Where Did Civil War Freedom Come From?

My history group and I made this poster during class.  It shows which documents we studied contain freedom from above and which have freedom from below.

In our most recent history lesson, we studied whether freedom during the civil war came from above or below, or rather, whether slave freedom was brought upon by the white citizens or the slaves.  To understand, we looked at several documents written during the civil war in which freedom was granted to the people.  By reading the sources, it was obvious whether freedom came from above or below. In class, we created posters (above) where we categorized the documents and decided whether they came from above or below. Freedom came from above more often in some cases, while in others, freedom came from below as the slaves started to take action to achieve what they wanted.

Engraving, “Slaves from the plantation of Confederate President
Jefferson Davis arrive at Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi,” 1863

The first document was an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's reply to a letter by Horace Greeley.  It was written in 1862, and Lincoln was not yet focused on freeing slaves.  He was most concerned about saving the Union, and didn't care what he would have to do to achieve this. Although this is freedom from above, Lincoln was not completely set on freeing the slaves. In the second document, an excerpt from The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in January 1863, Lincoln was just focused on suppressing the rebellion, and to do so he freed slaves from border states. The slaves from southern states were not freed, but he changed this as the war progressed. In the Gettysburg address in November 1863, he said that his goal had always been to free all the slaves, although he had never admitted it.  He said that war was God's way of punishing them for having slavery for so long.  The first line of this speech illustrates that he wanted all men to be equal: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."Each of these examples illustrate freedom from above because Abraham Lincoln and the government were taking actions to free the slaves, and the slaves did nothing to help themselves to freedom.

Freedom from below came at different points in the war. In a letter from Union General Ambrose E Burnside to Secretary of War Edwin M Stanton in March 1863, Burnside reported that fugitive slaves were taking over the southern city he was near and that he didn't know what to do. He asked Stanton to help him with this situation because slaves had never done much before to gain freedom. This is one of the first cases freedom came from below because the slaves were taking actions to try and achieve freedom. Another instance where freedom came from below is shown in the picture on the right. In this picture, there are slaves and white men, one of which is Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The slaves are trying to gain freedom, making this an instance of freedom from below. There are fewer instances of freedom from below because often slaves needed the government to give them freedom; they couldn't do it all by themselves.

My opinion on whether freedom came from above or below is that freedom came mostly from above. I believe that the slaves, although they did do it in some cases, couldn't achieve freedom all alone. They mostly needed government officials to pass laws that made them free or took steps to achieve this. Although freedom was more effective when it came from above during the Civil War, in modern day times, both freedom from above and freedom below have been effective. A good example where freedom came from above and below over time is same-sex marriage. A constitutional right that granted this was passed in 2013, so the government had a part this freedom, but citizens had rebelled for over 50 years to help them pass it. Freedoms of all sorts are still being granted today, and these, like the examples from the Civil War, came from both above and below.

Quote is from: http://www.edline.net/files/_DMF17_/780ff3a0307aa82d3745a49013852ec4/Freedom_from_Above_or_Below_Documents.pdf

In School Scavenger Hunt

While learning about the battles of the Civil War in history class, we went on a scavenger hunt around the school to find notes on each battle.  There were many steps to create and carry out the scavenger hunt.  First, each person was assigned a battle to research. We found basic information on the battle, like its location and victor, and then we organized this information into a google doc.  After linking the google doc to a QR code, we printed out the code and hung it somewhere in the school.  We then collaborated with the battles that came before and after ours and wrote the location of the next battle in the google doc so that our classmates could find each battle in the correct order and location.  Then, we started the scavenger hunt.  We started at our battle and copied the notes from the QR code document, and then followed the directions to the next battle.  After we finished, we used the information we took down to create a Padlet (below), and to answer the essential questions.

Created with Padlet

The first essential question asked who the ultimate victor was in each of the theaters of war.  Using the information from each battle that was recorded during the scavenger hunt, we were able to determine that the Union dominated in the Western and Naval Theaters throughout the war, and in the Eastern Theater later in the war.  However, the Confederacy dominated in the Eastern Theater early on in the war.  The Union won the most battles in the Western and Naval Theaters, like the Battle of East Baton Rouge Parish and the Battle of Gettysburg, because they had more ships and supplies, which they used to help bring down the Confederacy.  The Confederacy won most of the battles at the beginning of the war in the Eastern Theater, like the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, because there was a lack of leadership and control in the Union, but later on, as control in the Union improved they began to win these battles as well.  The Union was the ultimate victor overall, and they eventually won the war.

This image shows the Battle of Shiloh, which was located in the Western Theater.  The Union was the victor for this battle.
http://www.history.army.mil/news/2013/130401a_shiloh.html

The second question asked what the commonalities were between the results of the battles.  The reasons for the results of each battle were all fairly similar.  In the battles where the Union was the victor, such as the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Fort Henry, and the Siege of Vicksburg, the Confederacy ran out supplies, was outnumbered, or just wasn't prepared enough.  The Union won most of the total battles, but the Confederacy did win some in the Eastern Theater.  This is because the Union was slow in positioning their troops, like in the First Battle of Bull Run, and because they had lack of leadership early in the War.  However, as their leadership improved, they went on to win almost every battle later on in the war.  There were commonalities between most battles, and the results and victors of them were consistent in the Western and Naval Theaters throughout the entire war.  This scavenger hunt my history class completed in school worked well with this lesson in particular because there were many different battles to find and research. This lesson was educational but it was also a fun, creative way to learn about the Battles of the Civil War.