Q 01/05

Which state ratified the constitutional ban on slavery only in 1995 and filed the paperwork in 2013?

A) Kentucky

B) South Carolina

C) Mississippi

D) Delaware

Answer · why

C) Mississippi

Mississippi had rejected the amendment on December 5, 1865, a day before enough other states approved it to make it law. Its symbolic 1995 vote then s...

Q 02/05

Which actor reportedly vowed that Abraham Lincoln's call for Black voting rights would be his last speech?

A) Junius Brutus Booth Jr.

B) John Wilkes Booth

C) Lawrence Barrett

D) John McCullough

Answer · why

B) John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth stood in the crowd outside the White House on April 11, 1865, as Lincoln backed votes for former slaves. Booth shot him three days l...

Q 03/05

Which holiday marks the day in 1865 when a Union general announced in Galveston, Texas, that slavery was over?

A) Watch Night

B) Decoration Day

C) Kwanzaa

D) Juneteenth

Answer · why

D) Juneteenth

Juneteenth blends June and nineteenth, the date General Gordon Granger's order reached Texas. Few Union troops had been stationed there, so the Emanci...

Q 04/05

Which Union general's land order for freed families inspired the phrase 'forty acres and a mule'?

A) William T. Sherman

B) Ulysses S. Grant

C) George B. McClellan

D) Philip Sheridan

Answer · why

A) William T. Sherman

William T. Sherman issued the order four days after meeting twenty Black ministers and lay leaders in Savannah. Andrew Johnson moved to undo it within...

Q 05/05

Which trade did Andrew Johnson, who never attended school, practice in Greeneville before entering politics?

A) Blacksmith

B) Tailor

C) Printer

D) Cobbler

Answer · why

B) Tailor

Tailor was the trade Johnson was apprenticed to as a boy, and he ran away from his master after about five years. His wife later tutored him in mathem...