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