Note: Unpublished; converted to Examples of Historical Thinking entry

Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. These two speeches, one by Sojourner Truth (1852) and one by Frances Watkins Harper (1857) reveal the ways that African American women presented their cause and themselves. For many reform-minded men and women in the 19th century, the movement to abolish slavery was the most important cause in American society.

Radical abolitionists who sought to create a democratic and egalitarian movement allowed women and African Americans to have unprecedented influence and public roles. Some women within the abolitionist movement noted the links between the plight of slaves and the plight of women and thus became active in some of the first women's rights organizations. Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree) was enslaved for 30 years prior to the abolition of slavery in New York. Once free, she was guided by spiritual revelation to change her name and become a preacher and an active abolitionist. Born to free blacks in Maryland, Frances Watkins Harper was a poet and a teacher who became active in the abolitionist struggle in the 1850s.

Note: Unpublished because content moved to Examples of Historical Thinking.

Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. This 1804 inventory lists the possessions of Thomas Springer of New Castle County, DE. Legal documents, such as tax records or probate inventories, often provide our only information about the lifestyles of ordinary people during the colonial and early national periods.

Such listings of household possessions, from a time when household goods were not widely mass produced, can illuminate a fair amount about a family's routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as about a region's economy and its connections to larger markets. This inventory also contains items that suggest attitudes and policies toward slavery in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. This untitled daguerreotype of Niagara Falls was taken in 1853 by Platt Babbitt and reflects an era when the expansion of railroads and the rise of middle-class occupations enabled some Americans to enjoy leisure travel.

The daguerreotype process, the earliest form of photography, involved the painstaking manipulation of light, chemicals, and copper plates. Daguerreotypes were made public in 1839 and quickly became a popular medium in the United States for a growing middle class eager to document themselves and their surroundings. While daguerreotypes could not be mass produced, they often served as the basis for newspaper illustrations that reached large numbers of Americans.

Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. This cartoon, "Milk Tickets for Babies, in Place of Milk," created by Thomas Nast in 1876, comments on one debate that raged in the years following the Civil War: should the currency of the United States be based on gold (the "gold standard") or on paper (known as "greenbacks")? These debates about the nature of money, and the meaning of value itself, coincided with equally fundamental social and political debates about the nature of citizenship as it applied to the newly emancipated slaves. Political cartoons were a major form of commentary in late 19th-century American life, and Thomas Nast (1840–1902) was the most famous cartoonist of his day.

Scholars In Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. This short story by Herman Melville was published serially in Putnam's Monthly magazine in November and December 1853. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is the story of a copyist in a New York City legal office who refuses to perform any other work asked of him. It is also a story about office work and social relations at a time when urbanization and class stratification were increasing in New York City.

Economic and technological changes reshaped daily life dramatically in the mid-19th century. The rise of new categories of professionals and managers created a growing middle class that sought to impose its values and morals on the working class and poor through a wide range of reform movements. Melville's story of the relationship between the narrator, a lawyer, and his employee, Bartleby, was one of many stories about lawyers published in popular magazines in the 1850s and is part of a genre of stories that explore the culture of New York in that period.

Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. "Two White Horses Standin' in Line" (sung by Smith Cason) and "Worry Blues" (sung by Jesse Lockett), both recorded in 1939 by folklorist Alan Lomax, are known as "blues" songs.

The blues emerged as a musical form among African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and gained the attention of folklorists and record companies. Historians have studied blues and other African American musical forms to gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of poor and working-class African Americans who left few written records about their lives.