COGNITIVE SCIENCE Vol22 (3) 1998, pp. 319-346
Copyright Q 1998 Cognitive Science Society,Inc.

Reading

ISSN 0364-0213
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

Abraham

An Expert/Expert
Interpretation

Lincoln:

Study in theof HistoricalTexts

SAM WINEBURG
University of Washington
This study explored how historians with different background knowledge reada series of primary source documents. Two university-based historians thought
aloud as they read documents about Abraham Lincoln and the question of slavery, with the broad goal of understanding Lincoln’s views on race. The first
historian brought detailed content knowledge to the documents; the second
historian was familiar with some of the themes in the documents but quickly
became confused in the details. After much cognitive flailing, the second historian was able to piece together an interpretative structure that brought him
by the task’s end to where his more knowledgeable colleague began. Data
analysis focused on how, lacking detailed content knowledge, this historian
was able to regain his intellectual footing, work through confusion, and resist
the urge to simplify. Implications of this work for cognitive analyses in history
and education are discussed.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The origins of chess are claimed by every people on the globe. The Jews trace the game toKing Solomon, who reportedly taught it to his son Rehoboam. The Greeks trace it to thephilosopher Xerxes, who passed it down to the young Aristotle. The Mandarin Hansing,the Brahman Sissa, the Persian astronomer Shatrenscha: all claim to have invented thegame. It is, however, the Arabs whose claim bears linguistic witness: the declaration“check mate” derives from the Arabic sheik met, the sheik, or king, is dead.
In the more modem history of cognitive science, the ancient game of chess has played acentral role. It was to chess that the Dutch psychologist deGroot (1965) turned in his effort
to understand complex problem solving. Similarly, Chase and Simon (1973) took up the
movement of bishops and rooks to help us understand the nature of planning, means/end
analysis, and problem-solving templates-concepts that still find great currency in the cognitive lexicon.
DhCt all correspondenceto: Sam Wineburg,University of Washington, 3 12 Miller, Box 353600, Seattle, WA
98195; E-Mail: wineburg@u.washington.edu.
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The pioneering studies of chess masters, together with work on expertise in physics
problem-solving (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Simon, 1980; Chi, Feltovich, dz Glaser,
198 1) provided striking images of expert performance. The quintessential expert, as Glaser
summarized the research literature in 1984, possessed rich networks of highly-elaborated
knowledge and myriad problem-solving templates that smoothed the way for the fluid processing of new information. This process went on with lightening speed and, compared tonovices, relative ease.
In the decade or so since Glaser’s review, a series of studies have complicated the imageof the smooth and efficient expert. For example, Scardamalia and Bereiter’s (1991) workon written composition revealed that, compared to novices, expert writers took more time
executing tasks, detected more problems in their writing, agonized longer over revisions,and spent longer time puzzling about the “rhetorical space” of their compositions. Rather
than fluidity and rapidity, the writing process of these experts was characterized by a nagging propensity for finding flaws at every comer. Similarly, Wineburg (1991, 1994), in astudy comparing university historians and high school history students, found that it was
historians, not students, who echoed pangs of doubt about their interpretations, secondguessing themselves and appending strings of qualifications to their conclusions. Novices,on the other hand, quickly formed interpretations and typically never looked back.
Both domains-literary writing and historical interpretation-provide
a counterpoise to
the two domains, chess and physics, that lent us our first-generation images of domainbased problem solving. In both literary writing and historical interpretation, solutions toproblems are typically not “discovered” but imposed (Resnick, 1987). In the annals ofphysics or chemistry, a flawed solution is generally of “historical note” but not an essential
part of understanding current phenomena (e.g., it’s hard to imagine chemists losing theirjob, or even being chagrined, if they couldn’t recount the archaic theory of phlogiston). But
in a discipline such as history, a flawed approach to a problem (Beard’s 1912 Economic
Znterpretution ofthe Constitution comes immediately to mind) is still prized and studied bynewcomers, not because Beard “got it wrong” (cf. Palmer, 1959), but because his “wrongness” opened up a new way of seeing and asking questions-in short a whole new avenueof “finding problems” (cf. Getzels, 1979). In mathematics, rising stars make their mark bysolving long-standing conundrums (cf. Kolata, 1994). In history, they do so by inventing
conundrums that never go away.
Different domains may yield qualitatively different images of expertise. But it is also
clear from studies across domains that the problems we put to experts shape the images ofproblem solving we seek to understand (cf. Clement, 1989). So argued Schoenfeld (1985),
who presented an expert in number theory with a problem in geometry, a field this expert
had not studied in years. The expert’s protocol bears a certain resemblance to the protocols
of expert writers in Scardamalia and Bereiter’s work. Rather than the quick mobilization ofknowledge, the expert scratched his head and mumbled, “Hmmm. I don’t exactly know
where to start” (1985, p. 21). However, as he worked through the problem, the mathematician was able to improvise on what he did know to reach a solution. His success stood instark contrast to a group of college students who, despite having more knowledge about
this particular topic, were unable to solve the problem.

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The form of expertise displayed by this mathematician can be thought of as “adaptive”
as opposed to “routine” expertise (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). Adaptive expertise speaks tothe ability to apply, adapt, and otherwise stretch knowledge so that it addresses new situations-often situations in which key knowledge is lacking. Viewed from this vantage
point, expertise is less the rapid firing and deployment of knowledge than the ability to pickoneself up after a tumble, work through confusion, and reorient oneself to the problem at
hand.
These two images of expertise-the nimble and quick problem solver and the resourceful and persistent bricole’ur-may not be in conflict, but may speak to two different aspectsof expertise. Here, the work of Pate1 and Grwn (1991) provides an important distinction.
In presenting problems to a group of physicians, with specialties that ranged from radiology to cardiology to psychiatry, Pate1 and Groen distinguished between “specific” and“generic” expertise-the former would be what a cardiologist brings to a triple bypass surgery, the latter what the radiologist brings. If we needed heart surgery, we would seek thebest “specific expert” available. However, if we suffered a heart attack on an airplane wewould pray that there was a “generic” expert-an oncologist, an ophthalmologist, somebody with an MD-sitting close by.
The present study set out to explore in close detail the specific and the generic forms ofexpertise in the domain of history. Both participants in this study were experts given prevailing definitions in the literature but both differed in the level of factual and conceptual
knowledge brought to the task. The task they were given centered around Abraham Lincoln
and the question of race in the mid-nineteenth century. The overarching goal of the study
was to explore how interpretations are formed when experts draw on different kinds of cognitive resources.
II.

METHOD

Participants
Two historians were recruited. The first historian (hereafter referred to as Hl) has spent a
career writing and teaching about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The criteria forrecruiting the second historian (H2) were obviously broader: I sought someone in the general field of American history, but not a specialist in the Civil War period, Abraham Lincoln, or Reconstruction.
Both historians were Caucasian males and held the rank of full professor. Each taught
in a department that ranked in the top 25 history departments nationally (according to the1995 rankings of US News and World Report), and each earned the doctorate from adepartment consistently ranked among the top three. Together, these historians had written
and edited nearly a dozen books and scores of articles. Both had taught undergraduate survey courses spanning all of American history, with the majority of their upper-level andgraduate courses in their respective specializations. During IQ’s graduate training, hiscomprehensive examinations covered the Civil War period, but he had not studied thisperiod extensively since then.

