Battle of Trenton
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50 free Battle of Trenton trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In the last week of 1776 the American Revolution was close to collapse. George Washington's army had been chased out of New York and across New Jersey, enlistments were about to expire, and few people thought the cause could survive the winter. Then Washington took his soldiers back over the Delaware River in a storm and surprised the Hessian garrison at Trenton. The fight was short, but it changed the mood of the whole war. This quiz gathers the fun facts that make the story stick: the password for the attack, the future famous names in the ranks, the warning that went unread, and the legends that historians have since taken apart. It also covers the painting that fixed the crossing in American memory, the monument that marks the battlefield, and what happened in the weeks that followed. It suits students of the American Revolution, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone planning a trip to the crossing sites or downtown Trenton. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which holiday night in 1776 did George Washington's army cross the icy Delaware to attack Trenton?
Christmas
Christmas night, December 25, was when the crossing began. Sleet and a choked river put the landing three hours behind schedule, so the planned pre-dawn attack came after sunrise.
Q 02Which grim password did Washington set for the attack on Trenton, as a visiting doctor saw written on a note?
Victory or Death
Victory or Death was the challenge given to sentries around the New Jersey landing. The doctor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had come to cheer the general up.
Q 03Which future US president was badly wounded by a musket ball in the shoulder at the Battle of Trenton?
James Monroe
James Monroe, an 18-year-old lieutenant, was hit while charging the Hessian cannon on King Street. A doctor clamped the severed artery in time to save his life.
Q 04Which popular belief about the Hessians at Trenton do historians such as Edward Lengel dismiss as legend?
They were drunk
They were drunk, the story goes, but an American who guarded the prisoners swore not a drop was touched that night. Weeks of skirmishes and false alarms had simply worn the garrison out.
Q 05What peacetime trade suited John Glover's Massachusetts regiment to getting Washington's army over the Delaware?
Sailors and fishermen
Sailors and fishermen from Marblehead filled Glover's ranks. Four months earlier the same men had carried the beaten army off Long Island overnight.
Q 06Which future statesman, then a young artillery captain, fired cannon down King Street at Trenton?
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton's New York battery stood on the high ground where Trenton's two main streets met. A bronze relief on the city's battle monument shows his guns about to fire.
Q 07What stained the snow dark red behind Washington's ragged soldiers on the night march to Trenton?
Their bleeding feet
Their bleeding feet marked the route: many soldiers had no boots and marched with rags tied around their feet. Two men died on the way to Trenton.
Q 08With gunpowder soaked on the march to Trenton, which weapon did Washington tell General Sullivan to use?
The bayonet
The bayonet would have to do, Washington replied, adding that he was resolved to take Trenton. The Hessian commander had vowed to meet any attack with the very same weapon.
Q 09Which European river was the model for the icy water in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware?
The Rhine
The Rhine stood in for the Delaware because the artist worked in Düsseldorf. American tourists and student painters there posed as Washington's soldiers.
Q 10Henry Knox, whose booming voice steered the crossing before Trenton, once ran what kind of Boston shop?
A bookshop
A bookshop was his living, and its volumes on military science helped turn the largely self-educated Bostonian into Washington's chief of artillery.
Q 11Whose pamphlet The American Crisis is said to have been read to Washington's troops days before Trenton?
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine wrote it that December after retreating across New Jersey with the army. No order from Washington to read it out survives; the story comes from an early biographer.
Q 12From which state's riverbank did Washington's army push off on the night crossing that led to Trenton?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was the launch point: the army had sheltered in Bucks County since retreating over the river weeks earlier. The landing in New Jersey lay nine miles above Trenton.
Q 13Which Hessian colonel, a veteran of 36 years' service, commanded the Trenton garrison and died of his wounds?
Johann Rall
Q 21Which painter created the famous image of Washington crossing the Delaware, hoping to inspire Europe's reformers?
Emanuel Leutze
Emanuel Leutze grew up in America and conceived the picture abroad during the revolutions of 1848. He went on to paint three versions of it.
Q 22What destroyed the original version of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in Bremen in 1942?
