Chapter 14: Vocab and Reading Question Flashcards
Total War
A form of warfare that mobilizes all of a society’s resources- economic, political, and cultural- in support of the military effort.
Draft/Conscription
The system for selecting individuals for conscription, or compulsory military service, first implemented during the Civil War.
Habeas Corpus
A legal writ forcing government authorities to justify their arrest and detention of an individual. During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus to stop protests against the draft and other anti-Union activities.
King Cotton
The Confederate belief during the Civil War that their cotton was so important to the British and French economies that those governments would recognize the South as an independent nation and supply it with loans and arms.
Greenbacks
Paper money issued by the U.S. Treasury during the Civil War to finance the war effort.
“Contrabands”
Slaves who fled plantations and sought protection behind Union lines during the Civil War.
Radical Republicans
The members of the Republican Party who were bitterly opposed to slavery and to southern slave owners since the mid-1850s. With the Confiscation Act in 1861, Radical Republicans began to use wartime legislation to destroy slavery.
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation issued on January 1, 1863, that legally abolished slavery in all states that remained out of the Union. While the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave, it signaled an end to the institution of slavery.
Scorched-Earth Campaign
A campaign in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia by Union general Philip H. Sheridan’s troops. The troops destroyed grain, barns, and other useful resources to punish farmers who had aided Confederate raiders.
War Democrats
Members of the Democratic Party that split into two camps over a war policy during the Civil War. War Democrats vowed to continue fighting until the rebellion ended.
Peace Democrats
Members of the Democratic Party that split into two camps over war policy during the Civil War. Peace Democrats called for a constitutional convention to negotiate a peace settlement.
“Hard War”
The philosophy and tactics used by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, by which he treated civilians as combatants.
March to the Sea
Military campaign from September through December 1864 in which Union forces under General Sherman marched from Atlanta, Georgia, to the coast at Savannah. Carving a path of destruction as it progressed, Sherman’s army aimed at destroying white southerners’ will to continue the war.
