Causes & Events
This novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe exposed the cruelty of slavery and increased Northern opposition.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
He was elected president in 1860, and his victory prompted Southern secession.
Abraham Lincoln
The opening engagement of the Civil War in April 1861 where the first shots were fired
Fort Sumter.
The government agency created to help freed slaves with food, education, and legal aid.
Freedmen’s Bureau.
This first amendment in the Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, religion, and the press.
1st Amendment
The Compromise that admitted California as a free state in 1850 and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law.
Compromise of 1850
The Supreme Court case that declared enslaved people were property and not citizens.
Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The single bloodiest day in American history that led Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Battle of Antietam.
The constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.
13th Amendment (abolished slavery).
This amendment says you don’t have to let soldiers live in your home during peacetime.
3rd Amendment
Name the violent conflict in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery settlers after the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
Bleeding Kansas.
Name the abolitionist leader who led the 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry.
John Brown
The three-day battle in Pennsylvania in July 1863 that proved a turning point in favor of the Union.
Battle of Gettysburg.
The amendment that granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to anyone born or naturalized in the United States.
14th Amendment (citizenship and equal protection).
Ratified in 1870, this amendment said that citizens could not be denied the right to vote because of their race.
15th Amendment
This 1859 raid on a federal arsenal aimed to start a slave uprising and increased Southern fears.
John Brown’s Raid (Harpers Ferry).
This law required citizens to help return escaped enslaved people; identify the law and one major effect it had on sectional tensions.
Fugitive Slave Law (part of the Compromise of 1850); effect: increased Northern resistance and enforcement tensions.
The general and future president who accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Ulysses S. Grant.
The Southern laws passed after the Civil War to limit the rights of freedpeople and control labor.
Black Codes
This amendment gives Americans the right to a speedy and public trial.
6th Amendment
Explain the role of the Missouri Compromise (1820), including the line it established and its effect on slavery expansion.
Missouri Compromise created the 36∘30′ line (north of it, slavery was prohibited in the Louisiana Purchase territory except Missouri); it temporarily limited the spread of slavery but was later undermined.
Describe the significance of Dred Scott for the 1860 election and for Congress’s ability to regulate slavery in the territories.
Dred Scott heightened sectional tensions, influenced the 1860 election by convincing many Northerners that slavery would spread under pro‑slavery courts and reduced Congress’s perceived power to restrict slavery in the territories.
Define “Total War” and give one example of a Union campaign that illustrates this strategy.
Total War = targeting not only enemy armies but also economic resources and civilian infrastructure to destroy the opponent’s ability and will to fight. Example: Sherman’s March to the Sea.
Explain sharecropping and analyze how it affected freedmen’s economic independence during Reconstruction.
Sharecropping was a system where freedpeople farmed land owned by others in return for a share of the crop; it often kept them in debt and economic dependence, limiting true independence.
Poll taxes and literacy tests were used to stop people from doing this important civic activity.
Voting