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Question 1
a. The Union army was ill-prepared for the battle, and although they were pushed to go
ahead with it, they hoped for a victory that might show their strength, intimidate the
South, and resolve the conflict. They lost, however.
b. While defeat did force the Union soldiers to take their Southern opponents more
seriously than they had previously, it also led them to hunker down and focus on
training and strategy.
c. Correct answer. Victory at Bull Run led many Southern soldiers to think the war was
now over; many deserted, while overall enlistment rates plummeted, and no further
preparations for a long war were made. This overconfidence proved detrimental in the
long run.
d. The South clearly won the Battle of Bull Run. Northern soldiers did not take their
enemies seriously and initially they looked like they might win. But “Stonewall”
Jackson’s men stood literally like a stone wall (giving him his famous nickname), as
unexpected Confederate reinforcements poured in. Panicking, the Union soldiers
fled.
e. The southerners took this victory as a sign that the war would end fast, but
Northerners learned a valuable lesson to buckle down and develop a more strategic
approach to restoring the Union.
Question 2
a. He wasn’t at all intuitive when it came to timing his battle strikes. He often hesitated
and waited for things to seem perfect before he would act.
b. While it’s true that McClellan was uncomfortable taking risks—especially when the
lives of his troops were at stake—this is a trait of all good generals and not what he is
best remembered for.
c. Correct answer. Nicknamed “Tardy George,” McClellan earned a reputation for his
slowness to act. He often believed—whether or not the facts backed it up—that he
was outnumbered by his enemy. At the same time, we was overly cautious. As a
result, he missed several major chances to cause the enemy to retreat and took a
month to capture Yorktown.
d. While he did use waterways in his historic attack on Richmond, which he nicknamed
the Peninsula Campaign, McClellan did not have a preference for attacking by water.
e. It was Stonewall Jackson, and not McClellan, who was known for lightning fast
attacks. McClellan actually was slow to act and leaned almost toward not acting at all.
Question 3
a. While the South did win the Peninsula Campaign, it was not its first victory. The
South won earlier at Bull Run.
b. Correct answer. Had Lee failed, the Union would have been quickly restored with
slavery intact. However, McClellan’s defeat for the Union in the Peninsula Campaign
assured that the war would continue until the South was squashed and slavery was
wiped out. As Lincoln put it, the rebels “cannot experiment for ten years trying to
destroy the government and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt.” At that
point, he started writing an emancipation proclamation.
c. The Peninsula Campaign cost the lives of 10,000 Union and 20,000 Confederate
soldiers. But many of the Civil War battles were highly bloody and costly in terms of
lives. Hence, this was not the battle’s greatest significance.
d. During this battle, McClellan was temporarily replaced as general. However, he was
restored to his post later in Antietam.
e. Union leaders expected to wipe out the South quickly, but the South’s ability to resist
(and defeat) Union forces, and the North’s inability to strike hard and fast, made it
clear the war would be long and bloody.
Question 4
a. The strategy did include liberating the slaves, but not because of abolitionist political
sentiments, but to undermine the economic foundations of the Old South. Without
slaves, they would lose their labor supply; work would be halted, crops could not be
harvested or sold, and income would be greatly reduced.
b. The Union military wanted to slowly suffocate the South by blockading its coasts.
c. Union military strategists thought you cut literally cut the Confederacy in half by
seizing the Mississippi River, which was the backbone of Southern transport systems.
d. Ulysses S. Grant especially liked the strategy of taking the Confederate capital of
Richmond. To him, it was the way to decapitate the Confederacy (by taking its head).
e. Correct answer. The strategy was actually to destroy the Confederacy by sending the
Union army through Georgia and the Carolinas, not through Maryland and Virginia.
