“Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in the world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here,” says Carlyle. “The history of the world is the biography of great men.”

What the historian-philosopher esteemed the truest form of history is undoubtedly the form which appeals earliest and most strongly to the child mind. This fact has been recognized by educators, and biographical stories in the lower grades are wisely made the foundation for more comprehensive work in advanced grades.

The following biographies of men and women prominent in the making of American history are intended as an introduction to a topical study of the history of the United States. These biographies are prepared to meet the requirements of the New York State schools; the author has followed the plan outlined in the State Syllabus. She has in every case consulted the most recent and authoritative biographies, and has endeavored to make the narrative truthful and vivid.

This book contains all the biographical matter required for the fifth and sixth grades in the Elementary Syllabus of the New York State Education Department, and follows faithfully the outlines given.

The style is clear, easy, and concise, common words and short sentences being used.

The aim is to bring out, so far as the brief space will allow, those biographical and dramatic elements which make the strongest appeal to the pupil.

While no attempt is made to present a continuous history of our country, these biographies show its development from the time of discovery and exploration through the days of colonization and settlement to the present period of invention and industrial supremacy.

From the northwestern coast of Europe projects the rock-ribbed Scandinavian peninsula. The scenery is grand and picturesque, but the soil is sterile and the climate severe. In this bleak, beautiful country and on the adjacent islands of the Baltic Sea, there lived, a thousand years ago, the people called the Norsemen or Northmen.

Their houses were usually long wooden structures a hundred or two hundred feet in length. Sometimes these houses were divided into several rooms, but often the dwelling consisted of only one large hall or living-room. On the floor of stone or hard-trampled earth, was kindled a fire, the smoke from which found its way upward and out through the crevices of the high-pitched roof. On three sides of the room were built beds,—shelf-like structures of boards, with skins for bedding and blankets.

[8]The Norsemen did not even attempt to wrest a living from the reluctant soil. At home their days were given to hunting and fishing, their evenings to feasting in the hall. While they sat at table, the scalds, as their poets were called, sang or recited tales of battles, conquests, voyages,—the daring deeds of the vikings or sea-robbers and the sea-kings of their race. Thus in hunting, fishing, and feasting passed the winter.

When summer unlocked the storm- and ice-bound harbors, the Norsemen put forth in their ships. Their long-ships, or ships of war, were long, narrow vessels; on each side were benches for rowers and over the sides hung the shining shields of the Norsemen. Hundreds of these little vessels pushed off boldly from the shores of Scandinavia every summer. The Norsemen knew nothing of the mariner’s compass, and they directed their course on the pathless seas by means of the stars. This was a dangerous undertaking, and in stormy, foggy weather, many a boat lost its bearings and went down with all on board.

Fleets of the long-boats, however, braved the rough seas and sought distant lands—the coasts of England, France, Spain, Italy, even of Greece and Africa. What was their object? Plunder and always plunder. The fierce, merciless sea-soldiers descended on a land suddenly, like a thunder-cloud from the blue summer sky. They laid it waste; then, with stores of gold and silver, household goods and provisions, they sailed back[9] home. Year after year, century after century, the Norsemen made these summer raids and were a terror to all the western and southern coasts of Europe.

But in the course of time, the character of the Norse invasions changed. The men did not sail forth alone for summer raids. Instead, men, women, and children went together and wintered on the coasts which they plundered. Sometimes they remained summer and winter and made the stolen lands their own. They were so strong and fierce in battle that few people could withstand them.

They overran the coasts of England, and it seemed as if they would take possession of the land. But a brave, wise king, Alfred the Great, defeated them on land, and built boats, the beginning of the English navy, to defend the coasts. Thus the Norse people in England became subjects instead of masters.

France, however, did not have an Alfred the Great. In the ninth century Rolf, a bold Norseman, established himself on the fair coastland of France. In course of time, the people there were called Normans instead of Norsemen, and the land they had seized was known as Normandy. These Normans, like their Norse ancestors, were fond of battle and conquest. One of them, Duke William, went to England, took possession of the land, and made himself King William.

The Norsemen went west as well as south, and in the ninth century, they settled in Iceland. Thence they[10] pushed on to Greenland, where they established a colony. Farther west than Greenland it is said that they went, to the continent of America, hundreds of years before Columbus was born.

Here is the story as the Sagas, or old Scandinavian tales, tell it.

In 985, Bjarni, a merchant and ship-master who was traveling from Iceland to Greenland, was driven out of his course by a storm and foggy weather. “They were borne before the wind for many days, they knew not whither.” When at last calm and sunshine came, they reached a low wooded shore, probably Cape Cod. Leaving this land on the left, Bjarni sailed northward, with a favoring wind. Two days later, he again came near land, low and wooded. This is supposed to have been Nova Scotia. Again Bjarni turned from the coast which he felt sure was not the land that he sought, “because they told me,” he said, “that there are great mountains of ice in Greenland.” Three days later, he reached a rocky, snow-covered shore. He coasted along this till he found that it was an island,—probably Newfoundland,—and then again he turned away. A storm from the south drove him on his course and in four days he reached Greenland.

He told the story of his wanderings on the western seas, but he did not attempt to revisit the lands he had found. At last the tale came to the ears of Leif[11] Eriksen, “a man strong and of great stature, of dignified aspect, wise and moderate in all things.”

Leif bought Bjarni’s ship and in 999 sailed forth with about twenty-five men to find the new land. He reached the snow-covered island—Newfoundland—which he called Helluland, “land of broad stones,” and he went ashore to see its “frozen heights and bare flat rocks.” Next he visited the “low wooded land of white sandy shore”—Nova Scotia—which he called “Markland, land of woods.” At last he reached the third promontory—Cape Cod,—the first which Bjarni had beheld; there he landed and passed the winter. From the wild grapes, then as now plentiful on the coast of Massachusetts Bay, the Norsemen gave the land the name “Vinland,” land of wine. The next spring they returned to Greenland, rescuing on the way a crew of shipwrecked men. From this time Leif was called “Leif the Lucky.”

Two years later Leif said to his brother Thorvald, “Go brother, take my ship to Vinland.” Thorvald with thirty men spent the winter in the dwellings Leif had erected two years before; the next summer they explored the surrounding country and wintered again in “Leif’s booths.” In the summer of 1004, the Norsemen coasted along the shore exploring the country. At one time when they landed, they were attacked by natives, supposed to be Esquimaux, whom they called[12] Skrælings. In the skirmish Thorvald received a fatal wound from an arrow. His followers returned to “Leif’s booths” and in the summer of 1005 went back to Greenland; they gave an enthusiastic description of Vinland, with its vines, wild corn, fish, and game.

A few years later, Thorfinn Karlsefne and his wife Gudrid with three ships and one hundred and sixty persons made a voyage to Vinland. Gudrid’s son Snorri, the ancestor of the famous Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen, is said to have been born in Vinland. At the end of three years, the party returned to Greenland. After the death of her husband, Gudrid made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she described to the pope the fair new land in the west, the Christian settlement in “Vinland the Good.”

From Greenland, we are told, hunters and fishermen made frequent voyages to Vinland. They established settlements there and carried on a fur trade with the Indians. But in course of time, these posts were destroyed by the Indians, and the Norse settlements in Greenland itself were destroyed by war and plague. The western voyages and the memory of them ceased. Only the Scalds, trained to repeat family histories and tales of war and conquest, remembered and related the story of Vinland. In the course of time, these sagas, or stories, were written down, and centuries later men learned about the Norse colony, or “western planting,” in the New World.

You do not need to be told that the world as known to us to-day is very different from the world as it was known—or misknown—to the people of the thirteenth century. Two great inventions broadened the horizon of Europe; these were the mariner’s compass and the printing press. The mariner’s compass made it possible for men to strike boldly across unknown seas instead of clinging to familiar shores; the printing press spread books abroad and conveyed the knowledge of the few to the masses.

To-day, the steamship and the railway unite countries and destroy distance. Even the parts of the world where these do not penetrate, own, to a greater or less extent, the power of the great nations of the world. A citizen of the United States can cross the deserts of Africa or penetrate the wilds of Asia and be protected by his nation’s flag. There is hardly a place so secluded that some hardy traveler has not visited it, describing and picturing the country, people, and customs so as to make them known to all the world.

Very different was the state of affairs in the thirteenth century. The European who started east had an unblazed trail before him. He had to make his way on foot or on horseback, by sail or row boats, through mountain passes, trackless forests, and vast deserts, and[14] across streams and seas. On the land, he encountered robbers; on the waters, pirates. Everywhere were people with unknown customs and strange languages. The chances were that the adventurous traveler, instead of returning home, would leave his bones to whiten foreign sands.

Yet one traveler encountered and passed through all these dangers, returned safe home, and dictated an account of his travels,—a true story, as wonderful as the tales of the “Arabian Nights.” Perhaps some day you will read the story of Marco Polo’s travels.

Marco Polo began life with three advantages; he was born in the thirteenth century, he was a Venetian, and he was a Polo. Venice, in the Middle Ages, was one of the commercial centers of the world. The great oceans were as yet uncrossed; the Italian cities sent forth merchant-vessels which brought across the Mediterranean the goods conveyed overland by caravans from the East,—the spices, gold, and jewels of Asia. Among the Venetian families made wealthy by commerce—the merchant-princes, as they were called—was the Polo family. About the middle of the thirteenth century, there were three Polo brothers engaged in commerce.

Two of these brothers went to the East, first to the Crimea and thence to Cathay, as China was then called. They were probably the first European travelers who reached China. They went to Cambaluc, or Peking,[15] where they were graciously received by the great emperor, Kublai Khan. He was the grandson of Jenghiz, who had made himself master of northern China. The son and grandson of Jenghiz extended his conquests, so that the kingdom of Kublai Khan embraced China, northern Asia, Persia, Armenia, and parts of Asia Minor and Russia. Under this powerful ruler, the East was not only bound together in one vast empire, it was open to Europeans as it had never been before and has never been since. Kublai Khan welcomed the Polo brothers to his court, and they spent there several years. At last they returned to Venice, where Nicolo had left his wife; his son Marco, born the year of his departure, was now a youth of about eighteen.

The Polo brothers remained in Venice two years and then returned to Cathay. With them went Marco Polo, a brave, intelligent youth. They passed through the country around the sources of the river Oxus and crossed the plateau of Pamir and the great desert of Gobi. Much of this country had never before been visited by Europeans, and we have no record of its being revisited until a few years ago when the Orient was again to some extent opened to the world.

The Polos were welcomed back by Kublai Khan, who was at his winter residence, Cambaluc, where “are to be seen in wonderful abundance the precious stones, the pearls, the silks, and the diverse perfumes of the East.” Marco mastered the four languages most in[16] use at court. The Khan, seeing that he was both intelligent and discreet, sent him on public business to Kara Korum, Cochin-China, India, and other parts of the great empire. When he returned, he was able to give the Khan information stored in his memory and his note books not only about the business of which he had charge but also about the manners, customs, and peculiarities of the peoples he had visited. He became a great favorite with the Khan and was, we are told, made governor of the great city of Yang-Chow.

At the end of fifteen years, the Polos desired to revisit their home, and the Khan consented on condition that they would return to Cathay. Some idea of the difficulty of the return journey may be gathered from the fact that it took twenty-six months. We are told that their kindred did not recognize the long-absent merchants. They gave a grand feast in oriental style; at the end they donned costumes suiting their rank and ripped apart their travel-worn garments, displaying dazzling wealth of rubies, sapphires, and other gems therein concealed.

The Polos had been at home only about three years when there arose war between Genoa and Venice, which were commercial rivals. The hostile fleets met in battle and the Venetians were defeated. Among the seven thousand prisoners was Marco Polo, who was an officer on one of the Venetian galleys. He was put in prison in Genoa and there he remained about a year. One of his[17] fellow-prisoners was Rusticiano of Pisa, an author. The Pisan was much interested in the wonderful adventures of Polo and wrote them down from dictation.

The book consists practically of two parts. The first part, or prologue as it is called, relates the circumstances of the two Polos’ first visit to the Khan’s court, their second voyage accompanied by Marco, and their return home by way of the Indian Seas and of Persia. Polo informed the Europeans, who thought that eastern Asia ended in swamps and fog and darkness, that there was open sea east of Asia and that he, his father, and his uncle had sailed from the southeast coast of Cathay, or China, to the Persian Gulf. The second part of Polo’s “Travels” describes the different states and provinces of Asia, and the court and rule of Kublai Khan. Little is told of the traveler himself, but we gather that he was a brave, shrewd, and prudent man.

After Marco Polo’s release from prison in 1299, he seems to have returned to Venice, married, and lived quietly in his native city until his death in 1324.

“The Book of Marco Polo,” as Rusticiano of Pisa called his work, was read with much interest and was translated into many languages. For many centuries it was the only European description of the far East, written by an eye-witness. Polo was accused of falsehood and exaggeration, but as people learned more about the lands he described, they found that, in the main, he was right; he was truthful and accurate in describing[18] what he had seen, but he was sometimes misled by the tales of others to whom he listened. In the prologue, Rusticiano says that he describes things seen by “Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice.... Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity, and we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our book and that all who shall read it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.”

Marco Polo was the first European traveler to make his way across the whole length of Asia, naming and describing the kingdoms which he visited. He was the first to describe the Pamir plateau, “the roof of the world,” the highest level country on the globe, the deserts and flowery plains of Persia, the wealth and size of China, the manners and customs of its people, and the splendid court of its emperor, the great Kublai Khan. He was the first to describe Tibet, and to tell of Burmah, Cochin-China, Siam, Japan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and India, not merely as names but as places he had seen and known. He gave an account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, of the tropical luxuriance of the far-off islands, of the negroes and ivory of Zanzibar, of vast and distant Madagascar, of Siberia and the Arctic shores with their dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer. In brief, he described Asia[19] from Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, to Ceylon, from the Adriatic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and to him Europe owes its first geographical knowledge of Asia.

In the time of Marco Polo, the Mongolian Empire was probably the largest in the world. He informed Europeans that in the East, which they thought inhabited by savage and ignorant people, was a wealthy and civilized kingdom, swarming with inhabitants and dotted with huge cities. He described the palaces and pleasure grounds of Cambaluc, or Peking, somewhat as they are to-day. He told how “black stones” were dug out of the earth and burnt for fuel, because they “burn better and cost less” than wood,—whereat Polo marveled. He told about the emperor’s granaries for wheat, barley, millet, and rice, about the wool, silk, hemp, spices, sugar, gold, and salt of the country. At first it seems strange that Polo did not mention tea, for hundreds of years the national drink of the Chinese, but we must remember that he was associated with the Tartar ruling classes and so was to a great extent ignorant of the manners and customs of the subject natives.

Cipangu or Cipango—that is, Japan—was made known to Europeans by Polo. He described it as “an island in the high seas,” and said that the sea around it was studded with thousands of islands rich in spices and perfumes. Cipango was the only country attacked by Kublai Khan which was able to resist his power.[20] Its people were civilized and it was rich in gold and in wonderful pearls, white and rose-colored. Polo says “rubies are found on this island and in no other country in the world but this.”

He described India,—the scanty garments of the people and their magnificent jewels. He gave an interesting account of the diamond mines of Golconda, and of the cotton plant—more valuable even than those rich mines—from which fiber is obtained for clothing. He visited and described the places from which are obtained ginger, pepper, cinnamon, camphor, and other gums and spices.

Seilan, or Ceylon, was another place visited by Polo. He described the pearl fisheries there, much as they are to-day.

With the name and deeds of Christopher Columbus you are already familiar. You will be interested in a brief sketch of the main facts of his life; some day, it is hoped, you will read the story as told at length by our great American author, Washington Irving.

Careful research has not been able to ascertain the exact year of Christopher Columbus’s birth. It was sometime about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably 1445 or 1446. His father was a wool-comber [21]who lived in a village near the great Italian city of Genoa. Genoa was a rich commercial city,—the rival of Venice, as you learned in the story of Marco Polo.

Probably Columbus often visited Genoa in boyhood; he early showed his inclination for a seafaring life and became a sailor when he was about fifteen. Seafaring then was very different from what it is now. People knew little of the world beyond Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. Sailors were beginning to use the mariner’s compass, but old habits were still strong, and they did not often venture far from land. This was not only because they feared that they would lose their way and be unable to return home. They thought that around the known land and sea circled the Sea of Darkness, full of raging monsters and dangerous whirlpools. For centuries some geographers had reasoned that the world was round, but they never went to see if this were true. The majority of people believed that the earth was flat like a floor. Probably that was what Columbus believed in his youth.

We have little record of his early years. “Wherever ship has sailed,” he wrote later, “there have I journeyed.”

When he was about twenty-five years old, he married and settled in Lisbon. There he supported himself and his family by making the maps and charts, so necessary to sailors. He seems to have spent his leisure reading books of geography and travels, studying old[22] papers and charts, and talking with seamen. One of his favorite books was the story of the old Venetian traveler, Polo; as Columbus read about the vast and wealthy country of Cathay and the island of Cipango with its houses roofed with gold, he longed to visit them.

As he pondered the matter, he became convinced that these eastern lands could be reached by sailing west. Old geographers described the earth as a sphere. Columbus was convinced that this was true. It never occurred to him that any land unknown to him lay between Europe and Asia. He thought that the earth was much smaller than it really is and that Asia was much larger. He believed that the sea which Marco Polo described as east of Asia extended eastward to the shores of western Europe. He thought it was about twenty-five hundred or three thousand miles from Spain to China. This was a great mistake. But Columbus was much nearer the truth than most men of the day—who thought the world flat with an edge over which there was danger of falling. And, unlike the old geographers, Columbus resolved to sail westward to prove the truth of his theory.

There was living in Florence at this time a learned old man, a scholar and student, named Toscanelli, who had said he believed that India could be reached by sailing west. Columbus wrote to this scholar in 1474, telling of his intention to attempt the voyage. Toscanelli[23] sent him a chart which unfortunately has been lost and wrote, “I praise your desire to navigate toward the west; the expedition you wish to undertake is not easy, but the route from the west coast of Europe to the Spice Indies is certain, if the tracks I have marked be followed.”

Three years later Columbus made a voyage to Iceland. It has been suggested that he went there because he had heard sailors’ tales of the news carried to Rome by Gudrid of “Vinland the Good”—the western land discovered by Leif the Lucky. It is said that in Iceland Columbus met a learned bishop with whom he conversed in Latin about Greenland and Vinland. But these northern lands were not the ones sought by Columbus. He wanted to reach the southern coast, to visit the Cathay and Cipango of Marco Polo.

Soon after his return from Iceland, it is said that Columbus applied to his native city, Genoa, to fit out an expedition for a voyage of discovery. Meeting refusal there and at Venice, he turned to Portugal. The king of Portugal was not averse to undertaking the expedition but was unwilling to give Columbus the rank and rewards he demanded in case of success. The king secretly sent out an expedition to follow the route indicated by Columbus. But the faint-hearted captain returned after a brief cruise, saying he had seen no signs of land.

Indignant at this bad faith, Columbus took his little[24] son Diego and set out in 1484 to present his project to the Spanish sovereigns. His brother Bartolomeo had gone to plead his cause with the king of England. Columbus reached Spain at an unfavorable time. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were engaged in a war against the Moors, which occupied their time and emptied their treasury. However, the matter was laid before a council of scholars who decided that the plan was vain and impracticable.

Seven years Columbus attended the Spanish court, hoping against hope that a decision would be made in his favor. Weary and disappointed, he at last turned away, in 1491, to lay his project before Charles VIII., King of France.

Footsore and dejected, he stopped one evening with his son Diego at the convent of La Rabida to beg a night’s lodging. There he told the prior about the plan on which his heart was set,—his longing to add the rich domains which he was certain lay to the west, to the kingdom of Spain, his desire to win the great Khan and his subjects to the Christian faith and extend the power of the Church. This ambition appealed to the devout prior. At midnight he mounted his mule and rode to the camp to see the queen and persuade her to give Columbus an interview. He was successful and Columbus returned to plead his own cause with the king and queen. The king regarded the project coldly[25] and reminded the queen that war had emptied the royal treasury.

“I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile,” exclaimed Isabella, “and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.”

Columbus was granted the rank and title of admiral over all lands he might discover and was promised one-tenth of all gold, gems, spices, and other merchandise from these lands. Leaving his son Diego as page to the young Prince John, Columbus set to work to fit out the expedition. It was difficult to secure seamen to venture on the unknown ocean. At last the required number was secured; some were forced into service, some taken from jails, some won by bounties in advance and promises of rewards later.

On Friday, August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from the port of Palos, Spain, with three little vessels. The Santa Maria was a decked ship, ninety feet long, carrying sixty-six men; the Nina and the Pinta, smaller than the Santa Maria, were boat-like vessels, carrying each about twenty-five men. Columbus had a letter from the King of Spain to the great Khan whose realm, Cathay, he expected to reach.

You have read the story of that wonderful voyage to seek an Old World which ended in the finding of a New. You can in fancy follow the course of Columbus day after day—his struggles with his timorous, ignorant,[26] greedy, turbulent, mutinous crew,—his iron will, and determination to “sail on and on.” Day after day he set his will and courage against their stubborn fears. Like children, the sailors rejoiced at every good sign—birds, reeds, and boughs floating on the waters; and were depressed by every evil omen—calms and contrary winds.

At last one night there was seen the flickering light of a torch, and the next morning revealed the fair shore of a wooded island. As we shut our eyes, we can almost see the Spaniards landing on that October morning. Columbus, richly dressed in scarlet, went ashore, fell upon his knees, kissed the earth, and gave thanks to God. Then, drawing his sword and unfurling the royal banner, he took possession of the land in the name of the king and queen of Spain.

Eyeing the strangers were the natives,—naked, with straight, black hair, and swarthy skins daubed with paint. Columbus, who thought he had reached India, called these people Indians, the name they retain to this day. The island, which he called San Salvador, was one of the Bahamas. In search of gold, Columbus cruised about, touching one island after another, Cuba, Haiti, and others of the West Indies. These he thought were the “thousands of islands rich in spices” which Marco Polo said dotted the sea around Cipango. Cuba, Columbus at first thought was Cipango itself, but afterwards he concluded that it was the mainland of India.[27] Out of the timbers of the Santa Maria, which was wrecked, a fort was built on Haiti, and here thirty-nine sailors were left.

From Haiti, Columbus set sail for Spain, and he reached the port of Palos on the fifteenth of March, 1493. Now indeed, his good fortune was at its height. He was received with almost royal honors. He was bidden to sit in the presence of the king and queen—an unheard-of honor in that formal court—while he described his voyage and displayed the plants and birds and natives he had brought back. Nothing, so thought he and his sovereigns, remained but to take possession of the spices, gems, and gold described by Marco Polo.

Another expedition was planned. Instead of having to seek adventures and criminals to fit out a crew, he had but to choose among the gentlemen and nobles who contended for the privilege of accompanying him. A fleet of seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men was fitted out. With this Columbus sailed away from Cadiz, September 25, 1493. The good fortune for which he had had to wait so many weary years did not long abide with him, and ere this voyage was over it had taken its flight. The colony established on Haiti had by cruelty provoked the Indians and had been destroyed. On this second voyage new islands were discovered,—Jamaica, Porto Rico, and others,—a second colony was established, and one exploring expedition after another was sent out in search of gold, of which[28] small quantities were found. The turbulent, disappointed adventurers quarreled with Columbus, and his enemies at home were active against him. He landed at Cadiz, June 11, 1496, and laid his case before his sovereigns.

He was restored to royal favor, but it was two years before he could get another expedition fitted out, and then, May 30, 1498, only six vessels set sail. This time Columbus followed a southernly course and reached the mainland of South America, which was visited about this time by Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, who wrote an account of his voyage. Later, a German geographer spoke of it as “Americi terra,” land discovered by Americus, and so the land came to be called America.

Columbus at first thought that he had reached another island; afterwards he decided that this was the coast of Asia and that the Orinoco was a river in the Garden of Eden. Making his way to the Indies, Columbus found the colony at Santo Domingo in disorder but unwilling to submit to his authority. Each side appealed to Spain, and Bobadilla was sent out to investigate and settle the matter. He listened to but one side—that against Columbus. With harshness uncalled-for, had he been guilty of the charges brought against him, Columbus was sent to Spain, a prisoner, and in chains. The officers of the ship would have removed his fetters, but he proudly forbade, saying that[29] they had been put upon him by the agent of the king and queen and so by their authority.

“I will wear them until my sovereigns order them to be taken off, and I will preserve them afterwards as relics and memorials of the reward of my services,” he said.

This he did. His son Fernando “saw them always hanging in his cabinet, and he requested that when he died they might be buried with him.” The sight, the thought, of the great admiral brought in chains from the lands he had discovered turned all hearts to him with indignant pity. The queen, it is said, was moved to tears. Rewards and satisfaction were promised Columbus, and Bobadilla was deposed.

Another voyage Columbus was to make,—his fourth and last,—in search of a strait or passage by which he might reach Portuguese Asia. On May 9, 1502, he set sail with four ships and one hundred and fifty men. It was a voyage of “horror, peril, sickness, and starvation.” Columbus sailed along the Gulf of Mexico, coming pitifully near lands as rich in gold as the eastern ones which he sought. He missed them and found only savage tribes with a few rings and chains of gold. The story of these months is a sad one of famine, hardship, disease, tempest, mutiny, and quarrels with the natives. It was told in after years by Columbus’s brave young son Fernando, who accompanied him on this voyage.[30] At last the admiral turned homeward and reached Seville in the autumn of 1504. While he lay ill, soon after his return, he received the sad news of the death of his good friend, Queen Isabella.

In vain during the months and years which followed did the admiral strive to win justice from the king. Old and worn out, he had, as he said, “no place to repair to except an inn, and often with nothing to pay for sustenance.” He died, May 20, 1506, thinking to the last that the land which he had discovered was a part of the Old World. The voyages of the great admiral did not end with his life. His body was moved from one tomb to another in Spain, then was carried to the Cathedral in Santo Domingo and, in 1796, to the Cathedral of Havana.

Seven years after his death, king Ferdinand erected in his honor a marble tomb, bearing this inscription, “To Castile and Leon Colon gave a new world.” But the New World slipped from the grasp of the Spaniards, unable to hold the rich prize. Other nations of Europe claimed and sought to share it, but the brave and hardy English overcame one after another of their rivals and established here the colonies which grew into our mighty commonwealth. The land which Columbus discovered is a nation richer and greater than the Cathay of which he dreamed.

In Spain and all Europe, men were willing and eager to cross the western ocean to learn more about the lands Columbus had found. The early discoverers and explorers thought that these West Indian islands were the East Indies, off the coast of Asia. They wished to reach the mainland and get the gold, gems, spices, and silks which Polo had told them were to be found there. Wealth, even beyond their dreams, the Spaniards found. Seeking Cathay, they reached Mexico and Peru, rich in mines of gold and silver. Our famous American historian Prescott, tells the story of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Cortez and the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards under Pizarro. Like a fairy tale is the history of how a handful of men entered the unknown lands and made themselves masters of their wonderful treasures. It is a sad story too, of the greed and cruelty of the conquering white men, of the suffering and ruin of the gentle natives.

Some of the Spaniards, turning a little to the north, reached land on Easter Sunday which they call Pascua Florida, flowery Easter. In honor of the day the Spaniards gave to this land of flowers the name Florida, which was applied to all the country north of Mexico. All the flowers of that fair land, were not so charming[32] to Spanish eyes as one ounce of gold, and for this they roamed the country far and wide. It was not gold, however, which Ponce de Leon sought. His hair was turning white and he listened with eager credulity to tales of a fountain whose waters would give perpetual youth. Landing on the coast of Florida in 1513, he wandered hither and thither in a vain search for this longed-for fountain. Instead of finding it, he received his death wound in a fight with Indians.

A few years later, Narvaez was made governor of Florida, and he came with a force of three hundred men to conquer it. His troops made their way through trackless swamps and forests and among hostile Indian tribes, across the peninsula to the Gulf. Here they constructed rude vessels in which to go to Cuba or Mexico. Through shipwreck, starvation, and disease, the four hundred were reduced to four men who after nine years of hardships and wanderings reached a Spanish settlement in Mexico. There one of them, De Vaca, met and talked with a young Spanish captain, Ferdinand De Soto.

Ferdinand, or Hernando, De Soto belonged to a Spanish family that was both poor and noble. As a youth, he attracted the attention of a gentleman of wealth who took charge of him and educated him. It was not, however, the patron’s wish that De Soto should marry his daughter; when he found that this was the young folks’ plan, in order to separate them he took De Soto[33] on an expedition to the Isthmus of Darien. There De Soto distinguished himself by his courage and his daring coolness.

In 1528 he left the service of his patron and went on a journey of exploration, in search of the passage supposed to connect the ocean west of Spain with that east of Asia. Columbus, Cortez, and others had searched for this water-way which, as you and I know, does not exist. De Soto explored more than seven hundred miles of the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan. As he found no passage between the two oceans, he decided that there was none and gave up the search.

In 1532, De Soto with a band of horsemen joined Francisco Pizarro, the leader of the army which invaded and conquered Peru. He was nominally under the command of Pizarro but was really the master of his brave band of three hundred volunteer horsemen. Some historians say that the brave De Soto did more to secure victory than did the cruel Pizarro. At all events, the higher glory belongs to the young cavalry-man; he displayed more humanity in his dealings with the natives than any other Spanish leader and he endeavored to prevent the murder of the captive Inca, or emperor, of Peru.

The wealth wrested from the conquered Peruvians enriched the Spanish invaders. De Soto, who had landed in America with “nothing else of his own save his sword and shield” became master of a fortune of[34] “an hundred and four score thousand ducats.” He returned to Spain and married Isabella, his patron’s daughter, from whom he had been separated about fifteen years. But he was not content to rest at home. The age’s spirit of adventure and love of wandering was in his veins. Remembering De Vaca’s tales about Florida, he persuaded the emperor Charles V. to appoint him governor of Cuba and to grant him the region of Florida to explore and conquer at his own expense. Adventurers flocked to join him, hoping that in the unexplored land of Florida they would find treasures to equal or surpass those of Mexico and Peru.

De Soto’s wife went with him as far as Cuba, and there he bade her farewell—a final farewell, as events proved—and in May, 1539, he set sail with five vessels for Florida. He landed at Tampa Bay on the west coast. From the first he encountered hardship and opposition. Florida was occupied by Indian tribes naturally fiercer and more warlike than the Mexicans and Peruvians; they had met with cruelty and outrage, the outrage and cruelty of the Spaniards under De Leon and Narvaez. Almost everywhere De Soto found ready-made foes, expert with war club and bow and arrow. For nearly four years he and his men wandered from place to place, through morasses and forests, seeking gold and treasure but finding them not. Disappointed in his search he grew bitter and merciless.[35] “He was much given to the sport of slaying Indians,” says one old historian.

The exact route that De Soto followed is in many places hard to determine. He wandered through Florida and Georgia, probably into South Carolina and Tennessee, and perhaps as far as North Carolina,—then he turned southward and approached Mobile Bay. On this southward march was carried the Indian chief Tuscaloosa. At Mauvila, or Mabila, near Mobile Bay, a desperate battle took place in October, 1540, between Tuscaloosa’s warriors and the Spaniards. The Spaniards bought victory with the loss of eighty men and forty horses, which could ill be spared. They lost not only forces but hope.

From that time De Soto’s wanderings seem to have been animated by a dogged resolution not to return without honor and treasure. He learned that his men planned, as soon as they reached the Bay of Pensacola, then less than a hundred miles away, to give up the expedition. Swiftly he resolved that they should not reach Pensacola. Instead of going toward the coast and the ships containing supplies, he set his face to the wilderness and marched northward. “He determined to send no news of himself until he should have discovered a rich country,” says an old annalist.

“He was an inflexible man and dry of word,” wrote one who knew him, “who, although he liked to know[36] what the others all thought and had to say, after he once said a thing he did not like to be opposed; and as he ever acted as he thought best, all bent to his will.... There was none who would say a thing to him after it became known that he had made up his mind.”

Traveling to the northwest, in May, 1541, he reached “a deep and very furious” river, so wide that “a man standing on the farther shore could not be told whether he was a man or not.” This was the Mississippi, the Father of Waters. The Spaniards made boats and crossed the river and continued their wanderings on the other side, going northward nearly to the Missouri River. Month after month they sought gold; at last they turned southward from the vain search. On the homeward journey, De Soto was taken ill. He faced death as fearlessly as he had met every foe before. He bade farewell to his men, thanked them for their loyalty and faith to him, and advised them as to the choice of a leader to take his place.

The Spaniards did not wish the Indians, to whom they had represented themselves as immortal, to know that death had overtaken their great captain. Therefore, in the dead of night they sunk his body in the Father of Waters, near the junction of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. After wandering about for several months, they constructed frail vessels and trusted themselves to the stream. They reached the mouth of the river and made their way along the coast until the remnant[37] left by disease and warfare arrived at a Spanish settlement in Mexico.

By virtue of the discovery of Columbus, Spain claimed all the land beyond the western ocean. The other countries of Europe, however, refused to recognize its claim to any land except that actually discovered, explored, and possessed. Kings, nations, private individuals even, sent out expeditions to discover and settle lands in the New World, hoping to find treasure and to reach Cathay and Cipango. We are particularly interested in John Cabot, whose discoveries gave England its first claim to the New World.

John Cabot was not, like Columbus, a writer as well as a discoverer; we know little about his life, and the accounts of his discoveries are meager and contradictory. Cabot was born about 1450, so he was a few years younger than Columbus. Like him, he was by birth a native of Genoa. Cabot, however, moved to Venice and became an adopted son of that City of the Sea. He was a good navigator and went East on trading ventures. Having an inquiring turn of mind, when he bought cargoes of spices he tried to learn something about the countries from which they came.

Like most master-navigators of the time, Cabot was[38] a maker of maps and charts. He also believed that the world is round; he thought that Cathay and Cipango and “the spice lands” could be reached by sailing west. He tried in vain to secure the aid of Portugal or of Spain in fitting out an expedition to undertake the westward voyage. Columbus was one of many who were beginning to believe that the world was a sphere; he was bolder and more persistent than most of them, and had the good fortune to prove the truth of his theory.

About 1490 Cabot went to England “to follow the trade of merchandises” and to seek aid in his exploring projects. In 1496 he secured the countenance of Henry VII. of England, who granted John Cabot and his sons, Sebastian, Lewis, and Sanctius permission “for the discovery of new and unknown lands,” “upon their own proper cost and charges.” In return for his countenance the king was to receive one-fifth of all profits. Much uncertainty surrounds Cabot’s first voyage. It is now thought that his son Sebastian did not accompany him, as was long believed to be the case. Some say that Cabot had two ships, some say he had five, but an Italian acquaintance writing at the time says that he made his discovery with only “one little ship of Bristol and eighteen men.”

Cabot set sail from Bristol in May and returned in August. He sailed northwest, and it is supposed that the land which he reached was Labrador. From the[39] time the Norsemen left “Vinland the Good,” Cabot was the first European to touch the mainland of North America. He sailed some distance along the coast of what he thought was “the land of the great Khan.” He saw no inhabitants, but observed that the sea swarmed with fish, and on his return he suggested that England should send fishermen thither instead of depending on the fisheries of Iceland. He noted, too, that “the tides are slack and do not flow as they do here,” that is, in England.

A few days after Cabot’s return, a Venetian who was in England wrote his family an account of the voyage. “His name is Zuan Cabot,” he said, “and he is styled the great Admiral. Vast honor is paid to him; he dresses in silk and the English run after him like mad people.” The Venetian went on to say that Cabot “planted on his New-found land” the flags of England and Venice.

The king was so pleased with Cabot’s first voyage of discovery that it was promised he should have fitted out for a second voyage a fleet of ten ships and to man it he was to have “all prisoners except traitors.” Some merchants of Bristol aided in fitting out the expedition. With these ten ships, Cabot wished to go on westward to the east, hoping to reach Cipango, “where he thinks all the spices of the world and also all the precious stones originate.”

From the time that this second expedition was planned[40] we lose sight of John Cabot. Whether he returned safe or died on the voyage, we do not know. The English did not then attach enough importance to the western world to make records of Cabot’s voyages. They were disappointed at not finding gold and gems nor a direct passage to the East. To England in the early sixteenth century the new-found land was valuable only as a “cod fish coast.”

Sebastian Cabot, the son of the “great Admiral,” was, like his father, a chart-maker and navigator. He is said to have accompanied his father on one or both of his voyages, but there is no proof that he went on either.

