Freedom from Above or Below?

The essential questions we were told to answer were "Who 'gave' freedom to enslaved Americans? Did freedom come from above or below? To what extent were Abraham Lincoln's actions influenced by the actions of enslaved Americans?" We saw an image that represented Freedom from above called "Freedom of the Slaves". After this, we looked at some documents and analyzed them to find out what the goal for the war really was. Lastly, we watched a video and answer two questions from the video. The questions were, "How did fugitive slaves influence the government’s and Lincoln’s actions on slavery?"and, "What did Lincoln claim that he did not do more for abolition at this point in the war?"  To answer these questions, we needed to find out what the terms "Freedom from above" and "Freedom from below" actually meant, and what the differences were in them. Freedom from above occurs when people with more power and influence than the slaves help the enslaved people gain their freedom. Freedom from below is when the slaves themselves work together to make a difference on their enslavement without the help of government officials or people with influence. When it comes to Abraham Lincoln's place in the freedom of slaves, he certainly had an effect, but was it big enough to be considered freedom from above? During the Emancipation Proclamation he stated that all men are created equal in the following quote. "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The idea of Freedom from below was a large part of what the Civil war all about, and both document X and document Y are examples of it. Document X was a letter from General Burnside to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton which said, "They seemed to be wild with excitement and delight— they are now a source of very great anxiety to us; the city is being overrun with fugitives from surrounding towns and plantations— Two have reported themselves who have been in the swamps for five years." This quote accurately shows freedom from below because the slaves were making themselves be heard by purposely making a nuisance of themselves to the Union army.  Slaves from the plantation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis arrive at Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi from 1863. This image is powerful because it shows slaves taking action and trying to make a difference by working as a unit. In my opinion there was more freedom from above because it was more common but I do think that Lincolns decisions were influenced by the actions of the enslaved people. The following is an image of slaves trying to take action and make themselves known to others, which is powerful because it is one of the first times in America that slaves have made a difference in the lives of white men.