Key Terms:
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Bull Run, Battle of
- First major battle of the Civil War and the Confederates won.
Peninsula Campaign
- General George B. McClellan's failed attempt at seizing Richmond, the Confederate capitol.
Merrimack
- Confederate ship that was plated with old iron railroad rails and renamed the Virginia and destroyed two Union ships. Was eventually destroyed so the Union couldn't get to it.
Monitor
- Union ship which fought the Merrimack to a standstill. Was built in about 100 days.
Bull Run, Second Battle of
- Battle won by Confederate General, Robert E. Lee who was then encouraged to keep pushing further north.
Antietam, Battle of
- Landmark battle that was pretty much a tie, but showed how strong the Union army was. It stalled foreign intervention and gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.
Emancipation Proclamation
- Said that all slaves in the Confederate States were free but it didn't apply to the slaves in Border States. It stopped any chance at compromise with the south and thousands of slaves were encouraged to flee to Union lines.
Thirteenth Amendment
- Prohibited all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude. The former Confederate States had to ratify it before they could be readmitted to the Union.
Fredericksburg, Battle of
- Big victory for Confederate General Robert E. Lee, as he successfully stopped a Union attack on his lines.
Gettysburg, Battle of
- Battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania that was a Union victory, which looked bad for the Confederates, which never successfully invaded the north. Location of George Pickett's attempted charge at Northern lines.
Gettysburg Address
- Speech given by Lincoln at the dedication of the cemetery at the Gettysburg battlefield for all the troops who had died there. It said the war was a way to uphold the values of liberty.
Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Battle of
- Key victory for Union General, Ulysses S. Grant, he secured the Union's hold on Kentucky and helped him with his attacks deeper into Tennessee.
Shiloh, Battle of
- Bloody battle on the Tennessee-Mississippi border with more than 23,000 soldiers killed a marginal Union victory with Grant counterattacked the Confederates.
Vicksburg, siege of
- A 2 and half month siege of a Confederate fort on the Mississippi and it finally fell to Grant giving the Union army control of the River and the south was split.
Sherman's march
- A destructive march through Georgia led by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. Purposely aimed at infrastructure and civilian property to diminish morale and to cut the Confederate's war effort.
Congressional Committee of the Conduct of the War
- Established to oversee military affairs, mainly controlled by Radical Republicans who pressed for a stronger war effort and pressed Lincoln on the emancipation issue.
Copperheads
- Northern Democrats that hurt the war effort by attacking Lincoln, the draft, and emancipation.
The Man Without a Country
- A fictional account by Edward Everett Hale about a soldier's journey into exile because of participation in the Aaron Burr plot of 1806; very popular in the north, inspiring greater devotion to the Union.
Union party
- A party with pro-war Democrats and Republicans created in the election of 1864 in order to defeat the anti-war Northern Democrats with Lincoln as their running candidate.
Wilderness Campaign
- A series of classes between Grant's and Lee's armies in Virginia which lead up to the capture of Richmond by Grant. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Appomattox Courthouse
- Site of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant after his loss of Richmond in the Wilderness Campaign.
Reform Bill of 1867
- Granted suffrage to all male British citizens, success of the American democratic experiment was an argument to support the bill, reinforced by the Confederates lose in the Civil War to the Union.