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!
I
The True 5tory
I'W
"^America
iEIbrid?eS. Brooks
Illustrated!
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ~E 1-7(3
('h:ili.jL3.. Copyright No,
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
iUE MINUTE MEN OF THE UE VUl.L' 1 lU.N .
" He determine to die or be free."
.Ntt l""J^ •-''-'•
THE TRUE STORY OF
THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA
TOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY /
ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS
Author of
The Century Book for Young Americans, The True Story of George
Washington, The True Story of Abraham Liucohi, Historic Boys,
Historic Girls, The Story of the American Indian, The
Story of the American Sailor, etc., etc.
FULLY JLLUSTKATED
BOSTON LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
.^^7 3 / ^7
Copyright, 1891,
BY
D. LoTHRop Company.
COPYKIGHT, 1897, BY
LoTHROP Publishing Company.
Xorfajoot) 39rfBS :
Berwick & Smith. Norwood, Mass., I'.S.A.
PREFACE.
The story of the United States of America has already been told and re-told for young Americans by competent writers, and yet there is room for another re-telling. To avoid as far as possible the dreary array of dates and the duU succession of events that may make up the history but do not tell the story — to awaken an interest in motives as well as persons, in principles rather than in battles, m the patriotism and manliness that make a people rather than in the simply personal qualities that make the leader or the individual, is the aim of the writer of this latest " Story." The future of the Republic depends on the up- bringing of the boys and girls of to-day. Any new iight on the doings of the boys and girls of America's past when they grew to manhood and womanhood should be of service to the boys and girls of America's to-day and to-morrow. The hope that this volume may help as such a light has inspired its author to write as concisely and as simply as he is able the story of the great Republic's origin, development and growth from the far-off days of Columbus the discoverer to the nobler times of Washington the defender and Lincoln the savior of America's liberties.
BosToi^, August, 1891- E. S. B.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW WORLD THAT WAS OLD ........ 9
CHAPTER II.
COLUMBUS THE ADMIRAL I9
CHAPTER III.
THE NAMING OF AMERICA 26
CHAPTER IV.
SPAIN AND HER RIVALS .......... 29
CHAPTER V.
HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD ......... 37
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST COLONISTS .......... 47
CHAPTER VII.
HOW THEV LIVED IN COLONIAL DAYS 56
CHAPTER VIII.
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN ......... 64
CHAPTER IX.
WORKING TOWARD LIBERTY ......... 74
CHAPTER X.
" THE LAST STRAW ".........,. 84
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST BLOW FOR FREEDOM . 93
CHAPTER XII.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIO.N I OO
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION ......... IO9
CHAPTER XIV.
STARTING OUT IN LIFE II9
CHAPTER XV.
"the AMERICANS" 130
CHAPTER XVI. unsettled days . . . 141
CHAPTER XVII.
A WRESTLE WITH THIL OLD FOE .......... 152
CHAPTER XVIII.
STATE-MAKING . . . 161
CHAPTER XIX.
CITIZENS AND PARTIES .......... I70
CHAPTER XX.
CHANGING DAYS iSo
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SHADOW OF DISCORD .......... 1 89
CHAPTER XXII.
FOR UNION 202
CHAPTER XXIII.
A FIGHT FOR LIFE 213
CHAPTER XXIV.
A REUNITED NATION 223
CHAPTER XXV.
AFTER AN HUNDRED YEARS . . . 23 1
CHAPTER XXVI.
GROWING INTO GREATNESS 239
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Minute Men of the Revolution Fi
Christopher'Columbus .
A dream of Cathay
The Laurentian Rocks of the Adiron
dack region .... *' When monstrous-toed Ijirds waded i
tlie Charles " . An early American The red Americans A war chief of the Mound Builders The " canoes with wings " The landing of Columbus The young Columbus Amerigo Vespucci ....
De .Soto
In sight of Mexico ....
A Conquistadore ....
Coronado's march ....
Sir Francis Drake ....
Sir Walter Raleigh " Elbowing off " . James I. .....
Queen Elizabeth ....
Disputing for possession
Captain John Smith
Powhatan .....
Prince Charles ....
William Penu, the Younger .
A palisaded fort ....
Suspicious of Indians
Dutch windmill in old New York .
■3
14
IS iS
19
20 21 2S
3^
?>Z 35 36 38 39 40
41
43 44 45 45 48
49 50
|
Settlers from Holland approaching New |
|
|
Amsterdam .... |
51 |
|
Cavalier and Puritan |
53 |
|
La Salle |
55 |
|
Longing for the old home |
57 |
|
An old landmark .... |
58 |
|
Going to school in 1700 . |
59 |
|
The whirring spinning-wheel . |
62 |
|
Stopping the post-rider . |
62 |
|
In the chimney-corner . |
63 |
|
The clearing |
65 |
|
On the watch |
65 |
|
" I would rather be carried out dead ! ' |
|
|
said Stuyvesant |
66 |
|
Chaniplain and the Iroquois . |
67 |
|
In treaty with the Iroquois . |
69 |
|
" A witch " |
7^ |
|
A fight with pirates |
73 |
|
New York in 1690 .... |
75 |
|
One of King James' advisers . |
75 |
|
In the cabin of the Mayflower |
76 |
|
One of the villagers |
78 |
|
A lesson in liberty . |
79 |
|
King James II |
Si |
|
In Leisler's times .... |
82 |
|
The people and the Royal governor |
83 |
|
A smuggler |
85 |
|
Guarding the port .... |
85 |
|
The right of search |
86 |
|
The hated stamps .... |
87 |
|
Preparing for " homespun " clothes |
89 |
LItiT OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Unwelcome lodgers . . . . A weak-kneed patriot and her sly cup of
tea . Samuel Adams Paul Revere's ride . The bridge at Concord The British are coming " It rained rebels " Ethan Allen . " The rebels are fortifying Hunker Hill General George Washington . A " Continental " . One of the French soldiers Anthony Wayne .... John Paul Jones .... French's statue of the Minute Man Dr. Benjamin Franklin . John Adams prophesying " the gloriou
Fourth " . The I.iberty Bell .... In Marion's camp .... The Boston Boys and General Gage Threats of resistance to taxation . Inkstand used in signing the Constitution Alexander Hamilton George Washington The inauguration of President Wash
ington ..... George Rogers Clarke . " Borrowing fire " in old days " King Cotton " . . . . The stage coach .... Martha Washington Daniel Boone ....
The new home in the Ohio country Washington's home at Mount Vernon Training recruits for war with France John Adams ..... Thomas Jefferson .... Washington'.s tomb at Mount Vernon
90
92 93 94 96 97 99
lOI
102 105 106 106 107 108 109 no
112 114
"5
118
120 121 125
129 •3'
•33 >3J 135 136 '37 141 142 '43 '45 146
The sale of Louisiana
The tailing flag ....
James Madison ....
Tecumseh, chief of the Shawnees .
The battle of Tippecanoe
Andrew Jackson ...
The ruined White House
Keeping the old flag afloat
Jackson's sharpshooters at New Orlean
Ambushed in the Indian country .
The Conastoga wagon .
The mail boat on the Ohio
An old-time Louisiana sugar mill .
James Monroe ....
Ashland, the home of Henry Clay.
Discussing the tariff in 182S .
A Western flat-boat
John Quincy Adams
De Witt Clinton ....
The railway coach of our grandfathers
When every man was his own cobbler
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
Daniel Webster ....
The traveling schoolmaster .
Andrew Jackson ....
Martin Van Buren ....
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
.^nti-renters, disguised as Indians, am
bushing the sheriff . James K. Polk At Buena Vista Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore Franklin Pierce James Buchanan Dinah Morris's certificat. of freedom Among the sugar cane . Great seal of the " Confederacy " .
147 150
'5' '53 '54 '55 .56
157 159 160 162
■63 166 roS '70 '73 '74 '75 '77 1-8
179 180 iSi 1S2
■S3 184 1 86 1S7 1 88
191 '93 195 '97 1 98 199 200 203 205 207
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Abraham Lincoln ....
Seal of the United .States
Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor
A Louisiana tiger ....
In the enlistment office .
Charge of the Union troops at Gettysburg
The turret of the Monitor
Working for the soldiers
The birthplace of Abraham Lincoln
Home again
Andrew Johnson .... The Capitol of the United States . Ulysses Simpson Grant . Old French market, New Orleans .
|
209 |
Rutherford Birchard Hayes |
228 |
|||
|
211 |
The Art Gallery . |
229 |
|||
|
212 |
Machinery Hall |
230 |
|||
|
214 |
Sitka, the capital of Alaska |
■^y- |
|||
|
215 |
" The new way to India " |
^-Zl |
|||
|
g ^17 |
At the cotton loom |
2J4 |
|||
|
220 |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
235 |
|||
|
221 |
William H. Prescott |
236 |
|||
|
222 |
Henry W. Longfellow |
^37 |
|||
|
223 |
Peter Cooper . |
^38 |
|||
|
224 |
James A. Garfield . |
241 |
|||
|
225 |
Chester A. Arthur . |
242 |
|||
|
226 |
Grover Cleveland . |
243 |
|||
|
227 |
Benjamin Harrison |
244 |
THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW WORLD THAT WAS OLD.
ANY hundreds of years ago there Uved in ancient Greece a certain wise man wliose name was Pythagoras. As a boy he had been brought up beside the blue ^gean Sea. _^ji. ,,, He learned to observe carefullj^ He became a traveler £Esi^L=J and a teacher and from the closest study of all the things around him — the earth and sky, the sun and stars, the rise and fall of tides, the changes of the seasons and all the every-day happenings of this wonderful world of ours — he announced as his belief a theory that men called ridiculous but which, to-day, every boy and girl beginning the study of geography accepts with- out question. " The earth," said Pythagoras to his pupils, " is spherical and inhabited all over."
That was fully twenty-five hundred years ago and yet, after nearly two thousand years had passed, a certain Italian sailor whose name was Christopher Columbus and who believed as did the old Grecian scholar, made the same statement before a council of the most learned men of Spain and was laughed to scorn. " This Italian is crazy," they said. ''Why, if the earth is round the people
9
10
THE NEW WOULD THAT 1(1 1. S OLD.
on the other side would be walking about with their heels above their heads; all the trees would grow upside down and the ships
must sail up hill. It is absurd. All the world knows that the earth is flat."
P)Ut this Italian sailor was per- sistent ; Ijetter still, he was pa- tient. His life had been full of adventure. From his boyhood he had Ijeen a .sailor and a .sol- dier, a fighter and a traveler in many lands and upon many sea?. He loved tlie study of geogra- phy ; he was an expert map- drawer ; he had noticed much and thought moi-e. Believing in the theory of. Pythagoras, famil- iar to Italian scholars, that this earth was a globe, he also be- lieved that by sailing westward he could at last reach India — or Catha}-, as all the East was called. For ill those days, four hundred years ago, Eastern Asia wa.? a new land to Western Europe. It was supposed to be the home
Cllia-^lul'llKK CUIAMIU s.
of wealth and Inxury. From it came the gold and spices and all the rare things that Europe most desired but which were only to lie pro- cured by long and dangerous journeys overland. To the man who would find a sea-way to India great honors and greater riches were sure to come. So all adventurous minds were bent upon discovering a new way to the East.
''S^t
A DUi;.\M UF CAT1I.\Y.
THE NEW WORLD THAT WAS OLD.
11
Christopher Columbus solved the problem. The surest and safest way to the East, he said, is to sail west. This really sounded so ridiculous that, as we liave seen, men called him crazy and for a lono- time would have nothino; to do with him or his schemes. But
illi: l.AUliE.MIAN l:o(JKS l)F THE ADIIiO-\D.\(.K i;i:ijiu:,.
he persisted ; he gained friends ; he talked so confidently of success, so eloquently of spreading the knowledge of the Christian religion among the heathen folk of Asia, so attractively of getting, from these same heathen folk, their trade, their gold and their spices that at last the king and queen of Spain were won over to his side,
12 THE NEW WORLD THAT M'A^ OLD.
and on tlio tliinl of August. 14!t2, witli throe ships iiiid one huiuh-efl and twenty men, Christoplier Oohnnbus set sail from the port of Palos in southwestern Spain and steered straight out into Avhat peojjle called the dreadful Sea of Darkness in search of a new way to India across the western waters. But though Columbus was right in his theories and though, by traveling westward he could at last reacli India and the East something that he knew nothing of lay in his path to stop his sailing westward. Wlint was it '.'
Upon the western half of the earth's surface, stretching its ten thousand miles of length almost from pole to pole, lay a mighty continent — twin countries, each three thousand miles wide and •joined bv a narrow strip of land. Known now to us as North and South America this western continent contains three tenths of all the dry land on the surface of the glebe. It is nearly fifteen million square miles in extent, is four times as large as Europe, five times the size of Australia, one third larger than Africa and not quite as vast as Asia. And this was what stopped the way as Columbus sailed Avestward to the East.
But though it was a new and all unknown land to the great na\igator it is the oldest land in the world. The region fi'om the Adii-ondack forests northward to and beyond the St. Lawrence River, and known as the Laurentian rocks, is said by those students of the rocks, the geologists, to have been the \qy\ first land that showed itself above the receding waters that once covered the whole globe. And all along the hills and valleys of North Am- erica to the south as far as the Alleghanies and the Ohio the great ice-sheet that once overspread the earth and that was driven by the advancing heat nearer and nearer to the North i)ole, uncovered a hind so early in the history of this western world that it was old when Europe and Asia were new.
This old, old land, however, is commonly called the New World. That is because it was new to tlie Europeans foui- hundred years ago. But long before their day there had been people living
THE NEW WORLD THAT WA.S OLD.
13
within what is now the United States. Away back in what is known to geologists as the "pleistocene period" — that is the "most new" or "deposit" age — when the ice was slipping north- ward and dirt was being deposited on the bare rocks ; when the verdnre and vegetation that make hillside and valley so beautiful to-day were just beginning to tinge the earth with green ; when the great hairy elephant bathed in the Hudson and the wooUy
" WHf.M MONSTROUS-TOED BIRDS WADED IN THE CHARLES. "
rhinoceros wallowvN'l in the prairie lakes ; when the dagger-toothed tiger prowled throi'gh the forests of Pennsylvania and the giant sloth browsed on the tree tops from Maine to Georgia ; when the curved-tusked niastorion ranged through the Carolinas and mon- strous-toed birds wad-id in the Charles — there appeared, also, by lake-side, river and sesishore a naked, low-browed, uncouth race of savages, chipping the fli^t stones of the Trenton gravel banks into knives and spear heads and disputing with the great birds and beasts whose trails and tracks they crossed for the very caves and holes in which tho\' li\'ed. These were the first Americans.
u
THE NEW WORLD THAT WA:S OLD.
The more people mix with each other, you iviiow, the more friendly they become. In savage lands, to-day, tribes that are furious fighters against hostile tribes are linked together by some bond of family ties and held by some sort of internal government. So it was with the early Americans. As soon as they had risen above the first brutal desire for eating and sleeping, they learned the difference between fighting for food and figliting for power; they saw that the skins of the animals thej- killed could be wrapped about them for shelter and that a sharpened stone was a better weapon than one that was simply Hung at their enemy or their game. From fighting with the beasts and with each other they liegan to band together for protection ; then, those who lived in the more favored portions of the land grew a little more mindful of one another's wants; they made of themselves little communities in which fishing and hunting were the chief pur- suits, but where those who had the time and iurliuation betjan to fashion things of stone or clay to meet their needs. Bowls and mortars, knives and arrow-heads were followed in time by bracelets and bands, vases and pipe-bowls. Still they progressed. The com- munities became tribes ; some of them began to build houses, to make cloth, to do something more than simply to eat and fight and sleep.
To-day all over the niiddle poi'tion of the United States, from New York to Missouri, there are found great heaps of earth which wise men who have studied them sav are the remains of the towns and villages, the forts and temples, the homes and trading-places of the most civilized portion of the American people of two or three thousand years i^.go, and known for want of a l)etter name under the term " mound-builders." In the far Western plains and ri\er cour.ses, in Arizona and New Mexico and along the lianks of the
AN K.MtLV A.MKKICW.
THE RED AMEEICAXS. " The men did the huntiinj, flshiuy and flfjhting'
THE NEW WORLD Til AT WAS OLD. IT
mighty Colorado tliere exist remains of great houses covering hirge sections or perched away up in the crevices of mighty cliffs. These were occupied in the early days by races now called, for con- venience, the piiehlo or house-builders and the cliff-dwellers.
All these home-building people were, however, of the same race as the fierce and homeless savages who still hunted and slaughtered in the forests of the East or on the prairies of the West. All were Americans coming from the same " parent stock." Some of them, being brighter, more ambitious or more helpful than others, simply made the most of their opportunities and grew, even, into a rude kind of civilization.
But while these advanced, the others stood still. Here in the old American home-land was fought the fight that all the world has known — the conflict between io-norance and intellio-ence. The good and the bad, the workers and the drones, the wise ones and the wild ones here struggled for the mastery, a certain attempt at civilization which some had made went down in blood and conquest and so, gradually, out of the strife came those red-men of America that our ancestors, the discoverers and colonists from across the sea, found and fought with four centuries ago.
Hunters i-equire vast tracts of land to support them in anj'thing approaching comfort ; wars and tribal hostilities prevent rapid growth and there were, probably, never more than five or six liundred thousand of the red-men of North America li\ing within the territory now occupied by the United States. They were of all classes, ranging from the lowest depths of savageness to the higher forms of barbarism ; some were wild and some were wise ; some were brutes and some were statesmen ; some were as low in the social scale as the tramps and roughs of to-day ; some as high (from the red-man's standpoint) as are your own fathers and mothers seen f)om your standpoint to-day.
The half-million red-men who owned and occupied our United States four hundred years ago, though scattered over a vast area.
18
THE NEW WORLD THAT WAS OLD.
] of the \
speaking different languages and varying, according to location, in customs, costume, manners, laws and life, were still brothers, springing from the same original family and having, in whatever section of the land they lived, certain things alike ; they all had the same straight, black hair; they all used in their talk the same sort of many-syllabled words — ''bunch words" as they are called ; and they were all what w^e know as communists — that is, they held
their land, their homes and their pro)>- erty in connnon.
A red American's village was like one large family. All its life, all it,s in- terests and all its desires being shared iointly by all its inmates. Just as if to-day, the |)eople of Natick, or Catskill. or Zanesville or Pasadena should agree to live together in one big house with little compartments for each family, eat- ing together from the same soup-kettle and dividing all they raised and all they found equally between all the inmates of the one big house. The men did the hunting and fishing and fighting ; the women attended to the home- work and the field labor. The boys and girls learned early to do their share and in the home the woman of the house was supreme. Even the greatest war-chief when once within his house dared not disobey the women of his house.
The red-men had but a dim idea of God and heaven. They were superstitious and full of fancies and imaginings. They wor- shiped the winds, the thunder and the sun, and were terribly afraid of whatever they could not miderstand. They had good spirits and bad — those that helped them in seed time and harvest, iu woodcraft and the cha.se, and those, also, that baffled and annoyed them when arrows failed to strike, traps to catch or crops to grow.
COLUMBUS THE ADMIRAL.
19
In other words, the red-men of North America were biit as little children who have not yet learned and cannot, therefore, under- stand the reasons and the causes of the daily happenings that make up life.
CHAPTER II.
COLUMBUS THE ADMIRAL.
N a beautiful October morning in the year 1492, as one of the red Americans belonging to the island tribes that then lived on what we know as the Bahama group, southeast of the Florida coast, parted the heavy foliage that ran almost down to the sea on his island home of
Guanahani, he saw a sight that very nearly took his breath away.
Just what it was he could not at first make
out, but he thought either that three terrible
sea-monsters had come up from the water to
destroy his land and people or that three great
canoes with wings had dropped from the sky
bringing, perhaps, to the folks of Guanahani
some marvelous message from the spirits of
the air of whom they stood in so much awe. Gazing upon the startling vision until he
had recovered from his first surprise he
wheeled about and dashed into his village to
arouse his friends and neio-hbors. His loud
calls quickly summoned them and out from the
forest and through the hastily parted foliage
they rushed to the water's edge. But as they
THE
IA.XOES WITH WINGS.
