The song, “John Brown’s Body,” consists of tune and words. And often times in the 19th century, new words got set to familiar tunes because it was an easy way to learn songs. So the tune to “John Brown’s Body” had been around for a while.

“John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, But, His soul is marching on. Glory, Glory Hallelujah! Glory, Glory Hallelujah! Glory, Glory Hallelujah! His soul is marching on.”

The words to “John Brown’s Body” went through several different variations. The original John Brown that it’s singing of was not even the John Brown that we think of—John Brown, the anti-slavery figure. He was a soldier in the Union Army in a Massachusetts regiment who had the name John Brown and the song was initially a way for his fellow soldiers to tease him. But the song caught on and passed beyond his regiment. When other regiments sang the song “John Brown’s Body,” they probably had no idea that there was a Massachusetts soldier named John Brown.

They thought they were singing about John Brown, the anti-slavery figure. And the words, again, they changed and they evolved over the course of the war. Different groups would add different verses that fit their experiences. And what makes this song so interesting to me is that the image of John Brown, the anti-slavery figure, did the same thing. It changed so much over time and also varied depending on who you ask. So different groups would ascribe certain characteristics just like different soldiers would add different lyrics.

It becomes one of the Union Army’s favorite marching tunes. Partly because it’s quite a stirring melody and you can envision marching to this song. But also because the anti-slavery cause that John Brown came to stand for in the public mind takes on such added importance as the Civil War progresses, among Union soldiers and among the Northern public. So the popularity of the song far outstrips the popularity of John Brown. The song’s fate during the war is really quite telling about how attitudes about slavery and anti-slavery changed over time, but particularly within the war itself.

The first thing I would ask is, “What does it sound like?” In terms of tune, is it slow or fast? Is it the sort of thing you would use to sing a baby to sleep or is it the sort of thing that you would march to? I would also listen for repetition. Why do particular words recur again and again? Why this word as opposed to another word? What might this verse be talking about? There’s clearly a lot of military and army overtones. “A soldier in the Army of the Lord.” What do they think that means? There’s a war going on at the time so it could mean a couple of things. Does it mean the original John Brown? What does that tell us about how John Brown saw himself and saw his quest to free the slaves? We could talk about “Army of the Lord” in that symbolic sense in John Brown’s eyes. What does that mean to the soldiers who are singing it in the Union Army? What does that tell us about how they think about their own cause in the Union Army?

“He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord, He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord, He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord, His soul is marching on.”

Where the verses are in relation to each other. Why do certain ideas follow from certain other ideas? Might just be nonsense. We all make up nonsense songs, but not always. And in this case, I think where verses fall in relation to each other really does tell us something about how the war changed many of the men who fought it. Lyrics that don’t quite make sense to them, that they don’t quite understand because their context is different. And that context matters. That’s where sometimes you have to be careful because how we use words, what we mean by words, that can change over time. It’s worthwhile to spend time really looking at lyrics and what they would’ve meant to somebody in the 1860s.

Songs are a wonderful way to get at 19th-century life because so much of people’s entertainment had to be self-created. A way to entertain yourself was get together and to sing. The way it gets produced formally is in sheet music, pieces of paper with the words and the notes. But more often how people learn music is word of mouth. Words to songs are often set to tunes that people already know. That’s one way in which songs can spread so quickly. Learning a song is learning new words as opposed to learning both words and music. People do change the words as they go along. And that’s why you’ll see so many different versions and different lyrics.

When there are many versions, you have to be a little bit careful not to assume that everybody is (a) singing the same thing, or (b) means the same thing. But watching how words change over time and looking at particular words that are chosen and what certain lyrics might refer to can, I think, really be helpful in understanding what do people have on their minds at the time. They start to insert their experiences and things from the news and their ideas and attitudes into these songs.

John Brown’s raid happens in the year 1859 and then the Civil War breaks out in 1861. Northerners and Southerners have been growing apart on the issue of slavery. But the question that has really been dividing Northerners and Southerners at the time that John Brown’s raid happens is, what should the ultimate fate of slavery be as the nation expands? New territories are being added. Should they be slave or should they be free? Northern opinion is very divided. Some just don’t want to talk about it. Others think, slavery exists in the Southern states and it’s not really our business to touch it there. You can keep it if you already have it, but we don’t want to send it anywhere else.

Then there’s Southern opinion, which says, we need this institution. It’s central to our way of life. Not allowing it to spread first of all goes against the will of God and, second of all, is going to be dangerous. What if we become so outnumbered that all the other states in the Union can get together in Congress and can outlaw slavery. For many white Northerners, it can be kind of an abstract issue; this isn’t something they live with every day. Most white Southerners live among slaves every day, whether or not they actually own any. The institution of slavery is an inherently violent institution.

So for Southerners, the fear of a slave uprising is never absent. When somebody like John Brown, an outsider, a man from the North, comes into the South to incite an uprising of slaves, it sounds like your worst nightmare. That clearly shows that we have to take dramatic steps to protect ourselves. And for some white Southerners, the only step that will really protect us is to separate, to leave the Union. So John Brown is one man. He’s certainly not indicative of majority opinion. He only gets 19 people to help him. The rebellion doesn’t work. It lasts less than 36 hours. He’s tried and executed. The great uprising, all the slaves flocking to him, that he had envisioned never happened. But its impact shouldn’t be underestimated. Because he really does stand for so much of what white Southerners fear by 1860.

“John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back.” I would want to talk with students about what’s a knapsack. And what they think that one might mean.

“John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, His soul is marching on.”

That verse seems to me to be a clear outgrowth of the experience of being in the army for so many soldiers. That’s new. They have likely not been away from home before, much less in an army. So I think that verse gives us a chance to talk about the experience of being a soldier.

A lot of students carry a knapsack to school with them every day and in their knapsack they’ll put the things that they’re going to need from day to day. If a soldier is in the Union Army and he’s away from home, sometimes for the first time, what might he put in his knapsack? What would he need for his day-to-day life? What kinds of things do soldiers carry with them? What’s it like to be a soldier?

He’d probably have to carry his food, so what would he eat? He would have to carry a blanket. What would sleeping be like if you were on the march? How much can you really carry if you have to carry it all day long? Not that much. So if you had to think about the few things you could carry with you, what would you take? Two pairs of socks and your uniform and not a lot else. How does that affect your life?

I can see why singing songs would look like such a good time because you don’t have much else with you. Maybe a pack of cards. It becomes possible to talk about the bareness of life with that knapsack.

We go from this verse about the experience of being a soldier—trudging and carrying things, stomping through the mud—and then we go right into “John Brown died that the slaves might be free.” That’s an interesting juxtaposition because it suggests that this tromping through mud and being cold and being hot and being lonely actually has come to be for the purpose that this institution of slavery might come to an end.

“John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, His soul is marching on."

They first enter the Union Army for all kinds of different reasons. Some so that slaves might be free, but others might enter the Army because they really think that keeping one United States matters. So they might enter for patriotic motives. They might enter because they’re 19 years old and tired of working on the farm and they think it will be a big adventure. They might enter because other young men from their town are entering and they don’t want to look like a coward. So there’re all kinds of reasons why a person might decide to enter the Union Army.

But the experience of being in the Union Army really does begin to make many soldiers think about things they might not have really wanted to think a lot about before. And they’re doing this thinking in states that have slavery and most of them have never seen slavery before. They knew it existed, but it’s different to see it in person. So for many of them, seeing slavery in person really changes their minds.

