Gettysburg Trivia
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This Gettysburg trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the three days of July 1863 hour by hour: the cavalry stand on the first morning, the fishhook line, Little Round Top and Devil's Den, Culp's Hill, the great charge on the third afternoon and the retreat to the Potomac. It then moves on to the Gettysburg Address, from the two-hour oration that preceded it to the surviving handwritten copies and the newspaper that called it dishwatery, and finishes with the town and battlefield today: the national cemetery, the Cyclorama, the Eisenhower farm, the peace memorial and the four-hour 1993 film. It is built for Civil War buffs, teachers running a unit on the battle, visitors planning a trip to the park, and anyone hosting a history round. Easy questions cover the commanders and the famous speech; the hard ones ask who fired the first shot, which local man died on his own family's hill, and where the only photograph of Lincoln at the dedication came from. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After Gettysburg, Lee offered his resignation to whom?
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis. The Confederate president refused to let him go, and Lee stayed in command of his army for the rest of the war.
Q 02Gettysburg sits just north of Pennsylvania's border with which state?
Maryland
Maryland. With the state line so close, the armies arrived back to front: Confederates reached Gettysburg from the north and west, while Union troops came up from the south.
Q 03Which phrase opens Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?
Four score and seven years ago
Four score and seven years ago. That is 87 years, which reaches back to 1776: Lincoln dated the nation's birth to the Declaration, not to the Constitution.
Q 04Which general took command of the Union army only days before it fought at Gettysburg?
George Meade
George Meade. Woken in his tent before dawn by a messenger from Washington, he assumed he was being arrested, not handed the army.
Q 05Gettysburg was the Civil War's bloodiest battle, but which battle saw the war's bloodiest single day?
Antietam
Antietam. Its roughly 23,000 casualties in one September day in 1862 ended Lee's first invasion of the North and gave Lincoln the opening to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Q 06Which Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi surrendered to Grant the day after the fighting at Gettysburg ended?
Vicksburg
Vicksburg. It gave up after a 47-day siege, and once Port Hudson fell days later the Union held the whole Mississippi and the Confederacy was cut in two.
Q 07Which Union cavalry general held the ridges northwest of Gettysburg on July 1 until infantry arrived?
John Buford
John Buford. Heavily outnumbered, he had his cavalrymen fight on foot to slow the Confederate advance; that December he was promoted to major general on his deathbed.
Q 08Which Union corps commander was shot and killed early on July 1 while directing troops near Herbst Woods?
John F. Reynolds
John F. Reynolds. A month earlier he had reportedly told Lincoln he would lead the whole army only if Washington gave him a free hand, and the command went to a junior general instead.
Q 09Lee told Ewell on July 1 to take Cemetery Hill, adding which famous phrase?
"if practicable"
"If practicable" left the call to Ewell, newly promoted to replace Stonewall Jackson; he held back, and Union troops used the time to fortify the hill.
Q 10The Union defensive line at Gettysburg on July 2 is popularly described as resembling what?
A fishhook
A fishhook. Its curve let Union commanders rush reinforcements across the short inside of the line, while Lee's troops had to move the long way around the outside.
Q 11Which Union corps commander pushed III Corps to the Peach Orchard against orders and lost a leg?
Daniel Sickles
The former congressman kept the shattered leg bone and donated it to the Army Medical Museum, reportedly visiting it on the anniversary for years afterward.
Q 12Which Union engineer rushed troops onto Little Round Top minutes before Hood's Confederates arrived?
Gouverneur K. Warren
Gouverneur K. Warren. He found the hill held only by a few signalmen and diverted troops to it on his own authority; his bronze statue stands on the boulder where he is said to have spotted the attack.
Q 13Which regiment on the extreme left of the Union line at Little Round Top finished with a bayonet charge?
Q 21Roughly how much open ground did the men of Pickett's Charge have to cross to reach the Union line?
About 1 mile
About 1 mile. The Confederates marched it in line while artillery tore gaps in their ranks, and the fences in their path held them up under fire.
Q 22Which Confederate brigadier led his men over the wall at Pickett's Charge with his hat on the tip of his sword?
