CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC ESSAY ASSIGNMENT Essay Parameters: 1. 4 pages (minimum). 2. Double spaced. 3. Written in college level English. 4. Uploaded to Turnitin via the link in this folder on the due date (see Syllabus). 6. 12 pt font 7. 1 inch margins 8. Must have a developed thesis statement that is followed by the information provided in the paper. 9. Quotes and cited paraphrasing are good for this kind of paper! 10. Cite where in the book your details come from. This includes quotes, facts, or any borrowed material. 11. MLA or Chicago format are fine for this essay. CHOOSE ONE OF THE TOPICS BELOW  While Americans cling to the Civil War, they've forgotten most of the rest of their history. There is no comparable obsession with the Mexican War, the War of 1812, or even the American Revolution. Create an essay where you discuss some of the reasons for this, as stated by the author’s stories.  Horwitz meets many women who are as devoted as men to memory of the War: Sue Curtis, June Wells, Melly Meadows, Mauriel Joslyn. How does their approach to the War differ from that of men in the book?  Many Southern whites revere the rebel battle flag as a symbol of the valor and sacrifice of their ancestors. To many African-Americans, the same flag is a hated symbol of segregation and white supremacy. Create an essay that discusses this topic with examples from stories in the book: Is there any middle ground? Which of the states in the South have navigated this minefield most successfully?  Horwitz writes about the killing of Michael Westerman while flying a Confederate flag from his truck, in Todd County, Kentucky. What are the social and emotional reasons why Westerman's killing becomes such a flashpoint for Southern anger, both black and white?  The subtitle to Horwitz's book is "Dispatches from the unfinished civil war." In what ways is the war unfinished, according to the stories noted in the book? How will your paper be graded? Here is the rubric!  Full Credit (A Level)  Written completely in college level English with few grammatical mistakes.  Numerous relevant details demonstrating mastery of material.  A clear thesis that is supported by the paper’s structure.  Paper’s structure is apparent: Intro, Body, Conclusion.  Sources properly referenced by in-paper citations: (Horowitz: 23)  Bibliography is present and professional in style.  Half Credit (B-C Level)  College-level written response  Relatively complete. Thesis is present, but paper does not follow it, or the thesis is vague, leaving little guidance.  Writing is vague with relatively view supporting details.  Most of the borrowed material is referenced, but some paraphrased or borrowed material not cited.  Bibliography is present and fairly correct. Websites cited show only a URL and not a full reference.  Less than Half Credit (D Level)  No thesis, or clear pape.

1. CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Essay Parameters:
1. 4 pages (minimum).
2. Double spaced.
3. Written in college level English.
4. Uploaded to Turnitin via the link in this folder on the due
date (see Syllabus).
6. 12 pt font
7. 1 inch margins
8. Must have a developed thesis statement that is followed by
the information provided in the paper.
9. Quotes and cited paraphrasing are good for this kind of
paper!
10. Cite where in the book your details come from. This
includes quotes, facts, or any borrowed material.
11. MLA or Chicago format are fine for this essay.
CHOOSE ONE OF THE TOPICS BELOW

2. most of the rest of their history.
There is no comparable obsession with the Mexican War, the
War of 1812, or even the
American Revolution. Create an essay where you discuss some
of the reasons for this, as
stated by the author’s stories.
memory of the War: Sue
Curtis, June Wells, Melly Meadows, Mauriel Joslyn. How does
their approach to the War
differ from that of men in the book?
of the valor and sacrifice
of their ancestors. To many African-Americans, the same flag is
a hated symbol of
segregation and white supremacy. Create an essay that discusses
this topic with
examples from stories in the book: Is there any middle ground?
Which of the states in
the South have navigated this minefield most successfully?
flying a Confederate flag
from his truck, in Todd County, Kentucky. What are the social

3. and emotional reasons why
Westerman's killing becomes such a flashpoint for Southern
anger, both black and
white?
unfinished civil war." In what
ways is the war unfinished, according to the stories noted in the
book?
How will your paper be graded? Here is the rubric!
grammatical mistakes.
per’s structure is apparent: Intro, Body, Conclusion.
-paper citations: (Horowitz:
23)

4. -C Level)
-level written response
complete. Thesis is present, but paper does not
follow it, or the thesis is vague, leaving
little guidance.
paraphrased or borrowed material not cited.
show only a URL and not a full reference.
lities.
including such interchanges of similar words
like “there‟ for “their‟
our, you,‟ or “didn’t, wouldn’t, isn’t”
c citing of sources.
reading material.
-level discourse; incoherent, extremely poor
grammar, rambling.
is
largely wrong and unsupported.
plagiarized or made-up.

