James Buchanan
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free James Buchanan trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
James Buchanan is usually remembered for what happened at the very end of his term, when the country began to break apart on his watch. Yet few men have reached the White House with a longer record behind them: state legislator, congressman, senator, diplomat on two continents and cabinet member. That contrast, a seasoned insider whom historians rank among the least successful presidents, is what makes him such rich ground for trivia. This quiz covers the whole story. There are questions on his frontier childhood and rowdy student days, his rise through Congress and the diplomatic service, and the three-way election that put him in office. Others deal with the crises of his presidency, from court rulings and territorial fights to odd foreign episodes, as well as his cabinet, his rivals and the last tense months before the war. A final group looks at his private life, his home, his pets and how he has been remembered. It is written for history fans, students working through the presidents and anyone who likes a surprising fact. The opening questions are ones most people can reason out, and the later ones dig deeper. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still leaves you knowing more about the fifteenth president and his era.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01James Buchanan, who died at 77 in 1868, remains the only US president never to have done what?
Got married
He never got married, staying single for life after an engagement ended in tragedy in 1819. A female relative handled the hostess duties in his White House.
Q 02The ruler of Siam offered James Buchanan a herd of which animals, a gift his successor later turned down?
Elephants
Elephants came with a ceremonial sword and a photograph of the royal family. The letter arrived after Buchanan left office, and the next president replied that the American climate did not suit them.
Q 03James Buchanan sent a general to calm an 1859 standoff with Britain sparked by the shooting of which animal?
A pig
A pig rooting in an American settler's potato patch on San Juan Island was the only casualty of the so-called Pig War. The standoff ended with no human losses on either side.
Q 04Which monarch exchanged greetings with James Buchanan over the first transatlantic telegraph cable in August 1858?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria sent congratulations that took about 16 hours to cross the Atlantic. Buchanan's reply called the cable a triumph more useful than any won on a battlefield.
Q 05Which niece of James Buchanan acted as White House hostess for his whole presidency, with her dresses widely copied?
Harriet Lane
Harriet Lane was orphaned at eleven and asked for Buchanan as her guardian. She later left her art collection to the nation, and it went to the Smithsonian.
Q 06James Buchanan habitually tilted his head forward and to one side because of a problem with which part of his body?
His eyes
His eyes were mismatched: one was near-sighted, the other far-sighted, and he was cross-eyed too. Rivals such as Henry Clay mocked the tilt during debates in Congress.
Q 07James Buchanan sent Marines under Robert E. Lee to end which abolitionist's 1859 raid on the Harpers Ferry armory?
John Brown
John Brown hoped to spark a slave revolt, but the Marines stormed his stronghold within two days. He was hanged that December, and the raid pushed North and South further apart.
Q 08James Buchanan was born in 1791 in what kind of building at Stony Batter, a frontier trading stop?
A log cabin
A log cabin on his father's land was his first home. The family later moved to nearby Mercersburg, where his father became the area's wealthiest resident.
Q 09Which Supreme Court ruling on slavery, issued two days after James Buchanan took office, had he secretly lobbied for?
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott v. Sandford held that Congress could not bar slavery from the territories. Buchanan had privately urged a northern justice to join the majority, hoping to settle the issue; it enraged the North instead.
Q 10James Buchanan sent the merchant steamer Star of the West to resupply which island garrison in Charleston Harbor?
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter never got the supplies: shore batteries fired on the ship in January 1861 and it turned back. The stronghold fell to Confederate guns three months later, after Buchanan had left office.
Q 11Which president-elect did James Buchanan tell in 1861 that he would be happy to leave the White House and go home?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln took over a country already breaking apart: seven Southern states had left the Union during Buchanan's final months in office.
Q 12James Buchanan, a Lancaster lawyer before entering politics, was the first president elected from which state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania had waited through fourteen presidencies for one of its own. Buchanan carried his home state in 1856 along with four other free states and nearly every slave state.
Q 13Which explorer nicknamed the Pathfinder lost to James Buchanan in 1856 as the first Republican presidential nominee?
John C. Frémont
Q 21Which Kentuckian served as James Buchanan's vice president at 36 and later became a Confederate general?
John C. Breckinridge
John C. Breckinridge is the youngest vice president the country has had. In 1860 Southern delegates who rejected the official nominee put him up for president instead.