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Both historians volunteered for the study. Ideally, a crossed-design, in which Hl would
have also read documents in H2’s specialization, would have been optimal. However, thebusy schedules of both men prevented the extension of this task beyond its original confines.
Background
This study builds on previous work in which protocols were collected from 8 historians as
they worked through documents about the Battle of Lexington during the Revolutionary
War (Wineburg, 1991,1994). Based on these protocols, a model was formulated to accountfor historians’ cognitive representations of text. Although historians devoted great effort tocreating situation models (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), they also spent considerable timecreating a representation ofthe subtext, a model based on implicit textual information thatreconstructed authors’ assumptions, beliefs, biases, convictions, commitments, hopes, andfears-in sum, the totality of their world views. Texts vary in the degree to which they disclose these elements, but even short texts provide hints of authors’ polemical and rhetoricalaims, a fact noted by all 8 historians but typically missed by less expert readers (Wineburg,
1992).
As historians moved from document to document, the textual representations they built
converged into a cumulative representation of the historical event. This intertextual model,
the Event Model, incorporated new details and winnowed out less reliable ones. The Event
Model not only integrated information from the textual evidence historians reviewed, butdrew on the cognitive resources they brought to the task-their knowledge, skills, beliefs,
and personal experiences.
In an expansion and elaboration of this model, Leinhardt and Young (1996) focused on
the role played by historians’ theoretical commitments, such as feminism or Marxism, or
their particular disciplinary focus, such as economic or social history. Such prior commitments led historians to construct what Leinhardt and Young called a “historical read,” aninterpretation in which source material was filtered by and subsumed into larger theoreticalframeworks. The historical read was most evident when historians read a familiar document of their own choosing. However, when asked to step out of their specialization andread a document they had never seen, historians relied on more general problem solving
strategies, such as those identified in the study by Wineburg (1991).
In that study, three disciplinary-specific heuristics were identified: sourcing, or the actof considering the source of the document when determining its evidentiary value; corroboration, in which the details of one document are compared with those of another before
accepting such details as fact; and contextualization, the act of creating a spatial and temporal context for a historical event.
In particular, the theoretical conceptualization of this last heuristic, contextualizution,
was closely tied to-indeed limited by-the aim of the task: the reconstruction of a specificbattle on the eve of the American Revolution. But it is one thing to contextualize a discrete
event like a battle, that has a fixed beginning, an unfolding, and a clear end. It’s quite
another to contextualize a shift in zeitgeist or popular consciousness. This latter aim, central to understanding changing attitudes toward race in the mid-eighteenth century, requires

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the building of an abstract model that acknowledges competing ideas, broad shifts in opinion, and new ways of conceptualizing social phenomena. A desire to understand something
about this broader range of contexts led to the formation of this task.
Task Design
The overriding goal in task design was to construct a task that would, in the words of Ericsson and Smith ( 199 1, p. 1S), “capture superior performance under controlled conditions.”
To do so, more than three hundred documents were reviewed. The goal in selecting documents was to combine canonical texts (such as excerpts from the Lincoln/Douglas debates)with lesser-known documents that shed a different light on Lincoln’s views. Key documents from Lincoln’s contemporaries were also sought so that the final set of documents
would sample from the range of opinion on slavery and race in the mid- 1800s.
The seven documents included three from Abraham Lincoln, one from Stephen A. Douglas, and three from historical contemporaries (see Appendix). The three documents from
Lincoln spanned 21 years of his life. The earliest was composed when he was a 32-year-old
lawyer traveling up the Mississippi and writing a letter to a close friend; the second was his
rebuttal to Douglas in the first debate at Ottawa, Illinois; the third, written when Lincoln
was already president, came from a meeting with a group of free Blacks about establishinga colony in Central America. The other documents included Douglas’s opening statement
at Ottawa; statements from two religious racists, John Bell Robinson and John Van Evrie;and a statement from the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
Procedure
The two historians were taught the think-aloud procedure (Ericsson & Simon, 1984) using
an article on bees (“Busy as a Bee?‘) from the science section of the New York Times (July30, 1991). They were asked to read this passage out loud and to verbalize everything thatthey “heard themselves thinking.” For guidance, they were shown a list of six guidelines
for eliciting verbal protocols taken from Perkins (198 l), such as “say whatever’s on yourmind,” “don’t overexplain or justify, ” “don’t worry about complete sentences,” and so on.
Historians were instructed to read the historical documents with the broad goal of“understanding the light they shed on Lincoln’s views on race.” Each of the 7 documents
was printed on a separate sheet, with the source of the document appearing at the top. Historians read the documents in the same order but were allowed to go back to earlier documents at any time. During historians ’ “concurrent reporting” (cf. Ericsson & Simon, 1984;
Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995) my own comments were minimal, only reminding historians
to verbalize their thoughts when they fell silent. After each document, historians wereasked to give a “retrospective report” on anything else they remembered themselves thinking. Such retrospective reports are particularly susceptible to the criticisms of the thinkaloud method (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; but see also Ericsson & Simon, 1984). However,such reports offer insights into cognitive processes that are not provided by concurrent
reports alone (Robertson & Ericsson, 1988; Wineburg, 1991). During data analysis, a sep-

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aration was maintained between data elicited during the concurrent and retrospective
phases of the think-aloud ‘method.
Data Analysis
Data analysis sought to describe and draw relationships among the different kinds of cognitive processes engaged in by historians. Protocols were transcribed verbatim and analysis
was systematic. Analysis occurred in four stages.
Stage 1. Protocols were prepared by parsing them into “conceptual units.” A conceptualunit was defined as a unit of speech that focused on a single idea. A unit could be as short
as a few words (if a single thought was discernible) and as long as eight lines of the protocol. If an utterance exceeded eight lines, it was split into two units. Transcripts were prepared using an Apple Laser printer with a 1Zpoint typeface and a %-character carriage
return. This precision, which might be overwrought elsewhere, was necessary for insuringconsistency in applying decision rules for comparing the two protocols.
Stage 2. Protocols were systematically reviewed in order to create a coding scheme.
Rather than applying a pre-existing scheme, the goal here was the categorization of cognitive phenomena and a careful description of their features. Initially, protocols werereviewed inductively. Working hypotheses were developed, checked, refined, and rechecked in subsequent reviews. In this type of analysis, rigor is achieved by the refinement,
addition and elimination of codes, so that the surviving codes bear theoretical significancebut never stray far from the empirical data at hand.
Stage 3. Three broad codes were used to characterize each conceptual unit. When a single unit straddled more than one code, only the dominant code, following Waem (1980),
was assigned.

These comments were self-referential statements that addressed aspects of the historians’
beliefs, personal views, or opinions. These included metacognitive comments that pointed
to aspects of confusion, emerging understanding, or the formulation of plans. Also coming
under this category were comments addressing affective responses evoked by the texts.
Text
This code embraced comments that made reference to the explicit and implicit meanings of the text. These included comments about literal meaning (e.g., the establishment ofbasic causal connections, the decoding of anaphoric references, etc.) as well as comments
at an interpretative level (e.g., a narrowing the range of textual meanings or speculating
about what historical actors meant or intended).
Context
Comments coded as contexl were devoted to the establishment of a textual “world” tomake the text intelligible. Six sub-codes were generated to capture the distinct aspects ofthis category (a full coding scheme, along with decision rules, is available from the author):EXPERT/EXPERTSTUDY325

Spatio-temporal comments focused on the physical location of events and of humanbeings set against concrete geographical settings. Such comments related to the temporalsequence or chronology of events linked in time. Comments about a “mental picture” ofevents or seeing something in the “mind’s eye” also came under this code.
Social-rhetorical comments related to the social demands of situations in which actors
sought to persuade others of their points of view. Under this category came comments thatfleshed out an intellectual and ideological landscape in which people in the past wrote andspoke.
Biographic comments focused on the life histories of individuals, the events that shaped
their personal thinking and behavior, their characteristic modes of response, and the kindsof beliefs that framed their conceptual universe.
Historiographic comments made reference to the body of historical writing (the “secondary literature”) about the past.
Linguistic comments addressed the historical meanings of words, terms, and phrases,
including speculations about the range of meanings that differ from contemporary connotation and denotation.
Analogical comments sought to explain past events or behavior by drawing explicit
comparisons to other historical periods.
A second rater blind to the identity and backgrounds of the historians coded the protocols using the three general codes, yielding an acceptable reliability, Cohen’s K = .86.
Another rater coded contextual comments applying the six sub-codes, Cohen’s K = .84.
Stage 4. During this final stage, protocols were coded for other cognitive behaviors.
These codes were independent from the codes specified under Stage 3. Two phenomena
were identified for coding: (1) intertextual linkages, in which historians made explicit reference to previous documents read in the set; and (2) the specification ofignorance. This
construct referred to instances when historians explicitly acknowledged confusion,
expressed puzzlement or wonder, asked questions, or specified gaps in knowledge. Unlike
the coding scheme from Stage 3 (which was applied only to concurrent reporting data), theapplication of these codes included data from both concurrent and retrospective phases.
Interrater agreement was tested with a second rater: a 100% agreement was reached forintertextual linkages; 96% for the specification of ignorance.
III.

