Civil War

Radical Republicans

faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "radicals" and were opposed during the war by moderates and conservative factions led by Abraham Lincoln and after the war by "conservatives" (in the South) and "liberals" (in the North). Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for the former rebels, and emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for freedmen (recently freed slaves).

Emancipation Proclamation

(1862) an order issued by President Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves in areas rebelling against the Union; took effect January 1, 1863

Battle of Vicksburg

1863, Union gains control of Mississippi, confederacy split in two, Grant takes lead of Union armies, total war or attritions begins

1st Bull Run

1st major battle of Civil War, and the Confederate's victory. The battle is also known as the first Battle of Manassas. It shattered the North's hopes of winning the war quickly.

George McClellan

A general for northern command of the Army of the Potomac in 1861; nicknamed "Tardy George" because of his failure to move troops to Richmond; lost battle vs. General Lee near the Chesapeake Bay; Lincoln fired him twice.

Copperheads

A group of northern Democrats who opposed abolition and sympathized with the South during the Civil War

13th Amendment

Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

Jefferson Davis

An American statesman and politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865

Habeas Corpus

An order requiring a detained person to be brought before a court to investigate the legality of that person's detention. This was suspended by Abraham Lincoln during the war.

Appomattox Courthouse

April 1865., the Virginia town where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, ending the Civil War

Monitor v. Merrimac

Battle between two ironclad ships, lasts five days and has no winner but changes the paradigm of naval warfare

Battle of Antietam

Civil War battle in which the North succeeded in halting Lee's Confederate forces in Maryland. Was the bloodiest battle of the war resulting in 25,000 casualties

Confederate Raiders

During the American Civil War, the Confederate Navy operated a fleet of commissioned Confederate States Navy commerce raiders. These differed from privateers as they were state-owned ships with orders to destroy enemy commerce rather than privately owned ships.

Fort Sumter

Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War

Trent Affair

In 1861 the Confederacy sent emissaries James Mason to Britain and John Slidell to France to lobby for recognition. A Union ship captured both men and took them to Boston as prisonners. The British were angry and Lincoln ordered their release

New York Draft Riots

July 1863 just after the Battle at Gettysburg. Mobs of Irish working-class men and women roamed the streets for four days until federal troops suppressed them. They loathed the idea of being drafted to fight a war on behalf of slaves who, once freed, would compete with them for jobs.

Abraham Lincoln-executive power

Lincoln used executive power to call for 75,000 troops to put down the "insurrection" in the South, authorize spending for the war, and suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln acted in unprecedented ways, more than any previous president, drawing upon his powers as both chief executive and commander in chief, often without the authorization or approval of Congress. This is what he did for the first time in the Fort Sumter crisis. Lincoln later explained that he had taken strong measures without congressional approval, (because Congress was not in session, so the president had acted completely on his own authority) "as indispensable to the public safety".

Border States

Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri; these slave states stayed in the Union and were crucial to Lincoln's political and military strategy. He feared alienating them with emancipation of slaves and adding them to the Confederate cause.

Free Soilers

Northern anti-slavery politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, who rejected radical abolitionism but sought to prohibit the expansion of slavery in the western territories (later, this becomes the main platform of the Republican Party)

Confiscation Acts

Series of laws passed by federal government designed to liberate slaves in seceded states; authorized Union seizure of rebel property, and stated that all slaves who fought with Confederate military services were freed of further obligations to their masters; virtually emancipation act of all slaves in Confederacy

Anaconda Plan

Union war plan by Winfield Scott, called for blockade of southern coast, capture of Richmond, capture Mississippi R, and to take an army through heart of south

Sherman's March

conducted through Georgia in 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War. The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 16 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces destroyed military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupted the South's economy and its transportation networks. Sherman's bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be revolutionary in the annals of war.

Battle of Gettysburg

fought July 1-3, 1863, between Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North.

Confederacy

was a government set up in 1861 by several slave states of the Lower South that had declared their secession from the United States following the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. Seven states joined in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, and four of the Upper South were admitted after war began in April. The Confederacy later accepted two additional states as members (Missouri and Kentucky) although neither officially declared secession nor was ever controlled by Confederate forces.