Slaves believed that the Civil War was going to set them free. Lincoln and others believed that the only way to break the South's resistance and end the war was to free the slaves. I believe that this is crazy. I say this because there would be a lot of conflicts between the African Americans and the Americans. Even though African Americans were already freeing themselves, when 1863 came, it was a day to rejoice because it was a day of Emancipation and I'm very sure that African Americans were very happy.
African Americans said that to be free was to be with your family, and to not be under the treat to be sold. If that is what they call freedom, then I feel like I don't know what freedom is anymore. To me, freedom was for a human being no matter the age or whatever to be able to do as they please and to not be told by anyone what to do. Being free is a situation where you tell yourself that I can do what I want. I'm not saying oh, since I can do whatever I want, I can go and drink or smoke."No", doing those things aren't good, at all. African Americans had the basic idea of what being free meant, bit they did not get the full concept of it, which was to be able to vote, and take office. I know that African Americans have forgotten about those two points. In order to have total freedom, you have to be able to vote, whether man or woman, and to take office, if you don't have the ability to do those things, then you don't have total freedom.
African Americans are asking themselves, what can they do in Order to be free, or to be equal to. During the Civil War, African Americans were coming up with ways to get even and have the same right as Americans. African Americans started asking themselves how do I get myself out of this. African Americans now tell themselves that they have to have a vote in order to be entitled a citizen. The freedom doesn't come until the rain, and snow go away. This means that their storm isn't over, and they have to keep fighting.
Quote- " Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot".( page 245, Lewis & Kelley)
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This quote is very strong. This quote tells you that freedom doesn't come to freed slaves until they are able to cast a vote. I don't like how women were excluded from this quote, because it says he. I'm so surprised that there hasn't been a big drastic change that has occurred. Life still goes on, and it's just so sad that women weren't apart of something that was so hard to fight for. Remember at this time period, women were excluded from basically many things and they had non opportunity to do as I please.
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