| A | B |
|---|
| Abraham Lincoln | President of the United States during the Civil War; insisted that the Union be held together by force, if necessary |
| sovereign | independent, self-governing; not ruled by any other state |
| Ulysses S Grant | Union military commander; won victories over the South after several other Union commanders had failed |
| Robert E Lee | Confederate general of the Army of Northern Virginia; opposed secession, but did not believe the Union should be held together by force; urged Southerners to accept defeat and unite as Americans again, when some Southerners wanted to fight on after Appomattox |
| Frederick Douglass | Former enslaved African American; became a prominent abolitionist and urged Lincoln to recruit former enslaved African Americans to fight in the Union army |
| Fort Sumter | Opening confrontation of the Civil War |
| Battle of Gettysburg | Turning point of the Civil War |
| Appomattox Courthouse | Site of Lee's surrender to Grant at the end of the Civil War |
| Gettysburg Address | speech given by Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg to express that the US was one nation, not a collection of sovereign states, and that the Civil War was about preserving the Union |
| Emancipation Proclamation | presidential order issued after the Battle of Antietam that made abolition of slavery a Northern war aim, and allowed for the enlistment of African American soldiers in the Union army |
| 13th amendment | Slavery was abolished permanently in the United States. |
| 14th amendment | States were prohibited from denying equal rights under the law to any American. |
| 15th amendment | Voting rights were guaranteed regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (former slaves). |
| Compromise of 1877 | in return for support from Southern Democrats in the electoral college vote, the Republicans agreed to end the military occupation of the South |
| Jim Crow era | a long period of time in which African Americans in the South were denied the full rights of American citizenship |
| Dred Scott decision | Supreme Court decision that established that Congress had no power to regulate slavery in new territories; causes widespread debate over the issue of slavery, and is seen as a cause of the Civil War |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | an antislavery novel, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, exposed the cruelties of slavery, bringing strength to the abolitionist movement, and laid the social foundations for the Civil War |
| enlistment | join the military |
| Jefferson Davis | U.S. senator; became president of the Confederate States of America |
