Civil War Vocabulary

Known as the first modern war, due to large civilian armies, vast amounts of supplies needed, weapons and artillery used, and strategy and tactics implemented throughout the war.

• The American Revolution

• The War of 1812

• The Mexican War

• The U.S. Civil War

A military blockade of a city or fortified place to force it to surrender.

• battalion

• militia

• siege

• insurrection

Name given to many Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War and supported the Republicans.

• carpetbaggers

• radicals

• sharecroppers

• abolitionists

Name given to Southerners who supported Republicans and Reconstruction of the South.

• carpetbaggers

• scalawags

• traitors

• Confederates

To loot or plunder

• ambush

• pillage

• breach

• charge

A military tactic used by the Union during the Civil War to block Southern harbors, cutting off Confederate supplies and slowly strangling the South to death.

• ambush

• Chevaux-de-Frise

• Anaconda Plan

• breach

A decree freeing all enslaved people in states still in rebellion after January 1, 1863.

• black codes

• Emancipation Proclamation

• The Fugitive Slave Act

• Reconstruction

The amendment passed in January 1865, banning slavery in the United States.

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Nineteenth Amendment

• Fourteenth Amendment

• Thirteenth Amendment

The amendment passed in June 1866, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and declared that no state could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property "without due process of the law."

• Fourteenth Amendment

• Thirteenth Amendment

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Tenth Amendment

This amendment declared that the right to vote "shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

• Thirteenth Amendment

• Fourteenth Amendment

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Nineteenth Amendment