DSST Civil War cheat sheet

Secession timeline: South Carolina seceded December 20, 1860; six more Deep South states followed before Lincoln's March 4, 1861 inauguration; the Upper South (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina) seceded only after Fort Sumter and Lincoln's April 15 call for 75,000 volunteers.

Fort Sumter: Confederate batteries opened fire April 12, 1861; Major Robert Anderson surrendered April 13. No combat deaths occurred during the bombardment, but the event ended debate over compromise and triggered four more secessions.

Union war aims evolved from restoring the Union (1861) to emancipation as a war goal. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (September 22, 1862) gave Confederates until January 1, 1863; the final Proclamation declared slaves in rebelling states free but exempted border states and Union-occupied areas.

Key turning points: Antietam (September 1862) enabled the Emancipation Proclamation; Gettysburg and Vicksburg (both July 1863) ended Confederate offensives and split the Confederacy along the Mississippi; Atlanta's fall (September 1864) aided Lincoln's reelection.

Confederate advantages included defensive war on home ground, interior lines, and superior cavalry leadership; Union advantages included population (about 22 million vs. 9 million, of whom roughly 3.5 million were enslaved), industry, railroads, navy, and control of the banking system.

Reconstruction amendments: Thirteenth (1865) abolished slavery except as punishment for crime; Fourteenth (1868) granted citizenship, due process, and equal protection and barred former Confederates from office; Fifteenth (1870) barred denial of suffrage based on race, color, or previous servitude.

Presidential vs. Congressional Reconstruction: Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan and Johnson's plan were lenient; the Radical Republican Wade-Davis Bill required a majority loyalty oath. Johnson's vetoes of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Freedmen's Bureau renewal were overridden by Congress.

Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877: disputed Hayes-Tilden electoral results were resolved by awarding Hayes the presidency in exchange for withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively abandoning Southern Republicans and freedpeople.

Freedmen's Bureau (1865): provided food, schooling, and legal aid to former slaves and white refugees; it was the first federal agency aimed at direct social welfare and was dismantled by the early 1870s.

Black Codes (1865-66) restricted freedpeople's mobility, labor contracts, and voting; the Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared Black citizens' rights and was the first major law passed over a presidential veto.

Military Reconstruction Acts (1867): divided the South into five military districts, required new state constitutions with Black male suffrage, and required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment for readmission.

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868): the House impeached him over violation of the Tenure of Office Act after he removed Secretary of War Stanton; the Senate fell one vote short of conviction.

Carpetbaggers (Northern migrants) and scalawags (Southern white Republicans) were derisive labels; actual Reconstruction governments expanded public schools, roads, and tax systems, though corruption existed.

White terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (founded 1865-66) used violence to suppress Black political participation; the Enforcement Acts (1870-71) and the Klan Act allowed federal prosecution.

Sharecropping and crop-lien systems replaced slavery as labor controls: landless farmers borrowed against future crops at high interest, creating debt peonage that persisted for generations.

Civil War casualties: roughly 620,000 to 750,000 dead, more than any other American war; disease killed more soldiers than combat. The war transformed federal power, finance (greenbacks, income tax), and the role of women in nursing and supply.

Election of 1860: Lincoln won with about 40 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes from the South; the Democratic split between Douglas and Breckinridge and the Constitutional Union candidacy of Bell ensured a sectional Republican victory.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) held that Black people, enslaved or free, were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in territories; this undercut the Republican platform and heightened sectional tension.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repealed the Missouri Compromise line and introduced popular sovereignty, prompting 'Bleeding Kansas' violence and the rise of the Republican Party.

The Compromise of 1850 admitted California free, enacted a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, settled the Texas boundary, and allowed popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico.

The Anaconda Plan (Winfield Scott) aimed to blockade Southern ports and split the Confederacy along the Mississippi; the Union blockade was declared in April 1861 and steadily tightened.

Emancipation's military effect: the Militia Act (1862) and the Emancipation Proclamation opened service to Black soldiers; about 180,000 Black troops served in the U.S. Colored Troops, roughly 10 percent of the Union army.

