Your second formal paper assignment is to write an approximately 900 word essay
(double-spaced, twelve point font, Times New Roman) answering the question at the bottom of
the page. It is due at midnight on April 30, uploaded as a Word document or a PDF on
Blackboard (please do not load a link to a document in a cloud). Please read the following
instructions very carefully; following them is critical to your grade.
Instructions:
1.) Writing style counts for formal papers. Spelling, grammar and punctuation should be
correct throughout the paper even if that means you must work with tutors at the History
Tutoring Center, https://www.utep.edu/liberalarts/history/resources/student-resource/history-
tutoring-center.html, or the Writing Center in the library, https://www.utep.edu/uwc/index.html,
who can help with brainstorming and prewriting, essay organization, and writing and revision
strategies.
Also see the handout entitled “How to Write Essays” in the “Syllabus and General
Instructions folder.
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2.) This assignment is a critical essay, which asks you to carefully read, and think about,
class materials, and in particular the primary sources in the Causes of the Civil War book, which
are found on pages 34-119. You may use only classroom materials to answer this question.
Including any other material will result in a zero for this essay, so do not try to google an
answer.
You should naturally also use your own words or, when you want to quote from class
materials—keep quotes short—be sure to put those words that are not yours in quotation marks.
Avoid the temptation to cut and paste text, perhaps changing only a few words. When quoting
from or citing class materials, simply put the author (of the document, if it is a primary source, or
of the book) and the page number in parentheses in the main text. Examples: (Locke, p. 73),
(Sipress, p. 97), (Lincoln, p. 50). There is no need for footnotes.
3.) You must do your own work. This is not a group assignment, and SafeAssign
will check your work against that of your fellow students as well as against internet and
other sources. While the group work you’ve done in class and in Perusall workshops should
have helped prepare you for this paper, it is your responsibility now to write your own, unique
paper. You may not share drafts, or partial drafts, of your paper with your fellow students.
Collusion is working with another student on an assignment on which it is not allowed. Students
suspected of collusion will have their work submitted, immediately and without discussion, to
the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution.
4.) You may write in either English or Spanish.
5.) The goal is to produce a coherent essay with a clear argument. State your general
argument (your thesis), in your introductory paragraph. A good thesis will clearly list the three
trends or events your paper will focus on (see the question below). Then use the rest of the
essay to support your position, making sure to deal carefully with each part of the question
somewhere in the paper.
6.) Your essay should be based primarily on a careful, thoughtful evaluation of the
details of the primary source documents, combined with whatever background information
from secondary materials is absolutely necessary to place those details in context. In other
words, write largely about the details of the historical documents rather than summarizing the
broader history, but be sure to be aware of, and consider, the historical context.
7.) Remember that interpreting documents goes deeper than simply summarizing them.
To help you understand and interpret your documents, be sure to consider the following
questions. When and why was it written? What kind of document is it? What was the author’s
relationship to the events s/he recounts? After writing your thesis, clearly introduce the
documents you will use in your opening paragraph. Here is an example: “As evidence to
support this thesis, I will use the following documents: Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is
the Fourth of July” (1854); Thomas Cobb, “Secessionist Speech” (1860); and the Republican
Newspaper Editorial in the Hartford Evening Press (1860).
Introducing the documents you will use at the start of your paper will help you think about the
questions listed above, and thinking seriously about them may help you learn things that the
authors did not intend to teach you, and thus deepen your analysis.
The Question:
Disagreements over the institution of slavery were clearly one of the major causes of the Civil
War, but the abolition of slavery did not require civil war in most of the other countries of the
Western Hemisphere that experienced it. What would you identify as the two or three major
trends or events that interacted with slavery to produce the Civil War and how did they
work together to do so?
Be sure to develop a thesis in the introductory paragraph to your paper. Example: Three major
trends or events that worked together with disagreements over slavery by [blank—in just a few
words, explain by doing what?] were [blank, blank, and blank].
In developing your answer, you must discuss the details of at least three of the primary
sources in the book (you may refer to other material given to you in class too, but you must
refer to details of at least three primary sources and identify the documents you are using).
Failure to cite three primary sources from The Causes of the Civil War book will result in a
zero for the assignment. Be thoughtful about the documents you choose. You should
understand by now that not all are equal, and that the ones you choose will shape your
conclusions, so give some thought to getting a good sample of material that allows you to
address the question.
Finally, do not plagiarize. Plagiarism is the use of words or ideas from the internet (including
an AI-generated essay) or from any other publication without citing your source. Also, if you
use more than three words in a row from any source, including those you do cite, those words
must be enclosed in quotation marks as indication that they are not yours. Students suspected of
plagiarism will have their work submitted, immediately and without discussion, to the Office of
Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution, and the punishment can be severe. Passing
SafeAssign when submitting your paper does not mean you didn’t plagiarize. To avoid
plagiarizing, follow the instructions above carefully.
