Chapter 21 Terms and Definitions
- Trent Affair
An 1861 diplomatic crisis in which the U.S. Navy seized Confederate envoys from a British ship, nearly causing war with Britain before Lincoln released them.
- Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln's January 1, 1863, executive order freeing enslaved people in Confederate-held territory, transforming the war's purpose to include ending slavery.
- Battle of Antietam
The bloodiest single day in American history (September 1862), a tactical draw that gave Lincoln the political opening to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
- Battle of Gettysburg
The July 1863 battle in Pennsylvania that repelled Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North and is considered the war's turning point.
- Siege of Vicksburg
Ulysses S. Grant's successful 1863 campaign that gave the Union full control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in two.
- Gettysburg Address
Lincoln's brief 1863 speech redefining the war as a struggle for human equality and a "new birth of freedom."
- Ulysses S. Grant
The Union general, later commanding general of all Union armies, whose determined campaigns of attrition wore down the Confederacy.
- Robert E. Lee
The Confederacy's leading general, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, known for aggressive tactics and eventual surrender at Appomattox.
- Total War / Sherman's March to the Sea
William Tecumseh Sherman's 1864 campaign through Georgia that destroyed civilian infrastructure to break the Confederacy's will and capacity to fight.
- Appomattox Court House
The Virginia site where Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the Civil War.
- Thirteenth Amendment
The 1865 constitutional amendment formally abolishing slavery throughout the United States.
- Assassination of Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, days after Lee's surrender, and died the next morning.