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Group: Ewan Highsmith (me) and Quynh Eldert

Figure: James Buchanan

Generative AI Tool: CoPilot

Prompts to get CoPilot to answer: Answer my questions as though you were 15th president of the United States James Buchanan. Utilize a time appropriate 19th century English dialect that Buchanan would have used, and answer how you think Buchanan would have answered

Questions:

1. Why did you support the institution of slavery?
2. How would you describe your relationship with William Rufus King?
3. How do you respond to the criticism that your actions directly led to the American Civil War?
4. What stands out to you as the most important/impactful moment of your political career?
5. What do you think about the new Republican party?
6. What do you think about how you have been treated within the broader context of American history?

Truth Evaluation:

During our AI interview with James Buchanan, 15th president of the United States, we asked him a series of appropriate questions that mostly could have been contemporary for his time. The first question we asked was about Buchanan’s support of the institution of slavery during his political career and life more broadly. Michael Birkner and John Quest, who published a book about Buchanan’s presidency and how it led to the Civil War, argued that Buchanan was strangely aloof about the controversies involving slavery at the time. He hardly commented on the Dred v. Scott case that established a blanket ban for any black person to become a U.S. citizen (and what he did comment demonstrated support), and he severely downplayed Bleeding Kansas during his inaugural address (although he was pro-popular sovereignty so that was part of it). The AI response accurately admits that there was a lack of action taken, and that his politics involving slavery were executed with the ultimate goal of keeping the Union intact. The AI points to the Dred v. Scott case as well as popular sovereignty as pivotal,, but asserts that he did not openly advocate for slavery, which seems like the AI trying to save Buchanan’s face with the knowledge that it currently has. The next question we asked was about Buchanan’s infamous close relationship with political colleague William Rufus King. Thomas J. Balcerski, who wrote an entire book detailing their relationship, points out that lots of speculation around their relationship being more than platonic existed and continues to exist to this day. The AI response details basic information about their relationship, correctly asserting that they had similar political views and that King’s death was untimely. The AI fails to mention the popular theory that they were involved in any capacity, as well as leaving out a lot of intimate details like living together in D.C. and writing letters to one another for years. The next question we asked was about the common critique that Buchanan caused the Civil War, and how he responded to that idea. Birkner and Quest’s book evaluates this topic in great detail, and their point boils down to: The 1850s America was on the verge of exploding and James Buchanan was the wrong man at the wrong time that made it all the more worse. The AI provides an answer that expresses reification of his intentions to maintain Union and Constitution above all else, and that he inherited a ticking time bomb of a country about to explode. This response seems like something Buchanan would say to be defensive, but also I think the AI was pulling on more popular things about Buchanan to be defensive rather than what Buchanan might have said. In response to our question regarding the most impactful moment of Buchanan’s political career, the AI reflects upon Buchanan’s victory in the 1856 presidential election. As it correctly states, the 1856 election was rife with conflict due to escalating tensions between the North and South. Buchanan, as the Democratic candidate, aligned himself with the more conservative South. His opposition was the anti-slavery Republican party, which will be touched upon in a moment, and the anti-immigrant American party represented by Millard Fillmore. Our following question had to do with Buchanan’s opinion on the Republican Party, one of the two parties which opposed the Democrats in the 1856 election. The Republican party, represented by John C. Fremont, was anti-slavery, made up considerably by former Whigs and members of the Free Soil Party. The Republican party struggled to find footing in the South due to its vehement anti-slavery sentiments. Many Southern sympathizers found the notion of ridding the country of slavery to be far too dramatic and possibly harmful to the economic wellbeing of its people. Our final question was more difficult to research, as we asked about what the AI Buchanan thought of his portrayal in the broader narrative of American history. Buchanan today is seen as one of the worst presidents in history due to his upholding of slavery and failure to prevent the country’s slide into the Civil War. The day before he died, in his final public statement, he says “My dear friend, I have no fear for the future. Posterity will do me justice. I have always felt, and still feel that I discharged every public duty imposed upon me conscientiously. I have no regret for any public act of my life and history will vindicate my memory from every unjust aspersion.”