20
COLUMBi'S THE AD Mill A L.
gained the low and level beach the}- too stood mute with terror and surprise. For, from each of the monster canoes, other canoes put off. In them were strange beings clothed in glittei-ing metal or gaily colored robes. Their faces were pale in color ; their hair was curly and sunny in hue. And in the foremost canoe grasping in one hand a long pole from which streamed a gorgeous banner and with the other outstretched as if in greeting stood a figure upon whom the Americans looked with wonder, reverence and awe. It was a tall and commanding figure, noble in aspect and brilli;int in costume and as the islanders marked the marvelous face and form of this scarlet-clad loader they bent in reverence
and cried aloud '• Turey ; tureii ; they are tureij!'' (Heaven-.sent.) On came the canoes filled with a glittering company and gay witii fluttering ilags. But as the first boat grounded on the beach and the tall cliief in scarlet, his gray head yet uncovered, the flaming banner still clasped in his hand, leaped into tlie water followed by his men the terrified natives thought the spirits of the air were come to take vengeance upon them and, turning, they fled to the security of thicket and tree- trunk. But led back by curiosity the\- looked again upon the.se strange new-comers, and behold! they were all kneeling, bare- headed, upon the sand, kissing the earth and lifting their eyes toward the skies.
Tlien the scarlet-mantled leader rising from the ground, planted the great standard in the sand and drawing a long and shining sword he spoke loud and solemn words in a, language the wonder- In"; islanders could not understand, while those marvelous figures
d)out him as if in
THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS.
in glittering metal and gleaming clotli knc
THE YOUNG COLUMBUS.
" It was the realization of a Ufe-Ionri dream, first dimly conceived by him in his boyhood days at Genoa."
COLUMBUS THE ADMIRAL. 23
worship. They kissed their chieftain's hands, they embraced his feet and raised such kiud and joyous shouts that the simple islanders puzzl'id yet over-awed supposed all they saw to be signs of the devoutest adoration. '■'■ Turey ; iurey!" they cried again. "He is heaven-sent." And then they, too, prostrated themselves in adoration.
Who were these pale-faced visitors who had come in such a startlint' wa\- across the eastern sea ? Not for years coidd the red Americans into whose lands they came understand who they were or why they had visited them, although they learned, all too soon, that there was little about the new comers that was godlike or heavenly. The pale-faced strangers deceived and ill-treated the simple natives from the first and for four hundred years the red- men of America have known little but bad faith and ill-treatment at the hands of the white.
But we who luive hoard the story again and again know who were these wliite visitors to Guanahani and from whence they came. For the leader of that brilliant throng that knelt in thank- fulness upon the Bahama sand — this chieftain, whose followers clustered about him and raised applauding shouts while he took possession of the new-found land in the name and by the authority of Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain — this scarlet- mantled captain whom the wondering natives worshiped as a god, was that Christopher Columbus, the wool-comljer's son, the enthusiast whom men had laughed at as a madman and a •• crank," the patient, persistent Italian adventurer who was now because of his great discovery owner of one tenth part of all the riches he should find, Lord Admiral of all the waters into which he should sail and viceroy of all the lands of this New Spain upon whose sunny shores he had set foot. " I have found Cathay," he cried.
It was a glorious ending to long years of toil and struggle. It was the realization of a life-long dream, first dimly conceived by him in his bovhood days at Genoa. With firm and unwavering
24 COLUMBUS TUE ADMIRAL.
fiiitli r()linii])ns liad overcome all odds. He had been despised and ridieided. threatened and cast aside ; he had gone from court to coiu-t in Enrope vainly seeking aid for his enterprise ; and when, at last, this was eautionsly given, he had braved the terrors of an luiknown sea witli tlu'ee crazy little vessels and an luiwilling coni- jianv' of a hundred and twenty men. For days and days he had sailed westward .seeing nothing, finding nothing. whiK' his men sneered and grumbled and plainly showed that, if they dared, they would gladly have flung their captain overboard and turned about for home. At last signs of land began to appear — vagrant seaweed and floating drift wood, land birds blown oft" the shore and warm breezes that almost .suielled of field and forest. And then, one day, at midnight the admiral saw a moving light that told of life near l)y and finally in the early morning the eiy of Land ! from the watcid'ul lookout, Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on board the Nina, told that the end of the long waiting at last had come and that Cathay was found.
It was on the niorinng of Friday the twelfth of October. 1492, that Cohnnlnis landed on the island of Guanahani and solemnly named the i.sland '• San Salvador." The rich vegetation, the dark- .■^kinned natives, the rude but glittering ornaments in their ears and on their arms alike strengthened his belief tiiat liis plans w^re all successfid and that he had found the land of gold and spices he had sailed away to seek. He had promised to find the Indies and because by sailing westward he had come upon what he supposed to be certain rich islands off the India coast these i.slands were called and have ever siiu'C been known as the "West Indies, while the red natives who inhabited both the islands and the vast conti- nent beyond have ever since been called l)y the name the Spanish discoverers ga\e them — Indians.
It wa-s all a mistake. Colnmb\is had sailed westward to find Iiulia and had found a new world instead, a world that wa.s to prove of fjreater value to mankind than <'ver India woidd or could. But
COLUMBVS THE ADMIRAL. 25
to the day of his death Columbus believed he had foimd the land he sought for. " I have gone to the Indies from Spain by travers- ing the ocean westwardly," were almost his last words. And although he made four voyages across the Atlantic, each time dis- covering new lands and seeing new peojole, he still believed that he was only touching new and hitherto unknown islands off the eastern coast of Asia.
And so for a while all the world believed. No conqueror ever received a more glorious reception on his home-coming than did Columbus, the admiral. He entered the city of Barcelona, whore the king and queen waited to receive him, in a sort of triumphal procession. Flags streamed and trumpets blew ; great crowds came out to meet him or lined the ways and shouted their welcome and enthusiasm as he rode along. Captive Indians, gaily colored birds, and other trophies from the new-found land were displayed in the procession and in a richly deco- rated pavilion, surrounded by their glittering court, King Ferdinand and Isabella the queen received the admiral, bid- ding him sit beside them and tell his wonderful story. Honors and privileges were conferred upon him. He was called Don, he rode at the king's bridle and was served and saluted as a grandee of Spain.
Columbus, as has been said, made four voyages to America. But after the second ^•oyage men began to understand that he had failed to find India. The riches and trade that he promised did not come to Spain and many an adventurer who had risked all for the greed of gold and the return he hoped to make became a beggar through failure and hated the great admiral through whom he expected to Avin mighty riches. Enemies were raised up against him ; he was sent back from his third voyage a prisoner in disgrace and chains, and from his fourth voyage he came home to die.
But neither failure nor disgrace could take away the glory from what he had accomplished. Gradually men learned to understand
26 THE NAMING OF AMERICA.
the o-reatness of his achievement, the virtue of lus marvelous perseverance, the strength and nobiUty of his character. After his death the people of Spain discovered that he had opened for them the way to riches and honor; by the wealth of ''the Indies" that Columbus brought to their feet their struggling land was made one of the most powerful nations of the earth : and though some people have said that Columbus did not discover America, l)ut that French fishermen or Norwegian pirates were the real discoverers, we all know that, until Columbus sailed across the sea, America was un- known to Europe and that, for all practical purposes, his faith anil his alone gave to the restless people of Europe a new world. America was better than Cathay, for it has proved the home of freedom, hope and progress.
CHAPTER III.
THE X.VMIXG OF AMERICA.
OLUMBUS, as you have heard, did not know that he had discovered a new world. He thought he had merely touched some of the great islands off the eastern coast of Asia. Even when, in the month of August, 1498, he first saw the mainland of America, at the mouth of the river Orinoco, he did not imagine that he had found a new continent, but believed that he had discovered that fabled ri^er of the East into which, so men said, flowed the four great rivers of the world — the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile.
THE NAMING OF AMERICA.
27
But his success set other men to thinking, and after his wonder- ful voy.ige in 1492 many expeditions were sent westward for pur- poses of discovery and exploration. After he had found " Cathay ' every man, he declared, wanted to become a discoverer. There is an old saying you may have heard that tells us " nothing succeeds like success." And the success of Columbus sent many adventurers sailing westward. They, too, wislied to share in the great riches that were to be found in " the lands where the spices grow," and they believed they could do this quite as well as the great
admiral.. Once at a dinner given to Columbus a certain envious Spaniard declared that he was tired of hearing the admiral praised so highly for what any one else could have done. '• Why," said he, '• if the admiral had not discovered the Indies, do you think there are not other men in Spain who might have done this?" Columbus made no reply to the jealous Don, but took an egg from its dish. "Can any of you stand this egg on end?" he asked. One after another of the company tried it and failed, whereupon the admiral struck it smartly on tlie table and stood it upriglit on its brpken part. "Any of you can do it now." he said, "and any
of you can find the Indies, now that I have shown you
the way."
So every great king in Europe desired to possess new
principalities beyond the sea. Spain, Portugal, France,
England alike sent out voyages of discovery westward —
•■ trying to set the egg on end."
Of all these discoverers two other Italians, followino;
where Columljus had led, are worthy of S2)ecial note — John Cabot, sent out by King Henry the Seventh of England in 1497, and Amerigo or Alberigo Vespucci, who is said to have sailed westward with a Spanish expedition in the same year. Both of
28
THE NAMING OF AMERICA.
these men. it is asserted, saw the mainlaiid of America before Cohimbus did. and England foiuided her claims to possession in North America and fcjught many bloody Avars to maintain them because John Cabot in 1497 "first made the American continent" and set up the flag of England on a Canadian headland, in that same year of 1497 Cabot sailed along the North American coast from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson ; and Vespucci, although this is doubted by many, sailed in the same year along the southern
coast from Florida to North Caro- lina. In 1499 Vespucci really did touch the South Anu'rican coast, and in 1-303 he Iniilt the Hrst fort on the mainland near the })rescnt city of Rio de Janeiro.
Both these Italian navigators thought at first, as did Columbus, that they had found the direct way to tlie Indies, and each one earnestly declared himself to have been the first to discover the main- land. At any rate Vespucci could talk and write the best and he had many friends among the scholars of his day. When, therefore, it really dawned upon men that the land across the seas to which the genius of Columbus had led them was not India or " Cathay " but a new contirient. then it was that the man who had the most to say about it olitaincd the greatest glory — that of giving it a name.
Wise men who have studied the matter deeply are greatly puz- zled just how to decide whether the continent of America took it,>< name from Amerigo Vespucci or whether Vespucci took his name from America. Those who hold to the first cpiote from a very old
AMERIGO VESPUCCI.
gPAI^V ANB HER RIVALS.
29
book that says '' a fourth part of the "world, since Amerigo found it, we may call Amerige or America ; " those who incline to the other opinion claim that the name America came from an old Indian word Maraca-pan or Amarca, a South American country and tribe ; Vespucci, they say, used this native word to designate the new land, and upon its adoption by map-makers deliberately changed his former name of Alberigo or Albericus Vespucci to Amerigo or Americus.
But whichever of these two opinions is correct, the Italian astron- omer and ship chandler Vespucci received the honor and glory that Columbus should have received or that Cabot might justly have claimed, and the great continent upon which we live has for nearly four hundred years borne the name that he or his admirers gave to it — America.
CHAPTER IV.
SPAIN AND EER RIVALS.
FTER the year 1500 ships and explorers followed each other westward in rapid succession. Spain, as she had started the enter])rise, still held the lead and secured most of the glory and the reward. France sought a footing on the northern shores, England aAvoke slowly to the value of the Western world, but for nearly fifty years Spain stood alone in the field of American discovery and conquest.
And Spain's hand was heavy. The nation was greedy for gold ; America was thought to be a land of gold aud every exertion was
30
SPAIN AND IIER RIVALS.
made to obtain great stores of the precious metal. For this the ships sailed westward while the " gontlonien-ndventnrers" thronged their decks; lor this thev coasted up and down the land, killing the
trusting natives without pity, or turning tlicni into slaves to lu'lp on theii' gi'cedy search. The lirst ([uestion on lauding was: Which way docs the treasure lie? and the new comer.s could scarcely wait hut would rusli where even the slrndei-est promise pointed Avith the cry, •• (lold, gold I " upon their lips.
But this restless hunt for gold gave the knowledge of new lands (o the world, in 1500, Captain Cabral the Portuguese navigator discovei-cd tlir shores of Brazil ; that same year, thousands of miles to the north, the French sailoi- Gaspar Cortereal landed upon Labrador ; in 1508 Vincent Pinzon entered the Rio de La Plata and the Spanish gold-hunters find- ing the Indians not hardy enough for work in the nunes .sent over African negroes to take their places, and thus introduced into America the cur.se of negro slavery; in 1-511 Diego Velasquez, with three hundred men, conquered the island of Cuba; in 1512 John Ponce de Leon, .seek- ing for a mairic fountain that, it was said, would make him young again, discovered Florida but not the magic spring; in 1513 Va.sco Nunez de Balboa, still looking for the coveted gold, crossed the Isth- mus of Darien and discovered the Pacific Ocean ; in 1519 Hernando Cortes with five hundred and fifty men sailed to the conquest of Mexico and completed his bloody work in less than two years; in 1519 Francisco de Garay explort'd the (iulf of Mexico ; in 1520 Lucas de Ayllon explored the Carolina coast; in 1522 Fernando Magellan sailed around the world; in 1524 the Italian capt;iin Verrazano
SPAIN AND HER RIVALS.
33
sailed with a French expedition into Narragansett Bay I'nd New York harbor; in 1531 the cruel Pizarro with scarce a thousand men overthrew the Inca civilization of Peru and conquered all that coast for Spain; in 1535 Jacques Cartier, a French navigator, explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and set up the arms of France on the banks of the great river of that name; in 1535 the Spanish captain Mendoza with two thousand men conquered all the great silver country about the Rio de la Plata ; in 1537 Cortes, sending an
expedition north- covered the re2;ion i De Soto with /^''
the conquest M
J"
ward along the Pacific coast, dis- called California; in 1539 Fernando a gallant army, landed in Florida for of all that country, and marched westward to his death ; in 1541 Chile was conquered by Spanish ti-oops and Orellana the advent- urer made the descent of the Amazon from its source to its -"' mouth; in 1543 De Soto's broken expedition came sadly back, a sorry remnant only, leaving its leader dead beneath the waters of the great river he had discovered — the mighty Mississippi.
It is a long and adventurous record, in which Spain bears almost all the glory, is it not? But so for fifty years did Spanish ships and Spanish soldiers " the Couquistadores " or conquerors, as they were called, sail and march hither and thither, exploring and couquering. making a few settlements at im- portant points from which they might send home the riches they had collected, oettins: themselves hated by the red men whom they tortured and enslaved, and growing each year more and more greedy for the gold they never seemed able to get enough of.
Whoever is greedy is certain to be disliked, for he who tries to
IN SIGHT OF MEXICO.
34
SPAIN AND UER lilVALS.
appropriate everything generally finds that other people object to .such an ai)propriation. Four hundred years ago the Pope of Rome was believed to be the head of the Christian world. To him kings and princes gave obedience and his word was law. When Portugal — 1)V reason of her discoveries in Africa and Asia — and Sjiain, be- cause of what CoUunbus had found acro.'^s the western seas, appealed to Rome for authority to possess the lands, the Pope drew a line on the map and said: " All discoveries west of this line shall belong to
Spain ; all east of it shall belong to Portugal."
But there were other nations that objected to such a division. England, as we have seen, claimed the right to possess America because of Cabot's dis- covery in 1497,. and France whose fishermen had for years sailed westward to the shallow places or "banks" off Newfoundland where codfish Avere to be caught, laid equal claim to the Ameri- can shores. For years they did not openly dispute with Spain, for the ships and explorers of that nation kept to the .south in their .search for gold, while France kept to the north. Verrazano. in May, 1524, had landed near Portsmouth, N. H.. and in 1537 Captain Jacques Cartior sailed up the St. Lawrence River as far as Montreal. Other French ships followed, and though Spain grumbled loudly and threatened all sorts of harsh things to France for thus sailing into •• her territories," for a while nothing was done because S]iain still held that the most valuable part of America wivs to the south where the gold mines lay.
But now England awoke to the fact that Spain's greediness must be stopped, and that .some of the good things that Avere being found in America ouuht realh' to come to her. The king of England
SI'AIJV' AND UER lilVALS.
35
quarrelled with the Pope of Rome, and denying the right of the Pope to give away tlie new world to Spain, King Henry the Eiii-hth and his daughter the famous Queen Elizabeth began to send their ships and fighting-men into the very regions that Spain had held so long — the West Indies and Soutli American waters. Captain William Hawkins, his son. Captain John Hawkins, and the brave Sir Francis Drake were the most celebrated of these earlv Eno-Hsh sea-captains who dared the might of Spain. Thej- worried the Spaniards terribly ; they stormed their forts, captured their ships and seized tlieir stores of goods and merchandise, and by their daring and their audacity so enraged the Spaniards, that for o^•er a liundred years the waters all about the West India Islands and the lands which were known as the Spanish Main, were the scene of bloody battles and cruel revenges. These old English- men were brave men though they were cruel fighters, as indeed were all men in those bloody times. Captain John Hawkins kept his ships together by these excel- lent directions : " Serve God daily ; love one another ; preserve your victuals ; beware of fire ; and keep good //jIk company." And Sir Francis Drake, who was the first '''" ' of Euiilishmen to discover the Pacific Ocean, and who in 1578 made a famous vovaare ai'ound the world, was so
m.' ~
feared by the Spaniards against wliom he fought con- tinuallv, that thev called him '• the Ena-lish dragon."
Other noted Englishmen who made themselves famous in Ameri- can discovery were Martin Frobisherwho tried to find a way around America b}^ sailing to tlie north : Sir Humphrey Gilbert Avho twice tried to make a settlement in North America and the story of whose shipwreck in the Swallow has been told in a beautifid poem b}- Longfellow ; Captain John Davis, whom you know in geograi^hy as the brave mariner for wliom Davis' Straits were named ; and Sir Walter Raleioh who crave the knowledge of tobacco to the world and made the first Eno-lish settlement in North America in 1587.
Ii: FKAXCIS DKAKE.
36
SPAIN ANT) HER JillALS.
But. before Ealeigh, settlements had alreacl}' been made in what is now the region known as the United States. John Ribault and Rene de Laudonniere, French Protestants both, in the years 15(32 and 1564 settled French colonies in Florida only to be horribly killed by the Spaniards who claimed the sole right of occupation of that beautiful summer land. Tn 1505 the Spaniards fonnded St.
Augustine and in 1570 tried to make a .settlement on the Potomac River, but failed. The Spaniards even peneti-ated into the country as far north as Cen- tral New York, but all their colonies north of Florida were failures. In 1540 a Spanish captain, named Coronado, .set out from Mexico to find a won- derful land of gold known as the "Seven Cities of Cibola." He led a most remarkable march across the western territory of the United States almost as far north as the present city of Omaha. But he failed to find the .seven fairy cities he sought or even the gold he hoped to bring away ; though, had he but known it. his march across New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado was over more gold than he ever dreamed of — but it was sunk deep down in mines beneath the earth.
So, all through the sixteenth century, from 15UU to UiOO, went on the fight between Spain and France and England for the possession )f the Avestern world. Except in tlic far south, in Mexico and the West Indies, in Brazil and Peru, few settlements were made. It
.Slli WAI.TKl! itAi.i;K;ii.
HOMES IJSr THE JSFEW WORLD.
37
was simply a gold-hunt for a hundred years. At length Europeans began to understand that the riches of the New World were in its splendid climate and its fertile soil, and learned to know that future success was to be found only by those who made homes within its borders. Then it was that the gold-hunt ceased and the exjjlorers were followed hy the colonizers.
=^«L
CHAPTER V.
HOMES IN THE XEW WORLD.
HAVE seen laoys and girls — have not you ? — wii&. when all had equal chances, would rush to the best strawberry- patch, or the fullest blackberry-bush, or the best place for a sight of some passing procession and cry out, " Ah-ha ! it's mine. I got here first ! " Such a display of selfishness is certain to make their companions angry, especially if the finders refuse to share their good fortune.
