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Reading and Writing Center

Folsom Lake College

History Reading Module

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History Reading Module: Writing Support for History or Political Science

In this module, you will learn strategies vital to historical reading. You will use these strategies for better reading comprehension. Remember, the more clearly you understand what you read, the better your writing will be. Many of these strategies will also help you read the assigned material for other classes. The reading assignment for this module is the module packet, followed by six readings in history or political science. Three of these six readings are chosen from primary historical sources (actual documents), three from secondary historical sources (writings of professional historians, based upon documents).

Directions

1. Read the handout, “History Reading: A Process Guide.” Annotate the handout. That is, take notes in the margin. Then discuss the Process Guide with a staff member. Please ask if you’re not sure how to take margin notes. 2. Since the Process Guide is lengthy, don’t try to read, annotate, and discuss it all at once. Take it in stages. Starting with “The Basic Unit: The Paragraph,” important sections of the Process Guide are marked in bold type, and listed on the signoff sheet at the end of the module. 3. As you finish reading each section, look over your annotations, then complete a “Comprehension Self-Assessment” page. Ask a staff member for these pages. 4. Read and discuss the Summary Checklist and “Is the Historical Work Relevant?” These papers are included in a separate packet. 5. For each historical reading you must: ● preview ● read and annotate ● complete a reading analysis sheet (ask for this from staff person)

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History Reading: A Process Guide (with examples from Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin)

Introduction: Tom Goff, Instructional Assistant, RWC Welcome to the Reading and Writing Center’s History Reading Module! This module, or mini-course, will help you teach yourself to read, understand, and interpret history. After working through the module, you will be able to read good history writing, and you will be able to write more effectively about history. When you complete the module, you’ll earn 1 unit of credit in ENGLB 71.

Here are some skills you’ll develop when you complete the module. You’ll be able to: ● Compare or contrast different historians’ ideas. Compare explanations of important past occurrences, inventions, discoveries, conflicts, and civilizations. ● Develop a sharp eye for patterns of organization. You’ll be able to recognize how historians organize their written thoughts so that the reader can more easily read, understand, and remember. ● Explain how important chains or sequences of events are related. If you can do this, you won’t have the feeling, when taking a history class, that the subject has been cut “into a ragbag of pictures and questions and isolated facts and dates,” as the writer Jacques Barzun says. History, according to Barzun, a French-born American historian, is past and present life. In an essay titled “Subjects Dead or Alive,” Professor Barzun writes with amusement of students who describe how a certain teacher in high school or college─Mr. X, Mrs. B─“made history come alive.” Barzun shows that these students aren’t aware how “life” got there. In fact, all that happened was that the teacher “knew [the] subject and taught it properly. All school subjects are full of interest. It is not the subject but the imagination of teacher and taught that has to be alive before the interest can be felt.”

“History, according to Jacques Barzun, is past and present life. It is up to you to find the life which exists in history. You must then analyze that life in terms your classmates can appreciate.”

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It is up to you to find the life, the interest which already exists in history. You must then describe, define, analyze that life in terms your history professor and your classmates can appreciate. To find that interest is very important. History has a poor reputation, because poor teachers spread the idea that history is all “dry dates and details.” But history can be magical. It is a subject full of great ideas and bold enterprises. Human progress is made, scientific quests are undertaken. Important ideas are discovered, inventions created. In more somber terms, wars are fought. Real blood is shed. Famine and misery torment and kill real people; these events are also history. Nevertheless, even these discouraging stories are meaningful. They are part of the historical knowledge an adult citizen needs to have, as all adults want to have a truthful understanding of life. If people think history is dry, they’ve missed an important secret. The secret is finding pattern, that organizing structure which frames details and supports the important ideas. Pattern gives the details a place to stay. Pattern also gives the details logic, energy, significance. When you read history, you will need to look for pattern. Pattern is used in history writing, as it is in an essay. Let’s review. You may know that an essay has an introduction leading to a topic and main idea, a body of supporting details, and a conclusion. Historical writing is like essay writing. Sections, chapters, and paragraphs of a good history book have the clear structure we expect from an essay. The structure holds together, even while we find that history is full of surprises, just as life is. But without pattern, we will find no clarity, no cohesion. For example, here’s one such surprise, narrated by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Six years before the lawyer Abraham Lincoln was elected president, he was part of a legal team arguing a patent case in court: Taking a first look at the tall man with an ill-fitting suit, a fellow team member, Edwin M. Stanton, said to another, in a whisper Lincoln probably could hear, that Lincoln was a “long armed Ape” who would “do *us+ no good.” Even so, Lincoln put aside whatever hurt feelings he had, stayed on the case, and listened closely to Stanton’s well-prepared speech in the courtroom. Now we’ll see pattern enter the picture. In a concise paragraph, Goodwin describes a later, second encounter between Lincoln and Stanton, which has surprising results:

“If people think history is dry, they’ve missed an important secret. This is the secret of finding pattern, that organizing structure which frames details and supports the important ideas.”

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Unimaginable as it might seem, after Stanton’s bearish behavior, at their next encounter six years later, [President] Lincoln would offer Stanton “the most powerful civilian post within his gift”─the post of secretary of war. Lincoln’s choice of Stanton would reveal…a singular ability to transcend personal vendetta, humiliation, or bitterness. As for Stanton, despite his initial contempt for the “long armed Ape,” he would not only accept the offer but come to respect and love Lincoln more than any person outside of his immediate family. The effects of this surprise were felt by the nation as well as by Lincoln and Stanton. Serving in Lincoln’s Cabinet, Stanton immediately supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, a document which freed many slaves. But surprises by their nature are unpredictable. Success in one area may actually lead to failure in another. For example, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which followed it, freed the enslaved black Americans, only to lead them (after Lincoln’s death) into unemployment, segregated schools, and violent attacks from the Ku Klux Klan. In history, we follow the story wherever the story leads; and yet the stories are as clear as the plots of the movies we see, which means they have patterns we can trace. To understand a historian’s pattern of organization is to understand what kind of story you’re being asked to follow. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension Self-Assessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. The Basic Unit: The Paragraph We’ve mentioned the essay, made up of patterns called: ● an introduction, which contains the main idea, but sometimes prepares for this idea with introductory sentences, or “attention-getters”; ● a body, made of separate paragraphs, or groups of connected sentences, with each paragraph providing details to support the main idea; and ● a conclusion, which restates or logically follows up on the main idea. To understand historical writing, you need to know, while searching for pattern, what paragraphs give the reader. Paragraphs are miniature essays. They carry ideas, as

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an essay’s introduction will often provide its main idea, but they also provide the details and supporting arguments of history, like the body of an essay. Patterns of organization gather the details into a clear shape, making each paragraph understandable and allowing the writer, if he or she wishes, to come to a conclusion.

Indentation → If the paragraph is a miniature essay, what does it look like? You’ll see it in the shape of a “chunk” on the page, like this one, with an indentation, or space, at the start. The whole block of words you’ve read just above this block, starting with “To understand historical writing” and ending with “to a conclusion,” is another paragraph. Like each of these examples, a paragraph is usually made of several sentences; but there are exceptions. The first exception is any one-sentence paragraph set apart from the rest of the writing for special emphasis or dramatic effect:

This was important. Or: Never again would he make that mistake. Second, a one-sentence paragraph may be written to connect a longer paragraph that precedes it with another long paragraph that follows it. This is sometimes called a bridging paragraph. Aside from these two exceptions, a paragraph must be more than one sentence. Like the essay, a paragraph may begin with the topic (the person, place, thing, or idea the paragraph is about) and go directly to the main idea (the author’s general opinion or main piece of general information on the topic). However, the topic and main idea do not always come first. To see why, let’s imagine a common kind of paragraph, which does present these features first, and then a different kind of paragraph. First, the writer may be straightforward and begin with topic plus main idea. Even in this case, an opening sentence may provide us with a small detail or “attention-getter” that draws us into the topic and prepares the main idea. Now the main idea is stated, in general terms, as it must be. Last, we see the specific details which support that idea. Here are two paragraphs from Goodwin. The first paragraph presents the main idea right away (shown in bold): That Lincoln, after winning the presidency, made the unprecedented

decision to incorporate his eminent rivals into his political family, the cabinet, was evidence of a profound self-confidence and a first indication of what would prove to others a most unexpected greatness. [William] Seward became secretary of state, [Salmon] Chase secretary of the treasury, and [Edward] Bates

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attorney general. The remaining top posts Lincoln [a Republican] offered to three former Democrats…Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s “Neptune,” was made secretary of the Navy, Montgomery Blair became postmaster general, and Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s “Mars,” eventually became secretary of war. Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln. Their presence in the cabinet might have threatened to eclipse the obscure prairie lawyer from Springfield.

