American Wars
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50 free American Wars trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
America's wars are full of stories that textbooks rush past: spies and turncoats, last-minute gambles, a battle fought after the peace was signed, and mascots that became heroes. Each conflict left behind names, places and turning points that still shape the country. This quiz covers the major wars the United States has fought, from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War through both world wars to Korea, Vietnam and the conflicts of the twenty-first century. Expect generals and presidents, famous battlefields, ships, codes and memorials, plus a few lesser-known fights at sea. Many of the questions are friendly enough for kids studying US history, with tougher ones mixed in for history buffs, so the set works for families, classrooms and trivia nights alike. Every answer comes with a short explanation, which makes it as useful for review as it is for play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous residence did British troops set on fire after capturing Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812?
The White House
The White House fire and the others were put out within a day by a sudden, violent thunderstorm, possibly a hurricane. The Capitol burned on the same night in August 1814.
Q 02Which Boston silversmith rode out on the night of April 18, 1775, to warn that British troops were on the march?
Paul Revere
Paul Revere never reached Concord: a British patrol intercepted him beyond Lexington, questioned him and let him go. His fellow riders William Dawes and Samuel Prescott both escaped.
Q 03On the beaches of which French region did Allied troops come ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944?
Normandy
Normandy was one of four sites the planners weighed. A deception built around a fictitious army group led the Germans to expect the main attack at Calais instead.
Q 04Which national symbol points at the viewer in James Montgomery Flagg's famous World War I recruiting poster?
Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam wears a modified version of the artist's own face in the poster. Flagg borrowed the pointing pose from a British poster of Lord Kitchener made three years earlier.
Q 05What kind of animal was Sergeant Stubby, the mascot of a US infantry regiment in France during World War I?
A dog
A dog of uncertain breed, Stubby was a stray whom a soldier hid aboard a troop ship bound for Europe. His owner gave the preserved body to the Smithsonian in 1956.
Q 06Which future president won the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815, two weeks after a peace treaty was signed?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson beat the British before word of the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, had crossed the Atlantic. The British suffered over 2,000 casualties to the Americans' 71.
Q 07On which Pacific island did six US Marines raise the flag on Mount Suribachi in a famous 1945 photograph?
Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima's famous picture shows the second flag raised that day, after a smaller one went up in the morning. Three of the six Marines in it were killed later in the battle.
Q 08Which Civil War nurse, nicknamed the Angel of the Battlefield, went on to found the American Red Cross?
Clara Barton
Clara Barton also ran an office after the fighting that answered more than 41,000 letters and helped locate over 22,000 missing soldiers.
Q 09Which Native American nation's language did Marine code talkers turn into an unbroken battlefield code in World War II?
Navajo
Navajo had no words for modern weapons, so the code talkers made them up: a submarine became an iron fish. The code was never broken.
Q 10Which country did US-led forces invade in October 2001, beginning the longest war in American military history?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan held American troops for almost 20 years, until the last transport plane left Kabul in August 2021. The invasion began less than a month after the September 11 attacks.
Q 11Which hired German troops did Washington surprise at Trenton after crossing the Delaware on Christmas night 1776?
Hessians
Hessians, rented out to Britain by German princes, made up about a quarter of its land forces in the war. Around 900 of them were taken prisoner at Trenton.
Q 12At which Virginia town did Lord Cornwallis surrender his British army in 1781, all but ending the Revolutionary War?
Yorktown
Yorktown's surrender ceremony went ahead without Cornwallis, who claimed to be ill. His deputy offered the sword to a French general, who pointed him toward Washington instead.
Q 13Which French nobleman became a major general in Washington's army at age 19 and a hero of the Revolutionary War?
Lafayette
Q 21Which river did the United States claim as the border of Texas, a dispute that sparked the Mexican–American War?
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande was the line President Polk insisted on, while Mexico put the border at the Nueces River, farther north. Fighting began after Polk sent soldiers into the strip between them.
Q 22Which general, nicknamed Old Rough and Ready, rode his Mexican–American War fame to the presidency in 1848?