RESULTS
LengthThe two protocols differed in length. Hl spent approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes reading the documents in comparison to H2’s 1 hour and 50 minutes. The difference in numberof words uttered was also considerable: 5073 words for Hl versus 2992 for H2.
Types of Contexts
Protocols were coded according to the three categories of Self, Text, and Context. A Chisquare analysis yielded significant differences between the two protocols, x2 (2) = 16.03,

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p c .Ol. For Hl, there were 105 conceptual units. Se&accounted for 9% (9) of conceptual
units, Text 30% (32 units), and Context 61% (or 64 units). For H2, there were 77 total conceptual units. H2’s respective percentages were 18% (14 units) Self, 51% (39) Text, and
31% (24 units) Context. These differences reflected several expected results: I-I2 more
often than Hl raised questions about his knowledge and monitored his own confusion(Self); Hl brought more background knowledge to the task, which provided him with moreresources for building a context.
This pattern carries over to the distribution of comments categorized as Context: 61% of
Hl’s comments fall under context, while only 31% of H2’s do. Contextual comments were
further coded using the six sub-codes. Figure 1 shows the relative frequency of the different types of contextual comments.
The greatest differences occurred in the categories of Social-Rhetorical and Biographic
context. These findings reflect an essential difference in the kinds of intellectual resources
historians brought to this task. H2 lacked the key ingredient, factual knowledge about Lincoln, that would allow him to build a biographic context. On the other hand, the task provided him with raw materials for creating a social-rhetorical context. The document set
itself included an array of social and rhetorical genres-a campaign debate, a personal letter, a newspaper editorial, a public address, and so on-that allowed H2 to draw on related
knowledge about these discourse forms in public and private life.
Although Figure 1 shows the relative frequency of contextual comments, it does notaddress differences in kind. Table 1 addresses this by juxtaposing examples from each of
the two protocols.
In the example from the category of Spatio-temporal context, H2 draws on knowledgeof other periods in the history of the Americas (and the role of climate on Europeans’ New
World ventures) to bring texture to Lincoln’s plan for a Central American colony. On theother hand, Hl’s comments zero in on his extensive knowledge of this event, which heplaces in a micro-chronological sequence that takes into account the desolation of theUnion Army after Bull Run, the deliberations by Lincoln and his advisors about the timingof the Emancipation Proclamation, and the effects on Lincoln of the bloodiest day of thewar, the Battle of Antietam, which left 22,000 dead and wounded in its wake.
A similar pattern in the specificity of comments is evident in Biographic context. H2’scomments indicate some knowledge about Lincoln’s concerns about emancipation, buteven here his knowledge is overshadowed by what he doesn’t know. On the other hand,
Hl’s comments, in this instance a comment about abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s
struggles with his son, show intimate familiarity with key figures of this time. Hl’s othercomments in this category often spoke to issues of character-people’s idiosyncrasies andmannerisms, their ways of navigating the social world. For example, when reading Document C, Hl commented on Lincoln’s description of slaves bound together “like so manyfish upon a trot-line” (C.5). The image provoked Hl’s comment about Lincoln’s characteristic use of words:
It has always interested me about this passage how precise Lincoln is in describing asmall iron clevis. He doesn’t even say they were chained or anything . . . . People whorode the circuit with [Lincoln] as judges . . . the judges and lawyers would ride from one

TABLE 1
Examdes of Historians’ Contextual Comments
Spatio-Temporal
Lincoln’saddresson Colonization delivered to o group of freed Black men at the White House on
August 14, 1862. (D.4) It is interesting, that Lincoln is, although he has decided on Emancipation, and, as you know, his Cabinet persuaded him to wait until you win a victory. The North was
losing battles. Lee and Stonewall Jockson, the second battle of Bull Run and all the rest of it werereally the biggest victories the South ever won, I suppose right there, before the middle ofAugust, 1862. And it was Seward I think who was SecretoF/ of State who said, lookie, if you
issue an Emancipation Proclamation now it’s going to seem a lost gasp, death-bed repentanceand all of that, you’re about out. Wait until you’ve won a victory. And so the Battle of Antietam
which was militarily sort of a draw, it was enough of a victory. . . and it did stop the invasion of
the North for the moment. [Hl]The country is a very excellent one for any people (D.10) ‘Any people’ except Europeans who died
there in great numbers. Europeans were much more successful thriving in the more moderate
climates, North American, obove Mexico, South America away from the tropical zones. So it
amuses me when he says this country is “a very excellent one for any people.” [H2]Social-Rhetorical
Then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republicon party. Who are in favor of the citizenship of the
Negro. (A.5) OK. My reaction so far is that this probably expresses Douglas’s view. That’s his realviews, and that he is appealing to his audience. Many of his audience probably share this view.
So I don’t think Douglos had to distort his view-l think his views fit in with the views of a lot of
people in his audience. [Hl]
Lincoln’s address on Colonization delivered to a group of freed Black men at the White House on
August 14, 1862. (D.4) It’s important that the audience is a group of free Black men. One would
assume that he would say things differently to them than to others. Although, maybe not. [H2]
Biographic
Garrison . . . worked for a shorf time OSthe assistant editor of the Genius before beginning his own
anti&very
periodical in 1831. (F.2) What I was thinking about was an incident. . . [about] Garrison and his son, in about 1870 or 71. Garrison’s son, who hod fought in the Civil War, wos an
editor of The Nation magazine. The Nation was started in 1865, the magazine that is still going
now, started in 1865 . . . . Garrison’s son and The Nation had taken the position that there wasso much corruption in the Reconstruction governments that they should be given up, and Garrison and his son had debated this between themselves for some time . . . . (The son] said [to thefather] there is no need for us to talk about this anymore, we are on exactly opposite sides. He
said, we modern people realize, he says, you keep harping bock to this old issue, we modern
people reolize that corruption is the big issue. [Hl]He belongs to an inferior rote and must alwoys occupy an inferior position. (A.1 3) I don’t know asmuch obout Lincoln’s views as I think I do. As I read it and see Douglas, perhaps putting words
in Lincoln’s mouth, I’m not quite sure about what I do and don’t know about Lincoln. . . . I knowthat [Lincoln was] very practically aware of the concerns of bringing them together OS if they
were equal in the same society. But I don’t know enough about Lincoln’s views to, maybe, mokesome other judgments I’ve been moking. [HZ]Historiographic
In the right to eat the bread which his own hond earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, ond the equal of every living man. (B.9) A staunch critic of Lincoln has cited this passage as
example of Lincoln’s sort of two-facedness. . . And that’s what Richard Hofstadter did in his
book The American Politico/ Tradition published in 1948. Hofstodter, I think, later changed his
views about that. [Hl]continued