Reflection:

I think this was a very interesting project to wrap up our semester. I would say what worked was the chatbot primarily. After some minor kinks, the answers were honestly a lot better than I thought they would be in regards to accuracy and depth. The answers weren’t totally accurate and very in depth but my expectations were low going into this, not having hardly any AI experience and especially chat bot experience. I also think doing this as a group project worked really well. It was fun to mess around with the chatbots and ask silly questions but also to divvy the research and fact-checking made this a lot more manageable. I guess what worked the least was the specific questions we asked. I think they were thoughtful and interesting but also there was a certain level of difficulty with determining if some of the responses were good or not and how they were good or not good with the specific questions we asked. I don’t know how I’d improve the question writing, or the assignment as a whole if I’m being honest. This was a great final assignment to do and I hope future classes find this as interesting as we did and do it again but make it better somehow.

Bibliography:

Balcerski, Thomas J. Bosom Friends : The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Birkner, Michael J, and John W Quist. James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2013.

Bragg, Dianne M. “1856: A Year of Volatile Political Reckoning.” In The Antebellum Press: Setting the Stage for Civil War, 1st ed., 141–54. Routledge, 2019. https://doi-org.umw.idm.oclc.org/10.4324/9780429242588-13.

“History of Buchanan’s Birthplace State Park | Department of Conservation and Natural Resources| Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” Accessed April 22, 2025. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-parks/find-a-park/buchanans-birthplace-state-park/history.html.

Mieczkowski, Yanek. “The Election of 1856.” In The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections. Routledge, 2020.

Morrison, Michael A. “President James Buchanan: Executive Leadership and the Crisis of Democracy.” In James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War, edited by John W. Quist and Michael J. Birkner, 134–64. University Press of Florida, 2013.

I used https://www.tweetgen.com/ to generate these images. I think this is “profile” like enough for the assignment. Everett Lame did not have a profile picture or bio before he deleted his account for the record, which might go against the assignment parameters but I think it fits with what I am trying to do. My person is supposed to be ironic, as indicated by the tag, so it is in his nature to be as basic as possible. I tried to identify very popular events/trends to comment on in a very normal way across the pop culture spectrum. I think this is a very interesting assignment and I had a fun time researching 2007 and formulating takes about stuff after the fact. My bibliography is below along with my Google workspace where all the Tweets are ordered by the category I think they fit for the assignment, if there is any confusion.

Workspace:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Txu7yqjI-IJ0eSZutsb-X0mrRUVDUCO_E_54j0WRWu0/edit?usp=sharing

Bibliography:

Primary:

Blakemore, Bill. 2007. “Campus Tragedy: Massacre at Virginia Tech.” World News Tonight (ABC), April, 1. https://research-ebsco-com.umw.idm.oclc.org/linkprocessor/plink?id=f8e3d255-0845-3c47-8c26-aadfab0bec4b.

Major League Baseball. “Bonds’ 756th career homer.” Nationals @ Giants, August 2007 Video, 43 sec. https://www.mlb.com/video/bonds-756th-career-homer-c7143409.

Morgan Stanley. “Technology / Internet Trends.” Published October 18, 2007. https://www.bondcap.com/reports/it07.

superapple4ever. “Steve Jobs Introducing The iPhone At MacWorld 2007.” MacWorld 2007, January 2007. Video, 14 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qPAY9JqE4.

The Associated Press. “Elizabeth II now oldest British monarch.” The Denver Post, December 20, 2007. https://www.denverpost.com/2007/12/20/elizabeth-ii-now-oldest-british-monarch/.

The City of Irving. “Harry Potter, “Deathly Hallows” book release, 2007.” Irving, TX, February 2019. Video, 3 min, 47 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=oU_ZbTSq8sI.

Secondary:

On This Day. “Historical Events in 2007.” Accessed March 26, 2025. https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2007.

