Primary documents are historical artifacts at ground zero of a particular era under investigation. For example, Christopher Columbus’ letter to the Spanish king reporting what he found in the western Atlantic is primary data. Columbus’ ship is also considered primary evidence. Primary documents represent evidence that help historians and students to understand the experiences of people who lived during various historical times. Historians and students examine primary documents to prove a main idea and thesis.

Students will be asked to read primary documents for every required chapter reading from the supplemental primary reader American Yawp (Links to an external site.).  Students will select one primary document and are expected to write a summary and analysis of the primary evidence. To complete the summary and analysis students must address these specific questions.

Who was the author[s], date and/or origins of the primary source?

To whom was document directed?

What was the main idea and/or argument of the primary source?

What was its political, religious, and/or social message? 

How does it relate to the era it originated or what does it teach us about the society where it originated?

Last module, students learned how Northerners and Southerners shared contradictory views of American nationhood which arrested westward expansion and stoked the fires of Civil War. While before 1865, the politics of “Manifest Destiny” were entangled with the debate over the legitimacy of the institution of slavery, after, slavery no longer threatened to corrupt the western territories. Thus, the Union had a free hand in determining the cultural, economic, political, and social structures of the west. It was during this era that the Federal government fought some of its most brutal wars against Native Americans. By the 1890s American settlements had reached the Pacific Ocean and “civilized” the west – fetishizing and commoditizing the cowboys and Plain Indians through Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows. In this module students will explore how the UnionLouis Dalrymple, School begins, Puck,  2019, January. Retrieved from http://www.americanyawp.com/text/19-american-empire/ (Links to an external site.).victory over the Confederacy and the Reconstruction of the South reflected the cultural, economic, and political “Yankee” mind and how this “triumph” affected American identities in the west and beyond. The Civil War was the first war the US government fought to make the world “safe for democracy” and the first war that ended with the US trying to “modernize” a section of the non-industrialized world (the former Confederate States). Victory made many optimistic they could duplicate these “victories” in other spots around the globe. American leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Mahan turned to the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia to spread the gospel of democracy, free-markets, and American frontier “manhood.” Consider how Reconstruction helped, or not, American policy makers determine US diplomacy during the late nineteenth century, but also, consider how a world Americans heard “calling” for the US model influenced the process of Reconstruction and the redemption of the South.Readings and LectureRead: (NOTE: This chapter reading is a secondary source because it is one or more generations detached from the historical events under investigation).American Yawp, American Empire (Links to an external site.), Ch. 19.Read: (NOTE: The documents BELOW are primary sources because the individuals who composed these writings lived during the period under investigation. Their perspectives are firsthand accounts.)William McKinley on American Expansionism, 1903 (Links to an external site.)Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” 1899 (Links to an external site.)William James on “The Philippine Question,” 1903 (Links to an external site.)Watch: (NOTE: This lecture is a secondary source because it is one or more generations detached from the historical events under investigation).Social Darwinism, American Xenophobia, and the Competition for Foreign Markets, 1899-1914Josue Rey, “Social Darwinism, American Xenophobia, and the Competition for Foreign Markets, 1899-1914” YouTube, uploaded by Josue Rey, 25 September 2015, Module ObjectivesAfter completing this module, students will be able to: Recall, examine, and interpret the various economic, political, and social events which led to and maintained westward expansion.Recall, examine, and interpret the economic, diplomatic, cultural, racial, and religious, circumstances which led to the United States’ annexation of the Hawaiian islands and intervention in Cuba and the Philippines.Recall, examine, and interpret the economic, diplomatic, and racial policies that defined the relationship between the United States, Cuba, and the Philippines post-1898.Recall, examine, and interpret the economic and diplomatic relations of Western European nations to the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.