In the following lessons, you will learn key terms, concepts, individuals and events concerning the United States Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865), it’s causes, ideological differences, important battles, combatants, and aftermath.
You will play game quizzes reviewing key concepts and related information.
You will complete a 3 minute timed quiz after each lesson.
Finally, you will complete a 30 minute timed quiz assessing your acquired learning for this course.
Lesson 1 – Introduction 1.0
U.S. Civil War fought 1861 – 1865, the Confederacy …thirteen (southern) states, secession, the Union (Northern States), slavery and its spread a major issue, 620,000 – 750,000 dead, collapse of the ‘South’, slavery abolished, reconstruction and African American civil rights guaranteed.
Lesson 2 – Causes 2.1
Slavery the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s, Republicans anti-slavery, Southern Democrats pro-slavery, southern secession threatened, containment (stopping the spread of slavery in new states) a Republican goal, expansion (expanding slavery in new states) a Southern Democrat goal, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Southern anger, Abraham Lincoln ‘extinction’ of slavery essential, slavery seen as vital to Southern economy, Democratic Party split between North and South, ‘Bleeding Kansas’, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision and overturn of the Missouri Compromise.
Lesson 3 – Causes 2.2
Republicans opposition to Dred Scott decision (1857), Abraham Lincoln leading anti-slavery Republican, Free Port Doctrine, Harpers Ferry Raid (1859), a ‘peculiar domestic institution’, the ‘National Question’, the Confiscation Acts (1861), Northern opposition to slavery – Southern retention of slavery, ‘irreconcilable differences’, a ‘Compact’ versus a ‘Perpetual Union’, (Constitution), sectionalism, agrarianism versus industrialism, fear of slave revolts and abolitionism and protectionism (North) versus free trade (South).
Lesson 4 – Causes 2.3
Mechanization versus manual labor, ‘Free soil’, Homestead Law, territorial expansion of slave and non-slave holding states (1812-1850), the Missouri Compromise (1850), the Constitutional Union Party, the Crittenden Compromise (1860), Lincoln in line with the Wilmot Proviso (1846), and ‘Popular Sovereignty’ in line with Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854).
Lesson 5 – Cause 2.4
The Calhoun Doctrine, Jefferson Davis, John Breckinridge Southern Democrat Party leader, Northern nationalism for preservation of non-slave union, Southern nationalism preservation of slaves and secession, tensions fueled by Harpers Ferry Raid led (1859) by abolitionist John Brown, Lincoln (Republican leader) victorious in 1860 federal election, Breckenridge (Southern Democrat leader) winner of nine Southern states, failures of the “Corwin Amendment” and the “Crittenden Compromise” and the Confederate States of America proclaimed on February 4, 1861.
Lesson 6 – Causes 2.5
The secessionist states led by South Carolina, Federal forts and properties seized by secessionists: Texas Garrison (February 1861) and Fort Sumter (April 1861) , the Revenue Act (1861), secession of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas (February, 1861) followed by Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee (July 1861), Jefferson Davis First and only Confederate President), twenty-three states loyal to the Union, Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia under Union control and no military response from outgoing President Buchanan.
Lesson 7 – War and important battles 3.1
Lincoln inaugurated president (March 4, 1861), secession declared unconstitutional, promise to defend Federal properties and institutions, failure of last minute peace negotiations, capitulation of Union Fort Sumter (April 12-13), Northern army raised to fight the Confederates, Confederate capital moved to Richmond, Virginia (May 1861), conscription in Union and rebel states and armies mobilized with motivated soldiers on both sides.
Lesson 8 – War and important battles 3.2
U.S. Navy’s to blockade Confederate ports and control the river system (‘Anaconda Plan’), many naval innovations (The Virginia and USS Monitor), Union blockade eventually successful, capture of New Orleans by David Farragut (April 1862) but initial Confederate victory at the Battle Bull Run in Virginia (July, 1861).
Lesson 9 – War and important battles 3.3
Union Army of the Potomac led by General George McClellan, Union Army halted at the Battle of Seven Pines (July, 1861). (May-June 1862), General Robert E. Lee new Confederate military leader, retreat of Army of the Potomac after defeat at the Seven Days Battle in Virginia (July – August 1862), Confederate victory at Second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia (August, 1862), Confederate invasion halted at deadly Battle of Antietam in Maryland (September 1862), Confederate victory at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia (December 1862) and Lincoln heavily criticized.
Lesson 10 – War and important battles 3.4
Lee and Stonewall Jackson victorious at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia (April – May 1863), Lee’s ‘finest hour, Jackson killed, Union General George Meade victorious at Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, (July) 1863), the bloodiest battle of the war and it’s turning point, the infamous ‘Pickett’s Charge’, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (November 1863), General Ulysses Grant victorious at the Siege of Vicksburg in Mississippi (May-July 1863), Confederates driven out of Missouri (March 1862), Nashville and central Tennessee fallen to the Union (early 1862) and Union Navy capture of New Orleans (April 1862).