Notice how the opening “main idea” sentence clearly states the topic (Lincoln’s decision to place his rivals in the cabinet), followed by the controlling idea (he took that decision, revealing his self-confidence and greatness). The rest of the paragraph supports the main idea by naming the rivals and describing how Lincoln placed them in his cabinet, even though others might think him inferior to them. Now take a look at a different style of paragraph. Though shorter than the paragraph just quoted, this one gives the main idea after the opening sentence: Before I began [Team of Rivals,] aware of the sorrowful aspect of his features and the sadness attributed to him by his contemporaries, I had assumed that Lincoln suffered from chronic depression. Yet, with the exception of two despondent episodes in his early life that are described in this story, there is no evidence that he was immobilized by depression. On the contrary, even during the worst days of the [Civil War,] he retained his ability to function at a very high level. Here, in the opening “attention-getter” sentence, Goodwin admits a mistake: she began her study of Lincoln with an assumption which later proved untrue. This opener prepares us for a new and improved idea, the main idea. The main idea, “there is no evidence that he was immobilized by depression,” is signaled by the word “Yet.” This new idea contrasts with Goodwin’s first assumption. It indicates this historian’s willingness to change her mind. The paragraph then concludes just after the words “On the contrary,” which really confirm Goodwin’s new thought, her contrasting or “contrary” belief about Lincoln. Even these two paragraph arrangements aren’t the only ways. There may be other places to state the main idea. An author may start with a detail and realize that all detail is the right way to begin. This is because in some cases, our minds must collect a few details first, then build a main idea from all those details. Think of scientists, first making detailed observations, then creating a theory, an idea that explains the details.

“The topic and main idea do not always come first in a paragraph. There may be other places to state the main idea.”

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The author whose work we’ve been quoting, Doris Kearns Goodwin, sometimes takes this approach of detail first, main idea last (or at least comes close). Here’s an example. Goodwin has just been describing how Edwin M. Stanton, appointed by Lincoln as the new Secretary of War, completely changed the War Department, which had previously been disorganized and discouraged: Stanton kept his meetings brief and pointed. He was “fluent without wordiness,” George Templeton Strong wrote, “and above all, earnest, warm- hearted, and large-hearted.” His tireless work style invigorated his colleagues. “Persons at a distance,” a correspondent in the capital city wrote, “cannot well realize what a revolution has been wrought in Washington by the change of the head of the War Department. The very atmosphere of the city breathes of change; the streets, the hotels, the halls of Congress speak it.” After nearly a year of disappointment with [Simon] Cameron, Lincoln had found in Stanton the leader the War Department needed. Notice how Goodwin has arranged a series of details describing Stanton’s approach to business and people’s favorable reactions. Next, Goodwin collects the details, turning them into a main idea. This idea expresses how important Stanton’s arrival was: Edwin Stanton was the right man, and Lincoln found him. This main point should be the paragraph’s last sentence. In an unusual move, Goodwin breaks it off from the paragraph and makes it into a new paragraph by itself. This paragraph break gives extra drama to Lincoln’s choice: without a smoothly running War Department, the North could not win the Civil War. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension Self-Assessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. *** Another Approach: The Implied Main Idea (When the Details Are Hints) An author may make up a paragraph entirely of details, choosing those details to lead the reader’s mind to the unwritten main idea. The details are treated as hints that “speak for themselves.” Thus, the main idea is implied, without the author stating it directly.

“When the author leaves the main idea unwritten, he or she is probably writing for an audience well-trained on the topic, or else simply trusts that audience’s intelligence.”

