Enslaved people pursue freedom during the Civil War
How did enslaved people pursue freedom during the Civil War?
Use 12 pt font, double-spaced, and 1” margins. Please submit your paper in MS Word format or save it as .rtf if you use another word processing program.
I uploaded my previous paper and the corrections so you can see what mistakes to not make again.
Additional thoughts: The goal of this paper is for students to demonstrate they understand the uneven process of emancipation. The people chronicled in
Taylor’s book experience great uncertainty so your paper should accommodate the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Union’s policy and the various
ways that enslaved people responded to the changing dynamics. This is a story of change over time, but the change is not consistent so don’t anticipate a
perfectly linear argument.
As you read the Taylor book, please use the following questions as a guide. These will form the basis for our conversation on October 27.
What are the strategies that enslaved people employed to seek their freedom?
What were the ways that Union Army personnel helped enslaved people as they pursued their freedom? What were the ways that they hindered that effort?
How did “military necessity” factor into these decisions?
How did the actions of freed people in contraband camps challenge or reinforce white people’s perceptions of Black people?
How did men’s and women’s experiences in and around contraband camps differ?
What were the attitudes and actions of white people (missionaries, teachers, etc.) who came south to assist the residents of camps?
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.asp
Sample Solution
The Emancipation proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. As a result, the mass Southern blacks now faced the difficulties blacks had confronted – that of a free people surrounded by many hostile whites. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield, wrote, “For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.” On farms and plantains, enslaved workers broke equipment, feigned illness, slowed or stopped work, stole, plotted revolts, and fled. Whites and blacks mobilized to help people escaping enslavement, following what was known as the Underground Railroad, and cementing the fame of individuals such as Harriet Tubman.
