DBQ: Peer review and samples

REVIEW YOUR PARTNER”S OUTLINE (10 minutes) FIND a partner who has a rough outline to share READ your partner’s outline and answer all of the questions thoroughly. DO NOT answer the questions that start with “author’s response”. Those are not for you.

SHARE RESULTS: (10 minutes) PARTNER A: Read your findings to your partner. GO THROUGH the entire outline and ask questions or point out inaccuracies or flaws in the argument. Be thorough. PARTNER B: Repeat the same process with your findings

ANSWER “Author’s Response” questions (10 minutes) Go through your own outline and make the suggested changes to it. Pay close attention to your thesis and whether or not the claims in the paper make sense and correspond to your main argument.

Introduction: D/F Have you ever asked yourself, how revolutionary was the Revolutionary War? The war was caused because the British King was taxing the colonists and they wanted freedom. The colonists won in the end. A new democracy started in the United States. All in all though, the Revolution wasn’t very revolutionary.

Intro B/C Revolution means “big change in a short amount of time” according to Webster’s dictionary, and that’s exactly what happened during the Revolutionary War. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 stating that all men were equal and born with certain rights. Right away, this was a huge change from life under King George III. Change continued to happen after the colonists won the war. Not only did the new government become a democracy, but life also got much better for people in lower social classes, and for African- Americans in northern states.

Introduction: A/B “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” (doc 2). These words were written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 and remain controversial to this day. The Declaration of Independence was written to voice the concerns of the colonists about their shaky relationship with the British King George III. The Revolutionary War had officially started the year before and the colonists were determined to realize their Enlightenment ideals and become a free democracy. However, if the definition of “revolution” means “big change”, then the question must be asked, did that change really happen for everyone in the colonies? Although the colonists won the war and were able to form their own government under the banner of freedom and equality, those ideals did not exist for all people. The lives of women and African-Americans were largely unchanged when the war ended in 1783.

Body Paragraph D/F Document 1 shows that social classes wanted to tear down a statue of the king and document 3 shows them playing pool together. Well, I guess that means they got along better after the war.

Body Paragraph B/C The Revolutionary War improved the lives of people in lower classes. Before the war, they were segregated from upper classes like English society. For example, a print by Andre Bassett made in the 1770’s shows lower class men and possibly slaves pulling down a statue of an English Royal. Upper class men watch in the background implying that they don’t object to the destruction of the statue, but they also don’t want to get their hands dirty. (doc 1) Another picture made after the Revolutionary War by Henry Latrobe shows men from different classes playing a game of pool together. Therefore, there is some proof that the different classes interacted more socially. (doc 3)

Body Paragraph A/B Although small changes in the lives of people in the lower social classes seemed to occur, those changes were certainly not revolutionary as the Declaration of Independence implied. Those colonists who bravely fought for the ideals of freedom and equality must have been very disappointed to go back to their everyday lives after the war and realize that they were still poor and still had very little opportunity for advancement. A picture by Henry Latrobe painted in 1797 shows that after the war men from different social classes interacted together socially, but the differences in dress and demeanor were still striking. The poor men had no shoes and ragged clothing, while the rich man looked proud and well-groomed. (doc 3) Further, data about the economic status of representatives in state legislatures shows that while middle class representation grew in both the north and the south, poor people did not have representation either before or after the war. (doc 4) One can only assume that without representation, the lives of poor people have little chance of being noticed or having significant change. Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress wrote the Declaration of Independence in an attempt to equalize society, and while that equality may have started to happen for the middle classes, the poor were predictably left behind. (doc 2)

Conclusion D/F In conclusion, the social classes and African- Americans didn’t change much after the war. So you can see that the war really wasn’t revolutionary!

Conclusion B/C Overall, there were no significant changes for the lower classes and African-Americans in colonial society. Poor people still had a hard time finding basic necessities such as shoes and clothes