Bruce G. Kauffmann
HISTORIAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
SPEAKER
AUTHOR
Quiz- American History
(Grades 9-12)
1.
What two speeches of Abraham Lincoln’s are on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.?
2.
Who was the first female Cabinet member? Who was the first female elected to the U.S. Senate? Who was the
first female elected to the House of Representatives?
3.
He is responsible for choosing George Washington to command the Continental Army during the American
Revolution and he also chose Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence starting that
revolution. Who was he?
4.
The Federalist Papers, the newspaper articles that helped persuade Americans to ratify the U.S. Constitution,
were written by three men under the pen name Publius. Who were the three men?
5.
Elbridge Gerry was a Founding Father who signed the Declaration of Independence, was twice elected governor
of Massachusetts, and also elected vice president. Yet he is most famous for a political term, coined in his honor,
after he re-shaped voting districts in Massachusetts to retain political power. That term is widely used today.
What is it?
6.
Bill Clinton was the second president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Who was the first
president in our history to be impeached?
7.
Plessy v. Ferguson was the Supreme Court decision that established the “separate but equal” provision used to
legally discriminate against African-Americans. In 1954 it was overturned by one of the most famous Supreme
Court decisions in our history. Name it.
8.
Name the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated. Name four presidents who survived assassination
attempts.
The poem, The New Colossus, with its immortal words, “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free” is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Who wrote the poem?
9.
10.
A former slave, he became the most famous African-American and most forceful abolitionist during the Civil
War, even gaining the respect and admiration of President Lincoln. Who was he?
11.
He is the president responsible for the “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which both his attorney general and deputy
attorney general both resigned rather than carry out his presidential order. Who was he, and—extra credit—
who were the two men who resigned?
12.
The Chicago Daily Tribune was so sure this president would lose re-election, it published a headline claiming so
before the election was official. He won and gleefully displayed the errant headline the next day. Who was the
president and who was his opponent?
Exploring the oddities and ironies of history, and today’s politics and public policy.
Bruce’s History Lessons
Thinking Out Loud
Quiz- American History
Answer Key
1.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address.
2.
In 1933, Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt, becoming the
first-ever female Cabinet member. In 1932, Hattie Carraway from Arkansas became the first woman elected to the U.S
Senate. In 1916, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.
John Adams, the second president of the United States, chose Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of
3.
Independence, and he engineered the appointment of George Washington to command the Continental Army that
would fight the British in the wake of Jefferson’s Declaration.
4.
The Federalist Papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay.
5.
When Elbridge Gerry re-shaped voting districts in Massachusetts so that his Democratic-Republican Party could
retain political power, one of those districts looked like a salamander, resulting in the term “Gerrymandering” to
describe carving out voting districts to ensure an election outcome favorable to one political party over another.
6.
Andrew Johnson, who assumed the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was the first
president to be impeached. Leading to the impeachment was Johnson’s disagreements with the Republican-controlled
Congress over the post-Civil War Reconstruction policies with respect to the defeated Confederate states.
Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned by the famous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. The
7.
lead counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which initiated the lawsuit, was
Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first African-American Supreme Court justice.
8.
The four U.S. Presidents assassinated were Abraham Lincoln (April 15, 1865), James A. Garfield (Sept, 19, 1881),
William McKinley (Sept. 14, 1901), and John F. Kennedy (Nov. 22, 1963). Among the many failed assassination
attempts against presidents are those against Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.
9.
Emma Lazarus, who came from a Jewish family that years before had immigrated to America to escape the
Russian pogroms against Jews, wrote The New Colossus.
10.
Stephen Douglass, a runaway slave, became a self-taught author and speaker who rose to prominence as the most
forceful advocate for the abolition of slavery during the Civil War, even advising President Lincoln on the means to
achieve that goal.
11.
On Saturday, October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon engineered what was later called the “Saturday Night Massacre,”
in which his attempts to fire Archibald Cox, the special investigator appointed to investigate the Watergate scandal,
backfired when his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and his deputy attorney general, William Ruckleshaus, both
resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order to fire Cox. Nixon’s solicitor general, Robert Bork, finally carried out
Nixon’s order.
12.
The Republican candidate for president in 1948, Thomas Dewey, was so far ahead of the incumbent Democrat,
President Harry Truman, that pollsters stopped polling a month before the election, but Truman won decisively, and the
next day gleefully held aloft the Chicago Daily Tribune’s erroneous headline proclaiming Dewey the winner.