TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
1. Students are required to produce one typed term paper on the two questions provided below by this professor, based solely on the following version of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography: The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892). The term paper is to be at least eight pages in length (and no more than ten), plus a cover page, plus a bibliography page. If you are using MLA style you do not need an endnotes page, but if you are using AP style, then you do (unless you use footnotes). Any of the three styles of citation is acceptable. What is most important is that there are citations, and many of them! The term paper must be double spaced in 12 size font.
2. Your assignment is, first, to obtain a copy of the book: Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Your second task is to read it in its entirety. As you are reading it you should take notes on those aspects of the book and statements of Douglass that relate to the essay questions below, so you can use them when you prepare your paper. Thirdly, you must answer the essay questions about the book which I have assigned to you below, not write something else. You must first take notes from the book, pertaining to the question you are trying to answer, and incorporate the relevant information that you obtain from your notes into your essay in a logical answer to the questions, while also using citations (in either MLA parentheses, endnotes or footnotes) to show from where the relevant information (the facts or evidence from the book) came. Most importantly, remember to cite the pages that your information comes from.
3. You are not required, nor encouraged, to use any other additional literature other than Frederick Douglass’ book! While you can employ what you learn from the textbook, class lectures and discussions, this assignment is intended to be strictly focused on analyzing what this primary source itself reveals to you, not on opinions derived from secondary sources. Do not look to others for the answers; listen to what Douglass says and writes, as you would have if you had lived in the nineteenth century and met him. Place yourself in that time and that place, and let yourself feel what he felt in his life and times, and share his experiences and his understanding of the world in your essay. In doing so you will be doing precisely what a historian is supposed to do: explain what writers and people actually said, thought, and felt in the past and why it matters.
4. Do not wait to obtain and start reading your book! If you delay you will not have enough time to finish this project.
5. Frederick Douglass was born in 1818 and died in 1895. He was the most famous and influential African American of the 19th century. He published four versions of his autobiography. You will read and use only this last version of Douglass’ autobiography for your assignment because it is the most complete and best version.
6. Permit me to re-emphasize that when writing this term paper, you must remember to include quotes from the source you are using, and to cite the pages on which those quotes appear, in one of three standard formats: footnotes, endnotes, or notes within the text (MLA). A term paper submitted without proper citations is an automatic F.
7. YOUR TERM PAPER ESSAY QUESTIONS:
Based on the first half of the book, what were the cruelest and most painful experiences Frederick Douglass had to go through during his years under slavery? Give at least three examples from the book with page citations. [Should be at least three pages in length.]
Based on the second half of the book, why did Douglass meet with Abraham Lincoln, what were the reasons for the meetings, how many times did they meet, what did they talk about it, and what were the results of these meetings? Give page citations. [Should be about 3 to 4 pages.]
