Response Paper: Instructions
For the Response Paper assignment, you will compose a response (argument) to a prompt in essay form
that measures your critical thinking and analysis regarding a topic and/or question related to that topic.
You are required to compose an essay that demonstrates your argument (thesis) as an analysis and
representation of your interpretation, and how you evaluate primary sources for use and inclusion in
your discussion of the prompt and your argument (thesis).
Guidelines
The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your mastery of the exercises conducted within the
course. Your response should be designed as a specific and clear discussion of the prompt provided and
include examples from materials that address or allow you to evaluate the statement. At the core of
your paper should be a strong and developed argument that illustrates how you understand and
interpret the topic. The major evaluation of your response is the identification and support of a
developed thesis or argument and the evidence (or examples) included to back-up that argument.
In addition to providing a response, you need to demonstrate your citation skills in this assignment.
Since you will quote from primary sources in order to illustrate your response, footnote references will
be required. You may use Citation Machine or a similar service to include footnote citations and a
bibliography in Chicago-style for all quotes and any paraphrased materials (a separate page for a
bibliography is required in this assignment).
Expected minimum length of the Response Paper assignment is 900-1,500 words. This length does not
include heading and title details, footnotes, or the bibliography page.
Respond to the following prompt.
How did slavery impact the United States politically and socially from the Revolutionary War though the
Civil War? What evidence can we use to show how slavery would impact federal policies in Westward
expansion, as a contributory cause to the Mexican American War, and ultimately serve as a major
underlying cause of the Civil War? How did slavery impact life and business outside of the South?
Sources and References.
You may reference The American Yawp (both the text and primary sources documents), documents
uploaded to Canvas, and outside resources excluding sites like Wikipedia, answers.com, history.com and
other non-citation information amalgamation sites. Personal diaries or recollections saved into texts,
local newspapers, academic papers, and scholarly books on the topic are all acceptable sources that can
be accessed via the Library. All works should be properly cited in Chicago style footnotes accompanied
by a bibliography page.
Regarding quotes; if a quote is over 1 line of text long, it is probably too long of a quote for a paper of
this length. Block quotes (quotes over 3 lines) are not allowed at all in this assignment and will result in
penalties in the papers overall score. This strategy of word count inflation does not truly demonstrate
mastery of the material.