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When the author leaves the main idea unwritten, it is because that author is writing for an audience unusually well-trained on the topic. Or the author may simply trust that audience’s basic intelligence. Such an audience, applying previous knowledge or predicting possible outcomes and combinations of material, can blend several details into the more general, “all-embracing” idea the author is hinting at. The paragraphs just behind and ahead may also help carry that unspoken, but understood, main idea. To see how a paragraph completely made of details works, consider this example: Lincoln so enjoyed mingling with the men─who appeared amazingly healthy and lavishly outfitted with new uniforms, arms, and equipment─that he extended his visit until Friday. After one review, someone remarked that the regulars [members of the permanent, professional Union Army] could be easily distinguished from the volunteers, for “the former stood rigidly in their places without moving an inch as [Lincoln] rode by, while the latter almost invariably turned their heads to get a glimpse of him.” Quick to defend the volunteers, Lincoln replied, “I don’t care how much my soldiers turn their heads, if they don’t turn their backs.” This paragraph comes from a chapter in which Goodwin describes a presidential visit to the camps of the Union, or Northern, army, during which President Lincoln inspects the soldiers as they march on parade or drill. But what is the point of the paragraph? First, let’s repeat some of the information, but let’s also add some guesses of our own, as active readers. Lincoln enjoyed his soldiers’ company. His enjoyment may have come from his gratitude for their defense of the Northern states, including Washington, D.C., and from his sense of their many sacrifices. Here the President indicates his enjoyment by extending his visit: a detail, not a main idea. Another detail follows: a member of Lincoln’s visiting party has opinions as to which group of soldiers is better at the job. Now comes the last detail. Lincoln, who may be referring to the time-honored idea of the brave soldier turning his chest, not his back, to the enemy, says that, given no back-turnings, a few head-turnings may be allowed. But what is the main point? First, we must sense what the topic is. This should be a phrase (word group), not a sentence. A topic is like the subject, or the noun, noun phrase, or pronoun that opens a sentence. Let’s run the details by just once more, but fast; what do we get? Lincoln enjoys the soldiers; another man has reservations about some of them; Lincoln has little hesitancy about even these men. What’s the topic? Let’s call it Lincoln’s almost limitless enjoyment of his soldiers. Now let’s extend that topic into a main idea. For that, we need a controlling idea.

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A controlling idea is like the verb and other words we add to the subject of a sentence, in order to complete that sentence. Let’s run one or two hints through our minds. The man with Lincoln, while observing correctly that the volunteer soldiers are turning their heads to look at the President, is also judging them. If we have seen soldiers on parade before, we know that such soldiers must meet certain standards of correct bearing and snappy appearance. Clearly, the man with Lincoln is finding the volunteer soldiers deficient by parade-ground standards. But judging from the president’s words, “if they don’t turn their backs,” Lincoln is thinking far ahead, to the moment of the soldiers’ testing, even killing or dying, in battle. More than others at the review, Lincoln knows what’s at stake. So, what is the main idea? Add the controlling idea to the topic, and we get: Lincoln’s almost limitless enjoyment of his soldiers was heightened by his complete understanding of what they would soon have to do in battle. Sometimes, a paragraph made entirely of details is harder to interpret. How are we to extract a main idea from the following paragraph? It covers events happening right after the events of the previous paragraph. During a break from the reviews, several members of the presidential

party, including [the journalist] Noah Brooks, journeyed down to the Rappahannock for a glimpse of the rebel camps across the river. With the naked eye, they could see the houses and steeples of Fredericksburg. The wooded hills and the renowned plain that had become a “slaughter pen for so many men” in the December battle were also clearly visible. Binoculars allowed a view of the ridge on which thousands of unmarked graves had been dug. Beyond the ridge, smoke rose from the rebel camps with elaborate earthworks, a myriad of white tents, and the flag of stars and bars. At the shoreline, the Union pickets paced their rounds mirrored by rebel sentries across the narrow river. Honoring the “tacit understanding” that sentries would not fire at each other, they bandied comments across the water, hailing each other as “Secesh” or “Yank,” and conversing “as amiably as though belonging to friendly armies.” At one point, Brooks noted, a Confederate officer “came down to the water’s edge, doubtless to see if Uncle Abraham was of our party. Failing to see him, he bowed politely and retired.”