A British bombing raid
A British bombing raid on September 5, 1942, wiped out the canvas that hung in the Kunsthalle Bremen. Two later versions by the same hand survive.
Q 23Where did the smaller version of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware hang from 1979 to 2014?
The White House
Johann Rall had brushed off his engineers' advice to fortify the town. Shot twice in the side while rallying his men, he was carried back to his headquarters to die.
Q 14Where was an unread warning of the attack reportedly found after the Hessian commander at Trenton fell?
In his coat pocket
In his coat pocket, the story goes: a Loyalist had tried to warn him the night before, but he was busy at cards and put the message away unread.
Q 15Which flag in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware did not yet exist on that night in 1776?
The Stars and Stripes
The Stars and Stripes was not specified by Congress until June 1777, six months after the crossing. A truer choice would have been the Continental Union flag that Washington raised in January 1776.
Q 16Which New York institution displays the giant canvas of Washington crossing the Delaware in its American Wing?
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has owned the canvas since 1897, a gift from John Stewart Kennedy. More than 50,000 people came to see it when it first went on show in New York.
Q 17Which British general, sent to retake Trenton, boasted he would bag the 'old fox' Washington by morning?
Lord Cornwallis
Lord Cornwallis woke to find the American camp empty. Washington had slipped away overnight, leaving 500 men to keep the fires burning and make noise with picks and shovels.
Q 18Eight days after Trenton, at which New Jersey college town did Washington score his next surprise win?
Princeton
Princeton fell on January 3, 1777. The last British holdouts took refuge in Nassau Hall, home of the college, before they were talked into surrendering.
Q 19Which actor played George Washington in The Crossing, the 2000 TV film about the attack on Trenton?
Jeff Daniels
Jeff Daniels led the cast of the A&E film, which won a Peabody Award. Its snowy New Jersey was actually Toronto, where filming took place in the spring of 1999.
Q 20Who made Abraham Hunt, host of the Hessian commander's late party before Trenton, the town's postmaster?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin, then postmaster general of the colonies, gave Hunt the job in 1764. Hunt kept the colonel and his officers at his table late into the night before the attack.
The White House displayed it in the West Wing reception area for 35 years. In 2022 it sold at Christie's for $45 million, more than double the top estimate.
Q 24For which Russian ruler had the Hessian commander at Trenton fought the Ottoman Turks a few years earlier?
Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great had him in her service in 1771 and 1772, under Count Orlov. By then he had already fought in Scotland against the Jacobites and through the Seven Years' War.
Q 25What stands today on the Trenton site where the Hessian commander had his headquarters and died of his wounds?
A Catholic cathedral
A Catholic cathedral, St. Mary of the Assumption, occupies the ground, and a marker on its rectory records where the colonel died. The present building dates from 1959, after a fire destroyed the first.
Q 26Which cargo craft, built to haul iron down the Delaware, carried Washington's infantry over before Trenton?
Durham boats
Durham boats, named for an ironworks upriver, had high sides and a shallow draft and could be poled across. The horses and cannon went over on large ferries instead.
Q 27Which centuries-long cold spell is blamed for the frozen Delaware that Washington's army faced before Trenton?
The Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age probably explains the unusually harsh winters of the 1770s. Floes in the river were the gravest danger of the crossing and kept two other American columns from completing theirs.
Q 28The architect of the Trenton Battle Monument, John H. Duncan, also designed which New York landmark?
Grant's Tomb
Grant's Tomb is his best-known work. His Trenton column is topped by a 13-foot bronze Washington, pointing down the street where the American guns opened fire.
Q 29The Trenton Battle Monument was modeled on a 1670s London column that commemorates which event?
The Great Fire
The Great Fire of 1666 is marked by a column known simply as the Monument, near where the blaze began. Trenton's version swaps its gilded urn of flames for a statue of Washington.
Q 30Which major award did David Hackett Fischer's book Washington's Crossing, about the Trenton campaign, win in 2005?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for History went to Fischer's account, which starts from the famous painting and argues that the choices of individuals turned the course of the war.