And really does make them think that all this mucking around in the mud and loneliness and fear and boredom and all the other things that being a soldier entails is for a purpose. So I think the juxtaposition of those two verses, the very ordinary verse about a knapsack and all of a sudden this moral verse about “died that the slaves might be free,” I think that’s more than an accident. I think that those things got put together for a purpose.

The second version is a later version. The lyrics are more elaborate. They look to me like lyrics that somebody actually sat down and thought about as opposed to the lyrics that somebody made up as they were going along. They talk even more explicitly about exactly who was John Brown, exactly what did he do. There doesn’t seem to be much confusion at all about John Brown. John Brown’s a hero.

“Old John Brown’s Body lies mouldering in the grave; While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save; But tho’ he lost his life while struggling for the slave; His soul is marching on.” It starts right off not with the experiential part about a knapsack, but instead here is who John Brown was. And he was a person willing to sacrifice his life to end slavery. And then the next verse, it’s even more clear that the writer of the song really admires John Brown. This verse says: “John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave; And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save; Now, though the grass grows green above his grave, his soul is marching on.”

The writer of the second verse is a fairly educated person who must know something about John Brown’s life. Before John Brown decides to lead this uprising in Virginia, he goes to be part of this struggle to free Kansas. And then the second verse has a lot of details about his raid in Virginia.

“He captured Harper’s Ferry with his 19 men so few and frightened ’Old Virginny’ till she trembled through and through.” “They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew” must happen after secession because many Northerners see secession as the work of traitors. Again, it’s quite detailed. This person knows that there were 19 men involved in the raid. It’s not clear that the writer of the first version has that kind of detailed knowledge. “He captured Harper’s Ferry with his 19 men so true, And frightened old Virginny till she trembled through and through. They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew. His soul is marching on.” “The conflict that he heralded, he looks from heaven to view; On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue. And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do; For his soul his marching on.”

Now this is a fascinating verse. It draws a direct link between what John Brown does and the outbreak of the Civil War. But what I find even more interesting is this explicit connection between John Brown and his raid on Virginia and the Union flag of red, white, and blue. John Brown saw the United States government as protecting slavery. He led this raid in Harper’s Ferry, VA, against the Union government. He chose to attack a federal arsenal which is where the United States government keeps its firearms. It was the United States government that was partly guilty for this institution. John Brown’s cause becoming attached to the United States government, again, I think is a very interesting glimpse at how much the war changed things and changed peoples’ views about slavery.

And then we go on to “Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may; The death blow of oppression in a better time and way; For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day; And his soul is marching on.” The connection between the cause of John Brown and the cause of the Union Army, “Ye soldiers of Freedom,” becomes clear. But again, I suspect this is a song that comes in the second year of the war or later.

John Brown was born in 1800 to a family of very stern religious convictions and a father who was very sternly anti-slavery. Both of those things rubbed off on John Brown. And he’s never very successful at making a living. From a sort of material point of view, his life is a failure.

When he starts to become important is in the 1850s when Kansas Territory opens up for white settlement and the question arises, should Kansas be slave or free?

To John Brown, this is not even a question. It should be free. And so he goes to Kansas to participate in the struggle to make Kansas a free state. In December of 1855, the town of Lawrence, KS, a town committed to making Kansas free, was attacked by pro-slavery forces. And Brown’s involved in the defense of Lawrence. Later in 1856, there are a series of assassinations and executions of free state settlers. And in response to (1) those assassinations, (2) another attack on the town of Lawrence and, (3) an event that happens back in the United States Congress in which a pro-slavery senator attacked an anti-slavery senator, these three events just boil up in John Brown.

In May of 1856, he decided that if pro-slavery forces are going to try and force slavery on Kansas with violence, then anti-slavery forces have to react with violence. So he killed five pro-slavery settlers. The justification was that those who are willing to kill for slavery should be willing to die for slavery. To most people it was a gruesome act.

Brown denied that he did it. And he began to travel back among the eastern states to gain support for anti-slavery settlers in Kansas. He says he’s raising money for free state settlers in Kansas, but actually he had begun to plan his raid on Harper’s Ferry. He is back in Kansas in 1859 and his last hurrah is to cross over into Missouri and to free 11 slaves and to escape with them to Canada.

Harper’s Ferry. He found six wealthy Northeasterners, mostly New Englanders, who thought that they were supporting Kansas who really are the people who financed his raid. They’re known as the “Secret Six.” He also met with a number of free African American Northern leaders to try and get them to help him recruit men. Frederick Douglass told him that the plan was insane and wouldn’t help him. So Brown entered the raid disappointed. He had hoped for more widespread support.

He and some of his sons and some other compatriots, for a grand total of eventually 19 people, rented a farm house in Maryland, just seven miles from Harper’s Ferry. His hope was that he would seize this federal armory, the symbol of the United States government, which he blamed for helping to keep slavery. And then slaves from all around would flock to his banner and they would march to the South and free slaves as they went.

They seize the armory without too much difficulty. They do it in the middle of night. Nobody’s expecting a raid on Harper’s Ferry. But after that, it’s a little mysterious as to exactly what Brown thought would happen because he really just stayed put. Probably he was waiting for all of these slaves to rush to his banner and they didn’t. So eventually the locals surround Brown. Brown and his men eventually congregate in one building at the Harper’s Ferry arsenal, the engine house. Meanwhile, local people have contacted the United States military. A force of Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee comes to Harper’s Ferry and is able to capture Brown and his followers. A few of them escape. Some are them killed. Most of them are captured and will go on trial.

Brown goes on trial very quickly, so speedily that the judge will not even wait for a lawyer to arrive to serve as John Brown’s defense lawyer. That decision turned out to be important in first beginning to shift Northern opinion. They thought, first of all, this is a nutty idea. What on earth did he think he was going to achieve? And they did not see themselves as advocating the use of violence. And they did not see themselves as advocating marching into a Southern state and physically attacking slavery. And they certainly didn’t want Southerners to think that they advocated that kind of thing.

Then the judge makes the decision not to wait for the lawyer. Northerners begin to think that due process is being taken away. These Southerners are so worried about slavery that they’re willing to overlook civil liberties. They’re willing to overlook the Bill of Rights. Now John Brown is beginning to look a little different. He’s beginning to look like somebody who’s sacrificing himself in a greater cause. He’s beginning to look a little bit like a martyr.

Most Northerners are not on board with that view yet. But then he’s executed and he comports himself with great dignity. He gives a very eloquent last speech. He writes a very eloquent last letter in which he says, “I once thought it would be possible to end slavery by shedding just a little blood. Now I see that the crimes of this guilty land are too great and they will only be expiated with the shedding of a lot of blood.”

So, Northern opinion begins to shift a little more. And Southern opinion becomes a little more nervous about Brown. Once the war happens, that’s when Brown really becomes elevated in Northern opinion. He might’ve tried to end slavery by shedding just a little blood. Now, we have this great war that has shed a lot of blood. Suddenly he looks like a martyr and a prophet.

That this is certainly not a man who’s a hero right away. So you begin to see a shift in newspaper articles when John Brown is hanged. But then you really see a shift as the war progresses. One thing that would be really useful would be to find some newspaper articles about John Brown from those three different times: when the raid first happens; when he is executed; and then the during the war. And I think you’d see a big change in how people thought about John Brown. I think you might also benefit from looking at the letters that Union soldiers wrote during the war. What did they say about slavery before they go to war? When they first go to war? And after they’ve been there for a while? For some, there’s not a change. Some either always thought slavery should go away. Some never wanted to fight for the end of slavery.

