Chapter 14: A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861–1865

April 1865 witnessed some of the most momentous events in American history. Which of the following events occurred that month?

Abraham Lincoln became the first president of the United States to be assassinated. Grant finally broke the siege lines at Petersburg, forcing the retreat and abandonment of Richmond by the Army of Northern Virginia.

Union forces in the Western Theater met great success in the first two years of the war, arguably fatally crippling the Confederacy in the process. Who are the two major military figures that brought the Union victory in the West during the first two years of the war?

Admiral David G. Farragut General Ulysses S. Grant

During the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation had become a political and military necessity. Many factors contributed to this decision. Which of the following are factors that led Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation?

An economic strategy, such as eliminating slavery, would undermine the entire southern economy. There was a lack of a quick military success to end the war.

The intense new nationalism in the North considered criticism of the war effort and the Lincoln administration as to treason to many northerners. Identify the statements that accurately describe wartime dissent under the Lincoln administration.

Arbitrary arrests for dissenting views numbered in the thousands during the war, and they included opposition newspaper editors, Democratic politicians, and simple ordinary civilians. The Constitution was murky on addressing who held the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and so Lincoln claimed that right under the presidential war powers and suspended it twice for those accused of "disloyal activities."

Identify the outcomes of the following major Civil War battles.

Battle of Gettysburg: the largest battle in the history of North America in July 1863 Battle of Vicksburg: resulted in control of the Mississippi River for the Union in July 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville: stunning defeat of General Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac in May 1863

What does this image reveal about social and economic changes that occurred during the Civil War?

Both men and women worked in factories of the North, performing essential war work.

The most radical implication of the Emancipation Proclamation was the enrollment of Blacks into military service in the Union army. Identify the statements that describe their military contributions to the Union war effort during the Civil War.

By the end of the Civil War, more than 180,000 Black men had served in the Union army and 24,000 in the Union navy. Some Black units in the Union army won considerable renown.

Identify the statements that point to the differences between the European and American experience of nation building in the nineteenth century.

European nations were being built on the idea of unifying a people of the same ethnic, cultural, and linguistic group into a unified nation. Lincoln believed that the United States as a nation was embodied in a particular set of universal ideals.

During the Civil War, the Union and Confederacy rarely utilized propaganda through newspapers and mass marketing to mobilize public opinion.

FALSE

Grant's strategy of attrition worked brilliantly, as by the end of 1864 he captured Petersburg, Virginia, and forced the surrender of Robert E. Lee.

FALSE

President Lincoln favored a strategy that focused on capturing and holding Confederate territory—namely Richmond, the Confederate capital—not the destruction of the Confederate armies.

FALSE

Unwilling to surrender his army, General Robert E. Lee fought a desperate battle at Appomattox Courthouse, marking one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

FALSE

The Thirteenth Amendment was approved by Congress on January 31, 1865. What did the amendment accomplish?

For the first time, the word "slavery" appeared in the Constitution. It abolished slavery throughout the entire United States.

Review the following video with author Eric Foner on the Sand Creek Massacre. Match the following significant events of the Civil War in Indian territory to their correct description.

Glorieta Pass: Confederate defeat in New Mexico in March 1862 Sioux Massacre: More than 300 indigenous people were sentenced to death for killing white farmers. Sand Creek Massacre: November 1864 assault by Union troops of approximately 700 Cheyennes and Arapahos in Colorado

As in the North, Confederate women found themselves drawn into many spheres of life normally reserved for men. How did Confederate women respond to the hardships of war?

Initially, as in the North, women worked in factories and businesses, ran plantations, and attempted to farm with some enthusiasm. Eventually, women's morale collapsed, which led to a general collapse of morale both at home and in the Confederate armies.

The Civil War was not the first war in which modern weaponry and technology was used to affect the outcome on the battlefield. That distinction belongs to the Crimean War (1854-1856). What new technologies were revolutionizing warfare in the 1860s?

Ironclad warships participated in direct combat with one another. The telegraph was used to command and control a vast area of operations. The mass-produced rifled musket allowed for greater accuracy.

In the Western Theater of operations, Ulysses S. Grant laid siege to the city of Vicksburg, and it fell on July 4, 1863. What did Grant accomplish with this victory?

It gave Union forces complete control of the Mississippi, cutting the Confederacy in two. Approximately 30,000 Confederate troops under the command of General John C. Pemberton surrendered to Grant, which was a loss the Confederacy could not afford.

