First History Analysis Exam
Due Date: Monday, September 14, at 11:59 p.m. Submit your paper to the Turnitin.com link in the Week Four folder on the course Bb page.
Worth 125 points/12.5 percent of the course grade. Required length is provided for each question in the Task section of the assignment.
The assignment is required of all students.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this assignment is for you to practice doing history by answering seven pointed questions about the primary documents included with the assignment. The sort of work asked of you in this assignment is what you need to do with the documents you will be reading each week for your discussion boards and also for your remaining section assignments. Practicing a close read of documents early in the semester will help you with your remaining work throughout the semester. SKILLS: This assignment will help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course, in the university, and in professional life beyond the university.
You will begin by searching out primary source evidence that addresses the problem.
Be sure to give these documents a close reading so that you can pull as much meaning as possible from them. See the Primary Source Reading Guide handout in your Week Two folder for more details on how to undertake a close reading.
When you are reading the primary documents, you will gain experience in evaluating the views and claims contained in each document. Do the statements made accord with what youve read in the other documents? With what youve read in your textbook? With what youve heard in the podcasts? Considering these questions will help you discern how much credibility to give to each document.
From this primary source evidence, you will discern the most important facts, historical actors, and events associated with the problem.
Next, you will compare what you have learned from the primary sources with your textbook and the podcast lectures, which are your pertinent secondary sources.
Finally, you will plan and craft your answers for each of the seven questions. KNOWLEDGE: Successfully completing this assignment requires that you understand the varied attitudes about late 19th century social class and work, prohibition, politics, immigration, and the burgeoning consumer culture. FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS AND A FRIENDLY REMINDER: Type your answers in a Word document. Use Times New Roman font, 12-point size, and inch margins. Number your questions so that your TA will easily know what answers are intended for each question. Skip a line between each answer. All work will be checked for originality and any answers deemed to be plagiarized will trigger an academic honesty investigation and could result in sanctions. Do your own work!
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TASK: Answer the seven questions that follow, adhering to the directions within each question. QUESTION ONE 10 POINTS What were the views of this cartoonist toward the wealthy in late 19th century America? Explain your answer in at least 30 words and no more than 50 words. Be specific.
Source: The Rams Horn, January 11, 1896
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QUESTION TWO 30 POINTS Read the editorial pasted below from Harpers Weekly and use it to answer the two questions that follow.
1. What short quote–no more than ten contiguous words–would you use in an essay where you are defending the position of those who wished to restrict Chinese immigration? Explain your answer in no more than 50 words.
2. What short quote–no more than ten contiguous words–would you use in an essay where you are refuting the position of those who wished to restrict Chinese immigration? Explain your answer in no more than 50 words.
To do well on this question you must demonstrate that you understand the larger context in which late 19th century Americans debated the merits of Chinese immigration. THE CHINESE BILL Harpers Weekly, April 1, 1882, page 194 (Editorial) Mr. Taylor, the successor in the House of General Garfield, made an admirable speech against the Chinese bill during the late debate, in which he exposed the singular inconsistency of the arguments advanced to sustain it. The Chinese are represented in one breath as a rotten race; the victims of hideous immorality, and in the next as a people who are going to drive intelligent and sturdy American laborers out of the field. At one moment every man, woman, and child on the Pacific coast loathes and detests the leprous interlopers, and the next the same protesting people neglect the honest American and intrust the care of their homes and of their children to the leprous pariahs because they can be hired more cheaply. They are alleged to be a class of persons who will never assimilate with us like other foreigners. But those who assert this forget to state that our laws prevent assimilation by making the Chinese incapable of naturalization. Moreover, if they are so disreputable and dangerous and degrading, and if the Pacific population is so unanimously opposed to their coming, that population has an obvious and easy remedy in its own hands. It has only to refuse to hire the lepers, and they will come no longer. Part of the complaint is that they do not wish to stay longer than will enable them to pick up a little money. The hope of wages alone unwillingly brings them. If they can get no wages, they will be only too glad to stay at home. The only ground upon which the bill prohibiting the voluntary immigration of free laborers into this country can be sustained is self-defense. Every nation may justly decide for itself what foreigners it will tolerate, and upon what terms. But the honor and character of the nation will be tested by the motives of exclusion. Thus in 1803 a bill passed Congress which prohibited bringing to the country certain negro and mulatto immigrants. But it was a bill which sprang from the fears of slave-holders, and which was intended to protect slavery. In the same year South Carolina repealed her State law prohibiting the slave-trade. The objection was to black freemen, not to black slaves; and it is not legislation to which an American can recur with pride, because it was an inhuman abuse of an undoubted national right. We may, unquestionably, determine who shall come, and upon what conditions, as we may decide upon what terms the new-comers shall be naturalized. Against a palpable peril arising from the advent of foreigners, we may justly defend ourselves. Now during the
