LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ©]^apE.I7-^'ipTOy ^^* Sheli'i-%74.. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE Story of Our Country A PRIMARY HISTORY UNITED STATES BY ^ ALMA HOLMAN BURTON CHICAGO NEW YORK Werner School book Company Copyriglit, 1896. by ALMA HOLMAN BURTON PREFACE It is the aim of this Httle book to awaken such an abiding personal interest in the story of our country, that tlie after-study in the more advanced history of tlie United States may be a pleasant task. The author has attempted, without undue boasting, to show how the many feeble colonies, remote from each other and planted under such different circumstances, united at length through common perils and sufferings to form the foun- dation of a national structure so broad and so firm that when the strain of revolution, and even of rebellion, came, it survived the shock. She has endeavored to keep well to the front the great central idea of the nation's develop- ment from the time when the first discoverers peered through the mists of an unknown sea, down to to-day, when our nation has taken its place among the first powers of the earth. The author has sketched many of the thrilling and picturesque biographies which are always such an unfailing source of delight to the child. 4 PREFACE. The great discoverer, Columbus, has a goodly space allotted him. The courtier, the adven- turer, the priest, the puritan, the philanthropist, the acute statesman, the valiant warrior, the sturdy frontiersman, all pass in review before the mind of the reader; but it is hoped that not one of these personages disappears from the scene without having added something to the great national drama of which he was a part. Some space has been devoted to war, that the child may realize what it has cost to develop these United States. But military annals have been given a sub- ordinate place in the story. The young student should not lose sight of the fact that each struggle of the American people has been but a transient obstruction which, in the end, en- abled the nation to unite its forces yet more closely together for its great onward march of progress. The object for which The Story of Our Country has been written will have been at- tained if its readers may be led to adopt the words of Daniel Webster, that eloquent exponent of patriotism, who said: "I am an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American." March 31, 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. I. Early Discoverers 9-15 II. Columbus Discovers America 16-27 III. Americus Vespucius and Balboa 28-30 IV. Spanish Settlements 31-37 V. English and French Voyages 38-42 VI. French vSettlements 43-47 VII. Dutch vSettlements 48-53 VIII. English Voyages and Discoveries 54-58 IX. Settlement of Virginia 59-63 X. Maryland and the Carolinas 64-68 XI. The Pilgrims 69-75 XII. Settlement of Connecticut 76-79 XIII. Settlement of New Jersey and Delaware 80-83 XIV. Settlement of Pennsylvania 84-87 XV. Settlement of Georgia 88-92 XVI. Life in New England 93-99 XVII. King Philip's War 100-104 XVIII. The Indian Confederacies 105-116 XIX. Troubles with the French . , 117-126 XX. The French and Indian War 127-131 XXI. Canada Becomes an English Province 132-136 XXII. Taxes on the Colonies 137-141 XXIII. The First Continental Congress 142-146 XXIV. Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill 147-151 XXV. The Declaration of Independence 152-158 XXVI. Battles on Land and Sea 159-166 XXVII. A Permanent Union Formed 167-172 XXVIII. Washington's Administration 173-179 XXIX. Administrations of Adams and Jefferson 180-189 XXX. Madison's Administration , 190-198 XXXI. The Era of Good Feeling 199-206 XXXII. Development of the West 207-211 XXXIII. The North and the vSouth 212-217 XXXIV. The Civil War 218-224 XXXV. From 1868 to 1S92 225-233 XXXVI. The World's Columbian Exposition 234-238 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Adams, John 180 Alhambra, The 17 Arnold, Benedict 162 Arthur, Chester A 232 Americus Vespucius 28 Baltimore, Lord 64 Beaver Town 45 Beavers 122 Birthplace of Franklin 141 Birthplace of Washington.. 124 Bison or Buffalo 184 Boone, Daniel 177 Bunker Hill Monument .... 