Causes and Tensions
This issue divided the North and South more than any other and was the central cause of the Civil War.
What is slavery?
The attack on this fort in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1861 started the Civil War.
What is Fort Sumter?
This president led the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
This 1863 document freed enslaved people in Confederate states still in rebellion.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
This 1860 event triggered Southern states to begin seceding from the Union.
What is the election of Abraham Lincoln?
This September 1862 battle was the bloodiest single day in American history and led to the Emancipation Proclamation.
What is the Battle of Antietam?
This Union general accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Who is Ulysses S. Grant?
This constitutional amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the Thirteenth Amendment?
This term describes the loyalty to one's region (North or South) over the nation as a whole.
What is sectionalism?
This July 1863 battle in Pennsylvania is considered the turning point of the Civil War because it stopped the Confederate advance into the North.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
This former enslaved person became a leading abolitionist, recruiter of Black soldiers, and advisor to President Lincoln.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
The Union's victory in the Civil War preserved this and prevented the Confederacy from becoming an independent nation.
What is the United States (or the Union)?
This 1820 agreement temporarily settled the debate over slavery's expansion by drawing a line across the Louisiana Territory.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This Union victory in July 1863 gave the North control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two.
What is the Battle of Vicksburg?
This Confederate general led the Army of Northern Virginia and surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865.
Who is Robert E. Lee?
Approximately this many soldiers died during the Civil War, making it the deadliest conflict in American history.
What is 620,000 (acceptable answers 600,000–750,000)?
Explain how economic differences between the industrial North and agricultural South increased tensions leading to war.
The North's economy relied on factories and wage labor, while the South depended on plantation agriculture and enslaved labor. The South feared losing political power and economic control if slavery could not expand into new territories.
Explain why the fall of Atlanta in 1864 was critical to Lincoln's reelection and the Union's ultimate victory.
Sherman's capture of Atlanta boosted Northern morale, proved the Union was winning, helped Lincoln win reelection, and allowed Sherman to continue his March to the Sea, destroying Confederate resources and will to fight.
Explain the role Harriet Tubman played during the Civil War beyond her work on the Underground Railroad.
Tubman served as a nurse, scout, and spy for the Union Army. She also led the Combahee River Raid in 1863, which freed over 700 enslaved people in South Carolina.
Explain how the Civil War changed the federal government's power relative to the states.
The Union victory established that states could not secede and that federal authority was supreme. The war expanded federal power over issues like citizenship, civil rights, and the economy, setting the stage for a stronger national government.