🇺🇸AP US History
1. Evaluate the extent to which federal policies and actions transformed the social and political status of African Americans in the United States from 1861 to 1897.
Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
Support an argument using at least four of the provided documents.
Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence beyond the documents.
For at least two documents, explain how or why the document's point of view, purpose, historical situation, or audience is relevant.
Demonstrate a complex understanding through sophisticated argumentation and/or effective use of evidence.
Document 1
Source: U.S. War Department, Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln, 1863-1866.
Document 2
Source: Abraham, a Black Seminole leader, 1863
Document 3
Source: Abraham Lincoln, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Document 4
Source: Abram Colby, Testimony to Congressional Committee on Ku Klux Klan Violence, Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, October 27, 1871.
On the 29th of October, they came to my house and broke my door open, took me out of my bed and took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me in the woods for dead. They said to me, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” I said, “I will not tell you a lie.” They said, “No; don’t tell a lie.”...I said, “If there was an election to-morrow, I would vote the Radical ticket.” They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, I suppose...
I would have come before the court here last week, but I knew it was no use for me to try to get Ku-Klux condemned by Ku-Klux, and I did not come. Mr. Saunders, a member of the grand jury here last week, is the father of one of the very men I knew whipped me...
Document 5
Source: An Act to Establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees, 1865
That there is hereby established in the War Department, to continue during the present war of rebellion, and for one year thereafter, a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which shall be committed, as hereinafter provided, the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states, or from any district of country within the territory embraced in the operations of the army, under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the head of the bureau and approved by the President.
Sec. 2. That the Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct.
Sec. 4. That the commissioner, under the direction of the President, shall have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land.
Document 6
Source: Booker T. Washington, "The Atlanta Compromise Speech," 1895.
To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom you are surrounded.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I have said to my own race, Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.
Document 7
Source: Mary Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women, first presidential address to the association, 1897
"The colored women of the United States [have] bonded themselves together to fulfill a mission to which they feel peculiarly adapted and especially called.... It is not because we are discouraged at the progress made by our people that we have uttered the cry of alarm which has called together this band of earnest women assembled here tonight. In the unprecedented advancement made by the negro since his emancipation, we take great pride....
In public questions affecting our legal status, let us engage intelligently and continuously, whenever and wherever it is possible to strike a blow for equality and right.... Let the cause of temperance and morality be especially espoused in our effort to better humanity and elevate the race.... Let us consecrate¹ ourselves anew to the mission which we have been called to fulfill....
Let us not only preach, but practice race unity, race pride, reverence and respect for those capable of leading and advising us."
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