200 Cabot, Sebastian 39 Calhoun, John C 193 Canadian, A French 118 Carolina, Settlement in 67 Carpenters' Hall 145 Cartier, Jacques 41 Centennial Building 228 Chair, Gov. Carver's 72 Charles II 84 Church, Roger Williams', at Salem 79 Church, Old North 148 Church, Old Swedi.sh 82 Clay, Henry 191 Clermont, The (first steam- boat) 187 PAGE. Cleveland, Grover 234 Coach, Washington's 171 Cod Fishing 40 Colonist, A German, man... 87 Colonist, A German, woman 87 Colonist, A Georgia 90 Columbus, Christopher 14 Columbus,Statue atWorld's Columbian Exposition. 26 Columbus, Tomb of 26 Cortez, Hernando 32 Costumes, Dutch 52 Costumes, French 121 Cotton Gin 213 Cotton Plant 58 Cradle of Peregrine White.. 95 Crockett, Davy 198 Davis, Jefferson 215 De Leon, Ponce 31 De Soto, Hernando 33 Drake, Sir Francis 54 Early Voyages, Map of 27 Edison, Thomas A 229 Elm-Tree, The Old 200 Eskimo 223 Faneuil Hall 151 Federal Hall (1789) 170 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Flags 154 Flathead Indian 107 Franklin, Benjamin 155 French Gentleman, A 46 French Lady, A 47 French Trapper, A 46 Fulton, Robert 187 Garfield, James A 231 Gateway of St. Augustine. . 37 Gauntlet, Running the 123 Genoa 12 George III 138 Going to Church 71 Grant, Gen. U. S 221 Harrison, Benjamin 233 Harrison, William Henry... 186 Henry, Patrick 140 Highlander 133 House, Interior of 98 House, Old Colonial 98 House, Old Dutch, in New York 51 Howe, Elias 229 Hudson, Henry 48 Indian 104 Indians Fighting 230 Jackson, Andrew 197 Jackson's Monument 198 Jefferson, Thomas 181 Jesuit Priest 118 Johnson, Andrew 222 Jones, Paul 161 Lafayette 165 La Salle 44 Latch-string 186 Lawrence, James 195 I.ee, Gen. Robert E 221 PAGE. Liberty Bell 153 Lincoln, Abraham 215 Locke, John 66 Log Meeting-House 95 Log Schoolhouse 97 Long-house of the Iroquois 115 Louis XIV 45 Madison, James 190 Map of Colonial Times 92 Map of Colonies 143 Map of Indian Tribes 106 Map of Trans-Mississippi Territory 165 Marquette, Father Jacques. 117 Mayflower, The 70 Merchant, A London 69 Merchant's Wife, A 69 Mink 119 Moccasins 112 Monroe, James 199 Montcalm, Marquis de 130 Monticello 188 Morse, S. F. B 205 Mount Hope 101 Mount Vernon 164 New York in 1664 53 Nina, The 22 Norse Ship 10 Oglethorpe, James 88 Palisaded House 77 Palisaded Town 120 Pappoose Ill Penn, William 85 Perry, Oliver H 196 Philip, King 102 Pinta, The 20 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGi;. Pioneer Life 202 Pitt, William 132 Pocahontas 62 Polk, James K 208 Potato Plant 58 Prairie Schooner 209 Prophet, The 189 Puritan Man, A 73 Puritan Woman, A 74 Quakers 80 Quebec, View of. 134 Queen Elizabeth 56 Queen Isabella 18 Railroad, First 204 Raleigh, Sir Walter 56 Randolph, John 180 Santa Maria 19 Schenectad}-, Attack on.... 120 Slaves at Work 212 Smith, Capt. John 60 Smithsonian Institution 211 Soldier, A British 146 Soldier of King James, A... 59 Spinning Wheel for Flax... 94 Spinning Wheel for Wool. . 94 PAGE. Stamp 139 State House, 1775 153 Statue of Libert}', Bar- tholdi's 238 Stuyvesant, Peter 52 Surveying, Washington, at 16 125 Tobacco Plant 57 Totems, Indian 110 Wagons, Immigrant 201 Wampum Belt, A 112 War Dance, The 113 Washington, Col. George.. 128 Washington, Gen. George.. 150 Wayne, Gen. Anthony 175 Webster, Daniel 193 West Point 162 Whitney, EH 213 Wigwam 110 Winthrop, Gov. John 74 Williams, Roger 78 Wolfe, Gen. James 135 Wolfe-Montcalm M o n u - ment 135 World's Columbian Ex- position 236 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. CHAPTER I. EARLY DISCOVERERS. A few hundred years ago the oldest and wisest men of Europe did not know as much about the surface of the earth as a boy in the third grade at school knows now. The wisest of them thought that there was no land where America is. They thought that the world was flat and that the Atlantic Ocean stretched out to the end of the world. What there was at the end they did not know; but they fancied that horrible monsters might be there, and they were quite sure it was night there all the time, because it seemed so far from the sun. In the old books of Iceland a story is told of a brave Norseman whose name was Bjarni. This Bjarni once started on a voyage to visit his friend, Eric the Red, who lived in Greenland. Soon after Bjarni and his sailors set sail, a storm arose and drove their ship to the west for many 10 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. NORSE SHIP. days. Then, after one day of calm, they came to a long, level shore. Bjarni knew this could not be Greenland; for Eric had told him of high moun- tains covered with ice. So they sailed north, and kept seeing level land for many days. Then they came to a country where there were mountains of snow. This must have been an