American Revolution
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This American Revolution quiz has 254 free questions with answers and runs from the Boston Tea Party and the shot heard round the world through Saratoga, the winter at Valley Forge and the surrender at Yorktown. Expect the famous names — Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Benedict Arnold — alongside the battles and figures that usually get skipped: Cowpens, Kings Mountain, Camden, Nathan Hale and the real woman behind Molly Pitcher. It works as a warm-up for a history class, a July 4th party round or a straight test of what you remember from school. Questions range from easy to genuinely hard, so beginners and buffs can play the same set. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its source, so if you disagree with one you can go and see where it came from.
30 of 254 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft in June 1776; Congress then cut about a quarter of it, including his attack on the slave trade.
Q 02Instead of 'The British are coming', what did Paul Revere reportedly warn on his ride?
The Regulars are coming out
The Regulars are coming out is what a sentry heard him say; most colonists still thought of themselves as British, so the famous cry would have meant little, and his mission depended on stealth.
Q 03Which treaty formally ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783?
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783; on the same day Britain made peace with France and Spain in separate treaties signed at Versailles.
Q 04Which British act imposed a direct tax on printed materials in the American colonies?
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 required that newspapers, legal documents and even playing cards be produced on stamped paper from London, fuelling 'no taxation without representation'.
Q 05When Congress made George Washington commander-in-chief in 1775, what did he refuse to accept?
A salary
A salary: Washington turned down the $500 a month Congress had voted, saying he wanted no profit from the post, and asked only that his expenses be repaid from the account he kept.
Q 06Where did the Continental Army endure a harsh winter encampment from December 1777 to June 1778?
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania lay a short march from British-held Philadelphia; the winter was not unusually cold, but disease, fed by hunger and supply failures, killed nearly 2,000 of the 12,000 men.
Q 07Which document did the Second Continental Congress send to the king in July 1775, pledging loyalty while the fighting went on?
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition, adopted on July 5, 1775, begged the king to step in; George III would not even see the envoy who carried it and instead proclaimed the colonies in rebellion.
Q 08After Cornwallis's surrender the Marquis de Lafayette was hailed as 'The Hero of Two' what?
Worlds
The Hero of Two Worlds, the Old and the New: back in France he became a leading voice of the revolution that broke out in 1789.
Q 09What were the German troops hired by Britain to fight in the American Revolution commonly called?
Hessians
Hessians got the name because more than half of them came from Hesse-Kassel; they were not freelance mercenaries but whole regiments hired out by their princes to raise income.
Q 10Which Mohawk leader allied with the British and raided the New York frontier in the Revolution?
Joseph Brant
Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) sailed to England in 1775 and was presented at court; after the war he led his followers to a British land grant on the Grand River in Ontario.
Q 11Burgoyne's 1777 campaign was meant to cut which region off from the other colonies?
New England
New England, the hotbed of the rebellion, was to be severed from the colonies to its south by a drive on Albany; instead Burgoyne's army was surrounded and forced to surrender that October.
Q 12Despite its name, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought mainly on which nearby hill?
Breed's Hill
Breed's Hill, the lower rise closer to Boston, is where Prescott's men dug in overnight on June 16, 1775; the British took it the next day only on their third assault.
Q 13Common Sense called it absurd for a continent to be perpetually governed by what?
An island
Q 21At which Virginia town did Cornwallis surrender on October 19, 1781?
Yorktown
Yorktown's surrender came without Cornwallis, who pleaded illness and sent his deputy, Charles O'Hara, to hand over the sword in his place.
Q 22Which 1774 laws answered the Boston Tea Party by closing Boston's port?
Intolerable Acts
Intolerable Acts were known in Britain as the Coercive Acts; meant to isolate Boston, they instead rallied the other colonies, which called the First Continental Congress.
Q 23At which 1778 battle is 'Molly Pitcher' said to have taken her fallen husband's place at a cannon?
