Untitled Flashcards Set

1. Abraham Lincoln 

- President during the Civil War. Said the South being a separate country was infeasible. Weaponized the railroads and used telegraphs to fight the war on a different front that the south didn’t have. Freed all slaves.  

2. Napoleon III

- The legendary French general who saw the Civil War as an opportunity to invade and occupy Mexico City. Violated the Monroe Doctrine hoping the US would collapse. This failed and the North sent aid to the rebellion in Mexico City. After seeing his cause was doomed, Napoleon made the French evacuate.

3. Maximilian 

- An Austrian Archduke installed by Napoleon as emperor of Mexico City.  

4. Jefferson Davis 

- Only president of the Confederacy. Not very popular with the public and tended to go against public opinion. Talks of his impeachment were thrown up.  

5. Elizabeth Blackwell 

- America’s first female physician who helped organize the U.S. Sanitary Commission to assist the Union’s armies in the field. Helped women gain organization skills and self confidence that would propel the women's movement. 

6. Clara Barton 

- A woman who turned nursing into a respectable profession and in the process opened a major area of employment for women. She served as a volunteer medic in the Civil War, and later started the Red Cross.

7. Sally Tompkins 

- Similar to Clara Barton but in the South. Ran an infirmary for wounded soldiers and was awarded the rank of captain. 

8. Fort Sumter 

- South Carolina location where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the Civil War in April of 1861, after Union forces attempted to provision the fort.

9. Border states

- Five slave states—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia—that did not secede during the Civil War. To keep the states in the Union, Abraham Lincoln insisted that the war was not about abolishing slavery but rather protecting the Union. 

10. West Virginia 

- Mountainous region that broke away from Virginia in 1861 to form its own state after Virginia seceded from the Union. Most of the residents of West Virginia were independent farmers and miners who did not own slaves and thus opposed the Confederate cause.

11. Trent affair 

- Diplomatic row that threatened to bring the British into the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, after a Union warship stopped a British steamer and arrested two Confederate diplomats on board

12. Writ of habeas corpus

- Petition requiring law enforce- ment officers to present detained individuals before the court to examine the legality of the arrest. Protects indi-viduals from arbitrary state action. Suspended by Lincoln during the Civil War. 

13. New York Draft riots 

- Uprising, mostly of working-class Irish Americans, in protest of the draft. Rioters were particularly incensed by the ability of the rich to hire substitutes or purchase exemptions.

14. Greenbacks

- Paper currency issued by the Union Treasury during the Civil War. Inadequately supported by gold, greenbacks fluctuated in value throughout the war, reaching a low of 39 cents on the dollar 

15. National Banking System 

- Network of mem- ber banks that could issue currency against purchased government bonds. Created during the Civil War to establish a stable national currency and stimulate the sale of war bonds. 

16. Homestead Act 

- A federal law that sold settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but many people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land. 

17. Pacific Railroad Act 

- Helped fund the construction of the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad with the use of land grants and government bonds.