ESTABLISH THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Getting the most out of these documents requires reading with care and imagination. Historians are interested in what a document says and what it reveals about the historical reality that is only partly disclosed by the document itself. A document might be likened to a window that permits us to glimpse features of the past. A document challenges us to read and understand the words on the page as a way to look through the window and learn about the larger historical context.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, for example, hints that he believed many loyal Americans wondered whether the war was worth the effort, whether all those soldiers, as he said, “have died in vain.” Lincoln’s words do not explicitly say that many people thought the human tragedy of the war was too great, but that seems to be one of their meanings. His address attempted to answer such doubts by proclaiming the larger meaning of the war and the soldiers’ deaths. His public statement of the noble ideals of the Union war effort hint at his private perception that many Americans had come to doubt whether the war had any meaning beyond the maiming or death of their loved ones.

To see such unstated historical reality in and through a document, readers must remain alert to exactly what the document says. The first step is to learn something about the era in which the document was written by reading The American Promise or another textbook of American history.

IDENTIFY AUTHOR, DATE, AND AUDIENCE

The next step in deciphering a document is to consider three important questions: Who wrote the document? When was it written? Who was the intended audience? These questions will help you understand the information in the brief headnote and answer the questions that accompany each document, as well as the concluding comparative questions that draw attention to similarities and differences among the documents in the chapter. While these editorial features will aid your investigation of the documents, you should always proceed by asking who wrote each document, when, and for what audience.

Author. Obviously, a document expresses the viewpoint of its author. Different people had different views about the same event. At Gettysburg, for example, the Confederacy suffered a painful defeat that weakened their ability to maintain their independence and to defend slavery. If Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, had delivered a Gettysburg Address, it would have been very different from Lincoln’s. Documents also often convey their authors’ opinions of the viewpoints of other people, including those who agree with them and those who don’t. You should always ask, then: What does a document say about the viewpoint of the author? What does it say about the author’s opinion about the views of other people? Does the document suggest the author’s point of view was confined to a few others, shared by a substantial minority, or embraced by a great many people? What motivated the author to express his or her point of view in the first place? If the document has been translated or transcribed by another person, what relationship did that person have with the author, and can we trust that the document accurately represents the author’s thoughts?

Date. A document conveys valuable information about the era when it was composed as well as about the author’s point of view. Since a person’s perspective often changes over time, it is critical to know exactly when a document was written in order to understand its meaning. When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, the outcome of the Civil War remained in doubt; seventeen months later, in April 1865, he was certain of northern victory. The address expresses the urgency and uncertainty of the wartime crisis of 1863 rather than the relief and confidence of 1865. As you read every document, you should ask: How does the document reflect the era when the author wrote it? What does it say about the events under way at the time? What does it suggest about how that particular time was perceived by the author and by other people? How did the times shape the author’s thoughts and actions?

Audience. In addition to considering who wrote a document and when, you should think about the author’s intended audience. A politician may say one thing in a campaign speech and something quite different in a private letter to a friend. An immigrant might send a rosy account of life in America to family members in the Old Country — an account at odds with the features of life in the New World he or she describes in a diary. The intended audience shapes the message an author seeks to send. The author’s expectation of what the audience wants to hear contributes to what a document says, how it is said, and what is left unsaid. Lincoln knew that his audience at Gettysburg included many family members mourning the death of loved ones who “gave the last full measure of devotion” on the battlefield. He hoped his remarks would soothe the heartache of the survivors by ennobling the Union and those who died in its defense. To decipher any document, you should always ask: Who is the intended audience? How did the audience shape what the author says? Did consideration of the audience lead the author to emphasize some things and downplay or ignore others? How would the intended audience be likely to read the document? How would people who were not among the intended audience be likely to read it?

It is particularly important to consider the audience when reading interviews, since both the interviewer and interviewee can have different expectations of the same audience. If the interviewer’s questions are provided, how do they guide and shape the responses of the interviewee? What is the interviewer’s motivation for conducting the interview, and what is the interviewee’s motivation for giving it?

DECIPHER THE LANGUAGE

The meanings of words, like the viewpoints of individuals, also reflect their historical moment. For the most part, the documents in this collection were written in English and the authors’ original spelling has been preserved (unless stated otherwise), even if it fails to conform to common usage today. Numerous documents have been translated into English from Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, German, Swedish, or one of several Native American languages. But even documents originally written in English require you to translate the meaning of English words at the time the document was written into the meaning of English words today.

Readers must guard against imputing today’s meanings to yesterday’s words. When Lincoln said “this nation” in the Gettysburg Address, he referred to the United States in 1863, a vastly different nation from the one founded four score and seven years earlier and from the one that exists today, a century and a half later. The word is the same, but the meaning varies greatly.

Although the meaning of many words remains relatively constant, if you are on the lookout for key words whose meanings have changed, you will discover otherwise hidden insights into the documents. You can benefit simply from exercising your historical imagination about the changing meaning of words. To Lincoln, the phrase “all men are created equal” did not have the same meaning that it did for women’s rights leaders at the time, or for slaves or slave owners.

You should always pay attention to the words used in a document and ask a final set of questions: How do the words in the document reflect the author, the time, and the intended audience? Would the same words have different meanings to other people at that time? Does the author’s choice of words reveal covert assumptions and blind spots along with an overt message?