WORLD WAR I PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS
EVIDENCE-BASED EXAMPLE ANSWERS

The answers model supported reasoning, not a single required wording. Historical transcript, modern archive commentary and subsequent outcomes are distinct source layers.

Question 1: A is Wilson’s presidential address to Congress dated 2 April 1917; B is his address to Congress dated 8 January 1918. The modern archive page is a separate presentation layer.
Evidence: each page’s archival citation names President Wilson, its date and Records of the United States Senate, Record Group 46. A opens “GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS.” The archive’s descriptions identify both addresses to Congress. Wilson’s office and the institutional audience matter because the speeches seek policy action. The webpage’s review date does not date the original speech. The broader public could also encounter the message, but these records do not measure how every audience received it.

Question 2: Wilson asks Congress to declare the German government’s recent course to be war and accept belligerent status. The request does not establish an enactment date.
Evidence: A1 says “I advise that the Congress declare,” and the surrounding paragraph asks Congress to accept belligerent status and take immediate defense and war measures. The verb “advise” identifies a recommendation. This is an address seeking legislative action, not the resulting resolution. The archive introduction reports a subsequent congressional vote, but dating or analyzing that legal act requires its own record. Keep the speech’s 2 April date attached to the speech.

Question 3: A2 elevates noncombatant lives above compensable property. It supports a reading of Wilson’s moral framing, not a finding that one motive fully explains U.S. entry.
Evidence: “Property can be paid for” contrasts with lives that “cannot be.” The surrounding paragraph names noncombatants and describes destruction of their lives. This helps Wilson cast the issue as human harm rather than only financial loss. “Wilson emphasizes civilian lives in this passage” is supported. “Economic interests played no role in U.S. entry” is not established by that emphasis. Assessing competing causes requires other diplomatic, economic and political evidence, rather than treating a public justification as an exhaustive inventory of motives.

Question 4: Wilson distinguishes the German people from their government while pairing professions of friendship with conditional language about loyalty and repression.
Evidence: A3 explicitly denies a quarrel with the German people. Later, the address speaks of friendship toward people of German birth living in the United States, qualifies praise with loyalty and states A4’s conditional threat of “stern repression.” Those passages support an analysis of the speech’s distinction and tension. They do not document every person’s treatment, prove the stated conditions were fair or show whether the professed friendship was realized. For those questions, seek enforcement records and evidence from affected people.

Question 5: Point I proposes openly reached peace agreements and public diplomacy. The speech does not prove that negotiations were already open or that no secret understandings survived.
Evidence: B1 reads “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.” The remainder of Point I rejects private international understandings and calls for diplomacy in public view. This is programmatic language about what should happen. A proposed standard is evidence of a stated aim; it is not a complete record of negotiations. Meeting records, published agreements and relevant diplomatic correspondence could test how a particular process operated. Specify the negotiation and time period before judging implementation.

Question 6: No blanket promise is stated here. Point V gives populations’ interests equal weight with the specified government claims; Point XIII explicitly proposes an independent Polish state.
Evidence: B2 includes both “interests of the populations concerned” and “equitable claims of the government.” B3 names a particular independent state. The different wording matters: adjustment of colonial sovereignty claims is not identical to an unconditional independence promise. This comparison concerns what the text proposes, not a verdict about all later borders or colonial experiences. “Self-determination” is a useful historical discussion term, but substituting the label for these clauses would obscure their differing scope.

Question 7: Point XIV proposes an association offering mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity. The speech cannot establish later membership; the archive commentary says the United States never joined the League of Nations.
Evidence: B4 says the association “must be formed”; the rest of Point XIV specifies guarantees for “great and small states alike.” These are proposed institutional arrangements. The archive’s introduction, a modern explanatory layer, describes the League provision in the Versailles settlement and states that the United States never joined. Cite that layer separately when making the later-outcome claim. To study ratification disputes or membership decisions in detail, add the relevant legislative and diplomatic records rather than presenting the speech as proof of its own success.

Question 8: The speeches connect U.S. action to a wider account of peace and rights. Their immediate jobs differ: the 1917 address seeks war action; the 1918 address specifies a peace program while explicitly contemplating continued fighting.
Evidence: A5’s global democracy claim appears in an address requesting Congress’s war action. B5 links achieving proposed arrangements to willingness “to fight and to continue to fight.” The dated contrast supports continuity in public justification alongside a change from a war request to articulated peace terms. It does not show that fighting had ended in January 1918. A concise comparative answer uses both quotations and keeps aims, means and outcomes separate; claims about lasting peace require evidence after the speeches.

Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/address-to-congress-declaration-of-war-against-germany
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-14-points