Question 5
a. When the Union showed its powerful military might via the successful Antietam
conflict, the British and French governments, which had been on the verge of
intervening for the South, changed their minds. Both stayed outside the American
Civil War.
b. McClellan was literally handed a gift when two of his soldiers found a copy of Lee’s
battle plans wrapped around a packet of cigars that a Confederate officer had
dropped. He used this information to stop Lee at Antietam on September 17, 1862.
c. The incredibly violent Antietam battle was the victory that Union forces had long
needed, giving Lincoln the confidence to write the Emancipation Proclamation.
d. Correct answer. The Merrimack and Monitor battles were not part of the Antietam
Campaign.
e. After the Antietam conflict, President Lincoln noted that the very nature of the war
had changed, with the goal now to destroy the old South and replace it with a new
one.
Question 6
a. Contrary to the folklore surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation, it did not free
all slaves; it only liberated those residing in Confederate states that were still in
rebellion against the United States.
b. The Emancipation Proclamation declared “forever free” the slaves in Confederate
areas in rebellion. Slaves in the loyal border states were not affected, nor were those
in specific conquered areas in the South (together, about 800,000 slaves).
c. Correct answer. Lincoln understood the Emancipation Proclamation to be a symbolic
statement of justice. Through this document, Lincoln strengthened the moral cause of
the Union.
d. The Emancipation did not permanently end slavery. This was legally achieved by
action of the individual states and by their ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment
in 1865, eight months after the Civil War had ended. It also changed the nature of the
war because it ended the chance of a negotiated settlement.
e. While many former or runaway slaves did ultimately serve in the Union army, the
Proclamation was not meant as an appeal to them to join. Still, one in seven Southern
slaves ran away to Union camps.
Question 7
a. To keep order among slaves, the Confederacy created a system of home guards who
were charged with protecting against insurrection and flight. This effort, however,
required manpower, and often kept white soldiers from the battlefields.
b. Southerners did not enlist slaves in their army—partly due to prejudice, partly to
principle. It was only in the war’s final month that they let slaves serve, but by then, it
was already too late.
c. The Confederacy did not keep slaves in shackles or prisons for much of the war, but
slaves nonetheless were a distraction to the greater war effort and a drain on
Confederate resources.
d. They used them as spies against approaching Union troops. When Union troops
neared, slave assertiveness increased. As “intelligent contraband,” slaves served as
Union spies, guides, and scouts or provided shelter to escaped Northern prisoners of
war.
e. Slaves who remained in the South during the war, basically made masters improve
working conditions by negotiating with masters.
Question 8
a. Gettysburg was not the final battle of the Civil War. The war, in fact, continued for
another two years.
b. Correct answer. The Battle of Gettysburg defined the northernmost point reached by
the South and the last real chance for the Confederates to win the war. When
Lincoln’s army claimed victory, the Southern cause was doomed.
c. Gettysburg was a decisive win for the North.
d. Credit for the victory at Gettysburg belonged to General George Meade, not General
Ulysses S. Grant.
e. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was not killed by Union troops but was
accidentally shot by his own men.
Question 9
a. Shiloh was actually a loss for Grant. The impressive Confederate showing at Shiloh
indicated that there would be no quick end to the war in the West.
b. While the battle of Port Hudson was important, it came after Vicksburg. Port Hudson
was the last Southern bastion on the Mississippi.
c. Grant wasn’t at Gettysburg; he was fighting in the West. But Vicksburg came within
a day of the Union battle at Gettysburg, and in combination, these wins tipped the
diplomatic scales in favor of the North, to keep the British and French from aiding the
Confederacy.
d. Fort Donelson was among Grant’s early successes in February 1862.
e. Correct answer. Vicksburg was Grant’s best-fought campaign of the war and occurred
just a day after the Union victory at Gettysburg (July 4, 1863).
Question 10
a. General William Tecumseh Sherman actually pioneered total war. His methods were
brutal, but some credit him with shortening the struggle and saving lives.
b. Sherman did not have the most disciplined troops; in fact, the opposite was often true.
