Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election by carrying most of the Southern states.
Correct Answer
False
False. Lincoln won without carrying a single Southern state; his support came from the free states of the North and West. His election as a candidate opposed to slavery's expansion set off secession.
Category: Secession Crisis
Question 2
Seven Deep South states had seceded before Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861.
Correct Answer
True
True. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas all left the Union between December 1860 and February 1861. Four Upper South states seceded only after the fighting began.
Category: Secession Crisis
Question 3
Virginia seceded from the Union before Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter.
Correct Answer
False
False. Virginia's convention voted to secede on April 17, 1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops. Its secession brought Robert E. Lee to the Confederate side.
Category: Secession Crisis
Question 4
Kentucky declared itself neutral at the start of the Civil War.
Correct Answer
True
True. Kentucky, a slave state with ties to both sections, declared neutrality in 1861 and ultimately stayed in the Union. Lincoln saw keeping Kentucky loyal as vital to the war effort.
Category: Border States
Question 5
The Union naval blockade greatly increased Southern cotton exports to Britain.
Correct Answer
False
False. The blockade sharply cut Southern cotton exports, hurting the Confederate economy. Britain, the main buyer, found other sources of cotton, so the South's hope of winning support through cotton failed.
Category: Strengths and Weaknesses
Question 6
The Confederate government printed large amounts of paper money, which caused severe inflation in the South.
Correct Answer
True
True. With little gold and a weak tax system, the Confederacy relied on printing money, and prices soared. Inflation and shortages led to hunger and unrest such as the 1863 Richmond bread riot.
Category: Strengths and Weaknesses
Question 7
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln promised to abolish slavery in the states where it already existed.
Correct Answer
False
False. In March 1861 Lincoln pledged not to interfere with slavery where it existed, while opposing its spread into the territories and denying that states could legally secede.
Category: Secession Crisis
Question 8
The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863.
Correct Answer
True
True. Lincoln announced the preliminary proclamation in September 1862 and issued the final version on January 1, 1863. It declared free the enslaved people in areas still in rebellion.
Category: Emancipation
Question 9
Black soldiers in the Union army received the same pay as White soldiers from the time they first enlisted.
Correct Answer
False
False. Black soldiers were at first paid less than White soldiers. Congress granted them equal pay in 1864, after protests by Black troops and their supporters, though full back pay came only later and unevenly.
Category: African American Soldiers
Question 10
The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, an African American regiment, became famous for its assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
Correct Answer
True
True. The regiment's 1863 attack on Fort Wagner near Charleston failed, but its courage helped persuade Northerners that Black soldiers would fight. Black soldiers went on to make up a significant part of the Union army by the end of the war.
Category: African American Soldiers
Question 11
The Confederacy never drafted soldiers and relied only on volunteers throughout the war.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Confederacy passed a conscription law in April 1862, a year before the Union's Enrollment Act. Its allowance for hiring substitutes caused resentment among poorer Southerners.
Category: The Draft
Question 12
The Homestead Act of 1862 offered settlers 160 acres of public land if they lived on and improved it for five years.
Correct Answer
True
True. With Southern opponents gone from Congress, Republicans passed the Homestead Act to encourage settlement of the West by small farmers.
Category: Wartime Legislation
Question 13
At Fort Pillow in 1864, Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest killed many Black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Fort Pillow massacre in Tennessee outraged the North and showed the special danger Black soldiers faced if captured.
Category: African American Soldiers
Question 14
The fall of Atlanta in September 1864 badly damaged Lincoln's chances of reelection.
Correct Answer
False
False. Sherman's capture of Atlanta lifted Northern morale and greatly helped Lincoln, who won the 1864 election decisively.
Category: Union Victory
Question 15
Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of the Union during the war, allowing suspects to be held without formal charges.
Correct Answer
True
True. Lincoln first suspended habeas corpus in Maryland in 1861, and Congress authorized wider suspension in 1863. Critics saw it as a threat to civil liberties.
Category: Wartime Politics
Question 16
The Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 was a major Union victory that drove Lee's army out of Virginia.
Correct Answer
False
False. At Chancellorsville Lee defeated a much larger Union army, though Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded. The victory encouraged Lee to invade Pennsylvania that summer.
Category: Turning Points 1863
Question 17
Dorothea Dix was placed in charge of the Union army's female nurses.
Correct Answer
True
True. Dix, already known for her work for people with mental illness, was appointed in 1861 to oversee the women who nursed in Union army hospitals. Many other women cared for the sick and wounded outside her authority, including Clara Barton.
Category: Wartime Society
Question 18
Grant's siege of Petersburg, Virginia, lasted only a few days before the city fell.
Correct Answer
False
False. The siege lasted about nine months, from June 1864 to April 1865, with both armies dug into long lines of trenches. Petersburg's fall forced Lee to abandon Richmond.
Category: Union Victory
Question 19
The Legal Tender Act of 1862 allowed the Union government to issue paper money known as greenbacks.
Correct Answer
True
True. Greenbacks were paper currency not backed by gold, issued to help pay for the war. Along with new taxes and war bonds, they financed the Union effort but also fed inflation.
Category: Wartime Legislation
Question 20
West Virginia was created from Virginia counties that voted to join the Confederacy.
Correct Answer
False
False. The northwestern counties of Virginia, where few people held slaves, rejected secession and broke away, and West Virginia joined the Union as a state in 1863.
Category: Border States