PROMPT FOR SEVEN PAGE ESSAY: seven pages, double spaced. Please place your name at the top of the first page so as to Help me in identifying you as author. Use the university’s standards for style in writing the paper. Footnotes need only consist of page numbers in Woodard. If you use another source, however, you will need to give a full citation in the footnotes.
DIRECTIONS:
Many movements in US History provide a contradiction: on the one hand extension of liberty, on the other a promotion of a form of repression. This applies to people sometimes as well.
With this in mind, choose ONE of the following three movement/counter-movements for analysis:
When the commerce promoted by religious toleration stimulated the slave trade as well;
When freedom for the immigrant caused less freedom for the formerly enslaved;
When freedom for people in the countryside clashed with freedom for those in the cities
For each of these, try to explain why the first effect caused the second effect. Use the class texts of Shorto, Philbrick McLaughlin or Dolan, plus your class notes, for evidence.
Then, for the second part of the paper, choose ONE character of your choice from the Shorto, Philbrick, McLoughlin or Dolan books. The person you pick should be someone whose promotion of freedom in one area was accompanied by their standing for oppression in another. Analyze why the individual was contradictory in these regards.
Feel free to consult me during the preparation of this paper.
Required books:
1) Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World. This work takes advantage of recently re-discovered archives of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam to describe the multi-cultural foundations of the future city of New York.
2) Philbrick Nathaniel. Mayflower: Voyage, Community and War. New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2020 Revised Edition. Philbrick’s theme is the gradual souring of the relationship between Indigenous Americans and the Plymouth Colony. He is particularly challenging to the myth that a lasting harmony between the two groups may be symbolized by the first Thanksgiving.
3) McLoughlin, William G. Rhode Island: A History. New York, New York: WW Norton, 1986. The major themes of American history as measured through the experience of one small state.
4) Dolan, Jay P. The Irish Americans: A History. New York, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. This book concludes the quarter with a balance to the thesis of Woodard that begins the quarter. Dolan disagrees with Woodard’s assertion that post-colonial immigrant groups did not change America’s dominant cultures, and he uses the example of Irish Americans to prove his argument