The great object of Sebastian Cabot’s ambition was the discovery of a direct route to Asia. He undertook, under authority of the king of Spain, a westward expedition to reach the Pacific. On this voyage he discovered a great river which he named La Plata. Afterwards he returned to England and received from Edward VI. a pension for his services as Great Pilot. In 1553, he took part in the expedition to find a northeast passage to Asia; later, in search of a northwest passage, he sailed along the coast of America as far south, it is said, as Chesapeake Bay.

The first expeditions which came to the New World were bent on discovery, exploration, conquest, and plunder. It was many years before any attempts at settlement were made. The Spaniards, as you know, kept a southernly course and reached the West Indies and the adjacent coasts of North and South America. They reached Mexico and Peru, and made themselves masters of silver, gold, and other treasures.

It never occurred to them that the natives had any rights to be regarded. The only right that they recognized was that of the strongest. Against their war horses and coats of mail and firearms, what were the reed spears and arrows of the natives? The Indians fell before the Spaniards like grain before the scythe.

To the conquered natives, life was a worse fate than death. With brutal cruelty they were driven to labor in the mines for their taskmasters. Ship after ship crossed the ocean, bearing to Spain the treasures taken from these mines, or stolen from the homes and temples of the living and the tombs of the dead.

But the Spaniards were not suffered to possess nor convey in peace their ill-gotten gains. The other nations of Europe took advantage of every pretext to spoil the spoiler. England was foremost in these attacks on Spain. The two countries were not at open[42] war, but they were on unfriendly terms. The expeditions against Spain were undertaken by bold seamen who took as much delight in the damage inflicted on Spain as in the booty gained. They were not openly authorized by the English queen, but it was understood that they would be overlooked and that Elizabeth was not averse to receiving a share of the booty.

Among the freebooters most feared and hated by the Spaniards was Sir Francis Drake. This famous English seamen was born about 1540, in Devonshire, England. He was one of the twelve sons of a poor naval chaplain, and it is said that he was educated at the expense of Sir John Hawkins, a famous naval officer who was his kinsman. At the age of eighteen, Drake had become master of a ship that traded between England and France and Holland. This vessel he sold, “the narrow seas not being large enough for his aspiring mind,” and invested all his savings in Hawkins’s expedition to Mexico. This fleet was defeated by the Spaniards, and Drake, who behaved gallantly in action, lost his all. He “vowed the Spaniards should pay him with interest,” and shortly afterwards he made good his word.

In 1572 with three small ships, he attacked and plundered several Spanish settlements on the Isthmus of Panama and brought away as much silver, gold, and jewels, as he could carry. During this expedition, accompanied by eighteen Englishmen and thirty Indians,[43] he made a journey across the Isthmus. From the top of a tree, he beheld the waters of the Pacific, and expressed his resolve to “sail once in an English ship on that sea.” After his return to England, he served four years in Ireland, but he did not forget either the western ocean or his resolve. Secretly encouraged by Queen Elizabeth, he undertook an expedition “to discomfort the Spanish as far as possible.”

A few days before Christmas in 1577, he set sail from Plymouth, intending to pass through the Straits of Magellan and make the circuit of the globe. Drake’s fleet consisted of five small vessels and a crew of a hundred and sixty-six men. In the end, two of these vessels were left on the coast of Brazil. As Drake passed the western coast of America he stopped to attack the Spanish settlements. We are told that his men “being weary, contented themselves with as many bars and wedges of gold as they could carry, burying above fifteen tons of silver in the sand and under old trees.”

In August, 1578, Drake entered the Straits of Magellan. Adverse currents and storms separated the three vessels and only the Golden Hind, originally called the Pelican, passed through to continue the course. Along the coasts of Chili and Peru the Englishmen sailed, plundering till they were weary of spoils. From one ship they got “a prodigious quantity of gold, silver, and jewels,”—“thirteen chests of coin, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver, besides jewels and plate.”[44] The writers of the time who give an exact list of the captured treasures passed lightly over the natural objects and wonders of the New World. “They saw many strange birds, beasts, fishes, fruits, trees, and plants too tedious to mention,” says one.

Drake coasted along the western shore of America, trying to discover a passage to the Atlantic. He landed and claimed the country, which he called New Albion, for Queen Elizabeth and England. Turning from the severe cold of the northern seas, he sailed across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, stopping at Java and other islands. Resuming his voyage, he doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed along the coast of Africa.

In November, 1579, he re-entered the harbor of Plymouth, having made the circuit of the globe in two years and ten months. He was the first commander to take his ship around the world; Magellan, who had undertaken the same voyage, died on the route. Drake, “the master thief of the unknown world,” at once became a popular hero. He presented to the queen “great stores of silver, gold, and gems,” and received from her the honor of knighthood.

A few years later, war was openly declared between England and Spain. Drake was sent with a fleet to attack the Spanish colonies in America; he captured and plundered several settlements in the West Indies and in Florida, and burned the fort of St. Augustine.[45] Sailing on north to Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony at Roanoke, he brought away the disheartened colonists. It is said that he carried back to England the potato and the tobacco, two plants contributed by the New World to the Old.

Drake reached England in 1586, and the next year he led a fleet to inflict injury on the great Spanish fleet, proudly called the Invincible Armada, which was being collected to invade England. He entered the harbor of Cadiz and burned about a hundred ships. This he called “singeing the beard of the king of Spain.” The Armada, delayed for a year by this mischance, was refitted and sailed to attack England. It is said that when the news of its approach was brought to Plymouth the commanders of the English fleet were playing bowls. Drake, who served as vice-admiral under Lord Howard, insisted on finishing the game, saying, “There is plenty of time to win the game and thrash the Spaniards, too!” The great Armada was defeated by the brave little English fleet, aided by tempests and contrary winds.

In 1589 Drake made an expedition to Portugal and a few years later he and Sir John Hawkins were sent with a fleet to attack the West Indies. He and his old commander could not agree on the plan of action, and their expedition was unsuccessful. Hawkins died at Porto Rico. A few weeks later, Drake died, “his death being supposed to be hastened by his unsuccessfulness[46] in his voyage; his great spirit always accustomed to victory and success, not being able to bear the least check of fortune.”

You are not to suppose that the English claimed nothing of the New World except what they could plunder from Spain. They were, on the whole, willing to respect the rights of Spain to the West Indies and to the adjacent parts of the continent which Spaniards had discovered and settled.

More and more the English thought that it would be a good thing to have colonies in the New World to hold the land which they claimed by virtue of Cabot’s discoveries. Reasons for “western planting,” or establishing colonies in America, were given by Hakluyt, an Englishman of the sixteenth century. Among its advantages, he said, were these,—(1) the soil yields products needed for England, (2) the passage was so easy “it may be made twice in the year,” (3) “this enterprise may stay the Spanish king from flowing over all the face of that waste firm of America,” (4) it may enlarge the glory of God and “provide safe and sure place” for religious refugees, (5) poor men and those of evil life may there begin anew, (6) wandering beggars “may there be unladen.”

[47]The “Father of American Colonization” was an English gentleman, a soldier, courtier, and author, Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born in 1552 in Devonshire, a fair coastland, the home of Drake and many other bold seamen. In Raleigh’s home were several children, an own brother and three half-brothers, the children of his mother by a former marriage. One of these half-brothers, thirteen years his senior, was Humphrey Gilbert who grew to be a brave and enterprising gentleman.

Walter Raleigh seems to have had little schooling in his youth. He chose war as his profession and spent several years fighting in France and the Netherlands. Meanwhile his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, obtained from Queen Elizabeth a grant of land for “planting and inhabiting certain northern parts of America which extended beyond the twenty-fifth degree of north latitude.” Raleigh returned to England and sailed with Gilbert in 1579 to Newfoundland; storms and perhaps an encounter with the Spanish forced them to return without landing.

Raleigh spent two years in Ireland, fighting to suppress the risings there, then returned to England and became a favorite at court. There is a pretty story of the way in which he was first brought to Queen Elizabeth’s notice and favor. It is said that one day the queen was walking with her attendants along the London streets, then rough and unpaved. She came to a[48] mudhole, and hesitated for fear of soiling her shoes. Among the bystanders was Raleigh, a handsome, graceful, gentleman-soldier. He took off his new velvet mantle and spread it upon the ground so that the queen might pass dry-shod.

However he first won the queen’s notice, he had by 1583 become such a favorite that she was not willing for him to join Sir Humphrey Gilbert on a second expedition to Newfoundland. He contributed a large share of the expenses of this expedition, which was even more ill-fated than the former one. Sir Humphrey, it is true, reached Newfoundland and took possession of it, but on the return voyage the fleet was overtaken by storm, and two vessels, in one of which was Sir Humphrey, were lost.

These disasters did not destroy Sir Walter’s interest in discoveries. He got the queen to transfer to him the grant made to his half-brother, giving him for six years the privilege of sending out expeditions “to discover such remote barbarous lands as were not actually possessed by any Christian people,” and to take possession of them in the name of the queen.

Several expeditions were sent out under this grant, or patent, as it was called. The first, in 1584, consisted of two vessels under Captains Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow. They reached the coast of North Carolina and cast anchor on the island of Roanoke, which they claimed in the queen’s name and for Sir Walter’s[49] use. The name Virginia was given to this land in honor of Elizabeth, the virgin queen. No settlement was made at that time but the next year seven vessels under Sir Richard Grenville were sent out with about a hundred colonists. They entered Chesapeake Bay and James River and explored the country. Homesickness and hardships discouraged these colonists, and when Sir Francis Drake came to the settlement, after his expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, they embarked with him and returned to England. A few days after their departure, reinforcements and supplies sent by Raleigh reached the deserted colony.

About this time tobacco, introduced into England by Lane, Hawkins, or Drake, was brought into use by Sir Walter Raleigh. Tytler says, “There is a well-known tradition that Sir Walter first began to smoke it privately in his study, and his servant coming in as he was intent upon his book, seeing the smoke issuing from his mouth, threw all the liquor in his face by way of extinguishing the fire; and running down stairs alarmed the family with piercing cries that his master, before they could get up, would be burnt to ashes.”

In 1587 another colony of two hundred and fifty men under John White was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh. That summer a child was born to Eleanor Dare, John White’s daughter; this girl, the first English child born in America, received the name of Virginia Dare.

Fears of the Spanish invasion which threatened[50] England kept Sir Walter for several years from sending aid to the colony. When at last ships reached Roanoke Island the colonists and all signs of them had disappeared; on a tree was found carved the word “Croatoan,” but what this meant no one ever knew.

Raleigh now gave up his patent to a company in London, from which he was to receive one-fifth of gold and silver found in the lands discovered. He gave up his colonizing plans in order to fight the Spaniards. The queen, however, would not consent to his going, as he wished, on the English expedition to seize the Spanish treasure-fleet. His place was taken by Sir Richard Grenville, the story of whose gallant death is told in Lord Tennyson’s ballad, “The Revenge.”

Later, Raleigh sent out an expedition to the interior of South America; he believed that in Guiana was situated El Dorado, a fabled land of gold and treasure. He himself on a later voyage went four hundred miles up the Orinoco River and brought back some gold and the first mahogany wood seen in England. He wrote an account of his “Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana.”

In 1603 James I. succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne, and from that time Raleigh was in disfavor. He was accused of treason; on the unproved charge he was condemned to death and was kept in prison about thirteen years with the sentence hanging over him. [51]During this time he devoted himself to study and wrote his noble “History of the World.”

He was released in 1616 to lead an expedition to the Orinoco. There he had a skirmish with the Spaniards and brought back no treasure to appease the king for this attack on the enemy with which James was trying to keep on friendly terms. The old charge of treason was revived, and Sir Walter was beheaded in 1618, really as a sacrifice to gain the good will of Spain. “We have not such another head to be cut off,” said a bystander at the execution.

says an American poet. To the credit of John Smith—soldier, leader, reformer, discoverer, author—be it remembered that he never “talked big” till he had “acted big,”—that his deeds ever went before his words.

He was the first Englishman who wrote a book in the United States. His “True Relation of Virginia” was written in the intervals between tree-cutting, house-building, exploration, and adventure, and sent by the vessel which returned to England in June, 1608. Much doubt has been cast—Fiske and other historians[52] assert that it has been unjustly cast—on Smith’s statements. In details—dates and figures—we may believe that the soldier-author was not always accurate. Had he misrepresented facts, or misstated essentials, however, we may be sure he would have been promptly and eagerly contradicted by the “gentlemen of rank” who were actors and eye-witnesses with him, and who never missed an opportunity to vent their jealous hate on plain John Smith who outshone them all.

John Smith was born in Lincolnshire, England, about 1580. As a child he longed for a life of adventure, and when he was thirteen he sold his school-books and planned to go to sea; however, he thought better of the matter and remained at home two years longer with his mother. After her death he went to the Continent and became a soldier. He served in France and in Holland and then drifted East to fight against the Turks. There, he tells us, he had wonderful adventures. During a siege he fought three Turkish soldiers, one after another, and killed them all. Later, he was taken prisoner and sold as a slave, but escaped. He made his way home, through Russia, Austria, Spain, and Morocco. When he reached England in 1605, he found an expedition being planned to settle the New World and he resolved to join it.

The first English expeditions to make settlements in America were sent out under the authority of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other individuals.[53] Later on, the difficult and expensive work of colonization was undertaken by companies. These had regular trading agents and workmen, and expected rich profits from trade with the colonies. The colonies in the New World were encouraged by the sovereign, also, who regarded them as a check on the power of Spain to the south and on that of France to the north.

A band of about a hundred men sent out by the London Company, left England in December, 1606, in three little vessels, the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Constant. The party was led by Christopher Newport who had served under Raleigh and had himself captured Spanish treasure-ships. After a roundabout voyage by the West Indies, further delayed by contrary winds, in the spring of 1607 the colonists entered a noble bay. “The low shores were covered with flowers of divers colors; the goodly trees were in full foliage, and all nature seemed kind and benignant.”

The Englishmen called the capes on either side of the bay Cape Henry and Cape Charles, in honor of the king’s two sons; the river up which they sailed and the settlement they founded were named for King James. The landing at Jamestown was made May 13, 1607.

The band was ill fitted for the work before it. In it there were only a few workmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, and many “gentlemen”—men “that never did know what a day’s work was,” and that came for adventure or in search of gold. There had[54] been, it seems, jealous disputes on the way out, and John Smith had been put under arrest. After they landed, the settlers opened the sealed instructions given when they left England and found that Smith was appointed one of the directors of the colony; at first he was not allowed to take his place, but in course of time he became not only a director, but president, of the colony.

Some of the colonists busied themselves those spring days planting gardens as in England, and planting also cotton and orange trees, we are told. Others looked around for gold and set out to discover the Pacific Ocean, which they thought was near at hand. Unfortunately a malarial site had been chosen for the colony, and in the hot, wet summer, the men, unaccustomed to the climate, fell sick.

Their ill-health was increased by bad water and lack of food. By September half of the hundred colonists had died of famine and fever: there were not enough able-bodied men to bury the dead in decent fashion; the bodies were “trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be buried.” Fortunately the Indians did not choose this time for an attack; instead, they brought corn and game to trade for beads, bells, and other trinkets.

The Indians of this section were Algonquins, like those later encountered in Massachusetts, but these were stronger and more hostile. They attacked the white men, “creeping from the hills like bears, with their[55] bows in their mouths.” They were repulsed, but for many years there was the fear and danger of them for the colonists.

The Jamestown colony, like many of the other early ones, was managed by a “common-store system.” All food and supplies raised or bought were put into a common store-house and dealt out in equal portions. All articles collected for export were put into a common store and sent back to England. There was no reward for individual effort, and many of the colonists shirked work or labored in a half-hearted fashion.

There was one man who was always ready to do his part and do it well. This was John Smith. He helped cut trees, and build cabins, and erect a log palisade around the settlement. He was liked and feared by the Indians from whom he secured corn needed by the colonists. He was a sober and upright man and endeavored to establish law and order in the colony. In order to check the use of bad language, he had account kept of the oaths uttered by each man and at night for each one a can of cold water was poured down his sleeve. Strict as he was, he was always just and reasonable; he set the example of working hard, and never required of others more than he was willing to perform himself.

His chief relaxation was an adventurous journey in boat or afoot through the country, of which he gave a glowing description. “Here are mountains, hills,[56] plains,” he said, “and rivers and brooks all running most pleasantly into a fair bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitful and delightsome land.... The vesture of the earth in most places doth manifestly prove the nature of the soil to be lusty and very rich.”

On one of the expeditions, in December, 1607, into Powhatan’s country he and the men with him were captured. He was carried to the chief Powhatan—an old man who was “well beaten with many cold and stormy winters,” said Captain Smith. Captain Smith tells us that he was released at the request of the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, just as he was about to be killed. This story has been doubted. Nothing is said about it in the “True Relation” sent from Virginia in 1608. But this book was brought out by the directors of the Company. It was not to their interest to publish an incident which showed that the settlers had the hostility of the great Indian chief. The Company wished the colony to be thought successful and prosperous so as to induce men to go out. Later, settlers found it impossible to inform their friends at home of their sufferings.

In 1608 came more colonists, including some women and children. In this year Captain Smith set out in an open boat and explored Chesapeake Bay, of which he made a map that remained the authoritative one for over a hundred years. Smith returned to Jamestown in September, and was elected president of the colony[57] which was in sore straits, needing a firm and able man at its head. “You must obey this now for a law,” he said, “He that will not work shall not eat.” Under this rule disorder was suppressed and idlers were forced to labor. Smith’s prudence and wisdom saved the colony from ruin.

In 1609 five hundred new colonists came out, commanded by men hostile to Smith. He seems to have been in frequent conflict with them, and finally he returned to England to defend himself against their charges and to have treatment for a painful wound. After his departure, took place the terrible “Starving Time.” The colonists refused to work, they were attacked by the Indians, and laid waste by disease. By famine, fever, and war, the colonists in a few months were reduced in numbers from five hundred to sixty. They embarked to leave the scene of misery, but met a ship containing food and supplies and turned back. Thus near failure came the colony which laid the foundation of English civilization, and religious and civil liberty in America. After a time the common-store system was abolished and each man was given land to cultivate for himself; then “three men did more than thirty before.” In 1612 John Rolfe began the cultivation of tobacco and this became the currency of the colony, the source of its wealth and prosperity.

Captain Smith never revisited the Jamestown colony. In 1614 he came as “Admiral of New England” to[58] explore North Virginia, as the northern part of America was called, and made a map of the country which he called New England. The next year Smith set out with the intention of planting a colony in New England. But he was taken prisoner by the French, and finally made his way back to England. There he spent quietly the sixteen years remaining to him. He wrote in 1616 a “Description of New England;” in 1624 he contributed a description of Virginia to a “General History of Virginia,” which was compiled at the request of the London Company. At the time of his death, in 1631, he was busy writing a “History of the Sea.”

The white men who came to America naturally felt much interest in the new race of people which they called Indians. These were divided into tribes, differing in dialects, habits, and customs, but resembling one another in many respects. They lived, for the most part, in tents, called wigwams, made of skins or bushes. Their garments were usually made of the skins of buffaloes, deer, and other animals; they wore, also, beautiful mantels of feathers, strings of pearl, and ornaments of copper, silver, and gold. Their food was the game and fish obtained by the skill of the men, and the maize and beans raised in the fields tilled by the women and[59] children. Their tools and weapons were made of sharp stones and of sticks hardened in the fire; the use of iron was unknown.

Powhatan was the chief of the strong and warlike tribes of Indians which the English colonists found dwelling on the banks of the River James. Powhatan had many children, one of whom, a daughter, called Pocahontas, was about twelve years old when the English settled in Jamestown. Captain Smith says that when he was a prisoner in one of her father’s wigwams she visited and made friends with him. When he was sentenced to death, he tells us that she interceded for him and that his life was spared at her request. According to Indian custom, the enemy whose life was thus granted became a son of the tribe; and Captain Smith lived for awhile with Powhatan’s tribe. In the course of time he was allowed to return to his countrymen at Jamestown.

There were few farmers among the English settlers and they had to learn to adapt their methods to the crops and climate of the new land. Their crops were scanty at first and they often suffered for food. In times of need, the Indian maiden, Pocahontas, more than once came to their relief, bringing food. She went, too, at night to warn the people of an intended Indian attack. No wonder the English called her “the dear and blessed Pocahontas.”

Powhatan seems to have been from the first suspicious[60] of the white men; as time passed he came more and more to dislike and fear them. He had allowed them to settle on his land, thinking that they wanted it, Indian-fashion, for a season of hunting and fishing. But year after year passed and the white men remained in possession. Many died and some returned to England, but for every one that died or went away ten came. Powhatan would have liked to drive them away, but the Indians, with bows and war clubs, were no match for the white men, with guns and swords. Powhatan resolved to get guns and swords and make them fight against the white men. In one way and another, he got possession of many weapons,—some were bought with corn, some were stolen, some were taken from prisoners.

The matter became so serious that Captain Argall devised a plan to get back the weapons and also some prisoners taken by Powhatan. At this time, 1614, Pocahontas was visiting some friends who lived near the Potomac River. Captain Argall persuaded an Indian named Japazaws, and his wife, to entice Pocahontas on board his vessel. The Indian woman pretended that she wished to go on board to see the ship and her husband told her she could not go alone. To gratify her, Pocahontas agreed to accompany her. Captain Argall “secretly well rewarded Japazaws with a small copper kettle” and some other articles, which we are told he[61] valued so highly that “doubtless he would have betrayed his own father for them.”

Pocahontas was carried to Jamestown, and messages were sent to her father that “Powhatan’s delight and darling” would be held prisoner until the English men and weapons were surrendered. “This news was unwelcome and troublesome unto him partly for the love he bore to his daughter and partly for the love he bore to our men, his prisoners ... and those swords and firearms of ours,” says an old historian. After three months delay, Powhatan sent seven men and some guns and offered these and a store of corn for his daughter’s release; the English, however, refused to release Pocahontas till all that they required was done.

Month after month passed. It was now eight years since Pocahontas, the child, had first seen English faces. She was a woman grown—gentle, generous, and noble of nature. John Rolfe, “a gentleman of approved behavior and honest carriage,” loved the Indian maiden and his love was returned. Pocahontas was baptized and given the Christian name of Rebecca. Then she and Rolfe were married in the church at Jamestown, April 5, 1614. “Ever since then,” says the historian Hamor, “we have had friendly commerce and trade, not only with Powhatan, but also with all his subjects round about us.”

About two years after Pocahontas and Rolfe were[62] married they went to England, carrying with them their little son. John Smith wrote a letter to the queen telling how Pocahontas had saved his life and the colony and bespeaking for her the queen’s favor. She was received at court like a princess. “She did not only accustom herself to civility,” says a writer of the time, “but carried herself as the daughter of a king.” The Indian princess never returned to her native land. On the eve of her departure, she was taken ill and died in England, leaving one little son.

Early in the seventeenth century, James I. was king of England. He was a very self-willed man and was unwilling for his subjects to differ from him in religious or political matters. Naturally, all men were not willing to accept his opinions. Some were so unwilling to be dictated to by the king that they preferred to leave their homes in England and go where they could worship according to their own preferences. Some of these men, called Separatists because they had separated themselves from the established church of England, went in 1607 to Holland.

There they had full liberty in religious matters, but after a time they became dissatisfied.

The Dutch people were not strict enough in the observance[63] of Sunday to please them, and their children were learning Dutch language and customs and would grow up to be Dutch men and women instead of English. These Separatists loved their native land and wanted their children to grow up English, but with their own religious views. Moreover, fighting between Spain and Holland was beginning again after ten years of peace and the Englishmen did not wish to become involved in this war.

So they resolved to go to the New World and establish a settlement there. They discussed many places before they decided where to go. They thought of Guiana which Raleigh had described as being fertile of soil and mild of climate, but they remembered his fights with the Spaniards and wished to avoid so troublesome a neighbor. There was the same objection to Florida, where a French colony had been destroyed by the Spaniards. They did not care to go to the English settlement at Jamestown, where the people were devoted to the Established Church of England and observed its forms even more strictly than people in England. They did not wish to go to the far north, for some Englishmen had already tried to settle in Maine and had come home with pitiful tales of their suffering during the severe winters. The Pilgrims, as these English religionists began to be called, from traveling about so much, at last decided to settle between Jamestown and Maine, about the coast of what[64] is now New Jersey. They obtained a charter from the “North Virginia Company,” the Plymouth branch of the Virginia Company, which controlled from 41 to 45 degrees, giving them permission to settle in the southern part of North Virginia.

One hundred and two Pilgrims sailed in the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, in September, 1620. One of the men on board the Mayflower was Miles Standish, who was to be the soldier-savior of the northern English colony as John Smith was of the southern one.

Miles Standish was born about 1584 in England; he is said to have been the heir of a noble English family who was deprived of his rights. He entered the army and was sent by Queen Elizabeth to help the Dutch in their war against Spain. He was probably about nineteen or twenty then, and he seems to have remained in Holland after peace was made, and there he met the Pilgrims. His portraits represent him as a small man clad in leathern jacket and high boots, wearing a cartridge belt across his shoulder. He did not adopt the Pilgrims’ faith or ever become a member of their church, but he was a brave and faithful comrade.

The voyage was a long and stormy one. During it one member of the party died and was consigned to an ocean grave. Two months after leaving England, land was sighted, November 20, 1620. This land was a[65] point marked Cape James on Captain Smith’s map; the name Cape Cod was given it later on account of the quantity of codfish caught there by Gosnold’s men in the expedition of 1602. Cape Cod was farther north than the Pilgrims had intended to go, and they sailed southward but were turned back by “dangerous shoals and roaring breakers” and unfavorable winds.

The men met in the cabin of the Mayflower to discuss the situation. The shore they were approaching was not the land granted by their charter and therefore its laws did not apply there. They decided to establish their colony on the coast and they signed an agreement to obey such laws as they should make for their guidance. John Carver was chosen governor.

The Pilgrims made several trips ashore to get wood and water and to explore the country. Captain Standish led his party of sixteen soldiers, in warlike array, armed with muskets and swords; they had no need to use their weapons, as the only Indians they saw fled at their approach. The chief event of the expedition was finding some corn in a mound; they carried it to the ship and later, when they were informed to whom it belonged, they paid the owners for it.

Other expeditions were made along the coast and up the streams in a shallop, or small boat. Often the spray froze on their clothes and “made them many times like coats of iron.”

[66]While the Pilgrims tarried on the coast a child was born, son of William White and they called him Peregrine from a Latin word meaning “pilgrim.”

After exploring the country for several weeks, the Pilgrims determined to settle at a place called on Captain Smith’s map Plymouth, which was the name of the city from which they had sailed. On December 21, 1620, the men landed on the great boulder known as Plymouth Rock. Their first work was to build a “Common House”; January 31, 1621, this was completed and the women and children landed. The Pilgrims were not molested by Indians, but cold and famine were enemies that almost destroyed them. During the winter most of the colonists were ill and more than half of the hundred died; of eighteen women, only four survived the winter. One of those who died was Captain Standish’s wife.

At one time only seven men—one of whom was Captain Standish—were able to work. These seven, says Bradford their historian, tended the sick, cooked, washed, and did all the work indoors and outdoors. Rude houses were built of logs, with thatched roofs and windows of oiled paper. A church was erected which had cannon on top of it, so that at need it might serve as a fort.

To keep the Indians from suspecting their weakness, the Pilgrims leveled the graves and in the spring planted corn over them. On the whole, the Indians were[67] friendly. One day an Indian approached the settlement and “saluted us in English and bade us ‘welcome.’” This was Samoset, “a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind and short before and no beard. He was naked except for a strip of leather about his waist, which had a fringe a span long or more. He had a bow and two arrows, the one bended the other not.” Samoset had learned broken English from fishermen who came to the coast of Maine. With him came later Squanto, the only survivor of the tribe which had lived near Plymouth and which had been destroyed by plague. Squanto showed the English how to plant corn and to enrich the soil with fish. Another of the visitors was Massasoit, an Indian chief, who made a “treaty of friendship” which was kept fifty years.

In April the Mayflower returned to England, but despite the hardships and sufferings of that terrible winter, not one of the Pilgrims went back. They were busy making cabins, cultivating gardens and fields, getting fish and game for food, building up a home in the wilderness. They traded with the Indians for beaver skins, collected sassafras, and sent furs and lumber back to England, laboring to repay the money borrowed to defray their expenses. At first and for several years the Pilgrims, like the Jamestown settlers, labored together; they prospered more after the land was divided and each man worked for himself.

[68]They had a prosperous season and good crops and in the fall they celebrated their harvest and the end of their first year in the new land by a feast,—the first Thanksgiving. Fish and wild fowl and game were cooked in the big fireplaces or on wood fires out of doors. Massasoit came with about ninety men, bringing five deer as his contribution to the feast. There was a military drill and a shooting match, and three days were spent in merry-making. Year after year the Pilgrims observed this festival, and it came at last to be a national holiday.

The Narragansett Indians were unfriendly and the Pilgrims had to be on their guard against them. At one time Canonicus, their chief, sent the settlers a rattlesnake skin filled with arrows as a declaration of war; it was sent back filled with powder and balls, in token that the white men were ready to defend themselves. A strong fence, or palisade, was built around the settlement. In many ways the Pilgrims lived like soldiers on duty. Sunday morning at beat of drum, people marched to church. Each man had his weapon near in case of Indian attack.

More than once Indians tried to kill Miles Standish, the brave and prudent little captain. One gigantic Indian, Pecksuot, ridiculed him because he was small; in a fight soon after Pecksuot was killed. “I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground,” said one of the Indians.

[69]About 1623 Captain Standish married a second time, his wife being an English woman, the sister of his first wife. In “The Courtship of Miles Standish” Longfellow tells a romance—for so far as we know it had no foundation in fact—about the fiery little Captain’s unsuccessful wooing by proxy of a maiden named Priscilla Mullins. The poem gives a vivid picture of Captain Standish and of life in the New England colony.

In 1625 Captain Standish made a voyage to England on business for the colony, but he returned in a few months. He subdued the English settlers at Merrymount who were selling arms to the Indians, and were living idle, drunken lives.

In eight years the Plymouth colony had grown so that Elder Brewster, John Alden, and Miles Standish went one summer to Duxbury on the north side of the bay; Standish made his home there on a high hill called Captain’s Hill. His sword and musket were now laid aside and he was busy plowing and tending his farm, settling sites for mills, practicing his skill in medicine, and serving the public welfare in peaceful ways. The brave, honorable, helpful man died October 3, 1656, and was buried at his home on Captain’s Hill. For forty years he had been the leading spirit in every undertaking requiring courage and military skill.

“For Standish no work was too difficult or dangerous, none too humble or disagreeable. As captain and[70] magistrate, as engineer and explorer, as interpreter and merchant, as a tender nurse in pestilence, a physician at all times, and as the Cincinnatus of his colony, he showed a wonderful versatility of talent and the highest nobility of character.”

After the death of King James, his son Charles became king. Like his father, he was bent on having his own way; as often happens, his stubbornness made those opposed to him more stubborn. The people refused to submit to his dictation, and many of those who differed from the king in matters of religion and politics came to America, where a new England was being built up. From 1628 to 1640 there were more emigrants from England to America than came during the whole of the century which followed.

In 1628 a company of men secured from the Council of New England a patent to a tract of land in Massachusetts between the Merrimac and Charles Rivers and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean which was thought to be near the Hudson River. John Endicott was sent out that year with a small colony which settled at Salem, Massachusetts. He was a self-willed, blunt man and tried to regulate the affairs of the colony according to his ideas. He made laws[71] against wearing wigs, for instance, and required women to wear veils to church.

The first winter was a hard one for the colonists and they were “forced to lengthen out their own food with acorns.” Like the Pilgrims, however, the Puritans, whose religious belief was similar to that of the Pilgrims, held fast their resolution and endured hardship rather than return to old England where they were not free to worship according to their own faith.

In March, 1629, a company of prominent and wealthy Puritans secured a charter from the king, giving them the right to make for their colony such laws as they pleased provided they were not contrary to the laws of England. Under this charter six ships came, bringing men, women, children, cattle, arms, and tools, to establish a Puritan commonwealth. One of the six ships was the Mayflower which had brought over the Pilgrims nine years before. The six-weeks voyage seemed “short and speedy” in those days, and the Puritans landed on a June day when the land was fair with summer. How unlike the wintry landing of the Pilgrims! In one year the Salem colony outnumbered the Plymouth colony which had been established nearly ten years.

The Puritans had obtained a charter from the king, but the question was would they be able to keep it? The king was as ready to break as to make a promise, and the Puritan leaders feared that he would call for[72] and withdraw the much-prized charter. How could they keep it safe? At last they devised a plan. It was not stipulated where the Company should meet, so they resolved to move its headquarters and carry the charter to the New World. The Puritans took good care not to let the king know of this plan. The members who did not wish to leave England resigned, and in their places were elected men who were willing to emigrate to secure civil and religious privileges.

The king was much displeased when he learned that the Massachusetts Company and its charter had gone across the ocean, but just then nothing was done about the matter. Later on, an unsuccessful attempt was made to get the charter from the people.

The governor elected by the Massachusetts company was John Winthrop, one of the noblest men who aided in the making of New England. Winthrop was a gentleman by birth, gracious, gentle, and charitable in private life, intense—and sometimes intolerant—in his religious views. When he joined the “great emigration” of 1630, he was forty-one years of age, having been born the very year that the Spanish Armada was destroyed. With eight hundred men and the precious charter, Winthrop sailed to the New World. A few days were spent at Salem, and then it was decided to make a settlement at Charlestown. But the site proved unfortunate. There was[73] much sickness the first summer, caused, it was thought, by impure drinking water.

Not far from the little settlement was what was called Shawmut peninsula; here lived a Mr. Blackstone who had come from England to lead a hermit’s life. He pitied the sufferings of his neighbors and countrymen, and invited them to come to Shawmut where the air and water were excellent. They came and found the situation so favorable that they bought land from Mr. Blackstone; in September they laid there the foundations of a city which they called Boston for the English city of Boston from which many of them came. Shawmut peninsula was called Trimountain Peninsula from its three hills.

Like the settlers at Plymouth, the Salem colonists were often in want of food during the first years. Until they could cultivate farms and raise crops, food had to be brought from England, for there was no farmers and no tradespeople in the New World from whom it could be obtained. The loss or delay of a ship bearing supplies meant want and suffering for the colonists. On one occasion, expected supplies failed to come to the Puritans and a fast day was appointed to pray for relief. As Governor Winthrop was dividing his last handful of meal with a needy neighbor, a ship laden with food entered the harbor. The devout people went to church to give thanks and changed the appointed fast to a feast.

[74]Not all the people who had come to Massachusetts were willing to endure the hardships of the new life. About a hundred went back to England, but Governor Winthrop, with the more unselfish and zealous Puritans, remained.

Governor Winthrop endeavored to set the people an example of a sober and upright life. He became convinced that the drinking of healths at meals according to the English custom led to intemperance. He restrained it at his own table and thus became the leader of temperance reform in the New World.

One winter day he was informed that a poor man who lived near him was taking fuel from his woodpile. “Go call that man to me,” he said, “I’ll warrant I’ll cure him of stealing.” When the man came he said, “Friend, it is a severe winter and I doubt you are but meanly provided with wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my woodpile till this cold season be over.” He then asked his friends whether he had not cured this man of stealing his wood.

Winthrop’s charity, however, did not extend to matters of religion. He wished to have those of unlike religious views “well whipt.” The Puritans had come to America to establish a colony which should be ruled according to their own views and faith. They did not tolerate in it men who differed from them in belief. “Let such go elsewhere,” they thought; “there is room enough.”

[75]The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Company encouraged colonists of their own faith to emigrate. By 1634 four thousand had come and about twenty villages had been founded on or near the bay. Houses, churches, and shops were built; farms were tilled; fur, lumber, and salt fish were sent to England and manufactured goods were brought back.

The laws of the Massachusetts colony were very strict. People were taxed to support the church, and only men who were church members were allowed to vote or to hold office as magistrates. Everyone was required to attend church services. If any one was absent without good reason the “tithing man” was sent after him. In church men sat on one side and women on the other; there was a man to keep order and he had a long stick with which to tap people who slept or children who fidgeted during the service which lasted two, or three, or even four hours. Children were whipped and grown people were fined if they talked in church.

A young clergyman of Salem, Roger Williams, of whom you will hear more later, thought that these laws were too strict. He thought people ought to enjoy civil and religious liberty, but Governor Winthrop advised him to leave the colony as no one with such views was wanted there.

Governor Winthrop spent much of his fortune in helping the colony he had founded and had the joy of[76] seeing it grow and prosper. He died March 26, 1649.

In 1692 the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were united under the name of Massachusetts, and thus was founded the colony which in time became the state of Massachusetts.