The Gettysburg Address (November 1863) reframed the war around equality and national rebirth; the Thirteenth Amendment passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in January 1865.

Reconstruction's legal legacy: the Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection clauses later became the basis for applying the Bill of Rights to the states through selective incorporation.

Confederate finances collapsed under inflation and blockade; the Union financed the war through greenbacks, bond sales, the National Banking Acts (1863-64), and the first federal income tax (1861-62).

The Enrollment Act (1863) created federal conscription with commutation ($300) and substitution; the New York City draft riots in July 1863 killed over 100 people and reflected class and racial tensions.

The Homestead Act (1862), Morrill Land-Grant Act (1862), and Pacific Railway Act (1862) expanded western settlement and education during the war, linking wartime policy to national development.

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus (beginning 1861) and Ex parte Merryman (1861) tested civil liberties; Ex parte Milligan (1866) later held that military tribunals could not try civilians where civil courts functioned.

Sherman's March to the Sea (November-December 1864) and the burning of Atlanta applied total war against Confederate infrastructure and morale, a strategy Grant endorsed.

Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865 followed Lee's abandonment of Petersburg and Richmond; Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, five days later.

The Freedmen's Bureau and the Union League helped Black men register and vote in the late 1860s; roughly 2,000 Black men held public office during Reconstruction, including U.S. senators Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce of Mississippi.

The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) narrowly read the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause, weakening federal protection of Black civil rights and enabling state-level discrimination.

Key Confederate leaders: Jefferson Davis (president), Robert E. Lee (Army of Northern Virginia), Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson (killed at Chancellorsville, May 1863), and Nathan Bedford Forrest (cavalry).

Key Union leaders: Ulysses S. Grant (general-in-chief from March 1864), William Tecumseh Sherman, George McClellan (relieved after Antietam), and George Meade (Gettysburg).

Major battles and dates: First Bull Run (July 1861), Shiloh (April 1862), Antietam (September 1862), Fredericksburg (December 1862), Chancellorsville (May 1863), Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), Cold Harbor (June 1864), and Petersburg siege (1864-65).

Naval war: the clash of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (Merrimack) at Hampton Roads in March 1862 ended the era of wooden warships; the Union blockade captured blockade runners and supported river campaigns.

The Emancipation Proclamation permitted Black enlistment and declared freed slaves would be received into the armed forces; the 54th Massachusetts Infantry's assault on Fort Wagner (July 1863) became emblematic of Black military service.

Lincoln's First Inaugural (1861) denied the legality of secession and pledged not to interfere with slavery where it existed; the Second Inaugural (1865) called for 'malice toward none' and 'charity for all.'

The Civil War era constitutional shift: from a compact theory of states' rights toward a strengthened federal union, national citizenship, and federal enforcement of rights, though enforcement lapsed after 1877.

Reconstruction timeline: Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan (December 1863), Wade-Davis Bill (1864), Freedmen's Bureau (March 1865), Thirteenth Amendment (December 1865), Civil Rights Act (April 1866), Reconstruction Acts (1867), Fourteenth Amendment (July 1868), Fifteenth Amendment (February 1870).

Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner pushed for land redistribution and full civil rights; the failure to provide land left freedpeople economically dependent.

The Tenure of Office Act (1867) and Command of the Army Act were designed to limit Johnson; the Supreme Court in Myers v. United States (1926) later upheld presidential removal power.

The Colfax massacre (1873) and other violence in Louisiana showed federal enforcement failing; the Supreme Court's Cruikshank decision (1876) limited federal prosecution of Klan violence.

The Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction allowed 'Redeemer' governments to restore white Democratic control, enact poll taxes and literacy tests, and pass Jim Crow segregation laws.

Economic interpretation: the war accelerated Northern industrialization and railroad expansion while devastating Southern agriculture; the 1860 census showed the South held roughly 4 million enslaved people.

Political party shift: Republicans dominated national politics from 1860 to 1874; the Democratic Party regained the House in 1874 as Reconstruction waned.

The Civil War's memory and historiography include the Lost Cause narrative, which romanticized the Confederacy and minimized slavery's role, and later revisionist and neo-abolitionist interpretations.

