In groups of NO MORE than 4 people, please answer the following DBQ:

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Historians have been interested in the role played by African Americans in shaping the aims and
conduct of the Civil War. In the 1930s, an historian said that "American Negroes became free
without any effort of their own."

Respond to this statement, specifying whether you agree or disagree, in part or in whole. Use your
knowledge of the time period and the sources provided to support your arguments.

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From: http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/dbq/11015.html
A. Harriet Tubman's Letter to Lincoln

Primary source: Harriet Tubman to President Abraham Lincoln, letter, 1862.

Background information: After escaping from slavery in 1849, Harriet Tubman became one of the most prominent
abolitionists and a driving force behind the various secret escape routes for slaves. In this quotation from a letter by
another great abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child, Tubman seeks to influence President Abraham Lincoln.

. . . God won't let Master Lincoln beat the South until he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man,
and I'm a poor Negro but this Negro can tell Master Lincoln how to save money and young men. He can do it by
setting the Negroes free. Suppose there was an awful big snake down there on the floor. He bites you. Folks all
scared, because you may die. You send for doctor to cut the bite; but the snake is rolled up there, and while the
doctor is doing it, he bites you again. The doctor cuts out that bite; but while he's doing it, the snake springs up
and bites you again, and so he keeps doing it, till you kill him. That's what Master Lincoln ought to know. . . . 

Harriet Tubman quoted by Lydia Maria Child (21 January 1862), in William Friedheim, with Ronald Jackson,
Freedom's Unfinished Revolution, American Social History Project (New York: The New Press, 1996), 62.
B. General Benjamin Butler to General Winfield Scott

Primary source: Union General Benjamin Butler to Union General Winfield Scott, letter, 1861.
Background information: Two Union generals discuss emancipation.

Since I wrote my last dispatch the question in regard to slave property is becoming one of very serious
magnitude. The inhabitants of Virginia are using their Negroes in the batteries, and are preparing to send the
women and children South. The escapes from them are very numerous, and a squad has come in this morning to
my pickets bringing their women and children. . . . I am in the utmost doubt what to do with this species of
property. Up to this time I have had come within my lines men and women with their children—entire families
—each family belonging to the same owner. I have therefore determined to employ, as I can do very profitably,
the able–bodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and charging against their
services the expense of care and sustenance of the non-laborers. . . . I know of no other manner in which to
dispose of this subject and the questions connected herewith. As a matter property to the insurgents it will be of
very great moment, the number that I now have amounting as I am informed to what in good times would be the
value of sixty–thousand dollars. . . . Without [the labor of these fugitives] the batteries could not have been
erected at least for many weeks. As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity to deprive
their masters of their services. How can this be done? As a political question and a question of humanity can I
receive the services of a Father and a Mother and not take the children? Of the humanitarian aspect I have no
doubt. Of the political one I have no right to judge. I therefore submit all this to your better judgement, and as
these questions have a political aspect, I have ventured—and I trust I am not wrong in so doing—to duplicate the
parts of my dispatch relating to this subject and forward them to the Secretary of War.

Union General Benjamin Butler to Union General Winfield Scott, Fortress Monroe, Virginia, (27 May 1861),
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 ed. Steven Hahn et al. (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1982). Reprint, Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, et al., eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of
Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York: The New Press, 1992), 9–10.
C. The Second Confiscation Act

Primary source: The Second Confiscation Act, 1862.

Background information: The U.S. Congress passsed legislation to inhibit treason against the Union.

CHAP. CXCV.—An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate the
Property of Rebels, and for other Purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled, That every person who shall hereafter commit the crime of treason against the United States, and
shall be adjudged guilty thereof, shall suffer death, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free; or,
at the discretion of the court, he shall be imprisoned for not less than five years and fined not less than ten
thousand dollars, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free; said fine shall be levied and
collected on any or all of the property, real and personal, excluding slaves, of which the said person so convicted
was the owner at the time of committing the said crime, any sale or conveyance to the contrary notwithstanding.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall hereafter incite, set on foot, assist, or engage in any
rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States, or the laws thereof, or shall give aid or
comfort thereto, or shall engage in, or give aid and comfort to, any such existing rebellion or insurrection, and be
convicted thereof, such person shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years, or by a
fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and by the liberation of all his slaves, if any he have; or by both of said
punishments, at the discretion of the court.

[. . .]

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That, to insure the speedy termination of the present rebellion, it shall be the
duty of the President of the United States to cause the seizure of all the estate and property, money, stocks,
credits, and effects of the persons hereinafter named in this section, and to apply and use the same and the
proceeds thereof for the support of the army of the United States . . .

[. . .]

APPROVED, July 17, 1862.

The Second Confiscation Act, U.S. Statutes at Large, 12 (1863), 589–92.