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor had never voted in an election before his own. He had held off a much larger Mexican army under Santa Anna at Buena Vista in 1847.
Q 23Which future US state did Mexico cede in February 1848, nine days after gold was found there at Sutter's Mill?
California
Lafayette came back in 1824 as the nation's guest and toured all 24 states to a rapturous welcome. He is sometimes called the Hero of the Two Worlds.
Q 14At which Pennsylvania encampment did Washington's army endure the hungry winter of 1777–78 and emerge better drilled?
Valley Forge
Valley Forge cost the army nearly 2,000 lives, lost to disease rather than battle. A Prussian drill master, Baron von Steuben, used the months to retrain the survivors.
Q 15Which American general plotted to hand the fort at West Point to the British in 1780 and fled to their side?
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold's plot fell apart when militiamen caught British Major John André carrying papers that revealed it. André was hanged, and the general's name became a byword for treason.
Q 16Which American victory in upstate New York in 1777 persuaded France to enter the Revolutionary War as an ally?
Saratoga
Saratoga ended with General John Burgoyne surrendering his entire British army, which had marched south from Canada to take Albany and never reached it.
Q 17Which Baltimore stronghold withstood a 25-hour British bombardment in 1814, inspiring the words of the national anthem?
Fort McHenry
Fort McHenry's defenders swapped their storm flag for a far larger one at dawn. Francis Scott Key saw it still flying and began the poem that became the anthem.
Q 18Which US Navy frigate earned the nickname Old Ironsides when British shot rebounded off its hull in the War of 1812?
USS Constitution
USS Constitution won the name while wrecking HMS Guerriere in 1812. Launched in 1797, the ship sailed under its own power again to mark its 200th birthday.
Q 19Which Shawnee leader built a confederacy of tribes, sided with Britain in the War of 1812 and died in battle in 1813?
Tecumseh
Tecumseh helped the British capture Detroit in August 1812. His death at the Battle of the Thames, in what is now Ontario, caused his alliance to collapse.
Q 20Which president asked Congress to declare war on Britain in 1812 and fled the capital two years later to avoid capture?
James Madison
James Madison got his war by the narrowest margin of any American declaration of war: 79 to 49 among the representatives and 19 to 13 in the Senate.
California was the prize of a peace treaty that cost Mexico 55 percent of its territory. The United States paid $15 million for the land.
Q 24Which three-day battle in Pennsylvania in July 1863 is widely considered the turning point of the Civil War?
Gettysburg
Gettysburg cost the two armies between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties, the most of any Civil War battle. It ended after Pickett's Charge, an assault by about 12,000 Confederates, was thrown back.
Q 25Which island post in Charleston Harbor did Confederate guns bombard in April 1861 to open the Civil War?
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter gave up after 34 hours of shelling in which nobody on either side was killed. Lincoln answered by calling for 75,000 volunteers, and four more states left the Union.
Q 26In which Virginia village did Robert E. Lee surrender his army in April 1865, all but ending the Civil War?
Appomattox
Appomattox homeowner Wilmer McLean had moved there to escape the war after its first major battle was fought near his farm at Manassas. The surrender was signed in his parlor.
Q 27Which Civil War battle in Maryland remains the bloodiest single day in American history?
Antietam
Antietam left nearly 23,000 dead, wounded or missing on 17 September 1862. The result gave Lincoln the confidence to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days later.
Q 28Which Union general captured Vicksburg in 1863 and was then given command of all the Union armies?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant had already been hailed by Northern newspapers as Unconditional Surrender Grant, a play on his initials, after taking Fort Donelson in 1862.
Q 29Which Union general led the March to the Sea across Georgia in 1864, from Atlanta to the port of Savannah?
William T. Sherman
William T. Sherman telegraphed President Lincoln to present the captured port as a Christmas gift, along with 150 heavy guns and about 25,000 bales of cotton.
Q 30Which Union ironclad fought CSS Virginia to a standstill in 1862, in history's first combat between ironclad warships?
USS Monitor
USS Monitor carried just two guns, mounted in a revolving armored turret. The ship sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras on the last day of the same year.