island; for, in trying to find their friend, they sailed quite around it. People now think that it was the island of New- foundland. At last they found Eric in Greenland, and everybody listened eagerly to the stories which they told about the new lands they had seen far- ther south. Little Leif, the son of Eric, as he sat blinking at the great logs blazing in the fireplace, listened to it all. He said that when he grew to be a great big sea king, he would visit the new lands himself, and that perhaps he would find bigger bears there than any that were in Greenland. Surely enough, Leif Ericson became a bold sea rover, and one day he sailed away with some LEIF THE LUCKY. II friends on a voyage of discovery. He sailed past Newfoundland to the southwest and came through a bay, between an island and the main- land, into a river. It is thought that this island was Nantucket. On the banks of the river there were so many vines and grapes that Leif called the country Vinland. Leif and his friends were delighted with the warm, sunny land; they stayed several months, and when they returned to Greenland their stout ship was almost loaded down with fruit and timber. They wanted the timber for building ships. There were no such fine, straight trees in all Greenland as those from Vinland. When Leif sailed into port with his cargo, he was honored by the people. He was called Leif the Lucky; and when his father died, he became ruler in Greenland. After that, many of the Norsemen went to Vinland for grapes and timber, but they made no permanent settlement there. Sometimes, in the sea ports of other countries, they would talk about the lands they had seen in the west, but not many believed what they said. Even to-day, some historians do not believe that the Norsemen really visited America; but the schoolboys of Iceland and Greenland say 13 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY, that America was discovered by Leif the Lucky in the year looi. A great many years after this, in the beautiful city of Genoa, there Hved an Italian boy who GENOA. was very fond of the sea. He often stood on the wharves watching the ships sail in and out of the harbor. When only a little child, he said he wanted to be a sailor, and so when he was ten years old his father sent him to a school in Pa- via to study navigation. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 13 At the age of fourteen this boy, Christopher Columbus, went to sea on his uncle's ship. He was in several battles against the pirates in the Mediterranean, and was always very brave. Once his ship was burned, and he swam six miles to shore clinging to a piece of broken mast. In the sea ports of Europe and Africa, Colum- bus heard some of the strange stories which the Norsemen had told about lands to the west, and many things made him believe they were true. His own brother-in-law had seen a piece of carved wood which had been washed ashore from the west. There was also a tradition of two drowned men, dressed in strange-looking clothes, who had been picked up off the coast of the Azores. Then the great English traveler, Sir John Mandeville, had written a book more than a hun- dred years before this time, in which he said that he believed the world was round, and that it was possible for a man to sail round the world and reach, at last, the place of starting. Now the teachers of navigation in Pavia thought this theory of Sir John was but the bab- bling of an old man. They said no ship could sail upside down, and if the world were round that was what a ship would have to do if it should sail beyond the horizon. 14 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. But Columbus, who is thought to have read the book of Sir John Mandeville, began to beHeve that the world was round and that the lands to the west were China and India. You can almost hear the sailors laughing at this young upstart as they lay sunning them- selves on the shore and listening to his talk. They tapped on their foreheads and winked at one another, as if they thought his mind was not quite sound. But Columbus gave no heed to them and laid many plans to find a way to make a voyage to the far west. In those days the journey from Europe to India and China was made mostly by land on camels across the deserts of Asia. Every trip took a long time and cost a great deal of money. Columbus thought that if the world were round he might reach these coun- tries quicker and safer by sea; for