The Evolution of American Thinking
Describe the evolution of American thinking about the meaning of liberty, rights, and equality, culminating with the Cooper Union Address.
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?
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.)
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 ; the name of the professor who is teaching the course.
Citations: See FAQ–How to format citations