Well — there was a certain Avise old poet (Dryden, his name was^ who after studvins; the Avays of the world declared that
' Men are but cliiklrcii of a larger growth,"
38
HOMES IN THE NEW WOULD.
-^_.Vo
and the settlement of America is good proof of this. For each nation as it found a footing in the new worhl cried out to the rest of Europe, just like sellish children : " It's mine. I got liere first! "
And it does seem as though for fully a hundred and fifty years — from 1600 to 1750 — the European settlers in North America spent
a good portion of their time in trying to push one another off the little spots of earth on which the V stood, shoxinu' and elhowino; each otlier and growling out : '• Get otf ; this is my ground ! " or: •• Get off, yourself; I've as nuich right here as vou ! "
The Spaniards pushed away the French and the English elhowed off the Dutch and the Dutch crowded out the Swedes until at last, with a 2:rand shove, the English pushed (jff Spaniards, Dutchmen, Frenchmen and all, occupying the whole of North America from the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf of Mexico.
At first the colonies that set- tled in America were started for money-making purposes. Those who founcU'd them came for pur- poses of trade or because they hoped to make a living in the new world more easily than they could at home. Stiange .stories were told of the riches that were to be found in America. "Gold," .so one man said it had been told him, " is more pU'ntil'ul there than copper. The pots and pans of the folks there ari' pure gold, and as for rubies and diamonds tliey go forth on holidays and ])ick them
S^;,
•• KLUOWIXU Ol'F.
HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD.
39
up on the seashore to hang on then- children's coats and stick in their chikh"en"s caps."
So the lazy peojilc who wished to get rich at once without hard work, sailed over to America only to he terribly disappointed. But with all these money-seeking adventurers went also many hard-working and many good and kind people who reallj' desired :--'^" homes in the new world or hoped to be able to help the "red salvages," as they called the In- dians. Brave preachers or missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church went ahead even of the French explorers and settlers ; they carried the knowledge of the Christian religion to the wild Indians of Canada, who never could seem to understand what the good missionaries souo'ht to teach them and, too often, thinking that because the "black robes" came from hostile tribes they must be enemies, tor- tured and killed them. To the English colonies, also, came men and women who had a deeper purpose than simply to make a living. They came because they foiuid it so hard to agree upon religious matters with those in authority at home, and because they hoped in a new land to be able to live together in peace and with the right to worship God as they pleased.
All this was in the early years of 1600. There had been settle- ments formed already within the limits of what is now the United States, but they were not permanent.
In 1565 the Spaniards had founded the present city of St. Augustine in Florida, making it thus the oldest town in the United States, but this place while in Spanish possession had no association with any of the other North American settle- n^,,
ments and can scarcely be considered as belonging to them.
In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh had attempted to plant an English settlement on Roanoke Island on the North Carolina coast, but the houses and colonists he left there had disappeared forever when
40
HOMJiS JJSr THE NEW WORLD.
help came over the seas to them, and to this day no one knows what ever became of " the lost colony."
Ill 1()()U, however, the attention of some of the rich men or capi- talists of England was directed toward tlu' importance of America as
affording a fine chance for bnsi- ness investment, and in that year two wealthy corporations were fonned for tlie j>urpose of colonizing the New Woi-ld. These corporations were called the London Company and the Plymonth Company. To these Companies King James of Eng- land granted the right to trade colonize in the land along
and
\
the Atlantic Coast from Halifax to Cape Fear. Of tliis vast ter- I'itory the Plymouth Company was to control the northern half and the London Company the southern.
No sooner were these Com- panies formed than the}' set about carrying out their plans for trade and settlement. On the first of .January, 1607, an expedition consisting of three ships and over one hundred colonists sailed from England, sent out by the London Company to settle the lands where Sir Walter Raleigh had lost his colony and which he had named Virginia, in honor of the famous Queen Ehzabeth, who because she never married was known as "the Virgin Queen." They landed at Jamestown in Virginia.
The most prominent man in this company of adventurers was
QUEEN KI.IZAliliTII.
DISPUTINi; FOE POSSESSION. " This is my ground."
HOMES IN^ TUB NEW WOULD.
43
Captain John Smitli. His life is one exciting story. A rover and a fighter from his boyhood, he had been in many hinds and had had many snrjirising adventnres. His life in Virginia was no less remarkable. When provisions failed and disaster and death threatened the colonists, Smith by his wise and energetic meas- ures found them relief although many of them were so jealous of his superior ability, that they sought to drive him away. But, notwithstanding their envy, he worked with hand and brain to malvo the settlement at James- town a success. He made friends with the Indians ; he procured from them food for the succor of his starving comrades, and, at the risk of his own life, again and again carried the struggling colony through the dark days of its beginnings. But he did brag terribl}'.
The Indians of Virginia were at first friendly to the settlers. But they soon learned to dis- trust and dislike them, and but for the watchfidness of Captain John Smith and the good-will of a little Indian girl whose name was Ma-ta-oka, sometimes called Pocahontas, the settlement at Jamestown would soon have been utterly destroyed. Pocahontas,
CTliefc arc the Lines, thutrJJiM tf^j'TaceMt thofo
IliatPicW tliy Grace and Cf lory, l-njhhi- bii i
CT'hvTMVl-D'Jcoiicfies anl Towlc- Ovcrthrawcs'
0/ Satvages,mu:ti' CivUlizi Ij- 'tkccx^^ '
JicHJlciV tfiy Sji'r!i:ani ea it, Gtoiy aVynJi.
Sc.tfiou. artSral?c witfiout.iut Qolai \%'itfmL- .
C^"'icas ihou art Virhis,
44
HOMES IX THE NEW WORLD.
i
■ \ -^
'Vr
'o
/
■^7-
■p
n 'n
who was tilt' daiigliter of the Indian cliief Powliatan, proved licr- self in many ways the friend of the Avliite people, and it is sad to think that after her friend Captain Sniitli had left tlu' I'olony. the settlers repaid her kindness by trying to kidnap the Indian girl so
as to force food and corn from her father. Powhatan tlie chief was very angry, and threatened to destroy the colony, Ijnt jnst then a certain English gentleman whose name was Rolfe, fell in love with Pocahontas and mar- ried her, and. at her request. Powhatan made a lasting peace with the white men. It is said that two presidents of the United States. William Henry Harrison and his grandson Benjamin Har- rison, are descended from this Indian girl who married the Englishman.
Captain John Smith was so deeply interested in America that he wrote and talked about it a great deal. He made a map of Avhat he called New England, and the vouno; Enij;lish prince Clrirles (afterwards.the king Avho lost his head) dotted it all over with make- believe towns to which he gave the names of well-known towns in England. Captain Smith told another English captain whose name was Henry Hudson, some of his ideas, and in 1()()9 Captain Hudson, sailing in the service of Holland, remendjcred some of Captain Smith's words and hunted up and explored the In-autiful river that now bears his name — Hudson River. At the mouth of this river
'■is^ la i/U, cart JH^cj,/^ :7^^,
HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD.
45
"KINCE CHARLKS.
in 1G14 the Dutch, as tlie people of Holland ave called, made a settlement which they named New Amsterdam. The colonists were sent out by a rich corporation in Holland called the Dutch West India Company, formed like the London and Plymouth Companies for the purpose of ti-ade. They were sent to the Hudson River country to purchase furs from the Indians. This little fur post was the beginning of the great city of New York.
Captain Smith's favorable report of the New England coast and that of other explorers who had sailed from Maine to Lono- Island Sound, tui'ned the attention of settlers in that direction, but the first real settlement was made in 1620 by a body of English exiles known to us as "the Pilgrims." Driven first to Holland by religious perse- cution, they sailed from Delft Haven in the Mayflower under arrangements with the London or Virginia Company, as it was sometimes called, intending to settle some- where near the Hudson River. By some mistake they did not reach Virginia but striking to the northward, landed first at Cape Cod and, afterward — on the twenty- second of December in the year 1620. stepped ashore on the gray bowlder fa- mous as Plymouth Rock, on the Massa- chusetts coast, and there, in the blealc winter of 1620-21, founded a sorry littlr settlement that was the beginning of New England.
Within the next fifty years other settlements were made along the Atlantic coast by emigrants from Europe — most of them from
\MIII\M n\\ llli: Vol'XGER.
46 JWJIE.'i IX THE :sE\V WOliLU.
Eny-land — who desired to Iniild lor themselves homes in the New World. In lG2o Captain John Mason made two settlements on the Piscataqna River in New Hampsiiire — one at Dover and one at Portsmouth. In 16-34 certain Englisli Roman Catholics seeking relief from persecution, settled on the Potomac River in Maryland. In 1635 people from the Plymouth Colony settled at the mouth of the Connecticut River, and in 16-36 Roger Williams, a good but out- spoken man who could not agree on matters of religion with his Massachusetts brethren, was driven from the colony and with some of his followers founded Providence in Rhode Island. In 1638 a com])any of emigrants from Sweden settled on the shores of Dela- ware Bay ; in 164U certain "^'irginia colonists who could not agree on religious matters with their neighbors, set up for them.solves at Albemarle in North Carolina ; in 1670 William Sayle brought a company of English settlers across the sea and founded Charleston in South Carolina; in 1664 a settlement was made at a place called Elizabeth in New Jei-sey ; in 1682 W^illiam Penn the yoiniger, a famous English Quaker, with one hundred of his associates settled in Pennsylvania where now stands the great city of Philadelphia ; and, years after, in 1730, the Englisli soldier General Oglethorjjc wdth one hundred and twenty colonists, settled in Georgia on the site of the present city of vSavannah.
These thirteen settlements along the Atlantic coast were the be- ginnings of the United States of America. As you see they were for the most part made by peojile who were not satisfied because things at home did not suit them ; and they were, in most cases, backed by the capital of ricli men wiio saw in the ni'w land an opportunity to make money and, st the same time, help the poor or the persecuted folks who were anxious to escape from tlicir home troubles.
They occupied but a narrow strip on the ragged .sea-border of a vast and unexplorcil (•(intim'ut : their beginnings were full of dis- appointment and disaster; tlu'ir future was uncertain and yet these
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
47
thirteen struggling settlements were in time to be reckoned by England as among the most important and at the same time the most troublesome of all her possessions in foreign lands.
T^^^'^
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
cz
HEN we remember how many kinds of people go off to set^ tie in new countries and the reasons that draw them there, we shall not ])e at all surprised to learn that the settlers along the x\tlantic border of North America two hundred and fifty years ago, did not have the easiest sort of life or the pleasantest of times as they tried to make homes for themselves in the midst of all that wilderness. Even though we try to do so, we can scarcel}^ picture to ourselves the three thousand miles of coast hne from Maine to Georgia as it looked in those early days. For, try as we may. we shall not be able to think of it other tlian as it exists to-day — cleared of its woodland, studded Avith noble cities and alive with a crowding and busy throng of men and women, boys and girls. Then, ifi all New Eng- land, the forests ran down to the sea.; behind the white sands of the New Jersev and Carolina beaches, the land was dark with monstrous pines, Avhile over all the land prowled the wolf and the bear, the buffalo and the elk, and all manner of wild wood beasts that we can now only find in menageries, if at all. Not a horse or a cow lived in all North America ; those now here are descendants of the stock brought over hy the European settlers.
48
THE FinsT rOLONISTtH.
Here and there, througliout the land, Avere scattered Indian vil- lages in -wlucli lived a people that no white man dared to trust, be- cause no white man could understand their nuunier of thou"ht and life, \vhik> roving bands in the hunting and fishing season came into the settlements to exchange their peltry for the \vo!idri-ful labor- saving tools the white man had brought with him, or to pry about and make husbaiul and housewife suspicious and inicomfortable.
All about the little settlements rose the xuicleared forests in whose depths and shadows hukrd they knew not what dangers. The woodman's axe had made but small openings as yet, and neai- at hand stood wooden block-house, clumsy fort or picketed ])alisades as the sole protection against lurking Indians or the still more savage foeman of France or Spain.
Neither store nor shop. wartM-oom nor manufactury were to be
A l'AI.ISM)i;i> FOKT.
found when food ran short oi' housriiold stuffs were needed, and all who lacked must go williout or starve until sucli lime as the supply ship, braving storm and wreck, came sailing over-sea.
But, more than all this, the greatest danger to the struggling settlements lay in the colonists themselves. Here were people of
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
49
all sorts and conditions — the poor and the proud, the sick and the well, the good and the bad, the weak and the strong, the wise and the foolish, the worker and the drone, the dissatisfied and the indif- ferent, the over-particular and the careless, every class and every kind of men, women and children whom poverty, discontent, poli- tics, persecution, restlessness, greed, love and ambition had sent across the sea to struggle in a new world for the homes or the ad- vantages they had lost in the land of their birth. Quarreling and jealousies over rights and privi- leges ; pi'ivation and distress from lack of sufhcient food or proper home surroundings ; disease, sick- ness and death — all these sprung up in or visited each little settle- ment, cutting down its numbers, stirring up discontent and strife or hinderiuii' its o-rowth when most it needed gentle influences, sturdy workers and healthy and honest lives.
And yet in spite of all draw- backs the settlement slowly grew.
Along that narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea, from Maine to Georgia, were planted in the years between 1620 and 1700 the seeds from which has sprung a mighty nation of free- men. Before 1620, twelve hundred and sixty-one persons had been sent to the various '■ plantations " of the Virginia Company ; by 1634 the Massachusetts colonists had grown to between three and four thousand in number, distributed in sixteen towns. There were frequent disputes at first as to the ownership of the land and just
SUSPICIOUS OF INDIANS.
50
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
?-i'i^
,^-*_
what the different companies or jjroprietors had the abihty to promise or the right to give away, but these gradually grew less, until at length the only bar to the conijjlete English possession of the Atlantic coast from Pemaquid to Charleston, Avas the little Dutch settlement at the mouth of the Hudson Kiver.
Three hundred years ago there were two questions that more tlian any other i)erplexed people. These were : where and how to
live and where and how to go to church. The Old World was so full of struggle be- tween kings and princes, lords and ladies, as to just who liad the strongest arm and just who should be the ruler, that the peo- ple who were not of high rank were looked upon as lit only to fight for this side or for that. Their trade or occupa- tion was interfered with and following this or that party might make a man a pauper in a day or cost him his life on the battle-field or his head on the .scaffold. When, therefore, the settlement of a new land far away from all this strife and risk, offered opportunity for whosoever had pluck enough or ambition enough to try for fortune in fresh fields, those who loved money, those who loved ease, those who loved freedom and those who loved life, hastened to make the most of the opportunity and sailed to the Virginia Plantations, or the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hud- son. Trade in tobacco and trade in furs speedily made both these sections centers of business, and the Virginia planters and the New Netherland '• factors " built up a steadily growing trade with the home markets in England and Holland.
The question as to where and how to go to church was ecpially
DUTCH WI.NUMILLb IN OLD >,KW YOIiK.
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
53
important. When Martin Lutlier in Germany and King Heniy the Eighth in England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, men began to think for themselves more and more, and new sects and new opinions sprung up in tlie churches. This led to what is called freedom of thought, but it led also to discussions, quarreling, persecution and death. People who held certain religious opinions
CAVAI.IEI: AND rrillTAN.
were very firm in their new faith ; the people who believed other- wise were equally firm, and so it came to pass that they could not live together in peace and charity. Upon this those who were of the weaker or persecuted party looked abroad for some place where they could live as they chose, going to the church of their choice and mingling with those Avho believed as they did. These too
54 THE FIRST COLONISTS.
hailed America as the place they soiig'ht, and tlnis was Massachu- setts settled by the Pilgrims and the Puritans, Maryland by the Roman Catholics, Virginia by the Ejjiscopalians and Pennsylvania by the Quakers.
But even in the new land all was not peace. For the colonists had not brought across the sea that brotherly kindness that is called the spirit of toleration. That was to be gained only as the outgrowth ot" American life and American freedom. So, from Maine to Georgia the different church sects were jealous of one another; thev ara;ued and (luarreled, refused to live toy-ether in unity and showed the self-same spirit of intolerance and the same inclination toward persecution that they had fled from in England, France or Holland.
But in spite of religious differences and political jealousies, of opposition to trade and neglect by those at home who had promised them support and succor, the thirteen colonies on the Atlantic bor- der slowly extended their clearings and enlarged their numbers.
The date of the first jjermanent settlements along the seaboard — not counting the Spanish at St. Augustine — were the French at Port Royal in Nova Scotia in 1G05, the English at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607, the Fi-ench at Quebec in Canada in 1608, the Dutch at New Amsterdam (afterward New York) in Kilo and the English at Plymouth in Massachusetts in 1620.
The French settlement of Canada does not propei-ly fall within our plan of this story any more than does the Spanish si'ttlement of Mexico, for neither Canada nor Mexico have yet become parts of the United States, but the enterprise and energy with wdiich the priests and soldiers, the lords and ladies, the traders and peasants of France sought to found a vast colony among the lakes, the rivers and the forests of the North, are worthy of remembrance. Here Cartier had made discoveries; here Champlain. bravest and nujst un- tiring of Frenchmen, rightly named '' the Father of New France," had founded and fought; here Marquette the missionary and La
THE FIRST COLONISTS.
55
■T?^-
fmi^i^ ■
Salle the trader lived and labored, and, becoming pioneers, pushed westward, discovering the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers and, by right of this discovery, establishing the claim of France to all the wide western country beyond the Alleghanies. But all this vast section, as we shall see, from Canada to Louisiana, was finally secured from France by the power of England or the wisdom of the United .States.
The begiiniings of home-life in the New World which we have already noticed as the "• first permanent settlements," soon led to other attempts at colonization. The founding of Jamestown in Virginia in l(i07 was followed by that of Henrico and Bernuida in 1611 and of other "plantation" settlements in 161(3. In New England the struggling Plymouth colony of 1620 was followed by .the settlements at Little Harbor (or Portsmouth) in New Hamp- shire in 1623, at Pemaquid near the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine in 1625, at Salem in Massachusetts in 1628, at Boston in 1630, at Providence in Rhode Island in 1636, and at Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut in 163.J and 1638. The Dutch settlements at New Amsterdam (New York) and at Renselaerswyck (Albany) in 1623 and at the Wallabout (Brooklyn) were the principal centers of Dutch life, while at Philadelphia in 1682, at Port Royal and Charleston in South Carolina in 1670 and 1680 the Europeans broke ground for homes in a new and untried land. From these as cen- ters other towns were started and in 1700 the population of the Atlantic coast settlements extending from Pemaquid in Maine to Port Royal in" South Carolina had reached upwards of two hundred thousand. During all these early 3-ears the colonists had l)ut little in conunon ; their life and laljor were lai-gely confined to the places in which they had come to make their homes, and a journey from
s4"f
56 HOW THEY LIVED IN COLONIAL DA VS.
New York to Boston was almost as uiicommon as is to-da}' a trip to Central Africa or a vo3-age to the f'ricndlv Islos.
Their forms of government, too. for tliese first years were differ- ent. One by one, however, the colonies were taken out of the hands of the Companies and Lord Proprietors by whom they had originally been planted and were made royal provinces of England ; and, in 17(H). the word of the King of England was law throughout all the thirteen colonies of the English Crown.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW THEY LIVED ]\ (OLOXIAL D.-VYS.
HERE are few boys and girls to-daA', however tenderly
l)rought up, who do not enjoy getting away from their
'jr^ comfortable homes for a few days in the summer and
"roughing it" in some out-of-the-way '' camp " by river,
lake or sea. But, after a while, this summer •• rouii-liin<r "
grows disagreeable and the longing comes for the nice tilings and modern conveniences of home.
Life in the thirteen colonies in America two hundred and fifty ^-ears ago was the hardest kind of '■ roughing it." Con- veniences there were none, and even necessities were few. Many of the new settlers could not stand tlie life. Some returned across the sea to the homes they had left ; some, unable to endure the privations they had to undergo, sickened and died in their new homes ; but those who did .survive or who could stand the home- sickness, the dangers and the diseases which all alike must face and
now TIIEY LIVED IN COLONIAL DAYS.