You have learned that the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists came to America to found colonies governed according to their own views. This was because they were convinced these views were right, not because they believed that every man should be free to worship as he pleased. Liberty of faith and worship, they thought, would destroy all law and order.

Roger Williams, however, believed in civil freedom and religious liberty. He was a clever young Welshman who had been educated as a clergyman and had adopted Baptist views. He and his wife came from England to America in 1631. For a while he was pastor of a church in Boston, but his views were so different from those of his congregation that he did not stay there long. He went to Salem, then to Plymouth, and then back to Salem. He had much influence and won many people to his views. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans began to dislike him and to fear his influence;[77] there were long debates and discussions as to what should be done about him. They objected to both his political and his religious beliefs.

Roger Williams thought that the laws of a country should prevent and punish crime and should not direct religious matters; these, he urged, should be left to men’s own consciences. He said that every man should be free to believe what he chose, and that it was wrong to tax people to support a certain church or to compel them to attend it. He said that every man ought to be allowed to vote, and that for magistrates sensible, upright men ought to be chosen without regard to their church membership. These things were contrary to the belief of the Massachusetts Bay colony and to its practices.

Williams said, moreover, that the king of England had no right to grant lands in America to any one; these belonged to the Indians and should be secured from them. This assertion was regarded as a defiance of the king’s authority. Finally it was resolved to send Williams away from the colony, and in January, 1636, the General Court ordered him to come to Boston to get on a ship that was about to sail to England. Williams knew well that return to England meant imprisonment or punishment for his views. Instead of going to Boston, he left his home in Salem one bleak, snowy day and took refuge in the forest. From his first coming to the colony he had made friends with the Indians.[78] Now he made his way to the wigwam of Massasoit, where he spent the winter, trying to teach the savages the truths of the Christian religion. For weeks he was “sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.”

He then settled on Seekonk River and planted corn, thinking that he was beyond the bounds of the Plymouth colony. But he was still within its limits; in the spring Governor Winthrop informed him that he would be let alone if he would “steer his course” to Narragansett Bay.

With a few companions who had adopted his views, Williams crossed the bay in an Indian canoe, made a covenant of peace with the natives, and established a settlement which he called Providence. This colony became a place of refuge for people oppressed on account of their religious views. “I desired it might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience,” said Williams. It was to be free to “Baptists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks,” he said, “to all men of all nations and countries.”

Among the people who took refuge there was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. She was a woman preacher, claiming to have the spirit of prophecy, who had been driven out from the Massachusetts colony. After some peaceful years in Rhode Island, she moved westward to a settlement of her own. Here she, her children, and servants were murdered by Indians.

[79]Roger Williams refused to persecute Quakers who were very unpopular in all the other colonies. The religious liberty enjoyed in this colony seems to us to-day, when it is the general custom, entirely right and reasonable, but it seemed very strange and unreasonable to people at that time. Among the people of different religious views who took refuge in Rhode Island, there was a great deal of arguing and quarreling. It was said “any man who had lost his religion would be sure to find it again at some village in Rhode Island.”

In 1643, Williams went to England and secured a charter for his colony. It was called “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” and it is to be remembered as the first colony which by its laws secured entire religious toleration. The Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies so disapproved of the principles on which it was founded that they would not unite with it in joint action. But the Rhode Island colony was a great safeguard and protection to them. It was the influence and friendship of Roger Williams which kept the fierce Narragansetts from taking up arms against the white men at a time when it would have been dangerous and perhaps fatal to the struggling young colonies.

The exact date of Roger Williams’ death is uncertain. He is said to have lived to the age of eighty-four, devoting himself to the interests of his colony, which he lived to see prosperous and flourishing.

As time passed, people became convinced that the land which Columbus had reached was not the shore of Asia as they had at first thought. For more than a hundred years, however, they thought that it was only a narrow body of land and that a passage, or many passages, would be found connecting the Atlantic with the ocean to the west and opening a direct route to India. It was not strange that they held this theory. The early explorers had reached the land at its narrowest part and beheld from the Isthmus of Panama the great western ocean. They did not know that the unexplored land broadened into great continents to the north and south.

As years passed, people became more and more anxious to find a short passage to India. The Turks controlled and blocked the overland passage to Asia. The ocean route by way of Africa was long and roundabout; for the Dutch this had also the disadvantage of making it necessary for their ships to pass and repass their enemy Spain and their trade-rival Portugal. The Dutch had, by long and desperate fighting, freed themselves from Spanish control and they had become the great sea-traders of the world.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century they had about three thousand vessels on the seas—more than all the rest of Europe combined. Most of these were[81] under control of the Dutch East India Company, the largest and richest trading association in the world. They traveled the long ocean route south of Africa and brought back tea, coffee, spices, silks, and dye-woods from Asia. If only they could find a direct way to Asia how their profits would be increased! Early in the seventeenth century they heard of a sailor in England who had been to seek this direct route and they engaged him to make a voyage for them. This sailor was Henry Hudson.

When and where he was born and what were the events of his early life, we do not know. He was an Englishman by birth, a brave, energetic man by nature, a navigator by profession. We first hear of him in 1607, four days before he started on a voyage for some London merchants, to seek a northeast passage to India. He had a small vessel with only ten men, besides himself and his little son John who accompanied him on all his voyages. Hudson left London in April, 1607. He sailed along the coast of Greenland and was at last turned back by the ice barrier between Greenland and Spitzbergen. He made two interesting observations in these unknown seas—first, the changing color of the sea near Spitzbergen,—green, blue, dark, transparent,—second, the great number of whales which afterwards were the source of a profitable industry. Unable to carry out his purpose, he returned to England after an absence of four and a half months.

[82]In April of the next year, 1608, the London merchants sent him out again to seek the northeast passage. He reached Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla and vainly endeavored to find a passage through the ice; in August he returned from his unsuccessful voyage. The London merchants now gave up the scheme—at least for the time.

But the Dutch heard of Hudson and asked him to make a voyage for them. He agreed to undertake for the Dutch East India Company a third voyage in search of a northeast passage to India. He set out in April, 1609, with two vessels, the Half Moon and the Good Hope, and a crew of about twenty men, some Dutch, some English. As before he sailed to the northeast, and as before his passage was blocked by ice. The Good Hope returned to Amsterdam, it is supposed, after a mutiny near Nova Zembla.

But Hudson and the Half Moon did not return. Having for the third time failed to find the northeast passage he sought, he resolved to look for one to the northwest. This was probably suggested to him by a letter and maps which his friend Captain John Smith had sent him. Smith expressed the opinion that north of the English colony, Virginia, there was a sea which led into the Western Ocean. Sailing past Greenland, Newfoundland, and Cape Cod, Hudson reached the coast of Virginia, and entered the Delaware River.

Turning northward he kept near the shore till he[83] observed an opening in the land, New York Bay, which he entered. This bay had been entered before. Verrazano, an Italian sailor in command of a French ship, had sailed in and out of it. French vessels had afterwards traded there, but had made no settlements.

Into this bay emptied a river which Hudson thought might connect the eastern and the western ocean; up this river he sailed about a hundred and fifty miles, as far as the present site of Albany; then he turned back, being convinced that the stream did not afford the passage he sought. He spent a month exploring this river, to which his name was given. The land was “pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees.” It was, he said, “good ground for corn and other garden herbs, with great store of goodly oaks.” The natives, he said, were a “sensible and warlike people.” He carried on trade with the Indians who brought tobacco, maize, beans, grapes, pumpkins, and skins, to exchange for knives, beads, and trinkets. There arose disputes and in a fight one white man and several Indians were killed.

On Hudson’s way back to Holland, he stopped in England to leave some English sailors; there he was detained, being ordered by the English government to “stay and serve his own country.” His charts and records were delivered to the Dutch who laid claim to the country he had found, calling the Delaware the “South River,” and the Hudson the “Great North[84] River,” and the country between “New Netherlands.”

In April, 1610, Hudson sailed on his fourth and last voyage, to seek for English merchants the northwest passage. His little vessel the Discovery entered the strait and bay which bear his name, and he spent three months exploring the coast. In November the vessel was frozen in and the crew spent the winter on the northern sea, suffering from scarcity of food as well as from the severe climate. When summer came, Hudson wished to continue his search. He believed that men should, to use his own words, resolve “To achieve what they have undertaken, or else to give reason wherefore it will not be.”

His crew wished to return home and mutinied against him. One midsummer day, they seized him, his son, and seven loyal seamen, and set them adrift in a boat. The little craft floated off on the summer sea and nothing more was ever heard of it or of a soul on board. An old Dutch legend says that Hudson and his men came safe to shore and made their home in the fair land he had discovered. Years later, when thunder rumbled in the heights along the Hudson River, the old Dutch folks would shake their heads and say, “Hendrik Hudson and his crew are playing ninepins.”

A Dutch West India Company was organized on the same plan as the rich and powerful Dutch East India[85] Company. The western company was to trade on the coast of Africa and of America from Newfoundland to Magellan. For convenience in this trade, forts and posts were established where agents were stationed to carry on trade and collect furs. A fort and trading-post was established on Manhattan Island. There was gradually built up a village; this became a town and finally grew to be a city. At first it was called New Amsterdam; now it is the wealthy and populous city of New York.

The first directors who were sent to New Amsterdam by the Dutch Company lacked either ability or character to govern the settlement well. At last, however, the Company found the right man for the place. This was Peter Minuit. He was not a Dutchman. He was French by descent and German by birth; his early manhood had been spent in Germany.

He was appointed director of the council of New Amsterdam and came to Manhattan in May, 1626. His ship brought seeds, plants, and tools, for he realized that on agriculture as well as on commerce depended the success of the colony. He wished to establish it on a foundation of justice. His first act was to summon the Indian chiefs of the neighborhood and to buy from them the island of Manhattan. Gay-colored cloth, beads, knives, and hatchets were displayed, and for goods to the value of twenty-four dollars the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan and bought also the[86] good will of the Iroquois. Thus the settlement was spared, for the most part, the horrors of Indian warfare which wasted most of the other colonies. Before Penn came to America, the Dutch leader, Minuit, treated the Indians in fair and humane fashion. We are not to think that the Indians were defrauded by the small sum paid for Manhattan. To them it was a mere hands-breadth of their vast possessions, a place to hunt deer and turkey and build wigwams and till cornfields.

Minuit tried to establish friendly relations with the English colonies north of him and sent courteous letters and presents of sugar and Dutch cheese to Governor Bradford of Plymouth.

Minuit looked after the welfare of the colony and also after the interests of the Company. A flourishing fur trade was carried on with the Indians; a large vessel was built and sent to Holland loaded with furs—beaver, otter, mink, and bear—and with oak and hickory timber. Furs were the money of this settlement, as tobacco was of Virginia, and they were used in the payment of salaries and debts. The Indian money, wampum, was also used in the commerce of the colonies, six pieces of wampum being equal to one stiver, a small Dutch coin worth about two cents. Bouweries, or farms, occupied the meadows along East River; grain was grown, and sheep, cattle, and hogs were raised. The thrifty Dutch people lived in comfort and plenty.

[87]The colony prospered under Minuit’s management, but his rule came to an end on account of trouble with the “patroons.” These patroons were large land-owners along the Hudson. In order to get the colony settled, the Dutch Company granted land fronting sixteen miles on the river and extending back to the Atlantic or to the Pacific to persons who would establish settlements of at least fifty persons within four years. These patroons had almost absolute power over the settlers on their land; the only restrictions on their privileges and trade were that they were forbidden to make cloth, in order to protect Dutch manufacturers, or to trade in furs, which was the especial privilege of the Company.

The patroons, however, encroached on the Company’s fur trade, and Peter Minuit excited their enmity by endeavoring to protect the rights of the Company which he represented. On the other hand, the Company thought that he did not check and control the patroons as he should. Between the two he was recalled. He returned to Holland in the spring of 1632, having really established the colony of New Amsterdam which he governed for six years.

Failing to get his wrongs redressed by the Dutch West India Company, Minuit offered his services to Sweden to establish a colony in the New World. This plan had already been suggested by William Usselinx, a Dutch merchant who had projected the Dutch West[88] India Company in 1621. Minuit carried out the plan. He and his friends in Holland bore half the expense of fitting out an expedition to found a Swedish-Dutch Company.

Owing to Minuit’s illness, the vessels did not sail till late in 1637. They reached the shores of the Delaware in March, 1638, and took possession of the west bank of the river. Minuit had little regard for the claims of territory made by nations whose wandering ships had touched the coast and sailed away again. In his opinion the land belonged to those who purchased it from the Indian inhabitants and settled there and cultivated the soil. As at Manhattan, he met the Indian chiefs and formed a treaty never broken by either party. The Indians of Delaware, like those farther north, belonged to the great Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations.

Minuit took possession of the country in the name of the young queen of Sweden and built a fort called Christina in her honor. He cultivated friendly relations with the English at Jamestown and with the Dutch trading-posts on the east bank of the Delaware. A thriving fur trade was established with the friendly Indians and soon the Dutch West India Company complained that their trade was greatly injured by Minuit’s colony. The governor of New Netherlands wrote a letter of protest against the Swedes occupying this land,[89] but during the three years that Minuit remained in charge the Dutch confined their protests to words.

After doing his utmost to establish the colony in peace, strength, and safety, Minuit left it on a trading expedition. He sailed to the West Indies to barter for tobacco to carry back to Old Sweden. While he was guest on a Dutch vessel in the harbor a violent hurricane came up, the ship was driven to sea and was never heard of more. Thus perished the first governor of New Sweden, the real founder of New Amsterdam.

Van Twiller succeeded Minuit as governor of the New Netherlands. He proved incompetent and was replaced by Kieft, who by cruelty and injustice provoked the Indians to war. Kieft so mismanaged affairs that in three years the population of the New Netherlands was reduced from three thousand to one thousand.

In 1647 Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor. He was the son of a Dutch clergyman, but, being fond of fighting and adventure, he had chosen war as his profession. He took part in several of the battles by which the Dutch gained mastery over the Spaniards at sea. At one time he undertook to conquer the Spanish island of St. Martin and lost a leg in the fight. He was[90] called “Old Silver Leg,” because his lost limb had been replaced by a wooden stump, ornamented with bands of silver. He was also called “Headstrong Peter,” a title which he well deserved.

The Dutch West India Company thought that this brave, fearless soldier would be the very man to control their troublesome colony on the Hudson. So he was appointed and came to the colony in May, 1647, with a fleet of four vessels. He told the people, “I shall be in my government as a father over his children”—a very severe and stern parent he proved.

A strong man was needed to save the colony from ruin. Enemies threatened it on all sides.

In the first place, there were the Indians whom Kieft had provoked to war. Stuyvesant stopped the sale of intoxicating liquors to them; while stern, he was so just and honest and fearless that he won their respect and they made and kept peace with him.

In the second place, the encroachments of the New Englanders were a constant source of annoyance. The Dutch claimed all the land between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers by right of Hudson’s discoveries, and valued it as a field for fur trade. “The land is too good to stand idle,” said the English, and occupied it with their farms and villages. The Dutch protested and asserted their claims, but in vain. The English farmers continued to occupy the land, and more and more came in conflict with the Dutch.

[91]Stuyvesant decided that a fixed line—even one which yielded some territory claimed by the Dutch—was better than an unfixed one constantly advanced by the English. In 1650, therefore, he made an agreement, surrendering the land already held by the English—which the Dutch could not have regained—and establishing a fixed line beyond which the English agreed not to advance. Stuyvesant acted wisely in the matter, but the West India Company was dissatisfied, thinking that he ought not to have surrendered the Dutch claims.

In 1652 New Amsterdam was granted a charter as a city. It had then about three hundred houses and fifteen hundred inhabitants. The city was to have a council, but, instead of allowing the people to elect the members, Stuyvesant appointed them and he presided at all meetings of importance. The sturdy Dutchman was resolved that his will should be the law of the colony. The people assembled in convention and asked, among other things, that they might appoint local officers. Stuyvesant ordered them to disperse, informing them “his authority was from the West India Company and from God and not from ignorant subjects.”

In the course of time there arose trouble between the Dutch colonists and the Swedes who had settled along the Delaware on land claimed by the Dutch. Finally, a Swedish captain took possession of a Dutch fort. Stuyvesant, with a force of six or seven hundred men[92] and seventeen ships, set forth to uphold his country’s rights. He went to the Delaware, or South River, retook the forts, and compelled the Swedes to swear allegiance to the Netherlands. A Dutch garrison was put in charge of the fort and thus ended Swedish rule on the Delaware.

While absent on this expedition, Stuyvesant received evil tidings from Manhattan. An Indian woman had been killed by a Dutchman for stealing peaches from his garden. To revenge this injury, the Indians during the absence of the fighting men on the Delaware attacked and burned the settlement, killed some of the hated whites, and carried off others as prisoners. Stuyvesant made ready to march against the Indians, but did not do so as they requested terms of peace and returned their prisoners. Later, the Indians made another attack and Stuyvesant promptly punished them by force of arms.

Under the just, firm rule of the despotic, high-tempered governor, the colony of New Netherlands flourished. Farms were cleared and tended, villages were formed, trade flourished, and immigration increased. But the end of Dutch rule on the Hudson was at hand. In 1664 Charles II., king of England, granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the entire territory claimed and occupied by the Dutch, which he asserted belonged to England. England and Holland were then at peace, but the Duke of York did not hesitate to bring[93] on war. He fitted out four war-ships with four hundred and fifty soldiers and sent them to America under command of Colonel Nicolls. The Dutch were informed that the vessels were going to the colonies in New England. Instead, they sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant had neither powder nor provisions for a siege, and his soldiers wished to accept English terms. Nicolls informed the council that none of the people’s rights would be interfered with—only the flag and the governor would be changed. Brave sturdy old Stuyvesant tore up the letter offering these terms and wished to fight for the rights of the Company he represented. But the council, soldiers, and citizens would not support him, and he had to yield.

“I had rather be carried to my grave,” he said, as he ordered the surrender.

He went to Holland to prove that he had done his best to uphold the Company’s rights. Having done this, he returned to his home in the New World. He led a quiet, comfortable life in his fine old country home—in what is now the business heart of New York City,—and in the course of time, he and Governor Nicolls became great friends.

The Dutch resented the English seizure of their colony and declared war against England. When peace was made, it was agreed that each nation should keep what it had won. Holland had won the most victories and so gained most territory by this agreement; but the[94] city of New Amsterdam and the colony of New Netherlands—both of which were called New York in honor of their new ruler—remained in English hands. The Dutch inhabitants were secured in their rights and privileges, according to Colonel Nicolls’ promise, and they went on their sober, hard-working way. From them the English, in time, borrowed many Dutch customs and festivals,—such as that of having Easter eggs and of celebrating Christmas with the visit of St. Nicholas or Santa Claus.

For years the Portuguese and the Spanish shared between them the trading-posts and commerce of the world. Portugal controlled the ocean route to Asia, and Spain by virtue of her early discoveries and explorations laid claim to the whole of the New World. But as time passed this state of affairs was changed. In the Old World, the Dutch became the successful rivals of the Portuguese; in the New, Spain had to contend with France, England, Holland, and Sweden, all of which were seeking a share of the prize.

For a long time France was the chief rival with which Spain had to reckon. Verrazano, a Florentine sailor, was sent from France in command of four vessels to seek the longed-for westward route to Cathay. Left at[95] last with one ship, he reached in 1524 the coast of North Carolina, “a new land never before seen of any man, ancient or modern,”—for in the opinion of the Europeans the natives counted not at all. Verrazano sailed along the coast, into the Bay of New York and out again, and along the coast of New England to Newfoundland. Provisions giving out, he returned to France and gave the first description of the coast of the United States.

In the wake of Verrazano, followed other Frenchmen. One of these was Jacques Cartier. In 1534 he came to the coast of Newfoundland and sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping to find through it an outlet to Cathay. On a second voyage, he entered and named the Bay of St. Lawrence and ascended the great river as far as Montreal. A third voyage he made in 1541, for the purpose of establishing a colony. But a severe winter and much sickness and suffering discouraged the colonists, and the next year they left New France for Old.

Years passed. Civil and religious wars laid France waste, and many earnest men began to look to the New World for an asylum from the Old. A band of French Protestants led by John Ribaut left their native shores to make their home in America. Instead of sailing northward, they landed in 1562 on the shores of Florida, which was the territory of Catholic Spain. The colony was attacked by the Spaniards under Menendez,[96] and men, women, and children were killed. This terrible slaughter was avenged by the French under De Gourges, but the tide of French colonization was turned from the southern coast.

Five years after this massacre, there was born Samuel de Champlain, who won the title of the “Father of New France.” His father was a French ship captain; he himself was trained in the art of navigation and became a captain in the royal navy. “Navigation is the art which has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood and has led me to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous bufferings of the sea,” he said.

Chaplain served awhile in the army; when peace came his adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. This was Spanish territory and the Frenchman went thither at the risk of his life. He spent two years in America. To him it seemed, as it had seemed to some Spanish and Portuguese officials, that it would be a good plan to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Champlain wrote, “If the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to the (Chagres) river were cut through, one might pass from the south sea to the ocean on the other side and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; and from Panama to the Strait of Magellan would be an island and from Panama to the New-found lands would be another[97] island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.”

Always on his voyages Champlain kept a diary and made maps of the lands he visited. When he returned to France, he gave the king a minute account of the colonies and treasure of Spain. It was shame to France, he thought, that on the New World, discovered more than a century before, only their enemies had a foothold.

A French nobleman who was planning to found a colony in America decided that this enterprising young sailor-soldier would be the man to lead the undertaking. Champlain entered into the plan with enthusiasm. In 1603 he set out to reconnoiter the new land, following the route of Cartier. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River, to the present site of Montreal. During the next four years he made five voyages to the New World, exploring the coast from New England northward. He led a band of colonists who after a winter of hardship and sickness returned in 1607 to France. But Champlain was not discouraged. He was resolved to extend the power of France and of the Catholic religion in the new land, to penetrate the unknown wilds, and to seek a route to the East. He was appointed Lieutenant-governor of the French colony, an office which he held until his death, and came to America in 1608 to establish a settlement on the St. Lawrence River. In July[98] the colonists landed and erected a store-house, the beginning of the city of Quebec.

Five discontented men in the party formed a plot to kill Champlain and turn the fortress over to the Spaniards. One of the men, however, betrayed the plot; the conspirators were arrested, the ringleader was hanged, and the others were sent prisoners to France. The winter of 1609 found the French colony one of three in the New World. At Jamestown, in Virginia, were the English; at St. Augustine, in Florida, were the Spaniards; and far to the north at Quebec in Canada, were the French. No one could then guess which nation would finally become supreme, though the chances seemed in favor of the Spaniards.

The first winter at Quebec was one of hardship and sickness, and when spring opened only eight of the twenty-eight Frenchmen were alive. In 1609 Champlain, ever ready for adventure, accompanied some Algonquins and other Indians on an expedition against their enemies the Iroquois, the Five Nations. He wished to see “a large lake, filled with beautiful islands, and with a fine country surrounding it” of which he had been told. He reached the beautiful lake, which now bears his name; on its banks his firearms turned the battle against the Iroquois and begun the long warfare in which the French were opposed to this great confederation of tribes. The very day that Champlain brought on his nation the enmity of[99] this deadly foe, a little Dutch vessel, the Half Moon, was anchored on the New England coast. A few weeks later it entered the Hudson River,—bearing a crew of English and Dutch—the two peoples who were to be allies of the foe which the Frenchmen made that day and to turn the tide of battle against France.

From 1609 till his death, the time of Champlain was divided between New and Old France. Exploring, fighting, establishing trading-posts, he was busy building up the young colony and developing its resources. In 1620 his young wife, whom he had married ten years before when she was a mere child, came for the first time to Quebec. After four years of hardship, she returned to France and did not again revisit the New World.

The French colony grew and prospered. It was on friendly terms with its Indian neighbors with whom it carried on a flourishing fur trade. Furs were the currency and wealth of the French colony, as of the Dutch colony on Manhattan. The French exported every year to France from fifteen to twenty thousand skins; the Dutch at Manhattan thought business good when they shipped four thousand.

In 1628 the French colony was reduced to sore straits from scarcity of food. This was increased by the English capture of the ships bringing supplies. Winter passed and with spring the suffering increased. “We ate our peas by count,” says Champlain. His[100] heart was wrung by the sufferings of the people, especially of the women and children. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I was patient, having always good courage,—and can say with truth that I aided every one to the utmost that was in my power.” In this extremity in 1629 Quebec was attacked by English war-ships and was forced to surrender.

Champlain was detained awhile as prisoner in England. Afterwards New France was by treaty restored to France and Champlain returned to Quebec where he died Christmas Day, 1635. “Of the pioneers of the North American forests his name stands foremost on the lists,” says Parkman.

The Spanish adventurer, De Soto, in his march westward in 1541, was the first white man who reached the Mississippi River. Year after year passed and the Spaniards did not occupy the land along its shores. Instead, they settled the islands and shores to the south and sought silver and gold in Mexico and Peru. While the Spaniards were occupying southern regions, the French were taking possession of northern lands, penetrating inland along the St. Lawrence River.

The French traders and missionaries who went westward heard stories of a mighty river not far distant,[101] which flowed to the sea. In the spring of 1673 two Frenchmen set out in birch canoes to find and explore this river, hoping thus to reach the Pacific Ocean. These Frenchmen were Louis Joliet, an explorer in search of the passage to the Pacific, and Father Marquette, a priest familiar with Indian dialects, who wished to reach the savages of the wilderness. Joliet and Marquette went up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes. They were guided by two Indian boys to the Wisconsin River down which they floated in their canoes. After several days the explorers landed at a settlement of the friendly Indian tribe, the Illinois. The peace pipe was smoked and a banquet was served of Indian meal made into mush, boiled fish, baked dog, and buffalo meat. Again embarking, the adventurers sailed on till they reached the place where the Missouri empties into the Mississippi.

The Indian guides informed them that they could ascend the river and going westward reach a prairie across which their canoes could be carried; then they could embark on a river which flowed southwest into a lake; from this issued a river which flowed into the western sea. The Frenchmen did not follow the course thus pointed out and it was many years before the truth of the statement was verified. But if you look on a map you see the Missouri can be ascended to the Platte River, the source of which is near the Colorado River which flows into the Gulf of California.

[102]The Frenchmen sailed down the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. They were convinced that the stream entered the Gulf of Mexico and they did not care to encounter the hostile Spaniards or the warlike Indian tribes which they were told dwelt on the banks of the lower Mississippi. So they turned back, going up the Illinois River and passing the marshy prairie which is now the site of the great city of Chicago. After a journey of more than twenty-five hundred miles, they reached in September the mission at Green Bay.

Robert de la Salle, a gentleman of Normandy, was in Canada when Marquette and Joliet returned from their voyage. He was much interested in their discoveries and he determined to go from the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. He wished to take possession of the land in the name of the king of France to whom it was considered that the whole valley of the great river belonged by virtue of the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet; he wished also to establish military and trading posts along the lakes and the river; he hoped that he would find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The king gave his consent and aid to the plan.

La Salle established a fort on Lake Ontario. Not far from Niagara Falls, he built a vessel which he called the Griffin. This sailed through Lakes Erie and Huron and Michigan and then was sent back richly laden with furs. Unfortunately, it was wrecked on the return[103] voyage with all on board. In the winter of 1680, La Salle returned to the fort on Lake Ontario to get supplies. In August, 1680, La Salle’s party, consisting of twenty-three Frenchmen and thirty-one Indians, set out in birch canoes to explore the Mississippi. Delayed by storms and tempests and Indian wars, the voyagers did not reach the mouth of the Chicago River until January, 1682. The canoes were dragged on sledges down the frozen Chicago River. When they reached the Mississippi, they were detained by the masses of ice on its waters.

As soon as possible the Frenchmen embarked and sailed down the river, stopping to get corn and information from Indian tribes on their way and to give religious instruction. They slept in the wigwams of the savages and won their hearts by just and kind treatment.

They sailed down the mighty river till they came in sight of the open sea. On the ninth of April, 1682, La Salle in the name of King Louis of France took possession of the land which he called Louisiana. The French flag was raised over the valley of the Mississippi—a territory three times as large as France. The return voyage was made in safety, though it was delayed by hostile Indians, want of food and the illness of La Salle. He did not reach Quebec till the autumn of 1683.

He sailed for France that winter to organize a colony[104] for settling the southern country discovered by him. The king entered eagerly into the plan and La Salle was sent with four vessels bearing men and supplies to establish a colony. Ignorant of the coast, the captain went too far west and reached Matagorda Bay in Texas early in the spring of 1685. La Salle wished to seek the mouth of the river, but the captain, impatient to return, landed the stores and sailed away. La Salle made the best of matters and finding the climate pleasant and the Indians friendly, he established a colony there.

Month after month passed, and no supplies were received from France. Therefore he set out, January, 1687, with twenty men to find the Mississippi River and make his way to Canada. There he hoped to get supplies and send letters to France requesting aid for the colony. On the journey some men rebelled against his authority, killed his nephew and a faithful Indian, and later shot La Salle himself. “Thus died our wise commander, constant in adversity, intrepid, generous, engaging, dexterous, skillful, capable of everything.... He died in the prime of life, in the midst of his enterprises, without having seen their success.” He had laid the foundation of French power in the Mississippi valley, and had established it upon a basis of friendship with the natives, which made possible its growth in peace and security.

An interesting figure in the Stuart court was that of the first Lord Baltimore, the Catholic nobleman through whose interest and influence the colony of Maryland was established. George Calvert—he was not yet Lord Baltimore—entered public life as the secretary of Sir Robert Cecil; he won the favor of King James I. and in 1619 he was knighted and made secretary of state. So far from seeking office, we are informed that “he disabled himself various ways, but specially that he thought himself unworthy to sit in that place so lately possessed by his noble lord and master.”

A few years later he openly connected himself with the Catholics and resigned his office. He did not, however, lose favor with the Protestant king who granted him the title of Baron Baltimore of Baltimore, and confirmed his claim to large estates in Ireland. But George Calvert’s interest lay in another direction and the remainder of his life was given to “that ancient, primitive, and heroic work of planting the world.”

As early as 1609 he had been a member of the Virginia Company and his position as secretary of state made him intimately acquainted with the course of exploration and colonization in the New World. At that time Catholics in England were not allowed liberty of worship. Calvert desired to establish a colony where[106] men, especially those of his own faith, might enjoy the free exercise of their religion. In 1620 he purchased a plantation in Newfoundland and the next year he sent colonists with tools and supplies to found a settlement, which he named Avalon. “Westward Hoe for Avalon,” by Captain Whitbourne, published the next year, described in glowing terms the country with its good fisheries, abundant berries, cherries, and pears, and “red and white damask roses.” In 1623 the king granted a charter giving Lord Baltimore practically royal authority over the province. As a sign of sovereign power, the king of England was to receive a white horse whenever he visited Avalon.

In 1627 Lord Baltimore for the first time crossed the ocean to the province so eloquently described by Whitbourne. He found—a stormy sea beating against a rough peninsula which was broken by stretches of barren sand, tracts of marshes, hills clothed with stunted, cone-bearing trees, and narrow spaces of arable land. Desolate as it was, Lord Baltimore saw Avalon at its best, for it was summer.

In a few weeks he went back to England and the next year he returned to Avalon with his wife and all his family except his eldest son Cecilius or Cecil. The hardships of the long, severe winter and the contests with the French convinced Lord Baltimore that the northern province was no place for his colony—the twenty thousand pounds he had spent on it were wasted.[107] He wrote to the king, complaining that “from the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter upon all this land,” and requesting a grant of land in a more genial climate, to which he might remove his colony of forty-six persons. At first he endeavored to obtain territory south of Virginia, but this was opposed by the Virginia Company which claimed the land and said it was about to send colonists thither. Finally it was decided that it would be well to establish an English colony north of Virginia to keep back the Dutch and the French who were settling territory claimed by England. Lord Baltimore received a grant of land on Chesapeake Bay, extending to the Potomac. But this land he was never to settle or even to see. He died in April, 1632. The grant thus devolved on his son Cecil, a young man of twenty-eight, who carried out the plans so dear to his father.

Cecil, who was the real founder of Maryland, never visited the colony; he sent out settlers and supplies under his younger brother, Leonard. Leonard was the first governor of Maryland, as the land was called in honor of the English queen, Henrietta Maria. The charter given Lord Baltimore granted more absolute power than was ever bestowed on any other English colonist in the New World. “Cecilius, Absolute Lord of Maryland and Avalon,” could make peace or war; he had the law-making power also and the people could merely advise and assent or dissent. The only tribute[108] required was the yearly payment of two Indian arrows to the king and of one-fifth of all the gold and silver found in the land. As soon as the settlers landed, Leonard Calvert established friendly relations with the Indians whom the Englishmen found to “have generous natures and requite any kindness shown them.” The peaceful relations with these Indians, called “Friend Indians” in later treaties, were never broken.

Sailing up St. Mary’s River, the colonists found a place which pleased them as a site for a settlement. They purchased it from the Indians for “axes, hoes, and cloth.” Here St. Mary’s was built in 1634, on the former site of an Indian village.

From the first the policy of the Maryland colony was “peace, unity, and religious toleration.” Until it was established, there was no place in the English colonies in America where Catholics had religious liberty. In the colony on the Potomac, the Catholics enjoyed the free exercise of their religion and granted to others the same privilege. This religious toleration was secured by law in 1649. It was agreed that “no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested in their religion.”

The chief trouble of the Maryland colony in its early days was with William Claybourne, a trader from Virginia who had established a settlement and trading-post on Kent’s Island. This was a part of the territory afterwards granted to Lord Baltimore. After much[109] contention and dissension about the matter, in 1646 Claybourne stirred up a rebellion. Governor Calvert, armed with royal authority, took forcible possession of the island. A few months later Calvert died, having appointed as his successor, Thomas Greene, a Catholic and Royalist.

This “land of the sanctuary,” as Maryland was called, grew in wealth and prosperity. In 1656 Hammond described it for the benefit of home-staying Englishmen: “Maryland is (not an Island as is reported, but) part of that main adjoining to Virginia only separated or parted from Virginia, by a river of ten miles broad, called Patomack River,—the commodities and manner of living as in Virginia, the soil somewhat more temperate (as being more northerly) many stately and navigable rivers are contained in it, plentifully stored with wholesome springs, rich and pleasant soil, and so that its extraordinary goodness hath made it rather desired then envied.”

About the middle of the seventeenth century a good deal of attention was attracted in England to the religious sect called Quakers, Professors, Friends, or Children of the Light. One of their ablest exponents was George Fox. He was grave and temperate in life,[110] but so firm that it was said of him, “If George says verily there is no altering him.” “Verily” was the strongest word of assent he permitted himself, obeying literally the Bible command, “Swear not at all.”

The Quakers thought that the Bible only ought to be the rule for men and churches, that there should be no set forms of worship, and that men should pray and preach, not at appointed times, but only as moved by the Spirit. They believed that every man is led by the “inward light,” or the Spirit of God, saying, “He that gave us an outward luminary for our bodies, hath given us an inward one for our minds to act by.” The Quakers refused to pay tithes and taxes to support the established church and, thinking it wrong to fight, they refused to serve in the army. At that time hats were worn indoors as well as out, and men took them off as a token of respect. The Quaker refused to pull off their hats to men of any rank, uncovering only in prayer. “Hat honor was invented by men in the Fall,” they said. These Quakers were recognized by their sober attire,—broad-brimmed hats and sober-colored clothes,—and by their use of “thee” and “thou” and “thine” instead of “you” and “yours.” To use the plural forms in addressing one person, they said, was contrary to grammar, to Biblical usage, and to truth.

When George Fox, a lad of twenty, was preaching this faith, there was born in England one who was to spread[111] it abroad in the New World. This was William Penn. His father, Sir William Penn, was an Admiral in the royal navy and was anxious to see his son master of an estate and a title. All these plans were upset by the son who at twenty-four joined the Quakers. His father summoned him to London to argue with him, but the youth stood firm. He appeared covered before his father. The old Admiral tried to effect a compromise and get him to take off his hat to his father, the king, and the Duke of York, but he refused. He would not yield one point of the Quaker customs, dress, language, or faith. As he would not yield, his father in the end did so, and paid his fines.

The Quakers were so beset at home that Penn and others wished to establish for them a refuge in the New World. Penn became one of the owners of the colony of West New Jersey to which many Quakers went. But he was not satisfied with his partnership here and desired a province and colony of his own. This was not difficult to acquire. King Charles II., who owed Admiral Penn’s estate sixteen thousand pounds, had little gold or silver in his treasury and claimed much land in the New World. He willingly settled his debt by granting William Penn the land west of the Delaware; for this Penn was to pay yearly two beaver skins, and one-fifth of all the gold and silver found in the colony. Penn wished to call this land of woods Sylvania, and the king added to the name that[112] of his old friend, the Admiral, calling it Pennsylvania.