CHRISTOPHER he supposed the world to be much COLUMBUS. smaller than it really is, and did not dream that the great continent of America lay between Europe and Asia. He tried in vain to get the republic of Genoa to help him fit out vessels for the voyage. Then he went to Venice, whose rich merchants sent KING JOHN OF PORTUGAL. I5 every year to India for silks and jewels and spices; but the rulers of that little republic would not risk any money upon such a foolish undertaking. Then Columbus went to the kingdom of Portu- gal for aid. But, although King John, who was a great traveler himself, thought well of the project, he said that Columbus asked too much for his services. Columbus wanted a tenth of all the gold, silver, and jewels he should find. He also asked to be made governor of the lands he might discover. King John sent out secretly the best Portu- guese pilot to follow the course indicated by Columbus. But this pilot lacked the zeal and faith of the man from Genoa. His ship became entangled in the seaweed beyond the Azores, and the ignorant sailors said there were demons holding the ship back; a hurricane drove the ship hither and thither, and they said that was the work of demons, too. After the pilot had sailed several days without finding land, he returned to Portugal; and he declared that there were no lands to the west. When Columbus found out that the king had deceived him, he quit Portugal and went to Spain. CHAPTER II. COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA. Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, were having trouble at this time with the Moors. The Moors were Arabs, who had con- quered a part of Spain hundreds of years be- fore, and now occupied the province of Granada, where they had built a city and many beautiful palaces. Some of these Moors were great scholars and had large libraries; but none of them believed in the Christian religion, and they were not will- ing to acknowledge Ferdinand and Isabella as their king and queen. At the time Columbus came to the Spanish court, a bitter war was raging against Boabdil, king of Granada. When Columbus explained his plans for a voy- age to the west, the king did not seem to be interested; but the queen talked much with him and thought there might be some truth in what he said. She told him that Spain could not give him aid until the Moors were con- quered. So Columbus, the Italian, joined the Spaniards in the Moorish war and fought bravely. 16 THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA. 17 On the second of January, 1492, Columbus saw the triumphal procession of Ferdinand pass THE ALHAMBRA. through the streets of Granada in front of the palace called the Alhambra. The Moors had been conquered at last. Pages in gold-embroidered garments came first, then, on gayly harnessed steeds with nod- ding plumes and flying banners, came the minis- ters of state, clad in such gorgeous attire that they themselves seemed like an army of kings. Then came King Ferdinand. His royal mantle of crimson lined with ermine almost concealed his horse. The crown of gold upon his head glittered with jewels, and the precious stones on his embroidered vest shone like the sun. On iS THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. their prancing steeds the nobles followed, all in silver armor. Then fair Queen Isabella and her dames and pages came. It was a glorious sight. Loud sounded the trumpets. But the music was hushed as the con- quered Boabdil rode toward the king. He was robed in black. His eyes were downcast as he reined QUEEN ISABEI.I.A. J^J^ J^^j.^^ ^y ^|^g gJJ^ q£ p^j-JJ. nand. A flush of shame spread over his haughty face as, bowing low, he gave up his signet rings and the keys of his beloved city. He laid aside his shield and lance and scimetar, in token of submission. Then bowing low again, he sadly turned to the road which led clown to the sea. Trumpets and clarions then mingled with the voices of thousands who knelt on the pavements below the towers of the Alhambra. Colum- bus knelt among the rest. He now longed more than ever to become great. And at last, three small vessels, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina sailed from the little town of Palos. They carried about a hundred men, and food enough to last a year. Columbus was the captain of the Santa COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA. ^9 Maria; a Spanish pilot whose name was Pinzon, went with the Pinta, and