Writing Assignment and Instructions ***please see attachment for full instructions *** During the 1850s, the issues of slavery and U.S. colonization of the West converged to produce a decade of inc

Writing Assignment and Instructions 

***please see attachment for full instructions ***

During the 1850s, the issues of slavery and U.S. colonization of the West converged to produce a decade of increasingly contentious political debates. Those disputes culminated in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president and the subsequent secession of seven slaveholding states between December 1860 and March 1861. Using evidence from this week’s assigned readings, write a paper answering the following question:

What was the primary cause of secession?

DO NOT USE ANY OUTSIDE SOURCES, ONLY THE ASSIGNED READING. SEE ATTACHMENT FOR ASSIGNED READING . ALSO FEEL FREE TO UTILIZE THE COURSE BOOK/TEXT: The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection. Edited by William E. Gienapp. W.W. Norton & Company. 2001. ISBN: 978-0-393-97555-0

Overview and Submitting

Your paper should be about 3 pages in length and include an introduction with a thesis statement and a conclusion.

Papers should be typed, double-spaced with 1” margins.  Use Times New Roman 12 point font (or equivalent).  Include a title, your name, my name, and the class number.

Make a clear argument, beginning with a thesis statement in the first paragraph of the paper.  Underline your thesis statement.

Each body paragraph should present a coherent idea that develops your argument. Paragraphs should begin with topic sentences that clearly establish the main idea of the paragraph.

Use evidence from at least three of the assigned primary sources. No outside research is necessary.

Write in the past tense: “Edmund Ruffin argued…”; not “Edmund Ruffin argues…”

Use Chicago style citations (see, The Chicago Manual of Style Online: Notes and Bibliography: Sample Citations)

Use footnotes.  Footnotes go after the period at the end of a sentence. For example.[1] For subsequent citations to the same book, use a shorter form. Like this.[2] Or, this.[3] Footnotes should be single-spaced and use 10-point font. Papers without citations or with grossly inaccurate footnotes will receive an automatic deduction of 5 points. (For help, see Microsoft Office Support: Insert Footnotes and Endnotes)

Footnote Examples

[1] Robert Toombs, “The South Must Strike while There is Yet Time (1860),” in William E. Gienapp, ed., The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection (New York: Norton, 2001), 57.

[2] Toombs, “The South Must Strike,” 58.