The grant was made in 1680; two years later, in order to have an outlet to the sea, Penn secured a grant of the land which afterwards formed the state of Delaware. The very year that this second grant was made, many Quakers sailed to make their home in the new land. In the fall and winter of 1682, twenty-three ships came, bringing settlers to the Quaker colony. The next year Penn could say, “I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit, and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found among us.” In three years there were more than seven thousand settlers,—English, French, Dutch, Swedes, men of different races and various creeds.

Penn made it from the first a “free colony for all mankind,” assuring the people “You shall be governed by laws of your own making. I shall not usurp the right of any or oppress his person.” He put the government in the hands of a governor and of a council and general assembly chosen by freemen. Laws were passed forbidding drunkenness, dueling, stage plays, and card playing. Death, which was then in England the penalty for theft and many other offences, in Pennsylvania was inflicted only as punishment for wilful murder, according to the law of God, as the Quakers understood it.

Penn founded his colony on principles of peace and[113] fairness to the Indians. Under a great elm-tree at Shakamaxon, afterwards Kensington, he made with the natives, a treaty of peace and friendship “never sworn to and never broken;” the red man was granted equal rights with the white, and they were to be friends “while the creeks and rivers run and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.” The Indians with whom the Pennsylvania colonists were brought in contact were the mild and peace-loving Delawares. Fortunately for the Quakers, the fierce Susquehannocks, beaten by the Five Nations, had six years before gone southward.

Penn laid out the site of a town at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. He named it Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It was laid out with broad fair streets for he wished it to be a “fair and green country town.”

Two years later, Penn sailed back to England to decide a dispute about the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. It was fifteen years before he revisited his colony. He endeavored to see it governed well, but from a distance this was difficult. There were men hard to control. “For the love of God, me, and the poor country, be not so governmentish, so uneasy, and open in your dissatisfaction,” he wrote.

When Penn returned in 1699 it was with the plan of spending his remaining days in his colony. But two years later he learned that there was a plan afoot[114] to turn his province into a crown territory and he sailed back to England to protect his rights. One matter after another came up to detain him and he remained in England till his death in July, 1718.

The colony of Georgia was the last founded of the thirteen original colonies. It was established by Oglethorpe, a man of noble birth who was animated by principles of philanthropy and patriotism.

James Edward Oglethorpe was born in London, about 1688. When a youth he entered the army and fought bravely against the Turks for several years. After his return home his attention was attracted and his sympathy aroused by the condition of prisoners in England, especially of poor debtors. In those days debt was regarded and punished as a crime; debtors were confined in prisons with murderers and thieves. It is thought that Oglethorpe’s attention was specially drawn to the matter by the sad case of one of his friends. This man, being unable to pay his debts, was imprisoned and loaded with chains; unable to pay even the fees required by the jailer, he was confined in a miserable prison where smallpox was raging, caught the disease, and died.

Oglethorpe investigated the conditions of prison[115] life in England and found them bad and brutal beyond description. Most of the prisons were filthy dens in which men, women, and children were herded together, the child who had stolen a loaf of bread side by side with a brutal murderer. Oglethorpe brought the subject before parliament and succeeded in having a committee appointed to investigate the matter and take steps to limit the corruption and cruelty of the officials.

Besides attempting to relieve their condition at home, Oglethorpe began to plan an asylum abroad for the poor debtors and for persecuted sects. He wished to establish a place where those who were unfortunate and discouraged could begin life anew. It seemed to Oglethorpe that England would derive many benefits from such a colony as he planned. The country would be relieved of the burden of supporting unfortunate men who there would become self-supporting. New industries might be developed,—especially the culture of silk worms in which he was much interested. He wished to plant this settlement in the southern regions claimed by England, making it a military colony to prevent the encroachments of Spain and to protect the other English colonies.

In June, 1732, Oglethorpe and twenty associates obtained a grant of the land lying between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean, according to the usual terms of the[116] grants of the times. The English claimed this land by virtue of the expeditions of Sir Walter Raleigh and they were desirous to occupy it before it was seized by the Spanish in Florida or the French on the Mississippi. In honor of the reigning King George II., the territory was named Georgia.

Oglethorpe agreed with Bacon that “it is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people whom you plant,” and he tried to select men who were unfortunate rather than wicked. Every opportunity was to be given the people to reform and to build up homes and fortunes. Oglethorpe went as governor of the colony, hoping by his personal aid and supervision to encourage and direct the people.

For military reasons, Oglethorpe urged that negro slavery be prohibited and that rum should not be brought into the colony. Among the men who aided in establishing and directing the colony were John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, the famous Methodist clergymen.

In the winter of 1733, the colonists reached the New World and selected for their settlement a place on the Savannah River, a few miles from the sea. The Indians were conciliated with gifts and kindly treatment and assurances that their rights should be regarded. One of the desires of the philanthropic Oglethorpe was[117] to civilize and christianize the natives. In six months there were one hundred and fifty persons in the settlement. They were a turbulent people unaccustomed to labor and with habits of improvidence and idleness. Oglethorpe was kind but firm; he allowed no idlers and provided tasks for even the children. Their neighbors in South Carolina were friendly and helpful, and the colony prospered. In the summer of 1734 Oglethorpe visited England, taking with him as guests several Indian chiefs. Early in February, 1736, he returned to Savannah.

Clear-sighted man of affairs that he was, he realized that a contest with Spain must come sooner or later. He endeavored to put the country in a position of defense. When war was declared between England and Spain in 1739, Oglethorpe had already secured the alliance of the Indian tribes. The Spaniards attacked an English settlement, and in return Oglethorpe captured a Spanish outpost. With his Indian allies, he marched against St. Augustine, but it was too strongly defended to be taken by the forces at his command. Two years later the Spaniards attacked Georgia; by a fortunate union of good chance and good generalship, they were defeated. “The pauper colony,” as it had been called, not only defended itself but saved its neighbor, South Carolina.

After this war was over, Oglethorpe returned to England[118] and never again revisited his colony. About ten years later, the trustees of the colony resigned their patent and Georgia became a royal province.

Oglethorpe made his home in London where he was the friend of Walpole, Goldsmith, Johnson, and other famous men. He died at a ripe old age, having lived to see the colony which he had founded win its independence in the War of the Revolution. When John Adams came to England as minister from the United States, Oglethorpe called “to pay his respects to the first American ambassador and his family, whom he was glad to see in England; he expressed a great esteem and regard for America and much regret at the misunderstandings between the countries and felt very happy to have lived to see a termination of it.”

The Pilgrims were not the first white men who had visited Massachusetts. Explorers and trading parties had landed on the coast. At one time a fishing party had come to trade for furs and skins, and had carried off five Indians, one of whom was Squanto. Later, another vessel carried off twenty-seven Indians. The red men early learned to distrust and fear the pale faces.

The settlers of Plymouth endeavored to win the[119] friendship of the Indians. They presented knives, copper chains, and other trinkets to Massasoit who was sachem, or chief, of the Indian tribes of the neighborhood, and made a treaty of friendship with him. As long as Massasoit lived, the Indians and the English lived in comparative peace.

But year after year the natives and the colonists became less friendly to each other. The white men came in constantly-increasing numbers and occupied the best of the land. When the Indians had sold it for beads or knives or trinkets, they thought that the English wished it for a season’s hunting and fishing. But the English established farms and villages and towns and took permanent possession. Game and fish grew less plentiful and as the English prospered the Indians grew poorer. The Indians resented being treated as an inferior race by the white people. The Pilgrims resented the savages’ lack of regard for property rights, their gathering fruit and grain and shooting cows like deer. The two races were too different to thrive and prosper side by side. Some of the natives adopted the faith of the white men. These “praying Indians,” as they were called, identified themselves to a great extent with the white people and were regarded as traitors to their own race.

However, there was no open outbreak till after the death of Massasoit. The old sachem left two sons whom the English called Alexander and Philip. Alexander,[120] the elder, succeeded his father as sachem. The English suspected that Alexander was plotting with a hostile tribe against them, and they seized him and carried him as a prisoner to Plymouth. Nothing could be proved against him and he was soon released, but on the way home he died—probably of fever. The Indians, however, thought that he had been poisoned by the white men.

Philip succeeded his brother in authority. He was a renowned warrior, as wise and prudent as he was brave. We are told that instead of treating his wife as a slave, according to Indian custom, he made her his friend and companion. Next to his wife and child, Philip loved the people of his tribe. He saw with grief that his people were constantly growing weaker and the English were constantly increasing in numbers and in strength. He protested against the wrongs of the Englishmen but these wrongs were unredressed. Still, we are told, that he did not favor war; he realized that his people were unable to withstand the English and war would only hasten their ruin.

Against the wishes and commands of Philip, war began, brought on by the excesses of bad men on both sides. In June, 1675, some young Indians burned a village and were attacked by the settlers. The aroused savages went from one bloody deed to another, burning houses and villages, murdering men, women, and children. About the time that the war began, Philip[121] crossed Narragansett Bay and went to a tribe in the Connecticut valley. For nearly a year he was not seen by the English, and we do not know to what extent he countenanced and directed the war that was being waged.

The town of Deerfield was burned and Hadley and Hatfield were attacked. While the settlers at Hadley were in confusion, it is said that a venerable old man suddenly appeared and led them forward to repel the foe. When victory was gained, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. It was asserted that this was Goffe, one of the men who had sentenced Charles I. to death. When Charles II. became king, Goffe fled to the New World and lived in seclusion in Connecticut. In “The Gray Champion” Hawthorne tells this story with some changes.

The Narragansett Indians went on the war-path against the white men. Their headquarters were on an island in a swamp which was thought to be inaccessible. Here, in five hundred wigwams, were sheltered the women and children of the tribe and were stored their supplies of corn. By the treachery of one of Philip’s warriors, the path to the island was betrayed to the white men. In the depth of winter the colonists made their way through the swamp to the island, killed men, women, and children without mercy, and burned the fort and the whole settlement. King Philip’s wife and son had been taken prisoners and sent to the Bermudas[122] where they were sold as slaves. Still the Indians refused to submit. One of the warriors who advised surrender was killed by King Philip’s own hand. At last in August, 1676, he was surrounded at his old home, Mount Hope, not far from Providence, Rhode Island, and was shot. His body was cut to pieces and fastened on trees, and his head was exposed on the top of a pole in Plymouth. The Puritans held a thanksgiving to celebrate their victory in King Philip’s War. The inevitable conflict between the white men and the red had come and the whites were the victors. But nearly one-tenth of the fighting force had been killed, and there was hardly a village or even a home in New England which had not suffered loss.

It was not only with outsiders—French, Dutch, Spaniards, and Indians—that the English settlers had trouble. One faction in the colonies warred against another. In Virginia the established order was almost overthrown in the seventeenth century by the “Great Rebellion.”

For many years the governor of the colony was Sir William Berkeley, an aristocrat who would not allow the people to have any share in the government of the colony. He feared that if the House of Burgesses was[123] dismissed and new members elected he would lose control of it. So he adjourned it from one session to another, and year after year called together men whom he could trust to obey his will. A very stubborn and overbearing will it was, opposed to all progress and firmly set against granting rights to common people. He approved of high taxes and did not wish the common people to vote; above all, he opposed public education and the liberty of the press. “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses,” he said in 1671, “and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years.”

There were now about forty thousand people in Virginia, many of whom had been born and reared there. For the most part, they disapproved of Berkeley’s high-handed course and of his disregard of the rights and privileges of the colonists. But he was the lawful governor and they were loyal, law-abiding people; probably they would have gone on submitting and grumbling had it not been for the Indian attacks and Governor Berkeley’s failure to protect the outlying settlements. Fierce Indian tribes from Pennsylvania had come south; they were now on the borders of the Virginia colony—murdering, burning, and pillaging, making life and property unsafe. In the spring of 1676 the House of Burgesses voted to send five hundred men to protect the frontiers, but instead of ordering them to march Berkeley disbanded the little army.

[124]There was at this time in Jamestown an Englishman as brave and resolute as Berkeley himself and as devoted to the rights of the people as Berkeley was to those of the king. This was Nathaniel Bacon. He had been in Virginia only a few months, but he was so popular and so talented that soon after his arrival he was chosen a member of the governor’s council.

A few weeks after the governor disbanded the army which should have marched to protect the frontier settlements, Bacon received news that the Indians had attacked his plantation on the James and had killed the overseer and a servant. Immediately he collected a little band of his friends and neighbors and servants, and marched against the Indians. He sent to ask Berkeley for a commission; this was refused and Bacon marched on without it. He defeated the Indians and returned home in triumph.

Governor Berkeley was angry because Bacon had assumed authority without a commission and would have liked to punish him as a traitor. But the sympathies of the people were with the young Englishman; the governor had to give up and in the end had to promise Bacon a commission to fight against the Indians. He delayed drawing up the paper, however, until Bacon at the head of several hundred planters marched to Jamestown and required it by force.

At the head of these troops, Bacon marched from Jamestown into the Indian country. The governor,[125] meanwhile, declared Bacon a traitor, raised forces, and prepared to fight. Bacon and his men pledged themselves to stand together in defence of the rights of the people. This was in August, 1676, a hundred years before the American Revolution, which, like the Great Rebellion, was undertaken to uphold the people’s rights.

When Bacon returned from war with the Indians he found war awaiting him at home. The people of the colony were divided in their interests and sympathies. Some sided with Bacon for people’s rights, some sided with Berkeley because that was the cause of the king and lawful authority. There was a stubborn fight in which Bacon was victor and became master of Jamestown. Fearing that they could not hold it and unwilling for it to fall into Berkeley’s hands, the rebels burned the town, the capitol of Virginia, the first seat of English power on this continent. It is said that Bacon and other gentlemen who had houses there fired them with their own hands.

Bacon showed no disposition to take power into his own hands, only wishing to put down the tyranny of Berkeley. After a brief course of victory, he died of fever, October, 1676. His followers buried him in the forest and the place of his grave remains unknown to this day.

A few months later, troops from England came as reinforcements to Berkeley. He made himself again master of the colony and took swift and bloody revenge[126] oil his enemies. More than twenty persons were hanged for their share in the rebellion.

“As I live,” said Charles II., angrily, when the news reached him, “the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did for the murder of my father.”

The men about whom we have been reading were all natives of Europe—Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Dutchmen,—adventurers seeking wealth or power, settlers intent on gaining national or personal power, religious or civil liberty. It is not until the eighteenth century that we come across our first, our great typical American. This is Benjamin Franklin, keen and quick of wit, shrewd and energetic, a man of business and a scholar, a politician and a scientist.

Benjamin Franklin was the son of an English tradesman of plain respectable family, who came to New England in order to enjoy the free exercise of his religion. He made his home in Boston. There Benjamin was born in 1706 and there his childhood was passed. Many incidents of it are familiar to us all. You remember how when he was a child of seven he gave all his pennies for a whistle. But the money was not wasted, for the incident taught him to consider the real value of things and not to spend too much time, thought, or,[127] money for trifles,—in other words, “Don’t give too much for the whistle.”

When a little older he led his companions in taking some building-stones to construct a wharf to stand on while fishing; he tried to justify his conduct to his father, saying that his wharf was a public benefit but his father taught him a great truth: “My son, nothing can ever be truly useful, which is not at the same time truly honest.”

Benjamin learned to read almost as soon as he learned to talk, and he was so fond of books that his father wished to have him educated for the ministry. This plan had to be given up for lack of money. Mr. Franklin was a poor man with seventeen children, and when Benjamin was only ten years old he had to leave school and help his father in the shop. Mr. Franklin made and sold soap and candles, and it was Benjamin’s duty to cut candle-wicks and to pour tallow into molds to make candles. He did not like this work, and when he was twelve years old he was apprenticed to his brother James to learn the trade of a printer. He was so fond of books that it was thought he would like this work. He had read with interest his father’s few books, among which were Bunyan’s wonderful “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Plutarch’s Lives.” With his brother James, Benjamin had access to more books and more opportunity for reading, but the two brothers did not get on well together. Partly this was James’s fault,[128] for he was harsh and overbearing; partly it was Benjamin’s, for he tells us that he was pert and provoking.

Although Benjamin Franklin’s school days had ended so early, his education was just beginning; he appreciated the value of learning and was spending his leisure in study. When he was an old man he wrote for his son the story of his life. In this autobiography he tells how he trained himself. He read carefully one of the papers of the “Spectator,” a model of good English, and afterwards wrote it down in his own words. Sometimes he changed it into verse and then later turned it back into prose. By comparing his version with the original, he discovered and corrected his faults. This is of interest because Franklin became one of our best writers of good English. His command of clear, simple, strong English won attention for what he had to say.

Young Franklin and his brother got on so badly together that he resolved not to remain at home till the end of his apprenticeship. When he was seventeen, he sold some of his books and left home with a few dollars in his pocket. He went on board a vessel bound to New York. Three days after leaving home, he landed in that city where he hoped to find work. New York was then only a small town, and young Franklin found no demand for his services with “the printer in the place.” Therefore he went on to Philadelphia,[129] which was then a much larger and more important place than New York. Part of the way he walked, part he traveled by boat; one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1723, he reached Philadelphia.

In his account of his life he gives us a vivid picture of himself, a friendless, homeless boy, walking hungry up the streets of the strange city. He met a boy with some bread and asked where he could buy food. Being directed to the baker’s, he asked for “three pennyworth” of bread and received “three great puffy rolls.” Then he says, he “having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm and eating the other.” Thus he passed the home of a Mr. Read, and at the door stood his daughter Deborah, who laughed at the “awkward, ridiculous appearance” of the strange lad. This Deborah Reed a few years later became Franklin’s wife. Being satisfied with one roll, the youth gave the other two to a woman and child who had come on the boat with him.

He soon got work with a printer in the town, but gave it up because the governor offered to set him up in business for himself. He went to London, to buy the outfit needed for his trade. On arriving there, he found that the governor had failed to send the promised letters of credit,—had, indeed, no credit himself—and the youth, penniless, in a foreign land, was thrown on his own resources. He sought and secured work as a printer, and remained in London about a year. He[130] then returned to Philadelphia, where he worked awhile as salesman in a shop and afterwards at his trade. Soon after his return, he married Deborah Read, who made him a good and helpful wife, managing his home and aiding him in the shop.

Franklin had the “prospering virtues” of economy, industry, and temperance, and he increased in worldly goods and in the esteem of his townspeople. Despite some serious personal failings, he was a good citizen and in public questions people came more and more to respect his judgment.

In the American colonies in the eighteenth century, there were few newspapers and those had a small circulation. Nearly every printer, however, published an almanac which contained weather forecasts, advice, jokes, and miscellaneous information. These almanacs had a large sale and in many homes the only books to be found were an almanac and a Bible. In 1733 Franklin published an almanac which he announced was prepared by one Richard Saunders, called for short “Poor Richard,” a character which Franklin created and represented as overflowing with quaint humor and wise and witty sayings. “Poor Richard’s Almanac” became the most popular of all publications of the kind. Franklin kept up the yearly issue till 1758, when he turned it over to his partner.

Franklin was a man who was never so busy about[131] many things that he did not have time for another. You have been told how he acquired a good English style; to this was added the charm that he always had something to say that was worth hearing. He was fond of different branches of science and was gifted with inventive talent. He studied the laws which govern the movement of hot air, and invented what is called an “open fireplace stove;” under the name of “the Franklin stove” or “Pennsylvania fireplace,” a modified form of it is still in use.

When he was about forty years old, Franklin became interested in the subject of electricity and became convinced that lightning is a manifestation of electricity. He proved this by a famous experiment, drawing the current down the string of a kite in a storm. He invented the lightning rod—for he was always trying to apply the principles of science so as to make them useful. Among his other inventions, was a musical instrument called the “Armonica,” a kind of musical glasses.

Franklin was a progressive and public-spirited citizen. He organized an orderly night-watch for Philadelphia, established the first volunteer fire company, the first hospital, and the first subscription and circulating library, in America. He interested people in the subject of education and established an academy which became the College of Philadelphia, and was[132] the real origin of the University of Pennsylvania. He originated also the American Philosophical Society “to propagate useful knowledge.”

For years he served as postmaster, first of Philadelphia, and afterwards as deputy postmaster-general of the colonies; he introduced many reforms in the postal service and improved the methods of carrying mail to and from the seventy post offices then in the country.

Franklin was now nearly fifty years of age and he was just to begin the career which made him honored and renowned. This was his work as a patriot at home and abroad.

When the French and Indian War broke out, he was commissioned to procure wagons for Braddock’s army. In two weeks by the exercise of private means and wonderful energy, he procured one hundred and fifty wagons and two hundred and fifty pack-horses. After Braddock’s defeat, Franklin, with a band of men whom he had persuaded to enlist, went to protect the settlers on the frontier against the Indians.

It was not as a soldier, however, that he was to serve his country best. Oppressive and burdensome laws were passed for the government of the colonies, and it was resolved to send someone to England to protest against them. Benjamin Franklin was sent to represent first Pennsylvania, later Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. He spent several years in England and succeeded in getting repealed the laws to which the colonies[133] objected. Then he returned home. But soon the English government passed laws more oppressive than ever. One of these was the Stamp Act. Franklin ably and eloquently presented the cause of the colonists, stating that they were willing to bear their fair share of expenses, but that on principle they were opposed to taxation without representation. The king and his ministers were not disposed to grant the reasonable demands of the colonists. Franklin was insulted and abused. In 1775 he returned to a home made desolate during his absence by the death of his wife.

The battle of Lexington had already been fought, and the greatest and wisest of the Americans realized that there was nothing left but to fight for the rights they had failed to gain by respectful petition.

In 1776 there met at Philadelphia the second Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the colonies. It was resolved to form a colonial government and Benjamin Franklin was one of a committee appointed to draw up a declaration of independence. This declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and was adopted so nearly in his words that he is regarded as its author. On the fourth of July, 1776, this declaration was adopted by Congress, and henceforth the colonies were fighting not only for redress of wrongs but for freedom.

The next year Dr. Franklin, then over seventy years of age, was sent to France as one of the commissioners[134] from the United States. It was very important for the struggling colony to gain aid and recognition from France. No more popular or more influential ambassador could have been selected than Franklin; he gained terms more favorable than any other American could have secured.

The three American commissioners did not always agree. Franklin was accused of mismanagement of affairs, or at least of failing to exercise proper oversight. He talked little in his own defence. “A spot of dirt thrown upon my character I suffered while fresh to remain;” he once said shrewdly. “I did not choose to spread by endeavoring to remove them, but relied on the vulgar adage that they would all rub off when dry.”

At first the French were not willing openly to help the rebelling English colonies, but they gave secret aid. The patriots, however, seemed to be losing instead of gaining ground, and the outlook was gloomy at home and abroad. The commissioners in France were distressed by a report that the English general Howe had taken Philadelphia.

“Well, doctor,” said an Englishman to Franklin, “Howe has taken Philadelphia.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Franklin, “Philadelphia has taken Howe.”

But though he endeavored to put a brave face on the matter, his heart was full of apprehension. A messenger[135] came from the colonies and the commissioners rushed out to meet him, asking if Philadelphia were really taken.

“Yes,” answered the messenger.

Franklin clasped his hands and turned to stumble back into the house.

“But, sir, I have greater news than that,” continued the messenger. “General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war.”

The French government hesitated no longer; in a few weeks it openly recognized the United States, and made a treaty with them.

In 1785 Franklin returned home. He was now nearly eighty, but his public life was not at an end. He was elected President of Pennsylvania and the next year he was sent as a delegate to the Convention which met to form a Constitution for the United States. In April, 1790, he died and was buried in his adopted home in Philadelphia. He had years before written an epitaph for himself.

“The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stripped of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here food for worms.
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, (as he believed) appear once more[136]
In a new
And more beautiful Edition
Corrected and Amended
By
The Author.”

You have heard of the beginnings of the French power in America—how Cartier and La Salle, Marquette and Champlain, explored the country and claimed it in the name of their king. They went up and down the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and established along the streams their trading-posts and military forts.

The English meanwhile, settled along the Atlantic coast and established farms and villages.

The English patents granted to their colonists the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The French claimed and were occupying the Mississippi valley. The English pressed westward and crossed the Alleghany Mountains through gaps made by the rivers which the French claimed; the French pressed eastward along these same rivers. Contact and conflict were inevitable. The French foresaw it and made their preparations accordingly. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, they established posts and organized their forces. French[137] traders, French missionaries, French settlers, upheld the power of their king. They made friends with the Indians of many tribes, but from the day that Champlain joined battle against the Iroquois, the Five Nations were the deadly enemies of the French and therefore the friends of the English.

The English were, as you may think, most unwilling to give up the western lands which they claimed. Governor Spottswood of Virginia, who in 1716 rode westward to the summit of the Blue Ridge at the head of a company of gentlemen, realized how important it was to hold this fair region against the French. He urged the English government to establish a chain of posts from the lakes to the Mississippi in order to keep back the French. His advice was unheeded. A few years later the French began to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and it became evident that there the two nations would clash.

During this time there were growing into manhood two youths who were to be leaders when the conflict came.

One of these was a Frenchman, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. At the age of fourteen, he entered the army and at the age of eighteen he was a general. He did valiant service in Italy and in Germany.

Several years younger than Montcalm was the English soldier, James Wolfe. He also became a soldier at an early age and at sixteen was serving in the[138] Netherlands, doing a man’s work in the battles which he described with boyish zest in his loving and dutiful letters to his mother in England.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French determined to shorten and strengthen their line of defence towards the south. They established a fort on French Creek and an outpost upon the Alleghany River. This was land which the English claimed, and George Washington, then a lad of twenty-one, was sent to the French to demand that they leave the Ohio. A forced march was made through the pathless winter woods. The French commander received the messenger courteously, but informed him that they regarded the land as their own and had no intention of yielding it to the English. This was in the winter of 1753. The next year Washington was sent in command of a little force of three hundred and fifty men to uphold the English claim, and was defeated at Great Meadows by a French force of double the size. The English began to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers on a site selected by Washington, but the French drove them away and finished the fort, which they called Fort Du Quesne.

In this emergency the colonies at first did not act together. Troops were sent from Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Maryland; but the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York said that[139] the English claim to the valley of the Ohio was a matter of no importance, and did not move. Fortunately, the home government recognized the necessity of protecting the frontier, and of extending outposts; troops were sent from England for this purpose. Thus in 1755 began the Seven Years’ War which involved England and France in Europe; in America this contest was called the French and Indian War, from the enemies the English colonists had to encounter.

The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the first of many.

“I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat.

In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758, with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend[140] in a death struggle with the English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758.

The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor. Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his energies to the struggle.

One place after another was captured by the English. News of their victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and Crown Point was captured and strengthened.

In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his forces—fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city. At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so steep[141] that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly guarded.

One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:”

“I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.

By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to attack.

Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.”

He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised himself up on this news and smiled in my[142] face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he died.”

Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the Mississippi.

Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and saw that the American cause—the cause of freedom—must be upheld by force of arms.

Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he spent most of his spare time in the woods.

[143]It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop of his own—but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper. He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back to shopkeeping—and failed again. By this time people had a poor opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the course of time he was to find his element.

At the age of twenty-four, he read law for six weeks, was examined by judges, and was given a license to practice the profession. The judges granted his license with much hesitation. Henry was ignorant of the law,—had indeed read only the Virginia Statutes and one other law book. But he showed remarkable powers of thought and reasoning, natural not acquired qualifications, and the license was granted on condition that he would continue to study. One of the judges said, “Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”

It is not strange, however, that the small amount of law business which was in his community did not come Henry’s way. People naturally preferred to put their business in the hands of those whom they considered[144] better qualified. He eked out a support for his family by aiding his father-in-law to manage a tavern.

In 1763 he had what seems to have been his first really important case,—one which was turned over to him because no one else cared to undertake it. This was the famous “Parsons’ Case.” In order to understand it, you must remember that the colony of Virginia was then a part of England and that the church of England, like its civil government, was established by law. The salaries of clergymen were raised by a regular tax on all the people. As money was scarce in the colonies, this tax was paid in tobacco which was the regular currency of Virginia. By law sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was a clergyman’s yearly salary.

The people do not seem to have objected to paying these salaries, and usually they found no fault with the amount of them. Twice, however, after bad crop years, the House of Burgesses passed laws allowing the payment of money instead of tobacco at a rate lower than the price of tobacco in these years of scarcity. Naturally, the clergymen did not like this, and they finally appealed to the king of England who decided that the salaries must be paid in tobacco every year. So the clergymen of Hanover county where Henry lived brought suit for the loss sustained by the payment of money instead of tobacco. As the king, who was the supreme authority, had decided the matter in favor of the clergymen, it seemed that there was nothing for the[145] Virginia courts to do but to agree on the amount of damages due and pay them. Henry, however, offered to plead the case against the parsons and plead it he did with unexpected power. He told the people fearlessly that this was a matter for them to decide. They were to be governed by their House of Burgesses. It had made this law, and the king of England had no right to gainsay it. Henry spoke so eloquently that he won the sympathy of all. The jury could not put aside the king’s decree but it gave a nominal adherence to that and a real one to Henry’s argument; for it stated the clergymen’s damages as one penny each, about two cents.

From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg. This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion.

The people of the colonies—even the loyal Virginians—were beginning to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of[146] money; in particular, the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send representatives to parliament—the English legislative body which has the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’”

England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act was passed,—that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed, Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765, a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain time.

In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, among stately gentlemen in silks and velvets with their curled and powdered wigs, sat a raw country man dressed in shabby clothes and wearing his own plain hair. This was Patrick Henry. One day he arose and addressed[147] that gathering of high-bred scholarly men and presented certain resolutions to the effect that the people of the colonies had all the rights and privileges of the people of Great Britain,—were like them Englishmen—and that the taxes must, according to “characteristics of British freedom” be laid by the people themselves or by those chosen by them—that only the general assembly of Virginia had a right to lay taxes on Virginians, and that the people were not bound to obey any other laws.

In the heated discussion which followed, Henry protested against the despotic action of the king. “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”—

“Treason, treason!” came the interruption.

“May profit by their example,” concluded the orator. “If that be treason make the most of it.”

Henry’s resolutions were carried by a majority of one. These resolutions and his speech had “started the ball of revolution rolling.” The Stamp Act, so vigorously protested against, was repealed, but new and hateful taxes were laid on tea, glass, paper, and other articles.

Ten years passed during which Henry practiced his profession, served four years in the House of Burgesses, and took an interest in all public questions. During these ten years, the colonies had drifted and been driven further from England, the mother-country. Patrick[148] Henry saw that the encroachments on the rights of the people must be resisted—not by words now, but by arms. In the spring of 1775 a convention of Virginia leaders met in St. John’s church in Richmond to consider the state of the country.

Henry rose and “resolved that this colony be immediately put in a posture of defence.” The matter was argued earnestly; many men advised sending new petitions to the king. Then Patrick Henry made the speech, which every schoolboy knows, urging not petition but action. “Is life so dear,” he ended, “or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me give me liberty or give me death!”

He carried the patriots with him and his resolutions were passed; thus Virginia announced that she would fight for her rights. A few weeks later the English general, Gage, attacked the people in Massachusetts and the colonies sprang to arms.

Henry served three years as governor of Virginia. After the Revolution, he took for some time an active part in public affairs and then withdrew to private life. In 1799, at the personal request of Washington, he became a candidate for office and was elected to the House of Delegates. But he did not live to take his seat, dying June 6, 1799.

Samuel Adams is often called “the father of the Revolution.” He was the great-grandson of one of the Puritan settlers who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1722.

Adams was not a typical thrifty New Englander. His private life was a series of business failures and hardships that remind us of the early career of Patrick Henry. Adams, however, unlike Henry, was college bred, having been educated at Harvard. He tried law as a profession, but did not like it well enough to continue its practice. Then he became, first a clerk and then a merchant, and as both he was a failure. Next he became a brewer, and in this trade, also, he was unsuccessful. The truth is, he kept too busy attending to public business to pay proper attention to his private affairs. Perhaps his attention was first called to public matters by a private grievance. A law passed by Parliament against certain stock-companies made it necessary to close a banking company with which his father was connected and swept away his fortune.

Unsuccessful as Samuel Adams was as a business man, it was known that he was a good citizen, with wise and patriotic views about public matters. He ably voiced colonists’ objections to the arbitrary taxation[150] of the British government. “If taxes are laid upon us,” he said, in a paper in 1764, “in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only. We are born to them!”

Adams was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1765 and the famous “Massachusetts Resolves” were his work. They expressed loyalty to the king, but refused to aid to execute the Stamp Act. It was not against England as yet but against the unjust laws of the despotic king and ministry that there was hostility.

Hutchinson, who was the royal governor, informed the home government that its course was unwise. “It cannot be good policy,” he said, “to tax the Americans; it will prove prejudicial to the national interests. You will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance.” But his warning was unheeded, and it devolved upon him to execute the unpopular acts. He suffered as the instrument of British oppression. His house was attacked and destroyed, and he and his family were driven away.

The first of November came—the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into effect. Boston church bells tolled and minute guns were fired. The stamps lay[151] untouched; business stopped, because people would not buy and use them as required by law. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament at the same time took occasion to assert “that it was competent to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Other unjust taxes were laid and protest followed protest from the colonies.

In order to uphold the king’s authority, British soldiers were sent to Boston. On a March day in 1770 occurred one of the many quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens. A company of soldiers was sent out to disperse the mob; it refused to disperse, and the soldiers fired, killing three people and wounding several others. This was the famous “Boston massacre.”

The infuriated people would have attacked the soldiers but Samuel Adams persuaded them to refrain from disorder and bloodshed; he advised them to demand from the governor the withdrawal of the two regiments stationed in Boston. This was agreed to and the next day a committee, of which Samuel Adams was the spokesman, went to Governor Hutchinson to make this demand. The governor said at first that he had no authority to remove the troops; after talking with the commander, however, he promised to send one regiment away.

“Sir,” said Samuel Adams, “if you have authority to remove one regiment you have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the departure of the troops[152] will satisfy the public mind or restore the peace of the province.”

The governor finally had to yield to the demand of the people that he withdraw “both regiments or none” and the soldiers were sent to the castle.

As time passed, Adams ceased to hope for reconciliation between the colonies and England. He realized that it was important for the colonies to make common cause in defence of their rights. On his motion in the Massachusetts legislature in 1772 citizens were appointed as Committees of Correspondence to “state, communicate, and publish the rights of the colonies.” From this beginning grew the union of the colonies.

Matters came to a crisis in Boston when the tea on which a tax was laid was sent to the port. It had been sent to New York and Philadelphia, and there the people refused to allow it to be landed and it was returned to England. In South Carolina it was landed and left to mold in cellars because the people would not purchase it. In December, 1773, Samuel Adams, so often the spokesman of the people, went to ask the governor to send the tea back to England, instead of having it landed in Boston. In old South Church were assembled seven thousand people, to hear the result of his embassy. The governor refused.

“This meeting can do nothing more to save the country,” said Samuel Adams when he announced the fact. But another scheme was on foot which was probably[153] known to Adams if not inspired by him. Some men disguised as Indians went to the harbor and threw overboard the three hundred and forty chests of tea. The next morning the patriots drank a decoction of native herbs while the Chinese tea floated on the salt waters of the bay. The Boston Tea Party, as it was called, by its disregard of the rights of property and its defiance of his authority, made the king very angry. There was passed the Boston Port Bill, which forbade vessels to enter or leave that port.

General Gage was sent to Boston with soldiers to enforce the king’s laws. General Gage realized that Samuel Adams, “the Cromwell of New England,” was the ringleader of the rebellion. An attempt was made to bribe Adams, who was very poor, with money or with position. But Adams was proof against the British offers. “I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings,” he said. “No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country.”

In June Gage dissolved the general court, and the patriots organized a government of their own. Largely through the influence of Samuel Adams, it was resolved that representatives of the colonies should meet in Philadelphia to discuss affairs. He went as the representative of Massachusetts, which was suffering most from British oppression, having her port closed and an army stationed on her soil. We are told that Adams rode[154] to Philadelphia on a borrowed horse, wearing a coat presented to him “to enable him to make a decent appearance.”

Delegates from eleven colonies met in this Congress in September, 1774, and discussed their situation. Among the delegates was a traitor who gave the royalists a full account of the meetings. This man said, “Samuel Adams eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much. He is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his object. He is the man who, by his superior application, manages at once the factions in Philadelphia and the factions of New England.”

