using the pinned fragments of South Carolina's declaration and of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, and names one limit of what you can say after this week (for example, that the declaration shows what its convention named as the cause, not what every Confederate soldier believed). Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor saying that a corner bakery closed "because of the economy," when the owner's own notice in the window says the bakery closed because the building was sold and the new owner would not renew the lease. Model answer: "The best evidence for why someone left is what they wrote when they left. The owner's notice names the lease, not the economy, and it was written at the time by the person who made the choice. A guess about the economy might be interesting, but it is not what the notice says. The notice shows the owner's stated reason; it does not show how every customer felt about the closing."

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 13, 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 six years listed in the task), 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 documents and marks the 11 years from the Fugitive Slave Act to Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 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 13, and quote only the course's pinned fragments of South Carolina's declaration, of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, and of the Stamp Act Congress declarations. 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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