Presidential succession: Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat from Tennessee, became president after Lincoln's assassination; his lenient plan restored former Confederates to power and alienated Congress.

The 'swing around the circle' (1866) was Johnson's speaking tour to build support for his Reconstruction policy; it backfired and helped Radical Republicans win the 1866 midterms.

The 1866 midterm elections gave Republicans more than two-thirds majorities in both houses, enabling passage of the Reconstruction Acts over Johnson's vetoes.

Grant's presidency (1869-77) saw the Enforcement Acts, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (later struck down by the Civil Rights Cases of 1883).

The Liberal Republican revolt of 1872 and the Panic of 1873 shifted attention from Reconstruction to economic issues, weakening Northern commitment to federal intervention in the South.

The Election of 1876: Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina led to the Electoral Commission and the Compromise of 1877.

Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877; the last occupying forces left South Carolina and Louisiana, ending the last Republican state governments in the former Confederacy.

Long-term outcomes: the Fourteenth Amendment became the foundation for 20th-century civil rights litigation, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which cited equal protection.

The war began with secession over slavery's extension, not merely states' rights; Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens' 'Cornerstone Speech' (March 1861) explicitly named slavery as the Confederacy's foundation.

Border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) remained in the Union; Lincoln used martial law and arrests to keep Maryland, and by extension Washington, D.C., in Union hands.

West Virginia separated from Virginia in 1861-63 and entered the Union as a free state in June 1863, a direct wartime result of secession.

The Trent Affair (1861) nearly brought Britain into the war; Union diplomacy under Seward avoided recognition of the Confederacy, and the Emancipation Proclamation discouraged British intervention by making the war about slavery.

The Union blockade was a key strategic tool; the Confederacy relied on blockade runners and King Cotton diplomacy, which failed as British textile mills found alternative cotton sources.

Confederate conscription (1862) exempted owners of 20 or more slaves, fueling resentment among poor whites and the phrase 'rich man's war, poor man's fight.'

The Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation together redefined the Union cause as a 'new birth of freedom,' connecting the war to the Declaration of Independence's promise of equality.

Reconstruction's failure to secure land or sustained federal protection left a legacy of racial inequality that persisted into the civil rights era and beyond.

The Crittenden Compromise (1860-61) proposed extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific; Lincoln rejected it because it would allow slavery expansion, and it failed in Congress.

The Corwin Amendment (1861) would have protected slavery in states where it existed; it passed Congress but was never ratified, showing last-ditch efforts to avoid war.

The Confederate Constitution (1861) protected slavery explicitly and limited central power, but the wartime Confederacy centralized authority through conscription and impressment.

The Union's 'hard war' strategy under Grant and Sherman targeted Confederate resources and civilian morale, culminating in the March to the Sea and the Carolinas campaign.

Appomattox terms: Grant paroled Lee's army and allowed officers to keep sidearms and horses, signaling a lenient peace intended to speed reunion.

Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, removed the leader best positioned to moderate Reconstruction and elevated Johnson.

The Freedmen's Bureau's educational work helped found historically Black colleges and universities; Black churches and schools became central institutions of post-emancipation community life.

The Civil War's constitutional legacy includes the legal tender cases, the expansion of federal power, and the eventual incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the states.

The 1860 Republican platform opposed slavery's extension but not slavery in existing states, reflecting Lincoln's belief that the founders tolerated slavery where it existed while expecting its eventual extinction.

The Dred Scott decision and the Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858) framed the 'free soil' argument: slavery's expansion would nationalize it and destroy free labor.

The secession crisis: Lincoln's decision to resupply Fort Sumter forced the Confederacy to fire first, giving the Union a claim to moral and legal legitimacy.

The Union's numerical and industrial superiority was decisive in a long war; the Confederacy's hope for a quick victory or foreign recognition faded after Antietam and Gettysburg.

The Emancipation Proclamation changed the war's character and discouraged European recognition, but it did not free slaves in border states or Union-occupied areas.

Reconstruction's 'carpetbagger' and 'scalawag' labels obscured genuine Republican coalition-building among freedpeople, Northern migrants, and Southern unionists.