Because the details are so many, though sharp and clear, the reader may have trouble deciding what this paragraph’s main idea is. Let’s see if we can pinpoint the topic. As the paragraph opens, we learn that members of the presidential party, taking a break from Lincoln’s troop reviews, decided to see for themselves what the nearby rebel (enemy) camps looked like. The members of the party, aides to President Lincoln, are

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important mostly because they are eyewitnesses to the details that follow. We’re indebted to them for their observations: …With the naked eye, they could see the houses and steeples of Fredericksburg. The wooded hills and the renowned plain that had become a “slaughter pen for so many men” in the December battle were also clearly visible… Two kinds of detail are apparent; first we see the buildings of Fredericksburg, where the Union army, as the witnesses knew, had recently suffered a terrible defeat. Second, we see details indicating that the Union and Confederate pickets, or sentries, though official enemies, preferred not to shoot one another. But what do these details add up to? In this case, Goodwin hasn’t given much guidance, so the reader must decide. Let’s call the topic What the presidential party saw of the rebel camps. This is a phrase, suitable for a topic, and it covers what the paragraph talks about. Looking for the main idea, remembering that it is made up of the topic plus the controlling idea, we next need the controlling idea. But different readers may draw a slightly different controlling idea from one set of details. Readers who see ideas differently from other readers are not necessarily wrong. Several versions of this main idea might be assembled: What the presidential party saw of the rebel camps impressed them with reminders of terrible fighting and images of peace. Or, What the presidential party saw of the rebel camps was a mirror image of the scene in their own camps, giving the illusion that no war was actually being fought. Or, What the presidential party saw of the rebel camps was a hopeful reminder that, bad as the previous fighting had been, good relations between the opposing soldiers someday could be restored. Whatever our choice is, we trust to the details of the paragraph to make the topic clear, and then to reveal, in pieces, the main idea that is connected to the topic. Even for paragraphs with implied main ideas, the topic is the paragraph’s subject matter.

“The topic is like a person, problem, concern, even obsession the writer can’t keep out of the paragraph without destroying the whole written structure.”

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Please note. A key to finding the main idea is finding the topic: it’s like a person, problem, concern, even obsession the writer can’t keep out of mind, or eliminate from the paragraph, without destroying the whole written structure. To spot such an obsession, watch for certain words that just keep popping up in a paragraph. The words may be repeated exactly, or with slight differences. The repetitions will reveal the topic. Then the main idea will be easier to find. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension Self-Assessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. Patterns: Organizing Paragraphs into History There are two good ways to read paragraphs of history (or any subject). First, look for what doesn’t change. Sometimes the constant, unchanging part is the writer’s topic, the concern or obsession we just spoke of. Sometimes it’s the author’s main idea, maintained insistently through the paragraph in spite of the arguments an opponent brings against the idea. Finding those insistent features helps you focus on the paragraph and remember it better. Second, you should also look for what does change. Every new paragraph will be a big or small change from the paragraph before it. But paragraphs also change even as you read them. Often, the author will make a change from stating a main idea, a more general thought, to supporting that main idea with details. Sometimes the details are smaller ideas, chunks of the main idea, branching off. Another change occurs when a paragraph concludes. It may stop listing detail and change back again to a more general statement. This statement is called a conclusion. A conclusion may sum up the preceding details. It may restate the topic sentence. It may provide the solution to a problem already discussed. A conclusion may also make a prediction. Many types of conclusion are possible. Here’s a paragraph from Doris Kearns Goodwin with a strong topic sentence, a general idea, at the beginning, and a conclusion, strong but also general, at the end:

Patiently, Lincoln weathered criticisms from Browning and a host of others. He listened carefully when David Davis, who, more than anyone, had helped engineer his victory at the Chicago convention and whom he had recently appointed to the Supreme Court, warned him about “the alarming condition of things.” Yet when Davis told Lincoln to alter his policy of emancipation “as the only means of saving the Country,”Lincoln told him it was “a fixed thing.” And when Browning raised the specter that “the democrats would soon begin to clamor for compromise,” Lincoln replied that if they moved toward concessions, “the people would leave them.” Through the worst days of discord and division,

“[In an essay,] many types of conclusion are possible.”

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Lincoln never lost his confidence that he understood the will and desires of the people.

The topic sentence says that Lincoln stayed patient under criticism. Examples of such patience follow as details. The conclusion tells why Lincoln was patient: he honestly felt that he understood the people’s wishes. As this example shows, paragraphs are woven from an organizing rhythm or texture that we can follow to read and make sense of things. This texture is called organizational pattern. Pattern gives the details we read connection. Pattern is generated to prove or support the main idea. Sometimes the main idea itself will contain a piece of the pattern, or a clue about which pattern is coming. But more often, when we identify organizational pattern, we’re speaking of major supporting details and what arrangement holds them together. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension Self-Assessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member.