U.S. History Practice Test: The Civil War
- Civil War
- 10 questions
- 12 minutes
These 10 questions cover the growing conflict over slavery in the 1850s and the war itself from 1861 to 1865. Watch the dates: several laws and court cases came only a few years apart.
Tap an option to mark your answer. You can change your mind, or tap the same option again to leave the question blank. The correct answers and explanations appear when you finish the test.Tap an option to answer; tap it again to leave the question blank.
Your result
- 0 correct
- 0 wrong
- 0 blank
-
Question 1
Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which pair of states entered the Union?
Correct answer: B
The compromise kept the balance of slave and free states in the Senate and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′. California entered as a free state later, in 1850.
-
Question 2
Which part of the Compromise of 1850 angered many people in the North?
Correct answer: D
The new law required Northerners to help capture people who had escaped slavery and denied the accused a jury trial. Admitting California as a free state pleased the North, not the other way around.
-
Question 3
Why did fighting break out in Kansas after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854?
Correct answer: C
The act used popular sovereignty, letting settlers decide the slavery question, and it replaced the Missouri Compromise line. Pro-slavery and antislavery settlers clashed so violently that the territory was called "Bleeding Kansas."
-
Question 4
What did the Supreme Court rule in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)?
Correct answer: A
The decision denied Scott's claim to freedom and said the Missouri Compromise ban was unconstitutional, which deepened the crisis. Ending school segregation came almost a century later with Brown v. Board of Education.
-
Question 5
After Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, which state was the first to secede from the Union?
Correct answer: B
South Carolina left the Union in December 1860, and other Deep South states followed in early 1861. Virginia seceded only after the fighting at Fort Sumter.
-
Question 6
The Civil War began in April 1861 when Confederate forces fired on a federal fort in which city?
Correct answer: D
Confederate guns attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, and the fort surrendered the next day. Richmond later became the capital of the Confederacy.
-
Question 7
Which statement about the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) is accurate?
Correct answer: A
Lincoln's order applied to Confederate areas and did not cover loyal border states such as Kentucky and Maryland. Slavery ended everywhere only with the 13th Amendment in 1865.
-
Question 8
In July 1863, Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North was stopped in a three-day battle near which town?
Correct answer: C
Lee's defeat at Gettysburg ended his last major invasion of the North, and Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address there that November. Antietam (1862) also stopped a Lee invasion, but it was a one-day battle in Maryland.
-
Question 9
Why was the Union capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July 1863 so important?
Correct answer: C
With Vicksburg taken, Union boats controlled the whole Mississippi, cutting Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana off from the rest of the South. New Orleans had already fallen to the Union in 1862.
-
Question 10
Where did Robert E. Lee surrender to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865?
Correct answer: B
Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, which effectively ended the war. Yorktown is where the British surrendered in 1781.
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
More History tests
HistoryU.S. History Practice Test: ReconstructionReconstruction10 questions12 min HistoryU.S. History Practice Test: Colonial AmericaColonial America10 questions12 minHistoryU.S. History Practice Test: The American RevolutionAmerican Revolution10 questions12 minHistoryU.S. History Practice Test: The Constitution and the Early RepublicConstitution and Early Republic10 questions12 minHistoryU.S. History Practice Test: Westward ExpansionWestward Expansion10 questions12 minHistoryU.S. History Practice Test: Industrialization and ImmigrationIndustrialization and Immigration10 questions12 minHistoryU.S. History Practice Test: The Progressive EraProgressive Era10 questions12 min