The Killer Angels
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50 free The Killer Angels trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Killer Angels turns the Battle of Gettysburg into a story told from inside the heads of the men who fought it. Michael Shaara gives each chapter to one commander, so the reader rides with Lee and Longstreet on one side and with Chamberlain on the other, and feels every argument and every doubt. This quiz follows the book from the spy's report on the eve of the battle to the final evening on the field. It covers the main characters and what drives them, the turning points of each day, the friendships the war has split, and the story of the book itself: how it was written, how it was received, and the film and other works it inspired. It is written for students checking their reading before a test, for book clubs, and for Civil War readers who want to see how much of the story has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which space Western TV series did Joss Whedon create after reading Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels?
Firefly
Firefly follows veterans of the losing side of a civil war as they scrape a living on a frontier in space, an echo of the years after the American one.
Q 02In The Killer Angels, what does Chamberlain order when the 20th Maine runs low on ammunition on Little Round Top?
A bayonet charge
A bayonet charge down the hill routs the attackers and takes five hundred prisoners, though the day costs the regiment nearly half its men.
Q 03Which actor played Colonel Joshua Chamberlain in Gettysburg, the 1993 film of The Killer Angels?
Jeff Daniels
Jeff Daniels played the Maine colonel in a film that lifts much of its dialogue directly from the book.
Q 04Which literary award did The Killer Angels win in 1975, despite drawing little attention from reviewers?
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to a manuscript that fifteen publishers had rejected before a small independent house agreed to print it.
Q 05Arthur Fremantle, who watches the battle from Longstreet's side in The Killer Angels, is an officer from which country?
England
England is home to his regiment, the Coldstream Guards, and Fremantle hopes his country will ally itself with the Confederacy he so admires.
Q 06In The Killer Angels, what is Chamberlain authorized to do to Second Maine mutineers who refuse to fight?
Shoot them
Shoot them, says the order from the army's new commander, but Chamberlain feeds the men, hears their grievances and talks all but six into fighting.
Q 07A speech from which Shakespeare play, recited by the young Chamberlain, gives The Killer Angels its title?
Hamlet
Hamlet supplies the speech likening man in action to an angel, and Chamberlain turned the idea into a school oration called Man, the Killer Angel.
Q 08Which documentary maker credits The Killer Angels with sparking his interest in the American Civil War?
Ken Burns
Ken Burns went on to make the PBS series The Civil War, and he turns up in the 1993 film of the book as an aide to a Union general.
Q 09Before commanding the 20th Maine in The Killer Angels, Joshua Chamberlain earned his living in which civilian job?
College professor
College professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin was his trade, and he addresses the mutineers in the calm manner he once used on rebellious students.
Q 10George Pickett, the perfumed, long-haired general of The Killer Angels, graduated where in his West Point class?
At the very bottom
At the very bottom of 59 cadets is where he finished in 1846, yet Longstreet trusts him as a fighter who can be relied upon.
Q 11Which character, an actor by trade, opens The Killer Angels by scouting the Union army as Longstreet's spy?
Harrison
Harrison rides in after dark with news that the Union army is far closer than headquarters believed, and Lee has to move on a spy's word.
Q 12Which Union cavalry general spots the Confederates first and seizes the high ground at Gettysburg in The Killer Angels?
John Buford
John Buford, a Kentucky-born veteran of the Indian wars, has schooled his troopers to dig in and hold, which buys time for the infantry to come up.
Q 13Which Union general brings up infantry to relieve the cavalry in The Killer Angels, only to be shot dead that morning?
John Reynolds
Q 21Buster Kilrain, the one major fictional character in The Killer Angels, lost his sergeant's stripes for doing what?
Striking an officer
Striking an officer while drunk cost the white-haired private his rank, yet Chamberlain depends on the older man, who later saves his life on Little Round Top.
Q 22In The Killer Angels, Longstreet has grown withdrawn since losing whom to a fever the previous winter?
