United States History - The Civil War

Flashcards for key terms and concepts from the Civil War lecture.

Wilmot Proviso

Proposed that slavery should not exist in any territory acquired from Mexico. It divided Congress along regional lines and was ultimately rejected by the Senate.

Compromise of 1850

A series of resolutions that aimed to resolve disputes over slavery. It included admitting California as a free state, enacting a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, resolving the Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute, and allowing Utah and New Mexico territories to decide the slavery issue through popular sovereignty.

Fugitive Slave Act

A law that was part of the Compromise of 1850. It required people in free states to help capture and return escaped slaves and imposed penalties on those who helped fugitives.

Underground Railroad

A secret network of people, including free African Americans and white abolitionists, who aided fugitive slaves in their escape to freedom.

Harriet Tubman

A conductor of the Underground Railroad who made 13 trips to the South and helped over 70 slaves, including her parents, escape to freedom.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

An influential anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that depicted the cruelties of slavery and stirred anti-slavery feelings in the North.

Popular Sovereignty

The right of residents of a territory to vote on the issue of slavery for themselves, proposed by Stephen Douglas as a democratic way to reorganize new state governments.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An act introduced by Stephen Douglas in 1854 that divided the Nebraska territory into two: Nebraska and Kansas. It allowed for popular sovereignty, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise.

Bleeding Kansas

A term used to describe the violent conflicts that arose in the Kansas Territory between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers.

Free-Soil Party

A political party that opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. It had a focus on the impact of slavery on free white workers.

Republican Party

A political party formally organized in 1854, united in opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and keeping slavery out of the territories.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

A Supreme Court case in 1857 that ruled slaves/free African Americans did not have the rights of citizens, Congress could not forbid slavery in any territory, and the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

A series of seven open-air debates held throughout Illinois in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas concerning the issue of slavery in the territories.

Freeport Doctrine

Stated that all Free-Soilers had to do was elect representatives who would not enforce slave property laws.

John Brown's Raid

An event in October 1859 in which John Brown led a band of men to seize the federal arsenal in the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to start a slave uprising.

Election of 1860

Abraham Lincoln won the election, but he received less than half of the popular vote. This led Southerners to argue that they had lost their voice in the national government.

Confederate States of America

Formed in February 1861 by delegates from secessionist states in Montgomery, Alabama. Their constitution closely resembled that of the United States, but it protected and recognized slavery in new territories.

Fort Sumter

South Carolina’s location for the start of the Civil War in April 1861 when Confederate batteries began firing on the fort, leading to its surrender.

Anaconda Plan

The Union strategy during the Civil War that involved blockading Southern ports, capturing the Mississippi River, and capturing the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.

Battle of Bull Run

The first major bloodshed of the war, where Confederate reinforcements arrived and turned the tide of the battle into the first victory for the South.

Ulysses S. Grant

A West Point graduate, brave, tough, and decisive military commander for Union forces in the West.

Battle of Shiloh

Demonstrated how bloody the war might become with nearly one-fourth of the battle’s 100,000 troops were killed, wounded, or captured.

Ironclads

A war machine and ship that could splinter wooden ships, withstand cannon fire, and resist burning. They became instrumental in the successes of the Union in the West.

Robert E. Lee

Commanded the Confederate army after the battle of Seven Pines. He was willing to go beyond military textbooks in his tactics, and cast his lot with his beloved state of Virginia.

Battle of Antietam

The bloodiest single-day battle in American history. It was the victory that the North so desperately needed and led Abraham Lincoln to deliver his Emancipation Proclamation.

Emancipation Proclamation

A presidential decree that freed slaves in Confederate territories, giving the war a moral purpose for the Union.

Copperheads

Northern Democrats who advocated peace with the South, such as Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham.

Draft Riots

Poor white workers, especially Irish immigrants, rioted when draft laws were enacted because they thought it unfair that they should have to fight in a war to free the southern slaves.

US Sanitary Commission

The federal government set up the US Sanitary Commission to improve hygienic conditions of army camps and to recruit and train nurses.

Clara Barton

Union nurse, who was called the “angel of the battlefield” because after her courage under fire at Antietam, she cared for the sick and wounded at the front lines.

Andersonville

The worst Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia where prisoners had no shelter from the broiling sun or chilling rain and about a third of Andersonville’s prisoners died.

Battle of Gettysburg

The most decisive battle of the war (fought near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) and the surrender of Vicksburg occurred the next day.

Gettysburg Address

A historic speech Abraham Lincoln gave that stated that the Civil War was a test of whether or not a democratic nation could survive, one of the most historic speeches in American history.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Sherman believed in total war and occupied the transportation center of Atlanta. His goal was to make Southerners “so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it”

Appomattox Court House

Robert E Lee and Ulysses S Grant met to arrange a Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865.