Skip to main content

Understanding the American Civil War: A Quiz

Test your knowledge of the American Civil War with this engaging quiz that covers key events, figures, and facts from this pivotal period in American history.

#American Civil War #History #U.S. History #Civil War #Quizzes #Education

1 ________ during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June.

2 In the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, led by ________, had campaigned against the expansion of slavery beyond the states in which it already existed.

3 [115] These surrenders marked the ________.

4 The northwestern portion of Virginia subsequently seceded from Virginia, joining the Union as the new state of ________ on June 20, 1863.

5 What does the following picture show?  Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war.   US Postage, 1894 issue, honoring William T. Sherman   Andersonville National Cemetery is the final resting place for the Union prisoners who perished while being held at Camp Sumter.   The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the deadliest battles in the Western Theater.

6 How many casualties were there in the American Civil War?

7 [141] The Union victory in the ________ caused them to delay this decision.

8 In May 1862, the Union Navy captured ________[98] without a major fight, which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi.

9 Oates said that Lincoln's letter to ________ has been "persistently misunderstood and misrepresented" for such reasons.

10 Who was a commander in the American Civil War?

💡 Interesting Facts

  • in 1863, the U.S. gave Russia plans to build ten Passaic class monitors, partly because of the fear that the American Civil War would escalate into war between Britain and Russia.
  • minister Edward Woolsey Bacon served in the American Civil War and in 1865 led the black 29th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry into Richmond, Virginia.
  • more than 60% of the Confederacy's war finance came from printing money (pictured), which, along with bad military news, caused prices to increase 92 times over in the South during the American Civil War.
  • famed builder James W. McLaughlin started his Architectural studies at fifteen and when the American Civil War broke out served as a Lieutenant in the body guard of General John C Fremont.
  • during the Indian Wars, troops stationed at Fort Harker, Kansas in 1867 performed more escorts of wagon trains in one year than troops stationed at any other frontier fort in the post-American Civil War era.
  • during the American Civil War, the Third Tennessee regiment was sent to Camp Trousdale to help relieve disease, but its soldiers still suffered from epidemics.
  • during the Civil War years, the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles experienced floods, droughts, a smallpox epidemic, and even a plague of locusts.
  • most of the American Civil War events in Midway, Kentucky, including that which the Martyrs Monument in Midway commemorates, involved the stealing of horses.
  • none of Louisville's fortifications for the American Civil War were ever used, as Louisville was never endangered while they existed.
  • the 2001 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard II was filmed at an abandoned Civil War-era fort on an island in Boston Harbor.
  • the American Civil War saw buglers (infantry band pictured) required to learn forty-nine separate calls for infantry alone.
  • the Commonwealth of Kentucky had a Confederate shadow government during the U.S. Civil War, although it never officially seceded from the Union.
  • some historians consider the Baltimore riot of 1861 to be the first bloodshed of the American Civil War.
  • six Prussians served as generals for the Union army in the American Civil War.
  • on the brink of the American Civil War, there was a movement in the mid-Atlantic states to secede from the Union and form a Central Confederacy.
  • renowned magazine illustrator David Hunter Strother recounted a treacherous journey on the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike in his recollections of the American Civil War in Harper's Magazine.
  • during the American Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy developed new medical programs to treat sick and injured soldiers.
  • during the American Civil War, an early Union steam torpedo boat, USS Spuyten Duyvil, was used to clear obstructions so President Lincoln could visit the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia after General Lee's withdrawal.
  • after serving as a Union Army general during the American Civil War, Joseph Alexander Cooper was enlisted to suppress Ku Klux Klan disturbances in Tennessee.
  • after serving as a volunteer during the Mexican-American War, James W. McMillan returned to private life but still became a General during the American Civil War.
  • after switching sides multiple times during the American Civil War, Benjamin Anderson committed suicide, saying he "would prefer being dead than disgraced".
