Week 13 · Primary Source Workshop

Week 13 Primary Source Workshop: Checking a Study Guide on South Carolina's Declaration of Causes

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Study guides, websites, and chatbot summaries all retell why the South seceded, and many of them replace what the secessionists wrote with a guess about tariffs or rights in general. This week you learned how the Whigs fell apart and the Republicans rose, what Lincoln and Douglas argued about, how John Brown's raid and the election of 1860 hardened both sections, and how secession came in stages. In this workshop you act as a researcher checking a draft study-guide entry before it goes to other students: you source South Carolina's declaration, test eight statements against the record, close-read its pinned passage, corroborate it with Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, catch a chatbot making the same kinds of slips, and present your reading in one plain sentence. The convention named slavery as its cause in its own words; that is a documented fact, and the workshop reads the declaration as evidence of the convention's stated reasons, never as a debate about them.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What does South Carolina's declaration of the causes of secession, adopted in 1860 and kept by the Avalon Project, show about the cause its convention named, what does it leave out or fail to prove, and which statements in an illustrative draft study-guide entry survive a check against the record?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft study-guide entry about South Carolina's declaration of causes

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft study-guide entry written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real study guide, and you check each one against South Carolina's declaration and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address as the Avalon Project presents them and against Chapter 13.

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 pages for South Carolina's declaration and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, and Chapter 13

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free)
The Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration
The Avalon Project page for Lincoln'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 Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration, which is the one-stop reference on this week's Readings & Resources page. Read the opening paragraphs, which retell the history of 1765 and 1776, and find the closing line that records when the declaration was adopted. Keep Chapter 13, Section 5, open beside it. Tool: The Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration. Check: You can name who adopted the declaration and the year its closing line records.
Fill in the sourcing table for the declaration: who made it, when, why and for whom, what type of document it is, and which host keeps the text. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All five sourcing rows have an answer, and the type row says declaration of causes.
For each of the eight study-guide statements, check the Avalon pages and Chapter 13, 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.
On the Avalon page for the declaration, use your browser's find command (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) to search for an increasing hostility, then search the same page for tariff. Read the found passage with the sentences around it, and copy the pinned passage into your close-reading table letter for letter. Tool: The Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration. Check: The first search lands on one passage, the second finds no match, and your copied passage matches the course's pinned wording, capitals included.
Search DocsTeach or the Library of Congress digital collections for the words Lincoln inaugural 1861, 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.
Open the Avalon Project page for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, listed in Chapter 13, Section 8, and find the sentence that begins I have no purpose. Note in your close-reading table how that sentence, from 1861, confirms or complicates the declaration of 1860. Tool: The Avalon Project page for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. Check: Your corroboration row names the address, its year, and one way it bears on the declaration's stated cause.
Complete the close-reading table: say what the pinned passage says, what the declaration leaves out, what was happening around it, and how Lincoln's address 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 declaration 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 Avalon pages, your tables, or Chapter 13.
Present and defend your reading: record a two-minute spoken explanation, or write its script, that sources the declaration, 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 either Avalon Project page will not load in your browser.

Check the study-guide statements against the record facts printed in the table below, which restate the Avalon Project pages and Chapter 13 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 Project pages and Chapter 13, so you can check the statements without loading the pages.

Fallback model data
Record fact	Where it comes from
South Carolina's declaration of the causes of secession was adopted by the people of South Carolina in convention in 1860; it is a declaration of causes, and the Avalon Project keeps the text.	Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration; Chapter 13, Section 5
The declaration's pinned passage reads: an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.	Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration
The word tariff does not appear in Avalon's text of the declaration.	Avalon Project page for South Carolina's declaration; Chapter 13, Section 6
Lincoln's First Inaugural Address is an inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln, dated 1861, and the Avalon Project keeps the text.	Avalon Project page for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address; Chapter 13, Section 8
The address's pinned passage reads: I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.	Avalon Project page for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
In the evidence-claims set, item 7, that the declaration names hostility to slavery as a cause of secession, shows what the source says; item 8, that every Southern state seceded for exactly the reasons South Carolina gave, goes beyond the source.	Chapter 13, Section 7
The declaration shows that its convention named slavery as the cause; it does not by itself show what every Confederate soldier believed.	Chapter 13, Section 5

