This Thomas Jefferson trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and follows the third president from Shadwell Plantation to his death on the fiftieth Fourth of July: the Declaration of Independence and the quarter Congress cut from it, the years in Paris, the tie with Aaron Burr and the 36 ballots, the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Barbary war and the embargo, and the long retirement spent building a university and trading letters with John Adams. It also covers the Jefferson people argue about: the more than 600 people he enslaved, Sally Hemings and the DNA study, the debts that broke up Monticello. And the Jefferson of the workshop, with his swivel chair, wheel cipher, cannonball clock, giant sloth and failed vineyards. Early questions suit a classroom; the back half will test a history buff. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's Jefferson articles, and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Thomas Jefferson was which number US president?
Third
He followed John Adams, the man he had beaten in 1800 and served under as vice president.
Q 02In which city did Jefferson write most of the Declaration of Independence in June 1776?
Philadelphia
He worked largely alone in rented rooms at 700 Market Street between June 11 and 28.
Q 03Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?
Little mountain
He began building it in 1768 on land inherited from his father and tinkered with it for the rest of his life.
Q 04At which family plantation was Jefferson born in 1743?
Shadwell
He was the third of ten children of a planter and surveyor; the Shadwell house later burned with his first library.
Q 05Jefferson's face appears on which US coin?
The nickel
His home is on the other side of the same coin, and it has been there since 1938.
Q 06In what year was the Louisiana Purchase completed?
1803
Napoleon offered the whole territory after his army failed to hold Saint-Domingue and war with Britain loomed.
Q 07Which famous expedition did Jefferson send west to explore the newly bought territory to the Pacific?
Lewis and Clark
He personally tutored Meriwether Lewis in botany, mapping and astronomy before the Corps of Discovery left St. Louis in May 1804.
Q 08Jefferson is one of the four presidents carved into which national memorial?
Mount Rushmore
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum picked him alongside Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln in the 1920s.
Q 09On what date did Jefferson die in 1826?
July 4
It was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration's adoption; his last significant words were reportedly 'Is it the Fourth?'
Q 10Which other Founding Father and ex-president died on the very same day as Jefferson?
John Adams
Adams's last words were 'Thomas Jefferson survives', not knowing his old rival had died a few hours earlier.
Q 11Which institution did Jefferson found in 1819 and design himself?
University of Virginia
He called the grounds the 'Academical Village' and put a library, not a chapel, at its centre.
Q 12Under which president did Jefferson serve as the first US Secretary of State?
George Washington
He accepted the post soon after returning from five years as minister to France.
Q 13How old was Jefferson when he drafted the Declaration of Independence?
33
He was one of the youngest delegates to the Second Continental Congress.
Q 21Jefferson and Madison founded which political organisation in 1792 to oppose the Federalists?
The Democratic-Republicans
It dominated national politics for a generation after Jefferson's win in 1800.
Q 22The 1800 election ended in an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and which running mate?
Aaron Burr
The House needed 36 ballots to break it, and the mess produced the Twelfth Amendment.
Q 23How many House ballots did it take to elect Jefferson president in February 1801?
36
Hamilton lobbied Federalists to back Jefferson as the lesser evil, a decision that fed his fatal feud with Burr.
Q 14Roughly what fraction of Jefferson's draft Declaration did Congress cut before adopting it?
A fourth
He resented the edits but never complained publicly.
Q 15Which college did Jefferson enter at 17 in 1761?
William & Mary
After a first year of parties and dancing, he reportedly buckled down to studying fifteen hours a day.
Q 16Jefferson married a young widow on New Year's Day 1772. What was her name?
Martha Wayles Skelton
She was a skilled pianist; he accompanied her on violin or cello, and he never remarried after her death in 1782.
Q 17What did attendants find in a gold locket around Jefferson's neck after his death?
A lock of his wife's hair
His wife Martha had died 44 years earlier, having made him promise never to marry again.
Q 18Jefferson succeeded which man as America's minister in Paris in 1785?
Benjamin Franklin
Told 'You replace Monsieur Franklin', he answered: 'I succeed. No man can replace him.'
Q 19Which momentous event was Jefferson present in Paris for on July 14, 1789?
The storming of the Bastille
He also let Lafayette hold revolutionary meetings at his residence and advised him on the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Q 20Annoyed that postmasters kept opening his mail in Europe, Jefferson invented what?
The wheel cipher
He wrote important letters in code for the rest of his career.
Q 24Jefferson's 1801 swearing-in was the first presidential inauguration held where?
Washington, D.C.
He walked to the Capitol from his boarding house rather than ride in a carriage, or so the tradition goes.
Q 25How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory?
$15 million
That worked out at less than three cents an acre for about 828,000 square miles.
Q 26Which two American envoys signed the Louisiana Purchase treaty in Paris?
Robert Livingston and James Monroe
Livingston called it 'the noblest work of our whole lives'.
Q 27Doubting the Constitution allowed the Louisiana Purchase, what did Jefferson consider doing?
Proposing a constitutional amendment
His cabinet talked him out of it and Congress simply ratified the treaty.
Q 28What is Jefferson's war with the Mediterranean pirate states, the first US foreign war, called?
The First Barbary War
He had opposed paying tribute since 1785 and sent the first American naval squadron ever to cross the Atlantic.
Q 29Which US warship was captured by the Pasha of Tripoli during Jefferson's war in the Mediterranean?
USS Philadelphia
Jefferson answered with five naval bombardments of Tripoli and a land expedition led by consul William Eaton.
Q 30What was Jefferson's 1807 halt to all American overseas trade called?
The Embargo Act
It wrecked the US economy, and Jefferson signed its repeal days before leaving office.