History Quiz: American Presidents

1. What American President launched a massive invasion of another country that posed no threat, and without a declaration of war?
2. What President raised a huge army at his own will without the approval of Congress?
3. What President started a “war of choice” in violation of every principle of Christian “just war” teaching?
4. What President said that he had to violate the Constitution in order to save it?
5. What President declared the elected legislatures of thirteen States to be "combinations" of criminals that he had to suppress?

6. What President said he was indifferent to slavery but would use any force necessary to collect
taxes?
7. What President sent combat troops from the battlefield to bombard and occupy New York City?
8. What President sent the Army to arrest in the middle of the night thousands of private citizens for expressing their opinions? And held them incommunicado in military prisons with total denial of due process of law? And had his soldiers destroy newspaper plants?
9. What President was the first ruler in the civilized world to make medicine a contraband of war?
10. What President signed for his cronies special licenses to purchase valuable cotton from an enemy country even though he had forbidden such trade and punished other people for the same practice?

11. What President refused medical care and food to his own soldiers held by the enemy country?
12. What President presided over the bombardment and house-by-house destruction of cities and towns that were undefended and not military targets?
13. What President’s forces deliberately targeted women and children and destroyed their housing, food supply, and private belongings?
14. What President’s occupying forces engaged in imprisonment, torture, and execution of civilians and seizing them as hostages?
15. Under what President did the Army have the largest number of criminals, mercenaries, and foreigners?

16. Who was the first American President to plot the assassination of an opposing head of state?
17. Who had the least affiliation with Christianity of any American President and blamed God for starting the war over which he presided?
17. What President voted for and praised a law which forbade black people from settling in his State?
18. What President said that all black people should be expelled from the United States because they could never be full-fledged citizens?
19. What President was the first to force citizens to accept as legal money pieces of paper unbacked by gold or silver?
20. Who was the first President to institute an income tax?

21. Who was the first President to pile up a national debt too vast to be paid off in a generation?
22. Who is considered almost universally as the greatest American President, indeed as the greatest American of all times and as a world hero of democracy?
23. What predecessor is President Obama most often compared to?

This is a take-home quiz. Please grade yourself. You may contact Dr. Wilson at: cwilson@clicksouth.net. Clyde Wilson was a professor of history but is recovering nicely, thank you. His most recent book: The Papers of John C. Calhoun.

Source: "The Texian," newsletter of Alamo City (TX) Guards Camp #325, SCV, June 2010.