#Civil War

59 entries

People (17)

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States, who held the Union together through civil war

17th President of the United States and the first to be impeached

Abolitionist Senator Beaten on the Senate Floor, 1811–1874

Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross

Enslaved man whose lawsuit for freedom produced the Supreme Court's most condemned decision

Franklin Pierce

14th President of the United States, 1853–1857

15th President of the United States, 1857–1861

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865

Militant abolitionist who brought the war over slavery to a boil

John C. Calhoun

Senator, Vice President, and the intellectual architect of Southern secessionism

Confederate general and the South's most celebrated — and most contested — military commander

Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision — the worst ruling in the Court's history

Stephen A. Douglas

The "Little Giant" Whose Kansas-Nebraska Act Fractured the Union, 1813–1861

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

Confederate General, Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1863

Ulysses S. Grant

Commanding general of the Union Army and 18th President of the United States

The poet who gave America a democratic literature and witnessed its bloodiest war

William Tecumseh Sherman

Union general whose March to the Sea broke the Confederacy's will to fight

Places (11)

Appomattox Court House

The Virginia village where the Civil War effectively ended, April 9, 1865

The phoenix city of the New South, rebuilt from Sherman's ashes into a regional capital

The South Carolina fort whose bombardment started the Civil War

The Pennsylvania town where the Civil War's deadliest battle was fought

The Virginia armory town where John Brown struck the spark that lit the Civil War

The city where France, Spain, Africa, and America collided to produce a culture unlike any other

Birthplace of American government and site of the war's turning point

Capital of the Confederacy and center of Virginia's long reckoning with its past

Where the Civil War began and where nullification was born

Republic, Confederate state, and the empire that shaped American identity

The oldest English colony and the birthplace of American leadership

Eras (3)

The unfinished project of rebuilding the South and remaking American citizenship, 1865–1877

The Antebellum Period

The decades of deepening crisis that made the Civil War inevitable, 1848–1861

The conflict that tore the United States apart and abolished slavery, 1861–1865

Events (16)

American Civil War

The 1861–1865 war over slavery and union that remade the nation

Assassination of Lincoln

The murder of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, April 1865

Battle of Antietam

The bloodiest single day in American military history, September 17, 1862

Battle of Bull Run

The First Great Battle of the Civil War, July 1861

Battle of Chancellorsville

Lee's tactical masterpiece — and the shot that cost him his most dangerous general

Battle of Gettysburg

The bloodiest battle of the Civil War, July 1–3, 1863

Battle of Vicksburg

The 47-Day Siege That Split the Confederacy in Two

Bleeding Kansas

The violent territorial struggle that previewed the Civil War

Compromise of 1850

The last great legislative bargain before the Union broke apart

Election of 1860

The presidential election that dissolved the Union before the winner took office

Fort Pillow Massacre

The Confederate Slaughter of Black Union Soldiers, April 12, 1864

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

The 1859 assault on a federal arsenal that made civil war feel inevitable to everyone

June 19, 1865 — the day freedom finally arrived in Texas, and the holiday it became

March to the Sea

Sherman's 1864 campaign of deliberate destruction that broke the Confederacy's will to fight

New York Draft Riots

The deadliest civil insurrection in American history, ignited by the inequities of the Civil War draft

Nullification Crisis

The 1832 standoff between South Carolina and Andrew Jackson that previewed secession

Documents (8)

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The 1857 Supreme Court ruling that declared Black Americans had no constitutional rights

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln's 1863 executive order that transformed the Civil War into a war for human freedom

Gettysburg Address

Lincoln's 272-word speech that redefined the purpose of the Civil War

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The 1854 law that reopened the slavery debate and shattered American politics

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

"With Malice Toward None" — Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865

Missouri Compromise

The 1820 deal that delayed the Civil War by 40 years — and guaranteed it would be worse

The 1862 land-grant law that democratized higher education and created America's state universities

Thirteenth Amendment

The 1865 constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States

Concepts (4)

American Slavery

The institution that built the republic's wealth, defined its politics, and nearly destroyed the nation

The regional rivalry between North and South that drove America toward Civil War

The constitutional doctrine that shaped — and shadowed — American history

The Confederate mythology that rewrote the Civil War — and shaped a century of American race relations

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