57
ohare, toiighened under hardship, grew strong and sturdy and self- rehant, and became the ancestors of that hardy race which has built up into prosperity these United States of ours.
As you have learned from the previous cha^^ter, the early colonists, alone and in a strange land, had to depend upon themselves for almost every thing they needed to support life or give them the few
OXGIN'fl I'OR THE OLD HOME.
necessities and fewer comforts they must liave. The gi'ound had to be cleared of its forests, broken and ploughed and prepared for grain and grass, for vegetables and fruits. Many a time did those first comers suffer for food. The "starving time" of 1610 in Virginia, and the famine of 1623 in tlie Plymouth colony, were hardships that
58
IfOW TUEY LIVED IX COLONIAL DAYS.
very nearly destroyed the feeble settlements ; often the people of Plymouth in those first days had nothing but clams to eat and water to drink. And yet one of their faithful ministers. Elder Brewster, could in the midst of such a terrible lack of food thank God that '• they were permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures hid in the sand." Was not that an heroic patience ?
The first houses were the roughest of shelters — holes dug in the ground and hastily roofed over; then, flimsy bark huts or rudely- made log cabins ; houses of hewed logs or of planks, hand-split or hand-sawed from selected forest logs. Finally, as wealthier people came to the settlements more substantial liouscs of wood or stone were built. Sometimes, the " finishing touches," the doors and win- dows, even the verv bricks themselves of which the gable ends of the houses were built, were brought acro.ss the sea fi^^" S^ -A^^^v. -v-^^^ from England or Holland
'^^MiX/iy^^"^^-^
- — x"^*-
AN' <>i,i> i..vxi).m.vi;k.
for the adornment of tlie.se more pretentious houses. Certain of these old land- marks may now and then bi} found to-day, standing, still strong, though gray and weather-beaten. I recall one such in which I have spent many a happy hour, a mile or so back from the Hud.son River, ju.st across the New Jersey line — its ends built of little Dutch bricks brought across from Holland, its quaint and startling mantel of pictured tiles de.scriptive of Old Testament history, its floor of still solid hand-hewed planks, its massive rafters dark with .smoke and age. and over the Dutch half-door the date of building set in burned brick in the front of field stone. And in the old Jackson house at Andover, in Massachusetts, the chimney was so huge that two or three mischievous fellows, fastening a rope about one of their number, lowered him down the chimney until he reached the spot where hung a '• fine fat turkey set aside for the
JJOW TIIEY LIVED IN COLONIAL DAYS. 61
wedding dinner of Master Jackson's daughter." Then thief and booty were ahke pulled up the chimney, and of the wedding turkey a stolen feast was made.
Within the house the rooms were few, but the kitchen, with its huge fireplace, supplied with seats and settles, was at once kitchen, dining and living room ; it was the center of the home life ; its rough but strong home-made furniture, its wooden table-dishes and clumsy " kitchen-things " would be deemed by us of to-day as suited only to the hardest kind of " roughing it." There were, of course, finer houses built as the years went by and the people prospered, but even the finest mansions had but few of what we now call con- veniences— few indeed of what we hold as necessities — and even the most highly-favored children of those early days endured privations that the boys and girls of our day would grumble at as unbearable.
Porridge for breakfast, mush or hasty pudding for supper, with a dinner of vegetables and but Httle meat at any time were the daily meals of our ancestors. Life in all the colonies was rough and simple, and though we of to-day who expect so much would find in it much to complain of, it does not seem to have been altogether uncomfortable as the settlements grew and the fields became more productive, the crops more plentiful and the larder more bountifully supplied. Except in the cities — such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, where English manners and English fashions gradually crept into the wealthier families — the wardrobes of parents and children were scanty and plain. They were usually of homespun stuff, for the whirring spinning-wheel was the best-used belonging of every household. Leather breeches and homespun jackets were worn by father and son, but on Sunday or at times of festivity and holiday, there was a display of lace ruffles and silver buckles and a certain amount of style and finery. The windmills ground the corn that the fertile farms produced ; the post-rider galloped from town to town with news or messages ; the roads were poor ; the streets in the few towns were poorly paved and illy lighted ; the field work
62
HOW THEY LIVED IJSf COLONIAL UAlii.
was the great thing to be done, and strict attendance at chui'ch on Sunday with two-hour sermons to occupy the time was the main
])rivilege of ^oung and old. Schools were rare and never long-continuing. In the South little was done toward the general education of the children, and many of the boys nnd girls in the early days grew to manhood and womanhood iniable to write their names. But as time went on more attention, in the Northern colonies, was devoted to the children's schooling. The instruction given was slight, and '' book-learning " was con- fined to a study of the cate-
THE WIIIURIN'G SPINNING-WHEEL.
chism and of " the three R's" ("reading, 'ritin', and 'rithme- tic "), while the ferule and the birch rod played an important part in the school- master's duties.
There were few wagons for hauling stuff or carriages for riding. Pack horses were the only expresses on land ; boats and small coasting schooners — ketches and snows, as they were called — carried the heavier freights and merchandise along the coast or up and down the rivers.
Indian corn in the North and tobacco in the South were the principal things raised and cultivated. Farming tools and utensils were clumsy and unhandy as compared with those of to-day, and it was a long time be- fore the new farm lands were cleared of stumps and rocks. Many of the New England settlers were fishermen, and as the years went
STOPPING TIIK POST-RIDER.
BOW TBEY LIVED IN COLONIAL DAYS.
63
on they built many vessels for use in the ocean fishei'ies. Ship- building, in fact, soon grew to be an important industry along the Atlantic coast, and only six years after the settlement of New Amsterdam (New York), a " mighty ship "' of eight hundred tons was built and christened the " Nieuw Netherlands ; " but it proved so big and cost so much that it well-nigh ruined the enterprising Dutchmen who built it and not for two hundred years after was so great a vessel attempted in America.
Where there was so much work to be done and so few ways of mak- ing it easy there was not much time for rest or sport. People went to bed eai'ly so as to be up early in the morning ; but the men and boys when they could find the time en- joyed themselves hunting and fish- ing, while many of them grew to be hunters by occupation. Deer and wild turkeys were plenty in the woods ; wild geese and fish swarmed in lake and river ; foxes and wolves, bears and panthers were sometimes
far too jilenty for the farmer's comfort and a constant war was kept up against them with trap and gun and fire. .
Life was rougher and harder then than now and the boys and girls were not allowed to be wasteful of time or food or clothes. The beadle and the tithing-man, the town-crier and the rattle-watch made things unpleasant for mischievous young people, and there was little of that freedom of association between parents and chil- dren that is one of the jDleasantest features of the home and family life of to-day. In every village. North and South alike, the stocks
IN rilli CUIMNliY-Cur.NER.
(H
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
and pillory, the whipping-post and ducking-stool stood in ])lain view as a warning to all offenders, and as a result people were hardened to the sight of punishment and boys and girls would even stand by and make sport while some poor law-breaker was held hand and foot in the pillory or some scolding woman was doused and drenched on the duckiu": stool.
Yes, it was a hard life, judged by our standards, when every one had to "rough it" in those early colonial days. But though we may not feel that the '"good old tunes" we read aljout could really have been so very enjoyable, after all, as we understand '■ good times," we do know that to the struggles and trials, the privations and efforts, the labors and results of two hundred and fifty years ago are due the pluck and perseverance, the strength and glory that made America " the land of the free and the home of the brave."
E£Z
.9lM\
^ss^sm
CHAPTER VIII.
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
F unploughed land and unfilled forests had been the only obstacles with which the early colonists had to contend, if wolf and bear and panther had been the ouly li\ ing ene- mies against which they had to struggle, then would the settlement of America have been as easy a task as is to-dav the starting of new towns in Dakota or Washington, or the cultivation of the reclaimed lands of Arizona and Idaho. But every step of the path toward prosperity had almost to be fought for against foes without and foes witliin.
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
65
THE CLEARING.
The dread of Indian attaek was an ever-present terror, and for this no one was to blame save the white men themselves. From the very first day of discovery the red men and the white had failed to understand one another. Had Spaniard and Englishmen but met the Indians in the spirit of friendship, of justice and of helpfulness much blood and sorrow might have been avoided. But from the very first the In- dians learned to distrust the Europeans. The white man's greed for gold and for land made him careless of the red man's rights and more brutal even than the wild natives of the American forests ; it made him mean and base and cruel and quickly turned the wonder and reverence of the Indian to hatred and the desire for revenge.
When the Frenchmen came a second time to Florida they found the pillar which they had set up to display the arms of France garlanded with flowers and made an object of Indian reverence ; when the Pilgrims huddled, half-famished, upon the Plymouth shore Samoset the Abneki walked in among them with his greeting " Welcome, Eng- lishmen ! " and found for them food and friends ; Avhen Maqua-comen, chief of the Paw-tux-ents, helped the Maryland colo- nists of 1634 to found a home he said : " I love the English so well, that if they should o-o about to kill me, if I had so much breath as to speak I would command my people not to revenge my death, for I know that they would do no such a thing except it were through my own fault."
But this early loving-kindness was short- lived. The red and white races could not mingle peaceably when the white man wanted all that he could get and the red man loved,
ON THE WATCU.
66
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
so strongly, the land of his fathers. From Maine to Florida the war-whoop took the place of welcome and the deadly arrow quickly followed the gift of corn and fruit. Block-house and palisaded fort alike became the object of Indian attack and of stubborn defense, and the hardy troopers and "train-band men" of the
I WOULD HATIlKlt BIC CARRIED OUT DKAD ! " SAID STUATESANT.
colonies repaid the horrors of Indian ambush and massacre with the equal horrors of burning wigwams, the hunt with bloodhounds and the relentless slaughter of chieftain, squaw and child.
Added to the terror of Indian hostilities was the dread of " for- eign " invasion. With France and Si)ain alike claimino- the rio-ht of
I- loo
occupation, the English colonists could never rest in peace. Avhile, for the same reason, the Dutch settlements in the New Netherlands (a section extending from the Connecticut to tlu' Mohawk and from Lake George to Delaware Ba}) were in constant fear of attack by England. For the New Netherlands this came at last. When in ir)64 an English fleet sailed through the Narrows and dropped
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
67
anolior before the little fort at New Amsterdam, the stout and stern Dutch governor Stuyvesant had no choice but to surrender to a superior force. "I would rather be carried out dead !" he cried passionately when he saw his duty. But resistance was useless. New Amsterdam lowered the flag of Holland ; the English colors waved above its ramparts and the New Netherlands became " the Province of New York."
Every war in Europe had its effect in America. The quarrels of the kings were fought out in the forests and on the shores of the New World and the wiser treatment of the Indians by the French- men of Canada always gave to France the terrible ad- vantage of Indian allies.
The only exception to this was the steadfast friendship toward the Eniilish of the powerful Indian republic known as the Iroquois, or "Five Nations" of Central New York. Their real In- dian name Avas Ho-de-no-sau- nee or " people of the long house," so called because of the great buildings in which they lived. The French cap- tain and explorer Champlain, had foolishly quarreled with them in the early days of European occupation, and these warlike tribes had never forgiven France, but remained such firm friends, first of the Dutch and then of the English occupants of New York State, that they were for years the strongest bar against the French conquest and occupation of England's colonies.
CH.WIPLiUN AND THE IISOQUOIS.
68 FOES WITHOUT AXJ> WITHIX.
Til the 01(1 World across the sea Fi'aiice and England had always quarreled, ever since they liad become France and England ; in America they quarreled just the same. France said that by the right of discovery all the land between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains belonged to her ; England asserted that the land she had taken on the Atlantic seaboard extended westward to the Pacific and belonged to her. >So they quarreled about the land. Then France was Roman Catholic while England was Protestant, and in tliose days Catholic and Protestant were bitter enemies. So thev quarreled about religion. But, most of all. France wanted to control the fisheries of the American coast ; .so did England. France was determined to " monopolize " (as we say now) the fur-trade of North America; so was England. So they quarreled about trade. And when men quarrel with one another over land, religion and trade, it becomes a pretty serious matter in which neither side will give in luitil one or the other is defeated for good and all.
This struggle with France really extended from the first capture of Quebec by the English on the nineteenth of July. 1629, to its final capture on the thirteenth of September, 1759 — a period of one hundred and thirty years. The treaty of peace between France and England, signed in 1763, gave to England all the French pos- sessions in America east of the Mississippi River, and the bloody quarrel as to who owned the land came to an end.
The most famous of the Indian Avars of colonial tinu's were what are known as the Pequot War of 16o7 and King Philip's War in 1675. They were dreadful times of massacre and blood and held all New England in terror. But the coloni.sts finally pre\ailed. The Pequot War was brought to a close by the terrible assault on the village of Sassacus, the Pequot chief, by Captain John Mason and his men ; King Philip's War was ended by the fearless methods of Cap- tain Benjamin Church, a famous Indian fighter, and the treacherous murder of the chieftain Metacomet, whom the white men called " King Philip."
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 71
The dates to be especially remembered in the wars with France are the burning of Schenectady in the pi^ovince of New York by the French and Indians in 1690, the capture of Port Royal in Nova Scotia by the English in 1710, the capture of the great fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island in 1745, General Braddock's de- feat by the French and Indians on July 9, 1755, the surrender of Fort William Henry to the French on August 9, 1758, the capture of Fort Duquesne by the English on November 25, 1758, and the decisive battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 in which both the rival generals, Montcalm the Frenchman and Wolfe the English- man, were killed and the victory for England closed the hundred years of war.
Distressing to the colonists as must have been these foes without, even more disheartening must have been the foes within. For troubles in the home are the hardest of all to bear. And almost from the first days of settlement, such troubles had to be faced. As we have seen, all sorts of people came over the sea to America, expecting to be at once successful or rich or at the head of affairs ; disappointed ambition or imsuccessful endeavors made them cross and jealous and angry with those who fared better than themselves and those who were the most discontented, because of their own shortcomings, were always ready to stir up trouble. Then there were the questions of ownership and the disputes between colonies as to how far their limits of possession reached ; and, quite as hotly contested as any, were the religious quarrels in which the most earnest and most conscientious were also the most bigoted and vin- dictive, answering questions with persecution and arguments with banishment. Thus was Roger Williams, who differed with the min- isters of Bo.ston, driven out in 1635, but, undismayed, settled in the Rhode Island wilderness and founded the city of Providence ; thus was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, the earliest of women reformers, also driven out from Boston to meet her death from Indian arrows in the dreadful New York massacre of 1643. Thus were over-zealous
72
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
Quakers whipped '' at the cart's tail " by the Dutch rulers of New Amsterdam and hanged on Boston Common by the Puritan rulers of Massachusetts Bay ; from this cause the " Papists " as the Roman Catholics were called, were imprisoned in New York ; the Baptists were mobbed in Virginia ; Puritans and Papists came to open warfare in Maryland, and " Dissenters " and '• Churchmen " broke into fierce conflict in the Carolinas.
From all this you can see that people in those old days were not as high-minded, as open-hearted, as liberal or as '• kindly-aifectioned one to another" — as the Bible has it — as are people to-day. Educa- tion, freedom and union have made us brothers at liust. And, when people are bigoted and narrow- minded, they are apt to be superstitious and cruel. Our ancestors of two centuries ago were full of the oddest imaginations as to good and bad luck ; their fathers had been so before them. They especially feared the influence of witches. If anything went wrong an evil spirit, they said, had " bewitched " things and at once they hunted about, not to see why things went wrong, but what witch had made tliem go wrong.
Now so many things went wrong in the early colonial days, that the poor settlers begun to think the witches had followed them across the sea, and when one or two of their ministers — in whom they had perfect confidence — said that this Avas so, of course everybody believed it and the hunt for the witches began. It was a dreadful time. In almost all the colonies innocent people were persecuted or put to death under the supposi- tion that they were witches and had worked their evil "spells" upon other people, or upon cattle, crops and homes. But, harshest of all, was the time in New England when, from 1C88 to 1692,
J^^il ^
• A WITCH.
FOES WITHOUT AND WITHIN'.
the famous '• Salem witchcraft " persecution terrified all the peo- ple and led to some dreadful tragedies. Twenty persons were put to death as " witches " in Salem before the end came, and the people slowly recovered from what was a disease of the mind almost as universal as was " the grip " in 1890.
And besides all these troubles of mind and body that faced our forefathers, were others equally hard to bear. Pirates infested the coast, robbing and killing, making travel by sea unsafe and business ventures risky, while — so it was asserted — men of wealth and prominence among the colonists were partners in piracy with such freebooters as Bonnet and Worley in the Carolinas, Teach or " Blackbeard " in Philadel- phia and Captain Kidd in New York. Debts and taxes oppressed the colo- nists as the cost of Indian wars and the exactions of the home government ; while, as cruel as anything in the eyes of a people who were learning to live alone in a great land, the tyrannical measures of their English riders, who deprived them of the rights already granted them by charter and sought to make them simply money-getters for England, wrought them to the highest pitch of indignation and set them to thinking seriously as to some means of relief.
But hard knocks and rough ways, often, we say, '• make a man " of the young fellow who has to undergo them. And so it proved with the thirteen colonies of England in North America. The struggle with foes without and foes within made them at last strong, determined, self-reliant and self-helpful. Bigotry and per- secution, jealousy and selfishness in time gave way to the more neighborly feelings that the necessity for mutual protection and
A FIGHT \vmi riKATICS.
74 WORKING TOW J U I> L lllKli T Y.
the growth of mutual desires create, tlie wisdom of a union of in- terests became more apparent and year by year the colonies came nearer and nearer together in hopes, in aspiration and in action.
TC-^^ .^ .
CHAPTER IX.
WORKING TOWARD LIBERTY.
1\
T is the restless people who have pushed the world aloug. If every one had been satisfied with his lot or had Ijeen williug to put up with things as they were no progress would have been possible. Home one must "start things." And, to do this, he who tries to " start things " must be
dissatislied with his surroundings or his prospects; he must be indicniaut over oppression or injustice or indifference (for not to take care of people is sometimes fully as bad as to bully and distress them) ; he must be ambitious to advance himself or his fellow men and determined to better things if he possibly can.
There were numbers of such people who came over to America ; there were still more born and brought up here amid all the influences toward liberty of thought and action that a new land creates. They and their fathers had left a world wliere titles wi're esteemed of more worth than character and where there was. as yet, too little belief in the truth that an English jwet of our day has put into verse :
" Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more tlian coronets,
And simple fiiitli tli.in Norman blood."
WORKING TOWARI) LIBERTY.
75
NEW YOIiK IN 1690.
When boys get away from home and men from the restraints of government they are very apt to want to strike out for themselves
and they object more than ever to any attempt of tlie far-away ''power's that be" to tell them wliat they must do amid their new surroundings or how they must do it. So, at an earlj^ day, men in America began to think about freedom and to j^lan for a nobler living than was possible in the land they had left behind. For, when active, earnest people are really thrown upon their own resources they are bound to think and act for themselves.
One of the first of such acts was the Virginia Charter of 1618 — " the beginning of free government in America." This charter was a paper secured by the Virginia colonists giving them the privi- lege of dividing the lands they had come to settle into farms which each man could own and work for himself. It also gave them a voice in making their own laws and permitted them to say who should speak for, or represent them in the " General ■Assembly" of the colony. To us who have never known anything different this does not seem like a great conces- sion ; but it was in those days, when no man was really free. And King James, like the crabbed old tyrant he was, was very angry at what he called the presumption of the people. So in 1624, with the help and at the sug- gestion of some of his very wise but very stupid advisers, he took away all these rights and made the colony a kingly " province." But the ideas of personal liberty that the wise framers of the Virginia Charter had put into that early paper lived and became, in later years, the basis for the Constitution and the Government of the United States of America.
ONE OK KING JAMES ADVISERS.
76
WUMKIXG TOWAJil) LIBERTY.
Tlio next step towcard liberty was a remarkable paper or " com- pact" drawn up and signed in the cabin of the MayHower by the Plymouth colonists who, because of their wandeiings, have been called '' the Pilgrims." We call it remarkable because it was a bold thing to do in those days when the people had so little to say abovit their own governing.
As the little vessel lay tossing off Cape Cod on tlie eleventh of
IN THK CAUIN OF THE MAVI-LOWKR.