Q 22Which Alabama senator, later a vice president, shared a Washington boardinghouse with James Buchanan for ten years?
William R. King
William R. King and Buchanan were so inseparable that one congressman called King Buchanan's better half. King died in 1853, soon after becoming vice president.
Q 23James Buchanan ran his 1856 front-porch campaign from which brick estate, where he died twelve years later?
John C. Frémont won most of the free states' electoral votes and finished second nationwide. His party was brand new, and its strong first showing alarmed slaveholders.
Q 14James Buchanan served as secretary of state under which president during the Mexican–American War?
Polk
Polk also offered him a seat on the Supreme Court, which Buchanan passed up for the cabinet. Their four years together stretched the United States to the Pacific.
Q 15James Buchanan sent 2,500 soldiers west in 1857 to replace which Mormon leader as governor of Utah Territory?
Brigham Young
Brigham Young answered by sending raiders to destroy the army's wagon trains and oxen. A negotiated peace in 1858 let the new governor take office without a pitched battle.
Q 16James Buchanan pressed Congress to admit which territory as a slave state under the disputed Lecompton Constitution?
Kansas
Kansas voters strongly rejected that constitution in an 1858 referendum, and the fight split Buchanan's party. The territory finally joined the Union as a free state in his last weeks in office.
Q 17The 1854 Ostend Manifesto, drafted by James Buchanan and two fellow diplomats, urged the US to acquire which island?
Cuba
Cuba was to be bought from Spain, and the document argued that seizing it would be justified if Spain refused to sell. The manifesto met a divided response and was never acted on.
Q 18President Andrew Jackson sent James Buchanan abroad in 1832 as the American minister to which country?
Russia
Russia felt like political exile to Buchanan, who had denounced the tsar as a despot only a year earlier. He still came home with a trade treaty.
Q 19In 1860 James Buchanan welcomed to the White House the first diplomatic mission sent to America by which nation?
Japan
Japan sent its envoys to ratify a trade treaty, and Buchanan gave them a gold watch engraved with his own likeness for the shogun. New York then put on a grand parade up Broadway.
Q 20James Buchanan's administration offered $5 million in 1859 for which territory, finally bought eight years later?
Alaska
Alaska mattered to Buchanan because American whaling in its waters had become big business. The tsar's foreign minister had doubts and the talks stalled, but they laid the ground for the 1867 purchase.
Wheatland
Wheatland took its name from the local wheat fields. Buchanan bought the house in 1848, and after his death it passed to his niece.
Q 24Critics branded James Buchanan with which insult for a Northerner who sided with Southern slaveholders?
Doughface
Doughface was coined by Virginia congressman John Randolph in 1820 for Northerners he thought weak and half-baked. Buchanan earned it by backing the South on slavery again and again.
Q 25James Buchanan first won election to his state legislature in 1814 as a member of which party?
The Federalists
The Federalists were his father's choice too. Buchanan attacked President Madison over the war with Britain before crossing to Andrew Jackson's camp in the 1820s.
Q 26Which chief justice swore in James Buchanan in 1857 and was seen talking quietly with him at the ceremony?
Roger B. Taney
Roger B. Taney handed down a sweeping pro-slavery ruling just two days later, so the quiet chat fed rumours that he had tipped off the new president in advance.
Q 27James Buchanan was nearly expelled for rowdy behaviour from which Carlisle college before graduating with honours?
Dickinson
Dickinson almost threw him out in 1808 for drinking in taverns and vandalism. He pleaded for a second chance and finished with honours the following year.
Q 28James Buchanan's father was a merchant who had emigrated to America in 1783 from which country?
Ireland
Ireland's County Donegal was the family home, though their roots were Ulster-Scots. The frontier post where the future president was born was named after the old family place there.
Q 29James Buchanan served as Worshipful Master of a lodge in his home town as a member of which brotherhood?
The Freemasons
The Freemasons made him head of Lodge No. 43 and later a district deputy grand master, a regional post in the order's state body.
Q 30Which future British monarch stayed three days at James Buchanan's White House in 1860 while Prince of Wales?
Edward VII
Edward VII was 18 at the time, and Buchanan took him to Mount Vernon to pay his respects at George Washington's tomb. No Prince of Wales had toured North America before.