The people were now getting ready to fight. Minute men were being drilled, firearms and powder and ball were being collected. Samuel Adams encouraged all these preparations.

One night lights in the belfry of the North Church at Boston—a system of signals agreed upon—informed the patriots that British troops were leaving the city. They were going to seize the military stores collected at Concord and Worcester by the patriots. Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere,” tells in stirring phrase how the patriot-messenger galloped forth to give the alarm. In Medford he roused John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two leaders whom Gage was anxious to capture. The minute men sprang to arms. When the British soldiers, eight hundred in number, reached the village of Lexington about four o’clock on the morning of April[155] 19, 1775, they found sixty or seventy men collected on the green.

“Disperse, you rebels!” said the English officer. “Lay down your arms.”

The men stood firm. Captain Parker had already given his orders: “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean war let it begin here.”

The British fired and the shots of the Americans rang out in answer; eight Americans lay dead on the green. The War of the Revolution was begun. Adams and Hancock heard the shots as they galloped from Medford.

“Oh, what a glorious morning for America this is,” said Adams.

At Concord the minute men assembled and put the British to flight. From there to Boston, sixteen miles away, they fired on the British from behind trees and stone walls. Finally, the British broke and ran.

On the northwest Boston was commanded by Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. A force of Americans under Colonel Prescott occupied Breed’s Hill one night and threw up earthworks to protect the city. The British soldiers marched forth to attack them and the American troops formed behind the earthworks and on the edge of Bunker Hill.

“Wait till you can see the whites of their eyes,” said the American leader, wishing to use the small supply[156] of ammunition with deadly results. Twice the British attacked and twice they were driven back. Then the ammunition of the patriots was exhausted and they had to retreat. The news of the battle between the patriots and the king’s troops was borne to the other colonists; they came to the aid of Massachusetts.

Samuel Adams, who had done so much to inspire resistance to oppression, did not serve the patriot’s cause on the battle-field. His work was in Congress, and his position as a leader was so well recognized that the English excluded from the offer of pardon to the rebels two men—Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and “one Samuel Adams.”

After the war was over, Adams served as governor of Massachusetts. He aided to draft the state constitution, the only one of the old constitutions adopted immediately after the Revolution which is still in force. He died, October 2, 1803, and was buried in Boston. In the busy business heart of the city, there is a metal disc bearing the inscription, “This marks the grave of Samuel Adams.”

The story of Washington, the personal history of the man who was identified with the independence of our country, has been told over and over and yet it never[157] fails to find interested listeners and one can well believe that it never will. He was born, February 22, 1732, on a plantation, or large farm, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father, Augustine Washington, was master of many broad acres but lacked what seem to us the very comforts of life. There was a houseful of children, too—four by the first wife, and six (of whom George was the eldest), by the second wife Mary Ball.

Mary Washington was kept busy with household cares. She superintended not only the cooking and washing and housework, but the spinning of thread, the weaving of cloth, the making of clothes, and other tasks which were then a part of home routine.

When George was three years old, the family moved to Washington, the place afterwards named Mount Vernon, and there they lived about four years.

When George was about seven, the family moved to a farm on the Rappahannock, across the river from what was then the little village of Fredericksburg. George was sent to an old field school where he was taught “to read and write and cipher.” He was fond of writing and he wrote a clear, careful hand. His early copy books have been kept and we can read on the yellowed pages the moral precepts which he copied down with great care when he was twelve years old.

George early learned to ride and swim and excelled at outdoor sports and games, thanks to a strong body[158] and determined, energetic spirit. An early biographer, Weems, tells many stories of his childhood which are widely known. Of their truth or falsehood we cannot be sure. One is the famous story that George cut down a valuable cherry tree belonging to his father, and promptly confessed his misdeed, choosing punishment rather than falsehood. Another is that he undertook in boyish bravado to subdue his mother’s favorite colt and continued the struggle until the animal burst a blood-vessel and died. This, also, he immediately confessed, and his mother while grieved over the death of her colt “rejoiced that her son was brave and truthful.”

Mr. Washington died when George was only ten years old, and on the mother devolved the early training of the children. After his early childhood, George was with her but little. He was sent, soon after his father’s death, to live with one of his older brothers to attend school. When he was fourteen, it was planned that he should go as a sailor, but the plan was given up and he returned to school and took up the study of surveying.

His half-brother Lawrence, fourteen years older than he, was a soldier; perhaps as a boy George, who admired and loved this brother, wished and planned to be a soldier, too. If so, he no doubt thought that he would wear a British uniform and fight for the king as did his brother, for the colonists then were contented and loyal subjects of England.

Lawrence Washington after his father’s death inherited[159] the estate of Washington and changed its name to Mount Vernon, in honor of an English admiral under whom he had served. Lawrence Washington, who was a fine, manly fellow, married a Miss Fairfax whose home was near Mount Vernon. She was a cousin of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, an English gentleman who came to America to look after land which he had inherited from his grandfather. This was a royal grant of all the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Lord Fairfax did not even know how many thousands of acres were in this great estate. So he employed young George Washington to explore and survey his lands.

George Washington was sixteen years old when he set out, March, 1748, with one companion, to explore and survey Lord Fairfax’s land. He had a good horse and a gun as well as his surveyor’s instruments, and the two youths spent several weeks on the trip. Sometimes they met Indians and sat beside their camp fires and watched their war dances. Sometimes they slept outdoors, sometimes they spent the night in the rude huts of the settlers. “I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed,” George Washington wrote, “but after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire on a little straw, or fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire.”

On his return Washington gave such a glowing description[160] of the beautiful and fertile country he had visited, that Lord Fairfax determined to move there and make his home at Greenway Court. He employed young Washington to make a careful survey of his lands and got him appointed public surveyor. During the next three years when Washington was not at work in the field he stayed at Greenway Court with Lord Fairfax. This gentleman was a scholar and a courtier and from intercourse with him the young surveyor gained breadth of mind and polished manners, while his outdoor life was making him strong and robust.

At twenty he was a picture of stalwart manhood—over six feet in height, straight as an Indian, and with dignified manners. About this time his brother Lawrence died, leaving Mount Vernon to his little daughter; George, his favorite brother, was to manage the estate and in case of the child’s death was to inherit it.

He went home to take charge of the fine old estate, but he did not long remain there. France and England were beginning their contest for supremacy in the country along the Ohio. When only twenty-one, George Washington was appointed to bear a protest to the French against their occupancy of the land. He set out the very day that he received his appointment, accompanied by some white woodsmen and Indian hunters. His was a long, difficult journey through the untraveled forest to a fort hundreds of miles away near Lake Erie, and it was a vain one. He was received courteously[161] by the commander but was informed that the French were ordered to hold the country and would do so. The return journey was even more difficult than the journey to the fort. It was the depth of winter; the ground was covered with snow and the streams blocked with ice. Leaving the remainder of the party to follow later on horseback, Washington set out on foot with a woodsman named Gist. The two men made their way through the country inhabited by hostile Indians and fierce beasts. Once an Indian shot at young Washington, once he fell into an ice-blocked stream and came near losing his life; he accomplished the dangerous journey in safety and hurried to Williamsburg to inform the governor of the result of his expedition.

It was resolved to defend the frontiers, and some men were sent out to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio River near Pittsburg. But these men were attacked and defeated by the French who finished and occupied the fort. This they called Fort Du Quesne. The French soldiers marched forth in the spring of 1754 to meet the little band commanded by Washington. Washington, having defeated a small body of the French, stopped at a place called Great Meadows, and defended his troops by an earthwork which he called Fort Necessity. Here he and his soldiers fought bravely against a French force of far superior numbers to which they had to yield at last.

The next year, Washington, in charge of the Virginia[162] troops, went with General Braddock, commanding the English forces, to attack the French and take Fort Du Quesne. Braddock was brave but stubborn and ignorant of the methods of Indian warfare. Washington wished the Virginia rangers to march in front in order to guard the army against surprise.

“What!” said Braddock, “a Virginia colonel teach a British general how to fight!”

Off he marched with flags flying, drums beating, and men in close ranks. Before they reached Fort Du Quesne, the French and Indians attacked them and inflicted a terrible defeat. Braddock paid the penalty of his folly with his life. Washington made a gallant effort to redeem the day. He said, “I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side of me.” On him devolved the difficult task of leading the shattered remnant of the army back home, protecting it against the unfriendly Indians and the hostile French.

After this campaign he was tendered a vote of thanks in the House of Burgesses. When he rose to reply, he blushed and faltered so that the Speaker said, “Sit down, Colonel Washington, sit down. Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language I possess.”

Two years later, as commander of the troops raised in Virginia to defend the frontier he marched against[163] Fort Du Quesne. The French, unable to hold it, set fire to it and retreated; on the spot, the English built a new fort which they called Fort Pitt in honor of an English statesman, and on the site of this fort stands now the city of Pittsburg. The English were victors now and as most of the fighting was in New York and Canada instead of the Ohio country, Washington resigned his commission and went home to Virginia.

In January, 1759, he married Mrs. Martha Custis, a widow with a fine estate and two children. Washington had no children of his own and his step-children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, were like his own children. In the lists of goods he ordered from England we find such items as “One fashionable dress Doll to cost a guinea” and “A box of Gingerbread Toys and Sugar Images or Comfits.” “Patsy,” as the little girl was called, died in early girlhood, but the boy lived to become a man and married, leaving at his death four children of whom two, George Washington Parke Custis and Eleanor Parke Custis, made their home at Mount Vernon as Washington’s adopted children.

Probably the happiest and most carefree years of Washington’s life were those after his marriage which were spent at Mount Vernon which he had inherited at the death of his niece. Farming was his “most favorite pursuit,” and he devoted himself with characteristic energy to improving his land by manures and rotation[164] of crops, and his stock of sheep, cattle, and horses by selection and breeding. He was a member of the House of Burgesses, took an interest in public affairs, and was regarded as one of the leading men in the colony.

Not long after the French and Indian War, trouble arose between the colonies and England about taxation without representation. As you know, the trouble in Boston finally led to the passage of the Boston Port Bill. Virginia and the other colonies sympathized with Massachusetts. In a speech in the House of Burgesses Washington said, “I will raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march with them, at their head, for the relief of Boston.”

George Washington was one of the six Virginia delegates to the first continental congress in September, 1774. It was decided to raise a colonial army, and, June 15, 1775, Washington was appointed its commander-in-chief. In his speech accepting the office he refused to receive pay for his services, saying that only his expenses in the service should be repaid him at the end of the war. June 21 he left Philadelphia and rode to Massachusetts to take charge of the troops. On the third of July, at Cambridge under a great elm-tree still known as “Washington’s elm,” he assumed command of the army. He was an imposing figure, a tall handsome man dressed in a blue coat with buff facings and buff small clothes or knee trousers. The army of which he took command, was, he said, “a mixed multitude[165] of people, under very little discipline, order, or government.” These troops, about sixteen thousand in number, had most of them been enlisted for but a short time and they lacked provisions and supplies,—above all, ammunition. Throughout the war there was scarcity of ammunition and the enemy’s stores of powder and ball and firearms were the most welcome part of an American victory. During the first months, however, the Americans had more experience of defeat than of victory.

In the spring of 1776 the Americans took possession of Dorchester Heights and the British evacuated Boston a few days later. When their fleet put to sea, Washington marched across the country, hoping to keep them from landing in New York. But the enemy were too strong for him and they took possession of the city.

Up to this time the patriots had been fighting for their rights as British colonists. July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the fight was now for freedom. Of this Washington said, “When I first took command of the army I abhorred the idea of independence, but I am fully convinced that nothing else will save us.”

At Cambridge Washington had used a flag with thirteen stripes of red and white, and the red and white cross of the British flag in the corner; in 1777 Congress adopted as the national flag one with the stripes[166] but having, instead of the British cross, thirteen stars to represent the thirteen colonies.

As we said, the Americans were unable to prevent the British from landing in New York. Then the patriots were defeated in the battle of Long Island and Washington was forced to retreat. Pursued through New Jersey, he crossed the river into Pennsylvania, with about three thousand ragged, hungry, discouraged soldiers. It was now winter and it was supposed that the troops would go into winter quarters. But Washington did not wish to give up the year’s campaign without striking one successful blow. By a sudden march the day after Christmas, he surprised and captured a force of one thousand Hessians at Trenton and then he defeated an English force at Princeton. These victories inspired hope and the patriots began the campaign of 1777 with renewed courage.

But it was a year of reverses. The patriots were defeated at Brandywine in September and at Germantown in October and went into winter quarters at Valley Forge in December in a pitiable condition. They lacked clothing, food, military stores. The campaign in the north was more successful. At Saratoga General Gates won a signal victory and Burgoyne was forced to surrender his army. It was this victory which led the French to declare in favor of the colonists.

There was formed a conspiracy to depose Washington[167] and to put at the head of the army General Gates who had won the victory of the campaign. Congress, however, supported Washington and collected men and supplies for a new campaign. The army was drilled in the winter of 1778 by Baron von Steuben, a Prussian officer who had served under Frederic the Great.

In 1778 the British evacuated Philadelphia and Washington attacked them at Monmouth. Here he had a clash with General Charles Lee; his temper, usually under control, rose at what he considered General Lee’s failure to perform his duty.

The little army marched north and encamped near White Plains. In this vicinity it remained during the year. During the campaign of 1779 also, Washington remained in the Highlands of the Hudson on the defensive. The next year came French aid. That same year the plot of General Arnold to surrender West Point to the English was discovered from papers in the possession of a captured spy. This spy, the brave young General André, paid the penalty with his life; the traitor Arnold escaped to the British.

In 1781 brilliant victories were won at the south by General Greene, General Morgan and by Marion, called “the Swamp Fox.” That same year Washington, aided by the French troops, invested Lord Cornwallis’s men at Yorktown, and forced them to surrender.

A treaty of peace, made in September, 1783, ended the war which, as Pitt said, “was conceived in injustice,[168] nurtured in folly, and whose footsteps were marked with blood and devastation.” In November the British evacuated New York and on December the fourth Washington read his farewell address to the army. He resigned his commission to Congress, thinking that his remaining days were to be spent in private life at the home he loved.

But his country needed him still. Victory had been won indeed, but the debt and burden of war remained. Congress with its limited delegated power was unable to settle matters, and there seemed danger that the colonies, united in their struggle against British oppression, would drift apart. Washington had won public confidence; it was he who could best advance the work of peace. He presided over the Convention of 1787 which framed a Constitution for the newly-established United States. This was adopted by the required number of states and Washington was unanimously chosen President of the United States. On April 30, 1789, he assumed the duties of the office in New York, which was the first seat of national government. He entered upon the performance of his work as president with the conscientious attention which he gave to all matters. He aided to organize the different departments of the government and appointed as their heads the ablest men in the country—Hamilton, Jefferson, and others. He never openly allied himself with either the Federalist party led by Hamilton or the[169] Democratic-Republican party led by Jefferson, but strove for union and peace.

After serving eight years, he declined to be a candidate a third time—thus establishing a precedent that no President shall serve a third term. In 1796 Washington delivered a farewell address to the people he had led and served. He retired to private life, but did not live long to enjoy his well-earned rest. December 14, 1799, he died and was buried at his home at Mount Vernon. The eulogy pronounced on him by “Light Horse Harry” Lee well said that he was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life.”

Philip Schuyler was a member of an old Dutch family in New York, which had extensive possessions on the river Hudson. Under a French tutor, he received a better education than was usual in colonial days. He was an energetic manly lad, and early learned to ride and skate, to shoot and manage a boat. He grew up an intelligent man and a good woodsman, trained in the learning of the frontiers.

His father died when he was eight years old; Philip was the eldest son and when he attained his majority, according to the English custom he became master of his father’s wealth. This did not accord with Schuyler’s[170] Dutch ideas of justice nor with his native generosity; he divided the property equally with his brothers and sisters.

In the French and Indian war Schuyler, like Washington and others, gained the military experience which was later to be so valuable to his country. In his subordinate position there came no opportunity for him to distinguish himself especially, but he served with credit and honor. A characteristic story is told of him on this campaign. The troops were crossing the Oswego river and as the boats were crowded a wounded prisoner was about to be left behind. Schuyler quietly put his gun and coat in a boat, took the prisoner on his back, swam across the stream, and put the wounded man in charge of a surgeon before he rejoined his company.

It was largely through Schuyler’s influence that New York joined Virginia and Massachusetts first in protesting and then in fighting against the oppressions of England. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and was appointed by Congress a major-general—a place to which he was entitled by his position and services and by his experience in the French and Indian War. He was, however, unpopular from the first with Samuel Adams and the leaders of the New England party. They could not forget that he was of Dutch descent, and a native of the colony which had quarreled with New England about boundary lines.

On the morning of June 21, 1775, George Washington,[171] Philip Schuyler, and Charles Lee rode out of Philadelphia, going northward to the seat of war. Washington was to assume command of the army at Cambridge and Schuyler was to take charge of the troops in New York and lead an expedition against Canada. The three horsemen had gone about twenty miles when they met a courier bringing Congress tidings of the battle of Bunker Hill.

“Did the militia stand fire?” asked Washington eagerly. When informed that they did, he exclaimed, “The Liberties of the country are safe!”

During the ride to New York, Washington and Schuyler learned to know and esteem each other and the friendship begun then was never broken.

The position of the state of New York made its control a matter of great importance. The little settlement—it was seventh in population of the sparsely-settled colonies—was midway between the northern and the southern colonies. If it were under British control, it would be a wedge to separate them. Philip Schuyler was stationed in the northern part of the province. His illness made it necessary for Montgomery to take charge of the army sent against Quebec. As soon as Schuyler was able to move, he set to work to raise men and supplies, advancing his own funds for the purpose when those furnished by Congress proved pitifully inadequate. To the impatient and sometimes irritated letters of the young patriot, Washington[172] sent words of encouragement and counsel, saying, “In a little time we shall work up these raw materials into a good manufacture. I must recommend to you, what I endeavor to practice myself, patience and perseverance.”

In the campaign of 1777 the British, now largely reinforced, planned to occupy New York and so to separate the northern and the southern colonies. General Burgoyne was to lead eight thousand men down Lake Champlain; Colonel St. Leger was to go down the valley of the Mohawk from Oswego; and General Howe was to come up the Hudson. This force of thirty-three thousand men was to take possession of New York.

At first it seemed as if the British were to succeed. They marched on Ticonderoga, “the door to Canada,” which Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured in May, 1775. The British general determined to place his cannon on a rocky height commanding the fort. He was told that the height was inaccessible for cannon. “Where a goat can go, a man can go,” he said; “where a man can go, he can haul up a gun.” The cannon was put in place and commanded the fort. St. Clair, seeing that it was useless to resist, abandoned the fort and withdrew through the woods to join Schuyler. At the news that Ticonderoga was taken King George rushed into the queen’s room, exclaiming, “I have beat them; I have beat all the Americans!”

It was impossible for the American forces to meet[173] Burgoyne’s large, well-equipped army in open fight. They fell back, destroying bridges, felling trees across the roads through the ravines and swamps; the way was so obstructed that Burgoyne’s army could march only about a mile a day. Each day’s march took it further from its base of supplies and weakened its forces, while each day added numbers and strength to the patriots. An act of atrocity on the British side caused many to join the colonial army who had hesitated before. Some Indians from Burgoyne’s army killed and scalped Jane McCrea, a beautiful young girl for whom they had been appointed guides. The colonists were indignant with the English for making common cause against their own countrymen with the savages.

At Bennington a detachment of Burgoyne’s army was attacked by General Starke. “Before night we must conquer or Molly Starke is a widow,” he cried, as he led his men to victory. An English force of about two thousand men marched up the Mohawk and attacked Fort Stanwix, or Schuyler, at the head of the river. The men in the fort prepared to resist to the last. They cut up their shirts and cloaks to make a flag, the Stars and Stripes, which they raised with cheers. General Herkimer gathered the militia and went to their rescue. On the way the militia was attacked and General Herkimer’s leg was shattered by a bullet. Refusing to be borne from the field, he sat puffing at his pipe and calmly directing his troops. In this battle of Oriskany[174] both sides sustained severe losses. The British advance was checked but they continued to besiege Fort Schuyler.

General Schuyler called a council of war and suggested the sending of reinforcements to the fort but the officers objected to thus weakening the army which would have to oppose Burgoyne. Schuyler was unwilling to leave the brave men to their fate. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I shall take the responsibility upon myself. Where is the brigadier that will take command of the relief? I shall beat up for volunteers to-morrow.”

Arnold, ever ready for a daring deed, offered to take charge of the expedition. On the way he seized two Tories and sent them to the British army to announce that large patriot forces were advancing. The Indian allies were already discontented. At this tidings they deserted, and the British force broke up and retreated without striking a blow.

As affairs were in this favorable condition, General Schuyler was superseded in command. He had been blamed for the surrender of Ticonderoga and the New England delegates, disliking him from the first, lent a ready ear to the charges against him. Congress asked Washington to appoint his successor, but the commander-in-chief refused to countenance the act of injustice, and Congress appointed Gates. Schuyler had borne the heat and burden of the campaign; now he had to look on while the rewards of victory went to Gates.

[175]Schuyler accepted the situation in a noble and patriotic spirit. “I am far from insensible of the indignity of being ordered from the command of the army at a time when an engagement must soon take place,” he wrote to President Hancock. “It, however, gives me great consolation that I shall have an opportunity of evincing that my conduct has been such as deserved the thanks of my country.”

After the two battles of Saratoga the British were forced to retreat. They were hemmed in by the American troops and, October 17, 1777, Burgoyne and his army of five or six thousand men surrendered to Gates. It was this victory, you remember, which led France to declare for the colonists.

After the battle of Saratoga, Schuyler treated the prisoners with great consideration, especially the women and children. He courteously entertained General Burgoyne, who had had his house burned and his estate laid waste.

“Is it to me who have done you so much injury that you show so much kindness?” asked Burgoyne.

“That is the fate of war; let us say no more about it,” was the answer.

Later on, Schuyler insisted upon a court martial to investigate his conduct; it acquitted him, and Congress approved the verdict “with the highest honor.” Washington wished him to resume command but he refused.[176] However, he served his country ably in Congress and in the Senate of his native state. He died in November, 1804.

As a general Nathanael Greene ranks next to Washington in the esteem of the American people. His father was a Quaker clergyman who lived in Rhode Island. Nathanael as a boy worked on the farm, at the blacksmith’s forge, and in a grist mill. He generally had a book at hand and spent his leisure minutes in study; by his own exertions, without ever having much schooling, he became a well-educated man. No one would have imagined that this hard-working young Quaker, in his drab clothes and broad-brimmed hat, was to become a fearless leader of the patriot bands.

He was a young man when the Revolution began. He became convinced that the battle-field must decide the cause of the colonists, and, despite the Quaker views in which he had been trained, he wished to join the fight for freedom. As soon as he heard of the battles of Lexington and Concord, he started to Boston to take the part of his oppressed countrymen. When the Continental army was organized, Rhode Island voted to raise sixteen hundred men to be commanded by Greene.

For four years he served in the north, winning the esteem and confidence of Washington. He was with Washington in the retreat through New Jersey and[177] aided in the brilliant attacks at Trenton and Princeton. In the battle of Brandywine he saved the day. His troops were stationed in the rear; as the retreating forces fell back, at Greene’s command the ranks opened and let them pass, then closed again. Thus he kept his troops formed in line of battle and held the British army in check, till night came; then he withdrew to the main army. In the battle of Germantown, too, Greene bore a brave part, and by his courage and endurance he cheered Washington during the dark days at Valley Forge.

During the first years of the war the north was the battle field. The south was almost unmolested except for the attack in 1776 on Fort Moultrie which was gallantly defended. In December, 1778, however, General Clinton sent thirty-five hundred men by sea from New York; these troops easily captured Savannah which was defended by only six hundred men. The British forces made themselves masters of the country defended only by scattered bands of patriots. In the spring of 1780, Clinton himself with eight thousand men went by sea to Charleston and captured the city. Leaving Cornwallis to complete the conquest of the South, Clinton returned to the north. It seemed as if the southern colonies were to be torn from the patriots.

In this emergency General Gates was sent to take command in the south. By overcoming Burgoyne with[178] the army prepared by Schuyler and led by Morgan and Arnold, he had won fame and popularity, and was regarded as equal or superior to Washington. He was defeated at Camden by Cornwallis with a smaller force. Gates led the retreat, or stampede, of the militia, while a brave German, De Kalb, with one-third of the army stood at bay against the whole British army and met an honorable death. “We look on America as at our feet,” said an English statesman when the news of this battle was received in England.

But it was a general not a people which the English had defeated. The brave settlers on the frontier rallied in their own defense. In October, 1780, they surrounded Ferguson’s troops at King’s Mountain, captured or killed the entire force, and disbanded before the English could attack them. “A numerous army appeared on the frontier drawn from Nolachucky and other settlements beyond the mountains whose very names had been unknown to us,” wrote Lord Rawdon.

Two months later, December, 1780, a general was sent to the southern colonies who was worthy of the troops he was to command. This was Greene. The outlook was not promising. Without provisions, military stores, or clothing, and lacking means to provide them, Greene took charge of an army of about two thousand starving, ragged men. Opposed to him were well-disciplined, well-provisioned troops. But his brave soldiers were commanded by such men as William Washington,[179] Morgan, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Marion, and Sumpter. The patriots were cheered by the victory of Cowpens, won by Morgan’s men, January 17, 1781, over the bold and savage Tarleton.

Greene was not able to withstand the large and well-equipped British army; as Cornwallis approached, he fell back, going northward. By looking at a map, you can see the position of the troops. Behind them were three rivers, the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Dan. The patriots’ effort was to keep a river between them and their enemy; the British endeavor was to overtake the little American army between two rivers, where it would be easy to destroy it. The march became a race for the rivers. Cornwallis destroyed the baggage of the army, beginning with his own personal luggage, and his men marched as light infantry. The patriots hurried on through the mud and rain, over the snow and frozen roads; for them it was a march for life and death; the men were allowed three hours’ sleep and they had but one meal a day. They pressed on, crossed the Catawba in safety, and in safety crossed the Yadkin; unless they were overtaken before they reached the Dan, they would be safe. Cornwallis thought that they would seek the fords of the Dan and he marched in that direction; Greene, however, hurried toward a ford where boats were collected and the army crossed the river. After a vain march of two hundred and fifty miles, in which his losses had been greater than in battle, Cornwallis was[180] compelled to retrace his steps. He said of his opponent: “Greene is as dangerous as Washington,—he is vigilant, enterprising, and full of resources.”

Greene received reinforcements; though most of them were raw and untrained men, he knew that a battle must be risked while his ranks were full. He marched back to Guilford Court House, where a battle was fought, March, 1781. The raw troops were not able to withstand the attack of the British regulars, and the patriots were defeated. Though defeated, Greene remained in control of much of North Carolina; Cornwallis went northward, entered Virginia, and advanced to his fate at Yorktown. Greene’s troops were attacked at Hobkirk’s Hill, April, 1781, and defeated by Lord Rawdon who had succeeded Cornwallis in command. The men deserted the guns and it was not until Greene himself rushed forward and seized the ropes that the men rallied to drag off the precious artillery.

That fall, in the fiercely-contested battle of Eutaw Springs, Greene held his own. Though he won few decisive victories in pitched battle against the British regulars, he gradually drove the enemy from Georgia and the Carolinas, till only a few fortified towns were left in their control. Greene drew his lines closer and closer around Charleston and at last the British were forced to evacuate the city. This really ended the war in the south.

[181]When peace was declared in 1783, Greene returned to his home in Rhode Island. Two years later, he went to Georgia to make his home on an estate there which was presented to him as a reward for his gallant services. He did not long survive to enjoy his well-won fame, dying in June, 1786.

The American army during the Revolution was, for the most part, led by native Americans; the officers of English birth were for one reason and another less popular and less successful than the Americans. This, however, was not the case with the American navy, created and manned to meet the exigency of the time. The twenty-six vessels did valiant service, capturing during the first two years of the war eight hundred merchantmen and gaining many brilliant victories. The man whose achievements shed most luster upon it was a Briton.

John Paul, known to us as Paul Jones, was the son of a Scotch gardener. In childhood he showed a love for the sea and he became a sailor when he was twelve years old. One of his first long voyages was on a ship which came to Virginia for a cargo of tobacco. He studied naval history and tactics, though he remained in the merchant-service. There he rose in[182] rank, until he became captain of a trading-vessel. When he was about twenty-five, his brother, who had settled in Virginia, died and John Paul, for by this name he was still known, took charge of his estate. He does not seem to have been a successful farmer, and he led an uneventful life until the Revolution began. Then he offered his services to Congress. We do not know why he cast his lot with his adopted country instead of his native one, but he gave it faithful and brilliant service, without pay or allowance.

From this time, however, he dropped his real name of John Paul and chose to be known as John Paul Jones—perhaps because he did not wish his friends and countrymen to know that he was aiding the “rebel” cause.

He was at first appointed to a subordinate position. In the early part of 1776 the first American squadron, with Paul Jones first lieutenant on one of its vessels, the Alfred, sailed to the Bahama Islands. Its mission was to take the military supplies so needed by the Americans from the forts on New Providence. The Americans were unable to enter the harbor, and the expedition would have been a failure but for Paul Jones. He had been informed that there was a good landing near the harbor, and he undertook to guide the Alfred to it. He did so and the other ships followed. They seized the military stores, including a hundred cannon, and sailed back to America.

[183]Soon after this Paul Jones was given charge of a little sloop and sent to sea on a six-weeks’ cruise. He had encounters with several English frigates and on more than one occasion his vessel was saved only by his courage and seamanship. At the end of his cruise he returned to Newport with sixty-six prizes. The gallant and successful captain was deprived of command by a jealous superior officer and for several months he was without a ship. He repeatedly asked Congress for a ship and he requested that it might be a good one, “for I intend to go in harm’s way,” he said—and he generally carried out his intention.

While on shore Jones gave Congress valuable advice about fitting out a navy. He recommended that “1. Every officer should be examined before he receives his commission. 2. The ranks in a navy should correspond to those in an army. 3. As England has the best navy in the world, we should copy hers.”

In June, 1777, he was put in command of the Ranger and over this he hoisted, for the first time on the seas, the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, lately adopted by Congress. He thought that the most effective way to wage war was to “carry it into the enemy’s country.” Accordingly he went to Whitehaven on the English coast, where nearly three hundred vessels were in harbor. He took his men ashore in two boats and ordered them to set fire to the ships, while he surprised the two batteries and the fort and[184] spiked their cannon. When he returned to the harbor, he found that his orders had been disobeyed,—not one ship had been fired. It was now day and the people were aroused, but Paul Jones was unwilling to go without carrying out a part of his plan and with his own hand he set fire to the largest ship.

The English made many attempts to seize the doer of this daring deed, and at one time there were forty-two British ships on the waters seeking to capture the bold rover. One of the ships which set out to capture the Ranger was the Drake. Jones met it in battle and defeated and captured the English vessel which had more guns and better-trained and better-equipped men than his.

The Ranger was recalled to defend the coast of America, and for months Paul Jones was in France without a ship. At last he was given an old trading-vessel fitted out as a war-ship. He called it Bon Homme Richard, the French name for Poor Richard in honor of his friend Franklin’s Poor Richard of the almanac. In September, 1779, Commodore Jones sailed toward the English coast with four small vessels. There he met two large English war-ships that were convoying, or accompanying, a fleet of forty merchant-vessels. The merchant-vessels took refuge on the English coast, and the war-ships advanced to fight. The shots of the English ship, the Serapis, inflicted so much injury on the Richard that Captain Pearson of the Serapis[185] thought it was sinking and asked the American commander, “Has your ship struck?”

“I have not yet begun to fight,” was Jones’s stern reply.

He had the two vessels lashed together. Then, with his own hands helping to work the guns, he directed the fight with dauntless resolution. His ship was riddled with shot and on fire; still he refused to yield; when the vessel seemed sinking, he drove his prisoners to the pumps and made them work for life itself. One of his ships, instead of coming to his aid, fired on him. His situation seemed desperate. Captain Pearson called again to know if he had struck and he answered, “No,—that if he could do no better he would sink with his colors flying.”

After a deadly combat of three-and-a-half hours, in which the Serapis and the Richard literally “shot each other to pieces,” the Serapis had to yield. The king conferred on Captain Pearson the honor of knighthood as a reward for his brave, though unsuccessful, fight. When Jones heard of this he said that if ever he met Pearson at sea again he would make a lord of him. After the Revolution in which he served America so bravely and ably, Jones made his home in France. There in 1792 ended his adventurous life in which he had, as he said, “twenty-three battles and solemn rencounters by sea.”

Not all the work of securing American independence was done by the able generals and the brave soldiers. The patriot cause in the Revolution owed much to men who never served in the army. One of these was Franklin, who secured for the colonies aid and recognition from France. Another was Thomas Jefferson, called “the pen of the Revolution,” who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson was born in Virginia, in 1743; his father, a wealthy country gentleman, died when Thomas was about fourteen years old. The country boy divided his time between books and outdoor sports, and his mind was well-trained and his slender frame was as active and as tireless as an Indian’s. Then at seventeen he rode off to Williamsburg to enter William and Mary College.

At Williamsburg was formed the friendship with Patrick Henry which continued till after the Revolution; it was broken by differences in political opinions. It was on a flyleaf of one of Thomas Jefferson’s law books that Henry wrote his “resolutions.” Jefferson was one of the audience that listened entranced to the eloquent speech against the Stamp Act. When Jefferson was twenty-four, he was admitted to practice law at Williamsburg. He became an able and[187] successful lawyer, though he had a weak voice and was never a pleasing speaker. In 1775 Jefferson heard Patrick Henry’s eloquent appeal to the people to arm for the inevitable conflict; Jefferson, Washington, and others were appointed to form plans to put Virginia on a military basis.

Jefferson, who had already won reputation as author and scholar, was sent to Philadelphia to the Continental Congress. Though one of the youngest of its members, he was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence. The paper was accepted and adopted in form slightly changed from that in which he presented it. The delegates who signed it well knew that they were signing their death warrants if the Revolution should prove a failure and they should fall into King George’s hands.

Hancock, the president of the Congress, said that the members must all hang together.

“Yes,” said Franklin, “we must hang together or we shall all hang separately.”

Four days later, the Declaration was read publicly, and its proclamation was received with enthusiasm throughout the colonies.

Jefferson was one of the five men that the Assembly selected to revise the Virginia laws; upon him devolved most of the work. It was due to him that severe laws were passed against dueling, and that there was repealed the old English law by which the eldest[188] son inherited the father’s estate. For nine years he and other enlightened men fought for the repeal of the old intolerant laws about religion, and the passing of a statute securing religious liberty. Finally, all the old laws about tithes, compulsory worship, etc., were struck out and in their place was substituted this statute written by Jefferson:

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, ministry, or place whatsoever; nor shall he be enforced, restrained, molested or hindered in his body or his goods; nor shall he otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs; but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion; and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.” We accept this as a matter of course, but in that day it was a great step forward.

Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, but he resigned in 1781, feeling that in the emergency of the time the government could best be administered by having civil and military power in the same hands. He was asked by Congress to go with Franklin to France as ambassador but he refused because his wife was ill. After her death, two years later, he went as minister to France. No other American ambassador was ever so popular as Franklin, but Jefferson was liked and respected.

[189]“You replace Dr. Franklin,” said a Frenchman.

“I merely succeed him; no one could replace him,” was the prompt reply.

Jefferson, like Franklin, was a many-sided man. The famous author of the Declaration of Independence, the scholar versed in the Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish languages, took a keen interest in practical matters and applied science. Under great difficulties, he procured some of the best rice of Italy and sent it to South Carolina; from this handful came the great rice crops produced in that state. From Europe Franklin sent to the United States the first announcement of Watt’s steam engine which he went from Paris to London to see. He wrote back that by it “a peck and a half of coal performs as much work as a horse in a day.” Jefferson himself had inventive talent; among his other inventions was a plow superior to any then in use, which in 1790 received a gold medal in France. He became the third president of the American Philosophical Society of which Franklin was the first president.

Jefferson returned to America in 1789 and served as Secretary of State under Washington. He had succeeded in getting our present coinage system adopted, urging successfully a decimal system to replace that of England which many people wished to retain. He tried to have introduced a system of measures founded on the same decimal plan, but in this[190] he did not succeed. While he was Secretary of State the mint in Philadelphia was established by his advice; till then American money had been coined in Europe.

In 1793 Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State and returned to his beloved home, Monticello, one of the handsomest country seats in Virginia. His overseer said that in the twenty years he lived at Monticello, he saw Jefferson sitting unemployed only twice—both times he was too unwell to work. “At all other times he was either reading, writing, talking, working upon some model, or doing something else.” Once Jefferson’s little grandsons whom he urged to “learn” and “labor” replied that they would not need to work because they would be rich. He answered, “Ah, those that expect to get through the world without industry, because they are rich, will be greatly mistaken. The people that do the work will soon get possession of all their property.”