His children
His children, three of them, died of the fever, and since then he no longer joins the poker games he used to love.
Q 23Which approach to battle does Longstreet urge on Lee throughout The Killer Angels, without ever persuading him?
Defensive warfare
John Reynolds is killed while placing his troops on the first day, and that night the cavalry commander tells the dead general that they held the ground.
Q 14In The Killer Angels, the dying Lewis Armistead asks to send a message to which old friend, a Union general?
Winfield Hancock
Winfield Hancock commands the very line the charge is aimed at, and the dying man is told that his friend has been wounded too.
Q 15Which cavalry commander's long absence leaves Lee blind to Union movements in The Killer Angels, earning a stern rebuke?
J. E. B. Stuart
J. E. B. Stuart offers to resign when he finally returns, but Lee will not court-martial him and says he is needed for the fight ahead.
Q 16Which general takes command of the Union army only days before the fighting in The Killer Angels?
George Meade
George Meade is so new to the post that a rumour sweeps the marching column that the popular McClellan is back in charge instead.
Q 17Which brigadier, accused of cowardice by Stonewall Jackson, rides into Pickett's Charge in The Killer Angels?
Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett has an injured leg and cannot march, but he insists on going in on horseback to clear his name and is killed in the assault.
Q 18Which Confederate corps commander, newly back after losing a leg, fails to attack Cemetery Hill in The Killer Angels?
Richard Ewell
Richard Ewell defers to a subordinate, apologizes to Lee for being too careful, and so enrages one general that the man refuses to serve under him.
Q 19Which general begs Longstreet to let him go right, behind Big Round Top, in The Killer Angels?
John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood warns that attacking as ordered will cost him half his division, and Longstreet privately agrees but will not depart from Lee's orders.
Q 20In The Killer Angels, how is Lieutenant Tom Chamberlain of the 20th Maine related to Colonel Joshua Chamberlain?
His brother
His brother Tom is the younger of the two and newly made lieutenant, and Joshua agonizes over sending him to plug a gap in the firing line.
Defensive warfare is his creed: take good ground between the enemy and the capital, then let the Union army wear itself out attacking.
Q 24In The Killer Angels, which ailment leaves the 56-year-old Robert E. Lee weary and unwell on the morning of battle?
Heart disease
Heart disease is showing its early signs in Lee, who is often weary yet hopes the coming battle will finish the war.
Q 25After Pickett's Charge is thrown back in The Killer Angels, what does a shaken Robert E. Lee order?
A retreat
A retreat that same night is all that is left: of the thirteen colonels in Pickett's division, seven are dead and the other six wounded.
Q 26On the third day in The Killer Angels, Lee decides the Union line must be weakest at which point?
The center
The center looks thin to Lee after the previous day's attacks on the flanks, so he sends fifteen thousand men at it across a mile of open ground.
Q 27When Fremantle assumes the war is about slavery in The Killer Angels, Confederate officers insist it is about what?
States' rights
States' rights is their answer, and prisoners taken by Chamberlain's regiment later say the same, though the colonel is not convinced.
Q 28Which Irish song, sung by a tenor in the Confederate camp in The Killer Angels, reminds Armistead of a lost friendship?
Kathleen Mavourneen
Kathleen Mavourneen, a song of friends parting, takes him back to an evening in 1861 when he sang around a piano with a comrade who now wears blue.
Q 29In The Killer Angels, which landmark on Cemetery Ridge does Lewis Armistead reach before he is fatally hit?
A stone wall
A stone wall is the goal of the whole charge, and Armistead gets there with a leg wound, is hit again in the side and falls dying among the dead.
Q 30In The Killer Angels, whose dry reply to a recited Shakespeare speech gives Chamberlain the phrase 'killer angel'?
His father
His father heard the boy recite and remarked that if man is an angel he must be a murdering one, and the remark became the title of a school speech.