Benjamin Harrison
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50 free Benjamin Harrison trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Benjamin Harrison is often remembered only as the president wedged between two terms of the same rival, yet his four years in office were among the busiest of the nineteenth century. Congress passed landmark laws on business, trade and public land, the map of the West was redrawn, and the navy began its climb towards world rank. Harrison himself was a study in contrasts: a gifted speaker before a crowd and famously stiff in private, a war veteran who disliked war, and a doting family man in a house full of children and animals. This quiz covers the whole story. There are questions on his famous relatives, his boyhood and schooling, his years as a soldier and senator, and the two hard-fought elections that put him in office and then removed him. Others look at the presidency itself: the laws he signed, the foreign crises he faced, the people he appointed, and the changes his family made to the executive mansion. A final group follows him into retirement, when he went back to work and married again. It is written for history fans, students revising the presidents and anyone curious about a leader who rarely gets the spotlight. The early questions are ones most people can reason out, and the later ones dig deeper. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you knowing more about the man and his era.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Benjamin Harrison was related to the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, in what way?
Grandson
Grandson is the link: Benjamin was seven when William Henry Harrison won the White House. John Scott Harrison, between them, is the only person to be both child and parent of a president.
Q 02Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland in 1888 by carrying the Electoral College despite losing what?
The popular vote
The popular vote went to Cleveland by about 90,000 ballots, yet Harrison took the Electoral College 233 to 168. Four years later Cleveland won the rematch and returned to the White House.
Q 03Which White House first under Benjamin Harrison left his family so nervous that they avoided using it themselves?
Electric lights
Electric lights were wired in by the Edison company, but the Harrisons feared a shock from the switches and often went to bed with the lamps still burning.
Q 04Which White House tradition is credited to Benjamin Harrison's first wife Caroline, who loved celebrations and holidays?
The Christmas tree
The Christmas tree made its White House debut with the Harrisons. Caroline also rescued old presidential dinnerware from the attic, starting the mansion's porcelain collection.
Q 05What kind of animal was Old Whiskers, the pet Benjamin Harrison once chased down Pennsylvania Avenue, top hat in hand?
A goat
A goat it was: Old Whiskers belonged to Harrison's grandchildren, who were allowed to keep as many pets on the White House grounds as they liked.
Q 06More states joined the Union under Benjamin Harrison than under any other president; which of these was one?
Montana
Montana joined in November 1889, one of six new states in under a year. Idaho and Wyoming followed in July 1890, redrawing the map of the West.
Q 07Which 1890 law signed by Benjamin Harrison was the first federal act aimed at curbing monopolies and is still in force?
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act passed both houses by wide margins and marked a new use of federal power, though Harrison's own administration enforced it only lightly.
Q 08The first federal immigration station opened in 1892, under Benjamin Harrison, at which New York Harbor site?
Ellis Island
Ellis Island opened to arrivals in 1892, two years after Harrison's government took control of immigration away from the individual states.
Q 09A peacetime Congress first appropriated which round sum under Benjamin Harrison, earning itself a nickname?
One billion dollars
One billion dollars was the sum that got the 51st Congress branded the Billion-Dollar Congress. Speaker Thomas Reed shot back that this was a billion-dollar country.
Q 10Which city was home to Benjamin Harrison for most of his adult life and now holds his house museum and grave?
Indianapolis
Indianapolis drew the newlywed Harrisons in 1854, a move paid for by selling land he had inherited from an aunt. His 16-room house there is now a presidential museum.
Q 11Although the Harrison family is tied to Virginia, Benjamin Harrison was born on a riverside farm in which state?
Ohio
Ohio claims him by birth: he was born in 1833 at North Bend, on a farm next to the estate of Old Tippecanoe, and spent much of his boyhood outdoors hunting and fishing.
Q 12What name is given to the way Benjamin Harrison ran in 1888, speaking to delegations who travelled to his home?
Front-porch campaign
A front-porch campaign let him stay home while the crowds came to him. He gave more than 90 short speeches that summer and autumn without taking to the road.
Q 13Benjamin Harrison left the Union Army in 1865 holding which rank, granted by brevet for his battlefield record?
Brigadier general
Q 21Which bandleader conducted the Marine Band at Benjamin Harrison's 1889 inaugural ball in the Pension Building?