But there’s a big group in the middle who really hadn’t given the topic a whole lot of thought when they went to war but whose minds changed as a result of being in the South, of seeing slavery. And, also, as they fight the war, they think, if it’s slavery that started this war in the first place or if at least without slavery there wouldn’t have been a war, then the only way we can assure there will never be another one is to get rid of slavery. So I think soldier’s letters will help you see a change in soldiers’ views of slavery and also what the relationship between slavery and the war would be.

John Brown’s raid happened in October of 1859. John Brown was executed in December of 1859. 1860 was a presidential election. Presidential elections, then as now, are yearlong events. So we go into the year 1860. John Brown’s on everybody’s mind and it’s time to choose candidates for president. The North has this new political party, which doesn’t exist in the South. It’s called the Republican Party. And it exists for the purpose of stopping the westward spread of slavery. No way can a Republican candidate on this platform get votes in the South, but this platform is gaining strength in the North.

Meanwhile, the lower South states. Everyone’s nervous about John Brown. So they decide that the candidate that they are willing to support will have to be a candidate who’s very committed to something called the Federal Slave Code which would mean that the federal government would have to pass a code promising to protect slavery. And the Democrats in the lower South states, it’s only one party there, decide that that’s who they need for their president in 1860. Northern Democrats think that’s a terrible idea, but they also think that the Republicans are a terrible idea. They think that the president should run on a platform of “popular sovereignty.” The federal government shouldn’t have anything to do with slavery in the western territories. Congress shouldn’t decide and the president shouldn’t decide. Instead, the voters in the territory should decide if they want to be slave or free.

Democrats have their convention to choose their candidates; they split. And the Southern Democrats break away. The Northern Democrats nominate a candidate named Steven Douglas who says, let people in territories decide for themselves if the territory should be slave or free.

When that happens, the Southern Democrats split away. We need a candidate who’s going to make the federal government protect slavery. When they split the Democratic Party in two, they nominate their own candidate. So now there are two Democratic candidates and one Republican candidate. What that means is the Democratic vote’s going to be split and the Republican’s going to get enough to win. He’s not going to get a majority but he’s going to get enough because he’s going to get more than those two Democratic candidates.

Well, that Republican candidate turns out to be Abraham Lincoln and that’s precisely what happens. He carries enough of the North to win the election because the Democrats are split. Within weeks, the first state, South Carolina, leaves the Union. Sees the election of Lincoln on this platform of not letting slavery spread west as a clear threat to the Southern states. Six other states leave, too.

Virginia’s really a middle state in this growing contest between North and South. Much of the South is reliant on what’s called “staple crop agriculture” or “commercial agriculture.” People grow one crop and they sell it for cash. They use the cash to buy everything else that they need. So, much of the South doesn’t grow food. It’s not self-sufficient. Virginia is a little bit more diversified. It is still dependent on a cash crop. You grow lots of tobacco in order to sell it and then you use the money to buy the other things that you need. The problem with tobacco is that it wears soil out very quickly. So by the time Harper’s Ferry happens Virginia has actually been in a state of decline. It’s soil is wearing out because of tobacco farming.

There are sections of the state, however, that are more diversified—that grow wheat, potatoes, things that you would need to eat. The big crops grown for money are dependent on a slave labor force. The other crops—wheat, corn, the things that you can live off of—sometimes those are grown in the slave labor and sometimes they are not. As these large plantations become less profitable, the plantation owners find that they have more laborers than they need, but there are big cotton plantations in Alabama and in Georgia. So selling your slaves South is one of the single biggest sources of revenue for the whole state of Virginia. So in that sense, Virginia is very closely tied in to the deeper South.

The North is still a largely agricultural society. The North is also beginning to develop what we would recognize as an industrialized base. So diversified agriculture helps the North because all those people in the factories need wheat and corn and they need things to eat. Virginia in parts has a mixed economy, too. The largest ironworks in the country is in Virginia. There are factories and textile mills. It has clear links to the staple crop, plantation, slave-based agriculture of the lower South. It also, though, has more diversified agriculture than much of the South. And it also is beginning to develop industry like the North. So when John Brown happens and when the Civil War happens, Virginia’s really torn. Many Virginians feel ties to the South, but many feel ties to the United States as well. So it’s a very interesting state to look at in 1860. It’s a crossroads for many of the different ways of life in the United States at the time.

Lincoln takes office in March of 1861. Seven states have left the Union and formed the Confederacy. The standoff comes to center on a fort outside of the city of Charleston called Fort Sumter. The governor of South Carolina demanded the surrender of the fort to South Carolina and the United States Army officer inside said no. He couldn’t give a United States fort to a state that had left the Union because that would be treason. So Abraham Lincoln takes office and he immediately learns that here is this fort in the harbor outside of South Carolina and the soldiers have no food left. Lincoln decides that what he must do as a Commander in Chief is supply food to those soldiers. So he writes to the governor of South Carolina and he writes to Jefferson Davis who has now become the president of this new Confederates States of America. And he tells him, I’m sending a ship with food and I’m not sending arms. If you fire on us, we will fire back. But we’re just sending food and not arms.

Then Jefferson Davis and the governor of South Carolina have to decide what to do. Do they want the United States, who they now see as an enemy, sailing into Charleston harbor or not? And they decide not to take the chance. They fire on Fort Sumter before the food gets there. To Lincoln and to much of the Northern public, now we have a open rebellion. So Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers, soldiers, to put down the rebellion. Virginia and three other states—Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina—were hoping not to have to choose. But when Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion, they have to decide. Are we going to fight with or against the Union or the Southern states? And Virginia decides to go with the Southern states. It’s a hard decision for many white Virginians. It feels links with the states that have left, but it also feels links with the Union. The other reason why this is a difficult decision for Virginia is because it is located so close to the national capitol. It was pretty clear to Virginians that a lot of the fighting was going to take place in Virginia. And they were right.

West Virginia is more tied to the North. There are very few slaves. Agriculture there is very diversified. There’s not a lot of tobacco grown for cash. It looks much more like a Northern economy than a Southern economy. The state of Virginia has decided to secede, to leave the Union, but we don’t want to. We actually see that as being a traitor to the United States. So these counties decide to secede from Virginia and they enter the United States in 1863 as the state of West Virginia.

The first thing that I think that I would do is ask students, what do they notice? What stands out to them. And I would use that as the starting point, to invest them in the song. How does the sound of the song make you feel? Does it make you feel energetic? Does it make you feel sleepy? Does the song seem to praise Brown? Does it seem to condemn him? And then I think I would look at particular verses. That knapsack verse, for example. And ask them, what’s a knapsack? And, what do you put in your knapsack? What would a soldier put in his knapsack? And use that verse as a way to talk about what being a soldier is like.

“John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back, His soul is marching on.”

I would move immediately to the next verse about “John Brown died that the slaves might be free” and ask them to think about why those two verses come right next to each other.

“John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, But His soul is marching on."

I would start at the big level, what do you notice? I would then go to, how does it sound? How does the sound make you feel? And then have them imagine that they are soldiers in an army on a march making up their own lyrics. Maybe some could be Union soldiers and some could be Confederate soldiers. And if they were to sing a song about John Brown as they were marching along, what kinds of words might they add? Which would do two things—one is emphasize the self-creating aspect of music in the 19th century, the participatory aspect. But also really get them thinking about what John Brown and what he stood for would mean and how that would change over time.

Who issued it? The Congress that was gathered in Philadelphia in July of 1776, the so-called Continental Congress. Who were they? They were a bunch of men who had been elected or appointed by individuals within the 13 colonies to meet together to discuss their opposition to the existing legitimate government of the colonies, the British government.

