Week 15 · Primary Source Workshop

Week 15 Primary Source Workshop: Checking an Exhibit Label on the 14th Amendment

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Museum labels, websites, and chatbot summaries all retell the 14th Amendment, and many of them blur which amendment did what, when it was ratified, and what its words prove. This week you learned how Presidential Reconstruction gave way to Congressional Reconstruction, what the three Reconstruction amendments did, what freedpeople built, and the violence that opposed them. In this workshop you act as a researcher checking a draft exhibit label before it goes up: you source the 14th Amendment, test eight statements against the record, close-read its two pinned passages, corroborate it with the Dred Scott decision it answered, catch a chatbot making the same kinds of slips, and present your reading in one plain sentence. The violence of these years and the amendment's own words are documented facts; the workshop reads the amendment as evidence of what was written into the Constitution, never as proof of how far its promise was kept.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What does the 14th Amendment, a constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 and kept by the National Archives, say about citizenship and the equal protection of the laws, what does its text leave out, and which statements in an illustrative draft exhibit label survive a check against the record?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label about the 14th Amendment

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real museum or archive, and you check each one against the 14th Amendment as the National Archives presents it and against Chapter 15.

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 National Archives pages for the 14th Amendment and for Dred Scott v. Sandford, and Chapter 15

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free)
The National Archives page for the 14th Amendment
The National Archives page for Dred Scott v. Sandford
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 National Archives page for the 14th Amendment, which is the one-stop reference on this week's Readings & Resources page. Read the short history at the top, then find where the transcript of the amendment's own text begins. Keep Chapter 15, Section 4, open beside it. Tool: The National Archives page for the 14th Amendment. Check: You can tell the archive's own history from the amendment's text, and you can name the year Congress passed it and the year it was ratified.
Fill in the sourcing table for the amendment: who made it, when it was passed and ratified, 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 date row keeps the year of passage apart from the year of ratification.
For each of the eight exhibit-label statements, check the National Archives page and Chapter 15, 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 National Archives page for the 14th Amendment, use your browser's find command (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) to search for subject to the jurisdiction thereof, then for equal protection of the laws. Read each passage with the sentences around it, and copy each pinned passage into your close-reading table letter for letter. Tool: The National Archives page for the 14th Amendment. Check: The first search lands in the transcript, the second lands in both the archive's history and the transcript, and your copied passages match the course's pinned wording, capitals and punctuation included.
Search DocsTeach or the Library of Congress digital collections for the words Fourteenth Amendment, and note in your close-reading table whether the search finds a record connected to it 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 National Archives page for Dred Scott v. Sandford, the decision Chapter 15, Section 4, sets beside the amendment, and find its pinned passage on citizens. Note in your close-reading table how the decision of 1857 and the amendment of 1868 answer the same question differently. Tool: The National Archives page for Dred Scott v. Sandford. Check: Your corroboration row names the decision, its year, and the 11 years between it and the amendment.
Complete the close-reading table: say what each pinned passage says, what the amendment's first section leaves out, what was happening around it, and how the Dred Scott decision 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 amendment's text 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 National Archives pages, your tables, or Chapter 15.
Present and defend your reading: record a two-minute spoken explanation, or write its script, that sources the amendment, 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 National Archives page will not load in your browser.

Check the exhibit-label statements against the record facts printed in the table below, which restate the National Archives pages and Chapter 15 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 National Archives pages and Chapter 15, so you can check the statements without loading the pages.

