Freedom from above, or below?

In class before beginning our lesson we were given the essential questions, "Who 'gave' the freedom to enslaved Americans? Did freedom come from above or below? To what extent were Abraham Lincoln's actions influenced by the actions of enslaved Americans?". To fully understand the questions, you should know that "above" is the group of higher class Americans, mainly politicians, and "below", is the slaves and the other lower class Americans who were directly impacted by slavery.

In class, we were given a set of documents which all went along with the argument of where freedom came from. In one document, Lincoln's Open Letter , President Abraham Lincoln states that, " If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.". This article shows that freedom comes from above, because though he didn't say he was planning on abolishing slavery during his term, President Lincoln said that he believed all men should be free, and if saving the Union could only be achieved by abolishing slavery then he would have no problem with it.

In a Letter from General Ambrose E. Burnside toSecretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, which our class had called Document X, we read about how when the union army takes over an abandoned southern city, slaves begin to come out of the swamps, some claiming to have lived there for 5 years, and start taking residence in the city. This shows that freedom came from below, because the fugitive slaves who took refuge in the swamps are now taking the opportunity for a better life, though it is causing anxiety for their new neighbors.

To end the lesson, we made a graph showing which documents argued that freedom came from above and which showed that it came from below. In my opinion, it came from below, because the actions taken above were set in motion not by their own humanity, but the actions coming from below.

My group's graph of the documents.