Strengths & Aims
Crucial states with slavery that chose to remain loyal to the Union.
What are the Border States?
The Northern three-part strategy that used naval blockades to cut off Southern exports and split the Confederacy in two.
What is the Anaconda Plan?
Lincoln's famous 1863 decree that declared all enslaved people in rebel-held territory to be legally free.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
The constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment that President Lincoln suspended to deal with war opponents.
What is habeas corpus?
The systematic destruction of an entire land, its resources, and civilian morale to break an enemy's will to fight.
What is total war?
The primary goal of the South at the start of the war.
What was to establish itself as an independent nation?
To dig in or set up a strong defensive position using ditches, a tactic heavily utilized by Robert E. Lee.
What is to entrench?
The best-known African American Union regiment that fought bravely and suffered massive casualties at Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
What is the 54th Massachusetts?
To explain or determine the meaning of an event, such as how Lincoln viewed his 1864 reelection victory.
What is to interpret?
The famous name given to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s total war march across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean.
What is the March to the Sea?
This critical border state was the most important to protect because losing it would completely surround Washington, D.C.
What is Maryland?
A three-day turning point battle in July 1863 that permanently destroyed Southern offensive capabilities in the North.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
What is that Confederate soldiers were searching the town for shoes (supplies)?
The real-world reason the Battle of Gettysburg was considered "accidental," as neither commanding general intended to fight there.
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, this amendment officially and permanently banned slavery throughout the United States.
What is the Thirteenth Amendment?
The Virginia location where General Ulysses S. Grant met General Robert E. Lee to formalize the generous terms of surrender.
What is Appomattox Court House?
Two major military advantages held by the South over the North at the beginning of the conflict.
What are excellent military leaders and a strong fighting spirit (or knowledge of the land)?
To blockade a town or city, cutting off all food and supplies to force a surrender, as Grant did successfully at Petersburg and Vicksburg.
What is a siege?
What is to ensure that the dead did not die in vain / win the war / save the Union?
In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln claimed it was the duty of "the living" to finish this task.
The frequent political and military consequence Lincoln faced due to early devastating Union losses like Fredericksburg.
What were frequent, unstable changes in Union military leadership?
To prevent the Union army from capturing them, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered these two things to be set on fire before fleeing Richmond.
What are bridges and weapons?
The primary goal of the North at the start of the war, before it shifted to ending slavery.
What was to restore/preserve the Union?
This river city fell to Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863, giving the North total control of the Mississippi River.
What is Vicksburg?
Lincoln's phrase "a new birth of freedom" in the Gettysburg Address implied that the goals of the war had shifted from simply saving the Union to this.
What is abolition (ending slavery)?
Lincoln interpreted his handsome 1864 reelection victory as a clear mandate, or "sign from the voters," to accomplish this permanent goal.
What was to end slavery permanently by amending the Constitution?
This type of ruin in the South—including destroyed cities, farmlands, and railroads—made it impossible for Lee's army to physically sustain the war effort.
What is physical destruction (or ruined infrastructure)?