John Quincy Adams Trivia
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49 free John Quincy Adams trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
John Quincy Adams was a teenage diplomat in St. Petersburg, a Harvard professor of rhetoric, America's minister in The Hague, Berlin, St. Petersburg and London, the secretary of state who won Florida and drafted the Monroe Doctrine, and then — almost as an afterthought — a one-term president who lost the popular vote, won in the House, and spent four years being called a crook by Andrew Jackson's men. Two years after leaving the White House he went back to Congress, the only ex-president ever to do so, and fought slavery and the gag rule there until he collapsed at his desk in 1848. These 49 questions cover all of it: the Braintree boyhood and the diary he kept for almost seventy years, the London-born wife, the Treaty of Ghent, the 49th parallel, the "corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay, the national university and observatory nobody wanted, the Tariff of Abominations, the Amistad argument before the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian bequest and the famous last words. Easy questions stick to the family and the dates; the expert tier asks about Fletcher v. Peck, the Anti-Masonic Party and the earliest photograph of a president. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After Adams, which president's son next became president?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush took office 176 years after Adams, the sixth president; like Adams, he became president despite trailing his main rival in the popular vote.
Q 02Who unseated Adams's father, the second president?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson won in 1800, and John Adams left the capital rather than watch him sworn in; 28 years later his son likewise refused to attend his own successor's inauguration.
Q 03In which Massachusetts town was Adams born in 1767?
Braintree
Braintree's north precinct, where he was born, split off in 1792 as the new town of Quincy, so his birthplace now stands in a city that did not exist when he was born.
Q 04After whom was Adams given his middle name?
His mother's grandfather
His mother's grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, lay on his deathbed when the boy was baptized and died two days after the birth; the name was given at the request of the colonel's daughter.
Q 05At 14, Adams went to which Russian city as secretary and interpreter to a US envoy?
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg was then Russia's capital; the American envoy asked for the 14-year-old as his secretary and translator because the boy's French was so good.
Q 06From which university did Adams graduate in 1787 after his boyhood years in Europe?
Harvard
Harvard took him as an advanced student because of his schooling in Europe, so he finished the course in two years and then turned to the law.
Q 07As a boy of seven, Adams stood with his mother and watched which Revolutionary War battle from afar?
Bunker Hill
Bunker Hill was fought in June 1775 while his father was away at the Continental Congress; he later recalled feeling responsible, as the eldest son, for protecting his mother.
Q 08In which city did Adams marry Louisa Catherine Johnson in 1797?
London
London's All Hallows-by-the-Tower hosted the wedding; soon afterwards her merchant father fled the country to escape his creditors, and the dowry he had promised never came.
Q 09Louisa Adams was the first First Lady to be what?
Born outside the United States
Born outside the United States to an American merchant, Louisa first saw the country at 26; Adams's parents had disapproved of his marrying a woman raised abroad.
Q 10Adams's support for Jefferson's Embargo Act cost him what in 1808?
His Senate seat
His Senate seat: the Federalist-run Massachusetts legislature picked his successor well before his term was up, so Adams resigned at once and soon joined Jefferson's party.
Q 11While a senator, Adams held the Boylston professorship in which subject?
Rhetoric and oratory
He also taught logic at Brown; classical rhetoric shaped his public style for life.
Q 12In 1811 the Senate confirmed Adams for which post, only for him to turn it down?
Supreme Court justice
Supreme Court justice: the Senate confirmed him a day after he was nominated, but Adams, then serving in Russia, preferred diplomacy and politics, and the seat went to Joseph Story.
Q 13Which president made Adams the first US minister to Russia in 1809?
James Madison
James Madison sent him to the tsar's court, where Adams reported on Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia before the president reassigned him to negotiate peace with Britain.
Q 21Who won the most electoral votes in 1824 yet lost the presidency to Adams?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson took 99 electoral votes to Adams's 84 but fell 32 short of a majority; he spent the next three years campaigning to reverse the result.
Q 22When the House chose Adams as president in 1825, what counted as a single vote?
Each state delegation
Each state delegation cast one vote, whatever its size, so Adams needed 13 of the 24 states and won exactly that many on the first ballot.
Q 23Which Speaker of the House threw his support to Adams and became his secretary of state?
Henry Clay
Q 14Adams led the American negotiators for which 1814 agreement that ended the War of 1812?
The Treaty of Ghent
The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, but the news took weeks to cross the Atlantic, so the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the peace.
Q 15Which nickname did Adams earn in Congress late in his career?
Old Man Eloquent
Old Man Eloquent: the name honoured the long, forceful speeches against slavery that he was still delivering when he was past seventy.
Q 16The 1818 treaty Adams oversaw set the US–Canada border along which line?
The 49th parallel
The 49th parallel became the border from the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies, while the Oregon Country beyond was left open to both nations, a quarrel that outlived Adams's presidency.
Q 17Which territory did the United States acquire from Spain under the Adams–Onís Treaty?
Florida
Florida changed hands with no payment to Spain; instead the United States took on about $5 million in claims itself.
Q 18The Adams–Onís Treaty fixed the border between American Louisiana and Spanish territory along which river?
The Sabine
The Sabine is still a state line today; expansionists wanted the border pushed west to the Rio Grande, but Adams accepted it once Spain gave up its claims to the Oregon Country.
Q 19As president, Adams often began his day with a swim in which river?
The Potomac
The Potomac was his morning exercise ground; on one swimming trip in 1825 his leaky boat filled with water in midstream, and he had to jump overboard and swim for the bank.
Q 20Which statement of American foreign policy did Adams chiefly draft while secretary of state?
The Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine bears the president's name, but it reflected Adams's views: he insisted that the United States issue the warning alone instead of jointly with Britain.
Henry Clay had finished last of the four candidates and was shut out of the runoff, yet as Speaker he still held the deciding influence, and he used it for Adams.
Q 24What two-word phrase did Adams's opponents use for the 1825 deal that made him president?
Corrupt bargain
'Corrupt bargain' was the cry after Adams gave the State Department to the Speaker whose backing had just won him the vote; his chief rival campaigned on the charge for three years.
Q 25On what did Adams place his hand when taking the presidential oath in 1825?
A book of constitutional law
A book of constitutional law, by Adams's own account: the volume held the Constitution he was swearing to uphold, and Chief Justice John Marshall gave him the oath.
Q 26Which of these did Adams propose to Congress in his ambitious 1825 message?
A national astronomical observatory
A national astronomical observatory was his dream: he told Congress that Europe had 130 such 'light-houses of the skies' and America none, and opponents turned the phrase into a taunt.
Q 27Which highway did the Adams administration extend towards Zanesville, Ohio?
The National Road
The National Road was one of the few parts of Adams's ambitious programme that Congress agreed to fund, pushing on from Cumberland, Maryland, into Ohio with surveys onward to St. Louis.
Q 28What nickname did Southern opponents give the protective duties of 1828?
The Tariff of Abominations
The Tariff of Abominations was shaped by Adams's opponents in Congress, who left him a choice between a harsh tariff and none at all; he signed it, and Southern legislatures denounced it as unconstitutional.
Q 29Adams suspended a treaty forced on the Muscogee (Creek) by the governor of which state?
Georgia
Georgia's governor, George Troup, rejected the fairer treaty Adams signed in 1826 and told his citizens to evict the Muscogee anyway; the standoff ended only when they gave up the land in a third treaty.
Q 30Adams said America "goes not abroad in search of" what?
Monsters to destroy
'Monsters to destroy' comes from his Fourth of July speech of 1821, which held that America wishes freedom for all but is 'the champion and vindicator only of her own'.