Download MAJOR EVENTS LEADING TO THE CIVIL WAR PEOPLE OF

AMERICAN
CIVIL WAR
1861-1865
extensively. The practices of total
war and of trench warfare around
Petersburg foreshadowed World
War I in Europe. It remains the
deadliest war in American history,
resulting in the deaths of thousands
of soldiers and an undetermined
number of civilian casualties. Victory
for the North meant the end of the
(the Union), which was supported
by all the free states (where slavery
had been abolished) and by five
slave states that became known as
the border states.
The American Civil War was one
of the earliest true industrial wars.
Railroads, the telegraph and massproduced weapons were employed
The American Civil War was a
civil war in the United States of
America. Eleven Southern slave
states declared their secession from
the United States and formed the
Confederate States of America, also
known as “the Confederacy.” Led
by Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy
fought against the United States
Confederacy and of slavery in the
United States, and strengthened the
role of the federal government.
The social, political, economic and
racial issues of the war decisively
shaped the reconstruction era that
lasted to 1877.
MAJOR EVENTS LEADING TO THE CIVIL WAR
1848
1849
1850
Mexican War Ended
1851
1852
Fugitive Slave Act
With new territories added to the
Union, it posed a difficult task for the
government--would these new states
be free or slave? Congress passed the
Compromise of 1850 which let states
decide whether it would allow slavery.
1853
Uncle Tom’s Cabin released
Part of the Compromise of 1850, this
act forced any federal official who did
not arrest a runaway slave liable to
pay a fine. It caused many abolitionists
to increase their efforts against slavery,
as well as increased Underground
Railroad activity.
1854
1855
Bleeding Kansas
This book was written by Harriet
Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist. It
helped further the cause of abolition
by showing the evils of slavery.
Abraham Lincoln recognized this
book as one of the events that led to
the outbreak of the Civil War.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed,
which allowed those territories to
decide for themselves whether they
wanted to be free or slave. Kansas soon
became a hotbed of violence as proand anti-slavery forces fought over the
state’s future.
1856
1857
Charles Sumner attacked
Dred Scott decision
Pro-slavery congressman Preston
Brooks attacked Charles Sumner on
the U.S. Senate floor after he had
given a speech attacking the
pro-slavery forces for the violence
occurring in Kansas.
1858
Dred Scott lost his case proving he should
be free because he had been held as a
slave while living in a free state. The court
ruled that he could not be seen because he
holds no property. Even though he was
taken by his ‘owner’ into a free state, he was
still a slave because they were considered as
property of their owners.
1859
1860
John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry
Abraham Lincoln elected president
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who was
involved in anti-slavery violence in Kansas. He
led 17 people to raid the arsenal located in
Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to start a
slave uprising using the captured weapons.
They were eventually killed or captured by
Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried and
hung for treason.
South Carolina, followed by 6 other states,
seceded from the Union with Lincoln’s election.
Lincoln agreed with the majority of the
Republican Party that the South was becoming
too powerful, and made it part of their platform
that slavery would not be extended to any new
territories or states added to the Union.
PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE
Abraham Lincoln
Jefferson Davis
Ulysses S. Grant
Robert E. Lee
served as the 16th president of the United
States from March 1861 until his assassination
in April 1865. He issued his Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, and promoted the
passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, abolishing slavery. Reared in a
poor family on the western frontier, he was
mostly self-educated. He became a country
lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a oneterm member of the United States House of
Representatives, but failed in two attempts
at a seat in the United States Senate.
was an American statesmen and leader of the
Confederacy during the American Civil War;
serving as the President for its entire history.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the
Mexican-American War as a colonel of a
volunteer regiment, and was the United States
Secretary of War under President Franklin
Pierce. He served as a U.S. Senator representing
the state of Mississippi. As a senator, he argued
against secession, but did agree that each state
was sovereign and had an unquestionable
right to secede from the Union.
was the 18th President of the United States
as well as military commander during the
Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods.
Under command, the Union Army defeated
the Confederate military and ended the
Confederate States of America. After the war,
on July 25, 1866, Congress promoted Grant to
the newly created rank of General of the Army
of the United States, a form of the rank General
of the Armies of the United States.
was a career United States Army officer
and combat engineer. He became the
commanding general of the Confederate
Army in the American Civil War and a
postwar icon of the South’s “lost cause.”
