FREE ESSAY ON CIVIL WAR DEFINITIONS

CIVIL WAR DEFINITIONS

Confederacy - The Southern Power in the civil war.
Fort Sumter - It was attacked by a rebels on April 12th. 1861 this in effect was what
started the war.
Jefferson Davis - president of the confederacy in 1861, ordered the attack on Fort
Sumter.
Robert E. Lee - one of the top U.S. officers who chose to fight for the confederacy
because of his family and state.
Richmond - the Confederate Capital, the main target for the north.
Trent Affair - Two Confederate diplomats on their way to Britain on a British steamer
were captured by a United States Warship. When Britain found out about this they forced
Lincoln to either release the captives or the would go to war. Lincoln backed down
despite what the American people thought, and released the captives.
Martial law - a form of military rule that includes suspending Bill of Rights
guarantees.
Bull Run - the area where the first battle of the Civil war took place. It was thought
that it would be a short bloodless end to a short war but it war only the beginning of
one of Americas bloodiest wars.
George McClellan - trained and reorganized the Union army. In 1962 he was turned back by
the confederates at the Seven Days' Battle.
Antietam - A Union patrol found three cigars wrapped in Lee's battle plan. McClellan
realized from his that Lee's army was divided and that he could take him out. McClellan
attacked Lee's army on September 17 at Antietam. In the bloodiest single day of the war,
McClellan was able to push Lee back to Virginia, his army was too badly damaged to
further pursue him and finish him off.
Emancipation Proclamation - Issued September 22, 1862, to free slaves of Confederacy. It
encouraged slaves to escape to the freedom of the north, thus increasing the strength of
the union and weakening the confederacy.
Gettysburg - two small armies clashed by accident here thus causing the most important
battle of the war.
Ulysses Grant - Led the union advance and attacked two confederate forts on the Kentucky
Tennessee border.
14. Vicksburg - Union victory on the Mississippi river depended on the taking of this
city . Grant made 5 attempts to take this city.
15. Ex Parte Milligan - In 1866, in Ex Parte Milligan, the court overturned the
conviction of a Copperhead tried for treason by a military court in Indiana.
16. Clara Barton - Left her desk job to care for the sick and wounded Union soldiers.
Risked her life to deliver supplies at the front lines. After the war, before she founded
the American Red Cross, she worked to identify thousands of soldiers who had perished at
the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia.
17. Radical Republicans - Demanded that the southern slaveholders be punished for the war
by loss of their property.
18. Copperheads - they were mainly Democrats who called for ending the war at any price,
even if it meant welcoming the south and slavery back into the union, or letting the
slave states leave in peace.
19. Ex parte Vallandigham - In 1864, in Ex parte Vallandigham, the court refused to
challenge the president and ruled that Vallandigham's appeals' authority did not extend
to military courts.
20. Habeas corpus - legal principle which requires that people who are arrested be
brought to court to show why way they should be brought the court to show why they should
be held; write inquiring into the lawfulness of retaining a person who is imprisoned or
detained in custody.
21. Conscription - compulsory enrollment of people for military service.
22. Bounty - money paid to recruit soldiers for military service; payment to encourage
action.
23. Greenbacks - paper money that was not backed by gold or silver; legal-tender notes
issued by the U.S government.
24. William T. Sherman - Ordered by General Grant to engage and destroy the Confederate
army in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His army destroyed everything in Georgia.
25. Union Party - In the presidential election of 1864, the Republican Party temporarily
changed its name to the Union Party to attract Democratics who supported the war. They
re-nominated Lincoln for President.
26. Andrew Johnson - A war Democrat chosen to be the vice president for the Union Party.
27. Appomattox - the courthouse where General Grant and General Lee met. Lee signed his
surrender here.
28. John Wilkes Booth - A fanatical Confederate sympathizer who assassinated Abraham
Lincoln.