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TABLE 1
Contiued
Betweenthese extremes of humanity ore the intermediofe races (G.2) I’m reminded here about Winthrop Jordan’s (1968) book White over Block, ond how the colors come to be important for
English-speaking people. The color of block, the color of white, and what those entoiled psychologically apart from race and people, but [what] the colors themselves had meant. [HZ]
linguistic
If we deal with those Negroes. . .whose intellects ore clouded by slavery, we have very poor materials
to start with. (D.6) I think, it’d be interesting, one woy is to criticize from today’s standpoint, thereally sort of historical way, would be to see whether there were ony abolitionists at the time,
you see . . . [who] soy it differently. And I think whot we’ve found out in recent studies of abolitionists is that many of them thought of it the very same way. [Hl]1, as well as judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.
(8.5) I’m going bock and rereading the sentence. These 191h-century orators spoke in more
complicated sentences. They weren’t used to sound bites. I’m wondering what he means byphysical difference--if it’s simply the color or there are mental traits that he’s thinking about,that he also hos in mind when he refers to “physical differences”? [H2]

If we deol with those Negroes who ore not free at fhe beginning, and whose intellects are clouded byslavery, we hove very poor moteriols to star! with. (D.6) Agoin, one might picture that from thepresent doy standpoint as, kind of racist kind of statement. . . . One might make the some kind ofstatement today, I mean when one observes in the countries of Eastern Europe hying to adopt toa sort of a free market, and a free politico1 processes. , . . People who’ve not hod experience.
.
in doing this, one can’t expect that right off they’re going to be oble to do this right away. [Hl]
How true it is that God renders the worst of human conditions tolerable. (C.8) His point that “Godrenders the worst of human conditions tolerable” makes sense in that context. It’s an insight into
human nature that’s been confirmed by a lot of others. One example that comes to mind is
Alexander Solshenietzen writing about Siberia ond how, like the camps in Siberia for Soviet prisoners, you get to find out what is structured ond defined rewards in that misery. And that’s what
I’m reminded of. [HZ]

place to another, and Lincoln would be riding on in a buggy, so there’s plenty of time
to talk and they’d see a tree and they’d all agree that that’s a beautiful tree, but then it
would always be Lincoln, “Well now what does its beauty consist in? Does its beauty
consist in its form? Does it consist in its color? Does it consist in the location of the tree,
or what? And this comes up several times. People comment on that Lincoln always
seemed to be trying to get to the heart of the matter. . . Not only when he’s president,
but even before he’s president. Frequently when Lincoln has said something it’s reallynot possible-at least I’ve never found it possible-to say what he said in fewer words
than he said it. He had boiled it down right to the essence.
H2’s characterizationof Lincoln here is consistent with other historians’ descriptions.
Wills (1992) notes that Lincoln frequently discussed philology with his personal secretary(and later Secretaryof State under McKinley)John Hay. Lincoln’s

been studied by students of oratory for their balanced
perhaps hyperbolically,
the 16th president,

Lincolnscholar McPherson

speeches

have longrhythm and elegant structure.

And,(199 1) titled one of his essays about“How Lincoln Won the War With Metaphors.”

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Overview of the Two Readings
Hl’s Reading
Although Hl asked several questions in the course of his reading, his protocol is anextended elaboration of views he first laid out during Document A, Douglas’s speech at
Ottawa. Here Douglas imputes to Lincoln the belief of God-given equality between theraces, the notion that the slave “was endowed with equality by the Almighty and that no
human law can deprive him of these rights” (@ Document A, line 9, or A.9). At this earlystage in the reading, Hl gave an overview of issues upon which the whole task pivoted:
Lincoln accepted that slavery was the law of the land and was on record that he wasn’t
going to use force to try to change that law of the land, and so long as slavery existed by
the Constitution, Lincoln would support it. So it depends a good bit on what “no humanlaw can deprive him of these rights”-precisely
what that means . . . Lincoln certainly
over and over stated [the centrality] of the Declaration of Independence, just as Douglassaid, and he stated [it] frequently. . . . That in the “view of God” Blacks were equalLincoln right off-it doesn’t sound like Lincoln would put it that way.
Here, then, is a telegraphic look at the nexus of issues that influenced Lincoln’s views
about slavery: Hl focuses on the relationship between the language of the Declaration of
Independence, the constraints of the Constitution, the concept of natural rights (or what “nohuman law can deprive him of these rights” means), and whether or not God figures into
Lincoln’s public position on slavery and emancipation.
It is easy to get lost in this swirl of issues. To modern ears, it would seem that if one subscribed to the proposition that “all men are created equal” (a common but overly-simplified
distillation of the Declaration of Independence) the abrogation of slavery would automatically follow. However, in the 1850s these issues were more complicated than they mightseem now. Although some commentators have viewed Document B as contradictory to
Lincoln’s other public statements (hence Hl’s reference to historian Richard Hoftstader
under Historiogruphic Context in Table l), Hl sees it instead as “reflective of the complexity of Lincoln’s position” (@B .9).
A close examination of Lincoln’s response shows aspects that are easily overshadowed
by its charged language. Indeed, as Hl pointed out, the only thing Lincoln is willing to concede unequivocally to Douglas is that there is a “physical difference between the tworaces.” From then on, Lincoln equivocates. Regarding moral or intellectual endowment,
there is “perhaps” a difference, Lincoln says. This “perhaps,” a qualification typicallymissed by contemporary readers, is crucial, for even to raise the possibility that the races
were morally and intellectually equivalent must be viewed against the backdrop of midnineteenth century racism (Fredrickson, 1971, 1975). As Wills notes (1992, p. 96) theagnosticism signaled by “perhaps” constituted the “liberal” position of the day. Whatmight appear to modem readers as a bit of preciosity was to Lincoln and his contemporaries a distinction full of implication. Because it is difficult to imagine a world in such agnosticism would be viewed as “progressive,” modern readers tend to view Lincoln’sstatements as contradictory and inconsistent, or worse-hypocritical and self-serving.

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STUDY

After this point in the task, Hl’s reading was largely an amplification
The most complete

statementof earlier themes.

of his views, a place where his think-aloudcadence and rhythm of a university

lecture, came at Documentof slavery offered by John Bell Robinson.

In his retrospective

took on theE, the religious justification
report, Hl comparedLin-coln’s position to Robinson’s:
Lincoln never connects religion and slavery. In fact, in his Second Inaugural that is the
big contrast that he draws, where he says that, in this contest, it’s now nearing its end,
it’s March, 1865. Both sides read the same Bible, both sides pray to the same God. Hesays it may seem strange that any people should pray to God to justify an institution likeslavery. Clearly, I think, to Lincoln, it seems strange, but then, characteristically, in Lincoln’s way, he says “let us not judge so that we be not judged.” It seems to me that’s theone time that I can think of where Lincoln mentions God in relation to slavery, and theassumption is that it is absurd for people to pray to God to justify human slavery. Thatis the characteristic Lincoln view, and he even goes further when he suggests in the following sentence or so that it may very well be that God is not on either side. Seems tome that’s the real insight of Lincoln which I’m not sure I’ve seen equaled anywhere. It
would be beautiful if we could incorporate that in our foreign policy. . . . When two people are quarreling one may sympathize with one side but that’s not to say that it’s totallyright versus total wrong there, and that we shouldn’t say that God is on our side. That’s
not for us to say. And it may very well be that there are a lot of conflicts that God is noton either side. Now that seems to be a degree of detachment, that’s the characteristic
about Lincoln that I’m so struck by: the detachment. In the midst of fighting a hard war,
I mean people can be detached if they didn’t care who won the war, and there were people like that, and certainly they were detached, but to fight a hard fight, as hard as anybody, and then be able to be detached at the end and say we must not assume that God
is on our side. I don’t think [God] is on their side, because I don’t think that God would
support slavery, but that’s not to say that God is on our side. And that seems to me to besuch a great degree of detachment that I’m not sure anybody can go beyond it.
H2’s Reading
H2 confronted
document,

his lack of knowledge

almost immediately.

