Abraham Lincoln Trivia Questions and Answers
Who was the 16th President of the United States?
A: Abraham Lincoln.
On what date was Abraham Lincoln born?
A: February 12, 1809,
Lincoln was the second child of whom?
A: Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.
Where was Abraham Lincoln born?
A: In a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County,
Kentucky.
Who is he is descended from?
A: Samuel Lincoln, who arrived in Hingham,
Massachusetts, from Norfolk,
England, in the 17th century.
Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham was
ambushed and killed in a what?
A: An Indian raid in 1786, as his children, including Lincoln's father Thomas,
looked on.
Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks,
and was born where?
A: In what is now Mineral County, West Virginia, then part of
Virginia.
By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two
600-acre what?
A: Farms.
Lincoln’s father was among the “what” in the county.
A: Richest men in the county.
However, in 1816, Thomas lost all of his land in court
cases because of what?
A: Faulty property titles.
When did Lincoln serve as President?
A: From March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865.
Lincoln led the United States through what war?
A: It’s Civil War.
Where was Lincoln reared?
A: In a poor family on the western frontier.
Lincoln was a self-educated what in Illinois?
A: Lawyer.
Abraham was a Whig Party what?
A: Leader, and state legislator during the 1830s.
Lincoln was elected to Congress in what year?
A: 1846.
As a congressman, what did he promote?
A: Rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads.
He had originally agreed not to what?
A: Run for a second term.
Lincoln’s opposition to the Mexican–American War was
unpopular among whom?
A: The voters.
Lincoln returned to politics in 1854, and was a leader in
building up the new what?
A: Republican Party, which had a statewide majority.
In highly publicized debates in 1858, what did Lincoln
speak out against?
A: The expansion of slavery.
To whom did Lincoln lose to in the U.S. Senate race?
A: His arch rival, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.
In 1860, what did Lincoln secure?
A: The Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing
state.
Lincoln had very little support in the slave states, but he
swept the North and was elected president in what year?
A: 1860.
His election prompted how many southern slave states to
form the Confederacy before he took the office?
A: Seven.
When the North rallied behind the Union after the
Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln concentrated on what?
A: The military and
political dimensions of the war effort.
His primary goal was to what?
A: Reunite the nation.
Lincoln unilaterally suspended what?
A: Habeas corpus, arresting and temporarily detaining thousands holding
secessionist or anti-war views in the border states without trial.
Lincoln averted potential British intervention by defusing
what?
A: The Trent Affair in late 1861.
Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the
selection of what?
A: Top generals, including his most successful general,
Ulysses S. Grant.
Lincoln made the major decisions on Union war what?
A: Strategy.
Lincoln's Navy set up a naval blockade that shut down the
South's what?
A: Normal trade.
Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital
at Richmond, and each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until
what?
A: Grant succeeded in 1865.