Novendjer. IGliO, the forty-one men who represented the different families united in the enterprise of colonization, set their signatures to the following compact which is said to have been " the first in- strument of civil government ever subscribed to as the act of the
WORKING TOWABD LIBERTY. 11
whole people." Here it is for you to study out iu all its curious olfl-time wording, spelling and capitals :
- In y" Name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwriten, the loj'all subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by y^ Grace of God. of Great Britaine, France & Ireland King, Defender of y" Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for y" Glorie of God, and ad- vancemente of y"^ Christian Faith and Honour of our King and conn- trie, a Voyage to plant y'' first Colonic in y" Northerne part of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in y*" Pres- ence of God, and of one another. Covenant & Combine ourselves togeather into a Civill I)ody Politick, for our better Ordering & Preservation & Furtherance of y" ends aforesaid ; and by Vertue hearof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equall lawes, ordinances. Acts, Constitutions & Offices, from Time to Time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for y" generall good of y" Colonic, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes whereof we have hereunder subscribed our Names at Cap. Codd y" 11 of November, in y" year of y" Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord King James, of England, France & Ireland y" eighteenth, and of Scotland y" fiftie fourth, ano : Dom. 1620."
Nineteen years later — on the fourteenth of January, 1639 — the " freemen " of the three river towns of Connecticut (Windsor, Hart- ford and Wethersfield) met at Hartford and drew up what is said to be the first written constitution in the world. This paper did not recognize the right of any king or parliament to direct the actions of the people of Connecticut, but held all jiersons wlio were allowed a share in the affairs of the colony to be freemen. Under the arti- cles of this constitution the people of Coimecticut lived for nearly two hundred years.
The forms of government gradually adopted by the several col- onies taught men to stand alone and think for themselves. In Virginia, as we have seen, it was a " General Assembly," or " House
78
WOBKIXG TOWARD LIBERTY.
of Burgesses," as it was more frecjuentlj' callrd. elected l)y the people. In New England it was what is known as a " township "' government in which the people of the various towns taxed a)id governed themselves upon a basis settled once a year by the grown men of the colonies in a coming together called the " town-meeting." The town-meeting also elected to oflfice the men who were to manage public affairs during the year. In South Carolina a popular election
in the several '•parishes'" or cliurch divisions of the colony selected the mini.ster and ves- trymen of the cliur(di and the representatives to the colonial assembly. In Maryland and Delaware the people of the different sections, or ■• hundreds" as they were called — (from the old Roman word for a brotherhood, curia, whence came century, hundred) assembled in '• hundred-meetings," enacted by-laws, levied taxes. apj)ointed committees and helped to goAern themselves. In Pennsylvania the oilicers of each local division or ''county" were elected by the people. In New York the old svstem of villa2;e assemblies estab- lished by the early Dutch settlers was con- tinued by their Engli.sh successors ; this, by direct vote of the people in a sort of town- meeting, selected the governing body of the town for the coming year.
So. you see, the colonists almost from the start learned to govern themselves and were taught the lesson of freedom. But, above the people, as the direct representative of the English king, stood the Royal Go\ernor. He Avas generally a favorite or " pet " of the king ; he was as a rule good for nothing as a man and worse as a governor ; and he was sent over to keep the jjcople " up to the mark " in the service of a king three thousand miles away. The king and his
ONE HI' Tin; VII.I.ACERS.
A LESSON IN LIBERTY. They began tti thin/,' and talk and act."
WORKIRO TOWARD LIBERTY.
81
<^^.
governor were certain to have ideas and methods altogether differ- ent from those held by the people, who knew their own needs and were not slow to speak up for them. Tlie Royal Governor was, in the opinion of the colonists, foi'ever interfering in matters which he could not understand and in whicli they were deeply interested. There was, therefore, a continual quarrel going on between the gov- ernor appointed by the king and the people he had been sent over the sea to govern.
This quarrel dated from the early years of colonization, and some- times led to popular uprisings, to blows and blood. When royal commissioners were dispatched to Virginia in 1624 to take away the liberties granted by the "charter," the "Burgesses" boldly withstood them, and, when the commissioners bribed the clerk of the Burgesses to give up the records, tiie tempted clerk was put into the pillory by his associates and had his ear cut otf . In 1638, and again in 1645, William Clayborne in Maryland headed an armed protest against Governor Calvert and Lord Baltimore ; in 1676 the plucky Vir- ginia colonist, Nathaniel Bacon, stood out boldly against the obstinate and tyrannical Governor Berkeley, and, in what is known as " Bacon's Rebellion," forced the governor to terms, Ijut died Ijefore victory was fully attained, tlie first popular leader in America. In North Carolina, in 1678, John Culpepper headed a rising against the high-handed rep- resentative of the absent Royal Governor, who denied the peojile's "free right of election ; " in 1688 the enraged colonists of the Caro- linas rose against their governor, Seth Sothel, took away his author- ity and banislied him for a year. In 1687 and 1689 the colonists in Massachusetts and New York broke into open revolt against the tyranny of the Icing's representatives, imprisoning Governor Andros
MNG JAMES II.
82
WO EKING TOWARD LIBERTY.
in Massachusetts and frightening away thi' lioutenant-goyernor Nicholson in New York. For. at that time, a revohition in Enghvnd drove from the throne tlie despised King James (for wliom, when he was Duke of York, the city and province of New York had been named) and so mixed up matters in tlie colonies that it was hard to tell just who had the right to act. Then the people resolved to act for themselves. In Massachusetts, after putting the Koyal Governor, Andros, in prison, the people set up a government of their own. Connecticut saved her much-prized -charter" from seizure by the
king's men \t\ blowinc; out the lights just as it was to be taken away, and hiding it in a tree ; that tree stood as an honored relic for nearly two hundred years afterward and was always known as '• the Charter Oak." In New York, the people, left Avith- out a governor, proclaimed their right to rule themselves and ap- pointed a patriotic citizen, named Jacob Leisler, to act as temporary governor. One of the earliest of American patriots, Jacob Leisler ruled with vigor as the •■ people's governor." He summoned a popular convention, arranged the first mayoralty election by the people, made the first step toward union by attempting a continental congress, and tried to make a bold strike at the power of France by an invasion of Canada. But he was disliked by the few " aristocratic " leaders of New York affairs, because he Avould not do as they wished but preferred to act for the whole people ; they combined against him, and when the new gov- ernor appointed by the king arrived Leisler was ai-rested. im]n-is- oned and hanged for treason — "the first martyr of American aidependence."
After this, things went '• from bad to worse," so far as the relations
IK I.lOISl.KU S TIMES.
WORKTXG TOWARD LIBERTY.
83
between the people and the royal governors were concerned. There were grumblings in every colony ; there were open outbreaks in some, and active opposition in all. The governors themselves had anvthin"; but a pleasant time. As the years went on the colonists grew more and more emphatic in their demand for personal liberty.
THE PllOI'I.K AM) THE HCIVAI, (iON KKNcil;.
They saw that the land they lived in was destined to increase in importance, population and riches, but they knew that unless they had their " say " this growth would be slow or without direct benefit to them. Their English rulers granted them, few rights and looked down upon them as if they were inferiors. The Americans were
84
'■'^TIIE LAST STRAW."
not allowed to inamifacture anything lor their own use or for sale in England ; the farmers were compelled to send their crops to Eng- land and ])iirchase what they needed in English markets only.
It is no wonder then that the people grew restless, that they began to think and talk and act, and that at last they came to the conclusion that if the King of England denied them the right of liv- ing honest, honorable, hard-working and upright lives as loyal colo- nists of England in the land they had settled and cultivated, it was high time for them to deny the right of the King of England to have anything whatever to say as to their affairs.
Just then the King of England of that day (whose name and title were George the Tliird, and who was a i)articularly obstinate and unaccommodating ruler) gave his consent to certain measures that roused the people of the thirteen colonies to the greatest indignation ; they led to results, too, that were as unforeseen to the Americans as they were surprising to the pig-headed King George of England, three thousand miles away.
CHAPTER X.
"the last straav.
^^^rrt^S/ -^TIONS as well as boys and men are often all too ready to
'^^— ^J-^i^^f- play the bully. In 1760 the pojnilation of Great Bi'itain
was fully nine millions ; the j^opulation of Great Britain's
thirteen colonies in America was less than two millions.
It is very easy for nine millions to say to two millions,
" You shall I " or " You shall not ! " And they did say it. People
in England talked of the people in America as '• our subjects." Of
course the Americans did not like this ; they felt that they were
'■'^THE LAiST STRAW.
85
A SiMUGGLER.
quite as good and certainly as wide awake as their relatives across
the sea. And they said so, too.
Then the merchants of England felt that they owned the colonies. The people of America, as we have seen, could neither buy nor sell except through English traders ; they could neither receive nor send away goods except in English vessels ; and the right of trade which had been allowed them with certain French and Spanish colonies in and about the West India Islands was threats ened with withdrawal. The English manufacturers and traders held, in fact, what we call in these days a monop- oly of the American trade, and, caring only for what
money they could make, were unwilling to allow the colonists any
chance whatever for profit or trade.
This selfi.sh spirit naturally made the Americans very angry. As
a result certain of the colonists said that if England would not allow
them to trade where they pleased they would do it on the sly — even
though it was against the law. This
was called smuggling, and England tried
to punish the sailors and merchants who
brought into America, unlawfull}", the
goods they had purchased from people
with whom they were not allowed to
trade. But America's coast-line was full
of little creeks and bays into which
the smugglers could sail without beinif
caught and this '• illicit trade," as it was
called, rapidly increased and became very
profitable.
In 1759 the long struo-o-le between
France and England in America was
brought to an end bv the defeat of the French general Mont-
calm on the Plains of Abraham, and the surrender of Quebec in
guai;dinu the poin.
86
''THE LAST straw:'
Canada. The cost of this long-continued strife was frightful. Eng- lish tax-payers held that as these wars had been for the defense and benefit of the American colonies, America should pay the bill — or at least a certain proportion of it — and also the cost of governing and defending the colonies in the future. But the Americans did not think this was just. The wars with France, they said, Iiad been for the benefit and glory of England. The American colonies were
not allowed the right to choose or have any one to speak for them in the English Par- liament, saying who should govern them or how they sliould be governed. " If we can be represented in the English Parliament," they said, " we are willing to be ta.xed for our support, but we do not propose to pay for what we do not get."
The British lawmakers, however, were de- termined. They would not yield to the desires of the colonists ; they made new rules as to the commerce and shipping of the colonies that were harsher than the former ones ; these were called the Naviga- tion Acts. Then they ordei-ed that the Cus- tom House officers in America should have the right to enter any house at any time to search for smuggled goods, and, if need be, to call upon the soldiers for help. This order was called the Writ of Assistance.
Then how angry the colonists were ! For they were English- men in nature and ancestry and they held to the truth of the old English declaration, that an Englishman's house is his castle,* into which no one but himself or his family has the right to enter uninvited.
Till! niciiT OF .si:ai:cii.
• Tliis was the decision of a famous English justice, Sir Edward Coke, wlio, in 1660, said : " The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as lor his repose."
''THE LAtiT I^TRAW.'
87
So when the Enghsh authorities attempted to enforce these Writs of Assistance tliere was a great uproar ! The colonists had grumbled and protested at the other burdens laid upon them, but for the Eng- lish king to claim the right of invading the home was going too far. They resisted the Writ ; and James Otis, a brilliant Boston lawyer whose duty it was as one of the lawyers for the Government to de- fend the service of one of these writs, resigned his office and spoke in bold and fiery words against the new injustice. "•To my dying day," he declared in this memorable speech, " will I oppose, with all the power and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other." It was the first outspoken word for liberty, and roused the people to enthusiasm.
And yet, angered though they were at England's tyranny, the colonists hesitated to act. England was the mother country and resistance was rebellion. They were not yet ready to go so far. They felt that all they should do was — as the old saying runs — to " grin and bear it." But they really could not "grin" over tyranny and they soon determined not to bear it.
For, one day came the climax. It is the last straw in the overburdening load, you know, that breaks the camel's back. And in the year 1765, on the eighth of March, King George and his councilors tried to put the last straw on the overloaded back of the colonial camel. On that day the English Parliament passed the measure now famous in history as the Stamp Act.
This celebrated act was but one among a number of measures adopted by Parliament for taxing the American colonies, but it was particularly objectionable. It required that all newspapers, almanacs, marriage certificates, pamphlets and legal documents of every description should be upon stamped paper or have pasted upon them
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G^ |
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^X |
3 |
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^^Mfj/ |
'X'S) |
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^M^y^ |
^^ |
THE HATED STAMPS.
88 " TV/JS" LAST STllAW."
stamps furnished by the Enghsh Government and inn-ohased from the agents appointed to sell them in the colonics. It was consid- ered as the '• entering wedge " for other tyrannioal acts. '• If the king can tax our trade." the colonists said, "why not our lands?" And from Maine to Georgia the cry arose, " No taxation without representation." People do not object to pay taxes when they tliemselves order the taxes and are benefited by the money that comes from such taxation ; but to be taxed without a word to say in the matter and to be forced to pay, no matter how objectionable the method and manner of collection, makes people iingry. And so the jieople of America broke out into loud and rebellious words. James Otis in Massachusetts and Patrick Henry in Virginia, and other speakers of prominence and influence aroused their hearers to a pitch of enthusiasm ; local rivalries were forgotten in the general indignation ; the demand for a union of the colonies in opposition to the tyranny of England was universal ; acts of violence and insubordination against the stamp agents and the English gover- nors and officials were committed in every colon}^ ; patriotic asso- ciations called the " Sons of Liberty " were formed ; and on ths seventh of October. 1765, a Colonial Congress, consisting of dele- gates from nine of the thirteen colonies, assembled at New York and adopted three protests against taxation — one of these they called a " Declaration of Rights," one "An address to the King," and one a " Memorial to Parliament."
This wide-spread opposition on the part of the colonies, the refusal of the Americans to buy or to use the stamps, their agree- ment with one another not to import, buy, use or wear anv article of English manufacture until the Stamp Act was " repealed " — that is, declared by the English Parliament to be no longer in force — exerted .so great an influence in England, especially upon the mer- chants who saw that this stand of the Americans would cause them to lose both trade and money, that in 1766 after much debate and many bitter words, the English Parliament repealed the Stamp Act.
" THE LAST ST II A W:
89
The result was received l>y the colonists with the greatest joy; but when they learned that, in place of the Stamp Act other meas- ui'es had been adojited for raising money from the colonies by taxation, witliont granting them representation or securing their
i'i;L;rAi:iNi_i Fui; " i]iimi;si'i-n clothes
English
consent, the people again protested. Thereupon the government sent soldiers across the sea to see that the tax laws were enforced and ordered that the people should pay for the board
90
''THE LAST STRAW.''
and loclg'ing' of the soldiers who were sent over to force them into submission.
This was too much. New York refused to provide for the sohliers sent tt) that proN inoe and Pai'Hament. as a punishment, took awa_y the coh)ny's right to liokl its own legishiture. Massachusetts urged tlie colonies to call another congress for seU-preservation and Parliament ordered Massachusetts to recall its action. When the
UNWELCOME LODGERS.
colony refused its legislature was dissolved and four regiments of soldiers were sent to Boston to keep the town in order.
This was in 1768. From this time on things grew worse and worse. The people hated tlie soldiers as the representatives of England's tyranny. The soldiers already treated the people as rebels. From words they came to blows. On the eighteenth of
''THE LAST straw:' 91
January, 1770, the citizens of New York made the first stand against the king-'s troops in a street fight known as the " Battle of Golden Hill " and on the fifth of March, in the same year, an iniexpected fight iu King Street, Boston, developed into the bloody- brawl that has since been called •' the Boston Massacre."
Everybody was aroused. It looked very much us if war was at hand. But Parliament, fearing that it had perhaps gone too far, took off all the taxes save one — that on tea.
But this was adding insult to injury. The American colonies were not making their firm stand to save money but to gain their riohts. It did not matter what was taxed or how much it was taxed. What they resisted was any tax without the right of representation. They refused to buy tea. They refused even to drink it ; they drank, instead, tea made from sage or raspberry-leaves, or other American plants. New York and Philadelphia sent back the tea- ships unloaded. Charleston stored the tea in damp cellars and spoiled it. In Boston the British men-of-war blocked the way and refused to let the tea-ships out of the harbor. A great public meet- ing in the Old South Church requested the Governor to let the tea- ships go back and, when he refused, fifty men disguised as Indians rushed to Griffin's Wharf, boarded the tea-ships and smashed and flung overboard three hundred and forty-two chests of tea. This occurred on the night of the sixteenth of December, 1773, and has ever since been known as the " Boston Tea Party."
Enraged at this open defiance Parliament ordered the port of Boston closed — that is. said that no ships could go in or out — and the business of the town was well-nigh ruined. This was called the Boston Port Bill. The other colonies stood up for Boston ; they sent it aid and supplies and cheering words and, one after another, the thirteen colonies agreed to neither buy nor sell to England (to '• boycott " it, in fact, as we say to-day) and to join in a general congress.
This congress of the thirteen colonies — since known as the First
02
THE LAST straw:'
Continental Congress — assembled at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia on the fifth of September. 1774. and petiti<med the king and Parlia- ment of England to restore the rights thev had withdrawn. Rut it was of no use. King and parliament were stubborn.
The war is inevitable, and let it come I I repeat it. sir. let it
A \vi:ak-kni-.i;d tatukit and iiku .si.v t i i
come ! " cried Patrick Henry in Virginia in that famous speech which ever}' American boy, and, I hope, every American girl knows by heart. The vk^ar was inevitable. It had come at laist.
THE FIRST BLOW FOR FREEDOM.
93
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST BLOW FOR FREEDOM.
fctv
*^:';'%S
EBELLION is the open or armed resistance to lawfnl au- thority. When that resistance is successful it is Revolu- tion. You see, now, why we call our war for independence the American Revolution. It was a successful rebellion against English authority, and completely changed — or •■ revolutionized" — the government of the people of America.
There were many dark and bitter days before the rebellion became a I'e volution, but the story of the struggle is full of interest. You have already seen how the trouble grew, as, passing from objection to protest and from protest to insubordination, it developed at last into open defiance, resistance and war.
When Samuel Adams of Boston (the "'prophet of independence" as he has been called) declared in the Old South Church " this meeting can do nothing more to save the country " and cheered on the make-believe In- dians to the '• Boston Tea Party," the American Revolution began. From Maine to Georgia people began to talk of war, and when the English Par- liament rejected the proposals of the Continental Congress of 1774, the spirit of rebellion wa-^ ready to burst into a flame.
It takes but a spark to set the tinder ablaze, and the spark came at last. The cabinet of King- George declared as " traitors and rebels " all who were disloyal to the king; war-ships and soldiers were dispatched to Boston which was declared to be " the hot bed of rebellion ; "
-.v.Mri:i. Ai)A.M>
94
THE FIRST BLOW FOR FREEDOM.
and the Royal Governor, General Gaue. was (irdcrcd to seize or destroy all munitions of war held by the eolonists and to lire upon the people should he deem it necessary.
Acting luider these orders General Gage seized the arms and powder stored in the old powder house on Quarry Hill (in the pres- ent city of Somerville) three miles from Boston and took secret meas- ures to seize the stores at Salem and at C()UC(M'd.
Now as these stores and munitions of war were the ])roi)erty of the province of Massachusetts it was held that the king had no right to take them and after the seizure at Somer- ville the provincial congress — as the •• rebel " legislature of the province called itself — determined to save these stores for its own need. A nu)l) of indignant patriots frightened away the small force sent to Salem and some one* told the Americans of the secret designs upon the stores at Concord and the two signal lanterns hung in the belfry of the Old North Church of Boston gave warning of the plans of the British.
Then it was that Paul Revere made his famous night ride from Boston to Concord to arouse the farmers- against the British designs. Of course you all know Mr. Longfellow's splendid poem •• Paul Revere's Ride," telling how this brave '• scout of liberty " spread the news. Just read it again, right here, to refresh your memory and then you will understand how excited the people were and how the '• minute men " from all the country round caught up their
TAIT, liK\El!|-.
