Causes and Politics
This 1854 law let territories decide on slavery and effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The first shots of the Civil War were fired at this federal fort in South Carolina in April 1861.
Fort Sumter
This abolitionist escaped slavery and helped hundreds to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Harriet Tubman
The Northern strategy to blockade Southern ports and control the Mississippi River was nicknamed this, after a snake.
Anaconda Plan.
This 1863 executive order declared enslaved people in rebelling states to be free (name it).
Emancipation Proclamation
Name the political agreement of 1850 that admitted California as a free state and included a stricter fugitive slave provision.
Compromise of 1850
This 1863 battle is often called the turning point of the war in the East and resulted in about 50,000 casualties. Also known as the bloodiest battle.
Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863).
Name the commander of Confederate forces who surrendered in 1865 and the Union general to whom he surrendered.
Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.
Name one new Civil War technology that made wooden warships obsolete.
Ironclad warships (Monitor and Virginia)
Which amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery nationwide, passed in 1865?
13th Amendment.
What idea said settlers in a territory should vote to decide whether slavery would be allowed there?
Popular sovereignty
Which 1863 siege gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two?
Siege of Vicksburg
This African American regiment (led by Robert Gould Shaw) proved Black troops’ valor and helped encourage wider enlistment of African Americans.
54th Massachusetts Regiment.
Which 1862 law opened up 160 acres of land in the West to settlers willing to farm it for five years?
Homestead Act (1862).
Approximately how many Americans died as a result of the Civil War (nearest hundred thousand)?
About 600,000 (roughly).
Which 1857 Supreme Court case declared that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories?
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Name the 1862 single bloodiest day of the Civil War that gave Lincoln an opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg)
Which radical abolitionist led a 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry that intensified sectional tensions?
John Brown
Explain how inflation and the Union blockade affected everyday life in the Confederacy.
Inflation rose due to Confederate paper money and shortages; blockade made goods scarce and raised prices, hurting civilians and soldiers.
Name one political or social continuity and one change that resulted from the Civil War (brief).
Continuity: regional cultural identities and racial prejudices persisted in many places. Change: slavery was abolished and federal authority was strengthened.
This 1860 election outcome led Southern states to begin seceding; name the winner and explain briefly why his election provoked secession.
Abraham Lincoln won (1860); his antislavery platform and the Republican stance against expansion of slavery caused Southern states to fear for slavery’s future and secede.
Where did General Lee surrender to General Grant in April 1865, effectively ending major Confederate resistance?
Appomattox Court House
Identify the political party formed in the 1850s around an antislavery platform and describe one reason for its rise.
Republican Party; rose because Democrats and Whigs split over slavery and many Northerners opposed expansion of slavery.
Describe two ways the Civil War changed industry or technology in the United States after the war.
Examples: increased mechanization and growth of Northern industry; improvements in military medicine and transportation (railroads/telegraph) that later boosted industrial expansion.
Explain how the outcome of the Civil War affected the balance of power between state and federal governments (brief).
The federal government’s authority increased (e.g., federal wartime powers, later amendments) reducing the ability of states to claim secession and expanding national power.