This carried the weight of an official proclamation from this new government of the United States, so it was written in a formal language and an illiterate farmer or a sailor or a farm woman would not necessarily understand the meaning of all the terms or charges. However, the fact that a lot of them would have it read to them meant that the reading of the Declaration was just the point of departure. It was the first point of a larger public debate and discussion about what was going on.

There's this very powerful language that would have an impact, an emotional impact, on an audience. And then the people would be standing around and say, "Well, what does that mean—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" Or "What does it mean, he's forbidden his Governor to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance."

This was a bold experiment and a lot of people could get very excited by that. It was an important device to mobilize the people and to get them excited. The Continental Army had a hard time getting people. The Continental Congress was always short of money. The states were always very slow to pass taxes and to send the money to the Continental Congress. So the reality fell short of the grand ideals that were expressed in the Declaration.

Events had been building up to the Declaration for over a decade. At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, most people assumed that the North American British Colonies were happy to be part of the British Empire. They were prospering under British rule. The people of the Colonies considered themselves the loyal subjects of the Crown. But after the French and Indian War, Britain initiated a whole series of policies and laws that from the colonists' perspective, changed the relationship that had existed between Britain and the Colonies.

Prior to the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, when Britain wanted money from the colonists, they would go to the colonies individually. In each of the 13 colonies, there was a legislature that was elected by the people and Britain would ask those legislators to pass taxes on the people of that particular colony that would then be submitted to England. After the French and Indian War, there was a change in British policy. The leaders in Britain, because they had gone into so much debt fighting the French and Indian War and the people in Britain itself were already heavily taxed, were looking for new sources of revenue. So they started making policies which involved Parliament passing taxes that were imposed on the colonists. And from the colonists' point of view, this was changing the rules of the game. Parliament was taxing them and they elected no members to Parliament. So from their point of view, they were being taxed without their consent.

From the point of view of Britain, Parliament legislated and passed taxes for the Empire as a whole. The colonists were represented virtually in Parliament even though they elected no particular representatives. The colonists feared that if they allowed any of these taxes passed by Parliament, then there would be one tax after another. They would be deprived of their property completely.

There was a substantial minority by 1774 or 1775 who already believed that it was impossible to remain in the British Empire and remain a free people. But the process of convincing larger numbers of people took more time. A key moment there was the publication in January of 1776 of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. That pamphlet really reached out to large numbers of people and explained it in terms that they could understand why independence was necessary.

I think it needs to be understood in terms of the Order of July 1775. It's a document called a Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms. That was passed by the Continental Congress and that set up the Continental Army. That explains why the colonists are upset and I think it's very interesting to see what changed in their language. Jefferson wrote that as well, so I think it's really interesting to see why in 1775 they were willing to take up arms, but not declare independence and they were willing to do that a year later. In the 1775 document, they don't blame the King. They only blame Parliament and his ministers for these problems. And that's the big difference between 1775 and 1776.

And there's another document written by Jefferson in 1774 called a Summary View of the Rights of British America. That was not an official document of the Continental Congress, but it was issued as a pamphlet. That represents the thinking of the most radical of the delegates in 1774 who are already anticipating independence and seeing why it was becoming increasingly untenable for the colonies to remain in the British Empire.

The Continental Congress first met in 1774. Then disassembled, then reassembled in the spring of 1775. But did not declare independence until July of 1776. In an era before public opinion polls, these delegates had to go by their personal sense of the people via letters, via newspapers, via word of mouth. And only then, by the summer of 1776, did they feel that the people were going to back up their Declaration of Independence with the taking up of arms and with support of this cause.

What was the official status of the Continental Congress? They had none. The Continental Congress was an extra-legal or illegal assembly. The only authority they had was the authority that the people in the colonies gave them. They were not operating within the existing boundaries of the colonial charters or of any rule of law that the British government recognized.

They knew that if they declared independence without having a substantial proportion of the population supportive of them, they would hang. They were committing treason. They were not interested in leading a revolution that no one wanted to follow. It was really important that they waited as long as they did.

The stakes were very high. What people don't like to think about is that these delegates were becoming outlaws. They were operating outside the official rules that governed the legal system of Britain. They were establishing a separate nation. Looking back, we can put this patriotic halo around it. But from Britain's point of view, what the colonists were doing was disloyal, seditious, wrong, treasonable. I think because we won, Americans think it was right from the start, but it depends on your perspective. From the British point of view, it wasn't.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed the resolutions to Congress in June of 1776 that said these colonies should be free and independent. So the Continental Congress then appointed a committee of five to draft the Articles of Independence. The committee of five consisted of Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a very young member of the delegation. He had drafted a number of previous documents related to the Continental Congress. He was known to be a very good writer. So that's why the committee of five decided to delegate the task of writing the draft to Jefferson. He wrote the draft which was then submitted to the committee of five for editing; which was then vetted by the entire Continental Congress.

A lot of the changes that were made were basically editorial, but some of the changes were more substantial. They took out some of the exaggerated language that Jefferson was prone to use that was trying to stir up people against Great Britain. But they also took out a key paragraph where it accused the King of waging cruel war against human nature itself by enslaving people, by carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. This whole paragraph was excised from the final Declaration because it was understood that the southern states would never support the Declaration if there was this diatribe against slavery in it. I think that's the most important editorial change that was made by the Congress in the draft that Jefferson wrote.

It's a document that has several audiences. One audience is the people of Great Britain. Telling the people of Great Britain and the government of Great Britain that the people of the United States are a separate nation and should be treated as a separate nation henceforth. Another audience is the foreign nations of Europe. The Americans needed to let these foreign nations know that they were an independent nation to get loans and military assistance, especially from France, so that they could wage this war against Britain.

Finally, the last audience was the people of the United States themselves. It was an official statement to the people of the United States that we're no longer resisting the policies of Britain by staying within the boundaries of this nation, but we are now a whole separate country and we're a separate people.

It's a hard document to come to without background. I think reading aloud is a good tool and starting with the responses of the students. How does this make you feel? What does it inspire in you? Do any phrases stand out? Then talking about the curiosities—why they're blaming the King. "He," "he," "he," "he," "he." And then talking about the phrases that seem curious or obvious to us today.

The document has to be understood both as a rhetorical tool and official statement. That it's creating a new government. And that over time its meaning has changed a lot. I think taking it phrase by phrase. Certain things become apparent, like why do they keep phrasing it in terms of "necessity compels us?" That's something you can get by just reading it. Looking at the fact that they blame so much on the King.

Looking at the rhetorical tricks that are used. We're submitting these facts to the "candid world." Looking at what different parts of the Declaration are doing. The one part, appealing to the people of Britain. Another part, talking about the functions of government. The beginning part making these broad general sweeping statements that pertain across time and place. What are the laws of nature? How do we know what nature's laws are? What are inalienable rights?

Why is it important that government insures these inalienable rights? What if people held revolutions every time they got dissatisfied with government? When is a government just and when is it unjust? How do we decide? Can you rebel against a government which is based on the people, that is a constitutional form of government rather than a government in which there's a king? What kinds of protests should they engage in before they take up arms and try to overthrow a government? What makes a government legitimate? Why do we consider our government legitimate? What if you don't? What's the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution?

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another and to assume among the powers of the nation the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them."

First of all, there's an invocation here of the laws of nature and of nature's God. That's a reference to laws that are higher than the laws of Great Britain, that are higher than the British Parliament, that are higher than the British King. You're appealing to a higher authority and I think that's really necessary to justify and legitimate what they're about to say and do. And then they say, "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation," so they're going to explain to the world why they are separating.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident." This is a very typical enlightenment concept. "Self- evident" truths are truths of nature and by studying nature, a reasonable person can discover what is true.