• It is siii.l W\M Ihis " some one " was nn less a povson tliau Mrs. Ciagc. Ihc wif>: ol tlu- U.iyal Ciovcrnor. She was an Aiiiciicau woman .-mil said to be " IVieuiUy to liberty."
THE fje;st blow for freedom.
95
arms and hurried to the highway that led from Boston to Concord. These " minute men " were colonial miHtia men pledged to be in readiness for any call to arms, and prepared to march when the warning came — "at a minute's notice." They came; and on Lex- ington Common and by the North Bridge at Concord they struck the first blow for liberty.
"You kuow the rest. In the books you have read How the British Regulars tired and fled ; How the farmers gave them ball for ball From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to tire and load."
Eight hundred " red-coats," as the British soldiers were called, marched from Boston on the eighteenth of April, 1775. When they reached Lexington Common half an hour before sunrise on the nineteenth of April between sixty and seventy minute men wei-e drawn up '-just north of the meeting-house" to resist their advance.
" Disperse, ye villains ! ye rebels, disperse ! lay down your arms! Why don't you lay down yovu- arms and disperse ? " called out Major Pitcairn, the leader of the British advance.
The minute men of Lexington were sixty against eight hundred. But they, were not there to disperse. " Too few to resist, too brave to fly," as Mr. Bancroft says of them, thev simply stood their ground.
" Fire ! " shouted Pitcairn, and under the deadly discharge of British muskets seven of the '• rebels " fell dead and nine were wounded. Then the British marched on to Concord.
But their leader Colonel Smith saw that the country was roused and that he should have to fight his way back. He sent at once to
90
THE FIRST BLOW FOJt FREEDOM.
Boston for leinforcemeiits and nearly two thirds of all the "red- coats " in tlie town were liurricd off to the help of their comrades. Meanwhile these comrades had marched on to Concord. There they found but few of the '' stores" they had been sent to destroy. Two cannons were spiked in the tavern yard ; sixty barrels of (lour were broken in pieces ; five hundred jjounds of ball were thrown into the mill pond ; the liberty pole was cut down and some private houses were broken into. That was all. A hundred or more sol- diers were sent to guard the North Biidge across the Concord River and, while there, the minute men of Acton, led on by the school- master, marched down the hill to the bridge. The British soldier.s, seeing the colonists coming on, be- gan to tear up the planks of the bridge ; the Americans broke into a run ; the British fired and the sclioolmaster fell dead. Then Major Buttrick of Concord cried out, " Fire, fellow soldiers ! " and " Fire, fire, fire ! " echoed his men. They fired ; two of the British fell ; the rest turning ran toward the main body of the "invaders" and tlie minute men held the bridge.
That was the battle of Concord! For the first time the long-suffer- ing American colonists had turned upon their tormentors and there, by the ilowing Concord River, as Mr. Emerson say.s, they
^^^^
iMi: iii;ii)iii'; at c'dxcoI!!).
' Fired tlio sliot heard round the vvorhl."
Colonel Smith and his eight hundred red-coats turned toward home. From everv iioint the minute men hurried to the highway
^
THE FIRST BLOW FOR FREEDOM.
99
to " chase them back." At Lexington, nearly worn out, they met Lord Percy's reinforcement, twelve hundred strong. He and his men had marched from Boston to the tune of '• Yankee Doodle " in contempt of the colonists. But they soon " changed their tune," and when they turned for home the march back to Boston was but a sorry race for life.
The whole country round was now fully roused. Minute men came from every direction. Lin-
" IT liAIXEI) l;|.;iiELS.
followed
up
tl
le re-
ing the highway they fired " from fence and farm-yard wall," while the very clouds, so the bewildered British declared, " seemed to rain rebels." Back hurried the red- coats defeated, dispirited, beset. Like bull-dogs the aroused farmers Avitli flint-lock musket and old '• king's arm treat, barking and biting to the last, until, just after sunset, the straggling red-coats escaped across Charlestown Neck and were safe beneath the protecting batteries of Boston town.
It had been a dreadful day for them. Two hundred and seventy- three men were either killed, wounded or missing ; of the Ameri- cans eighty-eight had been killed or wounded. But, greater than the loss in men had been the fatal mistake of the troops of the king. The war had come at last ; they were the aggressors ; they, too, had been the chief sufferers. All hope of avoiding a bloody quar- rel was now past. The news of the "Battle of Lexington." as it has ever since been called, spread like a prairie fire. From all New^ England militia and minute men hastened to the aid of their countrymen. The people rose in war, and before the first of May, 1775, the king's soldiers w^ere securely shut. up in Boston by an armj^ of nearly twenty thousand " rebels."
100
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
The fi'\st })lou- for lihertv had been a decisive one. " We determine to die or be free," the Massachusetts Congress wrote, after the day of Lexington, to the people of EngUmd. And when swift riders carried the news of the fight north, west and south, the patriot col- onists from the Green Mountains to the Carolina rivers and the Kentucky borders sprang to arms and echoed the stern words of Massachusetts : " We determine to die or be free."
CHAPTER XII.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
HE colonists could now take no backward step. And there seemed to be no desire to. They were in earnest and they acted as if they were. The news of the fight at Concord and Lexington roused the patriots in other parts of the land. People began to talk of separation from England ; they Ijegan to plan for independence.
And yet the leaders moved cautiously. They did not know tlicir own strength ; they only knew that the people seemed determined not to be bidlied by England. So they summoned another Congress to determine on peace or war.
It would l)e an unequal contest. On one side Avas England witii all the power and all the advantage of a trained and iniconquered amiy ; on the other was a handful of feeble settlements, without army, money, standing or preparation for war, strung along an un- defended stretch of broken coast line, the deep sea to the east and to the west only the trackless forests and hordes of hostile Indians. But men will dare to do much in defense of their rio-hts. Lex- ington strengthened their arm. Following fast upon the battle of
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
101
775.
Lexington came the bold move by which on the tenth of May, 1 Ethan Allen and his one hundred Gi-een Mountain Boys captured the British post of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, demand- ing the surrender of the fortress " in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress ; " and from that day the war fever grew greatly.
Around the beleaguered British in Boston lay the patriot army, really without a leader, but determined to hold the regulars at bay or drive them into the sea. Reinforce- ments came to the army of the king and now, twelve thousand strong, its officers and sympathizers (called '* tories ") de- clared that the rebels were but a pack of blusterers and would not fight.
Would they not? This question was speedily answered. On the morning of the seventeenth of June, 1775, the British generals finding that the " Yankee Doodles " were fortifying one of the Charlestown hills, sent three thousand red-coats across the Mystic with orders to drive off the rebels. They did, but at what a cost. Three times they charged up the hill to where Colonel Prcscott and his thousand men awaited the attack.
Twice were they sent reeling down the slope, baffled by the deadly fire of the Americans. With the third volley the ammunition of the Americans gave out and the British troops finally carried the hill after a stubborn hand-to-hand fight. The Battle of Bunker Hill was won. But ten hundred and fifty-four in killed and wounded was the cost to the British of that doubtful victory, and it proved to all the world that the Americans would fight. From that da}' the British troops never cared to storm a '' rebel " earthwork.
102 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
All that the Americans now needed was a leader. And he was speedily forthconiing. The North had opened the Revolution ; the South should give it a leader. On the very day of the Battle of Bunker Hill — the seventeenth of June, 1775 — the Second Conti-
" THE JiEBELS AUE I'OUTIKYING ISIXKEI! llll.l.."
nental Congress, in session at I'hiladelphia. voted to raise and e(juip an army of twenty thousand men, and elected Colonel George Washington of ^'^irginia as " generalissimo " or commander-in-chief. In all the land no better choice could have been found. George Washington had been trained from early youth to leadership and direction. He was as strong of character as he was noble of .soul ;
THE AMERICAN EEVOLUTION. 103
he was patient, persistent, fair-minded, generous and brave ; his strength of will was inspiring, his power of self-control remarkable, and he was absolutely truthful. He was a natural leader. As a bo)' he was captain of the company of small Virginians he drilled and marshaled. At sixteen he was a surveyor and ■' roughed it " in the Indian country ; at twenty he was a major in the king's ser- vice ; at twenty-five he was commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces. It was he who fired the fii'st shot in the French wars of 1754, led the attack at Great Meadows, and by his valor, alone, saved the terrible defeat of the English general Braddock from be- coming a massacre. He knew the weakness as well as the strength, the endurance as well as the independence of the colonial soldier, and no man was better suited to lead the troops of revolution to victory, to guide them in skillful retreat or to save them from the disgrace of surrender. Other generals in the Revolutionary army were as brave, others as self-sacrificing, others as skillful as he, but not one combined all the excellencies that go toward makins; a great soldier except George Washington. His record as a leader alike in victory and defeat, was such that students of the art of war accord to General Washington the rank of a '' great commander."
On the third of July, 1775, Washington assumed command of the American army drawn up to receive him on the Commons of Cam- bridge, and his headquarters were in the old Craigie House, still standing, and equally cherished by all Americans as the military home of Washington the soldier, and the peaceful home of Long- fellow the poet. He declined to receive any pay for his services, went at once to work to organize his army of fourteen thousand un- disciplined militia men and kept General Gage and his red-coats so tightly locked up in Boston town, that they were at last forced to run away from the city by sea. This they did on the seventeenth of March, 1776. Washington and the victorious Continental troops marched into the city and Boston's long slavery was over.
On the first of January, 1776, the new flag of the Revolution was
104 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
raised over the American ciiinp on Prospect Hill ; and on the fonrtli of July, 1776, the ContinL-ntal Congress assembled in Independence Hull in the city of Philadelphia declared the thirteen United Col- onics to be "free and independent States" — that they were "ab- solved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all politi- cal connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ou<j!;ht to be totallv dissolved." This was the immortal '' Declaration of Independence," and ever since that memorable act the fourth of July has been celebrated as the birthday of the United States of America.
But to declare a thing is not always to <1() it. The Declaration was but the first step toward independence. Much was to be at- tempted, much suffered, much lost and won before the United States were really free and independent. For nearly seven years, from the nineteenth of April, 1775, to the nineteenth of October. 1781 — from the first blood at Lexington to the last lilood at Yorktown — did the unequal conflict rage before the King of England, his coun- cilors and his people would acknowledge themselves beaten by the spirit of liberty that had grown up across the sea. Then at last they reluctantly gave in. A treaty of peace with the new '■ nation " was signed at Paris on the third of September. 1783, and on the twenty-fifth of November following, the British soldiers evacuated the city of New York and Liberty triumphed.
It had been a stubborn fight between determined men. When once the war was really entered \\\mw and the evacuation of Boston showed the Kintr of Entiland and his advisers that it was to be fought in earnest, the British leaders sought by every means to secure success. They sent large armies to America, swelling their ranks by hiring for money thousands of European troops called Hessians; they tried in every way to frighten and overawe the steadfast " rebels," and gave honors and reward to those Americans who remained loyal to the king and who were called " tories." They sought to occupy the chief centers of population North and
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIOX.
105
South and to achieve the conquest of the coimtry from these points. But all to no purpose. With a less number of troops, poorly armed, poorly fed and scantily clothed, and with all the chances of war
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON.
against him, General Washington so planned and fought that, inch by inch, he w^on the disputed territory from the over-confident red-coats, and brought victory at last to the Continental forces.
100
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
After its beginning at Boston, tlie Revolutionary War may be di- vided into three periods of fighting : the struggle for the Hudson, the struggle for the Delaware and the struggle for the Carolinas.
Defeated at the Battle of Long Island, Washing- ton i-etreated throuo-h New Jersey and won the battle of Trenton ; defeated at Germantown he retreated into the gloom of that sorry winter of Valley Forge, coming out in the spring to fight and win the Battle of Monmouth. He drove the British from Boston; he foi-ced them from Philadelphia ; his planning relieved Charleston and the Carolinas, and finally brought about the British surrender at Yorktown. It was Washington's persistent refusal to stay beaten but to come up again and again to what seemed a useless fifjlit that drew to his side the o-allant xouno; French- man the Marquis de Lafayette, and won for the new United States the alliance and aid of France. On the thirteenth of January, 1778, a treaty of alliance with France was signed, and from that date the success of the revolt was never doubtful.
The dark days of the war were the defeats at Quebec, w-here the a'allant Monto-omerv was slain while storminy; the British citadel ; at Long Island and White Plains, where the raw troops of Washins;ton were no match for the British reo'u- lars ; at Brandywine and Germantown which lost ^^^^Pk / FrencK Philadelphia to the Americans: and at Charleston '^^W 1 c§°' '''*'"' and Camden which for a time '• wiped out "' the south- ern arm}' of the patriots. Darker still were the dreary days at Valley Forge when all seemed lost indeed ; the hateful treason of Benedict Arnold, one of Washington's trusted generals, and the days, when by the sel- fish combination of enemies in the armv and in the Congress (in
A "CONTIXKXTAI.
One
°f
the
THE AMERICAN ItEVOLiriON.
107
what is known as "the Conway Cabal"), General Washington was very nearly forced from his position as commander of the American army.
But the bright days are what we most thankfully remember; they were what gave strength to American endeavor and made for the cause of liberty friends across the sea. As Lexington and Con- cord and Bunker Hill are names to be forever cherished so, too, are the names of Trenton where through icy perils the patriots pushed on to victory ; of Princeton which saved New Jersey ; of Saratoga which saw the surrender of the pompous and boast- ful British general Burgoyne who had declared that with ten thousand men he would " promenade through America ; " of Stony Point where, borne on the shoulders of his men, the wounded leader, dear to all Americans as "Mad Anthony Wayne," charged into the British fort and won it at the point of the bayonet; of Fort Sullivan in Charleston Har- bor where the brave General Moultrie " held the fort," and Sergeant Jasper, in the face of the enemy, rescued the fallen flag and hoisted it again over the battered ramparts ; and, last of all, of Yorktown where on the nineteenth of October, 1781, Cornwallis and the British army surrendered as prisoners of war to Washington the American and the Frenchman Rochambeau.
And in this record of the fight for liberty we must not forget the struggle on the sea. The American colonies had no navv, but they had man}- plucky sailors and men who loved salt water. Early in the struggle privateers were sent out — that is, small vessels fitted out by private persons but authorized by the Congress to annoy and capture British ships and supplies. Soon the privateers were followed by men-of-war and the names of Captains Biddle and Manly, Mugford and Read, Weeks and Conyngham and Whipple are worthy to stand in memory beside the heroes of Lexington and
ANTHONY WAYNE.
108
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Bunker Hill, of Stony Point and Valley Forgo. But, chief of al! the Revolutionary sea-fighters, is John Paul Jones, the eaptaiu of the Bonhoiame Richard and conqueror of the British man-of-war Serapis. Lashed together, the two ships waged a fearful struggle for hours ; when the British captain thought the " Yankee pirate " was conquered he shouted across to him : " The Richard ahoy ! Have you struck your colors ?" and Ijaek came the valiant answer of the plucky ■' Yankee pirate," "I have not yet begun to light." Then lie really did begin and did not sto]) until the Serapis struck her colors.
The American Revolution was a stubljorn and gallant fight against tyranny; it was the answer of those who Avould be free men to those who .sought to keep them slaves. From it we may all. young and old alike, learn why we .should persevere if we feel that we are right even when the times seem darke.st and things are going wrong ; and, more than all, by it we are taught that whatever is worth having is worth striving for. Liberty could not have come to America without the struggle and blood of our forefathers ; and their endeavors and their sacrifices preached the noblest of sermons and .showed to a watching world the real worth of liberty.
JOHN PAUL JONKS.
THE MEN OF THE HE VOLITION.
109
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION".
— ^jHEN 3'ou watch a liase-ball game what is it that interests you most through it all — the players or the result of their pliiy ? Do you not soon forget this or that boy in whose good work you place so much confidence and think more of the score that is being made or Avonder whether the great playing of your favorite nine is really going to give them the vic- tory ? It is so in life. Acts are more than actors ; principles are more then men. What a city, a State or a nation is striving for is of more importance than the leaders in the struggle or the great men whose names we reverence and applaud.
And yet we are all hero-Avorshipers and love to linger over the names and deeds of those who have contrib- uted to the success of great principles, the results of noble deeds. For this reason it is well for us, at this point, to look over the years of struggle that led the thirteen English Colonies of North America " through night to light " and laid the foundation of the United States of America.
They were of three classes : the agitators, the organ- izers, the fighters. The agitators, or those who pre- 23ared the minds of the people for the struggle, began their work years and years before Lexington or the Declaration of Independence were thought of. These were the men who saw that kingly poAver and the peo- ple's will Avould not Avork together and Avho resisted, hy Avord or deed, the attempts of king or gOA^ernor to cut away the rights of the
FRENCH'S STATUE OF THE MINUTE M^US'.
llu
TtlE MEN OF TUB REVOLUTION.
pe()]»k'. Siidi men were Niithiuiiel Bacon, and John Culpepper and Jacob Lei^iler, wliose " rebellions ' have been referred to in earlier chapters; such, too, were John Wise, the minister of IpsAvich in Massachusetts who, a hundred years before the Revolution, boldly preached against '• taxation without representation " ; and Peter Zenger, the New York printer, who in his lu^wspaper. in 1733. boldl_y stood out against king and governor; and Andrew Hamilton, the Philadelphia hxwyer who, defending Zenger, spoke so eloquently
for what we now call " the liberty of the press," that the printer was acquitted and the governor dared not again accuse him. These are but a few among the " fore- rumiers of freedom " whose names should be held in remembrance ; to them, and to others like them who left their mark upon our colonial history, was due much of that manly and outspoken ' desire to be self- supporting that led to the later struggle for independence — a desire founded upon that noble utterance which is belie\ed to have been made by Dr. Benjamin Frank- lin : '• Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.-
Of this remarkable man Americans have ever been proud. And well they may be. Benjamin Franklin vras a poor Boston boy, born in IT'lli. who educated himself, learned the printer's trade and, when seventeen years old, went to Philadelphia where he gradually rose to posi- tion, influence and fame. An editor, an author, a ])hilosopher. an inventor, a statesman and a patriot, Franklin made the title of "an American" known and honored in Europe, and, by his wisdom, his eloquence and his influence, stood foremost among those great men of the Revolution to whom we <>ive the name of the or<z:an-
IJK. lil.N.JAiVlIN FUANKUN.
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION. Ill
izers. Largely tlirough his exertions was the king of Engh^nd lirought to repeal the hated " Stamp Act ; " he was one of the com- mittee to draft the Declaration of Independence ; he was sent as Ambassador to France and gained the French aid that helped the Revolution to final success ; he was one of the makers of the treaty of peace with England and one of the framer.s of the Constitution of the United States. Tlie young •' tramp-printer," who in 1723 entered Philadelphia, poor, friendless, hungry and hopeful, died in that city in 1790 at the age of eighty-four, its most honored citizen and the one American who, to-day, shares in all the world the glorv and renown of Washington.
Washington and Franklin have, indeed, been the two names that from the days of Revolution, have been associated as the greatest leaders in that historic struggle. But even Franklin's fame halts far beneath that of George Washington. In the minds of men as well as of boys the successful fighter is a much greater hero than the agitator or the organizer. We like to see a man who never knows when he is whipped ; who has what we call " grit ; " who accepts defeat without a murmur, but rather as ,a spur to new effort. But Washington had far moi-e than this. He was as strong of character as he was of arm ; as noble of soul as he was firm of purpose. His abilities as a soldier were equalled by his qualities as a state.'^man ; and from the day when, beneath the historic elm on Cambridge Common, he took command of the Continental army to the day when he rode into New York at the heels of the last depart- ing British regiment, he never faltered in his fidelity to the cause of freedom, or lost faith in its final and complete success.