At the third sentence of the firsthe made this admission:

As I read this and see Douglas perhaps putting words in Lincoln’s mouth, I’m not quite
sure about what I do and don’t know about Lincoln. Douglas makes it sound as if Lincoln believes they’re equal, Blacks and Whites, on virtually every level, but I don’tknow to what extent Lincoln did or did not believe that. I know that he was very practically aware of the concerns of bringing [the races] together as if they were equal in thesame society at this point, but I don’t know enough about Lincoln’s views to make someother judgments I’ve been making. (QA.3)
In the next document,

Lincoln’s

rebuttal of Douglas, Lincoln states that he has “no pur-pose to introduce political and social equality” between the races. At this point (aB.4) II2
paused: “Just rereading the sentence again. Again trying to think about how Douglas’s
statement

about Lincoln

thinking

the two were equal could have some truth if it falls out-side the realm of what Lincoln identifies(@BS), H2 stopped again:

as political and social equality.”

A sentence later

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332

I’m going back and rereading the sentence. These nineteenth-century orators spoke inmore complicated sentences. They weren’t used to sound bites. I’m wondering what hemeans by “physical difference.” If it’s simply the color or are there mental traits thathe’s thinking about, that he also has in mind when he refers to “physical differences”?

At the end of the document, H2 focused on the question of natural rights and what theymight mean with reference to slavery:
If Blacks have the “natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” onewould assume that liberty and pursuit of happiness would indicate that they cannot beslaves at the same time. Similarly, if Blacks have the “right to eat the bread which his
own hand earns,” that they have the right to the product of their labor, that is the pursuitof happiness or liberty, one form or the other, then if that is a natural right then slavery
goes against those natural rights. (@B.S)

but did not try to dissolve it. Over the
next five documents his reading can be thought of as a prolonged exercise in the specification ofignorance, in which he made a careful accounting of the knowledge he would need
before he could reach judgment. His stance here bears uncanny similarity to the protocols
of historians collected by Leinhardt and Young (1996, esp. p. 465). Across Documents CH, H2 asked, on average, 4.2 questions per document, underscoring what he did not know
with markers such as “I don’t have enough to go on” or “This makes no sense to me.”H2’s process of asking questions came to a head at Document E, the statement fromJohn Bell Robinson. Robinson’s religious racism posed a contrast to Lincoln’s views, but
the precise nature of this contrast was not immediately apparent. The differences only cameinto focus, slowly and painstakingly, as H2 backtracked to earlier documents. By the endof Document E, H2’s questions started to take shape. His comments at this point, withnotations that indicate links to previous documents, appear in Figure 2.
H2’s point of departure as he backtracked to earlier documents was John Bell Robinson’s claim that God ordained Africans to their status as slaves. The first link backward
was to Lincoln’s response to Douglas (Document A), in which Lincoln focused on physicaldifferences between the races and issue of natural rights. H2 finds no mention, however, of
God in Lincoln’s response. From here, in link 2, the historian searched for Lincoln’s connection between slavery and God. This search brought him back again to Document A(@A.S), a statement in which Douglas imputes to Lincoln the belief that “Negro equality
is guaranteed by the laws of God, and that it is asserted in the Declaration of Independence.”
From Douglas’s claims, H2 moved to Lincoln’s response (link 3), which connects the
Declaration of Independence to issues of emancipation but makes no explicit reference toGod. In link 4, H2 pinpointed a place in Lincoln’s letter to Mary Speed in which slaves andGod are explicitly linked, a linkage which gave him a basis for comparing Lincoln’s views
to John Bell Robinson’s. It is at the next link, the fifth, that we see a conscious act of refinement in H2’s understanding. He returned for the third time to Document B, raising questions about the nature of natural rights and where these rights might come from according
to Lincoln.
H2 called attention

to this apparent contradiction

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STUDY

Link 0 Link 7 Llnk 6 Link 6 Link 4 Link 3 Link 2 Link 1 start-

John Boll
RobinsonDocument E

Figure2.

Lincoln’s
addrem oncolonlmtlon
DocumentD

Lincoln’s Mtor

to Marysped
DOCUt?WltC

Ottawa dob8t.z
Llncokl’s reply
to Douglas
DoamentB

Ottawa dobate
Douglas’8
ot=W
Statomont

Retrospective report for HZ after reading Document E

Lincoln also talks about Blacks being endowed with certain things from God, but “usefulness as
slave&or a status of slaves isn’t one of the things that he mentions. [I’m going to] look at someof the earlier [documents]. What I’m looking for is his discussion [ofl the physical difference
between the two and his discussion of natural rights [to] see if he links those at all to God.‘.@ It
was Dough’”
who linked Lincoln to believe about the Negro to God and the Declaration of
Independence. But in this,3.B in Lincoln’s reply, he refers-I’mlooking here for reference toGod-I’m
not finding it but I haven’t finished yet, he refers to the Declaration of Independence.
But in the letter to Mary Speed 4.c he did say “how true it is that God renders the worst of humanconditions tolerable.” But God didn’t render slavery a condition that Blacks ought to findthemselves in, according to Lincoln. Lincoln keeps going out of it in these things, he talks about
the Declaration of Independence,5.B he talks about natural rights-I’m
not sure where thesecome from in his mind-andhe talks about natural differences. But he does not bring God into itother than to say that God makes, God allows people to make the worst of human conditions
tolerable.6.C And that’s a form of mercy, not of any kind of restriction on their status or behavior.
What I thought, Douglas’” has accused Lincoln of saying that Blacks had equal rights from the
Declaration of Independence and God. Lincoln didn’t say that in these things. [He didn’t say]anything about God, just the Declaration of Independence*.’ and natural rights, wherever thosecome from.

Nore. +Denotes the starting place for the reading. The words in quotation marks arefrom the current document being read. 0 Numbers refer to the order of links to otherdocuments; letters refer to the document being referenced.

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In returning to Document D in link 6, I-I2 came to view the letter to Mary Speed as acounter to John Bell Robinson. Lincoln connects God and slavery in the Speed letter inorder to stress the common humanity of all peoples, not to restrict slaves’ status or behavior. When H2 returned to Stephen Douglas’s claims in link 7, he was now in a position to
dispute them. H2’s final link, his eighth, brought him back for the third time to Lincoln’s
speech at Ottawa. H2 sees that even in justifying his position against slavery, Lincoln
leaves God out of the equation, appealing instead to the natural rights enumerated in the
Declaration of Independence.
In the course of this zigzagged comment, H2 came to understand that while Robinson
appeals to God to justify slavery as a lower form of manhood, Lincoln appeals to God toconnect the races in common humanity. Through this intertextual weave, he learned that
Lincoln justifies the equality of the races, not by appealing to God, but by appealing to thenatural rights in the Declaration of Independence, a reinterpretation so sweeping that Wills(1992) called it the “Second American Revolution.” Although H2 started off the task confused and full of questions, he ended up with a sophisticated understanding of Lincoln’s
position that brought him by the task’s end to an interpretation similar to where his more
knowledgeable counterpart, Hl, began.
Specification of Ignorance
The protocols of the two historians were coded for instances of the specification of ignorance. There were 21 instances for H2 versus 7 for Hl, 2 = -2.02, p < .OS, Wilcoxon
Signed Ranks Test.
The nature of each historians’ specification of ignorance reflected similar patterns fromother parts of the protocol. Hl’s questions demonstrated the specificity and depth of someone who has spent a career studying this time period; each query responded to a particulardetail in the documents with no conceptual linkage among the 7 instances. On the other
hand, H2’s questions echoed one other until the point when they came together in an interpretive outline (see Figure 2). The difference in how these historians specified what they
did not know is illustrated in Table 2, a point in the task when both responded to the samephrase.
For IX!, Lincoln’s use of the phrase “capable of thinking like White men” is “baffling,”
one which he has to “think about” twice within this short comment. Even then, I-I2
expressed doubt about whether he had enough to go on. In contrast, Hl immediately characterized the phrase as an unfortunate choice of words by Lincoln, who used the term
“White men” here as a synonym for “free men.” Hl then laid out different criteria for judging Lincoln, “present day standards” and the “historical way.” By “present day standards,”
Lincoln lays himself “open to criticism.” But a different problem faces the historian who
wants to contextualize Lincoln. If, in Lincoln’s world, the word “white” was synonymouswith “free,” then Lincoln can hardly be blamed for using a phrase whose meaning wasapparent to him and his contemporaries. But how would we know if this interpretation wascorrect? Hl’s comment shows us in small compass how historians both formulate hypotheses and propose ways of verifying them. Hl proposed a search of the literature of abolitionists to see if they, too, used this phrase, a fact that would “weaken the historical

