P2| APUSH | Ms. Wiley | Slavery DBQ, D___
Name:
Assignment Overview: Over the next ten days, you will be working towards your first DBQ. You’ll be
analyzing documents regarding slavery, working on the essay for homework, and taking part in a digital
peer-review exercise. You will receive a formative grade for your peer-review and a summative grade for
your final DBQ.
Procedure / Homework Schedule:
1.
Wednesday, September 30th:
Read the background information and prompt (see page 2) and analyze the 7 documents, paying
close attention to the suggestions on page 15 of your Survival Guide.
There is no great writing,
only great rewriting.
(Justice Brandeis)
2.
Thursday, October 1st – Monday, October 5th:
Write the DBQ, paying close attention to the suggestions and rubric on pages 15-18 of your
Survival Guide. Feel free to consult with classmates about the DBQ while planning/writing.
3.
Monday, October 5th by 11:59 pm:
On Monday evening your typed essay must be emailed to your assigned partner and Ms. Wiley (kwiley@cbsd.org). Be sure
to use your student email and put #block_ in the subject line.
Note: If your draft is incomplete, you will lose significant points on the assignment. The draft should represent your best
effort.
Record the name of your assigned partner and their email address here: _________________________________________
Discuss with your partner what file type you will send to one another and record here: _____________________________
4.
Wednesday, October 7th by 11:59 pm:
On Wednesday evening your peer-review must be emailed to your assigned partner and Ms. Wiley. Be sure to use your
student email and put #block_ in the subject line.
The point of peer-review is to help the author improve his/her paper and become a more attentive writer in general. Thus,
your main task is to identify weaknesses and suggest ideas for improvement (in a constructive fashion, of course). With that
being said, you will also need to identify the strengths of the paper overall. This is useful feedback for the author, who
might perceive the paper’s strengths differently, and it helps the author accept the more critical feedback.
Your edits should provide thoughtful commentary and criticism pertaining to all of the key categories in the DBQ rubric
(pages 17-18 in the Survival Guide), along with more general commentary regarding strengths, weaknesses, and ideas for
improvement.
Note: You will receive a formative grade (10 points) for your peer review.
Options for editing:
o Use the Microsoft Word comment feature to edit your peer’s work. Ms. Wiley will show you how to do this in
class.
o Simply record all of your commentary in your email response. If you choose this method, be sure to neatly
organize your feedback so that it can be easily applied to your partner’s paper.
5.
Friday, October 9th, in class:
A hard copy of your final DBQ (which should clearly be an
improvement from your Monday draft) is due at the beginning of
class.
Formatting instructions:
 Include the following header at the top of your DBQ:
Your full name
Ms. Wiley
Block ___
Period 2 Slavery DBQ
 Use font size 12 and double space your writing.
GOOD LUCK! REMEMBER TO ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU HAVE THEM!
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Background: Stanley M. Elkins, a famous historian who wrote Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life
(1959), argued that the harsh conditions of American slavery stripped slaves of their native African identities, prevented them from
having strong social and family relationship, and reduced them to dependent child-like laborers who were emasculated and unable
to think for themselves. However, recent historical scholarship has reexamined the lives of those born into slavery and has begun to
focus on their religious, social, cultural and intellectual identities. Many historians now conclude that individuals born into slavery
had the power to shape their own world and were not merely objects of oppression. Historians are now analyzing slavery with a
more broadened perspective, looking at not just slave treatment, but the creation of slave societies as well. Yet, in doing so, some
critics believe that society may lose sight of how oppressive and degrading American slavery really was. You will need to wrestle with
these issues as you frame your response to the prompt.
Prompt: To what extent was slavery in the New World dehumanizing? Use the documents AND knowledge from Period 2
(particularly pages 90-103 and the two PBS video clips from class—Racial Slavery Defined and The Middle Passage) to address the
prompt. [Note: Dehumanization = to deprive of human qualities.]
Document 1
Background information on Frederick Douglass: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1539.html
Document 2
Background information on Josiah Henson: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/henson49/summary.html
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Document 3
Source: PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, funded by U.S. government) Image, “Triangular” Trade
:
Document 4
Source: Eighteenth-century painting (estimated 1785-1795), from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Art Museum (VA)
Early African American Wedding Ceremony
Artist: John Rose, South Carolina plantation owner
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Document 5
John Woolman, Quaker, in Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754)
Suppose that our ancestors and we had been exposed to constant servitude in the more servile and inferior employments of life;
that we had been destitute of the help of reading and good company; that amongst ourselves we had had few wise and pious
instructors; that the religious amongst our superiors seldom took notice of us; that while others in ease had plentifully heaped up
the fruit of our labour, we had received barely enough to relieve nature, and being wholly at the command of others had generally
been treated as a contemptible, ignorant part of mankind. Should we, in that case, be less abject that they are now?
Quaker community at Germantown, Pennsylvania (c. 1750)
What thing on the world can be done worse towards us, then if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange
countries, separating husbands from their wives and children. Being now this is not done at that manner, we will be done at,
therefore we contradict and are against this traffic of men’s bodies.
Background information on Quaker’s beliefs, with regards to slavery: http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_1/p_7.html
Document 6
Virginia slave laws:
1627: Christian baptism may not alter conditions of servitude.
1669: The death of a slave during punishment shall not be accounted felony.
1691: Interracial sexual conduct shall be prohibited.
Document 7
Alexander Falconbridge, a British surgeon on several slave ships,
provides a description of the Middle Passage in The African Slave Trade (1788)
The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. It
frequently terminates in death, especially among the women. But the exclusion of the fresh air is among the most intolerable.
During the voyages I made, I was frequently witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of fresh air. I will give one instance, as it
serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of their terrible sufferings.
Some wet and blowing weather having occasioned the port-holes to be shut and the grating to be covered, fluxes and fevers among
the Negroes ensued. While they were in this situation, I frequently went down among them till at length their room became so
extremely hot as to be only bearable for a very short time. But the excessive heat was not the only thing that rendered their
situation intolerable. The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from
them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a
situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried upon deck where several of them
died and the rest with great difficulty were restored. It had nearly proved fatal to me also[;]...it was only with assistance I could get
back on deck. The consequence was that I soon after fell sick of the same disorder from which I did not recover for several months.
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