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last twentyfive years the Chinese immigrationand a large part of it was cooly trafficamounted to 228,000 persons, of which more than a hundred thousand have returned, so that by the census of 1880 the Chinese population in the country was 105,000. “All the Chinese in California,” says Mr. Hoar, “hardly surpass the number which is easily governed in Shanghai by a police of a hundred men.” Considering the traditional declaration of our pride and patriotism that America is the home for the oppressed of every clime and race, considering the spirit of our constitutional provision that neither race, color, nor previous condition of servitude shall bar a citizen from voting, is it not both monstrous and ludicrous to decree that American civilization is endangered by the “Mongolian invasion?” For the Republican party, which is responsible for national legislation, the simple question is, whether a free laborer who wishes to come to this country for a time and work honestly for honest wages shall be prohibited from coming, lest China should be precipitated upon Western America and overwhelm the New World. Can any such peril or the chance of it be inferred from the facts? Mr. Jones, of Nevada, speaks of the colored race. But that race was brought here by force and fraud. It is not a migratory race. So the Mongolians are not migratory. The coming of 230,000 or 240,000 Chinese in a quarter of a century, and the presence of 100,000 in the country at the end of that time, are not the precursor of an overwhelming invasion. The bill is founded on race hatred and panic. These are both familiar facts even in this country. It is not a very long time since one of the most familiar objections to the antislavery movement was that the fanatics wanted to free the “naygurs, ” who would immediately overrun the North and supplant the Irish. It was mere panic. We have always invited everybody to come and settle among us, because the chance of bettering his condition was fairer here than anywhere else in the world. If we now exercise our right to select new-comers, not upon great public considerations the truth of which is demonstrated, but because of race hatred, or of honest labor competition, or fear of local disorder, the movement will not stop there. The native American crusade of twenty-five years ago was another form of the same spirit. Senator George was logical in his implication that if a whole race may be excluded from the national domain because of a local desire, a whole enfranchised class may be excluded from the suffrage for the same reason. Mr. Taylor said of the Chinese bill: “It revolutionizes our traditions. I would deem the new country we will have after this bill becomes law as changed from the old country we have to-day as our country would have been changed if the rebellion of 1861 had succeeded.” The exclusion bill has passed Congress by a large majority. Public opinion seems to favor it, as it has often favored unwise legislation. Even the amendment to try the experiment of exclusion for ten years failed. It is not probable that there will be a veto, and the only benefit to be anticipated is that, as we have now decided to regulate immigration, we shall exclude every class whose coming can not be considered to be advantageous to the national welfare.
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QUESTION THREE 10 POINTS Evaluate the effectiveness of this cartoon as a critique of the saloon in late Nineteenth Century America. Be specific. Complete your answer in at least 30 words and no more than 50 words.
Source: The Rams Horn, April 3, 1897
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QUESTION FOUR 30 POINTS Read carefully the document pasted below and write a short essay–150 words maximum–in which you explain what can be learned from this source about Reconstruction. Be sure to include specific examples from the document in your answer, but DO NOT QUOTE. Remember that your answer needs to demonstrate that you understand the larger historical context as well as the particulars suggested by the document. FELLOW-CITIZENS AT THE FRONT Harper’s Weekly, April 18, 1868, pages 242-243 (Editorial) The Montgomery Mail, in alluding to a late article in the Weekly upon affairs in Alabama, describes us as basely slandering the South, and every week picturing horrible lies to inflame weak minds. It then demands whom we mean when we speak of our “faithful fellow-citizens in Alabama and elsewhere who are no at the front?” It proceeds:
“Are they the 78,000 registered Southern men, the 600 Northern men who have come among us since the war, and the 16,000 negroes who stood by us at the late election, making in all 100,000 men, not including the 20,000 good men who were denied registration; or are his fellow-citizens none but the 69,000 deluded negroes who voted for the infamous Constitution and the 1000 white candidates for office?”
