Bluebook 1

I. 5 short identifications (10 mins.)

II. Analyze the provided document in terms of how it relates to the other material we have investigated so far this semester. (20 mins.)

Bluebook 2

III. Choose 1 (out of 3) questions on one of the week’s readings and write an essay in response to it. (15 mins.)

IV. Choose one out of the following three essay topics and write an essay on it that integrates the material we have covered so far in the course. No matter which question you choose, be sure to be as specific as possible in your answer. Vague generalizations are not substitutes for concrete facts and the careful summarization of particular positions. [30 mins.]

A. By means available only to historians, imagine that Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jonathan Edwards, George Fitzhugh, William Lloyd Garrison, Judith Sargent Murray, Thomas Jefferson, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody have been locked together in a house for the PBS version of reality TV, “Watching Some Wallies.” Jefferson’s copy of The Declaration of Independence happens to fall onto the table, and, on reading it, they begin to argue about its merits and about the problem of equality and, more generally, about the nature of a republic. How might they react to the document, and what might they say to each other? [Be sure to deal with at least 4 of the 8 listed individuals]

B. Americans, as we have seen, came out of the Revolutionary period with a mixed sense of the power and role of the people in shaping and legitimating the political order. Some celebrated the people as the seat of government and power, while others sought to place limits on popular sovereignty and the role it would play. Throughout the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, a number of different conceptions of who the people were and what sorts of power they should have were put forward, by writers as diverse as Brutus, Catharine Beecher, John C. Calhoun, Martin Delany, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Louisa McCord, and Henry David Thoreau. Focusing primarily on three or four of the authors that we have read, write an essay that compares and contrasts some of the ways in which the people and their power have been defined and debated. Be specific as to which individuals or groups argued what positions.

C. “From almost the first establishment of European settlements in North America, Americans have been torn between attempting to construct their communities on the basis of the primacy of sentiment or of reason. The tension between these two approaches was fundamental to shaping American intellectual discourse at least until the Civil War.” Discuss the accuracy of this observation, being sure to examine at least two of the three periods (Enlightenment, revolution to early nineteenth century, and antebellum) we have studied and to focus on at least three specific authors.

DON’T FORGET TO BRING TWO BLUEBOOKS!