Like the Slave Quarters assessment, this question requires students to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of a document as historical evidence. Students with a sophisticated understanding of how to source a document will be able to explain that Henry Nelson's account is useful in that it was informed by his parents, who were enslaved at the end of the Civil War. They will also point out, however, that Nelson was offering secondhand information, making his interview less useful as specific evidence of the conditions facing enslaved people at the end of the war.