his brother with the Nina. In a month they reached the Canary Islands — farther than any of them had ever been be- fore. After they had gone beyond these, the sailors began to get frightened. The days went by. On and on sailed the ships, and still no land came in sight. Columbus him- self grew more and more anx- ious. He slept not; he ate not; he spent hours in prayer. The sailors began to think him a madman. They plotted to throw him overboard and re- turn home. But one morning the sailors on the Nina sighted a branch with red berries floating on the water; those on the Pinta soon picked up a curiously carved log. Then some pelicans, which are birds with long necks and white plumage, something like swans but heavier, sailed about THE SANTA MARIA. 20 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY THE PINTA. the masts. Flocks of land-birds began to circle about the ships. Columbus knew that land must be near. That night he saw lights •^'f;f>^ moving in the dis- tance. At early dawn the P i n t a , which was ahead, shot off a gun as a signal that land was seen. Soon, a long coastline came in sight where people were running up and down, in great excitement. The voyage of seventy- five days was at an end. The sailors joyously hauled down the sails and made ready to cast out the anchors. When land was reached, Columbus stepped on shore carrying the red and gold banner of Spain, and each of his captains bore a green flag inscribed with a cross. The soldiers and sailors came next in their best gala attire, and all knelt down together and kissed the land. Columbus rose with drawn sword and took possession of the country in the name of Spain. He called the land SanSalvador, because the lives of himself and his men had been saved from the dangers of the sea. THE NATIVES. 21 It was on the twelfth of October, 1492, that Columbus and his companions thus discovered the New World. At first, the natives kept a long distance from them. But after their fright was over, they were gentle and kind. They brought food and fresh water from the brooks to refresh the strangers. The sun shone so brightly on the shields and hel- mets and swords that they thought these men with white skins must be gods come down from the sun. They themselves were copper-colored and almost naked. They were very ignorant. They thought that the brass rings and ornaments of the Spaniards were prettier than their gold ones, and they wanted to trade. You maybe sure that the sailors were glad to do this. The natives traded great balls of cotton thread which their women had spun and which some- times weighed twenty-five pounds each, for a little painted tambourine, or a broken china cup costing a few cents. They knew so little about swords that they picked them up by the sharp blades and cut their hands badly. On most of the natives Columbus saw gold. When he asked them where they got it, they pointed toward the south. 22 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Columbus took some of them with him to search for this land of gold. He sailed south till he came to a great island called Cuba. Here the ferns and palms and flowers and birds were so beautiful that he was more sure than ever that he had found India. So he called the natives Indians. Once, when some naked Indian boys swam out to the ship, the sailors caught one of them. They dressed him up in a cap and bells and short bright-colored cape and long stockings, and made him swim back to his astonished friends on shore; and the ship went sailing off with everbocly laughing. When Columbus reached Hayti, he called that island Hispaniola. Here the Santa Maria struck on a reef and had to be abandoned. A fort was built out of the wreck, and thirty-nine of the men were left THE NINA. in charge. Then on the sixteenth of January, 1493, Columbus set sail in the Niiia for Spain, taking with him some COLUMBUS RETURNS TO SPAIN. 23 native Indians to be baptized. Pinzon had de- serted him. He was hurrying home in the ship Pinta, to win the laurels of the discovery for himself. Columbus had a stormy voyage on the return home. Once it was thought that the ship would go down. So he wrote an account of his discoveries, and sealing it up in a cask, threw it overboard. But the sea grew calm again and on the fifteenth of March the Nina dropped anchor off Palos. The King and Queen were at Barcelona at that time. You can fancy how astonished everybody looked when the tall, dark-skinned Indians marched in. They were half-naked. Their bodies were painted and their heads adorned with feathers. Some carried baskets of seed- pearls, and curious ornaments of gold, some bore the skins of strange animals, and others un- known plants and beautiful birds of brilliant plumage. The king and queen rose from their thrones to receive Columbus, which was a great honor. Columbus really believed he had found India. He told the monarchs that there were rivers with sands of gold in these wonderful West Indies, and that much gold was in the earth, to be had for the digging. 