Lewis Armistead
Lewis Armistead. Shot down just after crossing the wall, he asked that his personal effects go to a close friend from before the war: the Union general whose troops had stopped him.
Q 23What name is given to the stretch of stone wall on Cemetery Ridge where Pickett's Charge briefly broke through?
The Angle
20th Maine
20th Maine. Out of ammunition after repeated assaults, the regiment, led by a Bowdoin College professor, fixed bayonets and swept downhill, scattering its attackers.
Q 14Colonel William Oates's 15th infantry regiment, which repeatedly assaulted Little Round Top, came from which state?
Alabama
Alabama. Oates lost his younger brother John in the assaults, argued for years afterwards that taking the hill could have turned the battle, and was later elected the state's governor.
Q 15Which Gettysburg hill did 62-year-old George Greene's brigade hold from behind breastworks on the night of July 2?
Culp's Hill
Culp's Hill. Greene, a civil engineer before the war, had his men dig in though his superiors saw little need, and the works helped his lone brigade hold the Union right flank.
Q 16Which field at Gettysburg changed hands again and again on July 2 in fighting that cost about 6,000 casualties?
The Wheatfield
The Wheatfield. Both sides fed in brigade after brigade, so the small farm field was taken and retaken all afternoon; of more than 20,000 men who fought there, nearly a third became casualties.
Q 17Which regiment made a near-suicidal bayonet charge on July 2 to plug a gap on Cemetery Ridge?
1st Minnesota
1st Minnesota. Its corps commander needed a few minutes for reserves to come up and threw in the only formed troops at hand; 215 of the 262 men who charged became casualties.
Q 18From which landmark below Little Round Top did Confederate sharpshooters pick off Union officers on the summit?
Devil's Den
Devil's Den. Marksmen hidden among its boulders reportedly killed General Stephen Weed on the summit, along with the artillery officer Charles Hazlett.
Q 19Pickett's own division, only part of the force in Pickett's Charge, was made up entirely of troops from which state?
Virginia
Virginia. Every one of Pickett's brigades was Virginian, but his was only one of several divisions in the attack that bears his name, and he was never its overall commander.
Q 20Which Confederate corps commander was put in overall charge of Pickett's Charge despite believing it would fail?
James Longstreet
James Longstreet. He objected strongly to the plan and was overruled, yet after the war many fellow Southerners made him the scapegoat for the defeat.
The Angle. It is named for the sharp jog the wall makes there; the few Confederates who got across it were quickly killed, wounded or captured.
Q 24Union troops facing Pickett's Charge shouted the name of which battle, where their own charges had been cut down?
Fredericksburg
Fredericksburg. Seven months earlier Union troops had been shot down charging Confederates sheltered behind a stone wall; at Gettysburg the wall was theirs.
Q 25How did Pickett allegedly answer Lee's order to rally his men after the charge?
"General, I have no division."
"General, I have no division." It was close to the truth: about half of his men were casualties, and every one of his brigade commanders had been shot down.
Q 26Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, killed at Gettysburg, received which award in 2014?
Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor. It came 151 years after his death: badly wounded, he had refused to leave his guns and fought on, propped up by his sergeant, until a bullet killed him.
Q 27Which Confederate cavalry commander was out of touch with Lee until the second day of Gettysburg?
J.E.B. Stuart
J.E.B. Stuart. His horsemen were meant to be the army's eyes and ears, but his long ride away from it left Lee with almost no intelligence in enemy territory.
Q 28Which 23-year-old Union brigadier, a general for under a week, led Michigan cavalry charges east of Gettysburg on July 3?
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer. A staff captain until days before the battle, he led his Michigan brigade's charges in person; thirteen years later his command was wiped out at the Little Bighorn.
Q 29Historians doubt the popular tale that the Battle of Gettysburg began with Confederates hunting for what supply?
Shoes
Shoes. The story goes back to a postwar claim by Confederate general Henry Heth, but the town had no shoe factory or warehouse; the ten roads that met there are what drew the armies.
Q 30Which Union unit's black Hardee hats told Confederates in Herbst Woods on July 1 that they faced veterans?
The Iron Brigade
The Iron Brigade. The Confederates had expected only militia or cavalry; instead the Midwesterners outflanked them in the woods and captured their commander, General James Archer.