His men were thought of by some as roving riffraff (Sherman’s “bummers”) engaged
in an orgy of pillaging.
c. Correct answer. Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1863–1864, is probably the hallmark of
his reputation. Marching through Georgia, Sherman and his men burned buildings,
tore up railroads, twisted them into “iron doughnuts,” and bayoneted family portraits.
The purpose was to destroy supplies needed by the Confederacy and hopefully
weaken the morale of men at the Confederate front by waging war on their homes.
d. Sherman’s army did move deep into North Carolina, and its capital city of Columbia
burst into flames, which many attribute to Sherman. But this is not his claim to fame.
e. Sherman attacked Atlanta—not Chattanooga—in September 1864 and burned the city
in November of that year.
Question 11
a. Lincoln actually had two solid rivals in Salmon Chase and General George
McClellan, the latter of whom netted 45 percent of the popular vote, 1,803,787 to
Lincoln’s 2,206,938, and garnering support in the Southerner-infiltrated states of the
Old Northwest, in New York, and also in his home state of Pennsylvania.
b. Copperheads nominated war hero General McClellan as their candidate. In their party
platform, they denounced the prosecution of the war as a failure and attempted to
obstruct ongoing war effort by attacking the draft.
c. Choosing Andrew Johnson as his running mate was a wise strategy for Lincoln, but
by itself, it did not turn the election around. Johnson was an ex-tailor, loyal War
Democrat from Tennessee, and a former slave-owner. He was added to the ticket to
draw War Democrats and voters in the border states.
d. Correct answer. What really handed Lincoln a second term in office was a series of
Union military victories by Election Day. Those successes reversed the sense of
Union doom and led many to celebrate the prospect of another four years. Soldiers
also were furloughed to come home to vote for Lincoln.
e. Lincoln’s support came from War Democrats—which the Republican Party had
joined forces with—and not from Peace Democrats.
Question 12
a. Correct answer. The Wilderness Campaign was Grant’s combat strategy, which
centered on man-to-man confrontations in the Virginia countryside during May and
June 1864.
b. The Wilderness Campaign was Grant’s brainchild, not Lee’s. It put Lee in a defensive
—not offensive—position.
c. The Wilderness Campaign did not culminate with the fighting at Gettysburg, but
rather began after Gettysburg in June 1864.
d. Although many Indian groups did ally with the South, since they also held slaves and
liked the promised made to them by the Confederacy, the Wilderness Campaign does
not describe battles between Union troops and Native Americans.
e. Grant’s strategy focused on fighting out in the open, a method he’d perfected during
battles in the West. It was Lee, not Grant, who turned the eastern campaign into a war
of attrition fought in the trenches.
Question 13
a. While Southerners had immense hatred for Lincoln, this was not a factor in the failure
of negotiations.
b. Lincoln was not assassinated until five days after the war formally ended.
c. The South wanted to remain independent of the Union, so they did not seek a place
for any of their officials within the Union government.
d. The Union did not insist that the South bear the entire financial cost of the war.
e. Correct answer. Lincoln could accept nothing less that a complete restoration of the
Union and an end to slavery, while the South wanted to retain its independence. Such
goals were at odds and guaranteed that initial attempts at peace would fail.
Question 14
a. The North’s victory crushed the extreme states rights position. That put a final nail in
the coffin not only to that position, but also its offshoot, the issue of Nullification that
had so haunted the Union before the war.
b. Correct answer. Although both England and France were toying with the idea of
entering the war on the side of the Confederacy, neither did, which thereby preserved
their relationship with the U.S. during and after the war.
c. Within days after the Civil War ended, a pro-South fanatic, actor John Wilkes Booth
shot Lincoln in the head and killed him as he watched a show at Ford’s Theatre.
d. Victory for the Union army did inspire democracy and liberalism around the world.
For example, in England, the Reform Bill of 1867 transformed Britain into a true
democracy.
e. A Union victory put a final end to slavery in the U.S., and ultimately the rest of the
world. Had it not won, the peculiar institution might have been transported to the
Caribbean and imposed on the area from Panama to Hudson.