READING GUIDE

Terms in Fellman, et al – Understanding the Socio-Political Contexts of the Civil War

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WEEK 1

-John Brown

-Slavery

-Tobacco & Cotton in terms of staple crop agriculture

-William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, abolitionism

-Southern Society (how did it differ from the North?)

-Nat Turner Rebellion, 1831

-Missouri Compromise, 1820, & Westward Expansion (what was the relationship between slavery, westward expansion, & secession?; see also relevant discussion in chapt. 2)

-Nullification Crisis, late 1820s (what was John C. Calhoun’s role in this?)

-“Separate Civilizations”

(*note how volatile the 1850s were)

-Compromise of 1850 & the Fugitive Slave Law

-Harriet Beecher Stowe &Uncle Tom’s Cabin,1851

-Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 1854à what were the results? what is the relationship to the new Republican Party? (see pp. 59-60)

-Bleeding Kansas

-the Sumner-Brooks affair, 1856

-Dred Scott decision, 1857

-Emergence of Abraham Lincoln (look ahead at the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1857, which, for some reason, appears on pages 142-43)

WEEK 2

-Secession (the relationship to Lincoln’s election in 1860?)

-Fort Sumter

-Southern Unionism

-Volunteer Soldiers – significance?

-the “Anaconda Plan”

-Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis

-Bull Run / 1^st Manassas

-George McClellan

-the role of the British

-the Trent Affair

-the Western Theater (excluding the Far West) i.e. Wilson’s Creek, 1861

-Ulysses Grant and his relationship to Forts Henry & Donelson

WEEK 3

-Shiloh & its relationship to new Confederate strategy

-Conscription

-Robert E. Lee takes Command

-Seven Days’ Battles & relationship to new Union strategy

-Antietam & its aftermaths

-Emancipation Proclamation (see also discussion in chapt. 5)

-Material costs of the War

-John Fremont

-Significance of 1862 for the Union

-the Blacks’ Civil War (the major focus of chapt. 5)

-Freedmen’s Bureau

-54^th Massachusetts

WEEK 4

“It is well that war is so terrible…”

-Soldier Motivations

-Civilians & both home fronts

-Women & War (see also p. 217-24)

-Guerrilla Warfare & its contexts (see also p. 285)

-Confederate dissenters & refugees

-Confederate diplomacy & the British

-the Richmond Bread Riot, 1863

-Northern Conscription, protests, & riots

-the Gettysburg Address

-Mourning & religion

-Desertion

WEEK 5

-the final year of the War (see map, p. 265)

-the Wilderness Campaign

-the significance of the confrontation between Lee and Ewell, p. 267-68

-Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign

-Confederate distress

-the fall & surrender of the Confederacy, Appomattox

-John Wilkes Booth