Term | Definition |
secession | to withdraw or separate from a political state |
Union | consisted of 23 states located mostly to the north and west that opposed secession from the United States |
Confederate States of America | consisted of 11 states that supported states' rights and the practice of slavery and seceded from the United States |
border states | consisted of slave states that remained in the Union |
West Virginia | new state formed from the western counties of Virginia that refused to secede from the Union |
Abraham Lincoln | President of the United States who opposed the spread of slavery and was determined to preserve the Union, by force is necessary |
Ulysses Grant | general of the Union forces who defeated Robert E. Lee's confederate army |
Jefferson Davis | President of the Confederate States of America |
Robert E. Lee | Confederate commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, offered command of Union forces at the beginning of the war, but chose not to fight against Virginia |
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson | a skilled Confederate general from Virginia who dies after being accidentally shot by Confederate soldiers |
Frederick Douglass | escaped slave who became an abolitionist and advocated for African American soldiers in the Union military |
Clara Barton | a nurse during the Civil War, she helped found the American Red Cross years later |
Robert Smalls | African American sailor who escaped to the north with a confederate boat and became a Union naval captain who was honored for feats of bravery - became a Congressman after the war |
Fort Sumter, SC | artillery fire here began the Civil War |
First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) | location of the first major battle of the Civil War |
Emancipation Proclamation | issued by Abraham Lincoln, this document made "freeing the slaves" the new focus of the Civil War |
Battle of Vicksburg | by taking this city, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River and divided the Confederacy |
Battle of Gettysburg | turning point of the Civil War, Union forces repel Lee's invasion of the North after gaining control of the high ground of the battlefield |
Appomattox Court House | Lee's surrender to Grant here marked the end of the Civil War |
blockade | the Union Navy was used to stop people and materials from leaving or entering Confederate port cities such as Savannah, Charleston, or New Orleans |
Richmond, VA | many battles occurred in Virginia as Union forces repeatedly attempted to capture this capital of the Confederate States of America |
women | with men away while serving in the armed forces, they ran farms and plantations in the South and businesses in the North |
disease | a major killer of soldiers in the Civil War |
African American soldiers | discriminated against and forced to serve in segregated units under the command of white officers, these men served in the Confederate military, but many more served in the Union military, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation |
Gettysburg Address | written by Abraham Lincoln, said the Civil War was being fought to preserve a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." |