Identify the reason why the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, was significant.

Lee's invasion of the North resulted in the single bloodiest day in American military history

Abraham Lincoln's path to emancipation was gradual and incremental. Place the following initiatives in order, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln rescinded General Fremont's proclamation freeing enslaved people in Missouri Congress prohibited the army from returning fugitives slaves. Lincoln championed colonization Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

In 1863, Lincoln announced his Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction for occupied Louisiana and other areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union forces. The plan proved controversial. Identify the statements that accurately describe Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction.

Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan offered no role to Blacks in shaping the post-slavery order. This led to free Blacks pushing for equality before the law and a role in government. Lincoln essentially offered amnesty and full restoration rights, including property (except enslaved people), to nearly all white southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the Union and supported emancipation.

Read and analyze the "Voices of Freedom" primary source document from the chapter, titled "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore" (1864) by Abraham Lincoln. Click here to review the full document excerpt from the textbook. Which of the following are valid statements about Lincoln's vision of freedom as illustrated in this source?

Lincoln's use of a parable of the sheep, shepherd, and wolf underscored his thinking about slavery and emancipation. Lincoln acknowledged northerners had different views of liberty.

During the Civil War, Christianity and patriotism were joined in a civic religion unprecedented in American history. How did the war transform American religious and political life?

Many clergy in the North professed that the war was God's instrument to rid the nation of slavery and turn it into the true land of freedom. Clergy from the North and South wanted to reassure their congregations that their dead had not died in vain.

The Confederacy firmly believed that "King Cotton diplomacy" would lead to great power intervention on its behalf in the war. Which of the following are reasons that "King Cotton diplomacy" failed?

Many nations recognized their overdependence on southern cotton, and they developed their own sources.

In 1862, a slaveholder in northern Alabama commented on how slavery threatened the Confederate war effort: "Men who have no interest in it are not going to fight through a long war to save it—never. They will tire of it and quit." What statement best characterizes desertion and the Confederacy?

More than 100,000 men, one-ninth of the entire Confederate arm, deserted by the war's end.

Identify the statements that accurately describe the secession of the southern states and the creation of the Confederate States of America.

North Carolina was the last state to secede from the Union. Louisiana seceded before the fall of Fort Sumter.

The Civil War laid the foundation for modern America. In fighting the war, both the North and the South lost something they had gone to war to defend. Identify what each side had to sacrifice.

Northern capital dominated American politics, but in gaining that lead, it both weakened free labor and transformed the small shop and independent farm into powerful industrial giants. The South lost slavery, economic power, and southern dominance of American politics.

Select on the map the areas where Union forces gained success in 1863.

Port Hudson (July 1863) Vicksburg (July 4,1863) Chattanoga (November 1863) Gettsburg (July 1-3,1863)

Why did Abraham Lincoln wait until after the Battle of Antietam to announce his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation?

Secretary of State William Seward thought that Lincoln should wait for victory, lest emancipation be seen as a desperate act of a losing nation.

In November 1864, Sherman and his army of 60,000 set out from Atlanta on their March to the Sea. Which of the following statements describe the events of the March to the Sea and Sherman's subsequent military actions?

Sherman's army cut a sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction through the heart of Georgia, destroying anything that could be considered war material. In January 1865, Sherman marched into South Carolina, causing even more destruction than he had in Georgia.

As Union forces occupied large portions of slave territory in 1861 and 1862, thousands of enslaved people made their way toward Union lines.

TRUE

Confederate authorities eventually became so desperate to make up for manpower shortages that they made it legal to arm enslaved people and offer them their freedom in exchange for enlisting and defending the Confederacy. The measure became law in March 1865.

TRUE

During the Civil War, the North went through a period of massive economic growth and expansion in comparison with economic stagnation and devastation in the South.

TRUE

Grant's strategy of maintaining the initiative against Robert E. Lee, thus suffering high casualties in the Army of the Potomac, earned him a reputation of the "butcher of men."

TRUE

The Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 was a brilliant victory for Lee in central Virginia, as he was outnumbered by General Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac two to one.

TRUE

The Civil War brought significant social and economic change to the South. The Confederate government passed legislation allowing individuals who owned twenty or more enslaved people to be exempt from the draft.

TRUE

The Confederate military adopted a defensive strategy with occasional offensives into the North.