Fallback model data
Record fact	Where it comes from
The 14th Amendment is a constitutional amendment. Congress passed it in 1866, it was ratified in 1868, and the National Archives keeps the text.	National Archives page for the 14th Amendment; Chapter 15, Section 4
The 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865 and the 15th in 1870.	Chapter 15, Section 6
The 14th Amendment made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and barred states from denying due process or the equal protection of the laws.	Chapter 15, Section 4
The 15th Amendment barred denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.	Chapter 15, Section 5
The first pinned passage reads: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.	National Archives page for the 14th Amendment
The second pinned passage reads: nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.	National Archives page for the 14th Amendment
The words Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction come from the 13th Amendment of 1865, not the 14th.	National Archives page for the 13th Amendment; Chapter 15, Section 3
Dred Scott v. Sandford, a Supreme Court decision of 1857, held that Black Americans were not citizens under the Constitution; its pinned passage reads: are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word citizens in the Constitution.	National Archives page for Dred Scott v. Sandford; Chapter 15, Section 4
The amendment's text shows what Congress and the ratifying states wrote into the Constitution in 1868 about citizenship and the equal protection of the laws; it does not show how far those promises were kept.	Chapter 15, Section 4

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label about the 14th Amendment, 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 14th Amendment is a constitutional amendment, ratified in 1868, and the National Archives keeps its text.
S2. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1865, the same year as the 13th Amendment.
S3. The 14th Amendment barred denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
S4. The amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States".
S5. The amendment says, "No State shall deny any person the equal protection of the law."
S6. Because the amendment promised the equal protection of the laws, it proves that every state treated freedpeople equally after 1868.
S7. The words "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." come from the 14th Amendment.
S8. The 14th Amendment wrote the Dred Scott decision's holding on citizenship into the Constitution.

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

Student scaffold table 3
Sourcing question	Your answer for the 14th Amendment
Who made it
When Congress passed it, and when it was ratified
Why, and for whom
What type of document it is
Which host keeps the text you read

Close-read the two pinned passages and set the amendment beside the Dred Scott decision to corroborate or complicate it.

Student scaffold table 4
Move	Your reading
What the citizenship passage says, and who it includes
What the equal-protection passage says, and what it bars a state from doing
What the amendment's first section leaves out
Context: what was happening around the amendment in 1868
Corroboration: what the Dred Scott passage of 1857 adds
DocsTeach or library 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 the 14th Amendment words from another of this week's documents, and which document and year do those words come from?
Two statements mix up the 14th Amendment's year or its job. Explain what the 14th Amendment did, which amendment barred racial bars to the vote, and what year the record gives for the 14th Amendment's ratification.
Using your close-reading table, how does the Dred Scott passage of 1857 confirm or complicate the amendment's citizenship passage of 1868? Say what setting the two side by side shows that the amendment alone does not.
Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things the amendment's text cannot tell a historian about freedpeople's lives after 1868, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Explain why the statement about equal treatment goes beyond the source, and say what kind of evidence a historian would need to test it.

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 15 Primary Source Workshop tables above. They check an illustrative draft exhibit label about the 14th Amendment. Please do six things. First, summarize the 14th Amendment in three sentences and say what kind of document it is, which archive keeps the text, the year Congress passed it, and the year it was ratified. Second, quote word for word the sentence of the amendment that says who is a citizen of the United States. Third, say whether the amendment's promise of equal protection proves that every state treated freedpeople equally after 1868. Fourth, say in one sentence each what the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments did, and say how the 13th Amendment relates to the Emancipation Proclamation. Fifth, say whether Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction were one policy, and who passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Sixth, in one short paragraph, connect the 14th Amendment to the whole course, from contact and the colonies through the Declaration, the Constitution, and the coming of the Civil War.

Test the response for these likely failures:

Chatbots often treat a museum label or a modern summary of the 14th Amendment as the primary source itself.
A chatbot sketching the long arc of the course may say the Native nations of North America were conquered the moment Europeans first met them.
A chatbot tracing citizenship back to the colonies may call Jamestown the oldest European settlement in what became the United States.
A chatbot reviewing the course's first unit may say maize or tobacco came to the Americas from Europe.
Chatbots often say that because the amendment promised equal protection, it proves every state treated freedpeople equally after 1868.
A chatbot describing the slavery the 13th Amendment ended may call it a kind of servitude for a term of years.
A chatbot running the course synthesis may say the 14th Amendment amended the Declaration of Independence.
A chatbot reviewing earlier history may say the amendments of these years changed the Articles of Confederation.
A chatbot comparing the 1860s with the founding may call the Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 the same group as the Federalist Party of the 1790s.
A chatbot quoting the founders in a synthesis may credit Washington's Farewell Address with the phrase entangling alliances with none.
Chatbots often date the 14th Amendment to 1866 and call it ratified that year, mixing the year Congress passed it with the year it was ratified.
A chatbot tracing the road to the war may say the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 extended the Missouri Compromise line.
A chatbot summing up the whole course may say the Civil War was fought over the same tax quarrel that caused the Revolution.
Chatbots often say the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed every enslaved person, so the 13th Amendment only repeated it.
Chatbots often say the 14th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote, or that the 13th made them citizens.
Chatbots often describe Reconstruction as one policy, or credit Andrew Johnson with the Reconstruction Acts of 1867.