The Compromise of 1877 marked the formal end of Reconstruction; federal protection of Black voting rights did not return until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Civil War and Reconstruction together expanded American citizenship and federal authority while leaving unresolved the conflict between national rights and local control.

The Union's 'Anaconda Plan' was not a single battle plan but a strategy of blockade and river control; Grant's campaigns at Forts Henry and Donelson (February 1862) opened the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

The Battle of Shiloh (April 1862) showed the war's cost and made Grant's reputation; the capture of New Orleans (April 1862) gave the Union control of the Mississippi's mouth.

The Vicksburg campaign (1863) split the Confederacy and gave the Union control of the Mississippi River; Grant's victory made him general-in-chief.

The Overland Campaign (1864) and siege of Petersburg foreshadowed trench warfare; Grant's attrition strategy accepted high casualties to destroy Lee's army.

Sherman's capture of Atlanta (September 1864) boosted Lincoln's reelection and ensured the war would continue to unconditional victory.

The Thirteenth Amendment's ratification in December 1865 abolished slavery nationwide; the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments followed during Reconstruction.

The Ku Klux Klan Act (1871) allowed federal intervention against white terror; its enforcement declined as Northern political will faded.

The Civil War and Reconstruction are often treated as a single era in U.S. history because the war's outcome and Reconstruction's policies together reshaped citizenship and federalism.

The 'Second American Revolution' interpretation holds that the Civil War and Reconstruction transformed the Constitution and society, abolishing slavery and establishing national citizenship.

The 'Lost Cause' interpretation, promoted after Reconstruction, portrayed the Confederacy as noble and slavery as incidental; historians reject it as a distortion.

The 'Dunning School' of the early 20th century portrayed Reconstruction as corrupt and misguided; later scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Eric Foner challenged this view.

The Civil War's military history includes the first use of ironclads, submarines (CSS Hunley), and widespread use of railroads and telegraphs.

The war's human cost included roughly 620,000 to 750,000 deaths, widespread disease, and the destruction of Southern infrastructure.

Reconstruction's political history includes the rise of Black political participation, the first Black senators and representatives, and the violent backlash that ended it.

The Compromise of 1877 is a key turning point because it traded federal enforcement of Black rights for a peaceful presidential succession.

The Civil War and Reconstruction remain central to debates over federal power, civil rights, and the meaning of American citizenship.

The 1860 election results: Lincoln 180 electoral votes, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, Douglas 12; Lincoln won no Southern electoral votes.

Fort Sumter: April 12-13, 1861; the first shots of the war; Anderson's garrison surrendered after bombardment.

Antietam: September 17, 1862; the bloodiest single day in American military history (roughly 23,000 casualties); it gave Lincoln the victory needed for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gettysburg: July 1-3, 1863; roughly 51,000 casualties; Pickett's Charge failed; Lee retreated to Virginia.

Vicksburg: surrendered July 4, 1863; the Union gained control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy.

Appomattox: April 9, 1865; Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant.

Lincoln assassination: April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre; Booth was killed April 26, 1865.

Reconstruction amendments: Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), Fifteenth (1870).

Compromise of 1877: Hayes became president; federal troops withdrew from the South; Reconstruction ended.

The Union's war financing included greenbacks (1862), the National Banking Acts (1863-64), and the first income tax (1861-62); the Confederacy relied on paper money and inflation.

The Enrollment Act (1863) and draft riots showed class tensions; the Union also offered bounties, and Black soldiers served in segregated U.S. Colored Troops regiments.

The Homestead Act, Morrill Act, and Pacific Railway Act (all 1862) linked wartime legislation to western expansion and national development.

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and the Merryman case raised civil liberties questions; Ex parte Milligan (1866) limited military tribunals for civilians.

Sherman's March to the Sea (1864) and the burning of Atlanta applied total war; Grant's attrition strategy at Petersburg and the Overland Campaign destroyed Confederate armies.

The Confederate surrender at Appomattox (April 9, 1865) followed the fall of Richmond; Lincoln's assassination (April 14, 1865) elevated Andrew Johnson.