And one of these truths is that "all men are created equal." This is the phrase that provokes incredible discussion. What do they mean by "all men are created equal?" In America, you don't have inherited ranks and privileges. You don't have a hereditary monarch. All people in America are equal before the law and I think that's the most fundamental meaning of equal that they're talking about here.

They're "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." So there are these God-given rights that reasonable people can find in nature.

It was a very common political construct derived from John Locke's second treatise on government—all men are born free and equal. But you have to understand what equal meant in those terms. In a state of nature, men are equal. They have the equal right to give their consent to be governed. What's powerful about this statement is that it is so unqualified and so open to interpretations.

John Locke talked about life, liberty, and property. There's a lot of discussion about why it was changed in the Declaration from "property" to "pursuit of happiness." Property is obviously a much more restrictive term. It's confined to those, usually white males, who could own property. Pursuit of happiness is a much broader term that opens up this possibility to men, women, children, even black people, theoretically.

By choosing the phrase "pursuit of happiness" rather than "property," there's an immediate implication that this government isn't just for men of property. It's for all people who have rights. Then the question becomes, well, who has rights. So the document itself is written in a way that opens it up to multiple interpretations. It worked as a rhetorical strategy in fighting British tyranny, as an appeal to a large number of people in the United States and abroad. That's why they used those terms.

Whether they anticipated extending all of the privileges of citizenship to women and black people at the time is definitely not the case, but they definitely wanted the benefits of government to extend beyond those who owned property.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they're accustomed." What they're saying here is that people shouldn't and don't start revolutions whenever they're unhappy. They only do it when the problems are very serious, when they have tried by every possible means to resolve their grievances peacefully.

When there are these serious causes, it's "their right" and "their duty" to throw off such a government. I think it's important that they say "right." It is their right. It is their duty. They're not just doing this because they want to. They're doing it because the laws of nature compel them. And that's a persistent theme in the Declaration of Independence. Necessity compels us to do this. We don't want to do this. We're not choosing to do it because we're rabble-rousers. We're doing it because the laws of nature tell us that we must do this. Otherwise, we will be the equivalent of slaves. Our liberty will be taken away from us.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having a direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." When the King becomes a tyrant, revolution is necessary to preserve the liberties of the people. "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to the candid world." That's a very good rhetorical device. Let's the facts be submitted so any objective observer given this list will understand why the Colonies are starting this revolution, why they're declaring their independence. And they will side with us.

It's interesting to look at the list in the Declaration, that each sentence begins: "He has," "He has," "He has." And who is the "he"? Well, the "he" is the King of England, King George III. What seems inexplicable at first is why the colonists blame all these on George III. It wasn't George III, at least initially, who singlehandedly imposed taxes or deprived the colonists of trial by jury or quartered troops among the colonists. It was Parliament. But it was understood that the King gave his assent to laws of Parliament and that the King theoretically had the ultimate say in approving laws of Parliament. So if George III had wanted to veto any of these laws, at least theoretically, he could have.

No British monarch since the early 18th century had actually vetoed a law of Parliament, but the colonists believed that the King was their ultimate guardian and protector in Britain and that's who they appealed to ultimately for help. And that's who they felt ultimately let them down.

Also, you don't rebel against Parliament. You can only rebel when the King becomes a tyrant and when the King is no longer the protector or guardian of your liberties. They have to lay these issues at his feet in order for rebellion to be justified. So I think this list of grievances is interesting in its particulars and more generally, because they blame all this stuff that previously might have been blamed on Parliament on the King.

"He has refused his Assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." That is a reference to the fact that after the colonial legislatures approved a law, then it would go to the governor in that colony for approval. Then it would be sent to England for approval. And there are cases in which the Crown refused to pass certain laws that the colonists thought would be good for them.

The colonists feel like Britain is coming between them and their just right to representative government in their own colonies.

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people." I think one of the things that really started to get to the colonists was the fact that the Royal Governors, whenever they were threatened because the assemblies were passing resolutions opposing British laws, would then send the representatives home. They would dissolve the legislatures and the legislatures could not reconvene on their own merits.

They would go down to a local tavern and reconvene in the name of the people, but they didn't have the legal authority of the legitimate government, the royal government. And so the colonists increasingly felt that Britain was violating their right to representation in their own colonial legislatures.

"Suspending our legislatures"—that refers to the fact that in certain colonies, the Parliament prohibited the legislature from meeting. That violated the people's basic right to elect representatives who would govern them. And then the Declaratory Act of 1766, which was passed in the wake of the repeal of the Stamp Act, said that Parliament had the right to pass laws governing the colonies in any case whatsoever and Parliament intended that to apply to taxes.

And the colonists said that no, they would agree to laws that Parliament passed that were for the governance of the Empire, but they would not agree to pay any taxes that were not passed by their own representatives. Those in particular refer to this issue of no taxation without representation.

The Anglo-American idea of taxes was that taxes are a gift of the people to the government and the government uses those taxes to preserve life, liberty, and property for the security of the state, for the security of the people. The people can't be forced to give these taxes without their consent. That doesn't mean that the people meet personally to vote on taxes, but through their representatives. So as long as they are electing representatives to an assembly, then that assembly has the right to vote taxes and they are bound to pay those taxes even if they don't agree with the particular policies. They can change the person who they elect.

"In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humblest terms." And from the colonists' point of view, at every point since 1765 when they first became aware of what they perceived as change in British policy, they took steps to let Britain know that they were upset. They did this by sending petitions to the King, to the House of Lords, to the House of Commons. They did this by passing resolutions in their colonial legislatures. They did this by boycotting British goods. They did this by gathering together in a Continental Congress and by passing resolutions as a united group.

The government didn't listen. The people of Britain didn't listen. "Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

One of my favorite paragraphs is this next one. "Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren." This is a reference to the British people. "We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity and we have conjured them by ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence."

They're referring to the fact that the people of the Colonies felt that the people of Britain were also suffering under the King and Parliament. They pointed to a number of laws that had caused riots or protests in Great Britain. John Wilkes was a dissenter who'd been elected as a member of Parliament and who was denied his seat by Parliament. There was a great outcry in Britain and so the people of the colonies felt that the King and Parliament were becoming oppressive, not just to the colonists in North America but to the people of Britain themselves. And if they made common cause, then Parliament and the King would stop it.

But the people of Britain didn't rise up the way the colonists expected and make common cause with them. They didn't see themselves as allied. What this paragraph is doing is saying: we've appealed to you to join in our fight against tyranny but you've ignored us.

"We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity." Again, this phrase "acquiesce in the necessity." We don't want to do this. We are being forced; Britain's tyranny is making us do this. "We acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends." It's like a divorce. It's like the breaking of family ties. You are a foreign nation to us now, just like France. When we're at war, you're our enemies. When we're at peace, you'll be our friends. But you are no longer kin to us. This is probably the most heart-wrenching paragraph in the Declaration because it is where one people becomes two peoples.

The next paragraph says all these things that Congress is going to do. We're the representatives and we declare that the "United Colonies are Free and Independent States," "Absolved from Allegiance to the Crown." This allegiance is "dissolved." They have the "full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce." But why are they doing this? They're saying, 'We are the people's representatives, so we are now the legitimate governing body of this new entity, the United States of America. We have the people's confidence and we can do all the things that other nation states can do.'

We can make treaties to levy war. We can have peace negotiations. If Britain wants to deal with us, if France wants to deal with us, you should send your emissaries to us, the Continental Congress. Not to the different colonies. Not to any splinter groups. We are the legitimate representatives of the colonies.

We have the authority of the good people of these colonies and that's in whose name we are declaring independence. And we "pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Honor."