  • after serving as a Union Army general during the American Civil War, George Henry Chapman served as a judge in the Indiana Criminal Court, and later a state legislator in the Indiana Senate.
  • after leading African-American troops in the American Civil War, Alfred Stedman Hartwell became a supreme court judge in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
  • a year after the American Civil War ended, discharged soldiers had conflicts with local policemen in Memphis, which escalated into one of the worst race riots in U.S. history.
  • after his defeat in the American Civil War, Union Army General William Sooy Smith (pictured) returned to engineering and helped build the Glasgow Railroad Bridge, winning the Centennial Exposition prize in 1876.
  • among the dead interred at the Calvert Vaux-designed Hillside Cemetery in Middletown, New York, are three Civil War Medal of Honor recipients.
  • as President of the College of New Jersey, John Maclean, Jr. conveyed a Doctor of Laws degree to President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.
  • boundary surveyor Joseph Smith Harris climbed a ship's mast to direct mortars during the Civil War Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip.
  • despite having severely paralyzed hands, William B. T. Trego painted some of the most iconic images of the American Revolution and Civil War in the 19th century.
  • during the American Civil War, Pennsylvania provided over 360,000 soldiers who served in the Union Army, more than any other Northern state except New York.
  • before serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Brigadier General Stephen Gardner Champlin had his own law practice in Albany, New York.
  • before serving in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, James M. Goggin worked as a cotton broker.
  • before becoming a general in the American Civil War, Robert Alexander Cameron worked as a newspaper publisher.
  • before becoming a general in the American Civil War, Robert Francis Catterson practiced medicine in Rockville, Indiana.
  • the Confederate States of America bought fast steamboats from Edward Harland's company Harland & Wolff during the American Civil War so they could outrun the Union blockade.
  • the governor of Texas during the American Civil War was Francis Lubbock.
  • the capture and forced march of Daniel M. Frost's militia through St. Louis, Missouri during the US Civil War ignited a citywide riot.
  • the construction of the James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home was paid for by the owner's contract to supply hardtack to Union troops in the American Civil War.
  • the contradictory term foot cavalry was first used to describe the rapid movement of infantry troops of General Stonewall Jackson during the American Civil War.
  • the French-designed Minié rifle was the dominant infantry weapon of the American Civil War.
  • the Veteran's Monument in Covington in Kentucky is the state's only Civil War platform memorial and also the only one referring to that conflict as the "War Between the States".
  • the Tennessee State Museum has one of the largest collections in the United States of weapons, flags, and uniforms from the American Civil War.
  • the USS Hunchback was a steam powered ferryboat converted into a gunboat for the American Civil War.
  • the first Territorial Governor of Montana, Sidney Edgerton, fought as a Squirrel Hunter during the American Civil War.
  • the first Wabash was a steam screw frigate in the U.S. Navy during the American Civil War.
  • the term battery in baseball was first used by Henry Chadwick in reference to the firepower of a team's pitching staff, inspired by artillery batteries then in use in the American Civil War.
  • the unincorporated community of Oatmeal, Texas, was inhabited by a colony of former slaves after the American Civil War.
  • two songs on Scott Miller's 2001 album Thus Always to Tyrants are based on unearthed family letters from the American Civil War.
  • the owners of the Spade Ranch (pictured) in the Nebraska Sandhills hired Civil War veterans and widows to circumvent homesteading laws.
  • the owner of Fairhope Plantation near Uniontown, Alabama, organized his own artillery unit during the American Civil War.
  • the last surrender of the American Civil War took place aboard the British HMS Donegal after the CSS Shenandoah completed a 9,000 mile voyage specifically to do so.
  • the original Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral building was saved from burning during the American Civil War when the parish priest imitated General Banks's voice and ordered Union troops to spare the church.
  • the Romney Expedition, led by Stonewall Jackson, cleared Union forces from the lower Shenandoah Valley and surrounding Allegheny ranges during the early part of the American Civil War.
  • the Pewee Valley Confederate Memorial (pictured) is the only American Civil War obelisk monument in Kentucky to be made of zinc.
  • the Allegheny Arsenal explosion on September 17, 1862 was the single largest civilian disaster during the American Civil War.