The Freedmen's Bureau and Union League helped Black men register and vote; roughly 2,000 Black men held office during Reconstruction, including Senators Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce.

The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) narrowed the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause, weakening federal civil rights enforcement.

Key Confederate leaders: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson (killed at Chancellorsville, May 1863), and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Key Union leaders: Ulysses S. Grant (general-in-chief from March 1864), William Tecumseh Sherman, George McClellan (relieved after Antietam), and George Meade (Gettysburg).

Major battles: First Bull Run (July 1861), Shiloh (April 1862), Antietam (September 1862), Fredericksburg (December 1862), Chancellorsville (May 1863), Gettysburg (July 1863), Vicksburg (July 4, 1863), Cold Harbor (June 1864), Petersburg siege (1864-65).

Naval war: USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia (Merrimack) at Hampton Roads (March 1862) ended wooden warships' dominance; the Union blockade captured blockade runners.

The Emancipation Proclamation permitted Black enlistment; the 54th Massachusetts Infantry's assault on Fort Wagner (July 1863) became emblematic of Black military service.

Lincoln's First Inaugural (1861) denied secession's legality and pledged not to interfere with slavery where it existed; the Second Inaugural (1865) called for 'malice toward none.'

The Civil War era constitutional shift strengthened the federal union and national citizenship, though enforcement lapsed after 1877.

Reconstruction timeline: Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan (December 1863), Wade-Davis Bill (1864), Freedmen's Bureau (March 1865), Thirteenth Amendment (December 1865), Civil Rights Act (April 1866), Reconstruction Acts (1867), Fourteenth Amendment (July 1868), Fifteenth Amendment (February 1870).

Radical Republicans Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner pushed for land redistribution and full civil rights; the failure to provide land left freedpeople economically dependent.

The Tenure of Office Act (1867) and Command of the Army Act limited Johnson; Myers v. United States (1926) later upheld presidential removal power.

The Colfax massacre (1873) and Cruikshank (1876) showed federal enforcement failing; the Supreme Court limited prosecution of Klan violence.

The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and allowed 'Redeemer' governments to restore white Democratic control, enact poll taxes and literacy tests, and pass Jim Crow laws.

The war accelerated Northern industrialization and railroad expansion while devastating Southern agriculture; the 1860 census showed roughly 4 million enslaved people in the South.

Republicans dominated national politics from 1860 to 1874; Democrats regained the House in 1874 as Reconstruction waned.

Civil War memory includes the Lost Cause narrative, which romanticized the Confederacy and minimized slavery's role; later historians rejected it.

Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat from Tennessee, became president after Lincoln's assassination; his lenient plan restored former Confederates to power and alienated Congress.

Johnson's 'swing around the circle' (1866) backfired and helped Radical Republicans win the 1866 midterms with more than two-thirds majorities.

Grant's presidency (1869-77) saw the Enforcement Acts, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (struck down in 1883).

The Liberal Republican revolt (1872) and Panic of 1873 shifted attention to economic issues, weakening Northern commitment to federal intervention.

The Election of 1876: Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina led to the Electoral Commission and Compromise of 1877.

Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877; the last Republican state governments in the former Confederacy ended.

The Fourteenth Amendment became the foundation for 20th-century civil rights litigation, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

The war began over slavery's extension, not merely states' rights; Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens' 'Cornerstone Speech' (March 1861) named slavery as the Confederacy's foundation.

Border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) stayed in the Union; Lincoln used martial law and arrests to keep Maryland in Union hands.

West Virginia separated from Virginia and entered the Union as a free state in June 1863, a wartime result of secession.

The Trent Affair (1861) nearly brought Britain into the war; Seward's diplomacy and the Emancipation Proclamation discouraged British recognition.

The Union blockade and King Cotton diplomacy failed as British textile mills found alternative cotton sources.

Confederate conscription (1862) exempted owners of 20 or more slaves, fueling resentment among poor whites ('rich man's war, poor man's fight').

The Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation redefined the Union cause as a 'new birth of freedom,' connecting the war to the Declaration of Independence.

Reconstruction's failure to secure land or sustained federal protection left a legacy of racial inequality persisting into the civil rights era.