Lee's numerous victories against superior
forces won him enduring fame as a crafty
and daring battlefield tactician, but some of
his strategic decisions, such as invading the
North in 1862 and 1863, have been criticized
by many military historians.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1860
CASUALTIES
WASHINGTON
TERRITORY
NEW HAMPSHIRE
VERMONT
MINNESOTA
OREGON
DAKOTA
TERRITORY
COMBAT
DEATHS
UTAH
TERRITORY
PENNSYLVANIA
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
5
6
3
KANSAS
CALIFORNIA
VIRGINIA
MISSOURI
7
INDIAN
TERRITORY
NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY
TENNESSEE
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
ARKANSAS
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
CONFEDERATE STATES
TEXAS
175,000
BATTLE SITES
LOUISIANA
FLORIDA
Secessionists argued that the United
States Constitution was a compact among
states that could be abandoned at any time
without consultation and that each state
had a right to secede. After intense debates
and statewide votes, seven Deep South
cotton states passed secession ordinances
by February 1861 (before Abraham Lincoln
took office as president), while secession
efforts failed in the other eight slave states.
Delegates from the seven formed the
525,000
700,000
15,000
C.S.A. in February 1861, selecting Jefferson
Davis as temporary president until elections
could be held in 1862. Talk of reunion and
compromise went nowhere, because the
Confederates insisted on independence
which the Union strongly rejected.
30,000
Two percent of the US population died in
the Civil War. Only World War II claimed
the lives of more Americans. The proportion
of casualties to the total number of soldiers
who fought was extremely high by military
standards. This was in large part due to the
weapons used (small arms fire accounted
for more than three-quarters of the deaths)
and to the high rate of disease.
One out of every ten able-bodied
northern males was killed or injured by the
war; one out of every four southern males
(including blacks) was killed or injured.
Blacks counted for twenty percent of the
Union death toll. Of the 21,000 Cherokee,
most of whom fought for the Confederacy,
a third died.
51,112
36,624
30,099
27,399
26,134
25,416
25,251
24,645
23,741
19,455
0
The Confederate States of America (also
called the Confederacy, the Confederate
States, and the C.S.A.) was an unrecognized
state set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven
southern slave states of the United States of
America that had declared their secession
from the U.S. The Confederacy's control
over its claimed territory shrank steadily
during the course of the war, as the Union
took control of much of the seacoast and
inland waterways.
350,000
(Union and Confederate killed, wounded, missing, captured totals)
1 GETTYSBURG
2 CHICKAMAUGA
3 CHANCELLORSVILLE
4 SPOTSYLVANIA
5 ANTIETAM
6 WILDERNESS
7 BULL RUN
8 STONES RIVER
9 SHILOH
10 FORT DONELSON
UNION STATES
GEORGIA
634,703
335,524
DEADLIEST
BATTLES
9
2
137,000
4
NORTH
CAROLINA
8
275,175
*Combat deaths refers to troops killed in action or dead of wounds. Other includes deaths from disease, privation, and accidents, and includes
losses among prisoners of war. Wounded excludes those who died of their wounds, who are included under Combat Deaths. Confederate Army
statistics are incomplete and estimated due to missing records.
KENTUCKY
10
124,000
0
CONNECTICUT
NEW JERSEY
1
OHIO
249,458
TOTAL
RHODE ISLAND
IOWA
110,070
74,524
WOUNDED
NEW YORK
MICHIGAN
CONFEDERATE
OTHER
MAINE
MASSACHUSETTS
WISCONSIN
UNION
45,000
HOW DOES THIS WAR COMPARE TO OTHER AMERICAN WARS?
1 REVOLUTIONARY WAR 10,623
2 WAR OF 1812 6,765
3 MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR 17,435
4 CIVIL WAR 970,227
5 SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 4,108
6 WORLD WAR I 320,710
7 WORLD WAR II 1,078,162
8 KOREAN WAR 136,935
9 VIETNAM WAR 211,471
10 WAR ON TERROR 54,800
1,000,000
Between 1861 and 1865, Americans
made war on each other and killed
each other in great numbers — if only
to become the kind of country that
could no longer conceive of how that
was possible. What began as a bitter
dispute over Union and States' Rights,
ended as a struggle over the meaning
of freedom in America. At Gettysburg
in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps
more than he knew. The war was about
a "new birth of freedom."
750,000
500,000
250,000
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1875
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1835
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1825
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1815
1810
1805
1800
A COUNTRY DIVIDED
1795
The 34x44 poster can be folded down
to 8.5x11 as shown on the grid.
1790
FRONT
COVER
1785
BACK
COVER
WAR BETWEEN
THE STATES
1780
Case Study No. 9
Designed by Mary Kay Hickox
1775
DAI 523 Information Design I
Instructor: Pino Trogu
Design and Industr y Department
College of Creative Arts
San Francisco State University
California, USA – December 2010