Write 3–5 sentences naming one thing the chatbot got right and at least two places it went wrong, quoting its words and correcting each with evidence from the National Archives pages, your tables, or Chapter 15; where a slip concerns an earlier unit, name the week that taught it.

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 exhibit label about the 14th Amendment is the primary source for it, and the amendment was ratified in 1866, the year Congress passed it. The 14th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote, and the 13th Amendment made them citizens. It says that no State shall deny any person the equal protection of the law, which proves that every state treated freedpeople equally after 1868. The Emancipation Proclamation had already freed every enslaved person, so the 13th Amendment only repeated it, and the slavery it ended was a kind of servitude for a term of years. Reconstruction was one policy, and Andrew Johnson passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. The 14th Amendment amended the Declaration of Independence and changed the Articles of Confederation, which the Federalists who backed the Constitution in 1788 had founded as their party. Washington's Farewell Address had warned against entangling alliances with none. Citizenship in America 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 maize and tobacco to the Americas. The Civil War was fought over the same tax quarrel that caused the Revolution, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had extended the Missouri Compromise line." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (a secondary label read as the primary source, the year Congress passed it taken as the ratification year, the three amendments mixed up, a pinned fragment reworded, a promise read as proof of how it was kept, the Emancipation Proclamation read as freeing everyone, slavery and servitude blurred, the two Reconstruction policies treated as one, the Declaration confused with the Constitution, the Articles confused with the Constitution, the ratification-era Federalists confused with a later party, Jefferson's phrase given to Washington, Jamestown placed before St. Augustine, contact called conquest, the exchange run in the wrong direction, the causes of the Revolution confused with the causes of the Civil War, or the Missouri Compromise line confused with popular sovereignty), cite the evidence from the National Archives pages, your tables, or Chapter 15, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objective (Objective 8 — analyze the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction — emancipation, the Reconstruction amendments, the struggle over Black freedom and citizenship, and why Reconstruction ended in 1877) 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 14th Amendment: four completed tables (the exhibit-label 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 amendment, 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 amendment	All five sourcing rows are answered from the record: Congress and the ratifying states as its makers, the year Congress passed it kept apart from ratification in 1868, a purpose and audience the text supports, constitutional amendment as its type, and the National Archives as host.	Most rows are answered, but the year of passage is given as the ratification year, the type is wrong, 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 exhibit label 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	Both passages are read for what they say and the first section for what it leaves out, set in the years of Reconstruction, and corroborated or complicated with the Dred Scott decision 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 passages 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 National Archives pages, the tables, or Chapter 15, slips about earlier units are tied to the week that taught them, 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 amendment, gives the close reading, names the corroborating source, and ends in one plain sentence that says what the text shows and what it does not.	The explanation is given, but one of those moves is missing or the plain sentence overclaims what the text 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 constitutional text 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, a National Archives page or Chapter 15, never a chatbot.
The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
The amendment is sourced as a constitutional amendment, ratified in 1868 and kept by the National Archives, with the year Congress passed it kept apart from the year of ratification.
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 the violence of these years plainly, says freedpeople and enslaved people in its own voice, keeps the three amendments apart, gives no verdict on how far Reconstruction failed as settled fact, and compares no part of Reconstruction with any present-day party, policy, or voting fight.
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 amendment's text shows and what it does not.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com