D. Lincoln's Letter to Horace Greeley

Primary source: Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, letter, 1862.

Background information: President Abraham Lincoln responds on August 22, 1862, to the publisher Horace
Greeley, who three days earlier criticized the government for not making emancipation a key war aim. What Greeley
did not know and what Lincoln in his letter does not divulge is that a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was on
Lincoln's desk as he wrote this letter to Greeley.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:

Dear Sir.

[. . . ]

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national
authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not
save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who
would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do
not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the
cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. . . .

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, in Roy P. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c. 1953–55).
E. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

Primary source: Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, 1863.

Background information: Read the Emancipation Proclamation to determine whom exactly it set free. Was the
Proclamation issued because the war was not going well for the North or because African Americans were
demanding that the destruction of slavery become the key aim of the war?

Whereas, on the twenty–second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty–two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the
following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty–three, all persons
held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against
the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United
States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such
persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their
actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of
States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and
the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of
the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State
shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence
that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation (1 January 1863), in John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation
Proclamation (Wheeling, Ill.: Davidson, c. 1995), at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/emancipa.htm.

Courtesy of The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.

F. Recruiting Poster

Primary source: Recruiting poster for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, 1863.
Background information: President Abraham Lincoln did not endorse the active recruitment of free African
Americans into the Union army until 1863.

Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society.

G. African American Troops Liberating Slaves

Primary source: "Colored Troops . . . Liberating Slaves in South Carolina," illustration, 1864.
Background information: As the African American presence in the Northern war effort increased, so did the
chances of freeing slaves from Southern plantations.

"Colored Troops, Under General Wild, Liberating Slaves in South Carolina," Harper's Weekly 7, no. 369 (23
January 1864): 52.

Courtesy of HarpWeek.
H. African American Soldiers

Primary source: Theodore R. Davis, "The Fight at Milliken's Bend," letter, 1863.
Background information: This was one of many battles in which the new African American troops distinguished
themselves.

Twenty-second Day in Rear of Vicksburg, June 9, 1868.

Two gentlemen from the Yazoo have given me the following particulars of the fight at Milliken's Bend, in which
negro troops played so conspicuous a part. My informant states that a force of about 1000 negroes and 200 men
of the Twenty–third Iowa, belonging to the Second Brigade, Carr's Division (the Twenty–third Iowa had been up
the river with prisoners, and was on its way back to this place), was surprised in camp by a rebel force of about
2000 men. The first intimation that the commanding officer received was from one of the black men, who went
into the colonel's tent, and said: "Massa, the secesh are in camp." The colonel ordered him to have the men load
their guns at once. He instantly replied: "We have done did dat now, massa." Before the colonel was ready the
men were in line, ready for action. As before stated, the rebels drove our force toward the gun-boats, taking
colored men prisoners and murdering them. This so enraged them that they rallied and charged the enemy more
heroically and desperately than has been recorded during the war. It was a genuine bayonet charge, a hand-to-
hand fight, that has never occurred to any extent during this prolonged conflict. Upon both sides men were killed
with the butts of muskets. White and black men were lying side by side, pierced by bayonets, and in some
instances transfixed to the earth. In one instance, two men—one white and the other black—were found dead,
side by side, each having the other's bayonet through his body. If facts prove to be what they are now
represented, this engagement of Sunday morning will be recorded as the most desperate of this war. Broken
limbs, broken heads, the mangling of bodies, all prove that it was a contest between enraged men; on the one
side from hatred to a race, and on the other, desire for self-preservation, revenge for past grievances, and the
inhuman murder of their comrades. One brave man took his former master prisoner, and brought him into camp
with great gusto. A rebel prisoner made a particular request that his own negroes should not be placed over him
as a guard. Dame Fortune is capricious! His request was not granted. The rebels lost five cannon, 200 men
killed, 400 to 500 wounded, and about 200 prisoners. Our loss is reported to be 100 killed and 500 wounded; but
few of this number were white men.

Theodore R. Davis to Harper's Weekly, Vicksburg, 9 June 1863, Harper's Weekly 7, no. 340 (4 July 1863): 427.

Courtesy of HarpWeek.
I. A Man Knows a Man

Primary source: "A Man Knows a Man," cartoon, 1865.

Background information: Military service, especially in battle, was often seen as a rite of passage that turned boys
into men. Physical scarring or maiming served as the visible symbol of manhood tested and earned through combat.

"A Man Knows A Man," Harper's Weekly 9, no. 434 (22 April 1865): 265.

Courtesy of HarpWeek.
J. The Thirteenth Amendment

Primary source: The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1865.

Background information: The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of the legacies of the Civil
War.

Article XIII.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

U.S. Constitution, amend. 13, at http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html.

Courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives.