HIS 256: American History 1815
–
1900
The Lincoln Letters Project
[adopted
& adapted
with p
ermission of Dr. Benjamin Carp, Tufts University]
The colonial historian Rhys Isaac defined history as “stories that historians write on their own pages fashioned
from the stories they find in the archives.” Isaac himself, in a recent book, used a plantation owner’s diary as his
window into the larger hi
story of colonial Virginia. In this assignment, you will write a history on your own
pages, using the stories you find in the correspondence of President
Abraham
Lincoln during the turbulent year
1861.
ASSIGNMENT A: Getting Started
Each student will cho
ose
at least
THREE
letters
from the following online archive:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alser.html
. The letters are collected in
to
three groups, and within those
groups they appear in
chronological order (although the groups overlap chronologically). Within the year
1861
,
go to the week that includes your birthday (give or take a few days) and
select an interesting letter as your first
source
. [For example, if your birthday is Januar
y
10
th
, choose a letter dated somewhere between
approximately
January
3
rd
and January 1
7
th
.] You should use your own criteria to select your first letter
—
are you more
interested in the military, the political,
the social,
the personal? Be bold, and use a
letter that seems totally
bizarre,
confusing
, unfamiliar
, or otherwise intriguing
. Consider using a letter that touches on people, places, or
events that are strange or new to you. Above all, have fun. Once you’ve chosen your first letter, begin searchi
ng
for
at least
two more letters that relate to the same theme, event, person(s), or issue. It may be easiest if you
choose letters that are chronologically close to your first letter, but this is not required. [Your letters may be
selected from any or al
l of the three
archive
groups.]
Many letters appear both as scans of the original letter and as “transcriptions” that are more easily
readable, searchable, and transferable to your own disk. If no transcript is available, don’t be afraid to try and
tease
out the handwriting! Once you have selected your three (or more) letters,
save
a legible copy of each letter.
Upload
these
to Sakai. Hand in
a one
–
paragraph
explanation of what you find interesting/intriguing about these
letters.
Due date:
Monday,
Fe
bruary 1
st
(letters on Sakai, paragraph handed in)
ASSIGNMENT B: Primary Source Analysis
Analyze your letters and mark them up.
Then, search for
at least
THREE
newspaper
/magazine
accounts (or other primary sources) related to the same topic. Newspapers
/magazines
can be accessed from the
following databases through the library website
[database tab]
;
all
sites are full text and keyword searchable.

America’s Historical Newspapers

Historical New York Times

De Bow’s Commercial Review

Ladies Repository

Prin
ceton Review

Southern Literary Messenger

Vanity Fair

The Atlantic Monthly

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine

The Living Age

New Englander
Then write a paper of 1000
–
1250 words (approximately 4
–
5 pag
es
) with a coherent argument based on your
analysis of the let
ters
and newspaper articles
. Begin by considering: What issues do the letters address? Who has
written them? What seems to be on the minds of the correspondents? Are they worried, angry, happy, or in
need of help? Why do they write in certain ways for
their intended audience? What clues do these letters offer
about the pressures Lincoln faced during this year?
(** These questions are to help guide your thoughts. You
may or may not be answering these exact questions in your paper.**)
Use the letters
to draw inferences and
formulate a hypothesis. Do these letters present a mystery or conundrum? If so, it will be your task to solve it.
For now, it is okay to conclude your paper with unanswered questions that you hope to resolve later. As you
draw a
tentative conclusion about the significance of the letters, you may wish to lay out a set of unanswered
questions that might lead to a conclusion, or propose avenues of research that might resolve your unanswered
questions.
The letters often use footnote
s to identify people and other information mentioned in the letters. You
can use a textbook or encyclopedic sources
[but NOT Wikipedia or other
non
–
academic online source
s
] to
supplement this information for the purposes of identifying people.
But refere
nce sources do NOT count as a
required source.
For tips on analyzing nineteenth
–
century letters, you may wish to consult Steven Stowe, “Making Sense
of Letters and Diaries,”
History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
,
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/letters/
, July 2002. See also the handout
(on Sakai)
, “Analysis
of a Text
–
Based Primary Source
”
for dealing with both the letters and newspaper articles.
Due date (
uploaded to
Sakai
):
Monday
, February 22
nd
***Include a descriptive title, page #, word count, footnotes (see Rampolla), and full bibliography.
ASSIGNMENT C: Secondary Source Analysis
Now that you’ve isolated certain lives and events, find out where they fit in historical context
. Use
secondary sources
(books and/or journal articles)
on Lincoln and on the Civil War. Have historians overlooked
the issues your letters raise? Do your letters have particular historical significance? How does the secondary
source literature place t
hese lives and events in context and make them understandable?
(**Again, these
questions are to help guide you in your quest for a thesis.**)
Using the footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies in
the secondary sources, try to determine whether any other his
torians have used these letters.
For this assignment you should use
at least
THREE
sources
beyond
textbooks or encyclopedias. These
sources
can
be either books
and
/
or journal articles.
Please be considerate of your classmates and try not to take
out boo
ks for more than one night. Treat them as if they were on reserve.
The following
databases
are all available through the Phillip’s Memorial website:

HELIN
(PC library catalogue; access to books in all RI colleges)

JSTOR
(journal articles)

Project Muse
(j
ournal articles)

Cambridge Journals Online
