Big Picture

Questions

1. How many states seceded from the Union during the first weeks of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency?
2. When were the first shots of the American Civil War fired?
3. In which famous battle did Confederate General Robert E. Lee suffer his greatest military loss?
4. What was the goal of the Overland Campaign?
5. How was the Civil War a disaster for the American South?

Answers

1. Eleven.
2. April 1861.
3. At the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest engagement of the entire war. 
4. Union General Ulysses S. Grant launched this campaign in 1864 in the hopes of destroying General Robert E. Lee’s army through a series of major battles in which he would use the strategy of attrition. The plan failed.
5. The war left the South physically ravaged and economically and psychologically devastated.  It lost many of its young men, sons, husbands, fathers, and friends in the conflict, and the southern planter aristocracy lost its political power.