But tliough the names of Washington and Franklin lead all others in the story of the Men of the Revolution there are those linked with them to whom equal honor and equal praise are due. On this roll we read the name of James Otis, who made the first eloquent appeal for liberty and was branded by the king's men as " the grea' incendiary of New England ; " Samuel Adams — called " the last o
112
THE MEN OF THE HE VOLUTION.
the Puritans," — who, poor but incorruptible, '-aimed steadily at the good of his country and the best interests of mankind " and did more than any one else to •• put the revolution in motion ; '" Patrick Henry, the " man of the people," whose fiery elo(iuence ami daunt- less courage roused Virginia to stand side by side with Massachusetts
ui.N Ai»\\i> i'i;i 'i'ni,^\ i.Ni.
nil. i.i.oiam > i ni laii.
in the struggle for freedom : '•• I know not what course others may take," he cried, "but as for me. give me liberty or give me death;" John Adams, wise, far-seeing, statesmanlike, the iuspirer of our "Fourth of Julv " celebrations, who, years before the Revolution,
* " It will be celebrated by sticceeding generatious," said John Adams, *' from iine end of the continent to the other, a* the great anniversary festival."
THE MEX OF THE REVOLUTION. 113
believed in the great misfiion of America and in the early days of the struggle, replied to a friend who warned him against brav- ing the power of England : " swim or sink, live or die, siu'vive or perish with my countrj' is my unalterable determination ; " John Hancock. President of the Continental Congress, proscribed as a traitor by George the Third — dignified, impartial, quick in action, determined in purpose, who urged the people of Boston, " Not only pray, but act ; if necessary fight and even die for the prosperity of our Jerusalem," and who, when he put his bold signature to the Declaration of Independence, said, laughingly : " There ; John Bull can read my name without spectacles. Now let him double the price on my head, for tliis is my defiance ; " Christopher Gadsden, the boldest in denouncing British oppression, the first to speak for American independence, " whose unselfish love of country," says Mr. Bancroft, " was a constant encouragement to his countrymen never to yield;" Thomas Jefferson, the greatest Democrat, the sworn foe to aristocracy and kingly power, the author of the Dec- laration of Independence, and through that immortal paper, " the beginner of a new age of the world;" John Jay, a statesman and a patriot of elevated motives, and the purest character who, before the struggle begun, took a bold stand for America's rights and wrote in his address to the British people : " Know, then, that we consider ourselves, and do insist that we are and ought to be, as free as our fellow-subjects in Great Britain and that no power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent;" Koger Sherman, a farmer and a shoemaker, a jurist and a statesman, signer of the Declaration and ''one of the great men of his time," who set the bells of New Haven a-ringing as he declared that " the parliament of Great Britain can rightfully make laws for America in no case whatever;" Robert Morris, the •'moneyed man" and financier of the Revolution, who, in 1777, declared that Washington was "the greatest man on earth," and who, through faith in Washino-ton's ability as well as in the cause
lU
THE MEN OF THE liEVOLVTION.
of freedom, when hope wats lowest and Auiericau credit was dead, pledged his own fortune and, on the promise of his own name, hoii'owed the money to carry on the war; Richard Henry Ia'c, who, quickly repenting his application for the post of collector under the hated Stamp Act, became instead that Act's most vehe- ment foeman, introduced into the Continental Congress the first reso- lution looking toward independence, and wrote in the address to
the British people : " On the sword, therefore, w'e are compelled to rely for protection. Of this at least we are assured, that our struggle will be glorious, our suc- cess certain ; since even in death we shall find that freedom which in life you foi-bid us to enjoy ; " Henry Laurens, the incorruptible, in whose Charleston office bo^'s were trained to habits of iionesty, integrity and industry in business, and who, kept a strict prisoner in the Tower of London, resisted all attempts of the British govern- ment to shake his fortitude or purchase his patriotism ; and, not to extend the list, Peyton Ran- dolph, wlio, though attorney-general for tlie king, when he "saw the right," resigned his office and its rewards and stood out boldly for justice, for resistance and for independence.
These were among the leaders in council and congress. And in the field were others equally worthy remembrance — Joseph War- ren, "who fell at Bunker Hill," and who, though president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, refused the conmiand of its army of minute men and continentals at that famous battle, pre-
1 IlK LIBEKTY liKLL.
(.Vo"' in Independence Ihlll-, PliUafh'ljihia.)
IN MAKION S CAMP.
'Francis Marion called by the baffled British the ' Swamp Fox.'"
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION. 117
ferring to serve as a volunteer and saying to one Avho warned him to be cautious : " I know that I may fall, but where is the man who does not think it glorious and delightful to die for his country ? " Richard Montgomery, the intrepid leader of a forlorn hojae, but for whose death in the very front of his assaulting line, the " rebel de- feat " at Quebec might have proved an important victory ; Nathan Hale, the " martyr," young, brilliant, enthusiastic, who, condemned to die as a spy by his British captors, only regretted that he had but one life to lose for his countrv ; Alexander Hamilton, the boy captain, the friend and aide-de-camp of Washington, the fiery young advocate of libertj-, who replied to the taunt of the tories that the colonists would soon quarrel and disagree : " I please myself with the flattering prospect that they will, ere long, unite in one indis- soluble chain ; " Nathaniel Greene, " the victorious," who saved the South by his able generalship and crippled liis own estate to feed and clothe his soldiers ; Francis Marion, the borderer, called by the baffled British " the Swamp Fox," whose name is revered by all Americans as that of " one of the purest men, the truest patriot, and the most adroit general that American history can boast ; " Philip Schuyler, the general who could be true even under mijust suspicion, the real conqueror of Burgoyne, the unselfish soldier of whom Daniel Webster declared that he stood scarcely below Wash- ino-ton in the services he rendered his countrv.
But where can we stop ? The list of American heroes in camp and council is long enouc;jh to fill a volume, while those who fonu'lit in the ranks and those who suffered for the cause at home — mi- known heroes whose glorious deeds have never been recorded — couid their names but be collected, would make a roll of heroism, limited only by the number of American patriots. For all were heroes then. Though some at times were timid and some at times lost faith ; though traitors like Benedict Arnold and jealous self- seekers like Charles Lee well-nigh wrecked the cause of liberty and made the heart of its great leader to bleed and smart; though sec-
118
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
tioiis at times were "mad" with .sections and men "put out" with men, so that the progress of revolution was almost stopped hy jeal- ousies and disputes ; thougii money ran low and credit gave out and suffering and privation led to weakness anil to loss ; though defeat dulled the zeal of patriots and the cruelties of war tried the courage of the bravest; jet still, through it all, the spirit of persevering
TiiK licisiuN HOYS AM) gi;xi:i;ai, i;\(;i:.
patriotism swayed alike the men and the women, the ))o)s and the girls of th^ Revolution. The indignation that k'd the Boston boys to protest to General Gage against the petty tyranny of his soldiers who liad trampled down their cherished "slides" was the same spirit that animated their fathers to fight against British tjrainiy even to the bitter end and that broutrht in at last that success that
STARTING OUT IIST LIFE.
119
SO many had prated for, so many liad worked for, ,so many liad fought for, through seven long years of struggle and disaster, of defeat and loss, of hope and faith and a glorious persistence.
CHAPTER XIV.
STARTING OUT IN LIFE.
TIEN any prize is won, when any desired end is reached, when any thing that one has hoped, or worked, or fought for is at last obtained, the world, looking on, asks concern- ing him who has secured the prize : " What Avill he do with it ■'" From the boy in Franklin's wise old story who " paid too dear for his whistle " to the young man who has reached his "• freedom," the girl who has received hsr diploma, the man or woman who has attained fame or wealth or position — the same question applies to all : " What will he do wdth it ? "
The thirteen revolted colonies, assuming the sounding title of " The United States of America " had won independence. What would they do with it? There were plenty to ask the question. The world looked on to scorn, to criticise, to sneer; for liberty was not yet accepted as the birthright of every man, and king-cursed Europe had but little faith in the success of the republic-experiment across the westeim sea.
And, in fact, many in the newly-delivered land itself doubted and hesitated, beset with gloomy fears. There w\a.s talk of giving up the idea of a republic and establishing a monarchy ; there was even a foolish movement started (at which none was angrier than the great patriot himself) to proclaim Washington as king and for a
120
STARTING OUT IN LIFE.
tim-; people were " all at sea" just what to do with the liberty they had secured.
During the Revolution the colonies — or States as they were now called — had been held together in some sort of government by the Continental Congress and the paper its members had drawn up, called the " Articles of Confederation." But this was really ac-
THRKATS OF RESISTANCE TO TAXATION.
cepted as a government only because of the desperate needs of war. The Continental Congress merely governed by general consent ; it had no authority to govern. It agreed, in 1778, upon certain rights and powers which were called the "Articles of Confederation" and which stated that the thirteen united colonics, thereafter to be knowai as the United States of America, did b}' these articles " enter into a firm league of friendship Avith each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare."
This was well enough for a time of war. But it was not govern- ment. And now peace had come. Many clear-headed men in
STARTING OUT IJV LIFE.
121
America speedily saw that neither the Continental Congress nor its Articles of Confederation were of any further use. Liberty had been won, but it was liberty without union. The country was weak and exhausted from the wounds of war; prosperity that the people had looked for as one of the first results of freedom did not come ; the States, relieved from the strain of war, began to quarrel with one another over boundaries and ti-ade ; the talk of taxation led to angry threats of resistance ; bloodshed was feared and State after State threatened unless this or that was done to ".secede" from " the confederation." Congress had no authority ; people obeyed or disobeyed its commands as they saw fit ; the State governments had more real power than had the congress, and young Alexander Hamilton perplexed by the way things looked said sadly : ■• A nar tion without a national government is an awful spectacle."
And it was from such men as this young Alexander Hamilton that relief at last came. From the very first he had seen that only in union was there strength. Before the close of the Revolution, in the year 1780, he had written to his friend the con- gressman James Duane : '' We must have a vigorous confederation if we mean to succeed in the contest and be happy thereafter." And in that very letter this remai'kable young man of twenty-three outlined many of the provisions that, later, found a place in the Constitution of the United States.
For this is what came in due time — a paper drawn up and signed by the representatives of the people and accepted by each and all of the several States, by the agree- ments in which the United States of America were to be guided and governed. This is known as the Constitution of the United States. It was adopted in the year 1787, at a meeting together in the city
IXKSTAXD USED IN SIGNTNG TKE COXSTITUTIOX.
12-J STARTING OUT IX LIFE.
of Philadelphia of forty-five delegates from the thirteen States of the new union and which is known in history as the Federal Convention of ITcST.
This Federal Convention of 178T has been rightly called "one of tlie most remarkable deliberative bodies known to history." George Washington was its presiding officer. Among its members were such men as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton. James JMadi- son, Robert Morris, William Livingston, Rufus King, Roger Slii-r- mun and others whose love for liberty was great, whose foresight was clear and whose chief desire was to present to their fellow- citizens a document that should enable them to live together in peace and unity. From the fourteenth of May to the seventeenth of Sep- tember, 1787, the Convention discussed, debated, modified, amended and resolved. Then the great paper, duly signed, was presented to the people as the best their representatives could do. A year of discussion succeeded ; one by one the thirteen States said '• all right" — that is, accepted or ratified the document; and on the thir- teenth of September, 1788, the Constitution of the United States of America was officially declared to be " the law of the land."
Let us remember these few " personalities " of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton originated it ; Gouveneur Morris planned its construction ; James Madison put it into shape ; George Washing- ton was its first signer ; Benjamin Franklin was its oldest signer, at the age of eighty-one; Nicholas Gilman was its youngest signer, at the age of twenty-five.
By the Constitution the name of the government created '•' for and by the people " was the " United States of America." It pro- vided for a general government whose authority was to be supreme on all matters of national interest and union ; this was to be divided into three departments: the legislative, the executive, the judiciary. The legislative department, calk-d the congress, was to make the laws ; the executive department, consisting of the President of the United States and the officers selected b\ him. was to carrv out and
ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
" Till tiiihrr iifthc 'JonslUution of the United States.'
STARTING OUT IN LIFE. 125
enforce the laws; the jucliciary department, or law courts of the United States, was to decide all questions or disputes that might arise concerning the laws. To the Constitution as "the law of the land," the national government, the State governments and the people were to give entire obedience.
The Legislative Dejaartment, which was to make the laws, was to consist of two branches, the Senate and the House of Representa- tives. Each State, no matter how large or how small it might b'', was to have two men in the senate, their " Senators ; " the members of the House of Representatives were to be chosen by the States ac- cording to their population, so that the larger States had, of course, more men in the House of Representatives than the smaller States could have. These two Houses together comprised the Congress of the United States and were to levy taxes, borrow money, coin money, regulate commerce, establish postroffices, declare war, raise and maintain armies and navies, while the States could only levy taxes, borrow money and employ soldiers for their own State uses. A majority of votes in each House of Congress was necessary to pass a law ; and treaties made by the President must be approved by the Senate.
The Executive Department, which w\as to enforce the laws, Avas to be in the hands of a President, chosen every four years by repre- sentatives of the people known as electors. The president was to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy and to appoint the public officers to whom the details of carrying out the laws of Congress were to be given. If he did wrong he could be accused or " impeached " by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate and in case of his removal, resignation or death his " sub- stitute " or Vice-President was to take his place. The only other duty of the Vice-President was to preside over the meetings of the Senate.
The Judiciary Department which was to " interpret " the laws was to consist of a supreme court and certain district courts. The
126 STAliTING OUT IN LIFE.
judges were to be nppointed by the President and to hold office lor life. The "head judge "' ■was to be called the Chief Justice of the United States.
So, h\ vote of the jJeople of the thirteen United States, the Con- stitution became the law of the land. But the discu.ssion of its pro- visions by the people led to a diif'erence of opinion as to its real value, and this discussion resulted in a division into two parties. One of these parties believed that the Constitution coidd not be bettered and that the new Federal governinent was exactly the thing needed ; this party called itself the Federalists and enthu- siastically supported the new constitution. The other party be- lieved that more power should be allowed to the States ; they feared that too much jiower given to Congress might lead to a monarchy or a tyranny of some sort, and they declared that so strong a cen- tral power took away from the people the privilege of self-govern- ment ; this party was called the Anti-Federalists.
But the majority of the people accepted and resolved to live up to the new constitution. Washington and Franklin, to whom the people looked with the greatest respect and confidonce, supported it heartily and were among the chiefs of the Federalists. When, however, the office of president was to be filled one man alone was the choice of the people, and when the sixty-nine electors sent in their votes for president the sixty-nine ballots were all for George Washington of Virginia. John Adams of Massachusetts was elected vice-president. The city of New York was selected as the capital of the United States, and on the fourth of March, 1789, on the balcony of Fedei'al Hall (now the site of the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street) in the city of New York, George Washington took the oath to support the Constitution as the supreme law of the land ; and amid the shouts and tlag-waving and booming of cannon that fol- lowed the proclamation of Chancellor Livingstone who had admin- istered the oath : " Long live George Washington, President of the United States ! " the man who had led the armies of his land to vie-
First president of the United .States.
I
STARTING OUT IN LIFE.
129
tory and guided its wisdom in determining upon its form of govern- ment now began his career as the official head of the new nation — the President of the United States.
President Washington selected as his chief advisers and assistants Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state, Alexander Hamilton as
IHK INAUGUHATION OI' PHESIDUNT WASHINGTON.
secretary of the treasury, Henry Knox as secretary of war, and Edmund Randolph as attorney-general. These men Avere to help him in the conduct of aft'nirs that came within his duties as the chief executive officer of the new nation. Congress assembled in the Federal Building, with Vice-President John Adams of Massachu-
130 " THE AMERICANS."
setts as tlie presiding officer or " president " of the Senate, and F. A. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as the presiding officer or " Speaker " of the House of Representatives ; the " machinery of government" Avas put in motion and tlie new nation started out to try the experiment — deemed so doubtful by all the world — of government by the people.
For one hundred and seventy years had the American people been preparing for this very experiment. It had been a long and hard schooling. They had secured their liberty ; and now this was what they were going to try to do with it : to govern themselves — or, in the words of the constitution which they had just adopted : " We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more per- fect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establisli this Constitution for the United States of America."
CHAPTER XY.
"the AMERICANS."
HE new republic of the United States of America started out in life as a nation in 1789, with a population of nearly four millions (the actual figures of the first census in 1790, were 3,929,214). Of these four millions Virginia claimed the most and led the order of the States as luun- ber one with a population of 747,010; Pennsylvania was number two with a population of 434,373; North Carolina number three with a population of 393,751 ; and, following after, as fourth in order
" THE AMERICANS. "
131
came Massachusetts with 378,787; New York as fifth with 340,120; Maryland sixth with 319,728 ; South Carolina seventh with 249,073 ; Connecticut eiglith Avith 237,496 ; New Jersey ninth with 184,139; New Hampshire tenth with 141,885; Maine eleventh with 90,540; Vermont twelfth with 85,425; Georgia thirteenth with 82,548; Kentuckj' fourteenth with 73,077 ; Rhode Island fifteenth with 68;825; Delaware sixteenth with 59,096 and Tennessee seventeenth Avith 35,691. Of these, at that time, four were not yet admitted as States : Maine was a part of the State of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York, Kentucky of Virginia and Ten- nessee of the Carolinas. Already emigrants were crossing the Alleghanies and peopling the West- ern wilderness as Kentucky, Tennessee and the lands about the Ohio were called. Indeed, dur- ing the Revolution, a brave American borderer, named General George Rogers Clarke, had capt- ured from the British the distant outposts in the territory of the Illinois, along the Mis.sissippi River, and hai
GEOliGK KOGEIIS CLAKKE.
tl
nis
established a footing for American frontiersmen and given the United States a claim to the territory north of the Ohio River when the treaty of peace was signed.
But nearly all of the four millions of Americans above classified were settled alono; the Atlantic coast line. The western wilderness had, as yet, too many terrors. The sea was their main highway ; the sailing-packets their principal means of travel. Lumbering stages did, indeed, run between the leading cities, but it took quite as many days by land as by water, for roads were bad, bridges few and ferries clumsy and dangerous.
Philadelphia was the chief town of the United States. It had in 1790, a population of 42,520, while New York had but 33,131, Bos- ton but 18,038 and there was no Chicago at all ! Trade with the interior was by six-horse wagons, by pack-horse or tlat-boat ; what
132
" THE AMERICANS:
little mails tliei-e were could be carried by the postrriders ; news- papers were few and dull ; schools were poor in instruction and cruel in discipline: tallow candles, grease "dips" or pitch pine were the only lights ; Avood was the only fuel ; coal and stoves were unknown ; farming was rough and far from thorougli and fully one seventh of the four million Americans were negro slaves.
The buying and selling of black people for use in the farm labor and housework of America dated from the days of the Spanish co)i- quhiadoren who, as early as 1508, when they found that the con- quered Indians could not stand the killing work forced upon them
l)y their cruel task-masters, brought into the Spanish Main negroes from Africa to take their places. In 1619 a Dutch captain vent>- ured with a cargo of nineteen African slaves to Virginia ; and from their sale to the planters along the James River dates the two hundred and fifty years of negro slavery in North America. At the close of the Revolution slavery existed in all the States, though Massachusetts had already declared it illegal. It was not. however, suited to the peculiar climate of the Northern common- wealths whose metliods of farming were widely different from tho.se employed in the rice and tobacco plantations of the South. So it came about that nearly seven eighths of all the slaves in the United States were in Maryland, Virginia and North and South Carolina which were also, as we have seen, the richest and most populous of the thirteen States. New York owned the largest number of any Northern State — fullv twentv thousand. But, even then, clear-headed and I'ight- minded men saw the e\il of slavery and warned their countrymen of the risks of continuiny; it. The founders of the government —
BORROWING FIKE IX OLD DAYS.
" THE Americans:
133
Washington and Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Jay and Hamilton — opposed the degrading system as unsuited to a land of liberty, and earnestly desired its abolition. But in 1793 a Connecticut man who was teaching school in
Georgia, Eli Whitney by name, invented a machine for clean- ing cotton. Tliis was called the cotton-gin. With it a slave who, before that time, could not clean over five pounds of cotton a day, could easily clean a thousand pounds a day. At once the cultiva- tion of cotton became the chief industry of the South ; the value of slave labor was greatly increased ; the warn- ings of the fathers of the re- public were disregarded and the fight for the keeping up and extension of the hateful system continued for nearly seventy years.
With only sailing vessels or horses as means of communi- cation between the different sections, travel was not very general and visiting was not greatly indulged in. Neighborhoods kept to themselves, for when it took six days to go from Boston to New York and tliree from New York to Philadelphia the roads were never crowded. Presi- dent Washington rode in his private coach all the way from Mount Vernon to New York to be inaugurated, and the journey occupied
' KING COTTON.