24 THE STOKY OF Ol'K COUNTRY, So Ferdinand was anxious to fit out vessels for another voyage; and on the twenty-fifth of Sep- tember, 1493, a fleet of seventeen ships, with fifteen hundred men on board, weighed anchor and steered westward In about two months Columbus came in sight of Hispaniola. Sailing to the fort which he had built there, he found it burned and the little colony gone. Farther east on the island, he built another fort, where he left a colony under command of his brother Diego. Putting to sea again, he dis- covered the islands of Jamaica and Porto Rico, When he returned to Hispaniola, his colony was in a sad plight. The greedy Spaniards had not found gold. They were all discontented. Many were sick, for the climate was unhealthful. The Indians had been cruelly treated by the brutal soldiers and would not furnish food. The colonists blamed Columbus for all their troubles and sent complaints against him to the king. So the great admiral set sail for Spain to defend himself, and was again well received by the king and queen. In 149S, Columbus set sail with six ships on a third voyage to the New \\ orld. This time he steered farther to the south, still believing he would come to India. COLUMBUS'S LAST VOYAGE. 25 Skirting along the coast of South America, he saw the Orinoco river rushing clown with its yellow floods to the sea, and then he knew he had found a continent; but he thought it was Asia. When he reached Hispaniola, Columbus found the Spaniards quarreling with one another and angry with him. He was put in chains and sent back to Spain a prisoner. Enemies talked ugly about him on the streets of Granada. In the courtyard of the Alhambra, when they met his two little sons, who were pages to Queen Isabella, they would shout and jeer at them about their father. Although the king took off his chains, he did not treat Columbus very well. He, too, was angry because the gold had not been found. But the selfish Ferdinand knew that Columbus was the best sailor in Spain, and so he told him he must sail again to the west and try once more to find a passage to the rich provinces of India. When at last his ships again reached Hispani- ola, the colony would not let Columbus land. With a sad heart he sailed to the west to obey the king. He did not find a passage to India. His ships were old and worm-eaten. The food gave out, storms drove the vessels ashore, and Columbus and his men barely escaped alive. He 26 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. TOMB OK COLUMBUS. was finally taken back to Spain in a ship that was sent to his aid by the governor of Hispaniola. His kind friend Isabella was dead. The king would not reward him for his faithful services. Seventy years old and neglected, Columbus died among strangers. After many years, the people of Spain learned what a wonder- ful land Columbus had discov- ered. They took up his body, carried it across the ocean, and buried it with pomp in San Domingo, in the Island of Hayti, which he had colonized. When Hayti was ceded to France, his remains were removed to the Cathedral in Havana, Cuba. Isabella's grandson, Charles v., bestowed upon the grand- son of Columbus the title of Duke of Veragua and Marquis of Jamaica. The United States, in 1892, in- vited the present Duke of Ver- agua to help celebrate the mem- columbus statue at ° world's COLUMBIAN ory of Columbus at the World's exposition. Columbian Exposition. When the statue of HONORS FOR COLUMBUS. 