TRUE

Analyze the following map titled "The Civil War in the West, 1861-1862." Which of the following are valid statements about the war in the Western Theater?

The Battle of Shiloh was a Union victory. Union forces gained control of waterways, namely rivers, and port cities.

The Wade-Davis Bill was an unsuccessful bill named after two leading Republican members of Congress unhappy with Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction. Which of the following were provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill?

The Bill passed Congress but Lincoln refused to sign it. The bill required a majority, not 10 percent, of white male southerners to pledge support for the Union before Reconstruction commenced. The Wade-Davis Bill called for equality for Blacks before the law.

Until recently, a seldom discussed aspect of the Civil War is the Union's continuing wars against the Native Americans in the West. Identify the statements that accurately describe Native Americans and the Union in the West during the Civil War.

The Cherokee, forced to Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act, still owned enslaved people and sided with the Confederacy at the time of the Civil War. The U.S. Army attacked the Kiowas and Comanches in the Southwest in retaliation for raids on settlements and ranches. The Navajo's Long Walk was the Navajo people's forced removal from their ancestral lands by the U.S. Army.

Initially, as Union forces moved into Confederate territory, escaped slaves were returned to their owners in a policy to show southerners that the federal government had no intention of interfering with slavery. Yet this policy changed as the war progressed. Eventually, escaped slaves were welcomed into Union lines. Identify the reasons for the change in escaped slaves' status by Union forces.

The Confederacy sent enslaved people to work as military laborers, and so increasingly more Blacks were escaping to northern lines. Long before Lincoln called for emancipation, Blacks in the North and South referred to the war as the "freedom war." This undermined the institution throughout the South and led to mass exoduses to Union lines.

Identify the causes of economic hardship and disaffection among the population of the Confederate States of America that undermined the war effort.

The Confederate Congress authorized the army to confiscate what it needed from farmers to supply itself. The government of the Confederacy was unwilling to tax the wealthy planting class that could pay for the war.

Identify the characteristics that defined the first Battle of Bull Run.

The Confederate forces defeated Union troops. This fight demonstrated to both northerners and southerners that the Civil War would be a prolonged conflict.

What does this map reveal about the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation?

The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Missouri. Louisiana was split between territory exempt from and subject to the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Homestead Act was passed by Congress to increase agricultural output in the United States. Identify the statements that accurately describe the Homestead Act.

The Homestead Act went into effect the very same day as the Emancipation Proclamation. Some 400,000 families accepted land under the Homestead Act.

Identify the advantages that the Union held over the Confederacy at the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Union had more railroad mileage, industrial capacity, and financial resources. The Union had a larger population.

The transcontinental railroad was first proposed by Asa Whitney in 1846 and was quickly called "too gigantic" and "entirely impracticable" by Congress. Yet the railroad was built by 1869 and transformed the United States. Which of the following statements concerning the transcontinental railroad are true?

The transcontinental railroad shortened travel across the continent from an average five to six months to five or six days. The construction of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads eventually employed 20,000 workers. Congress gave 100 million acres of land to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads.

How does this artist depict the presidential election of 1864?

The war faction of the Democratic Party remained the most powerful.

In July 1863, Lee again invaded the North and clashed with federal forces at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Instead of defeating the federals on their own territory, Lee himself was defeated. Identify the statements that accurately describe the Battle of Gettysburg.

With more than 165,000 men engaged in the battle, Gettysburg is the largest battle ever to have taken place in North America. Gettysburg was a crushing defeat for Lee, and his army would never again return to northern soil. Gettysburg was unusual for Lee in that he was on the strategic offensive in northern territory as opposed to being on the strategic defensive on southern soil.

As a quick and conventional military victory eluded Union armies, Radical Republicans moved the nation closer to the idea of total emancipation as an economic means to hurt the Confederacy. Identify the steps taken by the Union against slavery before total emancipation.

abolition in the District of Columbia and the territories the Second Confiscation Act a March 1862 prohibition by Congress on the Union army from returning fugitive slaves

General Ulysses S. Grant was promoted and brought east in 1864 to achieve the final defeat of Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy. Identify the concept on which Grant's strategy to finally defeat the Confederacy and Lee was based.

attrition

Place the following battles in chronological order to show the progression of the Civil War.

the Battle of Bull Run the Seven Days' Campaign the second Battle of Bull Run the Battle of Antietam