5. Turnitin Originality Report
Confederate essay
by Armita Namiranian
From Confederates! (HIST 20 - Amer Hist to
1870)
Processed on 13-May-2013 7:51 AM PDTID:
329623248Word Count: 1208
Similarity Index
31%
Similarity by Source
Internet Sources:31%Publications:0%Student Papers:0%

6. sources:
1
24% match (Internet from 01-Aug-
2008)http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/projects/conattic.htm
2
8% match (Internet from 02-Dec-
2011)http://www.newton.k12.ma.us/nshs/library/SummerReadin

7. g/2009/AnnotSeniorSumRdg09.htm
paper text:
Armita Namiranian 05/08/2013 Dispatches from unfinished civil
war The Pulitzer Prize winner Horwitz took an eye-opening
journey in Southern part of America, where his childhood
fascination with Confederacy collides was with hard adult
certainty about culture and race in America. Having been
brought up in Virginia, Horwitz decorated rebel heroes on his
attic bedroom walls. After a decade of covering foreign wars,
Horwitz returned home and launched a one year ramble through
a landscape of the Civil War; he travelled from Virginia to the
Alabama searching for explanations for America’s continuous
interest in conflict. He accompanied the hard-core re-enactor,
who was obsessed with authenticity. The re-enactor specialty
that is “bloating” in the imitation of a corpse, putted Horwitz in
demand with filmmakers and artists on, “Civil Wargasm” the
whirlwind seven-day journey of battlegrounds. Horwitz visited
Shelby Foote together with lesser known historians such as
Jimmy Algiers, and eccentric storekeeper who folk museum
sports the life- size figurine of the Robert E. Lee prepared from
sheetrock. After trading notes with the park rangers, he
discovered that a lot of what he knows is a myth and the fact is
that the historical misrepresentation at the federally sustained
battlefields is often abetted by confined boosters. One morning
Horwitz was awakened by a crackle of the musket fire, and he

8. started filing the front-line dispatches once more this time since
the war in the home country, and were close to his heart
(Horwitz 425). Horwitz childhood impressions of American
heritage in civil war 1from his psyche relatively natural in the
cultural context of the adulthood,1Horwitz brings into this wild
journey the tortured past and bewildering present the style and
expertise he expended on the variety of assignments in different
publications, since the Wall Street Periodical to The New
Yorker and Harper’s. Horwitz remembered Robert Penn
Warren’s remark, which grandsons experience the full
imaginative appeal of civil war as a ritual of becoming
American. Horwitz grandfather, who was a Jew, 1came to
America seventeen years after the Appomattox (Horwitz 435).
He sensed that the history of civil war was the American
Talmud to unlock his secrets of American his adopted country,
as well as making him become part of the history. In
Connecticut, 1New Haven, he passed this to his own son who
later passed it to Tony Horwitz. Tony reproduced images such
as medieval illuminate, on his attic bedroom walls. After a
period of1nine years in different foreign countries, Horwitz
went to Virginia, a place where he discovered that American are
obsessed with war in different ways that motivated his own
sunken memories of many photographs he studied when he was
a child, activating his1obsessions very severely that it made his
Australian wife to refer to him as“civil war bore”. Horwitz
plotted his own hardcore campaign against civil war one night
after pondering on civil war obsession. His aim 1was to spend
about a year on civil war, searching for people and place with
memory of conflict alive in current days (Arnold and Roberta
108). Horwitz traveled to the Western Southern and Eastern
states where the big battles waged, as well as 1pictured in the
etchings his grandfather revealed to him through the magnifying
glass. Horwitz power to magnify the emotional impact, as well
as the importance 1of details evolved from childhood to a skill
that is enjoyable to watch. At Monument Avenue in the
Richmond, for example, he had this insight that he could not