27 Columbus was unveiled, the national air "Colum- bia" was played by hundreds of silver-throated instruments, and, for the hour, the whole world seemed to speak the one word — Columbus. Do you not think the great admiral himself would have felt repaid for all his heroic courage and self-sacrifice? EARLY VOYAGES TO NORTH AMERICA CHAPTER III. AMERICUS VESPUCIUS AND BALBOA. It soon became known all over Europe that there really was land across the sea, and another Italian, Americus Vespucius, who lived in Spain, planned a voyage of discovery. In 1499, Americus visited the coast of Venezuela and saw many curious things there. The people lived in villages built out in the water on piles, with little bridges which they could draw up so that no one could get into their houses. Americus saw them roasting alligators for food. He said that they sometimes killed and ate captives taken in war; but the people in Spain could not believe that story. It seemed too horrible to be true. Americus brought back two hundred Indians to Spain and sold them as slaves; he thought that was right because he had captured them in battle. He wrote letters to a friend about his voyage, but did not once mention the name of Columbus. 28 AMERICUS VESPUCIUS. DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 29 The letters were published and soon people began to talk about the country of Americus, although, as we have seen, Americus was not the one who discovered it. And that is the way in which the great western continent came to be called America. About this time there was a Spaniard named Balboa, who lived in Hispaniola. He was brave but cruel, and had many enemies. He owed a great deal of money wliich he did not wish to pay back. So one day, to escape his creditors, he hid behind some casks on a ship just as it was leaving port. When the captain found Balboa behind the casks he threatened to throw him overboard. But soon a storm tossed the ship about the sea until it was driven to the coast of Darien, near where there was already a small Spanish settlement. Here the Indians were not very friendly to the Spaniards, and tried to induce them to leave the country. One day, the son of an Indian chief told them that a few days' journey to the west would bring them to a great sea, and that beyond the sea was a land so rich that the people ate off plates of silver and drank from goblets of gold. Balboa determined to find this land. So, with a part}^ of 30 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Spaniards, he marched toward the west, fighting the hostile Indians and often going without food whole days at a time, until they came across the Isthmus of Darien, to a high mountain beyond which, the guide said, lay the sea. From the top of the mountain in 1513, they saw a vast blue sea which stretched out so far that only the water and the sky could be seen. Great was the joy over this wonderful discovery. The little band of men hastened down the mountain side; and as they went they cut the name of Ferdinand on the bark of the trees. When, at last, Balboa reached the shore, he waded out into the water and waved his sword and called the new ocean the South Sea, because all that part of it which was in sight lay to the south of the land; and he took possession of the sea and all the land along its coast in the name of Ferdinand, King of Spain. A few years after that, a brave navigator whose name was Magel- lan, sailed across the South Sea, westward from South America, and thus at last found the long- sought passage to India; and, because the waters were so calm, he gave to the great sea the name which it still bears, the Pacific Ocean. CHAPTER IV. SPANISH SETTLEMENTS. Of all the sailors who went across the sea to the new world, the Spaniards were the most pleased with their discoveries, because they happened to go where the climate was mild, where the flowers were blooming and the birds were singing. The land itself seemed so wonderful that they could not help believing the wonderful stories the natives told. One of the stories was about a magic fountain that would give eternal youth to any one who bathed in its waters. Now, among the friends of Columbus was a man whose name was Ponce de Leon. He was a brave knight, who had been made governor of Porto Rico. He was very rich, but, as he was getting old, he was willing to spend all his wealth if he might only find the fabled fountain and grow young again. So he fitted out some ships and sailed from Porto Rico among the islands that dot the sea to the west and north. PONCE DE LEON. 32 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. On Easter Sunday, in 1513, he landed on a coast so full of flowers that he called the land Florida. Then for ^veeks he searched all through this land of flowers; but although he bathed in many streams, he was just as wrinkled as before. At last, Ponce de Leon sailed awa}-. Although he kept thinking about the fountain of 3-outh, he kept getting older and older every day. Five years later he returned to Florida. The king had made him governor of the countr}' and wanted him to colonize it. But he searched no more for the magic fountain; for almost as soon as he landed, the Indians fell upon his men and killed several in a fierce battle. He himself was wounded and sailed back home to die. While the rich Ponce de Leon had been seek- ing youth in Florida another Spaniard, Cortez, was seeking gold in Mexico, but as that country is not a part of the United States, we shall not - ^>.