Thomas Jefferson Trivia
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This Thomas Jefferson trivia quiz has 110 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 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Thomas Jefferson was which number US president?
Third
Jefferson was the third president, serving from 1801 to 1809 after John Adams, whom 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 wrote it in Philadelphia, in rented second-floor rooms of bricklayer Jacob Graff's house at 700 Market Street, largely alone, between June 11 and 28, 1776.
Q 03Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?
Little mountain
Monticello means 'little mountain' in Italian; Jefferson began levelling the hilltop in 1768 on land inherited from his father and kept altering the house until his death.
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
Jefferson has appeared on the nickel, the five-cent coin, since 1938, with his home Monticello on the reverse for nearly all of that time.
Q 06In what year was the Louisiana Purchase completed?
1803
The treaty was signed in Paris on April 30, 1803 and the territory formally transferred that December; Napoleon sold 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
Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, which left the St. Louis area in May 1804 and reached the Pacific in November 1805; he coached Meriwether Lewis and sent him to Philadelphia scientists for training.
Q 08Jefferson is one of the four presidents carved into which national memorial?
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills, carved from 1927 to 1941, shows Jefferson beside Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
Q 09On what date did Jefferson die in 1826?
July 4
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration's adoption; his last clear words the night before 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
The University of Virginia, chartered in 1819 and opened in Charlottesville in 1825, was laid out by Jefferson as an 'Academical Village' with a library, not a chapel, at its centre.
Q 12Under which president did Jefferson serve as the first US Secretary of State?
George Washington
George Washington named Jefferson the first Secretary of State; he took up the post in March 1790, soon after returning from five years as minister to France.
Q 13Who served as Jefferson's vice president during his second term?
George Clinton
Q 21Jefferson and Madison founded which political organisation in 1792 to oppose the Federalists?
The Democratic-Republicans
Jefferson and Madison organised the Democratic-Republicans (then simply 'Republicans') around 1792 against Hamilton's Federalists; the party dominated national politics for a generation after Jefferson's 1800 win.
Q 22The 1800 election ended in an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and which running mate?
Aaron Burr
Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes because electors could not distinguish president from vice president; the mess produced the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.
Q 23How many House ballots did it take to elect Jefferson president in February 1801?
36
George Clinton, the long-serving governor of New York, was Jefferson's vice president for his second term, 1805–09, and stayed on under Madison until his death in 1812.
Q 14Roughly what fraction of Jefferson's draft Declaration did Congress cut before adopting it?
A fourth
Congress cut about a fourth of Jefferson's text, including his attack on the slave trade; he resented the edits and kept copies of his original draft to show friends.
Q 15Which college did Jefferson enter at 16 in 1760?
William & Mary
He entered William & Mary in Williamsburg in 1760 and studied under William Small; after a first year of parties and dancing he reportedly buckled down to fifteen hours of study 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 memento did Jefferson's family find in a secret drawer of his cabinet after his death?
A lock of his wife's hair
A lock of his wife's hair, kept with lines from Tristram Shandy the dying Martha had copied out in 1782, lay in a secret drawer of his cabinet; he had promised her never to remarry.
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
The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 happened while Jefferson was serving as US minister in Paris; he later hosted Lafayette's meetings with fellow deputies 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
Jefferson devised the wheel cipher around 1795: a stack of lettered wooden disks on a spindle that scrambled messages; the US Army independently reinvented the idea in 1922 as the M-94.
The House took 36 ballots over six days in February 1801; Hamilton lobbied Federalists to back Jefferson as the lesser evil, feeding his fatal feud with Burr.
Q 24Jefferson's 1801 swearing-in was the first presidential inauguration held where?
Washington, D.C.
Jefferson's was the first inauguration held in Washington, D.C.; he walked to the unfinished Capitol from Conrad and McMunn's boarding house, or so the tradition goes.
Q 25How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory?
$15 million
The price was $15 million ($11.25 million in bonds plus $3.75 million in assumed claims against France), under 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
Robert Livingston and James Monroe, the US minister in Paris and a special envoy, signed with Barbé-Marbois on April 30, 1803; 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
Jefferson considered proposing a constitutional amendment to authorise the purchase but, fearing Napoleon would back out, let it drop; the Senate ratified the treaty on October 20, 1803.
Q 28What is Jefferson's 1801–05 war against the North African pirate states called?
The First Barbary War
The First Barbary War (1801–05) began when Tripoli declared war over unpaid tribute; Jefferson, who had opposed paying tribute since 1785, sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean.
Q 29Which US warship was captured by the Pasha of Tripoli during Jefferson's war in the Mediterranean?
USS Philadelphia
USS Philadelphia ran aground off Tripoli in October 1803 and was captured with her crew; Stephen Decatur's raid burned her in February 1804, and William Eaton's land expedition took Derna in 1805.
Q 30What was Jefferson's 1807 halt to all American overseas trade called?
The Embargo Act
The Embargo Act of December 1807 barred American ships from foreign trade; it wrecked the economy and Jefferson signed its repeal on March 1, 1809, three days before leaving office.