It is not a very difficult question to answer. The political battle which is now engaged in Alabama and elsewhere is to determine the policy of reconstruction. Upon one side, both here in New York, and there in Alabama, are those who believe that, as there is no authority under the circumstances that can initiate civil government in Alabama but the United States, it is the duty of the United States to provide for its own security by not confiding the political power in the State entirely to those who say, with the Tuscaloosa Monitor, “We have not particular love of country now.” Those who hold this view of reconstruction, whether white or black, we call our “faithful” fellow-citizens, because they are faithful to the principles of the Government and to common-sense, and because they have proved their fidelity during the war by resisting the rebellion. And when any of these citizens live in a State where their views or their color or their fidelity to the Union and National Government during the war make them peculiarly odious to a great multitude of their neighbors, so that they are incessantly denounced and injured in their business, and in danger of personal injury except for the presence of United States soldiers, we call them our fellow-citizens at the front. There are others who insist that the political power in Alabama and elsewhere shall be at once committed to those whose feelings are fairly expressed by the Tuscaloosa Monitor. It is a party which hates and ridicules the freedmen; a party of which the Southern leaders were the chief conspirators in the rebellion, and whose Northern leaders did what they could to perplex and defeat the efforts of the Government of the United States to save itself; a party whose adherents in Alabama and other Southern States fiercely pursue with ribaldry and hostility men who were known not to favor the rebellion during the war, and who approve the policy of the representatives of the people now that the war is ended; a party which in Alabama sneers bitterly at the idea of the equal rights of every citizen before the laws; and which, by every kind of insult to those whom it calls Yankees, fosters a
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malignant hatred of other parts of the country. It is a party which secretly honors Wilkes Booth, and one of whose organs in Alabama as lately as the 25th of March frankly urges assassination. “The people about Hickmans,” it says, “are beginning to see the importance of ridding the community of political skunks; and some of the young men were so well pleased with our account of the doings of the Ku-Klux Klans elsewhere, that they avowed their purpose to at once form themselves into a company of these hyperbolical ghosts. So, ere long, we expect to hear that the nigger-vicegerent Stephens and the cotton-thief Davenport, besides many other notorious scalawags, are disposed of by lynch law in a manner agreeable to their crimes.” It may be very natural for baffled ruffians to print such stuff, but its effect upon ignorant and prejudiced minds is very calculable. And those who think and talk thus, wherever they live and of whatever color they may be, we do not call our faithful fellow-citizens. They are unfaithful to human-nature, to civilization, to the American principle, and to the hope of national pacification. We assure the Montgomery Mail that we have not the least hostility to any section of the country, nor to any class of the population. How the great question will be settled no man can say; but we can equally assure the Mail that the good sense of the American people will never abandon the colored population of the Southern States, in which they are probably two-fifths of the whole people, to those whose feeling toward them is expressed by such a paragraph as we have quoted and by the following. We do not say that all “Conservatives: would express themselves in so absurd and vulgar a manner, but the animus of this paragraph is the animus of the resolutions of every “Conservative” Convention yet held in the Southern States.
“A Burning Shame! “It is a fact that the agent for Freedmen in this cityMr. Blairhas received orders from Head-quarters to issue rations to all of those worthless negroes who were discharged from service by their employers on account of voting for the putrid Constitution. What better evidence of the utter corruptness of the miserable party now in power over the South could be adduced! In the history of demagogy nothing has ever transpired approximating in infamy this military order! The poor whites of the country are to be taxedbled of all their little earningsin order to fatten the vagabondish negroes, who have proved themselves to be their worst enemies, by avowing that they are in favor of measures conflicting with every interest of the white men! Think of this, white men, and abandon at once the foul scheme set on foot by raw Yankees, Southern deserters, and stinking niggers! Touch not, taste not, handle not!”
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QUESTION FIVE 10 POINTS What can be learned from this cartoon about the late 19th century political system? Be specific. Complete your answer in at least 30 words and no more than 50 words.
Source: The Rams Horn, May 29, 1897
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QUESTION SIX 25 POINTS What ten things can be learned about late 19th century social conditions from the ten advertisements pasted below? Each response must be one or two sentences in length, ranging between 10 and 30 words. At least four of your answers must identify concrete points specific to individual advertisements akin to the sort of example you would use in a body paragraph in an essay (one point per advertisement). At least three of your points must identify overarching themes akin to strong topic sentences for body paragraphs within an essay (draw each of these points from at least three advertisements). The remaining three responses can fall into either category. Be specific, and remember that your answers need to demonstrate that you understand the larger historical context as well as the particulars suggested by the advertisements. Number your answers.
Tingley’s Patent Horizontal Ice-Cream Freezer Harper’s Weekly, April 6, 1872, Page 278
F.L. Hedengerg & Sons Revolving Refrigerators Harper’s Weekly, April 14, 1860, Page 238
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Walter Baker & Co. Chocolate and Cocoa Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 23, 1867, Page 750
Steinway & Sons Pianos Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 25, 1871, Page 1120
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The Singer Manufacturing Company Sewing Machine Sales for 1870 Harper’s Weekly, May 13, 1871, Page 440
Travelers Life and Accident Insurance Co., of Hartford Accidents Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 14, 1871, Page 968
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Royal Victoria Hotel Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 31, 1864, Page 848
Best Farming Lands In The World For Sale by the Illinois Central Railroad Company Harper’s Weekly, June 17, 1865, Page 384
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Tiffany & Co. Silversmiths Harper’s Weekly, June 8 1872, Page 456
Lord & Taylor Summer Dresses and Suits Harper’s Weekly, July 10, 1869, Page 447
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QUESTION SEVEN 10 POINTS Explain the attitudes of this cartoonist toward William Jennings Bryan, the Populist and the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1896, having been nominated by both parties. Be specific. Complete your answer in at least 30 words and no more than 50 words.
Source: Judge, September 19, 1896