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: eight statements from an illustrative draft study-guide entry about South Carolina's declaration, 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. South Carolina's declaration of the causes of secession was adopted by the people of South Carolina in convention in 1860, and the Avalon Project keeps the text.
S2. The declaration was adopted in 1861, after Lincoln's First Inaugural Address.
S3. The declaration's pinned passage names high tariffs as the cause the convention gave for leaving the Union.
S4. The declaration names "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery".
S5. The declaration complains of "a growing hostility of the free States to slavery".
S6. Because South Carolina's convention named slavery as its cause, every Southern state seceded for exactly the reasons South Carolina gave.
S7. In his First Inaugural Address of 1861, Lincoln said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists."
S8. The declaration proves what every Confederate soldier believed the war was about.

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

Student scaffold table 3
Sourcing question	Your answer for South Carolina's declaration
Who made it
When it was adopted, and how that year relates to Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
Why, and for whom
What type of document it is
Which host keeps the text you read

Close-read the pinned passage and set the declaration beside Lincoln's First Inaugural Address to corroborate or complicate it.

Student scaffold table 4
Move	Your reading
What the pinned passage says the cause was
What the declaration leaves out or cannot prove
Context: what was happening around the declaration in 1860
Corroboration: what Lincoln's no-purpose passage of 1861 adds
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 rewords the declaration's pinned passage, and how do its words differ from the passage your search found on the Avalon page?
Two statements get the declaration's date or its named cause wrong. Explain what year the record gives for the declaration, what cause its pinned passage names, and why each statement fails.
Using your close-reading table, how does Lincoln's no-purpose passage of 1861 confirm or complicate what the declaration of 1860 says the free states threatened? Put the two years in order and say what the address adds that the declaration alone does not show.
Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things South Carolina's declaration cannot tell a historian about why the war was fought, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Explain why the declaration settles what its convention named as the cause but cannot by itself settle whether the war was inevitable, the debate historians still have.

