Civil War Jeopardy

Causes, battles, leaders, and emancipation in one Civil War review game. Free for teachers to copy; students join and buzz in on their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Causes of the War

$200
This 1860 election victory by an anti-slavery Republican prompted South Carolina to secede within weeks.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
$400
This 1850 law required Northerners to help capture and return enslaved people who had escaped to free states.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
$600
This 1857 Supreme Court decision ruled that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.
What is the Dred Scott decision?
$800
This best-selling 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe dramatized the cruelty of slavery for a Northern audience.
What is Uncle Tom's Cabin?
$1,000
This 1854 act let settlers in two new territories decide the slavery question themselves, leading to violent conflict.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

Union and Confederacy

$200
Eleven Southern states seceded to form this nation, with Richmond, Virginia, as its capital.
What is the Confederate States of America?
$400
This man served as the only president of the Confederacy.
Who is Jefferson Davis?
$600
This Southern harbor fort was the site of the war's opening shots in April 1861.
What is Fort Sumter?
$800
This border state stayed in the Union despite permitting slavery, in part because it surrounded the national capital on three sides.
What is Maryland?
$1,000
The Union's early strategy to blockade Southern ports and split the Confederacy along the Mississippi River was nicknamed for this constricting snake.
What is the Anaconda Plan?

Generals and Leaders

$200
This Union general accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox and later became US president.
Who is Ulysses S. Grant?
$400
This Confederate general led the Army of Northern Virginia and surrendered in April 1865.
Who is Robert E. Lee?
$600
This Confederate general earned his nickname when his troops held firm like a wall of stone at the war's first major battle.
Who is Stonewall Jackson?
$800
This Union general's 1864 march from Atlanta to the sea aimed to destroy the South's ability to wage war.
Who is William Tecumseh Sherman?
$1,000
This Confederate cavalry commander was known for daring raids and later helped found the Ku Klux Klan.
Who is Nathan Bedford Forrest?

Key Battles

$200
This 1862 battle in Maryland remains the single bloodiest day in American military history.
What is the Battle of Antietam?
$400
This first major land battle of the war, fought in Virginia in July 1861, showed both sides the conflict would not be short.
What is the Battle of Bull Run?
$600
This 1863 Mississippi River siege ended in a Confederate surrender on July 4, splitting the Confederacy in two.
What is the Siege of Vicksburg?
$800
This clash between two ironclad warships in 1862 signaled the end of the age of wooden warships.
What is the Battle of Hampton Roads?
$1,000
This failed Confederate infantry assault on the third day of a major Pennsylvania battle is remembered by the name of the general who led it.
What is Pickett's Charge?

Emancipation

$200
Lincoln issued this 1863 executive order declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held territory free.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
$400
This constitutional amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the Thirteenth Amendment?
$600
This term describes the roughly 180,000 Black soldiers who served in the Union Army, many in segregated regiments.
Who are the United States Colored Troops?
$800
This Massachusetts regiment of Black soldiers, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, is famous for its assault on a South Carolina fort.
What is the 54th Massachusetts Infantry?
$1,000
This unfulfilled Civil War-era promise to freed families named a plot of land along with a farm animal used for plowing.
What is "forty acres and a mule"?

Reconstruction Begins

$200
This term describes the period after the war when former Confederate states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union.
What is Reconstruction?
$400
This federal agency, created in 1865, helped formerly enslaved people find work, education, and food.
What is the Freedmen's Bureau?
$600
This constitutional amendment granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States, including formerly enslaved people.
What is the Fourteenth Amendment?
$800
This constitutional amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited denying the vote based on race.
What is the Fifteenth Amendment?
$1,000
This term describes Southern laws passed after the war to restrict the rights and freedom of movement of Black citizens.
What are the Black Codes?

Final Jeopardy — Turning Points

Fought over three days in July 1863, this Pennsylvania battle ended Lee's second invasion of the North and is often called the war's turning point.

What is the Battle of Gettysburg?

How to run this board

This board takes a class from the debates over slavery and states' rights through Fort Sumter, Antietam, and Gettysburg, and ends with emancipation and the first steps of Reconstruction.

Budget about 35 minutes for the main board and 10 for Final Jeopardy. Reading each answer aloud and asking one follow-up question turns a trivia game into an actual review session without losing the energy.

If your class covered the war in halves, play the left three categories after the first half and save the rest for the end of the unit.

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