Vocabulary: Pre-Civil War through Reconstruction (2026)

The period after the Civil War in the United States when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Segregation

• Reconstruction

• Abolition

Union forces prevented the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms to and from the Confederacy by blocking Atlantic and Gulf Coast.

• Fort Sumter

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Economic Boycott

• Naval Blockade

The constitutional amendment adopted in 1870 to extend voting rights to African Americans.

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Fourteenth Amendment

• Abolition

Definition: To leave or withdraw

• Naval Blockade

• Underground Railroad

• Secede

• Abolition

Definition: allowed government officials to arrest any person accused of being a runaway slave; all that was needed to take away someone's freedoms was word of a white person; northerners required to help capture runaways if requested, suspects had no right to trial

• Fugitive Slave Act of 1851

• Compromise of 1850

• Fugitive Slave Act of 1855

• Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Definition: 1854 - Created Nebraska and Kansas as states and gave the people in those territories the right to choose to be a free or slave state through popular sovereignty.

• Uncle Tom's Cabin

• States' Rights

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Kansas-Nebraska Act

Movement to end slavery

• Reconstruction

• Secede

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Abolition

1863, Union gains control of Mississippi, confederacy split in two, Grant takes lead of Union armies, total war begins

• Battle of Vicksburg

• Battle of Gettysburg

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Battle of Antietam

The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Thirteenth Amendment

• Reconstruction

• Fourteenth Amendment

The first shots of the Civil War were fired in South Carolina; Confederate victory

• Fort Sumter

• Battle Of Gettysburg

• Appomattox Court House

• Battle Of Antietam