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 13 Primary Source Workshop tables above. They check an illustrative draft study-guide entry about South Carolina's declaration of the causes of secession. Please do six things. First, summarize the declaration in three sentences and say who made it, what kind of document it is, which archive keeps the text, and what year it was adopted. Second, quote word for word the passage in which the declaration names the hostility that led to secession. Third, say whether the declaration shows the reasons of every Southern state and what every Confederate soldier believed. Fourth, say whether the Civil War had the same causes as the Revolution, since the declaration retells 1765 and 1776. Fifth, say what Lincoln promised about slavery in his First Inaugural Address of 1861 and quote him. 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 present a modern summary of why the South seceded as if it were the convention's own words, or call a later textbook account a primary source.
A chatbot setting the long background may say the Native nations of the South were conquered the moment Europeans first met them.
A chatbot tracing the Southern colonies may call Jamestown the oldest European settlement in what became the United States.
A chatbot describing the plantation South may say tobacco or maize came to the Americas from Europe.
Chatbots often say that because South Carolina's convention named slavery, every Southern state seceded for exactly the reasons South Carolina gave, or that the declaration proves what every Confederate soldier believed.
A chatbot describing the South of 1860 may call the people held in slavery servants bound for a term of years.
Because the declaration retells 1776, a chatbot may say it quotes the Constitution of 1776.
A chatbot may say the Union South Carolina left still ran under the Articles of Confederation.
A chatbot sketching earlier politics may call the Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 the same group as the Federalist Party of the 1790s.
Chatbots often mix up the two First Inaugural Addresses, crediting Lincoln with Jefferson's entangling alliances with none, or Jefferson with Lincoln's line about friends.
Chatbots often date South Carolina's declaration to 1861, the year the Confederacy and the war began, instead of the year its own closing line records.
A chatbot recapping the 1850s may say Lincoln and Douglas both stood for popular sovereignty, or that the Kansas-Nebraska Act extended the Missouri Compromise line.
Because the declaration retells 1765 and 1776, chatbots often say secession was the same fight over taxes and rights that caused the Revolution, or call the cause states' rights in the abstract.
A chatbot running ahead may say the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed every enslaved person.
A chatbot previewing to 1877 may say the 13th Amendment made Black Americans citizens.
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 pages, your tables, or Chapter 13; 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: "A modern summary of secession is the convention's own primary account. South Carolina's declaration, adopted in 1861 after Lincoln took office, names high tariffs as the cause, complaining of a growing hostility of the free States to slavery only in passing. It proves that every Southern state left for the same reasons and that every Confederate soldier believed them. The declaration quotes the Constitution of 1776, and the Union still ran under the Articles of Confederation, as the Federalists who backed the Constitution in 1788 had wanted. Its cause was the same fight over taxes that started the Revolution. Lincoln promised in 1861 to end slavery in the Southern states, and his First Inaugural Address warned against entangling alliances with none, as Washington's Farewell Address had. Lincoln and Douglas both stood for popular sovereignty, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act extended the Missouri Compromise line. The people held in slavery were servants bound for a term of years. The Southern colonies began at Jamestown, the first European settlement in what became the United States; the Native nations were conquered the day Europeans met them; and Europeans brought tobacco and maize to the Americas. Later, the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person, the 13th Amendment made Black Americans citizens, and Reconstruction was one policy." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (a later summary read as the convention's own primary account, the declaration given the wrong year, a pinned passage reworded or its cause replaced with tariffs, one state's words read as proof about every state and soldier, the Declaration confused with the Constitution, the Articles confused with the Constitution, the ratification-era Federalists confused with a later party, the causes of the Revolution confused with the causes of the Civil War, Lincoln's 1861 promise reversed, Jefferson's phrase given to Lincoln and Washington, the Missouri Compromise line confused with popular sovereignty, slavery and servitude 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 Avalon pages, your tables, or Chapter 13, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 7 and Objective 1) 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 South Carolina's declaration of causes: four completed tables (the study-guide 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 declaration, 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 declaration	All five sourcing rows are answered from the record: the people of South Carolina in convention as its maker, the year 1860 with the declaration placed before Lincoln's address of 1861, a purpose and audience the declaration supports, declaration of causes as its type, and the Avalon Project as host.	Most rows are answered, but the year is wrong, the type is misnamed, 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 study guide 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 pinned passage is read for the cause it names and the declaration for what it cannot prove, set in the months after the election of 1860, and corroborated or complicated with Lincoln's no-purpose passage of 1861 or another named source, ending in one plain sentence.	The close reading is attempted, but the corroborating source is unnamed, or the reading stops at what the passage 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 pages, the tables, or Chapter 13, 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 declaration, gives the close reading, names the corroborating source, and ends in one plain sentence that says what the declaration shows and what it does not.	The explanation is given, but one of those moves is missing or the plain sentence overclaims what the declaration 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 declaration of causes and the evidence or reasoning it calls for.	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, an Avalon Project page or Chapter 13, never a chatbot.
The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
The declaration is sourced as adopted by the people of South Carolina in convention in 1860, a declaration of causes kept by the Avalon Project.
Every quotation matches a pinned passage word for word, capitals and punctuation included; no quotation, date, figure, person, or document is invented anywhere in the submission.
The submission states plainly that the convention named slavery as its cause, never stages that fact as a debate or recasts it as tariffs or states' rights in the abstract, says enslaved people in its own voice, and compares no part of 1860 with any present-day party or policy.
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 declaration shows and what it does not.

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