There were always significant numbers of people in the colonies/United States, who were either neutral about the cause of independence or who supported Britain. But what you have to understand is that the war was long, the process of attaining independence took many years. People changed their positions over time. So when the British army was in your locality, a lot of people turned out to be neutral or loyalist. When the Continental Army was in your vicinity, you tended to support the Continentals.

The British army made a lot of people who were initially supportive of the Crown come over to the American cause. The British government continued to be so intractable, the war dragged on for such a long time. A lot of men were called up to their local militias and were shot at by British.

Once independence was declared, the outcome was by no means assured. They could very well have lost the war. The Continental Army could have been destroyed. In fact, it was almost destroyed the very summer that the Declaration of Independence was being issued because Washington was fighting in New York and he almost lost his entire army.

They create it. They sign it. They send it out. It's read. Bells are rung. Bonfires are lit across the colonies. There are celebrations. But the war was already going on in July of 1776. The Continental Army had been created July of 1775, so this really formalized what was already going on.

George Washington had been appointed head of the Continental Army a year before. He was fighting a very important battle in New York as the Declaration was being passed. On the ground level, it didn't make that much difference. One of the most significant consequences was that it allowed France to start aiding the colonies. Sending money and then eventually entering into a formal treaty that was signed in 1778 that promised money and men and supplies to the United States. And, without France's support, the United States would never have been able to win the war, especially the support of their navy.

I also think for the people of the United States the fact that they knew what they were fighting for in very concrete terms was very important.

It's important not to overstate the importance of the Declaration of Independence per se at the time. The document was important because it did formally declare the United States a separate nation, a new nation, and because it made other countries who might want to aid the United States know with whom to talk, that is the Continental Congress. And it was sort of a rallying point for the American people to understand that now they were fighting for a separate nation, not just to convince Britain to treat them better.

But the Declaration of Independence actually faded from prominence during the American Revolution and in the years immediately after. And for a long time, Thomas Jefferson was not identified as the sole or even most important author of the document. It was thought to be the creation of the Continental Congress and it symbolized the collective sentiments of the people of the United States.

It was only in the 1790s when Thomas Jefferson became the leader of a new political party, the Democratic Republicans, that the Declaration of Independence was revived. His political opponents, the Federalists, deliberately refused to read the Declaration of Independence at Fourth of July celebrations because they didn't like the radical implications of it—the idea that all men are created equal, the idea that we should all pursue happiness.

The Declaration of Independence is a fantastic way to understand American history because many protest groups throughout American history model their own protests on the Declaration. Frederick Douglass talks about: Why do black slaves celebrate the Fourth of July? Why do black slaves not want to celebrate it? Why are they left out of the Declaration? Women write the Seneca Falls Declaration. They rewrite the Declaration in terms of men and women. Various labor groups throughout American history write their own declarations of independence, saying why they feel oppressed or excluded or marginalized or not equal. I think it's the power of the ideals that have persisted throughout history.

But the specific provisions are very much rooted in the historical events that lead up to 1776. Depending on your audience, you could either understand it primarily as a basis for change, radical change, in various times and places. Or you could understand it as a specific historical document that was written in response to specific historical problems.

The first letter, first chronologically, was a letter written in October of 1862 by Jasper Barney, a private in an Illinois regiment. He fought for the Union Army, he was a farmer from Illinois and he is writing to his brother-in-law, another family member, about the state of the war and particularly about Emancipation.

The second letter is written the following month, November of 1862, but it is by a white Confederate soldier, prosperous farmer John White to his wife. And he is writing at a moment when militarily, the Confederacy is enjoying more success but Confederate civilians are living with the uncertainties of having a war fought in their own backyard. He's also writing about the Emancipation Proclamation and the fears that it has stirred up amongst Confederate civilians at home. His letter is a very personal letter too, in that he is quite forthcoming with his wife about how much he misses home and how torn he feels between his desire to be home and protect his family and the need to fight this war.

And then the third letter is written in February of 1864. It is by a black member of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, a black regiment. And he is writing from the city of New Orleans, which his regiment is occupying at the time to really articulate what he and many other black soldiers see as the stakes, as why this war matters for black Americans in particular.

Men in a regiment, or at least in a company, tended to enlist together. So letters that come from home will be read probably by more than one person, will probably be read out loud. A letter to home will often include a passage that says, "Brother A says to say, 'X, Y, Z'" With Civil War soldier's letters the vagaries of letter survival can skew our picture a little bit. The letters to home have a much greater survival rate than the letters from home to the front.

The letters from home don't survive because soldiers have nothing that they can do with them. Also, before battle soldiers are likely to destroy any personal letters that they have on them. Their fear is if personal letters are found on them that the enemy will somehow use that information.

The Union has the U.S. Postal Service; the Confederacy never really has a very efficient or working postal service. There's travel back and forth between home and the frontlines all the time, so often somebody from home or nearby is in camp and going home and you send letters that way and when that person comes they bring letters. There are also private express companies.

Jasper Barney's in the hospital when he writes the letter. He is trying to recover from a wound so the first part of the letter is about recovering from his wound and that actually in one sense is typical because almost every soldier's letter talks about his health to almost excessive degrees.

The letter is written in October of 1862, and in the fall of 1862 there's quite a lot of turbulence on the Northern home front and regarding the Union Army cause in general. The war militarily had gone fairly well for the Union in the early months of 1862 and then in the summer of 1862 the war started going poorly for the Union militarily and the North sort of woke up to the fact that this was going to be a much longer war than anybody had anticipated. So by the fall of 1862 the Northern home front and soldiers are still trying to cope with that realization.

One of those new measures that is taken to fight the war is the Emancipation Proclamation. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on September 22nd of 1862 and the Emancipation Proclamation really changed the whole aim of a war that had been begun to save the Union. Now it becomes a war also to end slavery. Now those two goals had never been completely separable but the official line had always been "This is a war to save the Union" and not to have really much of anything to do with slavery. Those changes really rocked much of the Civil War North, particularly the Northern home front.

You have quite a lot of dissent among white Northerners over the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Northerners, there is no dissent. They think this is exactly what has been needed since well before the war began. There are a number of issues at stake in the 1862 elections. There are economic issues, there are issues having to do with civil liberties, what actions can and cannot the United States government take during wartime and there's the war and of course there's the Emancipation Proclamation.

Meanwhile you have a number of new soldiers entering the ranks. So you have elections, tumult and dissent, and a host of new soldiers coming into the army, all at about the same time. And that's when this letter is written.

This letter is written by Barney who has actually been in the army for a while. So he is writing as an experienced soldier to his brother-in-law who has just joined. Barney, who would normally show a certain modicum of deference or respect for his more socially-elite and older brother-in-law thinks that this is too important an issue to stand on ceremony and so he tells him straight up, I think that you're wrong, I think that the Emancipation Proclamation is exactly what is needed to end this war. And what is more, you're going to think so too as soon as you have been in the war for any length of time.

Barney is fairly typical, he certainly wouldn't have called himself an abolitionist, he certainly would not have predicted that in less than a year he would be calling for the end of an institution that's older than the nation itself. It's quite a radical thing to talk about ending slavery in the 1860s. He's undergone what is a huge transformation in his thinking. As you can see from the letter to his brother in law, his family has not really kept up with this transition. So a gulf has really opened between many soldiers and their families at home.

He is on the Emancipation question even on the first paragraph, he says, "Now my lady love is more attentive for I got a letter from her yesterday. She is all right on the goose question." "All right on the goose" means how you stand on the slavery question, she agrees with him about Emancipation so he is pleased about that.

