24th Infantry
The document I chose to apply the PAPER strategy to is the War Department document written by Secretary of War John W. Weeks addressed to the governor dated May 16, 1921. The purpose of this document was to inform the Governor that, regardless of their beliefs that a surgeon had taken a look at the 24th Infantry and concluded that “There is nothing in the Medical records of this post to indicate the correctness of a statement that the general use of habit-forming drugs exits among members of the 24th Infantry.” The surgeon goes onto describe the 2 documented cases dating back from 1920. The argument or strategy here was a clear but respectful letter addressed to the Governor. Not only this but there is immediate evidence to support the claim that the 24th Infantry was clear of excessive drug use. If I were to relate this to other texts found throughout this unit alone it would be the trend developing of the 24th Infantry being slandered.
The Secretary of War John Weeks is tasked with dealing with the southern border. There is conflicting information regarding the 24th infantry and John W. Weeks would like to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on.
The major limitation or obstacle I faced while creating a narrative from the documents was the lack of a developed skill set for this type of critical thinking. I feel that over time I would become more proficient, however, I found that I would constantly second guess myself and wouldn’t be particularly confident in writing about this topic in a matter-of-fact fashion. I noted this as a particular weakness I’d like to work on because of my understanding that historical study requires you to speculate with the evidence you’ve uncovered near constantly. Additionally, I found the process of attempting to think empathetically and really imagine where the opposing sides are coming from to be more challenging than I had anticipated. I found myself re reading lines of text and then attempting to pull them apart to look at from another potential angle.
This exercise helped me to realize how much effort goes into the archival process and how useful primary sources can be. Not only do you need to exercise caution around aged documents and your organization skills need to be finely honed but creating a narrative is only possible after reading the document multiple times through to make sure you didn’t miss major points and then questioning your own perspective or interpretation. This, to me, proved to be the toughest aspect of this assignment. I didn’t live in this environment or study this environment extensively and as a result I feel like a bit of fool when I catch myself jumping to conclusions based off of whatever it is that I may be reading. A question I have, is there anybody willing to share some techniques or strategies that you may have felt went a long way in completing this assignment? What about these strategies made them effective?
