Chicago / Turabian History

Speech: Abraham Lincoln and the War With Mexico

Instructions
For this Primary Source Analysis assignment, you will analyze Speech: Abraham Lincoln and the War With Mexico in the previous Module slide, and complete a Primary Source Analysis.

Guidelines
The purpose of this assignment is to build your analytical skills. These questions are designed to help you better understand the document and its historical significance. Your job here is to fully answer these questions: simple one-word answers will not suffice. In order to get full credit on this assignment you must fully explain your answers and give examples from the source. The point is for you to come out of this with a very good understanding of these documents. Fully answering these questions will help you do so.

Since you will quote from the source assigned in order to illustrate your analysis, it is required that you include citations and give credit for use of the source.

Expected minimum length of the Primary Source Analysis assignment is 500 words. This length does not include the Chicago-style footnote citation or any heading and title details. The following questions direct you in completing an analysis of the source assigned, and you should compile your analysis in essay form with your answers as part of paragraphs.

Identification: Who wrote or created the document and what makes that person significant to the time period of the document/source?
Audience: Who is the intended audience and why is that group significant to the time period of the document/source?
Main idea: Give a short summary of the document.
Analysis: What is the purpose of this document? What details lead you to this conclusion? What questions does this source raise?
Evidence: Give specific examples from the document that support your answer for question 4 (make sure to use footnotes as your citations for the source).
Keep focused on developing ideas about the significance of the document based on these questions, and include your position (as an argument, thesis, or description of that significance), in the section of your submitted assignment that answers question 4.