302 Chapter 12 | war anD eManCipation | period Five 1844 –1877 putting it all together^303
Sample paragraph
By claiming that the “pretext for this policy [of freeing and drafting Afri-
can American slaves] is, that we want soldiers in our armies” (1864), the
Charleston Mercury (Doc. 12.9) claims that the state unjustly has more
control over its citizens than the federal government. South Carolinians,
indignant over Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, question President
Jefferson Davis’s emancipation plan as well.Explanation
Note how the paragraph begins with a summary of the main ideas of the Charles-
ton Mercury’s “Emancipation of the Slaves by the Confederate Government” and
a statement of historical causation: the Proclamation led South Carolinians to
become indignant. Freeing slaves to fight in Confederate armies is a similar crime
against the Constitution, according to the editorial.
In reality, this stance reflected Southerners’ belief in the inferiority of Afri-
can Americans, and they used the United States Constitution as leverage to
ignore the moral and social arguments against slavery. By arguing for states’
rights in this editorial, the Mercury upholds the continuation of the institution
of slavery.Step 5 Finalize your thesis, and write your essay
When you follow an inductive model to organize your body paragraphs, your
writing results in a claim.
As you finalize your thesis, your essay also will have completed a similar
approach toward the other perspectives outlined above—the Northern liberal
point of view and the Northern conservative point of view.
The finalized thesis combines these distinct perspectives into a single claim.
You have at least two choices for how you might combine these perspectives. A
basic form of organization combines three perspectives with subordinate phrases
(to evaluate). A template for this basic combination might look like this:Although perspective 1 reveals that ________, perspectives 2, 3, and 4
more fully demonstrate that _________.The above template evaluates and in so doing creates a broader argument.
A second approach toward combining points of view might engage in a
deductive process that allows you to synthesize distinct perspectives into a single
claim. Such an approach still obliges you to discern patterns or breaks in the pat-
terns of perspectives to create a single statement. A template for such a deduced
claim might look like this:Although all groups share perspective ______ on African Americans, they
differ from each other in their view of African Americans’ _________.13_STA_2012_ch12_275-306.indd 303 24/04/15 10:19 AM