  • the Battle of Appomattox Court House signalled the end of the American Civil War.
  • the Battle of Pogue's Run was done to prevent Democrats from rising against the American Civil War in Indiana.
  • the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry suffered 330 casualties, including 120 dead, in eight minutes at the Second Battle of Bull Run, the largest number of fatalities received by any federal infantry unit in the entire American Civil War.
  • the 32nd Indiana Monument, currently at Cave Hill National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, is the oldest surviving American Civil War memorial.
  • the pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly and Company was founded by American Civil War veteran Colonel Eli Lilly.
  • the Union forces in the American Civil War won the Battle of Simmon's Bluff without inflicting casualties.
  • the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad's plan to expand into Wyoming's Powder River Basin would be the largest new railroad construction in the United States since the American Civil War.
  • the Floating Battery of Charleston Harbor was the first floating battery to engage in hostilities during the American Civil War.
  • the historic monuments in the Los Angeles Harbor area include a Civil War Powder Magazine, a World War I coastal artillery battery, and the bridge of a World War II heavy cruiser.
  • the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey has on display the Intelligent Whale, an experimental Civil War-era submarine propelled by a hand crank operated by its four-man crew.
  • the Old St. Thomas Church (pictured), built in 1822–1824, is the burial site of a Canadian soldier who died in the Battle of Williamsburg in the American Civil War.
  • the Joint Expedition Against Franklin was a small battle during the American Civil War for which seven Union sailors were awarded Medals of Honor.
  • the G.A.R. Monument in Covington, Kentucky is the only American Civil War monument in the Bluegrass state shaped like a sarcophagus.
  • the Florida Railroad was the first railroad to connect the east and west coasts of Florida and the longest railroad to be completed in Florida before the start of the American Civil War.
  • the Franklin County Courthouse incorporates the walls and columns left after Confederate forces burned the previous courthouse during the American Civil War.
  • Major Caleb Huse purchased the majority of imported weapons used by the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
  • Kentucky judge Benjamin Mills' opinion regarding the rights of slaves brought to the Northwest Territory was cited as a precedent in U.S. courts until the U.S. abolished slavery following the American Civil War.
  • Alexander Hamilton Bowman helped build Fort Sumter and later served as the superintendent at West Point during the American Civil War.
  • Augustus Louis Chetlain was said to have been the first man in Illinois to volunteer for the American Civil War.
  • Bailey's Dam saved part of the Union Navy's Mississippi River Squadron during the Civil War.
  • Abram S. Piatt was an American Zouave colonel and Civil War general who later built a castle in Logan County, Ohio.
  • Zouave Guards of Indianapolis volunteered to fight before the American Civil War broke out, but its leader Francis A. Shoup (pictured) switched sides and joined the Confederates before the war began.
  • United States Army officer James H. Trapier graduated one position below P. G. T. Beauregard in his class at the U.S. Military Academy and later served under him in the American Civil War.
  • American Civil War-era novelist John William DeForest coined the phrase the Great American Novel in an 1869 essay.
  • Basil W. Duke became the chief consul and lobbyist for the L&N Railroad after the American Civil War, even though he led many efforts in destroying their property during the war.
  • Birely, Hillman & Streaker was the only Philadelphian manufacturer of wooden ships to survive the post-Civil War slump.
  • Charles Thomas Campbell, who served as a Union Army general during the American Civil War, helped found the town of Scotland, South Dakota.
  • David Owen Dodd was a 17-year-old boy hanged as a Confederate spy in the American Civil War.
  • Edward Payson Chapin (pictured) was wounded twice in the American Civil War and promoted to brigadier general four months after being killed in action.
  • Charles Sawyer Russell commanded the 28th Regiment United States Colored Troops in the American Civil War, which suffered nearly fifty percent casualties at the Battle of the Crater.
  • Charles Marshall chose the location where Robert E. Lee's surrender ceremony took place near the end of the American Civil War.
  • one of the most successful weapons of the American Civil War was designed by one of the war's most incompetent generals.
  • Camp Beauregard, an American Civil War camp in western Kentucky, was abandoned in less than six months due to over 1,000 cases of typhoid and pneumonia.