Then in the next paragraph he's addressing what he sees as his brother-in-law's mistaken views. "You say in your letter that you or your regiment is not in for freeing the Negroes. I am sorry to hear it. You wanted to know what I and my comrades thought of the Negro question. I think Old Abe's Proclamation is all right and there is very few old soldiers that is against it. It is my opinion that yourself and the greater part of your regiment will be in favor of it before you are in the service six months. I was of the same opinion of yourself when I first came into the service but I have learned better. You said you thought the thing would come to a finish by spring if the Negroes was left alone, but I think you will soon find out different. For it is my opinion that the war will never come to a close while the Negroes is left where they are to raise supplies for the rebel army. Even if we could suppress the rebellion and leave the main root where it was before, it wouldn't be long before they would try the same game as before. But if we take away the main root of evil and confiscate all their property they will have nothing to fight for hereafter."

First of all, it's the war that has changed his opinion. Second of all, it's going to change his brother-in-law's opinion too. His reasoning is actually quite pragmatic, what he's talking about is the recognition that without the institution of slavery there never would have been a war. So if we want the war to end and if we want not to fight it again we have to get rid of the cause. That passage encapsulates quite well a major shift in thinking that goes on. It's a pretty astute analysis on his part and on many soldiers' part that there's no way that the Confederacy could have conducted a four-year war without a slave labor force. The Confederate workforce is mobilized, is in the army.

"Old Abe gave them 90 days and that was long enough for them to come to terms and save their property and Negroes, but it seems like they wanted to go the whole hog or none. Now, I think it is perfectly right to take the hog and leave them none and then if they ain't satisfied, I am in for banishing every rebel and rebel sympathizer from the U.S. I am a whole soul Union man and believe in giving the rebels a lesson to be remembered in after generations. Then we will never be troubled with civil war again."

He's talking about the precise terms of the Emancipation Proclamation here. The Emancipation Proclamation issued on September 22nd is actually more, probably the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and what it says is that the slaves in the states that are still in rebellion against the Union as of January 1st, 1863, will be freed.

And so essentially it's an ultimatum delivered to states in rebellion and the reverse of it would say, therefore if you return to the Union before January 1st, 1863, your slaves won't be freed. And the Proclamation says that because it is operating in a context of a Constitution that protects slavery.

And so, the Emancipation Proclamation can only justify itself as a war measure. So what he is saying is, Lincoln gave the states 90 days to come back. He gives them a chance to retain slavery and if they won't take that chance, if their demands in terms of greater protection for slavery are more important to them than coming back in the Union and keeping slavery where it is then they made their own bed and let them lie in it.

By the time Barney writes this letter he has no qualms at all about confiscating the property of even non-combatants. As he sees it now the only thing that's going to end this war is to take a much harder line, to take away the root of the war.

And in the next paragraph he wants to assure his brother-in-law that 'I am not some wild-eyed abolitionist here, I am not a crazy reformer, this is in fact what most of us hardened commonsensical soldiers think.' He says, "Well, I think I gave you a very good sample of the opinions of myself and comrades."

I think the next paragraph is a good clue into the sort of limits of growing Emancipation sentiment among the Union Army, in other words he is all for ending slavery, but ending slavery is quite different in his view from increasing rights of former slaves or anything approaching racial equality.

You see that when he says, "P.S. I am not in favor of freeing the Negroes and leaving them to run free and mingle among us. Neither is such the intention of Old Abe, but we will send them off and colonize them. The government is already making preparations for the same and you may be assured it will be carried into effect."

So he doesn't know what should become of former slaves, but he certainly doesn't want them living among his own friends and family in the North. He refers to a passage in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that does not mandate but suggests as a possible outcome for former slaves, 'maybe they'd be happier if we send them back to Africa or to some place in South America and they could start their own society.'

By the time of the final Proclamation all reference to colonization has been omitted. Slavery was Southern, but prejudice was nationwide. And so colonization was sort of a way of coping with the tension between the insistence that we really need to get rid of slavery and uncertainty about what do we do with real slaves?

The Confederate soldier is named John White. He is part of the army of Northern Virginia, which is the fabled army of Robert E. Lee and he is writing from Fredericksburg, VA, in late November of 1862. So he's essentially writing while Union forces are getting ready to try and take Fredericksburg. It's cold, it's miserable, it's wet, his letter may or may not make it outside of battle lines. He's writing to his wife, there are armies in her backyard. Moreover, White's wife lives in a part of the state where there are slaves and there is a terror that the war is going to inspire a slave insurrection. Those fears are present from the very beginning of the war but at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation they become even more acute.

There is more uncertainty and there is a lot more worry in his letter. Even though militarily the war's going a lot better for his side at this time than it is for Barney's side. The Confederacy is very centralized, much more centralized than the Union and the Confederate Government nationalizes the economy to a much greater degree than the Union could even dream of doing.

And there's major disagreement about whether the Confederate State has any authority to do this. The reason why that disagreement doesn't spill over into a massive rush to rejoin the Union is all that stuff stinks, but it's not as bad as the Union. And I think that's the calculus that goes on in the minds of most Confederate soldiers. It's not liking the Union more than liking or feeling any attachment to the Confederacy that keeps the Confederate army in the ranks. Civilians are ready to throw in the towel a lot earlier than soldiers are.

He starts off by talking about a local neighbor's and he explains that's how he got some letters from his wife and is able to send some letters to her. But then, he hasn't even gone through the state of his health or the health of all their children or their friends at home before he gets to his concerns about the possibility of slave insurrection.

So his two main concerns, right from the outset are one, we can't be in touch with each other as much as I would like us to be and two, you're worried and I'm worried about slave uprising.

He talks about the battle that he calls Sharpsburg and Union soldiers would call Antietam. The battle of Antietam took place on September 17th of 1862, right before the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Confederacy stages a number of invasions of Union soil in the fall of 1862. Robert E. Lee's army marches into Maryland and the Union Army meets the Confederate Army at Sharpsburg, the name of the town in Maryland, along a creek called Antietam Creek.

The Confederates tend to name battles after the town nearest where a battle is fought while the Union tends to name battles after natural features, most often bodies of water. Militarily that battle was a draw, but it counts as enough of a Union victory because the Confederates were trying to invade the North. Their invasion was stopped at Antietam. And so the Confederates retreat back into the Confederacy.

Confederates do not see this as a devastating defeat by any means, but the Union has been so desperate for a victory because Lincoln has been trying to find a way to issue the Emancipation Proclamation since the summer of 1862. But he did not want to do it at a time when the Union Army appeared to be failing because then it would just look like a desperate move and that's not how he wanted it to look.

As you can see from White's description of the battle, he saw it as a terrible battle. But he doesn't really see it as a major Confederate defeat.

"Oh Matt, it almost makes me shudder to think of it. How will the 17th of September live in the memory of the 32nd Virginia Regiment and its friends? Oh, it was an awful day. Imagine my feelings, if you can, when I saw my comrades and friends falling all around me from the death-dealing shot and shell of the enemy and knew not how soon it would be my fate. Thanks be to a kind providence, I came out unhurt but narrowly escaped. A ball passed through my blanket between my body and right arm. I shot my gun until I could hardly get a cartridge down her. Finally, they gave way and ran, hotly pursued by our brigade, the 32nd leading the charge until pursuit was dangerous. They were said to be three to our one."

He's writing this more than a month later, but it's still a pretty fresh impression of his experience of battle. It's such an overwhelming experience to be in a Civil War battle. The impressions are roaring noise, and smoke, and a horrific smell. And those are hard sensations to really write precise words about. And so there are a series of stock phrases that soldiers tend to fall back on. There's nothing in her experience that he could compare it to. It doesn't so much make his description hollow as highlight the enormity of the experience, because he's clearly an eloquent man, and yet that's too overpowering for him.

