Quiz · 20 questions · answers explained
20 American history trivia questions with answers, from the Revolution to the Moon
Twenty multiple-choice questions on US history, in date order, from the first shots at Lexington to Apollo 11. Tap an answer to see straight away whether you are right and why. No sign-up, no timer.
Revolution and independence
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Fighting had already begun before independence was declared. When did the war start?
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D. 1775, at Lexington and Concord. More than a year of fighting preceded the Declaration. Until July 1776 the colonies were formally still petitioning the king as subjects.
From the “American Declaration of Independence” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Who commanded the Continental Army?
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A. George Washington. He lost more battles than he won. His achievement was keeping an army in the field at all, so that Britain could never end the war by a single victory.
From the “American Revolutionary War” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Who wrote the first draft of the Declaration?
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A. Thomas Jefferson. He was 33, and drafted it in about two weeks. Franklin and Adams edited it before Congress made its own cuts.
From the “American Declaration of Independence” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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The Declaration names three unalienable rights. Which are they?
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C. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. John Locke's formula was 'life, liberty and property'. Jefferson's substitution is deliberate, and has been argued over ever since.
From the “American Declaration of Independence” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Jefferson's draft contained a passage that Congress removed. What did it attack?
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B. The slave trade. It blamed George III for the trade. South Carolina and Georgia objected and it was struck out — the founding contradiction, visible in the drafting itself.
From the “American Declaration of Independence” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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'No taxation without representation' summarised which grievance?
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D. That Parliament taxed the colonies although no colonist sat in it. Colonial taxes were in fact lower than those paid in Britain. The objection was constitutional, not financial — about who had the right to levy them.
From the “American Declaration of Independence” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Why was the American victory at Saratoga in 1777 so important?
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B. It convinced France to enter the war openly on the American side. France had been supplying arms secretly. Saratoga proved the Americans could destroy a British army, and a formal alliance followed in 1778.
From the “American Revolutionary War” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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What was the greatest structural weakness of the American war effort?
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B. Congress could ask the states for money but could not tax, so the army went unpaid. Valley Forge was a supply failure, not a defeat. That weakness is exactly what the Constitution of 1787 was written to fix.
From the “American Revolutionary War” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781 because of what?
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C. He was trapped between Franco-American forces on land and a French fleet at sea. De Grasse's fleet beat off the British relief squadron at the Chesapeake. Without resupply or evacuation, the siege could end only one way.
From the “American Revolutionary War” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
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Put these in order. Which came SECOND?
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C. The Declaration of Independence. Lexington and Concord April 1775, the Declaration July 1776, Saratoga October 1777, Yorktown October 1781.
From the “American Revolutionary War” story in Histia · Full story: Why did the American colonies revolt?
Lincoln and the Civil War
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Who was president of the Confederate States?
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D. Jefferson Davis. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia but never held political office in the Confederacy. Davis had been United States Secretary of War a decade earlier.
From Histia's quiz bank · Full story: What caused the American Civil War?
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Antietam, in September 1862, holds a grim American record. Which?
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D. The bloodiest single day in American military history. Around 23,000 casualties in twelve hours. The narrow Union success there is what let Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength rather than desperation.
From Histia's quiz bank · Full story: What caused the American Civil War?
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What did the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 actually declare free?
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B. Enslaved people in the states then in rebellion — not those in the loyal border states. It was issued as a war measure under his powers as commander-in-chief, which is why it could not reach Kentucky or Maryland. The Thirteenth Amendment finished the job in 1865.
From the “Abraham Lincoln” story in Histia · Full story: Why was Lincoln assassinated?
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Where did Lincoln deliver the address beginning 'Four score and seven years ago'?
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C. At the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg. He spoke for about two minutes, after a two-hour oration by Edward Everett that nobody now remembers.
From the “Abraham Lincoln” story in Histia · Full story: Why was Lincoln assassinated?
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'Four score and seven years' before 1863 points back to which year, and which document?
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A. 1776, the Declaration of Independence. A score is twenty. Lincoln deliberately dated the nation from the Declaration — 'all men are created equal' — rather than from the Constitution, which had accommodated slavery.
From the “Abraham Lincoln” story in Histia · Full story: Why was Lincoln assassinated?
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Roughly how many soldiers died in the Civil War?
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C. Around 620,000, more American deaths than both world wars combined. Disease killed roughly twice as many as combat. In a country of 31 million, it was proportionally as if the United States today lost six million people.
From Histia's quiz bank · Full story: What caused the American Civil War?
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Which happened LAST?
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B. Lincoln's assassination. War in 1861, Proclamation in January 1863, Gettysburg in November 1863, and the assassination in April 1865 — five days after Lee surrendered.
From the “Abraham Lincoln” story in Histia · Full story: Why was Lincoln assassinated?
The twentieth century
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What were the 'fireside chats'?
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A. Radio addresses in which Roosevelt explained policy to the public in plain language. Radio let a president speak into people's homes without a newspaper standing in between — a genuinely new political instrument, and he was the first to master it.
From the “Franklin D. Roosevelt” story in Histia
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Roosevelt is the only American president to have done what?
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C. Won four presidential elections. The two-term limit was custom, not law, until the Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified in 1951 — passed precisely because of him.
From the “Franklin D. Roosevelt” story in Histia
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Which president publicly committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out?
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C. John F. Kennedy. He set the goal before Congress in May 1961, six weeks after Gagarin's flight. He did not live to see it met — Nixon was president in July 1969.
From the “Moon Landing (1969)” story in Histia · Full story: Did we really land on the Moon?
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