Trace one political claim as it crosses borders and decades
Three steps, the way the exam actually works: work through the lab, write down your own observations, then answer a 8-point free response. What you recorded goes to the grader with your writing, so a conclusion that does not follow from your own evidence will cost you the point — exactly as it would with a real reader.
Predict before you look
- Two documents sharing language is evidence of transmission only if one could have reached the other. State what a historian would check to establish that.
- Before you begin, decide what would count as evidence that an idea had been changed by traveling rather than merely repeated.
Nothing to submit here — these are to think through, so the prediction below is an informed one rather than a guess.
Commit to an answer now. It is not graded and being wrong costs nothing — the point is to have something specific to reconcile against once you have the data.
Answer every prediction to unlock the lab. A sentence is enough.
Run the investigation
Predictions first
The procedure and the simulation unlock once you have committed above. Observing before predicting is how a wrong intuition survives a lab intact.
Record what you found
This is your reading of the source, not ours. The grader sees them, so your conclusions have to follow from what you actually recorded.
| Year of the Declaration of Independence | |
|---|---|
| Year of the Declaration of Sentiments | |
| Years between them(Subtract the earlier from the later.) | years |
| A phrase carried over unchanged | |
| The decisive phrase that is altered, and how | |
| Continuity, change, or both — and why | |
| One other place the same claim was invoked in this period |
Answer the free response
You have two documents 72 years apart, one modeled on the other. (a) Quote the language carried over and the language altered, and state what the alteration does. (b) Explain why invoking the earlier document was a strategic choice, not merely a stylistic one. (c) Name ONE other movement in the period 1750–1900 that invoked the same natural-rights claim, and explain what it demanded and what it achieved. (d) Using your own data, evaluate whether the spread of natural-rights language between 1750 and 1900 is better described as continuity or as change, and defend your choice.
Sign in to have this graded and saved to your progress.