  • American painter Julian Scott entered the Third Vermont Regiment during American Civil War at the age of 15 and four years later was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
  • Union Army officer Frank A. Haskell’s account of the Battle of Gettysburg was hailed by historian Bruce Catton as "one of the genuine classics of Civil War literature".
  • Captain William Reynolds, a veteran of the American Civil War, formally claimed the Midway Atoll for the United States in 1867 due to its abundance of guano.
  • Confederate General John W. Frazer surrendered the Cumberland Gap during the American Civil War without a fight.
  • French Champagne merchant Charles Heidsieck was imprisoned for espionage during the American Civil War, sparking an international incident.
  • American Civil War leader William Tecumseh Sherman (pictured) said, "No single body of men can claim more honor for the grand result than the officers and men of the Louisville Legion".
  • American Civil War illustrator Alfred Waud made battlefield sketches that were quickly engraved and published by Harper's Weekly—allowing readers to visualize the war in an age before photographs appeared in press.
  • Africans from the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the U.S. formed their own community of Africatown near Mobile, Alabama after the Civil War.
  • Alabama land- and slave-owner Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (pictured), reputed to be America's richest man in 1860, lost a half million dollars during the American Civil War.
  • Interstate Commerce Commissioner Walter L. Bragg died after suffering from the effects of Civil War wounds, a quarter century after the war ended.
  • Jefferson Davis conceded the American Civil War at the Burt-Stark Mansion.
  • Theodore O'Hara's Bivouac of the Dead, popularized in American Civil War memorials, was actually written for fallen Kentucky soldiers in Latin America a decade before the War.
  • General Ulysses S. Grant's Civil War dispatch boat Monohansett was a chartered Martha's Vineyard ferry.
  • Union Army color bearer Thomas J. Higgins received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Vicksburg during the US Civil War at the request of his Confederate captors.
  • The Clash's song "English Civil War," warning against the rise of far right groups in Britain, was adapted from a popular American Civil War song.
  • Swedish soldier Charles F. Henningsen participated in civil wars and independence movements in Spain, Nicaragua, Hungary and the United States, but died without ever winning any of the causes for which he fought.
  • Kentucky philanthropist Eli Metcalfe Bruce contributed more than $400,000 of his personal fortune to aiding Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War.
  • Kentucky's Union County largely supported the Confederacy in the Civil War and built a monument to its Confederate dead afterwards.
  • Lt. Henry B. Hidden is believed to be first officer of Union volunteer cavalry killed in the American Civil War.
  • Fort Delaware State Park, once a Civil War prisoner-of-war camp, is now home to one of the largest heronries north of Florida.
  • Nickajack was the name of a proposed neutral state made up of Unionist areas of North Alabama and East Tennessee in the period leading up to the American Civil War.
  • Orion P. Howe (pictured) was awarded the Medal of Honor for his childhood service as a Union Army drummer boy during the American Civil War.
  • Senator Orris S. Ferry (pictured), who served as a brigadier general in the American Civil War, died of a wasting spinal disease.
  • Nathaniel Henry Hutton was a civil engineer on routes for the Pacific Railroad Surveys and a wagon road used by the Butterfield Overland Mail in the years before the American Civil War.
  • Morgan Henry Chrysler was one of only four men who rose from private to major general during the American Civil War.
  • Luther Prentice Bradley, a Union brigadier general in the American Civil War, was severely wounded during the Battle of Chickamauga where he commanded a brigade.
  • Maine produced more Union soldiers in proportion to its population than any other Union state in the American Civil War.
  • Pauline Cushman (pictured), an actress and Union Army spy during the American Civil War, was caught posing as a Confederate soldier, but escaped hanging by three days.
  • Robert Byington Mitchell, who was Brigadier General in the Union Army during the American Civil War, served as Governor of New Mexico Territory from 1866 to 1869.
  • Wyndham Robertson, a Virginia politician who was a member of the Committee of Nine that helped Virginia be re-admitted to the Union after the American Civil War, was a descendant of Pocahontas.
  • The Greek Slave (pictured), a statue by Hiram Powers, became a symbol for abolitionists in the United States in the years prior to the American Civil War.
  • American soldiers and sailors did not have access to dental service until Confederate Surgeon General Samuel P. Moore (pictured) brought in the first dentists at military hospitals during the Civil War.
