The Road to War
The formal act of a state withdrawing from the Union, which 11 Southern states did before the Civil War.
What is secession?
The two sides in the Civil War were the United States, also known as the Union, and this group of seceded Southern states.
What is the Confederacy
This amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, formally abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment
This massive project, connecting the East and West coasts by rail, was completed in 1869 at Promontory, Utah.
What is the Transcontinental Railroad
A former U.S. Senator and Secretary of War, who served as President of the Confederate States of America from 1861 until the Confederacy's collapse in 1865.
Who is Jefferson Davis
The Compromise of 1850 included a stricter version of this law, requiring all citizens to help capture runaway enslaved people.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act
The first shots of the Civil War were fired at this federal fort in Charleston, South Carolina
What is Fort Sumter
This federal agency was established to help formerly enslaved people by providing food, housing, education, and medical aid.
What is the Freedmen's Bureau
This invention by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 revolutionized long-distance communication.
What is the telephone
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1857 that denied citizenship to people of African descent, declared that enslaved people were property protected by the Fifth Amendment, and ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.
This treaty officially ended the Mexican-American War and had Mexico cede a vast territory to the United States.
What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
While it didn't free all enslaved people, this 1863 executive order declared slaves in Confederate-held territory to be free
What is the Emancipation Proclamation
This amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and guaranteed "equal protection of the laws."
What is the 14th Amendment
This person adopted the Bessemer process which made the mass production of strong, cheap steel possible, fueling the growth of cities and railroads.
Who is Andrew Carnegie
This secret network of routes and safe houses was used by enslaved African Americans to escape to freedom in the North or Canada.
What is the Underground Railroad
The idea that settlers in a new territory could vote to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.
What is popular sovereignty
This bloody 1862 battle in Maryland was the single deadliest day of the war and gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
What is the Battle of Antietam
This amendment, ratified in 1870, declared that the right to vote could not be denied based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
What is the 15th Amendment
He dominated the oil industry by creating the Standard Oil monopoly
Who is John D. Rockefeller
This radical abolitionist led a failed raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to start a massive slave uprising.
Who is John Brown
What future US president served in the Mexican-American War?
Who is Ulysses S Grant
A decisive Union victory led by General Ulysses S. Grant, resulting the Confederate surrender of this vital Mississippi River stronghold, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two and giving the Union control of the entire river
What is the Battle of Vicksburg
Reconstruction ended in 1877 largely due to this political deal that settled the disputed 1876 presidential election.
What is the Compromise of 1877
Crowded, poorly built, and often unsanitary apartment buildings that housed the urban poor, particularly immigrants.
What are tenements
This 19th-century belief held that the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion across the entire North American continent.
What is Manifest Destiny