Mexican-American War Trivia
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60 free Mexican-American War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Mexican American War trivia quiz covers the 1846-48 conflict that redrew the map of North America. The easy questions handle the basics: which president started it, the annexation of Texas, Zachary Taylor and Santa Anna, the treaty that ended it and the future Civil War generals who learned their trade in Mexico. From there it moves through the Nueces Strip dispute, the Thornton Affair, Lincoln's Spot Resolutions, the Bear Flag Revolt, Kearny's bloodless capture of Santa Fe and the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. The harder half is for history buffs: the 'flying artillery', the Diabólicos Tejanos, Perry's guns at Veracruz, the Niños Héroes legend, the San Patricios, Santa Anna's last battle, the price per acre of the Mexican Cession, the Senate ratification vote and the All-Mexico debate. If you have played our American history or Texas quizzes, this is the deep dive on one war. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry on the war before publishing.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before joining the US, Texas had been what since 1836?
Republic
Republic. Britain, France and the United States had all recognised it, but Mexico still claimed it, and so treated the 1845 annexation as the seizure of its own territory.
Q 02In Mexico, the Mexican-American War is widely known by which of these names?
The United States intervention
The United States intervention. Mexicans also call it the War of '47, the year American troops fought their way into Mexico City and occupied it.
Q 03James K. Polk, who led the US into war with Mexico, is remembered as the first presidential nominee of which kind?
A dark horse
A dark horse. Whigs jeered 'Who is James K. Polk?' all through the 1844 campaign, and the little-known Tennessean answered by winning the White House.
Q 04Weeks after war with Mexico began, Polk settled which territory's border with Britain by treaty?
Oregon
Oregon. Polk's supporters had demanded all of it with the cry 'Fifty-four forty or fight', but he split the territory with Britain at the 49th parallel instead.
Q 05Mexico claimed the Texas border lay along which river, rather than the Rio Grande?
The Nueces
The Nueces. The US army marched into the strip between the two rivers in 1846, and the first shots fired there became the president's case for war.
Q 06How did Mexico respond as the United States moved to annex Texas?
Broke off diplomatic relations
Broke off diplomatic relations. Mexico had threatened war over Texas, yet none followed at once; when Polk then sent an envoy to buy California, its government refused to receive him.
Q 07The Mexican-American War's opening clash, a cavalry ambush of a US patrol in April 1846, is known as what?
The Thornton Affair
The Thornton Affair. Captain Seth Thornton's dragoons rode into a far larger Mexican force and were killed or captured, and the news reached Washington as proof that hostilities had begun.
Q 08Polk won his declaration of war by telling Congress that Mexico had shed blood where?
On American soil
On American soil. The fight had happened in a border strip that both countries claimed, yet Congress voted overwhelmingly for war within two days of hearing the president's message.
Q 09Which freshman Illinois Whig demanded Polk name the 'spot' where American blood was shed?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln. The House never acted on his 'Spot Resolutions', and an Illinois newspaper mocked the first-term congressman as 'Spotty Lincoln'.
Q 10Which former US president, by then a congressman, voted against declaring war on Mexico in 1846?
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams. Two years later he voted no on a measure honouring the war's officers, collapsed at his House desk moments afterwards and died in the Capitol within two days.
Q 11Which writer was jailed for refusing a tax in protest at the Mexican-American War?
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau. He spent only one night in jail, because someone, most likely his aunt, paid the tax against his wishes, and he turned the episode into the essay Civil Disobedience.
Q 12Editor John O'Sullivan is credited with coining which phrase in 1845?
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny. The phrase drew little notice when it first appeared in an 1845 essay urging the annexation of Texas, and O'Sullivan himself did not think the words profound.
Q 13Which Democratic congressman proposed banning slavery in any territory taken from Mexico?
David Wilmot
Q 21Which explorer led the California Battalion in 1846?
John C. Frémont
John C. Frémont. After the conquest he refused to give up the governorship of California to a superior officer, was court-martialled for mutiny and resigned from the army.
Q 22Which mounted volunteers scouted for the US army in northern Mexico and were feared by Mexicans as 'devils'?
