The document provides teaching strategies for analyzing a quote by Abraham Lincoln about freeing slaves and preserving freedom. It includes defining key terms, dividing the quote into parts, asking questions to help students understand contextual meanings, and making connections to broader American history topics.

2. Teaching and Learning Strategies:

3. Note: These strategies will not only assist all of your students learn more complex meanings of the words, ideas, and concepts in the quote above but will also give you some possibilities for assisting your students who have special needs or are English Language Learners.

4. Ask students to define “freedom”

5. Ask students to define “assure”

6. If they do not know what that means, then go through the following steps:

7. Do they know what “ensure” means? (connecting to prior learning)

8. What about “insure” or “insurance”?

9. Connect what they do know back to the word assure

10. Ask students what “we” means in this quote.

11. Why do they think Lincoln used the term “we”?

12. Relationship to preserving the Union?

13. Ask students to define “honor”

14. How do their definitions relate to the term “honorable”

15. Ask students why Lincoln would be concerned with honor.

16. Define “preserve”

17. Ask students to write the definition of each of these terms in their own words:

18. freedom

19. honor

20. assure

21. preserve

22. Divide the quote into four parts and discuss the meaning of each to help students better understand the meaning of the entire quote:

23. “In giving freedom to the slave . . . ”

24. This is a good place to review the connection between slavery and the causes of the Civil War.

25. Review with students the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery.

26. “ . . . we assure freedom to the free . . .”

27. Ask students why Lincoln would say we would be assuring freedom to those that are already free?

28. This is an opportunity to explain to students the belief that no one is really free if slavery is allowed in a society?

29. Do students see anything similar in today’s society? (You could discuss race and class/economic discrimination here.)

30. “. . . honorable alike in what we give . . .”

31. Ask students why Lincoln would consider giving freedom honorable?

32. Point out to students that the word “alike” indicates that there will be a comparison between two or more situations.

33. “. . . and what we preserve.”

34. Ask students what Lincoln means here. In other words, how did Lincoln think that giving freedom to the slaves preserved freedom for all the nation’s citizens.

35. Learning Connections/Extending Student Learning:

36. Consider leading students in a discussion about whether the slaves were actually free once the Civil War ended or when the 13th Amendment was ratified.

37. Ask them why the 14th and 15th Amendments were necessary

38. citizenship/due process/equal protection

39. Discuss the Jim Crow laws in the South

40. Explore with students whether or not former slaves left their owners and/or left the South.

41. If so, where did they go?

42. Connections to 20th century American History

43. Discuss with students what role education plays in being a free citizen.

44. Ask students if the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ended segregation in the schools.

46. Identify Abraham Lincoln:

47. Define each of the following terms:

48. freedom –

49. honorable –

50. assure –

51. preserve -

52. What does Abraham Lincoln mean when he says “we” in the quote above? Why is the use of the word “we” important in this quote?

53. After you have discussed the four parts of the quote above with your teacher, write the ideas Lincoln stated in this quote in your own words.

54. Analyzing Diaries and Memoirs

55. Historical Context – Civil War:

56. Varina Howell Davis was the First Lady of the Confederacy because she was married to Jefferson Davis when he became President of the Confederacy. She believed that the Yankee invaders and conquerers inflicted cruel punishments on civilians as well as soldiers, on women as well as men, on blacks as well as whites.

57. Define Confederacy.

58. Define inflicted.

59. Identify Varina Howell Davis.

60. Why would her opinion on the Civil War be considered important in understanding American History?