Civil War Vocab

Question 1

A person who believed in the abolishment or abolition of Negro slavery

Answer 1

Abolitionnist

Question 2

Large, powerful weapons such as cannons and mortars

Answer 2

Artillery

Question 3

The murder of a prominent person such as President Lincoln

Answer 3

Assassination

Question 4

A unit of four or six cannons, or a fortified position on which they are placed

Answer 4

Battery

Question 5

Large scale combat between two armed forces (skirmishes and engagements are smaller scaled and briefer)

Answer 5

Battle

Question 6

The closing off, using naval forces, of a city or other area to traffic and communication

Answer 6

Blockade

Question 7

Slave-owning states that did not secede from the union: Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri

Answer 7

Border state

Question 8

A leather box in which the soldier carried his rounds or bullets

Answer 8

Cartridge box

Question 9

A person killed, wounded, captured, I missing during the war

Answer 9

Casualty

Question 10

Soldiers mounted on horseback fighting as a unit

Answer 10

Cavalry

Question 11

The liquid drug used to put to sleep wounded soldiers in war

Answer 11

Chloroform

Question 12

The alliance of 11 southern states to form the Confederate States of America

Answer 12

Confederacy or CSA

Question 13

Goods illegally traded during wartime. Slaves were sometimes called contraband during the war

Answer 13

Contraband

Question 14

A Northern Democrat who agreed with Southern secession and clamored for Peace in the war

Answer 14

Copperhead

Question 15

To spread out armies to create a battle line

Answer 15

Deploy

Question 16

To leave one’s military post or a battle, often punishable by death.

Answer 16

Desertion

Question 17

Slang term for the Confederacy, and a popular Southern song

Answer 17

Dixie

Question 18

The selection of citizens to fight in the war.

Answer 18

Draft of conscription

Question 19

The process of instruction on how to march and practice military arts as a unit

Answer 19

Drill

Question 20

An often fatal disease in the human intestines, usually caused by unsanitary conditions of military and battle sites

Answer 20

Dysentery

Question 21

An attack against the flanks of an enemy’s army, in hopes of encircling it

Answer 21

Envelopment

Question 22

The formal release of slaves, as it happened in 1863

Answer 22

Emancipation

Question 23

The sides of an army’s lines of battle

Answer 23

Flanks

Question 24

A search for food by soldiers often at the expense of the farmers in a battle area

Answer 24

Forage

Question 25

Paper money used during the Civil War in the North

Answer 25

Greenbacks