AP® WRITING HISTORICALLY
SAQ
Read the following question carefully and write a short response. Use complete sentences.
Using the following excerpts, answer (a), (b), and (c).
Source: Chandra Manning, The Fight Against Slavery, 2007
"Enlisted Union soldiers came to the conclusion that winning the war would require the
destruction of slavery partly because soldiers' personal observations of the South led many to
decide that slavery blighted everything it touched. Yet more influential than Union soldier's preexisting notions, or even their firsthand observations of the South, were their interactions with actual slaves, which led many to view slavery as a dehumanizing and evil institution that corroded the moral virtue necessary for a population to govern itself.
Hostility to slavery did not necessarily mean support for racial equality. In fact, white Union
soldiers strove mightily to keep the issues of slavery and black rights separate. [Still], contact with slaves and southern society convinced many Union troops that the immoral and blighting institution of slavery was antithetical to republican government, and that any republican government that tried to accommodate slavery was doomed to eventual failure……. [C]lear demands for the destruction of slavery plainly emerged among enlisted Union soldiers, especially those stationed in the slave states who were witnessing slavery with their own eyes for the first time. Even some border state Union soldiers joined the clamor, either because they had witnessed for years the violence that slavery could engender or out of shock and anger that slaveholders in their home states valued the peculiar institution over the Union. Slaves themselves did the most to force emancipation onto the Union agenda,. [primarily] by winning over enlisted Union soldiers, who, in the first year of the war, became the first major group after black Americans and abolitionists to call for an end to slavery…”
Source: Gary Gallagher, The Fight to Save the Union, 2011
"The loyal American citizenry fought a war for the Union that also killed slavery……. Union
always remained the paramount goal, a fact clearly expressed by Abraham Lincoln in
speeches and other statements designed to garner the widest popular support for the war
effort... That hardpan of unionism held millions of Americans to the task of suppressing the
slaveholders' rebellion, even as the human and material cost mushroomed.
[The Union] represented a cherished legacy of the founding generation, a democratic republic
with a constitution that guaranteed political liberty and afforded individuals a chance to
better themselves economically. From the perspective of loyal Americans, their republic stood
as the only hope for a democracy in [the] western world… [following] the failed European
revolutions of the 1840s. Slaveholding aristocrats who established the Confederacy … posed
a direct threat not only to the long-term success of the American republic but also to the
broader future of democracy. Issues related to the institution of slavery precipitated secession and the outbreak of fighting, but the loyal citizenry initially gave little thought to emancipation in their quest to save the Union. By the early summer of 1862, long before black men donned blue uniforms in large numbers, victorious Union armies stood poised to win the war with slavery largely intact. Eventually, most loyal citizens, though profoundly prejudiced by twenty-first century- standards and largely indifferent toward enslaved black people, embraced emancipation as a tool to punish slaveholders, weaken the Confederacy, and protect the Union from future internal strife."
a. Briefly describe ONE major difference between Manning's and Gallagher' historical
interpretations of the motivations of Union soldiers in the Civil War.
b. Briefly explain how ONE historical event or development from the period 1861 to 1865 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Manning's argument.
C. Briefly explain how ONE historical event or development from the period 1861 to 1865 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Gallagher's argument