One of his grandsons tells another incident of these days: “On riding out with him when a lad we met a negro who bowed to us; he returned his bow, I did not. Turning to me he asked, ‘Do you permit a negro to be more of a gentleman than yourself?’”

The country did not permit Jefferson to remain long in retirement. He was elected Vice President in 1796 and President in 1801. He represented the party of the people; this was opposed to the Federalist[191] party led by Hamilton which was in favor of a centralized government. The party led by Jefferson was called, first Republican, then Democratic-Republican, then Democratic—to express the idea that the power belonged to the people. Scholar and aristocrat as Jefferson was, he had confidence in the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as a man of the people expressed it later. Throughout Jefferson’s life this was his main idea, and the one for which he always worked.

During his first administration he rendered a great service to the country; being instrumental in 1803 in purchasing from France for fifteen million dollars the Louisiana territory. This territory included not only Louisiana but the territory extending to Puget Sound. In a message to Congress, Jefferson asked for money to send an expedition to explore this great country and he selected two brave and hardy frontiersmen to lead it, Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clarke. They spent two and a half years on the expedition and brought back information about the country and specimens of its products.

After he had served his country twice as president, Jefferson retired to his home at Monticello and there spent his old age, still occupied with schemes for the public welfare. He believed in America for Americans. In a letter to President Monroe he said, “Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle[192] ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs.”

He planned an educational system for Virginia which included a comprehensive free school system, and a university. He gave years of thought and study to planning the building, government, and course of study of this university. In 1818 the state legislature made a grant to establish the University of Virginia.

Jefferson gave practically his whole life to the service of his country. He was in office thirty-nine years, and spent more than twenty years revising the Virginia Statutes and laboring to establish the University of Virginia. Thus, he said, his public services occupied over sixty years. During this time, his private affairs were neglected. From wealth in youth, he was reduced in old age to straitened circumstances. He sold his library, thirteen thousand volumes, to Congress for $23,950, about one-half of its auction value, and the money went to his creditors.

In the summer of 1826 Jefferson was taken ill. At midnight July the third, he was heard to murmur, “This is the fourth of July.” About midday he died, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. On the same day in Massachusetts was dying John Adams who had helped in the fight for the people’s rights. During his last hours, his thoughts [193]turned to his great associate and he said, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.”

On Jefferson’s tombstone were recorded as he had requested—not the offices he had held nor the honors he had received—but the three things by which he wished to be remembered,—that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for religious liberty, and founded the University of Virginia.

The Democratic-Republican party which believed in the “power of the masses” and the rule of the people was founded by Thomas Jefferson. The Federalist party, which believed in a centralized government patterned on the aristocratic one of England, was founded by Alexander Hamilton. Little is known about the family and early life of Hamilton. He was born in the little West India island of Nevis in January, 1757. His father is supposed to have been a Scotch trader and his mother a Frenchwoman. His family was poor, and it was necessary for him to leave school in childhood and set to work. At the age of twelve, he became a clerk in a counting-house where he remained about three years. Every spare moment was spent in the study of mathematics, chemistry, and history. He was so faithful in his work, however, that[194] at the age of thirteen or fourteen he was left in charge of business during his employer’s absence.

In 1772 the island of Santa Cruz was visited by a terrible hurricane; young Hamilton wrote such a vivid and eloquent account of it that his friends thought he ought to become a professional man and offered to help him continue his education. Accordingly, in October, 1772, he set sail to the colonies. Leaving the West Indies, he cut loose from his old life; of friends and relatives there, almost nothing is heard after this time. Young Hamilton attended a grammar school in New Jersey, and then entered King’s College, now Columbia University, in New York. The young West Indian came to America at a time when people were greatly excited about political matters, and he heard much about the Stamp Act and the oppressive taxes laid by Great Britain. At first he took the part of the king, but in less than two years he had become an enthusiastic patriot. It was the cause of the colonies as a whole that appealed to him. He never developed any of the feeling for the separate colonies which was so strong in most native-born Americans.

When he espoused the cause of the oppressed colonies, he did it with his whole heart. The precocious, clever boy of seventeen made patriotic addresses, and published an able pamphlet, entitled, “A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of their Enemies” (1774). In this pamphlet he stated[195] the case of the colonies clearly and eloquently. He said, “All men have one common origin; they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right. No reason can be advanced why one man should exercise any power or preëminence over his fellow-creatures, unless they have voluntarily vested him with it. Since then, Americans have not by any act of their own empowered the British Parliament to make laws for them, it follows that they can have no just authority to do it.”

Hamilton believed in the enforcement of law and order. On one or two occasions, when mobs had set out to attack royalists’ houses, he persuaded them to respect private property and opinions.

The opinions that young Hamilton upheld with pen he was ready to uphold with sword. In 1776, when he was only nineteen, he was put in charge of a company of artillery which he drilled so well that he won the commendation and friendship first of General Greene and later of General Washington. During the retreat through New Jersey, he managed his company with courage and skill, and he fought bravely in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. In 1777 he became one of Washington’s “official family,” being made his confidential secretary. Washington was very fond of the clever young man whom he often addressed as “my boy.” Hamilton’s ability, too, was recognized and in 1777 he was entrusted with a delicate and[196] important mission. This was to get reinforcements for Washington’s hard-pressed army from Gates’s successful forces. As superior officer, Washington could have ordered the troops sent to his relief, but for many reasons it was best to have them sent on Gates’s own accord, if possible. Therefore, Washington gave Hamilton a sealed order of command to Gates, instructing him not to deliver it if without doing so he could persuade the general to send the troops. Hamilton brought back the troops and he also brought back the unopened letter. It was while he was in New York on this errand that he met General Schuyler’s daughter whom he married in 1780.

Hamilton did not remain in the commander-in-chief’s official family. On one occasion he failed to answer a summons promptly; General Washington, who was a strict disciplinarian, said, “Colonel Hamilton, you have kept me waiting for you these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, that you treat me with disrespect.” The hot-tempered youth replied, “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.”

“Very well, sir, if that is your choice,” answered the general.

Washington was willing to overlook the occurrence, but Hamilton was desirous to return to active service. At Yorktown he led a gallant attack against a British redoubt which he took in ten minutes.

[197]After the Revolution, he read law four months and then began to practice in Albany. He put aside professional work to serve his adopted country again. This time in Congress. The colonies which had united in their war of defence now seemed drifting apart and the general government had no power to hold them together. The country was in debt and had neither money nor credit. The states, therefore, sent representatives to Philadelphia in 1787 to form a Constitution to take the place of the Articles of Confederation.

Hamilton was one of these delegates. He argued in favor of a strong central government, ruled by a president, congress, and supreme court; he thought that practically all power should be put in the hands of the general government, and that the governors of states should be appointed by it and should have veto power over state legislation. To him an American state was a mere geographical division, like an English county. Most of the people, however, clung to the independence of the separate states, and there was heated discussion as to what rights should be delegated to the general government and what should be reserved by the states. At last a constitution was drawn up, in favor of which Congress voted. It was decided that this constitution should go into effect as soon as it should be ratified by nine states. As yet the states “had given up none of their rights to the general government.”

[198]In order to present the views in favor of this constitution and to secure its adoption, Hamilton, with some assistance from Madison and Jay, published a series of eighty-five papers called “The Federalist.” The constitution was adopted, and George Washington was elected first President. When he formed his Cabinet he made Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury. It was felt that this young man of thirty-two could do more than any one else to establish the finances of the country on a safe basis. He made a report “On the Public Credit” which “laid the corner-stone of American finance under the constitution.”

He insisted that the credit of the United States should be firmly established and the United States should assume the war debt of fifty-four million dollars; to secure the payment of this a national bank was established. Hamilton suggested ways in which money might be raised by taxing whiskey and imported articles and by the use of public lands, the Northwest Territory ceded by Virginia, and the western lands ceded by Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia.

After some opposition Hamilton’s plan was adopted and the finances of the country were established on a safe basis. An insurrection called the Whiskey Rebellion was raised in Pennsylvania by people who were unwilling to pay the tax on liquor, and Hamilton went with troops who suppressed it.

[199]Jefferson and others argued that under this constitution the general government had no power to establish a national bank. Hamilton brought forward the view, which he was the first to advance, that Congress had “implied” powers as well as “delegated” ones. One of his chief motives in urging national banks was that he felt they would be a “powerful cement of union,” uniting the business interests of the country in the support of the government. It was Hamilton, then, who originated the “protective tariff” and “national banks,” over which political parties are still contending.

In 1795 after his national policies were adopted, Hamilton resigned public life and began to practice his profession in New York. He put aside his brilliant and profitable professional work, however, when war with France seemed imminent, in order to assist Washington in his plans for the organization of the army. When the war-cloud passed he resumed the practice of his profession. But his brilliant life was to come to an early and untimely end. In his political life he made many antagonists. One of these was Aaron Burr, as brilliant and hot-tempered as Hamilton, and a man of bold and dangerous ambition.

After a political quarrel, Burr challenged Hamilton to fight a duel. In theory Hamilton recognized the sin and folly of dueling, but he was not willing to refuse to fight for fear people would think he was a coward.[200] Early one morning, July 11, 1804, the two rivals met in a quiet spot. Hamilton fired into the air, as he had said he would do; Burr with deadly skill aimed straight at his opponent who fell fatally wounded. Hamilton left his mourning country the record of a brilliant public career, the main purpose of which was to strengthen the general government and to consolidate the Union.

During colonial days, the English settlers occupied the land east of the Alleghany Mountains. Except on expeditions of war or explorations and adventure, they did not cross the mountains to the west. During the latter part of the eighteenth century, the first pioneer went westward to settle, taking with him his wife and daughter, the first white women to make their homes in the western land. This pioneer was Daniel Boone. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1735, and so was three years younger than George Washington.

Boone’s father moved to North Carolina in 1752 and there Daniel grew to manhood. His school days were brief and his book-learning was limited. There was standing many years a tree on which was carved in rude letters, “D. Boon Cilled A Bar on this tree year 1760.” But he was expert in the homely, hardy work[201] of the frontier, and in woodcraft; familiar with the life and habits of the wild things of the wood; a sure quick shot, a fearless and self-reliant youth. One who knew him later says he was “honest of heart and liberal—in short, one of nature’s noblemen. He abhorred a mean action and delighted in honesty and truth. He never delighted in the shedding of human blood, even that of his enemies in war. His remarkable quality was an unwavering and invincible fortitude.”

Boone was an expert hunter and trapper. Like many American frontiersmen, he wore a dress resembling that of the Indians,—a buckskin hunting shirt with fringed buckskin leggings and moccasins of deerskin or buffalo-hide. His inseparable companion was his long-barrelled rifle.

He went as a wagoner on Braddock’s ill-fated expedition and barely escaped with his life.

The country west of the mountains had been visited and explored by several men and parties. Gist, who accompanied Washington on his mission to the French forts, was one of these early explorers. Another was John Finley who traded with the Indians on the Red River of Kentucky. He told Boone about the fertile soil, the abundant game, and the “salt licks” of the western lands.

After a short hunting trip on the borders, Boone started out, in May, 1769, to explore “the far-famed but little-known land of Kentucky.” He started with[202] five companions and he spent two years roaming over the country. The white men were attacked by Indians in the fall of 1769 and Boone and Stewart were captured. A week later they made their escape, but were unable to find their friends. Not long after, Boone’s brother and another frontiersman joined them with a welcome supply of powder and lead.

Their companions were killed by the Indians, and the Boone brothers spent some months in the wilderness in a cabin which they built of poles and bark. For some reason his brother went home, and Daniel Boone remained for months alone, the only white man in that wilderness which was the battle-ground of northern and southern Indians. Not even a dog was there to keep him company, and as food, he had only what his rifle and fishing-rod could secure.

Undaunted by loneliness or wildness, by lurking beast or hostile savages, Boone determined to bring his family to this fair and fertile land. He felt that he had a work to do, “God had appointed him an instrument for the settlement of the wilderness.” Several families set out with the Boone brothers, driving their cattle and conveying their household goods in wagons. They were attacked by Indians and the others became so discouraged that they turned back.

Boone, however, was undaunted. In 1775, as agent of a North Carolina company, he founded Boonesborough, a stockade or station near a salt lick on the[203] Kentucky River. This was near the present site of Frankfort. Thither came his wife and daughter, the first women pioneers in Kentucky. The Indians strove to drive back the white men from their hunting-grounds, and this fort became the center of savage and relentless warfare.

At one time three little girls, one of whom was Boone’s daughter, were captured by the Indians. The settlers marched to rescue them, and did so, it is said, after a long journey and a fierce struggle in which Boone and a companion were captured.

In 1778, Boone with a small party of men left the settlement to get a supply of salt. They were surrounded by a large band of Indians and carried north. Boone was taken as far as the present site of Detroit. He remained with the savages several months without having an opportunity to let his family know his fate. Learning that the Indian warriors were preparing to attack the Kentucky settlements, he managed to escape and made his way two hundred miles southward, through the wilderness swarming with enemies, in time to warn the settlements and to help defend Boonesborough against attack. His family, thinking him dead, had returned to North Carolina. He followed them and returned with them to his chosen home a few months later.

For years there was almost constant warfare against the Indians in the “Dark and Bloody Ground,” as[204] Kentucky was well called. It is said within seven years—from 1783 to 1790—fifteen hundred whites were killed or taken captive in Kentucky.

In 1792 Kentucky, which had been a county of Virginia, was made a state; at this time Boone’s title to his land was found defective. In his old age he was deprived of his small share of the great country he had helped to settle and open to the English.

He moved west to the country owned by Spain, and stopped near the present site of St. Louis. The Spanish governor granted him about eight thousand acres of land. When this territory was sold to the United States, his title was upset and he was deprived of this estate also.

This typical American pioneer died in 1820.

The war of 1812 was brought about by the war between the French and English in Europe. France and England each issued orders forbidding trade with the other. Both claimed the right to confiscate all vessels that engaged in trade with its rival. The English claimed also the right to search American vessels for British seamen; and they seized hundreds of men, many of whom were not English seamen at all but Americans.

[205]In order to avoid war, instead of resisting these unjust demands at once, the United States passed the Embargo Act, forbidding American vessels to sail to any foreign country; this act occasioned discontent and was soon repealed; only trade with England was forbidden. The English impressments of American seamen continued until finally America had to fight for her rights. War was declared, June 18, 1812. Most of the American victories in this war were won at sea. The most famous of the naval commanders was Perry.

Oliver Hazard Perry was the descendant of an English Quaker, who came to America about the middle of the seventeenth century to enjoy the free exercise of his religion. He went first to Plymouth where Quakers were disliked; finally he purchased a tract of land in Roger Williams’ Rhode Island colony and settled there. Here his descendants remained and here Oliver Hazard Perry was born in 1785. His father served in the American navy during the Revolution and became so fond of the sea that he continued his voyages as captain of a merchant-vessel.

Oliver was sent first to a school near his home. A few years later his parents moved from South Kingston to Newport to give their children the advantage of better schools. The war between England and France was now going on, and it seemed at this time as if America would be drawn into war against France. President Adams, therefore, resolved to establish a[206] navy. Captain Perry was given command of a vessel called the General Greene, the business of which was to defend American merchant-vessels trading with the West Indies. Oliver, now thirteen, begged his father to let him enter the navy. Permission was granted, and Oliver became a midshipman on his father’s vessel.

After danger of war with France was over, young Perry still continued in the navy. His next service was in the Mediterranean against the Barbary States. These states,—Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli, and Morocco—on the north coast of Africa, had for hundreds of years made a business of piracy. They captured vessels, and used or sold the stores and sold the crews into slavery. America, like England and other countries, for years bribed them not to molest its vessels. At last the Americans determined, instead of paying tribute, longer, to send a fleet to the Barbary coast and force the pirates to respect the American flag. Oliver Perry was on a ship sent in 1802. The fleet cruised about and did little fighting and his ship was recalled to America in 1803.

The most daring deed of the war was performed by a young American lieutenant, Stephen Decatur. An American ship, the Philadelphia, had fallen into the hands of the Barbary pirates and Lieutenant Decatur went into the harbor with a few men in a boat and set fire to the vessel to prevent its being manned by the Tripolitans. The Barbary ruler finally made a[207] treaty of peace with the United States. In the war Perry had had no special opportunity to distinguish himself, but he had proved himself brave and efficient.

When the war against England began in 1812, it seemed that American chances for sea victory were small. England, the mistress of the seas, had a large, well-equipped navy; the American fleet was far inferior in numbers and in size. But the Americans had brave seamen who won some brilliant victories. One of the greatest of these was that of the American vessel the Constitution over the English Guerriére.

The command of the Great Lakes was very important; being on the boundary between the United States and the English colony of Canada, they controlled the entrance to each country. When the war opened, the English had a naval force on the Great Lakes, the Americans had none. A fleet could not be made ready without delay, and an American army under General Hull was sent to invade Canada. General Hull surrendered the fort at Detroit without attempting to defend it, and the English took also Fort Dearborn, on the site of Chicago.

To protect the northern coast, Lieutenant Oliver Perry was sent to build a fleet on Lake Erie and to fight the British there. This was a great undertaking. There was no railroad or canal connecting the western with the eastern part of New York. Nails, sails, guns, powder, shot, and supplies of all kinds[208] had to be carried on ox wagons along the rough roads and on boats up the streams. Perry did not lose time bemoaning the difficulty of the task. The very day that he received his orders he started carpenters to the lake; having arranged about men and supplies, he himself set forth in the depth of winter. In the spring, followed men bringing needed stores. In a few months Perry had a little fleet built of trees which were standing in the forest the summer before. “Give me men,” he wrote, “and I will acquire both for you and for myself honor and glory on this lake, or die in the attempt.”

In September, 1813, the American ships sailed forth and the English fleet, which was about equal in men and guns, made ready to attack. Lieutenant Perry hoisted a flag bearing the words, “Don’t give up the ship,” the dying speech of brave Captain Lawrence for whom the flag-ship was named. The English attacked gallantly, and Perry’s ship was so injured that “hammered out of his own ship,” he had to go in a row-boat to the Niagara. With him he took his flag and Captain Lawrence’s brave words waved as a signal from the Niagara. The Americans raked the English decks with a deadly broadside. The British fought bravely till their ships were crippled and most of their officers and many of their men were wounded. Then the whole squadron was surrendered,—the first[209] time that this fate ever befell the British in a naval battle.

In honor of Captain Lawrence, Perry was determined that the surrender should take place on the Lawrence, so he returned to that vessel and there received the swords of the British officers. On the back of an old letter he wrote his famous dispatch to General Harrison: “We have met the enemy and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop. Yours with very great respect and esteem, O. H. Perry.” This battle of Lake Erie prevented the English and French invasion of the United States and made it possible for the Americans to invade Canada. Perry was made captain, then the highest rank in the American navy. This ended his service in the war of 1812.

In 1816 Captain Perry was sent against the Algerian pirates who were again troublesome. The ruler finally signed a treaty of peace and Perry returned without having had to fight. Two years later, in 1819, he was ordered to Venezuela to protest against seizures of American vessels and to present claims for losses. He succeeded in his mission, but he did not live to return home, dying of yellow fever on his thirty-fourth birthday, August 23, 1819. His body was brought home in a war-vessel and buried with military honors at Newport, Rhode Island.

[210]Another hero of the war of 1812 was Thomas Macdonough, “the hero of Lake Champlain,” who won a decisive victory against odds of men, guns, and ships. Thomas Macdonough was born in Delaware and entered the navy when he was sixteen.

In 1803 he sailed on the frigate Philadelphia bound for Tripoli. At Gibraltar he was left in charge of a captured Moorish ship. The Philadelphia, as you know, was taken by the Tripolitans; its crew was kept in close confinement nearly two years. Macdonough served on board the Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, and he was one of the seventy men who captured and destroyed the Philadelphia, which Admiral Nelson declared to be “the most bold and daring act of the age.” For his gallantry on this occasion, Macdonough was made lieutenant.

In 1810 he made a voyage in the merchant-service; at Liverpool he was impressed and carried on board a British vessel, but he managed to make his escape in the clothes of an English officer.

In 1812 Lieutenant Macdonough, then twenty-six years old, was put in command of the naval force on Lake Champlain. You remember the old plan of the British under Burgoyne for the invasion of New York. A similar plan was now devised by the British and eleven thousand soldiers were collected at the end of Lake Champlain to invade New York by way of the[211] lake. The English had built a fleet to convey this army. The Americans had at the time, in 1814, only a force of about two thousand men at Plattsburg, New York, and on the lake Lieutenant Macdonough’s fleet of fourteen vessels, with eighty-six guns and eight hundred and eighty-two men.

This fleet protected Plattsburg and it was necessary to destroy it before General Prevost, the British commander, could make the land attack. The British fleet, consisting of sixteen vessels with ninety-two guns and nine hundred and thirty-seven men, advanced to the attack early on the morning of September 11, 1814. Macdonough in Plattsburg Bay awaiting the enemy. The shot of the British vessel shattered a hen-coop on board Macdonough’s vessel; a game cock, thus suddenly released, jumped on a gun, flapped his wings, and crowed. “The men laughed and cheered; and immediately afterwards Macdonough himself fired the first shot from one of the long guns.”

During the battle Macdonough worked like a common sailor at the guns and directed the movements of his fleet with a quick eye for every point of advantage. His ship was twice set on fire, and one by one his guns were disabled; the damage inflicted on the British was still more severe and some of their vessels were captured; in two and a half hours their crippled fleet had to withdraw. The American fleet was so injured that Lieutenant Macdonough was unable to pursue[212] the retreating enemy. But General Prevost was forced to retire without attacking Plattsburg and the invasion of New York had to be given up.

From his battleship, Macdonough sent the message: “The Almighty has been pleased to grant us a signal victory on Lake Champlain in the capture of one frigate, one brig, and two sloops of war of the enemy. T. Macdonough.” For this victory he was made captain.

After the war of 1812, Captain Macdonough was sent on several cruises. In 1825 on account of ill-health he obtained permission to leave the Mediterranean where he was stationed and return to the United States. But he did not live to reach his native shores, dying at sea, November 10, 1825. His body was brought home and buried with military honors.

One of the notable figures of the eighteenth century was a French nobleman who aided in the struggle for freedom in two countries, America and France. This book can give only a brief sketch of his efforts in behalf of the American patriots. By the death of his father and mother, the Marquis de Lafayette in his youth became master of large estates and great wealth.

But he did not settle down to a calm and selfish enjoyment of these. He heard of the struggles of[213] the American colonists against the oppression of the English king and his generous heart was inspired with interest and sympathy. Later, he said, “The moment I heard of America I loved her: the moment I knew she was fighting for freedom, I burned with desire of bleeding for her; and the moment I shall be able to serve her at any time or in any part of the world, will be the happiest one of my life.”

He was only eighteen, lately married to a young and beautiful lady of rank and wealth equal to his own. But he turned from the gay and luxurious court; despite the opposition of the government, he left France and made his way to America to aid the colonists in their fight for freedom.

He went to Philadelphia; there he was coldly received by Congress which hesitated to give the young foreigner the position to which he was entitled by his rank and by the promise of the American commissioner in France. A less enthusiastic patriot might have taken offence. Lafayette only wrote to Congress: “After the sacrifice I have made I have the right to exact two favors; one is, to serve at my own expense, the other is, to serve at first as a volunteer.”

His generosity was not unrewarded. Congress made him major-general; he was soon attached to the staff of Washington and between the two there grew to be the warmest friendship. Lafayette suffered many hardships in the patriot cause. He was wounded in the[214] battle of Brandywine while leading his troops; he bore without a murmur the privations of Valley Forge, and fought gallantly in the battle of Monmouth.

In 1779 Lafayette went to France for a few months; it was largely through his influence that land and naval forces were sent to the aid of America. France formed an alliance with America and aided the patriots chiefly because she hated England and wished revenge for the loss of her northern colonies. The young French officer, however, was inspired by love for the cause of freedom.

In 1781 he was sent in command of twelve hundred New England soldiers to help the Virginians against the invading Cornwallis who had about five thousand men. “The boy cannot escape me,” said Cornwallis when he heard of Lafayette’s approach. But “the boy” managed to keep out of reach, until he was so reinforced that when he offered battle Cornwallis withdrew. It was now Lafayette’s turn to pursue and Cornwallis’s to retreat. At Yorktown the British were hemmed in by the American army under Lafayette on one side and the French fleet on the other, until Washington’s forces came up. The siege and capture of Yorktown followed, and Lafayette who had contributed largely to the success of the campaign was publicly thanked by Washington. In December, 1781, the young nobleman returned to his home in France.

[215]A few years later the French began their struggle for liberty, the famous French Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette drew up a famous “declaration of rights,” modeled after the Declaration of Independence, and drew his sword again in the cause of the people. The great French prison, the Bastile, regarded as the stronghold of tyranny, was taken, and its key was sent by Lafayette to Washington.

Lafayette wanted freedom but not license for his countrymen, and he lost favor with the violent republican party. At last, sick of anarchy in the name of liberty, he left France, intending to come to America. He was seized by the Austrian authorities, and for five years was kept in close and cruel imprisonment.

In 1824 Lafayette, an old and broken man who had been deprived of wealth and property, came to visit the young republic for which he had fought. He was received as the nation’s guest, the people’s friend; he went from Boston to New Orleans, welcomed and honored at every turn. He made a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon to visit the tomb of his “great good friend,” Washington. In Boston he laid the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument. Congress voted him a grant of two hundred thousand dollars and an American vessel was sent to convey him home. The United States joined France in lamenting the death of this great patriot in 1834.

Franklin, the first great typical American, was interested in science,—not so much the abstract principles as the practical application of those principles so as to increase the comfort and well-being of people. This was true, also, of Jefferson, another great typical American. From those days to the present time, this practical turn has been characteristic of American talent. Sometimes it has been said in reproach that America stands for progress in material ways, that her men of science care, not for abstract truth, but for its market value.

Let us remember, however, that whenever a great cause or principle has needed support, Americans have always risen to the occasion. Material progress and business ability are good things, if only we do not overestimate their value in comparison with others.

In so large a country as America, the question of methods of travel and means of transportation was of course important from the first. Water-ways were the natural and most convenient mode of communication. If you will look on a map of the colonies, you will see how the settlements clung to water-lines—ocean, lake, and river.

Before the Revolution, men went to and fro as they had done for hundreds even thousands of years. On the water they traveled by slow boats, propelled by[217] oars or sails. On the land they journeyed on foot, or horseback, or in rude vehicles, over roads which were generally rough and bad and often dangerous.

It was so expensive to carry goods to and fro that their carriage within the limits of a state might cost more than the value of the goods. It cost, for instance, two dollars and a half a bushel to carry salt three hundred miles in the state of New York. People who moved from the eastern to the western part of the state could not afford to carry their household goods. They had to be carried by boat from New York to Albany, hauled to Schenectady, carried in boats up the Mohawk River and on a small canal to Utica, then hauled overland to Rome, and carried again in boats down a small canal and creek to Oneida Lake, thence by water to Lake Ontario.

During the early part of the nineteenth century, in three ways travel and hauling were made easier and cheaper. The simplest of these was by the extensive use of canals. A canal is a trench filled with water deep enough to carry well-laden boats. The boats are drawn by horses which travel along a path called a “tow path.” In most cases the boats are moved up and down inclines by means of what are called “locks” on the canal. It is usually cheaper to haul goods by canals than by natural streams as the locks make the water lift or lower loads on inclines.

The people of New York state became convinced[218] that canals along and connecting their water-ways would be a good and cheap way to carry manufactured articles from New York city to the western settlements, and to convey wheat, corn, and other produce to the eastern markets. A canal was planned between Albany and Buffalo, to connect the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. But the expense of this canal would be great and many people did not believe that the traffic would repay it. The matter was made a political issue and on it DeWitt Clinton was elected governor.

It was largely through his zeal and energy that the project was carried to a successful issue, and a canal forty feet wide and three hundred and sixty-three miles long was dug. While the canal was being constructed people called it “Clinton’s Folly,” and when it was finished and successful they called it “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”

An effort was made to get the general government to help construct this canal, but the bill was vetoed. Governor Clinton secured the help of the business men of New York, and four months after the aid bill was vetoed, the canal was begun, Clinton himself throwing the first shovelful of dirt. In fact, there was dug not one canal, but two canals,—one between Lake Erie and the Hudson, and the other between the Hudson and Lake Champlain.

In the summer of 1825 the western part was opened and boats went from Buffalo to New York City. As [219]there was no telegraph to announce the news of the starting of the first canal-boat, it was carried by cannon, placed at intervals along the route. When the boat left Buffalo, the first cannon was fired; the man at the second heard the report and fired his piece; and so from one to another the news was borne to New York in two hours. Governor Clinton was on the boat which made this first trip; he carried a keg of water dipped from Lake Erie which he poured into New York Bay, as a sign that the two were united. From the first the canal was a paying investment as well as a great convenience to the people. Freight rates decreased at once to much less than their former rates. Instead of its costing the farmer of western New York $1.10 to send a bushel of his wheat to the eastern market, it cost only forty cents.

There was another important result. So much freight was carried down the canal that vessels began to come to New York City in preference to Philadelphia and other ports, as they were sure of cargoes of grain, lumber, etc. This had much to do with the growth of New York City and the prosperity of the state. This canal is still used. Every year there travel down it great fleets of grain barges drawn by steam tugs. People overlook other things in Clinton’s political record, and, on account of this canal, remember him as the benefactor of his state.

About the time that the Erie Canal was completed,[220] the first steam railway was built in England. Its inventor was an Englishman who was born while the American colonies were fighting for independence. George Stephenson was the son of a poor workman, and as a boy he toiled in the coal-mine where his father was employed. He made up his mind, however, to get an education. When he was eighteen, he attended a night school and learned to read and write. About this time his father’s health failed and George had to support the family. Often he had to labor by night as well as by day, but he managed to keep on with his studies.

Uncovered lights were then used by miners; carried into mines where there was gas, these often occasioned explosions in which many miners were wounded and killed. Stephenson set to work to invent a safety-lamp. Meanwhile, Sir Humphrey Davy was working on a similar invention. The two English scientists, independently of each other, arrived at success about the same time.

Stephenson now turned his attention to the subject of steam locomotion. He made a locomotive, a “traveling engine” as he called it, which in 1814 was successfully used in hauling coal-cars at a speed of four miles an hour. Stephenson saw that this locomotive had many defects, and he set to work to obtain better results. He succeeded the next year in building an[221] engine which had “few parts and simplicity of action.”

After many years of discussion, a plan for a railroad was approved by parliament and a line was opened in 1825. People marveled at seeing Stephenson’s engine travel at a speed of fifteen miles an hour; they doubted whether the railway would ever become a practicable mode of travel. Stephenson said, “I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highways for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot.”

After the success of the first railway, it was decided to build a line to connect Liverpool and Manchester, as the canal between these two cities was inadequate for the handling of their passengers and freight. There was held a contest between different steam engines in which Stephenson’s Rocket came out victor. A paper commenting on the success of the Rocket, said: “The experiments at Liverpool have established principles which will give a greater impulse to civilization than it has ever received from any single cause since the press first opened the gates of knowledge to the human species at large.” This proved true. The problem of[222] cheap and speedy land-travel was now solved. During the years which followed England was covered with a network of railroads.

America with its great distances to traverse, was not slow to adopt the railroad. Only three years after Stephenson’s passenger railway was opened, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun. The first cars were only stage-coaches made to run on rails and the locomotive was a crude affair,—but it was a vast improvement on former methods of travel. Hundreds and thousands of miles of railroads were built in different parts of the country. Now, great lines connect the north and south, the east and west. Huge engines, very unlike Stephenson’s little Rocket, travel a mile a minute: instead of taking weeks to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, people can make the journey in five days.

Before the steam railway was invented by an Englishman, an American inventor had applied the use of steam to water-travel and had invented a steamboat. James Watt, a Scotch inventor, had prepared the way by his invention of the steam engine. After this was devised, many people thought that it would be possible and useful to make it furnish motive power for water-travel. Several American inventors attempted to make boats moved by steam power and had more or less success; but they lacked either money to carry[223] out their plans or perseverance to bring them to public notice.

While Watts was working on the steam engine, there was born in America a boy who was to apply it successfully to water-travel. This was Robert Fulton, who was born in Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was only a schoolboy during the stirring days of the American Revolution. He was a bright boy and early showed inventive talent. One holiday he went fishing with some schoolmates, in a boat propelled by means of poles. To avoid the labor of using these poles, Robert made some paddle-wheels which he attached to the boat; he also fixed on the stern a paddle by means of which the boat could be guided.

But this was mere schoolboy sport. It did not occur to Fulton till many years later to make boat-building his profession. Even as a boy he determined that he would be an artist. He spent four years in Philadelphia working and studying; there he succeeded so well that he went abroad. In England he was welcomed by Benjamin West, a popular American painter. Through his courtesy and kindness, his young countryman met many interesting English people, men of affairs and scientists as well as artists. In England Fulton became interested in canals, which he thought would be useful to convey merchandise along the water-ways of New York, as you know was done later. In fact,[224] he became so much interested in this subject that he gave more time to it than to painting and he invented several improvements in canals and canal-boats.

In 1797 Fulton went to France where he continued his art studies and his scientific experiments. He invented a torpedo and diving boat, but he did not succeed in getting either the French or the English government to take it up. In Paris he met a wealthy American, Mr. Robert Livingston, who was interested in science and who had tried to make a steamboat. Fulton said that he was sure he could do so if only he had money to carry on the necessary experiments. Mr. Livingston at once offered to advance the funds and to share the future profits.

Fulton gladly accepted and began his experiments. He made a little model of a steamboat with side-wheels turned by machinery. Then he made a trial boat which broke before it was used. Undiscouraged, he at once set to work on a second one. This was tried on the river Seine and to Fulton’s great satisfaction it worked well. Then he had an engine built in England and sent to America. Mr. Livingston secured the passage of an act by the New York legislature giving to him and Fulton for twenty years the sole right to use on the waters in New York state boats propelled by “fire or steam.” People laughed and said that they were welcome to the right for a hundred years. They called[225] the steamboat on which Fulton was working “Fulton’s Folly.”

In the summer of 1807, there was completed the Clermont, a side-paddle steamboat one hundred and thirty feet in length. It was an ugly object; even Livingston confessed, “It looks like a backwoods sawmill mounted on a scow and set on fire.”

Fulton made ready for a trial trip from New York to Albany. The boat moved off from shore, and then stopped. Fulton hurried to the engine, and discovered and corrected the cause of the trouble. The boat moved off again, and this time it kept on amid the cheers of the people. The steamboat was no longer a question, it was an accomplished fact. On that trial trip the boat went a hundred and fifty miles in thirty hours, which seemed wonderful speed in those days. How different the Clermont was from the swift and powerful boats of to-day, the “ocean greyhounds,” as they are called.

In 1812 during the war with Great Britain, Fulton made a plan for a steam war-ship and he was authorized to build it, the first in the world. While attending to its construction he contracted a severe cold and died in February, 1814.

We have considered improved methods of travel,—canals, railways, and steamboats. Let us look at what invention has done for agriculture in America. We[226] may almost say that Whitney created the cotton supremacy of to-day. Until he invented the gin, the seeds and lint had to be separated by hand. It was a tedious and costly process. The gin does the work so rapidly and well that it is possible to raise and sell cotton much cheaper than other clothing materials. Thus it has become the great agricultural staple of the South.

Whitney, the inventor of the gin, was not, as you might suppose, a southerner. He was born in 1765 on a farm in Massachusetts; he never even saw a cotton plant until about the time that he invented the gin.

From boyhood Eli Whitney showed an intelligent curiosity about machinery and a mechanical turn. One Sunday he was left at home while the other members of the family went to church. He took advantage of the opportunity to investigate his father’s big silver watch; he took the works apart, but with such care and skill that he was able to put them together properly and his father never suspected what had been done until Eli told him years afterwards.

Eli was a faithful student at the village school near his home; he longed for a better education than could be obtained there and he resolved to go to college. His father thought it would be better for the young man, now nineteen, to continue work at trade or business, but Eli was determined to have an education. For[227] four years he worked by day on the farm and in the shop to earn money for his expenses, and studied at night to prepare himself for college. Then he went to Yale, where he spent four years, eking out his scanty funds by doing odd jobs and working during vacation.