EXPERT/EXPERTSTUDYTABLE2.
Comparisonof Historians’Commentsat “Capable of Thlnking like White Men”
Hl

H2

Clearly I think, from the present day standards“Capoble of thinking like White men.” This is ahe’s open to criticism by bringing color into it,
baffling stotemem. I have to think about it. I“capable of thinking as free men,” see that’s
want to read it over again. Cleorly the condiwhat we want, it’s not whether they’re Whitetion of slavery in his mind has clouded theiror not. . . I think he meant free men. Not those
thinking. It’s give him, given the nation’s poor
who have been systematically oppressed, andmaterials with which to work. Poor materials
I think in his view, he just automatically--he’s
for whot? For the nation to work with? I’m notnever seen White men enslaved. Now White
quite sure. . . . “Capable of thinking like Whitemen have been enslaved in various parts ofmen”? Does that mean that they have never
the world, but he had never seen it. So hebeen enslaved or that they are so far from slaequated White with free, Black with slaves. Itvery that they don’t think as if they hove everwould be interesting--one way would be to
been slaves? I’ve got to read it again. I thinkcriticize him from today’s standpoint. But the
too much hos been taken out of it for me toreally sort of historical way, would be to see
appreciate exactly what’s going on in thatwhether there were any abolitionists at theparagraph. I don’t quite understand the contime, you see. . . [who] say it differently. And I
text; I’m a little confused. But clearly, the idea
think what we’ve found out in recent studies ofthat if we can start with Blacks who haven’t
abolitionists is that many of them thought of it
been enslaved, we’re starting with betterthe very same way. That is, there were abolimaterials. People who perhaps haven’t hadtionists who were ‘mcists,” who thought inideas of self-government and self-support
terms of Whites free, Blacks slaves. So thatbeaten out of them by slavery. But I’m not surewould dull--if that’s the case--that would dull,
if the idea is to take these better materials tounless we had people at Lincoln’s time whosome other place, Africa or Centrol America,
didn’t make the same error as I would call it
or if he wants to send the defective materials
that Lincoln made--it would weaken the hisoverseas to these colonies. I’m not quite sure
torical criticism of Lincoln. You can certainly
what’s going on. Obviously making an appeal
criticize Lincoln from today’s standpoint. Fromto the free Black audience that they’re thetoday’s standpoint he should have known betones who ought to be leading the way. Whichter.
makes the most sense? I’m not sure.

criticism of Lincoln.” In this example, Hl not only specifies his ignorance but lays out anaction plan for remedying it.
Intertextual Links

The two historians differed in the number of times they referred back to previous documents.
Hl made 3 intertextual links versus 20 links for H2, Z = -1.8, p = .06, Wilcoxon Signed
Ranks Test. During the initial part of the task, neither historian looked back frequently to earlier documents. Across Documents B-D, Hl had 1 link, H2 had 2. However, at Document E,
I-I2 made 9 links (8 that appear in Figure 2). I-I2 made another 9 links over the final two documents, an indication of his attempt to create a context within the task itself.
IV.

DISCUSSION

This study offers different images of historical expertise (see Table 3). In many respects,
Hl resembled the sure-footed experts from other domains. For him, these documents acti-

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vated broad associations and extensive declarative knowledge that let him situate documents in an web of chronologically ordered events -sometimes down to the sequence ofdays within a specific month of the Lincoln presidency. At other times the documents provoked seemingly ready-made interpretations, points when the think-aloud took on the quality of a “profess-aloud.”
Hl’s protocol exemplifies the range of ways that historians create historical contextsways that go beyond simple notions of situating events in time and space. From Hl’s protocol, we learn how an understanding of the Lincoln-Douglas debates is enriched byknowledge of the life history of Abraham Lincoln and his own development as a thinker.
Further, we see the pivotal role played by the establishment of a linguistic context, the recognition that words themselves have histories that must be considered before rushing tojudgment or condemnation (cf. Olson, 1994). We see also how the reading of history takes
place against the backdrop of its own interpretative history. When Hl invoked the historian
TABLE 3
Features of Expertise as Displayed by Two Historians
H2

Hl

AspectReading Time165 minutes

110 minutes

Definition of Key Issues

4 minutes into task

43 minutes into task

Specification of Ignorance

Lincoln’s views re: slavery
Major difference in stancerevolve around conflicts
between Lincoln and religious
between enacted law (Constimcists-while
each appeals
tution), natural law (as set
to God, they do so for opposite
down in Dec. of Indepenreasons. Lincoln’s argument
dence), and Divine Law.
for emancipation springs fromhis interpretation of naturalrights.
7 instances
2 1 instances

Confexf Creation

Nature of Expertise

Each in response to specific tex- Pattern of linked questions thattual details with minimal conled to search strategy within
ceptual linkage between
document set. Question asking
questions; explicit strategy ofas key to formation of new
hypothesis testing for resolving
interpretation.
textual questions.
Knowledge brought to task
General forms of context (e.g.,afforded creation of biographic
social-rhetorical) less depencontext; seamless interweoving
dent on specific topical inforof knowledge brought to task
mation; creation of intertextual
and associations spurred bycontext within task.
specific documents.
Encyclopedic knowledge of topic Ability to work through confusion,and its chronology, down toresist the urge to simplify, ond
the sequence of days within aregain intellectual footing
specific month of the Lincoln
despite major gaps in knowlpresidency. Extensive knowledge: in short, the ability toedge of familial texts OSwell as
develop new knowledge evenpositions of competing interwhen lacking many of the reqpretive schools.
uisite tools to do so.

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Richard Hofstadter (see Table 1) he shows how his own position results from an on-going
dialogue with a historiographic tradition. Finally, Hl’s protocol allows us to see how historians, when generating self-explanations (cf. Chi & Bassok, 1989), draw analogies withand comparisons to other historical periods.
In fact, over the course of his reading, Hl drew twice as many analogies (4) as H2. Thismay be one way that historical expertise differs from expertise in other domains. In science, for example, there is some indication that the tendency to create analogies varies
inversely with knowledge about the target phenomena (Dunbar, in press). Here, at least, thetrend went the other way: it was the more knowledgeable historian who made more frequent comparisons to other time periods.
The protocol of the second historian, H2, shines a different light on the reading of history. Here, the historian was thrown into unfamiliar territory and, at least initially,
responded with confusion. Yet, as he worked through the task, H2’s questions began tocluster around a set of constructs and relationships that proved crucial to his understanding.
Despite early stumbling, H2’s adaptive expertise was evident by the task’s end, when aninterpretative structure that made sense of these issues came into view. Even with major
gaps in background knowledge, H2 succeeded in creating a context to explain this diverse
collection of texts.
The creation of context lies at the heart of historical expertise, forming the foundation
upon which sound historical readings must rest. In examining the protocols of theseexperts, we are able to surface the very elements that are often hidden in historical monographs: the fits and starts that precede the emergence of an interpretation, the seams that
hold together discrete and seemingly contradictory pieces of text. On encountering such aneclectic group of texts, the easiest thing a reader can do is to leave each text as is: each anisland unto itself, distanced from its neighboring texts by more than two decades, and separated from our own condition by gaps in time, geography, language, custom, manner, andhabit of mind. Creating coherence from this textual melange is a major cognitive achievement.
An important question in any study of expertise is how experts get to be that way. In thisregard, the present study offers little new, for, like other snapshot studies of expertise, itcannot address what is at base a developmental question. But the study of expertise mustalso address a second key question: How is it that experts keep learning? Why do they continue to get smarter from encounters with materials and situations that leave other problem
solvers unfazed (cf. Holyoak, 1991; Perkins & Saloman, 1989)?
Here, H2’s protocol offers intriguing clues. His zigzagged comments open a window tointerpretative processes typically eliminated from historians’ book-length manuscripts. By
following H2’s interpretative tracks, we see how his understanding emerges as a result ofa dialectical process between the questions he asks and the textual materials he encountered. Expert problem-solving has sometimes been depicted as a unidirectional process inwhich the knowledge-base of the expert is brought to bear on a particular problem. Here,however, the arrow goes in the other direction: Aspects of the textual case provoked, challenged, and altered the knowledge base of the expert (cf. Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991).

