Founding Fathers Trivia
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99 free Founding Fathers trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free Founding Fathers trivia questions with answers. The Founding Fathers are the most quoted and least understood people in American history. Everyone knows Washington crossed the Delaware and Franklin flew a kite; fewer know that Franklin's funeral drew 20,000 people, that Thomas Paine's drew six, or that the man who wrote 'We the People' did it on a wooden leg. This quiz runs 99 questions across the whole founding generation: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, plus the signers, framers and firebrands around them, from John Hancock and Patrick Henry to Roger Sherman, George Mason, Charles Carroll and Abigail Adams. It covers the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights, starting with warm-ups and building to questions that will test a history teacher. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a US history class, a Fourth of July party or a pub-quiz history round.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who commanded the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later became the first US president?
George Washington
George Washington led the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783 and then served two terms as the first president; he also presided over the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Q 02Historian Richard B. Morris famously singled out how many 'key' Founding Fathers?
Seven
Richard B. Morris picked seven key figures in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, judging them on leadership, longevity and statesmanship.
Q 03Which three men negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War?
Franklin, Adams and Jay
Franklin, Adams and Jay signed the definitive treaty in Paris on September 3, 1783; Franklin had been America's senior diplomat in France throughout the war.
Q 04Which two Founding Fathers died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration?
Adams and Jefferson
Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826; Adams's reported last words, 'Thomas Jefferson survives', were mistaken, as Jefferson had died about five hours earlier in Virginia.
Q 05The 55 delegates who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention are commonly known by what term?
Framers
The Framers numbered 55 delegates in all, though only 39 of them signed the finished Constitution on September 17, 1787; three who stayed to the end refused to sign.
Q 06Which pamphleteer, author of Common Sense, is sometimes called the 'Father of the American Revolution'?
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776; its plain-language case for independence made it the best-selling pamphlet of the Revolution.
Q 07Which 'Give me liberty or give me death!' orator skipped the Constitutional Convention as he 'smelt a rat'?
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry, Virginia's first governor after independence, declined his seat at the 1787 Convention saying he 'smelt a rat', then led the Anti-Federalist fight against ratification in Virginia.
Q 08Who was the only person to sign the Continental Association, Declaration, Articles of Confederation and Constitution?
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman of Connecticut signed all four documents; a former shoemaker, he also brokered the Connecticut Compromise at the 1787 Convention that gave every state two senators.
Q 09Which delegate wrote the Constitution's preamble and is nicknamed the "Penman of the Constitution"?
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, on the Committee of Style, drafted the final wording including 'We the People of the United States'; he had lost a leg in a 1780 carriage accident.
Q 10Who alone signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin signed all three and also the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, making him the only man whose name is on all four of those founding documents.
Q 11Under what pen name did Franklin write his famous almanack from 1732?
Richard Saunders
Richard Saunders was the fictional author of Poor Richard's Almanack, which Franklin printed every year from 1732 to 1758; a decade earlier he had written as the widow Silence Dogood.
Q 12Which of these was NOT one of Franklin's inventions?
The cotton gin
The cotton gin was Eli Whitney's, patented in 1794; Franklin did invent the lightning rod, bifocals and the glass harmonica, and he founded Philadelphia's first volunteer fire company in 1736.
Q 13Roughly how many people attended Franklin's funeral in Philadelphia in 1790?
20,000
Some 20,000 mourners followed Franklin's coffin to Christ Church Burial Ground in April 1790, four days after his death on April 17.
Q 21What was James Madison's proposal that became the basis of the Constitutional Convention's debates?
The Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan, drafted by Madison and presented by Governor Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, proposed a bicameral legislature apportioned by population; the New Jersey Plan answered it for the small states.
Q 22On what date did James Madison introduce the Bill of Rights in the first Congress?
June 8, 1789
June 8, 1789 was the day Madison rose in the House to propose his amendments, distilled from some 200 suggested by state ratifying conventions; ten were ratified on December 15, 1791.
Q 23Where did James Madison study under John Witherspoon?
Q 14Where was Alexander Hamilton born?
Charlestown, Nevis
Charlestown, Nevis, in the British West Indies, was Hamilton's birthplace; born out of wedlock and orphaned young, he was sent as a teenager to the mainland colonies, where he studied at King's College, now Columbia.
Q 15How many of the 85 Federalist Papers did Alexander Hamilton write?
51
Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays; Madison wrote 29 and the third author only five, having fallen ill after the first four of them.
Q 16Where did the fatal 1804 pistol duel that killed Hamilton take place?
Weehawken, New Jersey
Weehawken, New Jersey, on the Hudson shore opposite Manhattan, was the site of the July 11, 1804 duel; Hamilton was mortally wounded there and died the next day in New York.
Q 17Which financial institution did Alexander Hamilton found in 1784, before he became Treasury Secretary?
Bank of New York
Bank of New York opened in 1784 under a constitution Hamilton drafted; it was the first bank in New York State, years before Hamilton's First Bank of the United States of 1791.
Q 18Under what collective pseudonym were The Federalist Papers published?
Publius
The name honoured Publius Valerius, a founder of the Roman republic; the first 77 essays ran in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788.
Q 19Which Federalist Paper by Madison argues a large republic is the best guard against 'majority faction'?
No. 10
No. 10, published in November 1787, argues that a large, extended republic dilutes factions by multiplying competing interests, so no single majority faction can easily combine to oppress the rest.
Q 20Which Founding Father was the first chief justice of the United States and later governor of New York?
John Jay
John Jay was the first chief justice until 1795, negotiating the controversial 1794 Jay Treaty with Britain while in office, then served as governor of New York from 1795 to 1801.
Princeton in New Jersey
Princeton in New Jersey, then called the College of New Jersey, was where Madison graduated in 1771 and stayed on to study under its president, John Witherspoon, before returning to Montpelier in 1772.
Q 24Who formally introduced James Madison to his future wife Dolley Payne Todd in 1794?
Aaron Burr
Aaron Burr, a boarder at Dolley's mother's Philadelphia house, arranged the May 1794 meeting; the Quaker widow had lost her husband in the 1793 yellow fever epidemic and married Madison that September.
Q 25Which unpopular clients did lawyer John Adams successfully defend before the Revolution?
British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre
British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre of March 1770 were defended by Adams; Captain Preston and six soldiers were acquitted, two were convicted only of manslaughter, and Adams later called it his finest service.
Q 26Adams was the primary author of which 1780 document that influenced the later federal charter?
The Massachusetts Constitution
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was drafted almost entirely by Adams; its separation of powers into three branches and its declaration of rights were models for the 1787 federal charter.
Q 27Which president was the first to live in the White House?
John Adams
John Adams moved into the unfinished President's House in the new federal city on November 1, 1800, with only four months left in his term; his predecessor never lived there.
Q 28Abigail Adams is remembered for a March 1776 letter urging her husband and Congress to do what?
Remember the ladies
'Remember the ladies' was her plea in a letter of March 31, 1776, warning that women would 'foment a rebellion' if they had no voice in the new code of laws.
Q 29Where was Thomas Jefferson born in 1743?
Shadwell Plantation
Shadwell Plantation, his father Peter Jefferson's farm in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia, was Jefferson's birthplace on April 13, 1743; Monticello, which he began in 1768, stands a few miles away.
Q 30Which of these is NOT among the three achievements on Jefferson's self-written epitaph?
President of the United States
President of the United States is missing by design: Jefferson's epitaph names only the Declaration, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the University of Virginia, the things he said he wished most to be remembered by.