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| 3546005218 | Fort Sumter | Built on a small island, this fort was designed to protect the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. When South Carolina seceded in December 1860, the garrison inside Fort Sumter remained loyal to the United States. When the fort's food supplies began to run out, President Lincoln's effort to replenish them generated military reprisal from Confederate forces. The shelling of this fort on April 12, 1861, started the Civil War. | 0 | |
| 3546005219 | Homestead Act | In 1862, Congress passed this act that gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm and improve the land within five years of the grant. It encouraged westward migration into the Great Plains after the Civil War. This remained in effect for over a century. During that time, over 2 million people filed for a homestead on a quarter section of public domain land. However, only about 40%, or 783,000, succeeded in finally earning the title to their property. | 1 | |
| 3546008319 | Morrill Land Grant Act | Passed on July 2, 1862 in the midst of the Civil War, this act encouraged the founding of agricultural (and later engineering) colleges across the United States by providing land for campuses in all states loyal to the Union. Under its auspices, more than 70 land-grant colleges have been founded in the United States. | 2 | |
| 3546008320 | Copperheads | This term refers to the northern Democrats who opposed all measures in support of war against the Confederacy. These "Peace Democrats" were convinced that the war was centralizing national power and that such developments ultimately posed greater dangers to the nation than the military challenge of Southern Rebels. Many Northerners strongly suspected unpatriotic motives lay behind the scathing attacks leveled by these Democrats against the war and the administration. Republicans branded them as disloyal. Indeed, the activities of some seemed to border on the treasonable, causing Lincoln such concern that he once expressed his fear of a "fire in the rear." | 3 | |
| 3546010548 | New York Draft Riots | Discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing Civil War, and objection to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, led to this violent protest. The riots were the largest civil insurrection in American history. The military suppressed the mob using artillery and fixed bayonets, but not before numerous buildings were ransacked or destroyed, including many homes and an orphanage for black children. Estimated fatalities during the five days of violence totaled more than 100. More than 50 large buildings were destroyed by fire, and property damage was about $2 million. | 4 | |
| 3546013676 | habeas corpus | habeas corpus This Constitutional right requires arresting authorities to explain the grounds for a person's imprisonment or detention before a court of law. Abraham Lincoln suspended this right in Maryland in order to "suppress the insurrection" and restrain "disloyal persons." | 5 | |
| 3546013677 | Emancipation Proclamation | This war measure was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862 to take effect on January 1, 1863. It freed the slaves in all areas rebelling against the Union at that point. Slaves in areas still within the control of the Confederacy were obviously not affected by this order, nor were slaves residing in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union. Despite the limited practical impact, however, it had an enormous psychological impact, elevating the abolition of slavery to one of the North's stated war aims and leading the way for the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment after the war ended in Union victory in 1865. | 6 | |
| 3546015823 | 54th Massachusetts | This regiment was one of the first official African American units in the United States armed forces. The regiment gained recognition on July 18, 1863, when it spearheaded an assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. Although the Union was not able to take and hold the fort, the unit was widely acclaimed for its valor, and the event helped encourage the further enlistment and mobilization of African-American troops, a key development that President Abraham Lincoln once noted as helping to secure the final victory. | 7 | |
| 3546015824 | Clara Barton | She served in field hospitals at or near the battlegrounds of Second bull run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, and the Richmond-Petersburg siege. Often under fire, she showed that women could serve in the field with bravery and competence and thus cleared the way for other Northern women to follow her to the Virginia front. The Civil War was the central, defining event in her life: it gave her the opportunity to reach out and seize control of her destiny in the relief of the suffering. She later served in military hospitals in Europe and Cuba and founded and became first president of the American Association of the Red Cross. | 8 | |
| 3546018660 | Robert E. Lee | He was the commander of the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia. Always outnumbered but never outfought, he was one of the most brilliant tacticians in American military history and the embodiment of Southern military prowess during the Civil War. For three years, he defied and outmaneuvered superior numbers of Union troops, though his Army of Northern Virginia was perpetually short of men, equipment, and supplies. He surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, in 1865. | 9 | |
