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Overview: Reading  the archive isn't about simply "collecting information." People in the  past had different motivations and perspectives, and the historian's job  is to read through and across the sources and accounts that remain with  us today to try to develop understandings and interpretations of the  past based on limited, partial, flawed, and very human evidence. 

For this assignment, you will annotate (e.g.  add interpretations, ideas, references to other readings and sources)  the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass' response to  celebration of that moment (“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”).

Task: You must add at least 6 to 8 substantial annotations (a few sentences) directly to the document packet and at least two for each document. 

• Highlight a specific phrase, grievance, or philosophical claim. Write a comment analyzing why  this phrase was revolutionary in its historical context or what  assumptions the authors were making about government and society.
• You must also make a connection to the readings and media from Unit 1 of the OER for at least one of them. 
   
• Identify connections between the documents and how they are talking to each other (or not).