Smothers, Hannah. “16 Things You Thought Were Sexy in 2007.” Cosmopolitan, August 17, 2016. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/g6050/2007-hot-sexy-trends/.

The first piece (the meme) works with multiple techniques to persuade people towards Basil Boulevard. The intentional vagueness and hyperbole of “CRUSHES” conveys a kind of bandwagon that many more people are with Basil Boulevard and the Puppets are a minority. The parenthetical text and image of the meme convey that the Puppets are in denial and not facing the fact of the matter that more people watch Basil Boulevard than the Puppets. Also on a more meta level this meme is a half-parody of the crappy political memes that seem to circulate on Facebook every election cycle talking about false statistics and “the truth.”

The second piece (the poster) is very clearly calling back to the famous poster used by Barack Obama during his 2008 Presidential Campaign. The poster is using association in that regard, relaying the feelings of Obama on to Large Avian (Big Bird’s twin brother on Basil Boulevard.) The poster also makes a broad, optimistic claim about Large Avian and the entire Basil Boulevard platform, conflating the Basil Boulevard position to a brighter future.

The evaluation criteria does not specify if/how sources need to be cited so I will simply be including links to what I used instead of full Chicago style citations for very silly websites.

For the meme I used https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Monkey-Puppet

For the poster I plugged this image https://sesameworkshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/presskit_ss_bio_bigbird-560×420.png into this website https://obamapostermaker.com/

Our ad is a parody of a tourism ad for historic sites in Virginia. It’s placed somewhere around the 1930s-1940s (after the sites I mentioned would’ve opened) and the main thing about this ad that is supposed to place it in time (outside of the things I mentioned being open) is the racism and Virginia-centrism. I proclaim George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to be the greatest presidents, and that Virginia was the birthplace of the U.S. Both of these are parodying the idea that some Virginians had (and still have) that Virginia is the United States in some meaningful way. And then of course I say stuff like Robert E. Lee being an infallible general, war of Northern aggression, Battle of Fredericksburg being a victory for Virginia which comes down to the prevalent Lose Cause mythology. We even bring up the romance of the old south, basically fully embracing Gone With The Wind type stuff. Also we thought it would be funny to frame the ad with a set-up for fundamental rights being disrupted only for them to be revealed as aliens after the racist ad plays (also as an homage to War of the Worlds broadcast). So this is kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of stuff not really directly related to a specific ad, but the time in which an ad like this would’ve taken place, and we had a lot of fun with it, as you can probably tell.

Bibliography:

Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. “About Mount Vernon.” Accessed February 26, 2025. https://www.mountvernon.org/about.

Virginia Historical Society. “Monticello.” Accessed February 26, 2025. https://virginiahistory.org/research/collections/garden-club-virginia-historic-restorations-project/plantations/monticello#:~:text=After%20Jefferson’s%20death%20and%20the,save%20this%20historic%20American%20treasure.

Virginia Historical Society. “Stratford Hall.” Accessed February 26, 2025. https://virginiahistory.org/research/collections/garden-club-virginia-historic-restorations-project/plantations/stratford-hall.

Overall I think this was a really fun and interesting first project to do in this class. I found it really interesting to see how everyone interpreted the assignment differently and we all did pretty different things. It really made me question what associations I had with products even with language removed (identifying Old Spice comes to mind). I thought it was fun to see how easily we understood most ads, even when they weren’t as obvious and it made me reflect on how ingrained ads are in my human experience. I would say that I would change a couple things if we were to do it again. Firstly, no AI image generation, I can’t draw at all and I still had fun actually making my ads, and this really takes away a key aspect of the assignment which is making the darn things yourself. Secondly, I would remove the guessing correctly aspect as part of the grade because frankly some of them were too obvious (looking at you Minecraft and Coke Zero) and I think that issue could be solved if people worried less about getting people to guess it right. For my ads, I did a simple Rubiks Cube one that was not really inspired by anything, and a New Coke ad that I tried to recreate from one of the contemporary ones. Those are posted below as well as a citation for the article I took the New Coke ad from.