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Novice readers encounter the past in primary documents and judge it. II2 encountered thepast in this task and learned from it.
Indeed, the dialectical process of reading exemplified by H2 contrasts with how other
adult readers performed on this same task. In a previous study (Wineburg & Foumier,1994), 14 college history majors and non-majors, all enrolled in a program to becomeschool teachers, read these same documents. Although there was great variety in their
responses, two trends stood out. One group took Lincoln’s words at face value, as offering
direct access into Lincoln’s mind unmediated by issues of context or the passage of time.
They saw the documents written by others, e.g., those by John Bell Robinson or William
Lloyd Garrison, as contributing little to the conversation about Lincoln, since neither document mentioned the president directly. Other, more careful, readers recognized that theyneeded a context for Lincoln’s words. But rather than fashioning a context from the raw
materials provided by these documents, they selected a context from their contemporarysocial world.
In other words, faced with seeming incongruities in Lincoln’s position, these readers
appealed to an array of present social forms and institutions-speech writers, press conferences, spin doctors-which allowed them to harmonize discrepant information. In one
sense, they possessed sufficient background knowledge to form situation models from low
coherence text (cf. McNamara & Kintsch, 1996). but such models, while adequate forquick, everyday readings, fell far short of mature disciplinary understanding (cf. Winebtug, 1992; 1997). In such readings, Lincoln and Douglas become contemporaries in top
hats, much like characters from a James Michener novel who happen to dress funny but
whose behavior and mannerisms are those of our next-door neighbors.
The phenomenon of “presentism,” the act of viewing the past through the lens of thepresent, is not some bad habit we’ve fallen into, but is instead our psychological conditionat rest. If Lincoln seems to be saying two different things, it is because he is speaking to
two different audiences for, in our world, we know exactly why Bob Dole says one thing
to Kansas wheat farmers and another to New York City stock brokers. We resolve contradictions in Lincoln’s words by turning him into one of us.
I-I2responded differently to these textual contradictions. He assumed, at least as a working hypothesis, that the contradictions he detected in Lincoln may be rooted less in the 16th
president’s duplicity than in his own ignorance of the 19th-century. I-Es distrust in his
own sense-making abilities may be thought of as a domain-specific form of metacognition,
an imperative to read history differently from how we read ordinary expository or narrative
text. None of us can stop the spread of activation that occurs when we read certain wordsin this case, charged words about race. H2 reacted to these words with heightened affectjust as the college students referred to above. But what distinguished his reading was theability to step back from the first interpretation that came into view. His was a reading thatwas disciplined in both senses of the word: first, by showing restraint and self-awarenessin the face of the first ideas that popped into mind, and, second, in the academic sense ofword, by drawing skillfully on professional training that enjoins historians to identify andresist anachronism.

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I-I2brought to this task an awareness that words give rise to multiple interpretations, andthat the first one we think of may disclose more about ourselves than the people we are trying to understand. When I-I2 says in Document B that he does not know “what Lincoln’ssaying,” he does not mean that he can’t figure out the words in the text, but somethingbroader and more encompassing: that he does not understand a world into which a wholesegment of the population was born into slavery, a world in which a trip to the market could
result in the purchase of human beings. Oppression exists in as many varieties as ever, but
the institution of slavery and its accompanying commercial arrangements are difficult tofathom today. In that sense, a chasm separates us from Abraham Lincoln, and before we
can understand his views, we must enter into what Lowenthal (1985; 1989) has called a“foreign country.” It is an approach to reading history that underscores its strangeness,rather than its continuity, with today (Wineburg, 1997).
But what about Hl? Is he not a virtual resident of the 186Os, so steeped in these events
that he can array them with a precision that few of us can equal with events in our own
present? Indeed, for much of his protocol this seemed the case. But his comments on thephrase “think like a White man” (see Table 2) demonstrated that he is a resident of the 2Oth,
not the 19th, century.
Hl responded to this phrase by outlining a strategy of consulting the documentary
record to see if abolitionists also used the phrase “White men” as synonymous for “freemen.” Essentially, he recommended a textual strategy that first gained currency in the fieldof biblical hermeneutics: the notion that we can understand a word by examining all of its
textual occurrences, a method of reading that spurred the creation of the biblical concordance. Concordances are useful tools when one is separated from language as a living,breathing entity. Native speakers, however, don’t need them: they speak the language in its
own natural context. Hl remains an interloper in the world of the 1860s. Every now andthen, a nuance escapes him that signals that he is not a “native speaker.” He speaks the language of the 1860s but does so with a slight and sometimes undetectable accent.
The protocols of both historians shed light on the active processes of creating historicalcontexts, of piecing together into stories the bits of life that present themselves as artifacts
from another world. The word “creating” is used here deliberately. The process of establishing a historical context is misrepresented by notions of “placing” or “putting” Lincoln
into context, verb forms that conjure up images of jigsaw puzzles in which pieces are slotted into pre-existing frames. Context, from the Latin contexere, means to weave together,to connect strings in a pattern. The zigzagged weave of H2 or the problem-finding andsolving of Hl exemplify the active and creative processes that go into the formation of historical interpretations.
Radical constructivists might see license here for an approach of anything goes, a kindof Bacchanalian revelry of context creation run amok. But such an interpretation would be
misguided. While words may not “fix” or “determine” meaning they sure do constrain it.
If one reads Lincoln’s racial views as harsher than John Bell Robinson’s, closer to a van
Evrie than a Lloyd Garrison, it is a reading that is wrong, no matter what verbal somersaults or linguistic contortions that are offered. In this sense, an analogy can be drawn
between the act of cooking and the processes of historical interpretation. Elements of the340

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documentary record can be likened to ingredients in a kitchen. The culinary variations one
can produce with, say, flour, tomatoes, eggs, cheese, and salt-from pizza to pasta, toquiche and souffle-are endless. But if a group of cooks claimed they could produce ice
cream, meat loaf, or aspic from these same ingredients we would send them back to cooking school-or worse, recommend a psychiatric evaluation.
V.