But it's really important to him for two reasons, one, the enormity of the battle itself but two, it becomes the occasion for this Emancipation Proclamation. White and his wife aren't shocked by the Emancipation Proclamation so much, they sort of have expected it, they thought since the beginning that the Union was out to destroy slavery and all this talk of Union is really just a red herring. But the Emancipation Proclamation makes those fears more real for them. Moreover, they worry that slaves are going to hear about this Emancipation Proclamation and will become emboldened and as a result will start holding uprisings and possibly go on killing sprees.

"Dear Matt, I must tell you I am in a hard place and know not what to do. When I think of my sufferings, both in mind and body which are indescribable and how much my services are needed home, I am tempted to try and get there. I see no probability of getting there if I remain in the service. The war is likely to last for years yet and I cannot reasonably expect to survive it. Besides this, you are threatened with an insurrection," which is again a reference to the slave uprising that they fear is going to happen because of the Emancipation Proclamation, "and how better can I die than defending my family and fireside. To do this, I came in the war and now that you are threated, I consider it my Christian duty to come to your rescue and protection. Dear Matt, you know that I love my country but I love my family better."

And I think in that passage he captures the dilemma that's going to be a dilemma for a great number of Confederate soldiers. And the dilemma is this; most Confederate soldiers don't own slaves. Two thirds of white families in the Confederacy are not slave owners. But they're not stupid, they know full well that this war was begun to protect the institution of slavery and they're not embarrassed about that. In fact, they agree that it was important and the reason why is not necessarily that they own slaves, they live in a place where 40 percent of the population is black. Parts of the Confederacy, the majority is black slaves. And they honestly believe that the two races cannot live together harmoniously without the institution of slavery.

"Dear Matt, you know that I love my country but I love my family better." Now that sounds to me like a very unguarded moment. That's not the sort of sentence you would want anyone you didn't really trust to see. Particularly in wartime when there were questions of loyalty, when there were questions of patriotism, when your own honor rests in part on your reputation for fearlessly defending your country. There's no censorship, there's no official mechanism by which superior officers are going to read his mail. But you don't know that it's not going to go amiss, that it's not going to get dropped somewhere and have someone pick it up. So that he took that risk really underscores the sincerity of that line for me.

The problem is, that if the heart of the motivation is to protect what one sees as the best interests, the health and the safety of one's family. And then the war to protect one's family starts threatening one's family, what do you do? Does he best protect his family by staying in the army and trying to secure an independent Confederacy where slavery will be protected forever or does he best help his family and protect his family by going home so that if there is an insurrection he's there to take care of them? And that tension will haunt him and will haunt most Confederate soldiers really for the rest of the war and is at the heart of the war experience for a very great many Confederate soldiers.

The third letter is written by a black Union soldier to the editor of the most prominent African American newspaper during the Civil War, the Weekly Anglo-African and black soldiers throughout their term of the service in the Union Armies do this. They write to Northern newspapers, particularly black newspapers, about their soldiering experience. The majority of black Union soldiers were former slaves who could not read and write and so we don't have letters from them. Who we have letters from are the minority, who are Northern free blacks, who could read and write before the war. They sort of see themselves as having obligations, not just to their family, representing the war experience to their family, but to a broader, at least black, public.

He is writing from New Orleans, LA, in February of 1864. This soldier is a member of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. New Orleans has been under Union control since May of 1862 so he is really an occupation force.

He is also fighting two battles at once because initially black Northerners who tried to join the Union Army were refused. Black soldiers were not accepted into the Union ranks until 1862 and they didn't join in big numbers until 1863.

Once they're in the ranks, they're paid less. At first there are no black officers and at first they are barred from combat duty. So he is fighting to save the Union and to redefine it, to redefine it as a place where he and people like him are seen as citizens, are seen as invested with the same rights and promises as white Americans are. And you see evidence, I think, of both battles in this letter. The immediate audience for the Anglo-African is Northern blacks. However, all newspapers in the 19th century have a habit of picking up letters, columns, articles from one paper and running it in their own pages. There is always the chance that this could run in a white newspaper too.

So he always has a definite audience and a potential audience in mind.

"I will give a brief account of the battalion to which I am now attached, and to which I hope to belong until this cruel war is ended, and the nation enjoys once more the blessings of peace." Well there he's talking about Union versus the Confederacy but then the next passage after that he's onto the battle for respect for citizenship, for equality within the Union itself.

"The Battalion is composed of as good material and contains as brave hearts as any equal number of men that ever shouldered a musket in this war." We are just as good, we are just as brave as any other soldiers, including the white ones, is what he's saying there. "These men have left their own dear homes, their wives and children, of their own free will: why, then, should they not fight?" We have made the decision to fight in this war, just as white men have, so if one of the sort of hallmarks of fitness for citizenship is the ability to reason, to excerpt one's own free will, look, we have done that.

"Yes they will," fight, "as they know full well that this is the golden opportunity that they have given them to establish their manhood, and capability as soldiers before the world."

Manhood shows up all the time in black soldier's letters and it can have one of two meanings. Sometimes it means recognition of the full humanity of all black Americans. In this one, though, he clearly means the adult male identity of black men because one characteristic of the adult man in 19th-century American culture is the ability to take care of a family, the ability to support a wife and children. And its men who are entitled to full political rights and he has twice told his readers that 'we have characteristics of manhood. One is in the moral agency, that we of our own free will decided to do something and two is, we have wives and children, we support families. We therefore have the attributes of adult males and are entitled to the rights of adult males.' So he means manhood in that explicitly gendered way.

The next and final paragraph is a very conventional one. This is the sort of thing that shows up in a number of public letters. "If it be my lot to fall on the battle-field, I shall be content to die far from home and friends, if my ears are saluted by the shout of my comrades, 'The battle is over; the stars and stripes wave triumphantly, and the slave is free!' This is a letter that is not just telling loved ones how he feels but is really also fighting this very public campaign for respect for black soldiers and for African Americans in general.

He signs it with the name Macy and this is another challenge of working with black soldiers' letters. They take pseudonyms all the time. I don't know who this soldier is. That could have been a nickname, it could have been his first name, and he in fact does give his company and his regiment. But he doesn't sign his full name and so positive identification is a lot harder with black soldiers than with white soldiers.

I think juxtaposition works pretty well with letters. The Union and Confederate and the white and the black letters really do sound different. Students I think generally like reading letters too. They feel like real people that seems interesting to them. But having them read the letters against each other, just asking them what jumps out to you, what are they talking about, what strikes you, what surprises you, initial reactions.

With these particular letters it'll work pretty well. If what you want them to talk about is the Emancipation Proclamation it's all over those first two letters. Another strategy, a sort of teaching assignment might be to imagine the letter in response. You could talk about home front and battlefield using these letters because you could ask students to imagine how might Jasper Barney's brother-in-law have responded to this letter. Asking them to imagine responses I think also really makes them really engaged with the questions and the issues that are raised by the letters.

There's not a lot of talk about politics in the Union letter and there's often politics in Union letters. There's not overt criticism of Jefferson Davis or some aspect of the Confederacy in the Confederate letter which there often is in Confederate letters. At the time black soldiers are fighting for equal pay and you'd expect that to show up and it doesn't. In February of 1864 that's a hot issue and it not showing up is a little surprising. That is the drawback to using one letter. Of the letters that went amiss from John White, 12 of them might have talked about something that you would expect, but this letter doesn't. So, it's hard sometimes to resist the temptation to think we know everything about him from this one letter. We don't.