US Civil War & Abolition: Key Events and Figures

John Brown

Abolitionist who helped free states and was considered a terrorist to slave states; led a failed slave revolt in Virginia.

Election of 1860

A victory for Republican Abraham Lincoln that led to an immediate secession by seven Southern states, joined by four other slave-holding states.

Fort Sumter

Location of the first Civil War battle.

Confederate States of America

CSA - the states which seceded from the Union, also known as the Confederacy.

Confederate

A person belonging to the Confederate States of America.

Sherman's March to the Sea

From Chattanooga, Union forces drove into Georgia, capturing Atlanta, then General Sherman embarked on a march of destruction through Georgia to the coast and then northward through the Carolinas.

Sherman's Total War

A strategy where William T. Sherman and his Union army destroyed military and civilian property in the South during the winter of 1864, exemplifying total war.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Law requiring runaway slaves and indentured servants to be returned, which enraged citizens, especially after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

A novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that fictionalized a story about slavery, angering both sides of the slavery debate.

Popular Sovereignty

The idea of allowing the people to decide whether territories applying for statehood would be pro-slave or anti-slave, which went against the Missouri Compromise and worsened sectionalism.

Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854

Legislation that allowed popular sovereignty in two territories that should have been free states under the Missouri Compromise, worsening sectionalism by creating the possibility of slavery in new states north of the Missouri Compromise line.

Bleeding Kansas

The term used to describe Kansas due to the violence and death occurring as it became a battleground between slave and free state supporters.