| 3546018661 | Bull Run | This was the first major battle of the Civil War fought between the 32,200 Confederate soldiers of Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard's army and 30,000 Union troops under the command of Brigadier General Irwin A. McDowell. By the afternoon of 21 July, Confederate reinforcements arrived and finally broke the Union right flank. The retreat rapidly became a rout, and McDowell's forces fell back in disarray. Altogether, nearly 900 men had been killed and over 2,700 wounded, numbers that would pale in comparison to later battles, but nonetheless shocked a nation that had naively expected a relatively bloodless war. The battle helped convince the Washington government that the war would be a costly affair. | 10 | |
| 3546021093 | George McClellan | President Lincoln appointed him commander of Union forces in 1861. After months of preparation however, his army was defeated by Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. His egotism and overcautiousness cost the Union the chance to end the Civil War quickly and finally forced President Abraham Lincoln to relieve him of command after Antietam in 1862. Thereafter, he identified with the political opposition to Lincoln and in 1864 ran unsuccessfully for president as a Democrat. | 11 | |
| 3546021094 | Antietam | This Civil War battle took place near Sharpsburg, Maryland in September, 1862. Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, had led his troops into the North to forage for supplies and to rally Southern sympathizers in Maryland. This was the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War. The Confederates' defeat was a serious blow to their morale and diminished the Confederacy's chances of securing international recognition. McClellan, despite winning the battle, was criticized for not inflicting a more resounding defeat on the Confederates with their vastly superior numbers. | 12 | |
| 3546023575 | Vicksburg | During the Civil War, this strategic location earned the label "The Gibraltar of the Confederacy" because of its impregnable situation on the Mississippi River. In July, 1863, Union major general Ulysses S. Grant completed a successful campaign to capture the city. The Union victory came at a high cost, but it succeeded in cutting off the Confederacy's only remaining route to its western regions with their indispensable supplies. The capture of this location solidified Grant's reputation as a fighting general, prepared to win the war despite the casualties. Lincoln later named him commander of all Union forces. | 13 | |
| 3546023576 | Gettysburg | This battle is considered by many historians to be the turning point of the Civil War. General Lee planned a raid into Pennsylvania to relieve the strained Virginia countryside, disrupt Union economic security and bring foreign recognition to the Confederacy. US General George G. Meade ordered the entire army to concentrate on this battlefield against Lee's forces. After the Confederate loss there, Gen. Robert E. Lee never took the strategic offensive in battle again. Lee's army of 75,000 troops suffered 28,000 casualties. Though Meade had kept Lee out of the North, he was later criticized for not further pursuing and demolishing the Confederate Army. | 14 | |
| 3546026057 | Gettysburg Address | On November 19, 1863 in a ceremony to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg fought the previous July, President Abraham Lincoln delivered this brief address to a crowd of 15,000 people as he dedicated a cemetery for the battle's dead. Both at the time and since, Americans have looked to this address as representing the noblest vision of America and the sacrifice that is often called upon to attain that vision. | 15 | |
| 3546026058 | Election of 1864 | The contest in the midst of the Civil War pitted President Abraham Lincoln against Democrat George B. McClellan, the general who had commanded the Army of the Potomac until his indecision and delays caused Lincoln to remove him. The Republicans attracted Democratic support by running as the Union party and putting Johnson, a pro-war Democrat, on the ticket. McClellan repudiated the Democratic platform's call for peace, but he attacked Lincoln's handling of the war. Lincoln won in a landslide, owing to the military successes of Generals Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia and William T. Sherman in the Deep South. The electoral vote was 212 to 21. | 16 | |
| 3546028567 | Ulysses S. Grant | In 1864, President Lincoln placed this victorious commander at Vicksburg in command of all Union forces. He slowly battered Lee's armies into submission around Richmond in 1864-1865, and received Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. He was elected president in 1868 and 1872 and guided the nation through the difficult period of Reconstruction. His scandal-ridden administration seemed to suggest a transition into a new "gilded age." | 17 | |
| 3546028568 | William T. Sherman | In September 1864, General William Sherman's army captured Atlanta and began marching toward Savannah on the Georgia coast. He intended to defeat the enemy's forces, destroy its economic resources, and break its will to resist. Sherman himself estimated his raid had inflicted $100 million worth of damage. Sherman's strategy of destruction was designed, as his own saying went, to "make Georgia howl." | 18 | |
| 3546029988 | Appomattox Court House | On April 9, 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant in this town in south-central Virginia. The Confederate surrender was the end of the Civil War in Virginia and marked the beginning of the end of the war across the South. | 19 |
