Your principal written work for this course will be a 20-page research paper. You may choose to write on a particular wartime president or to compare some relatively narrow aspect of two or more wartime presidents. If you decide to focus on one president, you may select from among James Madison, James K. Polk, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H. W. Bush, or George W. Bush. I am prepared to consider projects on other presidents who served during lesser conflicts.
 

Papers will be due Monday, April 28th. I prefer that you send me the paper as an e-mail attachment in Word format, so I can grade it using the Word reviewing function. Papers submitted as e-mail attachments will be returned to you the same way. If you prefer, you may submit a hard copy in class on April 28th. Late penalties begin at 3 PM on the 28th for hard copies and at 7 PM for e-mail attachments. Also, late papers without a valid, documented explanation may not be revised. You are welcome to send me papers via e-mail over spring break and I will do my best to grade them while we are on vacation; even if I am unable to do so, early papers will be graded first.
 

Deadlines for Graded Preliminary Tasks. A research paper proceeds in stages, and I will grade it accordingly. The paper will be graded on a 50-point scale as follows: initial statement of topic and central thesis, 3 points; bibliography and revised thesis, 5 points; detailed outline, 10 points; paper, 32 points. To arrive at the paper grade, I will add the points from each stage and convert The late penalty for the paper shall be 2 points per day; for each preliminary stage, 1 point per day. As with the final paper, I encourage you to send me the preliminary parts of the assignment as e-mail attachments.

March 10th: Initial statement of topic and central thesis (one paragraph), including preliminary bibliography (minimum of three sources not on course syllabus).

March 24th: Full bibliography and revised thesis (up to three paragraphs), based on my earlier comments and your research.

April 7th: Detailed outline previewing all main sections of the paper (up to three pages) or detailed visual diagram that depicts clearly causal relationships or factors.

These intermediate deadlines are as important as the final paper due date. Only students who meet each intermediate deadline may revise the paper.
 

Revising the Paper. For students who revise the paper (instructions to follow at a later date), both the original grade and the new grade will be given equal weight. The research paper is 40% of your course grade. That means the original paper and the rewrite each amount to 20% of the final course grade. For students who do not rewrite the paper or are barred from doing so because they missed deadlines, the single version of the paper will count for 40% of the course grade.
 

Possible Research Topics for One Wartime President. If you decide to write about one president, these are some of the issues you might decide to address:

1. What diplomatic/political steps did the president take to avert war or keep the United States out of a conflict, to make war more likely, or to forge alliances to help achieve victory in the event of war?

2. How did the president prepare the military for war? Be sure to consider president-Congress interactions on legislation anticipating military needs, economic mobilization, etc.

3. How did the president establish a legal foundation for military action?

4. How did the president prepare the nation for war, including other political leaders, key elites, and the general public? Examine the use of communications technology and the nature of presidential argument/rhetoric.

5. How did the president define war goals? Did those goals change over the course of the conflict? If so, what factors led the president to redefine war goals?

6. How did the president sustain domestic and international political support for the war? In terms of domestic support, consider relations/bargaining with Congress, use of the media, presidential rhetoric, and political favors or promises. International support may have been sought through concessions, threats, promises, etc.

7. How did the president deal with opposition to the war, at home and possibly abroad? Did the president seek to delegitimize opponents, coerce or intimidate them, use surrogates to attack them? In terms of international opposition, how did the president deal in particular with American allies who opposed particular conflicts?

8. Did the president conduct the war in a way that heightened partisanship or dampened partisan tension? What role did elections play in the president's approach to wartime strategy?

8. What role did the president play in mobilizing economic and manpower resources for war? Did the president implement planned mobilization or approach the task in an ad hoc fashion? To what degree and to whom did he delegate mobilization responsibility? How actively did he exercise oversight over mobilization efforts? What fiscal policy did the president favor to support the war? If fiscal resources were insufficient, how did the president cope with the shortfall?

9. The president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States. How directly and actively did he exercise his command function? With whom did he consult on broad strategy? How did he select commanders and how closely did he supervise them? Did he establish operational priorities and objectives and question commanders' operational plans? What means did he use to secure accurate information about the course of military events?

10. How did the president prepare for the postwar period? Did he direct postwar planning or delegate responsibility? Did he work with other American political leaders or foreign leaders to shape the postwar world? Did he attempt to build public support for his postwar vision? Did his conception of America after the war differ from his view of the nation before and/or during the conflict?

11. How effective was the president in managing the postwar period, including new international circumstances, military demobilization, the return to a peacetime economy, social issues arising from the war itself, and the return to peacetime political norms such as partisanship?

12. What lasting changes, if any, did the president's wartime leadership have on the presidency as an institution, its relation to the other branches of government, and its place in the political system?

13. What were the most significant constraints on the president's leadership before, during, and after the conflict?
 

For a careful, detailed research paper, you will need to focus on only a few of the issues listed above, possibly as few as one. Do not feel bound by the list if other issues arise in the course of your research. Pick issues that are related either temporally (such as the road to war) or thematically (such as political opposition before during and after the war). You should do some preliminary research on your president before you narrow the focus. I strongly encourage you to make use of primary source materials: collections of presidential papers are readily available as are contemporary newspaper accounts.
 

Another option for the paper is to do a comparative research project. You may take one of the issues listed above (or even a subset of one issue) and investigate how two or more wartime presidents approached it. For example, you might investigate how at least two wartime presidents dealt with domestic opposition to the war or how relations between presidents and their field commanders have evolved over time in response to advances in communication technology or other factors.