CONCLUSION

In contrasting someone who has written books about the Civil War with someone who has
not, it is easy to lose track of just how much knowledge this second historian brought to thetask: H2 knew the general chronology and sequence of events, he could decipher major figures, he understood the antecedents and aftermath of the Civil War, and so on. However,H2’s factual knowledge is not what stood out. Once he became immersed in these documents, it was what he didn’t know that came to the fore: his way of asking questions, ofreserving judgment, of monitoring affective responses and revisiting earlier assessments,
his ability to stick with confusion long enough to let an interpretation emerge. It was how
he responded in the face of what he didn’t know that allowed him, in short, to learn something new.
What might we learn from such a reading that might help us become more thoughtful
about the teaching of history in schools? This question is more pertinent than it might
first seem. Although this study bears on the thought processes of historians, it is not thetaskfaced by historians. Historians do not go into the archive to find carefully excerpted
documents, serially presented, each with an explanatory sentence at the top. If anything,
this task resembles a format that many students face in a testing situation, such as theDocument-Based Question of the Advanced Placement examination (cf. Young & Leinhardt, 1998), in which students have 55 minutes to decipher how 7-9 documents speak
to a significant historical question. Emerging research on students’ ability to deal withsuch complexity (e.g., Carretero & Voss, 1994; Leinhardt, 1993; Paxton, 1997; Perfetti,
Britt, & Georgi, 1996; Rouet, Britt, Mason, & Perfetti, 1996; Spoehr & Spoehr, 1994;
Stahl, Hynd, Britton, McNish, & Bosquet, 1996; Voss, Wiley, & Kennet, in press;
Wineburg &KFoumier, 1994; see Wineburg, 1996, for review) shows how challenging
this task can be.
Only a fraction of the school children who study history ever go on to become professional historians. In that sense, our focus in history instruction has always been liberalrather than vocational. Particularly in high school and college, the history curriculum possesses the potential, often unrealized, to teach students how to sort through contradictory
information and come to reasoned conclusions (Gagnon, 1989; Boix Mansilla & Gardner,
1997; Wineburg & Wilson, 1988). Tests such as the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, which ask “What do our 17-year-olds know” (Ravitch & Finn, 1987), serve an
important function to be sure. But it may be students’ response in the face of complexitywhat they do when they don’t know-which holds the key to their continued learning fromthe world we call the past.

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Acknowledgments:
My thanks to Earl Butterfield, Allan Collins, Howard Gardner, Jim
Greeno, Gaea Leinhardt, Veronica Boix Mansilla, Susan Mosborg, David Olson, and Peter
Seixas for comments on a previous draft. This research was supported by a grant from the
Spencer Foundation, and that support is gratefully acknowledged.
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APPENDIX: SET OF DOCUMENTS USED IN STUDY
Document A
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate. ’ The two engaged in a series of seven public debates which attracted national attention.* Although Lincoln lost the election, he became widely known for his views on
slavery.3 The following is an excerptfrom Douglas’ address to Lincoln in theirfirst debate
at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858.4t
If you desire Negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State andsettle with the White man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to
make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to ajudge your rights, then support Mr.
Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the Negroa
For one, I am opposed to Negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made...by White men, for the benefit of White men and their posterity forever,and I am in favor of confining citizenship to White men, men of European birth anddescent, instead of conferring it upon Negroes, Indians and other inferior races.6
Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little abolition orators, who goaround and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of
Independence, that all men were created equal, and then asks how can you deprive a Negroof that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards to him.7 He andthey maintain that Negro equality is guaranteed by the laws of God, and that it is asserted
in the Declaration of Independence.* . . . I do not question Mr. Lincoln’s conscientious
belief that the Negro was made his equal, and hence his brother, but for my own part, I do
not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother’.... [Lincoln]holds that the Negro was born his equal and yours, and that he was endowed with equality
by the Almighty, and that no human law can deprive him of these rights”...Now, I do notbelieve that the Almighty ever intended the Negro to be the equal of the white man1 l.... For
thousands of years the Negro has been a race upon the earth, and during all that time, in all
latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to therace which he has there met.12 He belongs to an inferior race, and must always occupy an
inferior position.13 (from Lincoln, 1989, pp. 504-505).
Document B
From Abraham Lincoln’s reply to Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21,
1858.’
I will say here . . . that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.* I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I
have no inclination to do SO.~I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality
between the White and Black races.4 There is a physical difference between the two, whichin my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as344

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well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position.5 I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this,
there is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’s I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the White man.’ I agree with Judge
Douglas [that the Negro] is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps
not in moral or intellectual endowment.8 But in the right to eat the bread...which his own
hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living
manP (from Lincoln, 1989, p. 5 12)
Document C
Abraham Lincoln, writing in a letter to Mary Speed, a personal friend, September 27,
1841.’

By the way, a tine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect ofcondition upon human happiness2 A gentleman had purchased twelve Negroes in different
parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the Soum3 They were chained six andsix together.4 A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each so that the Negroes werestrung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-lines5 In this condition they werebeing separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers andmothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them, from their wives and children, andgoing into perpetual slavery . . . yet amid all these distressing circumstances . . . they werethe most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board.6 One, whose offense for which
he had been sold was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually;
and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day
to day.’ How true it is that “God renders the worst of human conditions tolerable . . T8
(document cited in Lincoln, 1989, p. 74).
Document D
Colonizationof freed Blacks was an idea proposed

Many Whites who opposed slavery actively advocatedearly in the nineteenth century.’colonization,

maintaining that true

freedom and equality could be realized only by relocating the Black popt~lation.~Abraham
Lincoln had long favored the idea, and, in 1862, a sum of money was appropriated by Congress to aid in a colonization program. 3 The following is from Lincoln’s ‘Address on Colonization” delivered to a group offree Black men at the White House on August 14, 1862.4
why. ..should the people of your race be colonized, and where?5 If we deal with those whoare not free at the beginning, and whose intellects are clouded by slavery, we have very poormaterials to start wim6 If intelligent colored men . . . would move in this matter, much might
be accomplished.7 It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable ofthinking as White men, and not those who have been systematically oppressed. . . .* The place
I am thinking about having for a colony is in Central America.’ . . . The country is a very

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excellent one for any people, and with great natural resources and advantages, and especiallybecause of the similarity of climate with your native land-thus being suited to your physicalcondition.” (from Lincoln, 1989, p. 368).
Document E
From Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery: Advantages of Negro Slavery & the Benefitsof Negro Freedom Morally, Socially, and Politically Considered by John Bell Robinson, aWhite pro-slavery spokesperson, Pennsylvania, 1863. ’
God himself has made them for usefulness as slaves, and requires us to employ them assuch, and if we betray our trust, and throw them off on their own resources, we reconvert
them into barbarians.2 Our Heavenly Father has made us to rule, and the Negroes to serve,
andifwe..
. set aside his holy arrangements for the good of mankind and his own glory,
and tamper with his laws, we shall be overthrown and eternally degraded, and perhaps
made subjects of some other civilized nation3 . . . . Colonization in their native land of all
the Negroes would be so nearly impracticable, that it will never be done, and no other spot
on this green earth will do for them.4 It would be the height of cruelty and barbarism tosend them anywhere else.5 If they could all be colonized on the coast of Africa, they would
fall back into heathenism and barbarism in less than fifty years6 (from Robinson, 1863, p.
42)
Document F
From an editorial by William Lloyd Garrison appearing in the Genius of Universal
Emancipation, February 12, 1830.’ Garrison (1805-1879) was a leading White abolitionist and worked for a short time as the assistant editor of the Genius before beginning his
own anti-slavery periodical in 1831 .2
I deny the postulate, that God has made . . . one portion of the human race superior toanother.3 No matter how many breeds are amalgamated-no matter how many shades ofcolor intervene between tribes or nations-give them the same chances to improve, and afair start at the same time, and the result will be equally brilliant, equally productive,
equally grand.4
Document G
From Negroes and Negro “Slavery: ” the First an Inferior Race, the Latter its Normal
Condition by John H. Van Evrie, M. D., Van Evrie, Horton & Co., New York, 1863.’
The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most superior, the latter themost inferior-and between these extremes of humanity are the intermediate races . . . .2
As color is the standard and the test of the specific character, revealing the inner nature
and actual capabilities of the race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physicalcondition of the individual.3 The highest health of the White man is distinguished by a pure

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and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs from this, his color is clouded and sallow;
while that of the Negro is marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is todirty brown, almost ash-color . . .4 Every one who practically understands the Negro,
knows that the strongest affection his nature is capable of feeling is love for his masterthat affection for wife, parents, or offspring, all sink into insignificance in comparison withthe strong and devoted love he gives to the superior being who guides, cares, and provides
for all his wants.5
tN~re. Material in italics was added at the beginning of the document for introductory
purposes and to provide bibliographic information.