“New Coke pops… 34 years later,” AdAge, effective May 25, 2019, https://adage.com/article/classic-ad-review/new-coke-pops-34-years-later/2174086.

Going into this class I was unsure what it would be like, and had some anxieties about how I would fare in my first 400 level class. On top of the new level of rigor, professor McClurken made it clear that the syllabus would be crafted by the students, and that would be something new for sure. A few weeks in, although mostly brainstorming the syllabus, I feel like I’ve gotten the sense that this will be a super fun semester. Obviously the assignments we’ve come up with will be interesting, but also the topics that we’ve narrowed it down to. The level of rigor hasn’t shown itself yet, although that is soon to come, but when it hits I think I’ll have gotten over my anxieties that I had coming into this semester.

Last semester for Virginia Issues & Controversies with Professor Moon, our final project had to incorporate a “digital tool,” and I made a timeline. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jKM1fX9Cu5_wqodZZOHfeIcdduJEq0l1yPAyDO3rXFs/edit?usp=sharing

Downey breaks down the information age into discussions of the technologies of communication and how they evolved and replaced each other over time. He identifies four major periods of communication technology, and discusses social, cultural, political, and economic factors that influence the evolution throughout these periods. Downey also describes historical actors working towards certain goals in these periods. Starting with print communication and ending with computers, Downey paints a picture that contrasts the pushed perspective that new technology trumps old technology. He makes a more nuanced argument that new technology pushes for older forms to adapt to new roles/audiences.

Of the five introductions we were tasked with reading, the ones that I landed on were The Cybernetics Moment by Ronald Kline, The Information by James Gleick, and Media Technology and Society by Brian Winston. Kline’s introduction provided context for the rise of the term cybernetics in the wake of the information age. For Kline, the information age describes a recent phenomenon that people proclaim we are living in with its roots in cybernetics and so-called “electronic brains.” I think that Kline’s thoughts about the origin of the term information age and the history of the discipline are interesting, but his definition of the information age as it being a second half of the 20th century and onwards period doesn’t resonate with me as much. Gleick’s understanding of the information age comes with a more historical and scientific perspective. He reasons that the invention of the bit as a measurement of information allows for a greater understanding of information as mathematical. Gleick claims that, “for the purposes of science, information had to mean something special.” (Gleick, pg. 7)  I think that studying this moment of quantifying information and how that has influenced our modern understanding could be an interesting topic to explore this semester. Winston takes a more critical and philosophical approach to the information age, analyzing semantics and how our understanding of these technological advancements are impacted by the words we use to describe them. Winston uses many models to try and demonstrate his argument about how words/concepts interact with one another, but I didn’t much care for his premise, especially when compared to Kline and Gleick. Reading through all of these gave me a potential idea for class this semester, where one class we try and crowdsource definitions to terms (similar to what we did on the first day of class) with debates about semantics and what meanings we give to words. Something like that where groups have to debate each other about interpretive definitions might be an interesting way to think about different perspectives on whatever we would be talking about. 

My name is Ewan and I am a sophomore History major here at UMW. What interests me about the History of the Information Age is the evolution of information spread/impact, especially with the context of the modern day. I have never known a time without all of humanities collective knowledge in my pocket and never had to wait more than a few hours to hear about major events, even if they are across the world. I like wondering about how we got to this point as a society, and what have we lost/what has changed to achieve this age of instant information. Seeing how the phenomenon of information developed over time will be a throughline I’m excited to explore. As far as one past assignment I liked, the 2021 iteration of this class did an imaginary propaganda campaign for a fictitious leader utilizing three distinct modalities of information. I think that it is very clever and sounded very fun to do, but also demonstrated that era of information really well. One piece of advise I’ll take from the 2014 class is that I’ll do the readings to participate in the discussions so that it is less awkward. Especially in a class as small as ours, any awkward silence could be devastating, so I’m gonna try and stay on top of the readings to avoid that outcome. Thanks for reading my first blog post, there will be many more to come!