Events leading to the Civil War, Civil War & Reconstruction

15th Amendment

(Male) Citizens cannot be denied the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Male suffrage

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States, leader of Union during Civil War

Andrew Johnson

17th President of the United States, A Southerner form Tennessee, was V.P. when Lincoln was killed, so he became president. He opposed radical Republicans who passed Reconstruction Acts over his veto. The first U.S. president to be impeached, he survived the Senate removal by only one vote.

Battle of Bull Run

1861, the first major battle of the Civil War that showed that the war was going to be long and costly. "Stonewall" Jackson began to rise in the army.

Fort Sumter

1861. Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the Confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War; Lincoln called for state militias to be provided.

Morrill Act

1862, this law distributed millions of acres of western lands to state governments in order to fund state agricultural & manufacturing colleges.

Fall of Atlanta

1864, Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground in his March to the Sea.

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized "separate but equal" facilities for blacks & whites.

Pickett's Charge

3rd day of Gettysburg, Lee asked Pickett to lead troops on a mile and a half run where they were then slaughtered by the Union army

Fugitive Slave Act

A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders

Confederacy

A loose union of independent states; name of government used by the southern states that seceded during the Civil War

Free Soil Party

A political party dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery

Bleeding Kansas

A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory.

Slavery

A system of enforced servitude in which some people are owned by other people.

Underground Railroad

A system that helped enslaved African Americans follow a network of escape routes out of the South to freedom in the North

Sharecropping

A system used on southern farms after the Civil War in which farmers worked land owned by someone else in return for a small portion of the crops.

Literacy Test

A test given to persons to prove they can read and write before being allowed to register to vote

Civil War

A war between people of the same country.

Total War

A war that involves the complete mobilization of resources and people, affecting the lives of all citizens in the warring countries, even those remote from the battlefields.

13th Amendment

Abolition of slavery

Radical Republicans

After the Civil War, a group that believed the South should be harshly punished and thought that Lincoln was sometimes too compassionate towards the South.

Grandfather Clause

Allowed people to vote if their father or grandfather had voted before Reconstruction

Dawes Act

An act that removed Indian land from tribal possession, redivided it, and distributed it among individual Indian families. Designed to break tribal mentalities and promote individualism.

KKK (Ku Klux Klan)

An extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid-nineteenth century and its members, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War.

Union Strategy

Anaconda Plan: naval blockade of the South; capture Mississippi, split Confederacy in two, take TX, AR, LA out of the way, capture largest Confederate City: New Orleans; Capture Richmond

John Wilkes Booth

Assassinated Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater

John Brown's Raid

Began when he and his men took over the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in hopes of starting a slave rebellion.

Wilmot Proviso

Bill that would ban slavery in the territories acquired after the Mexican War

Veto

Chief executive's power to reject a bill passed by a legislature

Battle of Antietam

Civil War battle in which the North "won" by stopping Lee's invasion of the North in Maryland, Lincoln used this to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. Was the bloodiest battle of the war resulting in 25,000 casualties.

Robert Gould Shaw

Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, killed in a failed attempt to capture Fort Wagner, near Charleston

Robert E. Lee

Commander of the Confederate Army

10% Plan (Lincoln)

Confederate states would be readmitted if 10% of the population took a loyalty oath and the state ratified the 13th Amendment

14th Amendment

Declares that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens and are guaranteed equal protection of the laws

Sherman's March to the Sea

Devastating total war military campaign, led by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman that involved marching 60,000 Union troops through Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah and burning everything along the way.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

During the race to become Senator Lincoln asked to have multiple debates with Douglas, mostly on slavery. Although Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, he gained national reputation.

Grant's terms of surrender

Everyone goes home with no fight. Horses and mules go with him for plowing. He keeps the soldiers' rifles but not the officers' pistols. He ordered food to be sent to Lee's men since all of the farms in the south had been destroyed.

Appomattox Court House

Famous as the site of the surrender of the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant.

54th Massachusetts Regiment

First African American Regimen, successfully defended Fort Wagner

Hiram Rhodes Revels

First African American senator

Sgt. William Carney

First African American to win the medal of honor

Secession

Formal withdrawal of states or regions from a nation

Emancipation

Freeing of enslaved people

Confederacy Strategies

Gain support from Britain and France by invading the North, and fight a defensive war to wear the North out.

Stonewall Jackson

General in the Confederate army, led Confederate army in the 1st Battle of Bull Run

Ulysses S. Grant

General of the Union Army during the Civil War

Missiouri Compromise

Henry Clay, 1820, admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state

Compromise of 1850

Henry Clay, California admitted as a free state, the Fugitive Slave Act, made popular sovereignty in most other states from Mexican-American War

Confederate Advantages

Home-field advantage, military leadership, skilled shooters

Do you got it?

I got it!

Johnson's Impeachment

Johnson's refusal to obey the Tenure of Office Act and vetoing of the Civil Rights Act & Freedmen's Bureau led to Congressional leaders to try remove Johnson from office, it failed by one vote

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Law that allowed voters in Kansas and Nebraska to choose whether to allow slavery in their state or not.

Black Codes

Laws denying most legal rights to newly freed slaves; passed by southern states following the Civil War

Jim Crow Laws

Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites

The Election of 1860

Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won because the Democratic party was split over slavery. As a result, the South no longer felt like it has a voice in politics and a number of states seceded from the Union.

Union Generals

McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Grant

Johnson's Plan

New state constitutions, did not punish the South except for the rich & highest ranking Confederate officers; opposed equal rights for African Americans

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 which portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral

Homestead Act

Passed in 1862, it gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm the land for five years.

Reconstruction

Period after the Civil War in the United States when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union

Union Advantages

Population, industry, railroads, navy

Decline of Reconstruction

President Hayes withdrew the military from the South, leaving state governments in the hands of ex-Confederates.

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America

Emancipation Proclamation

Proclamation issued by Lincoln, freeing all slaves in areas still at war with the Union (Confederacy).

Freedman's Bureau, 1865

Provided food, clothing, medical care, and education to help freedmen after the Civil War.

Poll Taxes

Required citizens of a state to pay a special tax in order to vote

Election of 1876

Rutherford B. Hayes elected

Nat Turner's Rebellion

Slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in 1831

First state to secede

South Carolina in 1860

Seceding States

South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina

Battle of Vicksburg

Split the south in two and gave the Union control of the Mississippi River.

Border States

States bordering the North: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. They were slave states, but did not secede.

Dred Scott Case

Supreme Court case which ruled that slaves are not citizens but are property that are not freed even if they travel to free places, and affirmed that property cannot be interfered with by Congress.

President Grant

The Civil War military hero that, shortly after he was reelected in 1872, the nation sank into a deep depression, and corruption scandals began to plague the administration.

Battle of Gettysburg

The intensely bloody 3-day battle that marked the last major Confederate attempt to invade the North.

Civil Rights Act

This secured the rights of freedmen, giving citizenship to African-Americans

Impeach

To formally charge a public official with misconduct in office

Who won the Civil War?

Union/North