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa led the Marine Corps band for a large crowd. Earlier that day Harrison's speech ran half the length of Old Tippecanoe's, still the longest inaugural address ever given.
Q 22After losing the 1892 election, Benjamin Harrison told his family he felt as though he had been freed from what?
Prison
Prison was his word for the presidency by the end: his wife had died two weeks before polling day, and his own party's bosses had tried to deny him the nomination.
Q 23While out hunting in secret, Benjamin Harrison made the national press by shooting which farm animal by mistake?
A pig
Brigadier general was the brevet rank Lincoln nominated him for in January 1865. He had joined up three years earlier with no military experience at all.
Q 14In his last weeks in office, Benjamin Harrison sent the Senate a treaty to annex which Pacific islands?
Hawaii
Hawaii had just seen Queen Liliuokalani overthrown in a coup. The Senate never acted on the treaty, and Grover Cleveland withdrew it soon after returning to office.
Q 15Which of these men did Benjamin Harrison appoint as United States minister to Haiti in 1889?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass took the post and Harrison relied on his counsel frequently, though the administration's push for a naval base in Haiti came to nothing.
Q 16Benjamin Harrison was dubbed the Centennial President because his 1889 inauguration fell a century after whose?
George Washington
George Washington first took the oath in 1789, so 1889 doubled as an anniversary. Weeks after his own swearing-in, Harrison joined a three-day centennial celebration in New York.
Q 17As a senator, Benjamin Harrison opposed an 1882 law shutting out immigrants from which country?
China
China had treaties with the United States that Harrison believed the Chinese Exclusion Act violated. The act passed anyway, without his support.
Q 18Benjamin Harrison's great-grandfather and namesake, a Virginia planter, signed which founding document?
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence bears the name of Benjamin Harrison V, who chaired the final debate on it in Congress and later became governor of Virginia.
Q 19Which 1890 massacre of Lakota people by the 7th Cavalry took place on Benjamin Harrison's watch as president?
Wounded Knee
Wounded Knee followed a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota amid official alarm at the Ghost Dance movement. Harrison ordered an inquiry and sent 3,500 troops to the region.
Q 20Benjamin Harrison opened the Unassigned Lands to settlers in 1889, setting off a famous land rush in which future state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma's first land run began at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up at the start. Harrison himself had named the day and the hour.
A pig belonging to a farmer was the victim, on one of many escapes from the capital by a president who usually worked only until noon.
Q 24Which disease killed Benjamin Harrison's wife Caroline two weeks before the 1892 election, muting the contest?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis took her on October 25, 1892, after a summer in the Adirondack air failed to help. Grover Cleveland declined to stump in person once he learned how ill she was.
Q 25Which future president lent his name to the 1890 tariff that Benjamin Harrison signed into law?
William McKinley
William McKinley framed the bill as a congressman, and the price rises it brought helped cost him his own seat that autumn. Six years later he won the White House.
Q 26Which future president did Benjamin Harrison put on the Civil Service Commission, then largely ignore?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt kept calling for a wider merit system and complaining about patronage in the Post Office, but Harrison barely advanced the reform cause otherwise.
Q 27Benjamin Harrison's stiff, aloof manner led even his own White House staff to call him by which nickname?
The human iceberg
The human iceberg impressed big crowds from the platform but froze visitors one to one. With family he thawed, and he loved to play with his grandchildren.
Q 28Benjamin Harrison's wife Caroline served as the first president general of which newly founded women's society?
Daughters of the American Revolution
The Daughters of the American Revolution organised in 1890 with the First Lady at its head. At the White House she made orchids the official flower for state receptions.
Q 29Benjamin Harrison's second wife, Mary Dimmick, was related to his late first wife Caroline in what way?
Her niece
Her niece Mary had lived in the White House as the First Lady's assistant. Harrison's two grown children disapproved of the match and stayed away from the 1896 wedding.
Q 30Benjamin Harrison fought at Resaca and Peachtree Creek in the 1864 Union drive on which Confederate city?
Atlanta
Atlanta fell on September 2, 1864, and Harrison was among the first Union troops to enter the city. At Resaca his regiment had stormed a gun battery in hand-to-hand fighting.