9. think of any other 1city in the world, which lined its avenues
with stone leviathans reverencing failed rebels against the state.
Horwitz’s re-enactor comrade Rob took him on what Rob
referred to as the civil Wargasm. Rob told Horwitz that his true
calling is a civil war bum. By experiencing what Rob referred to
as “period rush” Horwitz became captive of the past. Several
chapters later, Horwitz confessed that he could not glance at a
calendar without attaching the parallel dates since the 1860s
(Arnold and Roberta 109). Horwitz was 1myriad- minded
through temperament, however, even his comrade was single-
minded exhibited it in behavior and speech at each turn of
twisted road in the past. Rob explained how he evolved along
the two paths, and became what he is currently. Roving at the
speed soldiers of the civil war never imagined over consecrated
places to make an impression to 1Horwitz with accounts of
heroic times, Rob consumed fables and facts of the war.
Horwitz wielded 1humor as the shield against the hydra-headed
monster of the obsession, at the end it failed to save him.
Horwitz felt nearly no ideological relationship with the
unreconstructed rebels he realized that these rebels were right.
The matters at hand in civil war particularly remained
unresolved and raw. Horwitz journey made him understand
obsession of others, although he felt strangely not able to
explain. 1As a persistent qualifier to the underlying purpose,
which could not be serious, Horwitz humor cause 1effect of the
luring and later lulling to readers who thought preoccupation
with civil war is ludicrous. Such readers came from Horwitz’s
battleground sight more open than they were before to probable
ways of feeling and seeing the relevance of war to their lived
(Kingseed 104). In Virginia State, Horwitz joined the band of
the ‘hardcore’ re-enactors who were involved in crash-diet in
order 2to achieve a hollow-eyed view of starved Confederates.
In the Kentucky, Horwitz witnessed Klan rallies, as well as
calls for the race war ignited by killing of the white man who
brandished the rebel flag. At the Andersonville, Horwitz found
that the commander of the prison was executed in the claim that

10. he was a war criminal, and currently he is exalted as a hero and
martyr. In the climax of the book, 2Horwitz takes the marathon
trek from the Antietam to Gettysburg and finally to Appomattox
together with the Robert Lee Hodge, an unconventional pilgrim
who named their odyssey ‘Civil Wargasm’ (Kingseed 105).
2Propelled by the boyhood passion for Civil War, Tony
embarked on the search for people and places still detained in
the thrall through the America’s greatest conflict. This journey
resulted into 2an adventure for the soul of Unvanquished south,
a lace where ghosts of Lost Cause were resurrected through
remembrance and ritual. Horwitz visited many sites throughout
the South; he encountered the unreconstructed rebels who
practiced the outdated beliefs. Horwitz met groups of re-
enactors devotees who tried to relive the experience of soldier’s
death and life. He brings to live old battlefields, as well as new
courts, classrooms, 2country bars, where previous and present
collide, and often in the explosive ways. One of the Horwitz
most disheartening but yet unsurprising realizations are the
attitudes towards civil war that divided people along racial
lines. A majority of whites covered the memory in the nostalgia,
and refused to search beneath the myth, whilst most blacks
dismissed the civil war as worthless to them and to their current
existence. Work Cited Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic:
Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. New York: Vintage
Books, 1999. Internet resource. Arnold, James R, and Roberta
Wiener. American Civil War: The Essential Reference Guide.
Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print. Kingseed, Cole
C. The American Civil War. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press,
2004. Print.

11. Although it is expected that students already know the
particulars of college level writing, sometimes converting a
topic into a great thesis statement can be a bit of a challenge!
Below are some steps to take to help get your thesis statement
ready for your Essay:
.
.
Thesis Statement Formulation:
A thesis is a statement that clearly lays out a topic of research
and discusses the main point(s) to be made by the research. A
thesis is not a summary of a question or a basic sentence of fact,
but is an argument that can be proven by the evidence gained by
your research.
.
The Thesis Tests:
1. Is this a complete sentence (and not a question)?
2. Does it have an opposing argument?
3. Is every word clear and unambiguous in meaning?
4. Will the thesis require proof from the book to prove it? (If
so, then good job!!!)
5. Does the statement make such a large claim that the writer
has no hope of proving it to be true in the space of this
assignment? If so, go back and check the question you are
trying to answer, and revise your thesis to make your main
points clear and specific.
.
Remember: A thesis will often require adjustment after the
paper is written! What you intend to prove may be different
from what actually is proven when the paper is done. Be sure to
go back and be sure your thesis matches your body of evidence
and your conclusion.

12. Please date it on 5/5/2013