Introduction
In your Writer's Handbook chapter “Historical Analysis,” Professor Fahs talks about the historian's interest in contingency—the fact that none of us, despite our best efforts, can predict the future exactly. Instead, the unfolding events of history are contingent—shaped in complicated ways by multiple social, economic, cultural, and political factors.
When we look at war as contingent, we can begin to recapture the fact that historical actors have rarely known what the outcome of a war would be. No matter how obvious victory or defeat might seem to us in retrospect, it was usually not as obvious to those who lived at the time. Frederick Douglass, for instance, did not know whether slavery would ever be eradicated from American life when he wrote his famous Narrative in 1845 as part of a larger “war on slavery” mounted by abolitionists. Nor could he know that the Civil War, which began in 1861, would ultimately result in the death of slavery in American life and law. These events were themselves contingent upon a host of factors.
In this paper, you will engage in a historical analysis of Frederick Douglass’ writings—his Narrative, his speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” and his selected writings in the Humanities Core Course Reader (keep in mind that your section leader may limit your source materials). You will analyze these writings to examine how the contingencies of certain historical moments shaped Douglass’ views on slavery and emancipation. Not knowing what the historical moment would bring meant, for Douglass, the same thing that it means for us—the shifting of personal ideals that respond to the contingencies of historical events.
While your interpretation of Douglass’ work will be based on primary sources (his Narrative and essays), you will also incorporate at least one secondary source into your essay. Your “Frederick Douglass Research Task” has offered you skills in locating such sources. The secondary source you choose should serve to support or complicate your own thesis—it should recontextualize your own thinking in the same way that historical contingency shaped Douglass’.
Assignment
Demonstrate how Frederick Douglass sought to shape the history of slavery and emancipation in both his early and his later writings: first, in his 1845 Narrative and his 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”; second, in his writings that respond to the Civil War, which erupted in April of 1861. In discussing these two, distinct histories, analyze how Douglass’ purposes changed in response to the Civil War.
This paper will be 5-6 pages in length and will count as 35% of your writing grade.
The Writing Process
In examining the phenomenon of historical contingency, you must approach Douglass’ writings as two separate bodies of work. The first is the Narrative, which appears prior to the Civil War; the second is composed of the various Civil War writings. Your work will be to examine the shift in Douglass’ ideas and approaches in these bodies of work. Begin by closely re-reading your primary documents to determine how each body of work attempts to shape history. What arguments does Douglass make? What rhetorical tools does he use? What were the weapons at his disposal within that historical moment? How did those tools change, given the contingencies of the historical moment?
As you brainstorm with these primary materials, re-read the secondary sources that you examined in your “Frederick Douglass Research Task” and determine which of the academic sources best helps you understand this shift in Douglass’ writing. Which of the secondary sources poses the same historical questions that you are answering here? What answers do these sources offer to those questions? While your primary sources serve as your first—primary—site of evidence, your secondary sources also offer you evidence with which to develop your argument. Your task will not only be to represent the argument offered by the secondary source you choose, but also to engage the source in conversation. Closely re-read your Writer’s Handbook chapter “Working with Secondary Sources” for tips on evaluating and integrating these materials into your argument.
Student Learning Goals:
- Reinforce skills learned in assignments 1-3: make specific, complex and arguable claims; produce cohesive paragraphs; present well-selected and well-contextualized evidence; develop strong warrants; develop organic transitions that show the progress of ideas over time; write rhetorically persuasive introductions and conclusions.
- Understand and participate in the assumptions and methods of historical analysis.
- Analyze autobiography and essay, invoking special vocabularies relevant to each context.
- Evaluate and integrate secondary materials into writing through careful evaluation and contextualization.
- Demonstrate intermediate-level information literacy skills (locating information, evaluating sources, placing sources in conversation, integrating and complicating source material in own writing).
- Practice active revision, whereby the final submitted drafts exhibit the generation of ideas, careful reflection and working through of numerous revisions, editing and proof-reading, and reflection on the process of writing itself.