Texas Rangers
Texas Rangers. They became the army's eyes and ears, and were so ruthless against guerrillas that Mexicans named them 'los Diablos Tejanos', the Texan Devils.
Q 23Winfield Scott lost the 1852 presidential election to which Democrat, a general in his own army in Mexico?
Franklin Pierce
David Wilmot. His Wilmot Proviso twice passed the House and twice died in the Senate, and the quarrel it started over slavery in the new lands set North against South.
Q 14General Zachary Taylor, victor at Palo Alto in 1846, was known to his troops by which nickname?
Old Rough and Ready
Old Rough and Ready. Taylor rarely wore anything in the field to show his rank, and that homespun image helped carry the career soldier to the White House two years later.
Q 15What did the US Army call its mobile horse-drawn light guns that proved decisive at Palo Alto?
Flying artillery
Flying artillery. Major Samuel Ringgold had trained gun crews to race light cannon around a battlefield on horseback, and he was mortally wounded at Palo Alto, the tactic's first real test.
Q 16Which Texas city grew up around the fort US troops built opposite Matamoros in 1846?
Brownsville
Brownsville. The fort, and later the city, took the name of Major Jacob Brown, who died of wounds received while commanding it through a Mexican bombardment.
Q 17Which Mexican general, exiled in Cuba when the Mexican-American War began, returned to lead Mexico's armies?
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Antonio López de Santa Anna. He got Washington to let him through its naval blockade by promising to work for peace, then took command of Mexico's army and fought.
Q 18Which gunmaker went back into business when the US ordered 1,000 of his revolvers for the war with Mexico?
Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt. His first gun company had failed, but word of how well his revolvers had served on the Texas frontier won him the wartime order that put him back in business.
Q 19Which US general's Army of the West took Santa Fe in August 1846 without firing a shot?
Stephen W. Kearny
Stephen W. Kearny. The governor's forces took up a position on the road to block him, then withdrew without a fight, and Kearny rode in unopposed and proclaimed a civil government for New Mexico.
Q 20The June 1846 uprising in which American settlers seized Sonoma, California, is known as what?
The Bear Flag Revolt
The Bear Flag Revolt. The settlers' republic lasted under a month before the US Navy ran up the American flag in its place, but its grizzly bear lives on in California's state flag.
Franklin Pierce. Whigs revived the taunt 'Fainting Frank' over a fall from his horse in Mexico, yet he carried all but four states against his old commander.
Q 24Which future Confederate leader commanded the Mississippi Rifles, whose stand helped save the US line at Buena Vista?
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis. He was fighting under his former father-in-law, the army's commanding general, and came home wounded and a national hero to a seat in the US Senate.
Q 25Where on Mexico's Gulf coast did Winfield Scott land his army by sea in March 1847 to march on the capital?
Veracruz
Veracruz. Navy surfboats ferried the army onto the beach, and after a bombardment by army and navy guns the walled port surrendered within three weeks.
Q 26Commodore Matthew Perry, who commanded US warships off Mexico in 1847, later forced which country to open its ports?
Japan
Japan. Six years after his squadron's guns helped the army besiege a Mexican port, Perry steamed into Edo Bay and pressed Japan to end more than two centuries of isolation.
Q 27Which future Confederate general made his name as an engineer scouting routes for Winfield Scott's army in Mexico?
Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee. At Cerro Gordo he found a way around the Mexican flank over ground thought impassable, and he finished the war with three promotions for gallantry.
Q 28Fear of which disease made Winfield Scott hurry his army inland from Mexico's Gulf coast in spring 1847?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever. Its season on the coast set the timing of his whole campaign, and across the war disease killed about seven US soldiers for each one killed in action.
Q 29Which famous phrase recalls the storming of Chapultepec Castle in 1847?
The Halls of Montezuma
The Halls of Montezuma. The Marines' Hymn takes poetic licence: the castle the Marines helped storm was begun by a Spanish viceroy in 1785, centuries after the Aztec emperor.
Q 30Legend says cadet Juan Escutia leapt to his death from Chapultepec Castle in 1847 wrapped in what?
The Mexican flag
The Mexican flag. In the legend he jumped so that the Americans could not capture it, and Mexico still honours him and his fellow cadets as the Niños Héroes, the boy heroes.