134
" THE AMERICANS."
seven days, so filled was it with receptions, greetings, processions and enthusiasm.
The adoption of the Constitution and the inaugnration of the new government made men and women intensely American. They
1111 M A< il. 1 t > \i 11,
remembered that in the early days of opposition to Great Britain they had been able to do without the manufactures of the mother country and they saw no reason why they should not now depend upon American productions, and develop home resources.
'■ THE AMERICANS. '
135
So, all over the land the people combined to use as far as possible American materials only. Rich and poor alike wore plain clothes of strong home stuff ; the ladies met in " spinning-bees " -where each one tried to out-do the other in the work accomplished ; " American broadcloth " became the fashioii ; and both President Washington and Vice-President Adams took the oath of office dressed from head to foot in home-spun garments " whose niaterial was the product of American soil."
The Revolution, however, had not altogether destroyed that very objectionable feeling of " I am better than you," that royalty and aristocracy are responsible for and that is so hard for people to get rid of. The Declaration of Independence had told the world that " all men are created free and equal," but for many people, even in free America, it was hard to admit the equality. So, in the little cities and in the neigliborhood centei's of the United States there existed for years that unwise feeling of superiority that we call aristocracy, due to the wealth or posi- tion of certain favored families. Even when Wash- ington was to be inaugurated the Congress was perplexed what title to give him. Some, with the remembrance of the old titles of royalty still in mind wished to address him as " High Mightiness ; " some wished to speak of him as " His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberty;" "Your Grace" and " His Excellency," were both proposed ; but good common sense won the day and it was resolved that the address should be simply " the President of the United States." And '' To the President " or " By the President " have been the address and signature pertaining to the office to this day.
But though aristocratic and high-flown manners and feelings found place in certain sections, and though the dear and noble-
MAUTHA WASHINGTON, WIFE OF THE PRESIDENT.
136
" THE AMERICANS. "
minded wife of the President was ridiculously styled by many " Lady Washington," while men and women aped the display and costume and fashionable follies of the rotten old courts and king- doms across the sea, the great mass of the Americans were plain, sensible, hard-working men and women, who laughed at all such prett nded " style " and farmed and fished and bought and sold in the proud knowledge that all men were equal before the law as well as in the sight of the good God who had created them.
More and more, as population increased, the young men of the homes by the sea went west to seek their fortune and to occupy new lands in the far-off Indian country, where for years the forests and valleys of Kentucky and Ten- nessee and the Ohio region had been first the hunting ground and then the homes of hardy frontiersmen and hopeful settlers. The Indians who had hunted and fought in this fertile section for generations, fiercel}^ resisted the coming of the white man ; biit it was to no In spite of arrow and tomahawk and scalping-knife such mighty hunters as Daniel Boone cleared the pathway in what was called '' the dark and bloody ground," for settlement and civiliza- tion ; population increased; and, in 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the luiion of States, while Tennessee followed in 1796. To the northeast Vermont, which after years of dispute as to whether it belonged to New Hampshire or New York had set up for itself during the Revolution, was in 1791 admitted into the Union as the fourteenth State.
By the treaty of Paris, Avhich established peace between the United States and Great Britain after the Revolutionary War, the boundaries of the United States were acknowledged to be Canadii on the north, the Mississippi River on the west, and Florida (ex- tending in a narrow strip to the Mississippi) on the south. The
purpose.
■'■^A\
■#"
-^■■H '
■X
i'- 'i:/^^'>-
',!ii
■'^Wt^jVU-
TIIE NEW HOME IN THE OHIO COUNTRY.
"It v:as fertile, fair and erenj waij attractive.'
" THE AMERICANS:' 139
vast territory extending from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes was called the Northwest Territory and into this section settlers speedily fonnd their way. It was fertile, fair and every way attract- ive, and promised a better outlook for pleasant homes and produc- tive farming than did the rocky shores and sterile hill-slopes of New England. As colonists, the people of America had experienced such bitter days with England that when their own people went west to settle in the new lands beyond the Ohio they dealt with them justly and kindly, and the "Ordinance of 1787" which provided for the government of the Northwest Territory was one of the broadest and most genei'ous agreements known to history. Daniel Webster .said of it : " We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of an- tiquity ; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus ; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787." By this "ordinance" slavery was forbidden ; the inhabitants were assured religions freedom, trial by jury and equal rights ; conmon schools were to be supported and, as soon as the population was large enough, five new States were to be formed from the territory admitted to the Union and were to be governed by the people themselves. This ordinance and this territory developed in time into the great and prosperous States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.
So, with the new life and the mighty inspiration that liberty and the privilege of self-government brought, the new American re- public started toward progress. All was not smooth at first. There were disputes between sections and jealousies between law-makers ; there were struggles for place and power; there were protests against what some deemed the " tyranny of the majority;" the debts incurred by the years of war wei'e heavy and needed to be met by that very taxation that so many Americans had learned to detest and, from this last cause, two "rebellions" sprung — Shay's insurrection in Massachusetts in 1786, and the whiskey insurrection
140 ''THE AMERICANS."
in Pennsylvania in 17U4, both of which needed to be pnt down by force of arms. The exciting days of the French Revolution in 1789, when, profiting by the example of America, the French people threw off the yoke of the kings (in a much more bloody and brutal fashion, however, than it was done in America), very nearly dragged the American republic into war ; but Washington's firm hand on the helm guided the ship of state safely through the troubled waters of a dangerous sympathy. The wars on the frontier into which the settlement of the Ohio country provoked the Indians, begun, in 1790, in defeat under General St. Clair, ended, in 1794, in victory under General Wayne. These secured from the red owners the rights to possession forever in the present State of Ohio. Further rights in the Northwest, and the settlement of disputed questions as to who had the " say" on the northern border, were secured by a new treaty with England, concluded by John Jay in 1795.
In spite, however, of debt and jealousies and questions of rights and privileges, in spite of angry uprisings, misunderstandings and rumors of war, the new nation speedily began to prosper and under the two terms which George Washington served as president, bore itself with dignity and showed the world its ability to live in good order and to maintain a successful government. Europe still looked on doubtfull}^, ])ointing to the terrible times in France as one of the first fruits of American independence and prophesying similar anarchy and final downfall for America. But, unmoved by this, the United States held on the course resolved upon ; commerce increased ; the money of the United States, first coined in 1793, was placed in circulation ; enterprising sea-ca])tains displayed the American flag in foreign waters, and in 1700 carried it around' the Avorld on the good ship Columbia of Boston ; turn-jjike roads were built; canals were dug ; colleges were founded. Thus American enterprise was born ; and, as the stormy seventeenth century drew to its close, the United States of America began to challenge the attention and admiration of the world.
UNSETTLED DAYS.
141
CHAPTER XVI.
UNSETTLED DAYS,
N 1796 George Washington declined to serve as president for a third term of four years. Issuing a remarkable " Farewell Address to the American People," he retired to private life and settled down to enjoy the rest he had earned after forty-five years of public service. The home in which he lived and died, at Mount Vernon on the Potomac River, has continued to this day an honored place of pilgrimage for all Americans.
Upon the retirement of Washington people realized that some other man must be found to serve as president and they at once began to say what they wanted done and who they wished to do it. Discussion ran hot and high ; the Federalists took as their can- didate for president, Washington's vice-president, John Adams of Massachusetts ; the anti-Federal- ists supported Washington's first Secretary of State, Thomas Jeffer- son of Virginia. Adams was elected and, under the law as it then ex- isted, Jefferson, the defeated candi- date for jsresident, became vice- president.
Even before this was concluded the country was plunged into dis- putes with France. Washington had kept America from making promises to France, and the revolutionists then in power in that
WASHINGTON S HOME AT MOUNT VEUNON
142
UJSISETTLED BAYS.
disturbed laud declared that, it the IJuited States desired peace with France, peace must be paid lor. So they set to work to annoy their old ally. The American minister was driven from the country ; American commerce was damaged by unjust laws; American ships and cargoes were preyed upon ; and American envoys, when sent across the sea to protest, were told they must pay or suffer. But Americans had ])roved that they were able to defy injustice. " Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," was the
IKAININli ItlXians I'Oli W.U! WITH l-KANCIv
famous answer they made in reply to the French demands, and at once they prepared for war.
Washington came from his (juiet home at Mount Vernon to once
UNSETTLED DAYS.
143
JOHN ADAMS.
Second president of the United States.
again take his place at the head of the army ; the black cockade, worn as the symbol of patriotism, was seen in every hat ; old Con- tinental uniforms that had seen service in the Revolution were hunted out of chest and closet; and. on many a village common, the raw recruits, in all sorts of funny costumes, drilled and marched and " trained " with all the fervor and enthusiasm of the old fight-
144 UNSETTLED DAYS.
ing days of " tweatv years ago." Tlie navy was increased, and several sea-fights had taken phice — notably one off the Island of St. Kitt's where Commodore Truxton in the war-sliip Constellation ^ought and captured the French frigate L'lnsurgente ; the song " Hail, Columbia ! " was upon every one's lips and then, even before war had been declared, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had put himself at the head of French affairs, made peace with the United States in 1799, and the war cloud passed over.
Whenever there is danger of war people become greatly excited and sometimes do very foolish things. And so it happened that, when war with France seemed probable, the law-makers assembled in Congress, of whom the majority belonged to the Federalist party, passed certain laws that proved to be both stupid and hurtful to the best interests of the country. They feared " foreign influence " and they wished to show the world the " power " of the United States ; so they made a law by which the president could arrest and exile any foreigner or '• alien " who was thought to be dangerous. This was called the " Alien Law." Another measure punished any person who dared say a word in public against the government ; this was called the " Sedition Law." At once the opponents of the Federalists who called themselves Republicans cried out ••' For shame ! " The Alien Law, they said, took away the right to a trial by jury ; the Sedition Law was a blow at free speech. The American people had learned to value these rights for which they had fought too highly to permit them to be abused. Popular opinion sided with the Republicans, and at the Presidential election of 1800, amid great excitement. President John Adams and the Federalists were defeated.
But the success of the Republican ticket gave Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr an equal luunber of votes. The Constitution declared that the person receiving the highest number of votes should be president, and the one receiving the next highest number should be vice-president. So here was a problem : which should be
UNSETTLED DAYS.
145
the president, Jefferson or Burr ? The decision was referred to thi House of Representatives and, there also, it resulted in a " tie-vote." There was a great deal of delay and much angry talk, but finally the struggle came to an end and Jefferson was chosen president with Burr as vice-president.
But this showed one weak spot in the Constitution ; it would not do to have such a struggle repeated and the Constitution was changed or '' amended," so far as to direct the presidential electors to vote for but one man for presi- dent and to make a separate bal- lot for the vice-president. And this method has continued to this day.
In December, 1799, George Washington died. The news came like a shock to the whole country ; the world mourned a great man gone ; England low- ered her flag to half-mast ; France draped in black her standai'ds and her flags and America, from north to south, sorrowed for the loss of her greatest and wisest man. Firm, prudent, sagacious, just, courageous, patient, true and good, this illustrious man is now revered by all Americans as truly the " father of his country " ; his birthday is a national festival ; his memory is dear to all, and now, almost a century after his death, there is not an American but repeats with deepest faith the eulogy pronounced upon George Washington by John Marshall when making before the Congress public announcement of this good man's death : " First in war, firsi in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
THOMAS JEFFERSON'.
Third president of the United States.
146
UNSETTLED DAYS.
Washington's greatist monument is tlio memory of his spotless name ; but as a noble monument, also, may be regarded " the Federal City," which, selected by him, was built upon land given to the general government by the States of Maryland and Virginia, and set apart as the District of Columbia. After his death the new city received the name of Washington and was made the capital of the United States.
In 1800 the government was removed there ; President Jeffer- son was there inaugurated ; and to-day the straggling forest settle- ment of 1800 has developed into one of the most beautiful of cities, one of the most imposing of capitals.
Thomas Jefferson, as has been said, was the greatest of Democrats. The success of his party was the success of new men and new manners. The old colonial ideas that birth and blood were meant to lead were done away with, even as the wigs and cues, the short
clothes and buckles, the -^''- ^k .S^ frills and patches and pow-
^ I; r *-r''^.>''- der of the eighteenth cen-
tury gave place to modern manners and a less theat- rical dress. The nine- teenth century meant pro- gress and, even from its earliest years, progress was the order of the day. Profiting l)y the wars by which Eiu'ope was almosi, torn asunder, America'^ commerce grew to greai proportions; her debts were speedily settled, her ships were .seen in every quarter of the globe, and her territory was very largeljr increased.
In 1803 Napoleon seeing that the American possessions of Franr J
^'%''-W<?-
WASHINGTON S TOMB AT MOUNT VEUNON.
THE SALE OF LOUISIANA.
'^Napoleon sold the vast territory for fifteen millions of dollars."
UNSETTLED DAYS. 149
would be in danger from the hostile arms of England, sold to the United States for fifteen millions of dollars, the vast territory lying between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and known as Louisiana. This more than doubled the possessions of the United States, and from this land purchase of 1803 have since been made the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana and the Indian Territory. It also included goodly portions of the present States of Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.
The new republic was fast growing into a successful and ambi- tious young giant, but, like many ambitious young men, it boasted and assumed too much and frequently got into trouble. Fired by the success of the Louisiana purchase in 1803, it stretched out toward the Pacific and, by virtue of an exploring expedition conducted into the far northwestern region by Lewis and Clarke in 1804, it laid claim to what was known as the Oregon country — a claim that was disputed by England for nearly forty years.
In 1800 the population of the United States had increased to 5,308,483 ; in 1810 it had grown to 7,239,881. Discovery and in- vention, though weak and unsatisfactory, were just beginning to open people's eyes, and were giving a new push to American enter- prise. Robert Fulton invented the steamboat in 1807, and by his success made the great rivers of the United States more valuable than ever before as highways for commerce. Coal was discovered in Pennsylvania, but no one knew just how to use it to advantage. Dissatisfied people were beginning to find fault with their circum- stances and their surroundings, and no less a j^ersonage than the vice-president of the United States, Aaron Burr, smarting under .what he considered ill-treatment by the Government and having wickedly killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, hatched up a treason- able scheme to found a government of his own in the new western country, but was arrested, tried, acquitted, disgraced and forgotten. The people of the United States might be uneasy and ambitious, biii
150
UNSETTLED DAYS.
they were loyal to the govennnent they had set up, and such schemes of treason as was this of Burr found neither favor nor support among them.
But in Europe things were becoming worse and worse, as Nn]5oleon Bonaparte, declaring himself emperor of France, found himself at war with the world. Franco with the most pov,'erful army in the world, and England witli the most formidable navy, made things decidedly unpleasant for each other and the rest of the world. England declared a blockade of all European ports against France — that is, refused to allow the vessels of any nation to enter the harbors of France or her allies ; France retaliated by forbidding all vessels to sail into English harbors. As American ships at that time did most of the carrying trade these decrees of France and
England most deeply affected American commerce. Congress would, had it dared, have gone to war to redress this outrage ; it had in 1801 declared war against the Mohammedan pirates of the Barbary states in North Africa, and had punished them severely in what has been known as the War with Tripoli ; but to fight Tripoli and to fight Great Britain were quite different affairs and the United States could not hope to beat Great Britain on the seas. So, instead. Congress tried to punish both the great powers by refusing to trade with them and passed in 1807 a measure known as the " Embargo Act," which forbade the sailing of American vessels to any foreign port. But this was almost suicide. American ships lay rotting at their docks; Ameri- can commerce was very nearly destroyed ; New York and New England protested loudly and some particularly unpatriotic people
TUK TALLINO FLAG.
War tiit/t Tripoli.
UNSETTLED DAYS.
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in the Eastern States, when tliey saw their business ruined and their commerce dead began to talk, very forcibly, of " seceding " from the Union.
The Embargo Act proved so unpopular and hurtful that Congress soon repealed it and in 1809 passed, in its j^lace, what was known as the " Non - Intercourse Act." This permitted American vessels to trade with all countries except France and England. But it was too late to save the lost popularity of President Jefferson. He had served two terms as president, but the Embargo Act was the means of defeatins; his re- nomination and his party (which was no"w often called the Democratic party) was obliged in 1808 to take another man as candidate. This was James Madison of Virginia, who had been a member of the historic Continental Congress and had served as Secretary of State under Jefferson.
The Non-Intercourse Act was repealed in 1810 and the new admin- istration of President Madison found itself face to face with a prob- lem that must be solved at once if prosperity was to be regained for those sections of the country which had been the principal sufferers
JAJIES MADISON. Fourth president of the United States.
J52
A WRESTLE WITH THE OLD FOE.
under the unfortunate Embargo Act. Tlie old tyrants across the sea were bent on ''crowding" the new nation beyond the limit of patience. The ''young giant" must prepare to stan'd his ground
and either fight or fall.
CHAPTER XVII.
A WRESTLE WITH THE OLD FOE.
T is very hard to forget. • When you have been wronged or worried by any of your companions you may learn to forgive them, but the memory of the wrong that has been done you lasts a long time.
It was so with the United States and England. The bitterness of the strife that brought on the Revolution, the ill-feeling that accompanied those seven years of war continued as unpleasant memories long after the treaty of peace was signed. And the boastr ing about success assumed by Americans Avas as distasteful to Englishmen as was English contempt of America exasperating to Americans.
When in 1809 the "Non-Intercourse Act" was repealed the Congress of the United States said to France and Great Britaiu : " If one of you will recall the laws you have made that are so hard on American commerce, we will trade with you only and will ' boy- cott' the other nation." To which Napoleon at once responded. "All right; I will." He didn't, but he said he would, and on the strength of his false promise the United States at once cut off its trade with England, and began to boast about it, too. For, you see, the old hatred still lived.
A WIi£:S7'Zi; WITH THE OLD FOE.
153
Great Britain, confident of her strength npon the seas, treated America with more contempt than ever. She claimed the right to search American ships and take out any sailors that might seem to be of English or Irish birth. Of course the Bi'itish searchers were not over-scrupulous and many American citizens were seized as British sailors, and forced to serve in English war-ships. British men-of-war sailed up and down the American coast, attacking and capturing American merchant vessels, while, in the West, agents of the British govern- ment stirred up the Indians to hostility against American set^ tiers, furnished them arms and ammunition, and backing up the Indian leader Tecumseh, chief of the Shawnees, brought about at last in 1811 an Indian war. This war was, however, speed- ily ended by General William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana Territory, who, marching against Tecumseh. utterl}' defeated the Indians at the famous battle of Tippe- canoe.
All these signs of English hostility and hatred had their effect at last upon America.
Instead of calmly talking things over and trying to arrange the difficulty America "^'got mad" with England. All talk of peace ceased. Patience was exhausted, self-respect could not longer sub- mit, the old " spirit of '76 " was renewed, and though New England objected to the war as unwise and wrong, popular oj^inion forced
TECUJISEH, CHIEF OF THE SHAWNEES.
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A M'RESTLE ^yIT^ THE OLD FOE.
Congress into action and on the eighteenth of June, 1812, President Madison formally declared war against Great Britain.
The countr}' was altogether unprepared for such a conflict. England had a thousand war-ships ; the United States had but
1111. ..Aiii.E oi- nri'iXA-NOii.
twelve : England's army was a victorious force of disciplined soldiers ; America had no army ; the country was poor ; the president had been forced into war contrary to his own judgment ; the generals in command of the raw and inidisciplined soldiers were veterans "left over" IVdiu the Revolution, too old to be of real service and Great
A WliESTLE WITH THE OLD FOE.
155
HndremeJatksoa'
Britain felt tliat it would be but an easy task to whip the young nation that thirty years before had caused her so much shame.
From first to last tlie land battles of the War of 1812 were a series of defeats, brightened by only a few victories. The soldiers had no confidence in their generals, until generals had really been made by the bitter experience of defeat. For the most part it was a " leaderless war." The names of Winfield Scott and Andrew Jackson, with perhaps that of William Henry Harrison, are almost the only ones that come down to us as those of successful leaders.
The war was mismanaged from the start. Many