Essential vocabulary 5

Major Battles

(1861-65)

Conflict between the U.S. federal government and 11 Southern states that fought to secede from the Union.

or Civil War War Between the States It arose out of disputes over the issues of slavery, trade and tariffs, and the doctrine of states' rights. By die 1850s abolitionism was growing in the North, and when the antislavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the Southern states seceded to protect what they saw as their right to keep slaves. The war began in Charleston, S.C., when Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Both sides quickly raised armies. In July 1861,30,000 Union troops marched toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, Va., but were stopped by Confederate forces in the Battle of Bull Run and forced to retreat to Washington, D.C. The defeat shocked die Union, which called for 500,000 more recruits. {Fascinating Fact: Although the total number of Union troops at Bull Run was about 35,000 and die Confederates had about 32,500 only about 18,000 men on each side were actually engaged in combat).The war's first major campaign began in February 1862, when Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant captured Confederate forts in western Tennessee. Union victories at the battles of Shiloh (August 28-30,1862) and New Orleans followed. In the East, Robert E. Lee won several Confederate victories in the Seven Days* Battles and, after defeat at the Battle of Antietam. in the Bailie of Fredericksburg (December 1862). The war's turning point in the West occurred in July 1863 with Grant's success in the Vicksburg Campaign, which brought the entire Mississippi River under Union control. Grant's command was expanded after the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga. and in March 1864 Lincoln gave him supreme command of the Union armies. He began a strategy of attrition and, despite heavy Union casualties at the battles of the Wilderness, began to surround Lee's troops in Petersburg. Meanwhile William T. Sherman captured Atlanta in September, set out on a destructive march through Georgia, and soon captured Savannah. Grant captured Richmond on April 3, 1865, and accepted Lee's surrender on April 9 at Appomattox Court House. On April 26 Sherman received the surrender of Joseph Johnston, thereby ending the war. The mortality rates of the war were staggering—there were about 620,000 deaths out of a total of 2.4 million soldiers. The South was devastated. But the Union was preserved, and slavery was abolished.

planter	плантатор
yeoman	мелкий землевладелец
poor whites	белые бедняки (обычно малограмотные, находящиеся на самом низу соц. лестницы)
abolitionist movement	аболиционизм, движение за отмену рабства
Underground Railroad	подпольная железная дорога
fugitive	беглый
Missouri Compromise	Миссурийский компромисс
popular sovereignty	суверенитет народа
a free-soil state	штат свободных земель
A house divided against itself cannot stand	первые слова инаугурационной речи президента Линкольна
Confederate States of America	Конфедерация южных штатов

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11