1.
abolitionist: a person who believed in the abolishment or abolition of Negro slavery
2.
artillery: large, powerful weapons such as a cannons and mortars
3.
assassination: the murder of a prominent person such as President Lincoln
4.
battery: a unit of four or six cannons, or a fortified position on which they are placed
5.
battle: large-scale combat between two armed forces (skirmishes and engagements are smaller scaled and briefer)
6.
blockade: the closing off, using naval forces, of city or other area to traffic and communication
7.
border state: slave-owning states that did not secede from the Union: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri
8.
cartridge box: a leather box in which the soldier carried his rounds or bullets
9.
casualty: a person killed, wounded, captured, or missing during the war
10.
cavalry: soldiers mounted on horseback fighting as a unit
11.
chloroform: the liquid drug used to anesthetize (put to sleep) wounded soldiers in the war
12.
contraband: goods illegally traded during wartime
slaves were sometimes called contraband during the war
13.
copperhead: a Northern Democrat who agreed with Southern secession and clamored for peace during the war
14.
CSA: the alliance of 11 Southern states to form the Confederate States of America
15.
deploy: to spread out armies to create a battle line
16.
desertion: to leave one's military post, or run away from battle, often punishable death
17.
dixie: slang term for the Confederacy, also a popular Southern song
18.
draft or conscription: the selection of citizens for mandatory military service
19.
drill: the process of instruction recruits how to march and practice the military arts as a unit
20.
dysentery: an often fatal disease of the human intestines, usually caused by unsanitary conditions of military camps
21.
emancipation: the formal release of slaves from bondage, as it happened in January 1863
22.
envelopment: an attack against the flanks of an enemy's army, in hopes of eventually encircling it
23.
flanks: the sides of an army's line in battle
a flanking movement is attacking the sides
24.
forage: the search of food by soldiers often at the expense of farmer in the battle area
25.
greenback: paper money used during the Civil War in the north
26.
hardtack: a quarter-inch or half-inch thick hard cracker eaten by Civil War soldiers
also known as biscuits, crackers, and army bread