In 1792 he was graduated from Yale. He wished to study law but his funds were now exhausted and it was necessary for him to set to work. So he went to Georgia to teach school. There were then no railroads across the country, and Whitney went by sea, which was the cheapest and most convenient way of making the journey. From New York there traveled on the same boat Mrs. Greene, the widow of the famous General Nathanael Greene. She and her children, who were on their way to their home in Georgia, soon made friends with their fellow-traveler, the bright young New Englander. When Whitney reached Savannah he was disappointed about the school which he had come to teach.

Mrs. Greene at once invited him to visit her home where he could study law until he found such a position as he wished. He proved a pleasant visitor and a helpful one, too. He was always ready to put in bolts and screws where they were needed and made many labor-saving little devices. One day Mrs. Greene complained that her embroidery frame tore the cloth on which she was working. Mr. Whitney at[228] once made a new frame, far superior to the old one.

Not long after this, some of Mrs. Greene’s guests were talking about the unprosperous condition of the South. It could be remedied, they thought, if a way could be devised to separate the short staple cotton from the seed, which would make cotton a profitable crop. The seed and lint of the sea island cotton do not adhere so closely, and these were separated by means of a roller-gin, acting on the principle of the clothes-wringer. But the sea island cotton can be grown only in a certain section near the coast. The seeds and lint of the short staple, or upland, cotton adhere so closely that they had to be separated by hand. Mrs. Greene suggested that Mr. Whitney, who was so clever with tools, should invent a machine to do this work. Whitney was willing to try. He had never even seen cotton in the seed; he got some and examined it and tried to devise a machine to do the work of the human fingers.

His first plan was to have a cylinder on which were fastened circular saws; as the cylinder revolved the saw-teeth would catch the cotton and drag it from the seeds. On the plantation he could not get tin or metal plates to make these saws; finally he decided that teeth of wire would do as well or better. He made a model of a gin which worked well, except for the fact that the cotton lint stuck to the saw-teeth and clogged them.

[229]“I must devise some way to get the cotton off the teeth,” he said.

“Use a brush,” suggested Mrs. Greene, picking up a brush and with it removing the cotton from the wires. Mr. Whitney accepted the suggestion and put rows of small brushes on a second cylinder to meet the teeth and take off the cotton.

In 1793 Whitney went north to secure a patent for his machine. The Secretary of State then was Jefferson who was interested in all inventions and especially in those useful in agriculture. He asked many questions about the workings of the gin which he foresaw would prove a vast benefit to the cotton-growing states.

Cotton was raised and sold now at a profit, for one man could gin a thousand pounds in the time it had taken to seed one pound by hand. Macaulay said, “What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States.”

I wish I could tell you that Whitney won fortune by his invention which was such a great benefit to his countrymen, but this was not the case. Men infringed his patent rights and there was for a long time a foolish prejudice among buyers against ginned cotton. Whitney spent thirteen years struggling for justice and recognition, and his patent had almost expired before[230] his legal rights were established. Friends made an effort to get the patent, which ran only fourteen years, extended, but in vain.

Whitney was destined to be more successful in another undertaking. He thought that the United States ought to make its own firearms, and he succeeded in getting money advanced by the government to aid him in starting a factory near New Haven. He invented new methods which proved successful and profitable. His factory brought him fortune and his prosperous latter years were spent in his Connecticut home.

Another American benefactor of the farmer first and so of the whole country was Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper. He was born in Virginia in 1809. In his boyhood, grain was cut with the sickle. It was gathered into bundles by hand, tied, and put up in stacks. The grain was separated from the straw and chaff by beating it with flails. This was slow and tiresome work.

Many men before McCormick tried to invent machines to reap grain. Some of the English machines were fairly successful. You would think that the English farmers would welcome the invention. Instead, they said that it would deprive laborers of work, and they threatened to kill the makers if they continued to manufacture these machines.

In sparsely-populated America people were on the[231] lookout for labor-saving inventions; they welcomed the reaping machine which was invented by McCormick in 1831. This useful invention won both money and fame for Mr. McCormick; a part of his well-gained wealth was devoted to the endowment of schools.

In 1851 at the World’s Fair in London there was a trial of different reapers. Under unfavorable conditions, the McCormick machine did perfect work; at a timed trial it proved that it could cut twenty acres in a day. A farmer who was present broke his sickle across his knee, saying that it would no longer be needed. Wonderful improvements have been made in the reaper. There are great machines now on the prairie lands of the west which cut the grain, thresh it, and carry it from the fields in sacks ready for the mill.

Mowing-machines constructed on a plan similar to the reapers, cut grass, and horse-rakes and hay-forks handle the hay so cheaply that the production of hay now costs less than a fifth of what it did under the old methods. Flails, too, have been replaced by modern threshing machines.

The labor-saving machines used on a farm enable a few people to do with ease the work which formerly required the labor of many. As fewer men are required in the country, more are set free to engage in business and trade. For these purposes, they gather[232] in cities, which have gained size and wealth that would have been impossible under old agricultural conditions.

Let us now consider the improvements in methods of communication. The carrying of letters and papers by the great postal system of our government, is done chiefly on the steam cars and steamboats, which have already been described. You know, however, that by means of the telegraph and the telephone messages can be transmitted much more promptly than by mail. Both these modes of communication are recent. Before they were invented, various methods were used to transmit intelligence quickly. You learned how, by the firing of cannon along the canal, in two hours it was announced in New York that the first boat was starting down the Erie Canal.

A thousand years ago, beacon-fires were lighted along the coasts of England to warn people of the approach of an enemy; a hundred years ago, similar signals were used in our own country. Sometimes a wood fire was kindled, sometimes a pot of tar was set on fire. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the semaphore was used to some extent. This consists of a horizontal bar, set on a high post. By changes in its position, according to a method of signals agreed upon, messages are sent. Flags are used for signals and messages are sent by placing flags of different colors and shapes in different positions; this is less practicable[233] on land than at sea where the range of vision is uninterrupted. Another method of signaling is by mirrors to reflect the sunlight. But all these methods have inconveniences and are limited to comparatively short distances.

Early in the nineteenth century, scientists thought that electricity which can be conducted by wires from place to place might be utilized to carry messages. This was at last successfully accomplished by an American, Samuel Finley Breese Morse.

Morse was born in Massachusetts in 1791 and was given the names of his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. As befitting a child with the reputation of so many to sustain, his education began early. At four he was sent to what was called a “dame school” conducted by an old lady in the neighborhood. At seven he was sent away from home to attend a preparatory school; later he went to an academy; and thence at fifteen to Yale College.

At Yale he was much interested in some experiments with which a professor illustrated a lecture on electricity. It seemed to young Morse that this great force which travels with such wonderful speed ought to be put to some use. During vacation he made many experiments in the college laboratory.

But art, not science, was the subject which interested him most. From his childhood, he had been fond of drawing; he developed such skill and interest in the[234] pictorial art that when he left college he told his father he wished to become an artist. Dr. Morse had hoped that his son would choose a profession but he resolved to let the youth follow his own inclinations and talents. Young Morse studied art several years, first in America and afterwards in England. His pictures brought him praise and medals abroad, and at home he became a successful portrait painter. He organized the National Academy of the Arts of Design and was made its president. Then he went abroad again and spent three years studying his chosen art.

In 1832 he started home; he was now forty-one years old and his life-work up to this time had been art. At this time an incident turned his attention to science, to the mysterious force which had interested him in his college days. On shipboard coming home, there arose a discussion about electricity and the almost instantaneous passage of a current along a copper wire.

Morse said: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by it.”

The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that messages could be sent as he had suggested. When he got home, instead of painting portraits he spent his time trying to make an electric current carry a message along a wire and to invent an instrument to receive the message. He became very poor, and moved to an attic where he devoted himself[235] to study and experiments. In 1835 he had devised an alphabet consisting of dots and dashes and had invented a machine, rough and crude but which would carry messages.

He did not have money to push his invention, but in 1837 Mr. Alfred Vail became interested in the machine and offered to furnish money and enter into partnership with the inventor. In 1840 a patent was secured. Morse tried to get an appropriation from Congress for testing his machine, but it was delayed so long that he despaired of success. One morning in March, 1843, a young friend, Miss Ellsworth, brought him news that an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars had been made by Congress for “constructing a line of electric-magnetic telegraph.” Morse promised that she might send the first message by telegraph between Baltimore and Washington. The line of wires put up on poles, was finished May 24, 1844. The first message sent was the text selected by Miss Ellsworth, “What hath God wrought.”

The Democratic National Convention was held in Baltimore about the time that the line was completed and the names of the nominees were telegraphed to Washington. People refused to believe the message was really sent till the news was confirmed by later tidings.

In 1842 Morse made experiments to prove that messages could be carried under water. As water is a[236] good conductor of electricity, it was necessary to insulate the wire, which Morse did by wrapping it with hemp covered with pitch, tar, and rubber. This under-water wire worked well, and a plan was formed to put across the Atlantic a cable resting on the plateau between Newfoundland and Ireland.

This scheme was undertaken by Mr. Cyrus W. Field. The first cable made of insulated wire protected by twisted wire rope was broken in the attempt to lay it in 1857. The second cable was laid and it worked a few days. The first message sent by the cable which united Europe and America was “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” The third cable failed also, but the fourth, laid in 1866, gave good service. For thirteen years Cyrus Field had worked for the cable and at last out of failure had come success. Since the fourth cable was laid, there has been constant communication between Europe and America.

The latest great step forward in telegraphy was made by Marconi, an Italian scientist, who invented a system of telegraphing without the use of wires.

The telephone has one advantage over the telegraph; it enables a person not only to send messages but to carry on a conversation with persons at a distance. The electric telephone was invented in 1875 by Alexander Graham Bell. His father was a Scotch educator[237] and scientist who invented a method called “Bell’s visible speech” to teach deaf-mutes to speak. Telephones now connect places hundreds of miles apart.

As great advances have been made within the last century in methods of lighting houses as in modes of travel and of communication. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, people still used candles and crude lamps, similar to those which had been in use for hundreds of years. The principle of the candle and the lamp is the same; oil or grease, liquid or solid, is burned by means of a wick. During our great-grandfather’s days, well-to-do people used chiefly wax candles and poor people used candles made of tallow. In many families the only light was furnished by pine knots, called lightwood because the pitch burned making a bright light. It was by such a light that Abraham Lincoln studied.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century an Englishman invented practical gas-light and carried gas made from coal through his house in pipes. In 1821 illuminating gas was made and used in Baltimore for the first time in this country. About a half-century later, another stride forward was made in the lighting of houses. Edison invented the electric light, the brightest, cleanest, and safest light, and the one requiring least care of any yet devised. There are two kinds of the electric light, both widely used. The incandescent,[238] or “glow lamp” as it is called in England, is most common. The arc light is used for lighting large buildings and city streets.

Thomas Edison is an American scientist who has made it his life-work to make practical use of the great force of electricity. He was born in 1847 and is still living and still working. He was the son of a hard-working laborer. His mother had been a school teacher and she gave her son as good an education as she could. When only twelve years old, he started out to earn his own living as a news-boy on the Grand Trunk Railroad.

He was a business-like, enterprising youngster. When there was exciting news in his papers, he telegraphed the fact to stations in advance and bought extra supplies of papers which he disposed of at a good price. He decided that he would like to print a paper of his own, so he got some old type and fitted up part of a freight-car as an office. Here he published a weekly paper, “The Grand Trunk Herald,” which became popular with railroad people. He undertook a second paper called the “Paul Pry” but for some personal remarks in it he was severely punished and he soon after gave up journalism.

He now became interested in chemistry. He bought cheap apparatus and some chemicals and in his freight-car office devoted himself to experiments. Unfortunately, an over-turned bottle of phosphorus set the floor[239] on fire; the conductor put the young editor and scientist, with his printing press and chemical outfit, off the car.

When Edison was about fifteen, he saved the life of a two-year-old child, dragging it from in front of the engine at risk of his own life. The grateful father was a station agent and he offered to teach Edison telegraphy. The boy became a rapid operator, but was too fond of experimenting to devote himself to work and he drifted from one place to another. Finally he went to New York City. For his inventions of stock-printing and other telegraph appliances, he received forty thousand dollars and this enabled him to establish a laboratory to work out his ideas.

For many years Edison was laughed at because he believed that a telegraph wire can be made to carry two messages at once; by his duplex system he made it do so, and later by his quadruplex system he made it carry four messages.

He added some improvements to the telephone invented by Bell, invented a phonograph to record and repeat the sound of the human voice, and a megaphone to carry the sound to a distance, and the kinetoscope.

His greatest work, however, was in connection with the electric light. He worked on it a long time before he succeeded. The chief trouble was in securing a good non-conducting filament. He sent men to search in China, Japan, South America, and Ceylon for bamboo[240] and other plants which would answer his purpose. Out of three thousand specimens of vegetable fiber, he found three or four which would do. In 1880 the light which is now used all over the world was perfected and exhibited.

Edison has made few, if any real scientific discoveries, but he has made many ingenious inventions, and has applied scientific principles to practical purposes so as to increase the comfort and economy of living.

While Washington, the aristocrat, was using his sword and Jefferson, the scholarly gentleman, was using his pen, to form in America a government of the people, there was growing up in a border settlement a youth who was to be a “man of the people” and bear rule over it.

Andrew Jackson was the son of a poor Irish emigrant, who spent the years after his coming to America in a brave fight for bread for his wife and children. Worn out by the struggle, he died, and the children were left to their mother’s care. Andrew was born at the Waxhaw settlement which is partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, both of which states have been claimed as Jackson’s native place. In childhood he attended an “old field school” where he[241] gained the rudiments of an education and at work and play held his own among his comrades.

“I could throw him three times out of four,” said an old schoolmate, in later days “but he never would stay throwed. He was dead game and never would give up.”

Neither then nor in later life was he handsome, with his pale, sharp-featured face, his sandy red hair, and his keen steel blue eyes.

Andrew’s elder brothers, mere lads at the time of the Revolution, served in the patriot forces and Andrew joined them when he was only thirteen. He was taken prisoner by the British and it was then that a well-known incident occurred.

A British officer ordered Andrew to black his boots and the lad refused.

“I am a prisoner of war,” he said, “and demand to be treated as such.”

The angry officer drew his sword to chastise the young rebel; Andrew, raising his arm to parry the blow, received a wound, the scar from which he carried to his grave. One of his brothers died from neglected wounds. Andrew and Robert were confined with about three hundred other American prisoners in a stockade at Camden. Andrew, through a hole in the fence, watched the battle of Hobkirk’s Hill and the last hope of release departed when brave General Greene was forced to retreat. Not long after, however, the two[242] brothers were released, probably in an exchange of prisoners. With their mother they made their way home. Robert died of smallpox caught while in prison and Mrs. Jackson died soon after of fever contracted while nursing American prisoners. Thus Andrew was left alone in the world,—with a bitter feeling that his mother and brothers had been sacrificed to British injustice.

The orphaned and penniless lad set to work, first at a trade, then as a school teacher; finally he studied law. When he began to practice his profession, he crossed the mountains and went west to the region now forming the state of Tennessee. In that rough border country, as it then was, his strong will, courage, and common sense were even more valuable than his small store of legal knowledge. People soon came to respect and depend on him. When offenses against the law were reported to the governor, he said, “Just inform Mr. Jackson; he will be sure to do his duty and the offenders will be punished.”

Mr. Jackson soon became Judge Jackson. We are told that on one occasion he ordered the sheriff to arrest a desperate criminal; the officer returned and reported that he was unable to do so, the man resisted his authority. Judge Jackson descended from the bench, went out and arrested the man, marched him into court, resumed his seat, tried the case, and sentenced the offender. It was a characteristic incident.

In 1791 Jackson married and between him and his[243] wife there existed a simple-hearted devotion which was never broken. Some one who saw her years later when the beauty of youth was gone, described her as a “coarse-looking, stout little old woman,” but she remained beautiful to his eyes.

After Tennessee was admitted to statehood, Jackson was sent to Congress, first as representative, then as senator. From Washington he returned to the mountains which he loved, and busied himself as store keeper, cotton-planter, and stock-raiser,—recognized in his community as a man of undoubted integrity, a staunch friend, and a relentless foe. He took part in two duels, in one of which he was severely wounded and killed his opponent.

Jackson offered his services as soon as the war of 1812 broke out. He was ordered to lead the militia to New Orleans, which it was thought would be attacked. When he had gone about five hundred miles he was ordered to disband his troops.

Soon after, he led a force against the Creek Indians who took advantage of the war in progress to attack outlying settlements and kill white settlers. The troops failed to receive needed supplies and Jackson gave up his private stores to the sick and wounded and set his soldiers an example of cheerful endurance of hardship. At one time, it is said, he invited some officers to share his breakfast and they found—a bowl of acorns and a pitcher of water.

At last Jackson agreed that if provisions did not[244] come in two days the troops might return home. Soon after they turned back, they met supplies; they refreshed themselves and then started to continue the homeward march. Jackson galloped to the front, raised his rifle and furiously swore that he would kill the first man who made a step homeward. The troops, driven back to the path of duty, defeated the Indians in several battles. After one battle Jackson found an Indian baby in the arms of its dead mother. The Indian women refused to care for it and Jackson took it to his own tent, fed it with brown sugar and water and finally sent it to his home, the Hermitage, where the young Indian was cared for and reared.

Jackson’s military merit was now recognized and he was made major-general.

At New Orleans which was attacked by British forces about the close of the war, he won the one important land victory of the war. The British, secure in their superior numbers and discipline, were confident of success.

“I shall eat my Christmas dinner in New Orleans,” said one of the British officers.

“Perhaps so,” said General Jackson to whom this remark was repeated, “but I shall have the honor of presiding at that dinner.”

With wonderful skill and energy, he put the place in condition for defence and made ready for the British attack which took place January 8, 1815. Fortune as[245] well as good generalship favored the Americans. The British were defeated with a loss of about three thousand men, including their commander. The Americans lost only eight men killed and thirteen wounded. A treaty of peace had been signed two weeks before, but there was then no ocean-cable to convey the tidings, and the news did not reach America until after the battle had been fought and the repulsed British had sailed away.

In 1818 Jackson led troops to put down the Seminoles in Florida who were making war on the border settlements and had massacred the people at Fort Mimms.

In 1824 Jackson was one of four candidates for the presidency. The People’s Party founded by Jefferson was divided and put forward two candidates both from the west,—Jackson and Clay, who were bitter enemies. Adams was elected, but four years later Jackson was the successful candidate. The poor son of the Irish emigrant had fought his way upward,—saddler, lawyer, judge, general, he now held the highest office of the country. He thought and said that his will was the will of the people and he ruled with autocratic power, never hesitating to oppose Congress. If he thought that a bill was not for the best interests of the country, he vetoed it. He never forgot a friend and seldom forgave a foe. He accepted the view of one of his followers who said “to the victors belong the spoils of[246] the vanquished.” He removed office-holders to bestow offices on his friends—a bad example followed and carried to great excesses by all parties from that day to this. In 1832 he was re-elected; the people recognized that with all his faults he was honest and loyal to their interests.

The most important acts of his administration were his attitude towards the Nullification Act of South Carolina and his leadership in the “bank war.” A dramatic incident, at a dinner in honor of Jefferson’s birthday in April, 1830, showed clearly the president’s attitude towards those who were beginning to be dissatisfied with the general government. Jackson was called on for the first toast. He raised his glass, saying, “Our federal union! it must and shall be preserved.” Calhoun, the great South Carolina leader rose and offered the next toast, “The union, next to our liberty the most dear.” After a pause, he added, “May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and by distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the union.”

South Carolina considered herself aggrieved by certain tariff regulations, and proclaimed that these duties should not be paid after a certain day and that if the United States attempted to enforce payment the state would secede. Jackson issued a proclamation stating ably his views as to the binding force of the union. He sent to Charleston a naval force, one of the officers of[247] which was Farragut, and he ordered General Scott to have troops ready to march at once to South Carolina. Through the influence of Clay, a compromise tariff bill was passed and the conflict was postponed thirty years.

Jackson acted with equal energy in the bank matter; thinking national banks are unconstitutional, he vetoed a bill in their favor, even though his friends believed it would cost him re-election. Feeling ran so high on this subject that the Senate passed a resolution of censure on the president; this resolution was afterwards removed from the record. During Jackson’s administration the national debt was entirely paid. He was probably the only president who went out of office more popular than he went in.

He retired to his beloved home, the Hermitage, and there he died in 1845. His tomb bears this inscription:

“General
Andrew Jackson
Born on the fifteenth of March, 1767
Died on the eighth of June, 1845.”

On April 12, 1777, Henry Clay, the son of a poor Baptist clergyman, was born in Virginia in the country known as the “Slashes of Hanover.” His earliest[248] recollections were of the death of his father when he was four years old and of Tarleton’s troops passing his home and carrying off slaves, provisions, and even his mother’s clothing.

In boyhood Henry Clay worked hard to aid his widowed mother. He turned his hand to such work as came up—plowing the fields around his home, and, like many another country boy, going to the grist mill with his bag of corn to be ground into meal. In later years he received, in memory of his boyhood struggles, the nickname of “the Millboy of the Slashes.”

He studied reading, writing, and arithmetic in an “old field school,” worked a while as clerk in a store, and then studied law. In those days there were no law schools in the country, and Clay, like other aspiring young men, gained the necessary training from a few books, a little instruction in a law office, and practice in the courts.

At twenty the new-fledged lawyer, went west to make his home in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky which had been but a few years a state. This adopted state was his home thenceforth and all his interests were identified with it. He worked with indomitable energy. In order to train and modulate his defective voice he went out in the barnyard and argued his cases before the pigs and cows. He used to say that the brutes of the farm were the best audiences he ever had.

Clay secured a good practice, married well and lived[249] happily at Ashland, a farm just outside Lexington, which he bought about the time of his marriage. Remembering his own struggles and the kindness extended him during those years, he was always interested in ambitious young men and ready to help them with money, advice, and influence.

At the age of twenty-nine, Clay was appointed to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate for an unexpired term. He early formulated his “American system” declaring himself in favor of internal improvements, building up home industries, and distributing surplus money from the sale of public lands among the states, according to population. In 1811 he was in favor of war with Great Britain; as Speaker of the House, “The War Hawk,” as he was called, did much to bring it about. He was one of the men sent in 1814 to make terms of peace with England, and it was largely through his labors that favorable terms were secured.

Clay admired General Jackson’s military ability but he censured the invasion of Spanish territory in Florida and the two men became bitter and relentless enemies.

In 1820 began the career for which he is famous—that of the “Great Pacificator,” trying to avert conflict between the north and the south, the free and the slave states. It was largely through his influence that the contest was so long postponed. Clay was not the author of the Missouri Compromise—as the bill was called[250] which provided that Missouri should be admitted to statehood without restriction as to slavery—but it was through his influence that it was passed. Although he struggled to adjust differences and keep the peace, he stood fearlessly by what he thought was right.

On one occasion Clay consulted a friend about the stand he was preparing to take on a public question. The friend suggested that the course he planned might injure his political prospects. His reply was, “I did not send for you to ask what might be the effects of the proposed movement on my prospects, but whether it is right. I would rather be right than be president.”

His life-long ambition was to become president, and he was several times a candidate and once seemed on the eve of victory only to be defeated. The Great Peacemaker was too moderate for either side. The north accused him of favoring slavery, the south of making war against established institutions. He was not, however, in favor of freeing slaves, except gradually, and then of colonizing them. His own slaves were well-treated and loved him dearly.

Clay was one of what is called the Great Triumvirate, composed of the three foremost leaders in Congress; Webster and Calhoun were the other two. The three were in many ways rivals for power and popularity, but they united in opposing Jackson—who, secure[251] in the favor of the people, held his own against all three.

In 1833 Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” carried his second great compromise act, securing the passage of a tariff bill which caused South Carolina to withdraw her Nullification Act.

“There is one man and only one man who can save the Union,” said John Randolph of Roanoke just before his death. “That man is Henry Clay. I know he has the power—I believe he will be found to have the patriotism and firmness equal to the occasion.” His patriotism and firmness were indeed equal to his power.

In 1850 the friction between the slave and free states became so great that war seemed inevitable. In order to maintain peace, Clay, then an old and feeble man of seventy-three, gave up private for public life and returned to the senate. For the last time the Great Triumvirate met in Congress. Clay was so feeble that he had to be helped up and down the steps of the Capitol, but with unquenched energy and fire, he appealed to the people’s patriotism and urged them to uphold the Union. Through his influence, the compromise measures of 1850 were adopted and peace was again restored for a time.

He could well say near the close of his life, “If any one desires to know the leading and paramount object[252] of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key.”

The great leader grew gradually weaker and passed away, June 29, 1852. His body was carried back to Kentucky and laid to rest in the state he so loved.

“I am a Whig,” he said once: “I am so because I believe the principles of the Whig party are best adapted to promote the prosperity of the country. I seek to change no man’s allegiance to his party, be it what it may. A life of great length and experience has satisfied me that all parties aim at the common good of the country. The great body of the Democrats, as well as the Whigs, are so from a conviction that their policy is patriotic. I take the hand of one as cordially as that of another, for all are Americans. I place country far above all parties. Look aside from that and parties are no longer worthy of being cherished.”

“I know no south, no north, no east, no west,” he said, at another time. It was such sentiments as these that made him Lincoln’s ideal of a statesman. The conflict he had striven to avert was postponed—but it came. His children and grandchildren fought, some on one side some on the other. Two of his grandchildren who were brothers fought on opposite sides and both fell in battle. Such was the War between the States.

Daniel Webster was descended from one of the Puritans who came from Old England to New England in the “great emigration.” His father, Ebenezer Webster, was a sturdy pioneer who fought in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. “Captain Webster, I believe I can trust you,” said General Washington, and this was the opinion of all who knew him.

Daniel, one of his ten children, was born in 1782 in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was a delicate child and from babyhood was indulged and petted by his parents and brothers and sisters. He was fond of outdoor sports, but he was fond of study too and easily led his classes. Many characteristic stories are told of his boyhood. It is said that one of his first purchases was a handkerchief on which was printed the recently-adopted Constitution of the United States. Thus as a child he read and studied the great instrument which he was so eloquently to uphold. Looking back to his childhood in later years, Webster said: “I read what I could get to read, went to school when I could, and when not at school was a farmer’s youngest boy, not good for much for want of health and strength, but expected to do something.”

By means of many sacrifices on the part of his family, Daniel was kept at school and finally sent to college.[254] The attitude of the family toward him is illustrated by an incident of his boyhood. He and his brother Ezekiel were one day allowed to go to town, each being provided with a small sum of spending-money. When they returned home Mrs. Webster asked Daniel, “What did you do with your money?”

“Spent it,” was the reply, and there followed an enthusiastic description of the day’s pleasures. Then the mother turned to the silent elder brother.

“And what did you do with yours, ’Zekiel?”

“Lent it to Dan’el,” was the quiet answer.

The family was always “lending to Daniel”—making sacrifices for him and feeling amply repaid by his affection and success.

Young Webster’s talents were early recognized; even in his college days his eloquence and commanding presence and deep sonorous voice attracted attention. When he was eighteen he delivered at Hanover a Fourth of July oration; in crude form it uttered the message—love of country and loyalty to the Constitution—which was the burden of his later speeches. After leaving college he began the study of law. He taught for awhile in order to aid his brother Ezekiel to obtain a collegiate education, but kept steadily on with his studies.

In 1805 he was admitted to the bar, and established himself in a New Hampshire village. He was an eloquent and able speaker, and gradually became prominent[255] in politics, making addresses at Federalist meetings and on public occasions. In 1813, he was sent to Congress as a member of the House. There he met Clay and Calhoun, the other members of the “Great Triumvirate” of which you have heard. Webster spoke ably in behalf of a national bank, of the tariff, and of other measures advocated by the Federalists; he soon came to be recognized as one of the foremost men of his party.

After serving a term in Congress, however, he returned to private life for a few years. He removed to Boston where he continued the practice of his profession, earning money easily and spending it with equal facility, often before it was earned. He was known as one of the ablest lawyers and greatest orators in the country. The effect of his eloquence was aided by his commanding presence. “Good heavens, he is a small cathedral by himself,” said a witty Englishman.

Among Webster’s famous addresses on public occasions were the oration at Plymouth on the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, the address five years later at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument, and the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. The best-known passage in the eulogy is the imaginary speech of John Adams, which many people have supposed to be an extract from a real speech. This begins with the famous words,[256] “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.”

After serving again in the House, Webster was sent in 1827 to the Senate; there he supported Henry Clay’s “American system.” About this time the question of the tariff was causing much friction between the North and the South, and the people of South Carolina were discussing nullification. This discussion led to one of Webster’s ablest speeches. In 1830 General Hayne of South Carolina made a speech expressing the view that the Constitution was “a compact between sovereign states” and asserting the right of secession which Kentucky and Virginia in 1799 and New England in 1814 had threatened to exercise. In his reply to Hayne, Webster insisted that the Constitution was not a “compact” but a “national instrument,” and he made an eloquent argument for the Union and the Constitution. This speech was published and scattered far and wide; it was inserted in school-books and declaimed in debating societies; its author was regarded as the “great expounder and defender of the Constitution.”

The life-long ambition of Webster, as of Clay, was to become president, but like his rival he was doomed to disappointment. Many people thought that Webster might have attained the honor in 1852 had it not been for his speech in 1850 on the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was not an extremist. He considered slavery “one of the greatest evils, both moral and political,”[257] and he was opposed to its being admitted into the western territories. He said, however, that the Constitution “found slavery in the Union, it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties” which could not honestly and honorably be broken. He asserted that a state had no right to refuse to give up runaway slaves to their masters, as was provided by the Fugitive Slave Law. He concluded his speech with an eloquent appeal for national harmony and the Union. His position was legally unassailable and he was animated by a desire to conciliate and unite the jarring sections, but the speech called forth a storm of indignation from the abolitionists. There was no longer any hope that he would receive the presidential nomination.

But the time was at hand when earthly honors were a matter of no moment to the great orator. His health was giving way, and he died September 8, 1852, at Marshfield, his beloved home beside the sea. His dying eyes were gladdened by the sight of the flag he loved, the symbol of the “Union and liberty” for which he had striven.

When asked about his early life Abraham Lincoln once said, “It can all be condensed into a single sentence and that sentence you will find in Gray’s ‘Elegy,’

His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a roving, shiftless, man, a carpenter by trade; after his marriage his wife taught him to read and to write his name, but here his education began and ended. Abraham Lincoln’s mother came, he said, “of a family of the name of Hanks,” about whom nothing good is recorded. Of his mother personally, almost nothing is known.

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven years old, his father made one of his numerous moves, going to Indiana and taking up a claim of land. There he built what was called “a half-faced camp”—a log-shed open on one side; in this his family passed the winter. The next year Thomas Lincoln built a cabin; it had four walls, but for years it was left without floor, door, or window. Instead of steps there were pegs in the wall by means of which Abraham ascended to the loft where he slept. The furniture was rude and scanty. It consisted of a few stools, a rough table and bed, some pewter dishes, a skillet and a pot.

Abraham was only nine years old when his mother succumbed to a fatal disease. As she lay on her death-bed she called her son and daughter to her and gave them her last charge. “Be good to one another,” she said, “love God and your kin.”

The winter which followed was dreary and desolate for the motherless children. A few months later[259] Thomas Lincoln brought to the cabin a second wife who was a mother indeed to the two little ones. She was thrifty and industrious, as well as kind and affectionate, and under her rule the family had more of the comforts of life than it had ever known before. Mrs. Lincoln insisted that ten-year-old Abe must be sent to school and so he trudged every day to the log schoolhouse a mile and a half from home.

He was a diligent student, and he read every book on which he could lay his hands. These books were few in number; the Bible, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a history of the United States, and Weems’ “Life of Washington,” were read and re-read. His bookcase was a crack between the logs of the cabin wall. One night the binding of the “Life of Washington,” was injured by a driving storm; to pay the man from whom it was borrowed for the damage, Abe worked three days in his corn field. At night the boy would lie flat on the floor before the fire and cipher on a plank or a wooden shovel with a piece of charcoal; when the surface was covered with figures, he would erase them and begin anew.

His father considered the hours spent in study as wasted time, and Abe was often called to put his books aside to grub and plow and mow. Such work was little to his taste; he said in later years, “his father taught him to work but never taught him to love work.”

Abe grew fast and at seventeen he was over six feet[260] tall. He was strong and active, but an awkward figure, in his homespun shirt, buckskin trousers, and cap of squirrel or coon skin.

In the spring of 1830 when Abe was twenty-one his father moved to Illinois where fertile land was to be had on easy terms. The household goods were carried on an ox-wagon and it took two weeks to make the long and tedious journey. In the new settlement the men set to work to clear away the forest and build cabins. Abe helped to split rails to fence in the little farm. He not only helped at home, but worked for others as occasion demanded. We are informed that he bargained with a Mrs. Miller “to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers.”

A little later he made a trip to New Orleans with a boat-load of meat, hogs, and corn. In that city for the first time he saw slaves bought and sold. You remember that slavery had been introduced into America early in the seventeenth century. For a long time slavery existed in both the northern and the southern colonies, but in the course of time it was limited to the south where alone slave labor was profitable. Lincoln did not think that it was right that negroes should be sold like cattle, and he said, “If ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery] I’ll hit it hard.”

After his return home, he became clerk in a country[261] store. Here by his scrupulous honesty he earned the nickname “Honest Abe.” One day he made an overcharge of fourpence and that night he walked several miles to return the money. During his leisure he continued his studies. Books were scarce, and on one occasion he walked six miles to borrow a grammar.

In 1832 Abe Lincoln was elected captain of a company of volunteers who marched with the regular troops against the Indian chief, Black Hawk. Most of the men went home when their term of enlistment expired but Abe Lincoln re-enlisted and served as a private. This was his only experience in actual warfare. When he returned home he presented himself as a candidate for the legislature. His neighbors heartily supported “humble Abraham Lincoln” who was one of them, but he was defeated. He was a clear, straightforward speaker with a pointed, well-told joke for every occasion.

After his political defeat he opened a store in partnership with a friend. As Lincoln spent his time in studying and telling jokes and Berry spent his in drinking, it is no wonder that the business proved a failure. Berry died soon after this; Lincoln assumed all the debts of the firm and paid them to the last penny, although it required his savings for over fifteen years.

Lincoln now began to study law, supporting himself, meanwhile, by doing such work as came to hand. People took it as a joke that this rough, awkward fellow[262] was preparing himself for a profession. One day a man who saw him sitting on a woodpile poring over a book asked, “What are you reading, Abe?” “I am not reading; I am studying,” was the answer. “Studying what?” “Law, sir,” said Abe. The man laughed uproariously, but Lincoln kept on with his studies; neither in youth nor in manhood was he to be turned from a purpose by ridicule. He worked as a farmhand, he learned to survey lands, he served as postmaster of the country office. We are told that “he carried the office around in his hat,”—putting in his hat the handful of letters which came to New Salem and distributing them as he went to survey land.

In 1837 Lincoln was licensed to practice law. He resolved to make his home in Springfield, lately made the capital of the state. He rode thither on a borrowed horse, carrying in a pair of saddle-bags all his personal effects,—“two or three law books and a few pieces of clothing.” One who knew him in those days describes him as a tall, gaunt, awkward figure; he wore a faded brown hat, a loose, ill-fitting coat, and trousers which were too short; in winter he added to this costume a short cloak or a shawl. In one hand he carried a carpet-bag containing his papers, and in the other a faded green cotton umbrella, tied with a string. Like the other lawyers of the place, he “traveled on the circuit,” going from one place to another to attend courts. He usually carried with him a book or two; rising earlier[263] than his companions, he would sit by the fire to read and think. In later days when a young lawyer asked Lincoln’s advice as to the best method of obtaining a knowledge of law, he answered that it was “simple though laborious,” such knowledge must be gained by careful reading and study. “Work, work, work, is the main thing.”

Lincoln was popular with men and was known as an honest, kind-hearted fellow. He himself told the following anecdote: one day as he was riding along dressed in his best he saw a hog “mired up” beside the road. Unwilling to soil his clothes, he passed on. The poor animal gave a grunt which seemed to say, “There now, my last chance is gone.” Unable to resist the brute’s appeal, Lincoln went back and helped it out.

In 1842 Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd, a clever, well-bred woman, who forwarded his professional and political success. She lacked, however, the amiable temper which would have made a happy home; more and more her husband’s interest centered in public matters and in politics. In 1844 he gave his enthusiastic support to Henry Clay, the presidential candidate, who was “his ideal of a statesman.” Two years later Lincoln was elected to Congress; after serving a term, he retired from public life for awhile, devoting himself to his profession and to his studies.

