Civil War and Reconstruction

[mchamp]

Hi,

I am going to take the Civil War DSST this next week and I feel I have studied hard but I am nervous about knowing the specific dates of several battles. Could someone tell me if I should know all the dates or just rough estimates. Should I know only the obvious dates like the years the civil war lasted, the assassination of Lincoln, etc...

Help

[perrik]

The chronology of events is important. Exact dates are not. Do pay close attention to which generals faced off in which individual battles and which regions (remember that the generals moved around a bit - Grant was at Shiloh and Vicksburg in the western theater, but later faced off against Lee's forces in Virginia).

Don't neglect the politics involved! You'll need to understand how politics affected military decisions, not to mention the mess that political maneuvering made of Reconstruction.

[jonbig04]

I thought I would post my feedback, I passed this one a few days ago. I actually thought it was pretty difficult, but I only studied for a few hours and watched the Ken Burns documentaries. I was counting on my previous knowledge of the subject to carry me through, which it did...barely.

As was mentioned before, there were many questions on what generals did what and what major battles they were involved in. Also many questions focuses on the factors behind the victory or loss. I went through every online quiz I could find and it actually really helped. The exam is very broad and deep. I found that in most of the questions I did not know the answer for sure, but based on some general knowledge of the specific subject or person I was able to narrow it down and increase my odds.