The Antebellum South
Rising Tensions
Election of 1860
Civil War Battles
Documents, Speeches and Amendments
100

This cruel system, which legally defined human beings as property, was the economic backbone of the antebellum Southern economy.

What is slavery?

100

This label refers to a person who is against slavery for moral reasons and wants to see it ended.

What is an abolitionist?

100

This candidate eventually won the election of 1860.

Who is Abraham Lincoln?

100

The opening shots of the Civil War were fired in April 1861 when Confederate forces shelled this federal fort in South Carolina.

What is Fort Sumter?

100

Issued by President Lincoln after the Battle of Antietam, this document declared all enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be "forever free."

What is the Emancipation Proclamation?

200

Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the gin made this major cash crop highly profitable, earning it the nickname "King."

What is Cotton?

200

This state entered the Union as a "free" state after the Compromise of 1850.

What is California?

200

Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 as the candidate for this relatively new, anti-slavery political party.

What is the Republican Party?

200

Fought near a church in Tennessee in April 1862, this bloody Union victory saw more American casualties than all previous U.S. wars combined.

What is the Battle of Shiloh?

200

This short, famous 1863 speech by Lincoln honored fallen soldiers and redefined the Civil War as a dedication to "a new birth of freedom."

What is the Gettysburg Address?

300

These large agricultural estates in the American South relied entirely on the forced labor of enslaved people to cultivate cash crops.

What are plantations?

300

Part of the Compromise of 1850, this highly controversial law required all citizens, even in free states, to assist in capturing runaway enslaved people.

What is the Fugitive Slave Act?

300

President Lincoln made this promise the South in regard to slavery to calm Southern fears.

What is that he would not interfere where it already existed? 

300

This September 1862 clash in Maryland remains the single bloodiest day in American military history and gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

What is the Battle of Antietam? (Accept: Sharpsburg)

300

Ratified in 1791, this part of the Bill of Rights protects five core personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

What is the First Amendment?

400

The profession of most people in the rural South.

Small family farmers.

400

This secret, informal network of safe houses and escape routes helped thousands of enslaved people flee to free states and Canada.

What is the Underground Railroad?

400

Lincoln won this number of Southern states after the Election of 1860.

What is zero or none?

400

Considered the turning point of the war, this three-day July 1863 battle in Pennsylvania ended Confederate General Robert E. Lee's final invasion of the North.

What is the Battle of Gettysburg?

400

Ratified right after the Civil War in late 1865, this addition to the U.S. Constitution formally abolished slavery throughout the entire nation.

What is the 13th Amendment?

500

These were advantages the South had in the event of a Civil War.

What is knowledge of the land and/or greater military experience?

500

A famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, helping guide enslaved people to Canada.

Who is Harriet Tubman?

500

What is it called when Southern states left the Union after Lincoln's eleciton?

Secession or to secede.

500

This man assassinated President Lincoln right after the war ended.

Who is John Wilkes Booth?

500

This Reconstruction-era amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

What is the 15th Amendment?