American history The “Omaha Platform” of the People’s Party

ASSIGNMENT I: Documents Analysis Essay

First: Read your document and ask yourself the following questions: Who wrote this? When did they write it? Who is the audience? What is the purpose? What crucial information does it contain for understanding some aspect of the past? What other information do you need in order to place it in context or discern its biases? Use the textbook and the lectures to help provide context for the documents and to understand them. That will give you a general idea about the importance of the document and probably answer some of the questions above. But the document will have a lot of detail that is not in the textbook or lectures, and you should be paying attention to what you can learn from the document itself beyond what the text may tell you.

Your opening paragraph should state clearly what the document is, how and when it was produced, and why it is important. The rest of your paper should draw specifics from the document itself to spell out your analysis of its significance and, perhaps, its limitations as a source for understanding the past.

A paper, two pages long, based on one of the assigned primary documents used in the course. Your section leader will describe which document you should analyze.

The paper should be double spaced, in 12 point, Times New Roman font, with standard margins (those that come up automatically in Word and other documents—generally one inch all around).

Quality of writing matters. Write with care and seriousness. Emulating the tone of your Becoming America textbook will help you to arrive at the right style. Of course, proofread carefully.

After receiving your graded paper, you will rewrite it. This will be a serious reworking of the paper, not just the correcting of minor errors. The rewritten paper will receive its own grade. See the syllabus for more details and due dates.

GUIDELINES (to be discussed in section):

Primary sources are the evidence historians use to understand the past. This assignment is an exercise designed to give you the experience of analyzing primary sources (documents). This is a skill you will need for your book analysis paper and any future history courses you may take. It is also a skill of careful evaluation that is essential to most careers and to being an active and informed citizen.