Lesson 11 – War and important battles 3.5
Union forces control Kentucky after the Battle of Perryville (October 1862), Union forces control of Tennessee after the Battle of Stones River (December – January 1862,3), Clear Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga fought in Georgia (September1863), the infamous Confederate Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence Kansas (August 1863), Ulysses Grant victorious at Battle of Shiloh (April 1862) and at the Third Battle of Chattanooga in Tennessee (September – November1863).
Lesson 12 – War and important battles 3.6
Guerrilla warfare in the trans-Mississippi region, the pro-Confederate ‘Sons of Liberty’, Lincoln re-elected as President on November 8, 1864, Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie, General Kirby Smith, General Grant Union commander-in- Chief of all Union armies, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies, Lee’s last victory at The Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia (May – June 1864), Grant victorious at the Siege of Petersburg in Virginia (June – April 1864), the last major Confederate victory at the Battle of New Market in Virginia ( May 1864 ), Union victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia (October1864) and Sherman victorious at the Battle of Atlanta in Georgia (July 1864).
Lesson 13 – War and important battles 3.7
Union victory at the Battle of Franklin, in Tennessee ( November 1864, Union victory at the Battle of Nashville in Tennessee, (December 1864), Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ ending in Savannah, Georgia (December 1864) … thousands of freed slaves along the way, Union victory at the Battle of Sayler’s Creek in Virginia (December 1864), Army of Northern Virginia retreats to Appomattox Court House, final Union victory at the decisive Battle of Five Forks in Virginia (April 1 1865), Lee’s surrender at the McLean House in Virginia (April 1865), President Lincoln shot by Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth (April 14, 1865) and Confederate President Jefferson Davis captured (May 10).
Lesson 14 – Union Victory and Reconstruction 4.1
Secretary of State William H. Seward’s role during the war, ‘King Corn’ and ‘King Cotton’, European reluctance to support the Confederacy, the ‘Trent Affair’, overwhelming long-term Union advantage over the Confederacy, great leadership showed by Abraham Lincoln and The Emancipation Proclamation, an 1863 Presidential decree freeing at least three million slaves in the U.S.
Lesson 15 – Union Victory and Reconstruction 4.2
600, 000 to 800,000 military personnel estimated perished, outdated military tactics, slavery officially abolished by The Thirteenth Amendment (December 18, 1865), the South devastated by the war, contentious Reconstruction and the full restoration of the Union in the South, Southern and Northern soldiers’ motivation in the war, Ulysses Grant elected President in 1868 further promoting ‘Reconstruction’, the Freedmen’s Bureau and the first Ku Klux Klan, the Compromise of 1877 and the end of the Reconstruction era, Civil War interpreted not as a ‘class struggle’ but more as a moral fight against slavery.
Lesson 16 – Women in the Civil War 5.1
Nursing care provided by more than 20,000 women in the North and South, the number of female soldiers in the war roughly estimated at between 400 and 750, women promotion of the Abolitionist cause by publishing works … Ain’t I a Woman?, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Hospital Sketches as well as other war contributions by women in the field of publishing, journalism, health care and soldiering.
Lesson 17 – Women in the Civil War 5.2
Some notable women of the Civil War era: Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Susan B. Anthony, Jennie Hodgers, Frances Hook, Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Cornelia Hancock , Harriet Beecher Stowe, Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska, Lucretia Mott, Abigail, Mary Jewett Telford, Phoebe Pember, Cornelia Hancock , Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Lesson 18 – African -Americans in the Civil War 6.1
186,097 enlisted African-Americans in the Union Army, sixteen African Americans Medal of Honor recipients, many medical field African-American participants, African-American regiment, the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment distinguished in Missouri at the Skirmish at Island Mound (October 29, 1862), African-American regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment distinguished at the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina ( July 18, 1863), African-American division of the Eighteenth Corps distinguished at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, Virginia (September 29, 1864), Four African Americans awarded The Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic valor at The Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama (August 5, 1864), notable contributions by Wilson Brown, James H. Bronson, Sojourner Truth, Andre Cailloux, Ann Bradford Stokes, Bruce Anderson, Susie Taylor and James Mifflin.
Lesson 19 – African -Americans in the Civil War 6.2
William Barnes, Charles Veale, Powhatan Beaty, Edward Radcliff, Edward Pin, Joachim Pease, Milton Murry Holland, James Daniel Gardner, Alexander Kelly, Miles James, Thomas Hawkins, Jame Harris, William Carney, Andrew Jackson Smith, William H. Brown, John Lawson, Christian Abraham Fleetwood, Decatur Dorsey, Robert Blake, Aaron Anderson, Alexander Augusta and Thomas English,