Monmouth
Monmouth was fought in fierce June heat; legend says Mary Hays carried water to the gun crews, hence 'Molly Pitcher', and took over when her husband collapsed.
An island, Paine wrote, cannot rule a continent forever: 'In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.' The pamphlet appeared anonymously in January 1776.
Q 14Benedict Arnold's treason was exposed in 1780 when militiamen found his papers hidden where on John André?
In his stocking
In his stocking: three militiamen who stopped André near Tarrytown searched his boots and found the plans of the fort Arnold meant to betray; André was hanged as a spy, while Arnold escaped.
Q 15In 1777, Congress commissioned the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette at which rank?
Major general
Major general was the rank Congress gave Lafayette, 19 and untested in battle; at first he had no troops to command and served on Washington's staff.
Q 16Which American general routed Banastre Tarleton's force at Cowpens in January 1781?
Daniel Morgan
Daniel Morgan used his militia as bait at Cowpens, ordering two volleys and a withdrawal before his regulars and cavalry closed the trap; the battle became a textbook double envelopment.
Q 17Asked to surrender in 1779, John Paul Jones is said to have replied 'I have not yet begun to' what?
Fight
'I have not yet begun to fight' is how his lieutenant later recalled it; Jones lashed Bonhomme Richard to HMS Serapis, took her surrender, and sailed away in his prize after his own ship sank.
Q 18Which European volunteer drilled the Continental Army in 1778 and wrote its drill manual?
Baron von Steuben
Baron von Steuben reached Washington's camp in February 1778 and, speaking little English, drilled a model company that then taught the rest; his 'Blue Book' became the army's manual.
Q 19Which southern city fell to the British in May 1780, costing the Patriots an entire army of some 5,000 men?
Charleston
Charleston's defenders surrendered on May 12, 1780, after a six-week siege; the loss opened the Carolinas to Cornwallis.
Q 20Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga, was routed in August 1780 at which South Carolina battle?
Camden
Camden was a rout: Gates fled on horseback and rode north for three days, leaving his army behind; it wrecked his reputation, and Nathanael Greene replaced him in the South.
Q 24Henry Knox hauled 60 tons of cannon to Boston in the winter of 1775-76 from which captured fort?
Fort Ticonderoga
Fort Ticonderoga's guns went some 300 miles by sled over frozen rivers and mountains; once mounted on Dorchester Heights in March 1776 they forced the British to evacuate Boston.
Q 25In August 1776 William Howe outflanked Washington's army and drove it to the East River in the Battle of what?
Long Island
Long Island was a clear British win, but Howe paused instead of storming the last American lines, and all 9,000 men slipped across to Manhattan by night without a single loss.
Q 26Where was the October 1780 Patriot victory that crippled Loyalist militia in the South?
Kings Mountain
At Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, frontier 'Overmountain Men' surrounded Patrick Ferguson's Loyalists on the wooded ridge and killed Ferguson himself; almost every man on the British side was American-born.
Q 27Which future president defended the British soldiers charged with murder after the Boston Massacre?
John Adams
John Adams argued the soldiers had fired in self-defense and won acquittals for six of them; he later called the case one of the best pieces of service he ever rendered his country.
Q 28Roughly how many chests of tea did the Sons of Liberty dump into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773?
About 340
About 340 chests (342 by the usual count) were hacked open with axes and tipped overboard; Governor Thomas Hutchinson called it high treason.
Q 29What was Paul Revere's trade at the time of his famous midnight ride?
Silversmith
Silversmith Paul Revere was also an engraver: his famous print of the Boston Massacre was based on a drawing by Henry Pelham.
Q 30Washington's 1776 Christmas-night crossing of the Delaware set up an attack on which New Jersey town?
Trenton
Trenton was a gamble Washington had to take: his shrunken army's enlistments were about to expire, and the dawn attack on December 26 captured most of the garrison at little cost.