In 1854 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise led him again to take an interest in politics. Lincoln was[264] opposed to the extension of slavery, but he did not agree with the extreme abolitionists; he said that “loyalty to the Constitution and the Union” forbade interference with slavery where it was already established. In 1856 he was a member of the Convention at Bloomington, Illinois, which formed the Republican party, the object of which Lincoln said was “the preventing of the spread and nationization of slavery.”

He became the Republican candidate for senator in 1858 and made a famous speech in which he asserted that the Union could not endure, part free and part slave. “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” he said. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall,—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other.” To a friend who objected to this utterance he said, “If I had to draw a pen across my record and erase my whole life from sight and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased.”

Lincoln was defeated by Douglas in this contest, but the eyes of the people were on him and in 1860 the Republican party made him its candidate for president. Some of the rails he had split were brought into the convention; the contest between free and slave labor[265] was made an issue of the campaign. There were three other candidates in the field, and the division of votes in the old parties caused Lincoln to be elected. The southern people knew little about Lincoln personally; they knew, however, that he led the party which wished to destroy slavery. There had been so much disagreement and friction in the Union that some of the southern states now decided to leave it. The Constitution did not give the general government power to enforce a permanent union. In course of time there came to be held two different views about the Union,—one, generally held in the South, was that it was “a compact between sovereign states” and that the power of the state was supreme; the other, generally held in the North, was that the states made up one great nation to which belonged the supreme authority. The latter was the view held by Lincoln. He prepared for his inaugural address by studying the Constitution, Clay’s great speech of 1850, Jackson’s proclamation against nullification, and Webster’s reply to Hayne: locked in his dingy office he composed his inaugural address.

Before he left home, he paid a farewell visit to his aged step-parent who had been as a mother to him. Then with his wife and three sons, he set forth to Washington.

When he took the oath of office, it was over a divided Union. South Carolina had seceded and several other southern states had followed its example. Lincoln said,[266] “the Union must be preserved” and he issued a call for seventy-five thousand soldiers. At this call there withdrew from the Union several states which loved the Union but believed in the supreme power of the states and the constitutional right of secession.

The reverse at Manassas distressed but did not daunt Lincoln. As commander-in-chief of the army and the navy, he appointed officers and supervised their movements. There were three great military tasks necessary for the northern forces,—to control the Mississippi River, to blockade southern ports, and to capture Richmond. The sea forces under Farragut and Porter successfully performed their tasks. In Virginia one unsuccessful or incompetent general after another was put forward and supported,—McClellan, Halleck, Pope, and Hooker. Meanwhile the great commanders, Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, were fighting undiscovered in the west. At last they were brought forward and put at the head of magnificent armies to “end the job.”

As a military measure, in 1863, President Lincoln made the emancipation proclamation granting freedom to slaves. In November, of that year he made his famous address, consecrating the military cemetery at Gettysburg.

Not long before the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln issued a call for five hundred thousand soldiers; friends urged him to wait a few weeks as this call for troops might injure his chance of re-election. He[267] refused saying, “What is the presidency worth to me if I have no country?”

In his second inaugural address are the famous words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in.” The end was already in sight. The capital of the Confederacy fell and Lee’s little army was forced to surrender. Lincoln expressed only sympathy for the defeated and desolate South. But his plans for reunion in peace and kindness were not to be carried out. Just as the great victory was accomplished he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His death was an even greater loss to the South than to the North which mourned so bitterly, the heroic man of the people, the martyred president.

April 27, 1822, was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, who by an error of which you will hear later had his name changed to Ulysses Simpson Grant. His father was Jesse Grant, an Ohio tanner. Grant’s ancestors had settled in New England in the seventeenth century and some had served in the French and Indian War and some had served in the Revolution, so he was of good American stock.

[268]When Ulysses was about ten years old, his father moved to Georgetown, Ohio, about forty miles from Cincinnati. There he prospered and became the owner of a farm as well as a tannery. Ulysses was not specially fond of books, but his father was resolved that he should have a good education. The boy was sent regularly to school and was a faithful student. He had work to do at home too—sometimes in the tannery which he disliked, sometimes on the farm, which he liked better. He was fond of horses and learned to ride and drive well.

From the time he was eleven till he was seventeen, he did the plowing and hauling on his father’s farm. His father who seems to have been more ambitious for his son than the boy was for himself, secured an appointment to West Point. Ulysses did not wish to go and feared he could not pass the entrance examinations. But his father’s word was the law of the family and so the sandy-haired, blue-eyed lad of seventeen left his Ohio home to go to West Point. He lingered on the way to see the sights in Philadelphia and other places.

Two weeks after he left home, he reached West Point, in May, 1839. He passed the dreaded examinations and was enrolled among the cadets. The Congressman who had secured the appointment for him forgot his name and filled in the application for Ulysses Simpson Grant, and by that name he was called. The boys[269] nicknamed him “Uncle Sam” and called him “Sam Grant.” He got on well in his studies, especially in mathematics which had always been his favorite. He was more famous as a horseman, however, than as a student. At West Point there is still shown the place where he made a famous leap of six feet, three inches, on a big horse named York. Except for his horsemanship the young Ohioan, quiet in manner and careless in dress, was not much noted one way or another. He was graduated, June, 1843, twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine.

In 1846 came war with Mexico which Grant then and forty years later thought “one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” He had hoped for a place in the cavalry, but was sent in the infantry as second lieutenant.

He took part in many battles and distinguished himself by his coolness and courage under fire. In the battle of Monterey his regiment lacked ammunition and Lieutenant Grant volunteered to go for it to headquarters, four miles away. The route he had to travel was exposed to the enemy’s fire. He hung his foot on the saddle and held on to his horse’s mane; thus swinging on the horse’s side he galloped off and carried the message, returning unharmed.

In Mexico served many men and officers with and against whom he fought in the War between the States. He said afterwards that the knowledge of their character[270] and methods which he gained during the campaign in Mexico was very useful. In the battle of Chapultepec, Grant, with the help of some comrades, dragged a small cannon up into the belfry of a church and used the place as a fort with great advantage. Major Robert E. Lee, in his report of the battle, commended the young lieutenant, saying that “Second Lieutenant Grant behaved with distinguished gallantry.” In 1848 Grant returned home and that year he was married.

Soon after, his regiment was ordered to California and Oregon. Unwilling to be separated from his family, in 1854 he resigned and came home. From his pay he had not been able to lay aside enough to defray his expenses home and these were paid by his father.

At thirty-two he had to begin the world with a wife and children to support. He moved to Missouri to a small tract of land belonging to his wife. Here he cut and hauled logs and split shingles and built a cabin. He named the place Hardscrabble, because, he said, life there was a “hard scrabble.” He worked diligently raising corn, wheat, and potatoes and cutting cord-wood for sale to help out his expenses, but he did not succeed as a farmer. At the end of three years, he was two thousand dollars in debt. Then he tried the real estate business but at that too he failed.

“Grant did not seem to be just calculated for business, but a more honest, generous man never lived,”[271] said one who knew him in those days. “I don’t believe he knew what dishonor was.”

At last he gave up the struggle in Missouri and went to Galena, Illinois, where his brothers were carrying on a leather business. He began work in their shop as a clerk at six hundred dollars a year.

But he did not finish out the first year. The War between the States began. Grant helped to raise a company of soldiers in Galena and drilled them. As Colonel Grant, he was put in charge of the twenty-first Illinois regiment which he made the best regiment in the state. A little later he was made brigadier-general. After several skirmishes in the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, he went, in February, 1862, with seventeen thousand men and a fleet of gunboats to attack Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. Fort Henry was taken by the fleet before the army reached it, and then the land and water forces made ready to attack Fort Donelson. General Buckner, who had been with Grant in Mexico, wrote asking Grant for terms of surrender. “No terms other than an immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted,” Grant replied. “I propose to move immediately upon your works.” As Buckner was unable to hold the fort, he had to surrender on these terms. Grant was now made major-general.

His next plan was to attack and break the base of Confederate railroad communications in northern Mississippi.[272] For this purpose he marched towards Corinth. The Confederate general, Albert Sidney Johnston, instead of waiting to be attacked, threw his forces gallantly against the Federal army. The battle raged the whole day, without decisive results. That night General Buell brought Grant heavy reinforcements, and in the next day’s battle General Johnston was killed. The Confederates were forced back to Corinth, contending for every inch of ground.

Grant’s third move was to divide the Confederacy by getting command of the posts along the Mississippi River, thus cutting off the western base of supplies. The fleet under Farragut had tried to carry out this scheme. But Vicksburg and Port Hudson were both held by the Confederates, and between these they controlled the river and brought supplies from the west. Vicksburg, called “the Gibraltar of the Mississippi,” was strongly situated. In five battles Grant drove back the Confederate forces and in May, 1863, besieged Vicksburg, resolved to starve it into surrender. Many said that this was a foolish attempt and tried to persuade Lincoln to remove Grant, but Lincoln resolved to give him a chance. Grant closed in on the Confederates and cut off their line of supplies. In July General Pemberton asked for terms and received this answer: “The unconditional surrender of the city and the garrison. I have no terms other than these.” The taking of Vicksburg was a great victory for the Federals.[273] President Lincoln wrote Grant a personal letter: “My dear General, I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country.... When you turned northward, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make a personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong. Yours very truly, A. Lincoln.” Those who had tried to get Grant removed saw that they too were wrong, but they lacked the president’s manly frankness and did not confess it.

Grant was given command of all the armies in the West. He went to Tennessee to relieve the division of the Union army under Rosecrans which the Confederates had hemmed up in Chattanooga. It was shut in by the Tennessee river on the north and by mountains on all other sides. Grant, with Sherman, Sheridan and other brave generals aiding him, marched up the mountain and fought a great battle on Lookout Mountain “above the clouds,” by which the troops in Chattanooga were relieved.

The title of Lieutenant-General, which Washington had borne, was revived for Grant, and he went to Washington in March, 1864, to receive his commission from Lincoln. The president said in giving it, “As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, will it sustain you.”

Lincoln had now found the general that he had been[274] looking for, the man able to lead the magnificent Federal army of seven hundred thousand men. Grant went to Virginia, the battle-field of the Confederacy, where for three years Lee had held his own and defeated four generals sent with large armies against him. Grant resolved to break the Confederate lines and to capture Richmond. He thought that one cause of the lack of Federal success had been that the parts of the great army had not worked well together; he tried to make them move like the parts of a well-ordered machine. General Sherman was sent southward on a march to Savannah to lay the country waste so that no help could be sent to Lee’s troops. Sherman’s army covered a track of country sixty miles wide, in which railroads, bridges, houses, and provisions were destroyed.

It took Grant a year and it cost many lives to carry out his plan of overcoming Lee, but he never wavered. The two great generals fought one great battle after another. “I shall fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” General Grant wrote after the battle at Spottsylvania Court House. Then came the desperate battle of Cold Harbor. After these battles the Federals received reinforcements to repair their losses, but none came to the southern army. There were none to come; even the old men and the boys were already in the field. On the second of April, 1865, the Confederates were forced to abandon Petersburg. Lee endeavored[275] to withdraw his array but Grant followed close in the rear. After retreating seventy-five miles, the shattered, starving remnant of the Confederate army was surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865.

Instead of being detained as prisoners, the Confederate soldiers were released on parole and they were allowed to retain their horses.

“They will need them for their plowing and spring work,” said Grant with kindly wisdom.

“General,” said Lee earnestly, “there is nothing you could have done to accomplish more good either for them or for the government.”

To honor Grant for his services, Congress created for him the rank of general, a higher title than even Washington held. The joy of the North at Lee’s surrender was turned to mourning by the assassination of President Lincoln. This was an even greater calamity for the South than for the North. Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson and there followed a period of grave mismanagement,—especially of southern affairs. At one time Johnson was impeached—that is, tried for misconduct in office—and he lacked only one vote of being convicted.

Johnson wished to have Lee arrested and punished as a traitor. Grant said that “he had accepted Lee’s surrender and he and his soldiers were prisoners under parole and were not to be punished so long as they[276] obeyed the laws to which they had sworn allegiance.”

In 1868 Grant was elected president as the candidate of the Republican party by a vote of two hundred and fourteen to eighty. He tried to withdraw the national government more and more from the South and to leave the state governments in control. He was re-elected in 1872 by two hundred and eighty-six votes, showing the people’s approval of his administration. A noteworthy act of his second term was his vetoing the bill for the inflation of the currency, making paper money legally equal to gold and silver.

People wanted him to serve a third term but he refused, and in 1877 started on a tour of the world. He visited Europe and Asia and was everywhere received with honor,—as the guest of Queen Victoria, the kings of Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, the Czar of Russia, and other rulers. Having received royal honors in many lands, he returned in 1880 to California where he had served thirty years before as an obscure young soldier.

His last years were burdened by business misfortunes and physical suffering. He had invested his money in a banking business which failed and involved him in ruin. With poverty came illness, a painful throat disease which was to end in death.

From his sickroom in answer to words of sympathy which came from all parts of the country, indeed of the world he sent this message: “I am very much[277] touched and grateful for the sympathy and interest manifested in me by my friends and by those who have not hitherto been regarded as my friends. I desire the good will of all, whether heretofore friends or not.”

To make provision for his family, he set about writing his “Memoirs,” the story of his life and battles. In pain and illness, he toiled on and held death at bay till this work was finished, July 1, 1885. A few days later, he died on July 23. He was laid to rest beside the Hudson and over his remains was erected a magnificent marble tomb; over the doorway of this is inscribed his noble words, “Let us have peace.”

More and more, Americans are coming to realize that in the great War between the States men on both sides were animated by a sense of duty and devotion to what they thought right. On the one side, brave, loyal-hearted men upheld the Union; on the other, men as brave and loyal upheld the supremacy of the state. You have read how Grant, the victor, won the love and reverence of his countrymen; no less loved and reverenced was his defeated opponent, the great Confederate leader, Lee.

Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 1807, at Stratford, a handsome old country home in Virginia.[278] His father, General Henry Lee, was the famous “Light Horse Harry” of the Revolution. When Robert was only four years old, General Lee moved to Alexandria in order to give his children the benefit of better schools. From childhood Robert was an apt and faithful student, careful to do his best at any task which he undertook. His childhood was darkened by the illness and death of his father. Robert cared tenderly for his invalid mother who said, “He is both son and daughter to me.”

From the school at Alexandria Robert went to West Point, where at the end of four years he was graduated second in his class. Two years after leaving West Point, he married Mary Randolph Custis, the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, Washington Parke Curtis. Lieutenant Lee and his wife made their home at Arlington, a stately mansion on the Potomac River, in sight of the city of Washington. Here he passed a few happy months. But a soldier cannot choose his post of duty, and Lee was summoned from home to engineer work in the West. Then came the war with Mexico in which he took part. In this war served as privates or officers many others destined to fame in the War between the States—Johnston, McClellan, Pickett, Grant, Jackson. Among his brave and able comrades, Lee made a distinguished record. In the advance on the city of Mexico, he explored and made a road over a pathless lava field across which he guided troops; then he rode[279] back alone in the darkness and rain to report to his commanding officer. General Scott said that this midnight journey was the greatest deed of the war, and Lee “the greatest military genius in America.”

After the war with Mexico was over, Captain Lee made a visit home. In 1852 he was made superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. Thence he was sent to Texas to fight against the Indians. He was in Virginia in 1859 and he was sent to suppress John Brown’s raid. He performed his duty at Harper’s Ferry in soldierly fashion, treated his prisoners kindly, and turned them over to the civil authorities to be punished for breaking the laws. In 1860 he was again in Texas, but the next spring he returned to Virginia. The period of disunion and secession was a sad one for Colonel Lee. He loved dearly the Union which his father had aided to establish. He had entered its army expecting to devote his life to its service. He believed, indeed, in the supreme authority of the state, but he thought secession unwise and was confident that in the Union the vexing questions about slavery and the tariff could be settled.

“If the four million slaves in the South were mine,” he said, “I would give them all up to keep the Union.”

But dearly as he loved the Union he thought that his first duty was to his native state, Virginia, his second to the Union of which he was a part. When Lincoln issued his call for troops, by General Scott’s advice[280] the command of the Union army was offered to Lee. He declined, resigned his commission in the army, and accepted the command of the Virginia forces. It was a sad day when he and his family left beautiful Arlington which was never again to be a home. It fell into the hands of the Union soldiers and is now the site of a great national cemetery.

Lee fought at first in western Virginia; then he was sent to aid in fortifying the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Afterwards he was put in charge of the army in Virginia, and there he remained, as general and commander-in-chief of the southern army until the end of the war. The southern army was small but it was commanded by brave and able generals. Lee’s “right hand” was Stonewall Jackson, a fearless soldier and earnest Christian, one of the greatest military leaders the world has ever known. A famous cavalry-leader was J. E. B. Stuart, a dashing cavalier who loved battle as a boy loves play. Both Jackson and Stuart were killed before the war was over.

As you have been told, it was the great aim of the northern armies to capture Richmond; it was the aim of Lee and his little army to defend the city. Lee led his soldiers with masterly skill in the Seven Days’ Fight about Richmond. Then he marched north; having defeated Pope at the second battle of Manassas, he advanced into Maryland and fought a great drawn battle at Antietam, or Sharpsburg. Lee then returned to[281] Virginia. He fought at Fredericksburg against Burnside who had supplanted McClellan in command. The next spring “Fighting Joe” Hooker was defeated at Chancellorsville, but in the death of Jackson, the Confederates sustained a greater loss than that of many battles.

Lee marched north again, and a great battle was fought at Gettysburg. General Longstreet failed to advance as ordered, the Confederates who had charged fell unsupported, and the day was lost. General Lee led his crippled army back to Virginia. At Gettysburg the tide had turned against the Confederates. From that day defeat and surrender were but a question of time. For a long time Lee’s little army held its own in defence of Richmond. Grant, the victor of the West, was sent against it. It cost him a month and sixty thousand men to march seventy-five miles. With masterly skill, Lee opposed him in the great battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor, but the Confederate line was broken at last.

Forced to give up the defense of Richmond, General Lee endeavored to withdraw his army, but Grant followed, and the little army was surrendered at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865. As Lee bade farewell to his soldiers, they sobbed aloud and tears were in his eyes. He said with a broken voice, “Men, we have fought the war together. I have done my best for you. My heart is too full to say more.”

[282]Great as had been Lee’s work in war, it was no less great in peace. Bravely and uncomplainingly he accepted the results of defeat, and endured the horrors of the reconstruction days. No word of bitterness was ever heard to pass his lips. Nor would he in their hour of woe and poverty desert his people. Wealth and position were offered him abroad, and at home he might have had affluence by lending his name to business enterprises. But he steadfastly refused all such offers. “I think it better to do right,” he said, “even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.”

He set himself to aid in the upbuilding and restoring of the South. At a salary of a few hundred dollars, he became president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia. Wisely and conscientiously he performed his duties until the autumn of 1870. One evening at tea his voice failed as he was about to ask a blessing and he sank back in his chair. After lingering a few days, he died October 12, 1870.

David Glasgow Farragut, the first admiral of the American navy, was born near Knoxville, Tennessee,[283] July 5, 1801. He was the son of a Spaniard, a native of the island of Minorca, who came to America in 1776 and after helping the country fight for its rights settled here to enjoy them. At the end of the eighteenth century, Tennessee was a sparsely-settled region, occupied by a few hardy pioneers and by roaming Indians. One day when Mrs. Farragut was alone at home with her two little sons a band of Indians attacked the cabin. The brave mother sent her children to hide in the loft and guarded the door with an ax till help came.

When David was about seven, Mr. Farragut was put in charge of a gunboat on the Mississippi. His family moved near New Orleans, and there Mrs. Farragut died of yellow fever about a year later. Just before her illness, a stranger, an old man who had had a sunstroke, had been taken into her home and cared for. This stranger was the father of Commodore David Porter. The grateful naval officer offered to adopt and educate one of the Farragut boys. After the mother’s death, this offer was accepted for David. The little fellow was sent to school and at the age of ten he became a midshipman in the navy. He was very small for his age, and once when he went ashore a group of idlers gathered around and made sport of “the baby officer.” One waggish fellow sprinkled him with water from a watering pot to “make him grow.” This led to a fight between David’s tormentors and the sailors in which[284] David took active part. After it was over, someone remarked that “the baby officer was three pounds of uniform and seventy pounds of fight.”

In October, 1812, David sailed with Captain Porter on the Essex. Captain Porter was ordered to join the squadron in the Atlantic if he could: if not, to use his own discretion. He cruised about the Atlantic several months, capturing several British merchant-vessels, but not finding the American squadron. He then decided to make a cruise in the Pacific. There he captured several British vessels and gave timely warning to American ships that had not heard of the war. At one time provisions were scarce, and David, like the others, was on a short allowance of bread and water. In May, 1813, David, then twelve years old, was put in charge of a captured English vessel to take it to port. The English captain was very angry at having to take orders from the “baby commodore,” as Farragut was often called, but Farragut executed his orders with exactness and dignity.

In March, 1814, the Essex, off the coast of South America, was attacked by two English vessels and captured after a desperate fight in which the Americans lost one hundred and twenty-four men. Farragut was “a man on occasions,” and Captain Porter commended his battery in this action. The American sailors were made prisoners on parole and they were exchanged only a few weeks before the treaty of peace was made. The[285] time was improved by Farragut in attending school. Between his cruises he was generally at school studying diligently, and at eighteen he stood the examinations required for a lieutenant, though he did not receive his promotion till several years later.

In 1822 Farragut went with his friend, Commodore Porter, to fight against the pirates which thronged the West Indian waters. The American fleet was composed of small fast-sailing vessels and of boats called the “mosquito fleet.” They had some exciting adventures and encounters with the pirates, whom they succeeded in driving from most of their haunts. A more formidable foe than the pirates was yellow fever. Twenty-five officers were attacked and of those twenty-three died; Farragut was one of the two who recovered. Soon after his return to America, Lieutenant Farragut was put in charge of the Brandywine to carry Lafayette to France.

In 1833 he went to Charleston under orders to uphold the revenue laws of the United States which South Carolina had threatened to nullify. The danger was averted and for the present he was not called upon to serve against his countrymen. During the years which followed he made many cruises but saw no active service. He was an excellent officer. One who knew him said, “Never was the crew of a man-of-war better disciplined or more contented and happy. The moment all hands were called and Farragut took the trumpet,[286] every man under him was alive and eager for duty.”

In 1850 Farragut and three other officers were appointed to draw up a book of regulations for the navy. They devoted eighteen months of hard work to the task and made an excellent manual. A few years later the book appeared with a few changes; the names of the four men who had prepared it were omitted and the credit was given to men who had really done none of the work. The fair-minded and hard-working young officer was naturally indignant at this injustice.

Later, he was sent to California and spent four years establishing navy-yards near San Francisco. He was now captain, which was then the highest rank in the American navy. On his return to Washington in 1858, he was put in charge of a new vessel, the Brooklyn. This was very different from the old sailing-ships on which he had served, being one of the first steam war-vessels in our navy.

The clouds of the War between the States were now gathering over the country, greatly to Farragut’s distress. He was a southerner by birth but from boyhood he had been in the nation’s service and his strongest affections were for the American navy.

“God forbid that I should raise my hand against the South,” he said.

Yet when the war broke out he felt that he must choose the national cause. In January, 1862, he was sent in charge of a squadron to secure the Mississippi[287] River for the Union. He was to capture Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip which defended New Orleans, then take the city, and afterwards sail up the river, subjecting the forts along the banks. He was in charge of the largest and best-equipped fleet that had ever been led by an American commander. It consisted of forty-eight vessels. An army of fifteen thousand soldiers under General Butler was sent to aid in the capture of New Orleans. Below the forts commanding the city, was a barricade of old vessels and logs fastened together with iron chains; above these was the Confederate fleet of fifteen vessels. For a week Captain Farragut’s mortar boats rained shells on the forts, then his gunboats broke the barricade. At four o’clock on the morning of April the twenty-fourth, his squadron passed the forts which had held back the British in 1815. Then they engaged in a desperate battle with the little Confederate fleet. Every vessel of it was captured or wrecked. Four days later the besieged forts surrendered, and on the first of May the Union troops under Butler took possession of New Orleans. Farragut was ordered to “pass or attack and capture” the Confederate forts between New Orleans and Memphis. He accordingly went to Vicksburg, but his expedition failed for lack of land-forces to support the attack. July 4, 1863, Vicksburg was taken by General Grant, and a few days later, Port Hudson was surrendered. This gave the Union forces entire control of the river. For his[288] valiant and efficient service, Farragut was rewarded in 1862 with the rank of rear-admiral, created for his benefit. Thus he was the first admiral in the United States navy. Later he was made vice-admiral, and in 1866 he became admiral, each of the three ranks being created in his honor.

While Farragut’s squadron was striving to gain control of the Mississippi, a battle took place on the Atlantic coast which marked the beginning of a new era in naval warfare, the end of wooden war-ships and the use of iron vessels. The Confederates captured a United States vessel, the Merrimac, removed its masts, covered it with iron, and fitted it with an iron prow. This iron-clad vessel attacked and destroyed several Union vessels. It was attacked by the Monitor, an iron-covered vessel designed by Captain John Ericsson and commanded by Lieutenant Worden. It carried larger guns than had ever before been used on a vessel. A fierce battle was fought in which neither of the iron-clads was seriously injured, and the Merrimac finally withdrew.

Leaving the Mississippi squadron in charge of Porter, who was also a rear-admiral now, Farragut went to the Atlantic coast. As soon as vessels could be refitted, he set forth in the summer of 1864 to capture Mobile, an important seaport of the South. With twenty-four war-ships and four iron-clads he entered Mobile Bay which was commanded by two strong forts.[289] In order to overlook the fleet and direct its action, the admiral stationed himself in the rigging of his vessel, despite the protests of his men against his occupying a place of such danger. A submarine mine sunk one of his vessels with almost its entire crew; at this disaster the vessel which was leading the fleet stopped. Admiral Farragut ordered his own vessel, the Hartford, “full speed” in the van and led the way into the bay. The entire Confederate fleet was destroyed, and the forts were taken in a few days, thus giving the Federals control of the Gulf. Of the battle of Mobile Bay Farragut said, “It was one of the hardest-earned victories of my life, and the most desperate battle I ever fought since the days of the Essex.”

While Farragut was in the Gulf making ready to attack Mobile, in June, 1864, a brilliant naval battle was fought off the coast of France. This was between the Federal Kearsarge, commanded by Captain Winslow, and the Confederate Alabama under Captain Semmes. After an hour’s desperate battle, the Alabama was sunk.

A few months later, occurred one of the most daring deeds of the war. The Confederate vessel, the Albemarle, was destroyed at night by a torpedo from a little boat commanded by Lieutenant Cushing. Lieutenant Cushing had volunteered for the service, fully recognizing the danger to which he would be exposed. His boat was sunk, and only he and one of the crew escaped by swimming.

War at best brings with it terrible suffering, hardship and sickness, wounds and death. Gratitude is due those who labor to alleviate such sufferings. Among these, women have ever been foremost. During the Crimean War in Europe, Florence Nightingale and other noble Englishwomen went to the Crimea to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers.

In our War between the States a few years later, similar services were rendered by many self-sacrificing women, both North and South. Two great organizations, the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission, were formed in the North to collect supplies and forward them to the needy and suffering soldiers. Mary Livermore, who was at the head of the Sanitary Commission, wrote an interesting account of its work.

While these were busy at home, other women were at work in the hospitals and on the battle-fields, caring for sick and wounded soldiers. One of these nurses was Dorothea Dix. During the war, she was a superintendent of hospital nurses; after the war, she devoted herself to improving the conditions of prison life.

Another hospital nurse was Clara Barton, afterwards so prominently identified with the Red Cross movement. She was born in Massachusetts in 1830. In young womanhood she taught several years, then she secured a[291] clerkship in Washington. At the beginning of the War between the States, she resigned her position to work in army-hospitals, where she was called “an angel of mercy.”

After the war, broken down in health, she went abroad. In Europe she became interested in the work of the Red Cross societies, which were doing a noble work and had already secured the co-operation of twenty-two nations. These organizations were due to the efforts of a Swiss gentleman who in 1859 visited the field of Solferino where, in a battle between the Austrians and the French, thousands of soldiers were killed and thousands were wounded. The medical aid at hand was pitifully inadequate; the sight of the sufferings of the wounded soldiers led this Swiss to plan the formation of societies for the relief of wounded soldiers. Such a society was formed at Geneva in 1864, and a badge, a red cross on a white ground, was adopted which was to be worn by those in its service.

By the efforts of Miss Barton, in 1881 the United States co-operated in this work. A Red Cross society was formed of which Miss Barton became president. In 1896 its members helped in the relief of the Armenians; they did noble work in the Spanish-American War in 1898, and in the Boer War the next year.

The work of the Red Cross society is not limited to the relief of the victims of war. In times of calamity and disaster, it takes speedy relief to those stricken by[292] flood, famine, or pestilence. During the floods of 1884, Miss Barton in a relief-boat traveled thousands of miles up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, distributing food, clothing, and supplies. The Johnstown flood of 1889 left four thousand people dead and twenty thousand homeless. The Red Cross Society hastened to the relief of the sufferers. For five months its agents worked amid scenes of want and distress, distributing over two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of food, clothes, furniture, and other supplies. They did similar work at the great flood of Galveston in 1900, and are always ready to extend a helping hand where it is needed.

George Dewey, the third admiral of the United States navy, was born in Vermont, December 26, 1837. He was descended from a Puritan who emigrated to Massachusetts about 1633. As a boy, George Dewey was mischievous and daring and not fond of study. His father, however, realizing the importance of education, kept him at school and insisted on his applying himself.

He entered the Naval Academy when he was seventeen and was graduated in 1858, fifth in his large class. His first active service was in Farragut’s attack on New Orleans, and here he showed courage and coolness under fire.

[293]In attempting to pass Port Hudson, his ship, the Mississippi, was riddled with shot and shell. Then it was run ashore and set on fire by Captain Smith and Dewey to prevent its falling into the hands of the Confederates. In his official report of this affair, Captain Smith said, “I consider that I should be neglecting a most important duty should I omit to mention the coolness of my executive officer, Mr. Dewey, and the steady, fearless, and gallant manner in which the officers and men of the Mississippi defended her, and the orderly and quiet manner in which she was abandoned after being thirty-five minutes aground, under the fire of the enemy’s batteries.”

After the war Farragut said to Dewey’s father, “Your son George is a worthy and brave officer and some day will make his mark.”

It was long, however, before the opportunity came for him to do so. Meanwhile he went quietly on, performing the duties of his profession. For two years after the War between the States, he was instructor in the Naval Academy. In 1884 he was promoted captain and in 1897 commodore. He was now sixty years old, and while he was recognized as a brave and able officer, the prospect seemed that he would be retired at sixty-two, according to the rules of the navy, without gaining special fame.

But this was not to be the case. His opportunity was to come, and because he was ready for it, he was to[294] attain a fame equal to that won by any other naval commander of his country. In January, 1898, he was ordered to take command of the Asiatic squadron; that spring while he was on Pacific waters, war was declared between the United States and Spain.

Cuba, one of its first discoveries, had remained subject to Spain while one after another of her New World possessions slipped from her grasp. Instead of ruling the colony wisely, Spain governed it with severity and injustice. The oppressed people made more than one effort to gain freedom. One attempt after another was unsuccessful, but in 1895 there broke out a rebellion so desperate that the Spaniards were not able to suppress it. The cruel General Weyler was put in command of the army in Cuba. In order to keep the natives from taking part in the insurrection, he formed what were called “concentration camps;” towns were surrounded by barbed wire fences and the inclosures were guarded by Spanish soldiers; in these were confined men, women, and children. Foul water, lack of food, and lack of proper sanitary regulations killed thousands in these camps. Through the Red Cross Society, the Americans sent food and supplies to the sufferers.

When our Consul in Havana reported that many Americans were among the starving sufferers, the United States protested; finally, Weyler was recalled and the American prisoners and the helpless natives were released.

[295]In the winter of 1898 the Maine, an American battleship commanded by Captain Sigsbee, was in Havana harbor on a friendly visit. On the fifteenth of February, it was blown up by a submarine mine and two hundred and sixty-six Americans were killed. No one could find out who put the mine there nor who exploded it. This incident excited such indignation in America that Congress authorized President McKinley to use the army and navy to force Spain to give up Cuba. This caused Spain to declare war against the United States.

The war with Spain began, April 21, 1898. Three days later, orders were cabled to Dewey, who was at Hong Kong, China: “Proceed at once to the Philippine Islands. Commence operations, particularly against the Spanish fleet. You must capture or destroy the vessels. Use utmost endeavor.”

As Dewey sailed from Hong Kong, he signalled to his fleet: “Keep cool and obey orders.” The night of April the thirtieth the vessels reached Manila; ignoring the mines and batteries, they steamed in single file between the forts which guard the wide entrance of the bay. A little after five o’clock on the morning of May 1, 1898, began the battle of Manila Bay. The Spanish fleet was commanded by Admiral Montojo, one of the ablest of the Spanish officers. His fleet and the batteries opened fire on the Americans. Two submarine mines were exploded; fortunately, they did no damage[296] and they did not deter Dewey, who had been with Farragut at the battle of Mobile Bay when the brave admiral sailed over torpedoes.

Dewey coolly watched the Spanish cannonade for awhile, and then quietly said to the captain of his flag-ship, the Olympia: “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” With a shout, “Remember the Maine,” the Americans fired. Their vessels, single file, passed the Spanish squadron, firing broadsides with deadly effect. Then they turned and repeated the maneuver. This was done five times in the course of two hours. The Spanish ships one after another were sunk, disabled, or blown up. At half past seven o’clock Commodore Dewey withdrew out of range of the Spanish batteries, and breakfast was served. He then returned to the attack and in two hours the Americans completed the destruction of the Spanish fleet, which was superior to their own in ships, men, and guns. The Spaniards fought bravely, but they were poor marksmen; they had two hundred men killed and lost their squadron of twelve vessels. The Americans did not lose a ship and they had only seven men wounded and none killed.

Dewey received from Congress a vote of thanks and the rank of rear-admiral. He remained in charge at Manila till relieved by a military governor. The war was over then, Spain was defeated, and Cuba free. There was no further occasion for his services. In[297] 1899 he left Manila; after a leisurely cruise, in the autumn he reached the United States, where he was received with enthusiasm.

The United States has been called “the land of the poor man’s opportunity.” More than one barefoot boy in it has passed from a log cabin to the White House. In no other country have there been such rises from poverty to wealth and position. There is often much to condemn in the methods by which vast wealth is acquired, but the task requires ability and talent of a kind, and the careers of these “captains of industry,” as they are well termed, are regarded with interest.

A typical man of this class is Andrew Carnegie, who has risen from extreme poverty to vast wealth. He was born in 1837 in Scotland. His father, a master weaver, lost work when machines took the place of hand-looms; he emigrated to the United States when Andrew was a boy of eleven. Andrew began work when he was twelve as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory in Pennsylvania, at weekly wages of a dollar and twenty cents.

When he was fourteen, he became a telegraph messenger boy and earned three dollars a week. In his[298] spare time, he learned telegraphy and became an expert operator.

He was shown a model of a sleeping car of which he was quick to see the advantages; his first business investment was in a sleeping car company, and the success of this laid the foundation of his fortune.

Later on, he became interested in iron works of various kinds. He foresaw that iron bridges would largely take the place of wooden ones. He formed a company to make the parts for iron bridges. Later, he saw the superiority of steel over iron. In 1868 he introduced into America the Bessemer process of making steel. He acquired one after another seven great iron and steel works; moreover, he acquired coal and iron fields and railways and steamboats to control transportation.

In 1889 his plant at Homestead was the scene of a strike, one of the fiercest contests in America between capital and organized labor. A number of workmen and detectives were killed, and the militia had to be called out to put down the riot.

In 1899 Carnegie’s interest in different iron and steel plants were consolidated; in 1902 there was formed the United States Steel Corporation, a vast trust with a capital of over a billion dollars, which employs forty thousand people. The year that this trust was formed Carnegie retired from business: he received for his share in the trust two hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of bonds bearing five per cent. interest, thus securing[299] him an income of about fourteen million dollars a year. The Steel King, his wife, and daughter, make their home at Skibo Castle, a magnificent residence in Scotland.

Mr. Carnegie says that a man who has accumulated a great fortune ought to share it with the people. Among the objects which he considers most worthy the aid of men of wealth, he names universities, free libraries, hospitals, public parks, swimming baths, public halls, and church buildings. His own favorite charity is the aid of public libraries to which he has given millions of dollars. In 1902 he gave ten million dollars to found Carnegie Institution in Washington “for promotion of study and research.”

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