Part of the rationale behind this assignment is for students to gain a better sense of how historians work as well as learn about the institution of slavery. College level organization, writing style, grammar, content, and originality are expected and will make up the final grade for the assignment. Students MUST receive approval of their document by the Professor at least two weeks prior to the due date. Failure to receive approval will result in automatic zero for the assignment. A primary source is a document or physical object which was written or created during the time under study.
Primary sources are the texts nearest to any subject of investigation.
The most common primary sources are written documents such as diaries, speeches, letters, official records, maps, and reports. But primary sources can also include photographs, painting, sculpture, architecture, oral interviews, statistical tables, and even geography. Such sources include, among other things, diaries, letters, newspapers, magazine articles, tape recordings, pictures, and maps. Such material may have appeared in print before, edited or unedited, and still be a source. The term is meant to be restrictive rather than inclusive, in that it attempts to indicate that works of secondary scholarship, or synthesis, are not sources, since the data have been distilled by another person.