Documenting United States History

230 ChaPTer 9 | expansionism: part 1 | period Four 18 0 0 –1848 putting it all together^231231

and then expand to a discussion of the political or international issues that related

to such expansion. Using this inductive model, a logical conclusion would be that

the Webster-Ashburton Treaty reflected an American domestic policy that put

national interests ahead of international relations. In general, the more significant

an event, the more likely that a conclusion (or claim) that is drawn inductively is

logical. Visually, such an arrangement appears as a triangle:

Specic event, observation, or example

General statement

When you use a deductive approach, you reason from the “top down,” begin-

ning with a pattern of examples, observations, or events from which a main point

or claim can be inferred. For example, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) was

followed by the Democratic Party Platform (1844), which advocated the annexa-

tion of the Oregon Territory as part of the party’s domestic policy. A pattern thus

emerges between these two documents, and a logical conclusion (similar to what

you arrived at inductively above) would be that the doctrine of Manifest Destiny

challenged British or international relations. Such an arrangement appears as an

inverted triangle:

Series of examples, observations, or events

Concluding observation

Both the inductive and the deductive approaches to organization can be

applied to debates about westward expansion during an era when the rights of

individual states often clashed with the interests of the federal government. A

review of state or regional issues deductively leads to a review of the role of the

federal government. Similarly, a discussion of a singular state or regional issue

inductively presents a discussion about the national or global status.

Consider the following prompt:

What political debates were inspired by westward expansion? To what

extent were these political debates based on moral considerations?

steP 1 Understand the prompt, and identify the key words

For a review of this step, see Building AP® Writing Skills in Chapter 1 (p. 22).

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