Describe the evolution of American thinking about the meaning of liberty, rights, and equality, culminating with the Cooper Union Address.

The Evolution of American Thinking

Text me if you need any questions!!! Am writing the first part of this essay.

Try and use Britannica sources as well!

For the second part of your exam essay, describe the evolution of American thinking about the meaning of liberty, rights, and equality, culminating with the Cooper Union Address you analyzed in part one. Here are some of the questions you will wish to address: How did American liberal thought change, over the course of the period 1607 to 1860? Who is entitled to liberty? What kind of liberty or equality is desirable? Are liberty and equality always good things? What are some of the tensions or contradictions within American liberalism, and how did American thinkers confront them (think, for example, about patriarchy, or about slavery)? What major events occurred that focused American attention on these topics, and induced American or British writers to discuss them? Label this part of your exam essay “Evolution of American Liberalism, 1607-1860.” This section of your essay should be roughly 2000 words—about eight pages.

As with part one, you will wish to do some background research to help you think about this problem. There are several good sources which you might consult–one of them is:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism (Links to an external site.)

(In general, when you read essays like this one, you want to keep you focus on what is most important for our purposes in this class–we care most about the evolution of liberalism in the United States. After 1776, thinkers outside the US are much less relevant for our purposes.)

A few things to think about:

You should develop your essays using the materials assigned for this class. Refer to the Class Lectures or to the secondary sources we read, or resources like the American National Biography, the Encyclopedia Brittanica or the Oxford Reference Online.

Use quotations from the documents assigned from Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought, The American Debate over Slavery, or from the course web site.

Use your Common Place books to help support your analyses.

Remember that this is an exam covering the appropriate material we have been reading across the respective units of this course. Use this essay as an opportunity to show off your mastery of the material we have read and studied together.

Format:

Use 12 point Times Roman type and one inch margins.

Use double spacing.

Use paragraphs as the unit of composition. Your exam should consist of a series of paragraphs, each with a clear topic sentence and each focused on a single main idea. Most of you have taken or are taking a class devoted to written communication—be sure to apply what you are learning in that class to the written work you do for this one.

Paginate your work.

Your essay should have a cover page. The usual elements of a cover page include: your name; the date you completed the assignment; the name of the course for which you are completing this work (ie., HIST 225: United States History); the name of the professor who is teaching the course (Dr. Kevin Hardwick).

Citations: See FAQ–How to format citations

There are two circumstances in which you should provide a citation.

First, every quote you use should be followed by a citation. The purpose of a citation is to provide your reader with the information necessary to look up the quotation for him or herself.

Second, provide a citation every time you consult a secondary source. This is, among other things, the way you document the reading that you have one in the secondary sources. If you have done extra work researching the context for a document, or looking up precise information about a person or event, or reading a biography or encyclopedia essay, and you want credit for doing that work, then you need to provide us with a citation. If you don’t provide the citation, you will not receive credit for doing the work!

If you consulted a secondary source—your notes from a lecture, the introductory essays in CAPCT or ADOS, an essay from Encyclopedia Brittanica, the ANB, or the Oxford Reference Online—you have to cite it. Anytime you look up information, you need to inform your reader where you went to find it. Be as precise as you can, so your reader can go look up the information too. This is especially important since this is an exam!

We take citations seriously, when we grade your work. If you want us to give you credit for doing the work, you have to cite it. If you do not cite the quotations you use or the information you provide, you will not receive credit for doing the work.