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Feel free to adopt and/or adapt the following Discussion and Essay Prompts for use in class with the accompanying Primary and Secondary Source Documents!
Feel free to adopt and/or adapt the following Discussion and Essay Prompts for use in class with the accompanying Primary and Secondary Source Documents!
Discussion Prompts
──────────────Discussion Prompts
1) What can be learned about the lives of enslaved persons from these primary source documents?
Is it significant that these documents are documents all written by people who claimed ownership over the enslaved?
How do historians need to account for this?
What sorts of questions can the historian ask of these documents to get to the experiences of the enslaved?
2) How can these primary source documents be used to reconstruct the narratives of enslaved persons?
3) What are the limitations of these primary source documents in detailing the experiences of enslavement?
How significant are these limitations?
Can they be overcome? If so, how?
4) How can these primary source documents be used to characterize late 18th and early 19th century thinking about Slavery? Liberty? Natural Rights of Mankind? Abolition? Manumission? Emancipation?
5) What are the limitations of these primary source documents in characterizing late 18th and early 19th century thinking about these concepts?
How significant are these limitations?
What are the specific dangers of using these Primary Source documents to generalize the thinking of that era?
6) How can we as historians use these primary source documents to unravel and explain the past?
7) What misconceptions did you have that were corrected by reading these primary source documents? Cite specific evidence in your explanation.
8) Based on specific evidence from these Primary Source documents, how conscious were practitioners/supporters/bystanders of the moral dilemma that slavery posed?
Was it something that weighed heavily on their consciences?
How can we know?
Essay Prompts
──────────Essay Prompts
I) Based on these primary source documents, analyze how the Livingstons, and those they interacted with, thought about slavery.
II) Using these primary source documents, chart the changes in attitude and thinking towards slavery/liberty/nature rights/abolition/emancipation over the course of the late 18th and early 19th century. Support your claim with specific evidence.
III) Evaluate the extent to which – and how – these primary source documents have changed your perception of slavery and/or 18th and 19th century thought about slavery. Use specific evidence from these primary source documents to support your evaluation.
IV) Evaluate the extent to which William Livingston was a supporter of slavery or an abolitionist, using specific evidence from these primary source documents to support your claim.
V) Based on these primary source documents, evaluate to what extent people of the past can be judged for their role/interaction with slavery.
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