for kim woods

Document Analysis Instructions Choice A: Reading about John Brown

You will be reading and comparing extracts from three biographies of John Brown, the militant abolitionist who led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859, a failed attempt at starting a slave rebellion. He was tried for treason, convicted and executed. A complicated and controversial historical actor, his life and actions have been interpreted in fundamentally different ways: Brown has been seen as a hero, a villain, a madman, a terrorist, a religious zealot; the hero who prompted the North to take on the South in Civil War, or the monster who inflamed the nation’s passions, precipitating a needless war.

It is not your job to identify the real John Brown, but to explore, in an essay of between 3 and 5 double-spaced pages, how interpretations of the past change over time and space, using biographies of John Brown.

Assignment Outline:

I. Introduction, with your thesis statement. In one or two paragraphs, introduce Brown and the problem of interpreting him. End with a statement about what you conclude from your readings.

II. Comparison of three assigned readings Introduce each of the three passages and its author in turn; summarize their "take" on Brown; provide examples of how they paint Brown’s intentions, motives, actions and their consequences.

Finish this section with a few direct comparisons between the three biographical excerpts (unless you integrated some comparisons into your descriptions.)

III. Conclusion: Describe at least one additional modern source of information about Brown. This could be any of a number of websites about Brown, abolitionists, or the run-up to the Civil War in general. Assess how the interpretation of Brown you found in your modern source relates to the three biographical extracts you studied, and finish with your thoughts on the interpretation of history, or whether and why we should care about Brown today.

Background to read up on before you begin:

 John Brown’s early life: family and career

 Abolitionism

 Brown at Pottawatomie

 Kansas-Nebraska Act

 "Bleeding Kansas"

 Harpers Ferry Raid

 Brown’s trial, imprisonment, and execution

 "John Brown’s Body"

Some things to keep in mind as you read:

1 Who is the author? Where is he from? What is his relationship (if any) to the North and South, or African American history?

2 What is the work from which the excerpt comes (date, title of larger work)?

3 Does the passage emphasize Brown’s virtues, vices, emotions? Look for evidence of bias (either in Brown’s favor or against him)

 4 How does the author assess Brown’s significance in American History

Choice B: Slave Narratives

You will be reading and comparing extracts from three autobiographical texts written by enslaved African Americans: Henry Bibb, Solomon Northrup, and Harriet Jacobs. Firsthand accounts by slaves themselves provide one of the most immediate windows into the institution of slavery. But as with all primary documents, these "slave narratives" present the historian with many questions. In addition to the questions of the individual’s memory, their personal bias, perspective, and motives, critically reading these narratives requires looking into the facts of publication, how much assistance the authors received from editors and others (and their motives), as well as basic historical research into what is known about the writer and his or her times.

Your job is to examine, in an essay of between 3 and 5 double-spaced pages, the three assigned passages for evidence regarding several questions of interest to historians: discuss what they reveal about :

 daily life—the work slaves did, family issues, and social interactions among slaves

 their "masters" and White society

 how slaves resisted; what did slaves do to push back against the realities of enslavement, and to demonstrate their status as human beings, whether to themselves, to each other, and –perhaps—to their masters?

Assignment Outline:

I. Introduction, with your thesis statement. In one or two paragraphs, introduce slave narratives and the problems in using them to study history. End with a statement about what you conclude from your readings.

II. Description and comparison of three assigned readings Introduce each of the three passages and its author in turn; summarize the stories each narrator tells (for the most part, confine yourself to the passages provided) and what each passage reveals about the topics outlined above.

Finish this section with a few direct comparisons between the three excerpts (unless you integrated some comparisons into your descriptions.)

III. Conclusion: Explore at least one reliable source of general information about American slave narratives (I got almost a half-million hits when I googled "slave narratives"). How does what you read in this online source fit with what you found in analyzing the three slave narrative excerpts?

Background to read up on before you begin:

 A full overview of each writer’s life and the scope of their complete narrative (beyond the scope of the extract you’re reading)

 The facts of publication, including editorship, assistance in writing, etc.

 General information about the economy and culture in the region and time depicted in each narrative

Some things to keep in mind as you read:

 Who is the author? Where is s/he from?

 How does each author describe confrontations between slave and master?

 What role if any does gender play?

 Consider that these authors knew most of their readers were going to be white. How does that reality shape what they write?

 What evidence can you find that each of these authors had assistance from experienced writers? How might that shape what is recorded in the narrative?