Weekly Response Essay 1

In their books, Hahn and McPherson argue about fundamentally different things. In Hahn's expose on slave politics between the slaves, their owners, and the North, including Lincoln, he begins with the run-up to the freedom of the slaves and how the Southerners, slaves included, detected the increasingly loud grumblings of freedom amongst their owners. Of course, then the Civil War happens, and to the slaves' delight, they are freed. The book mentions the treatment of blacks, from when they were slaves and typically treated poorly in the South or hunted down in the North, to during the war, where black Northern POWs were forced into slavery and treated abysmally, to after the war and emancipation, when former slaves moved north as quickly as possible in order to start a better life in pursuit of the American Dream that had recently been granted to them. The blacks, during and after the Civil War, launched a revolution, with Lincoln and the Union's help, not only on their slave owners and the concept of slavery, but also on the public's image of liberty. Those 3 forces declared that liberty wasn't just for some, but equally for all, as our Constitution originally guaranteed. In McPherson's book, he asks different questions, whether Lincoln was justified in his actions of pressing for war, and even if the Civil War was considered a revolution for the greater good of humanity. Conversely, he contrasts the reasons for the North's reasons with the South's, stating that the South believed that they deserved a revolution from the North's crackdown on their lifestyle. The South compared their "plight" of having slavery taken away, among other claimed abuses, with early America's treatment by the British, and wanted to draw a parallel between America's revolution and their own, therefore "justifying" their own secession and eventual war with the Union.
In the lecture, Professor Suri asked the question, Who has authority over whom? In the books, both Hahn and McPherson...