  • William Stewart Simkins, later professor emeritus at the University of Texas School of Law, may have fired the first shot of the US Civil War.
  • Vermilion Lighthouse is a replica of the 1877 iron lighthouse that was forged from recycled smooth-bored cannons that had been obsoleted after the American Civil War.
  • Thomas E. Corcoran received the Medal of Honor for rescuing his crewmates from their sinking ship during the American Civil War.
  • Towson (Md.) Methodist Church's membership split in two for 90 years after a dispute over the American Civil War.
  • Kate Mason Rowland introduced a motion in the United Daughters of the Confederacy to have the American Civil War known as the War Between the States.
  • Karl Wilhelm Scheibler, the "Cotton King" of Łódź, sold his stock at triple the price after the American Civil War broke out.
  • George P. Kane, Marshall of Police in Baltimore, Maryland, was imprisoned in Fort McHenry along with Mayor George William Brown and pro-South members of the city council by the Northern Army during the American Civil War.
  • Hanging Rocks (pictured) at Wappocomo, West Virginia, on the South Branch Potomac River was the site of both a battle between Delaware and Catawba Native American tribes and an American Civil War skirmish.
  • Henry Bohlen, an American Civil War Union Brigadier General who was born in Germany in 1810, was the first foreign-born Union general in the Civil War.
  • French-designed cannons, manufactured in both the North and the South, were the primary artillery weapons of the American Civil War.
  • Francis Mallison was elected to the New York State Assembly after being held as a Union prisoner of war during the American Civil War.
  • Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island was used as a staging area by the Union Army during the American Civil War, and that more than 230 Union troops were buried there.
  • Fort Runyon, built to defend Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War, was almost the same size, shape, and in almost the same place as the Pentagon, built 80 years later.
  • Dr. Hunter McGuire was a physician who amputated General Stonewall Jackson's arm during the American Civil War and later helped found several hospitals and a prominent medical school in Richmond, Virginia.
  • James D. Hutton was a pioneer photographer of the northern Rockies who betrayed the plans for the Federal defense of Alexandria, Virginia, to the Confederacy early in the American Civil War.
  • John Ordronaux, an American Civil War army surgeon, went on to become a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on medical jurisprudence and U.S. constitutional law.
  • John Fuller, who led a Union Army division at the Battle of Atlanta and participated in Sherman's March to the Sea, was one of the few foreign-born generals in the American Civil War.
  • Joseph Finegan, an attorney, politician, and railroad builder, was the commander of Confederate forces at the Battle of Olustee, fought in 1864 during the American Civil War.
  • John H. Kelly was the youngest Confederate Brigadier General at the time of his appointment at 23, and one of the youngest generals to die during the American Civil War at 24.
  • John G. Downey, Governor of California during the American Civil War, was the state's only foreign-born governor until the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • James Edward Hanger, the first amputee of the American Civil War, designed his own prosthesis and went on to found a prosthetic manufacturer still in business today.
  • Kotetsu, a Japanese ironclad battleship, was originally intended to be Stonewall of the Confederate States Navy but was not delivered until after the end of the American Civil War.
  • Adam R. Johnson's Newburgh Raid, using two stovepipes, charred wood, a broken wagon, and only 27 men, resulted in the first capture of a northern town in the American Civil War.
    • Previous Quiz Next Quiz

    Related Quizzes

    Key Events and Figures of the 13th Century: A Quiz

    #13th century #history #Mongol Empire #Crusades #European culture #Franciscan order #Cambridge #Boyana Church

    Discovering the 14th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #14th Century #History #Renaissance #Ming Dynasty #Hundred Years' War #Petrarch #Military History

    Exploring the 16th Century: Events, Figures, and Discoveries

    #history #16th century #exploration #Renaissance #Conquistadores #art #politics #religion

    Exploring the 17th Century: Key Events and Figures

    #17th century #history #empires #Mughal Empire #Ottoman Empire #Persian Empire #Taiwan #Hudson's Bay Company #Kara Mustafa #French history

    Exploring the 18th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #18th century #history #quiz #education #literature #philosophy #politics

    Significant Events of 1904

    #1904 #history #events #quiz #education

    Significant Events and Figures of 1906

    #1906 #history #chess #astronomy #civil rights #swimming #biochemistry

    Significant Events and Figures of 1911

    #1911 #history #events #figures #Nobel Prize #aviation #fire incidents #education #composers