™ . take time to relate the story of ' (-'r-^W ' its discovery. ' '' In the city of Mexico, Cortez HERNANDO CORTEZ. found bcautlful palaces and tem- ples, and vast stores of wealth in the treasure- houses of Montezuma, the king. SEARCH FOR GOLD. 33 Cortez conquered the country and made it a Spanish province. He sent bushels of pearls and millions of dollars in gold and silver to Spain. This caused the new king, Charles V., to be more anxious than ever to possess the whole of the new world and he sent over many colonists to make settlements. Some of the Spaniards were very wicked and cruel to the Indians. Sometimes they cut off their noses and put out their eyes because the Indians would not show them where to find gold; for they believed that the Indians knew just where all the gold mines were. In 1526 the king of Spain appointed a man called De Narvaez to be governor of Florida. He was a bold adventurer, and wanted gold more than anything else in the world. He treated the Indians so cruelly that they at last revenged themselves by shoot- ing down his men from the for- ests and swamps, until only four were left of the three hundred who had started out. King Charles now planned a new expedition which should be hernando de soto. greater than any other. Hernando de Soto, the flower of the Spanish youth, was appointed gov- 34 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. ernor of Florida and Cuba. He had already done some famous things, fighting the Indians in South America. He had just been married to the daughter of Don Pedro cle Avila, the proud- est of all the nobles of Spain. Many young courtiers (locked about the stand- ard of De Soto and began to prepare for the voyage. It was a gay company, all clad in bright armor, with scarfs flying and swords dangling at their sides. In the ships there were great iron chests in which to bring back the treasure they expected to find. They also carried many chains for the In- dian slaves they wanted to capture, and they had a number of trained bloodhounds to chase the slaves that should run away. Although they took over cards and many games for the young nobles to amuse themselves with, they also took twelve priests. These were to convert the natives who were called heathen, because they had never heard of the Christian religion. At last ten fine ships were fitted out and six hundred young nobles sailed proudly from the harbor of San Lucar, to seek their fortunes in the strange new world. Favorable winds bore them to Havana, where De Soto left his beautiful wife to rule the island HERNANDO DE SOTO. 35 of Cuba while he should be in Florida seekin*^ for gold. In May, 1539, the ships cast anchor in Tampa Bay, Florida, and De Soto landed there. He soon heard of an Indian town six miles away and hastened to visit it. When he reached the town, the Indians had fled and hidden themselves in the forest; but there were wooden houses there, and everything was neat and clean. The walls were hung with embroidered curtains made from buckskin; and on the floors were buckskins for rugs. Some dresses for women were there, and shawls woven from the bark of mulberry trees andT trimmed with shells or em- broidered with gold and bright-colored threads. De Soto began to think he had, indeed, found a country rich in gold. So he and his men went through gloomy swamps, deeper and deeper into the forests. Some of them grew frightened; but they were too proud to say so and went on and on, searching for treasure they never found. All winter they stayed near the Flint river in the Appalachian mountains. They made many explo- rations and saw many strange beasts and birds. The next summer they wandered about, always told by the Indians that gold was farther to the 36 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. west. They passed through the country now known as Georgia and Alabama, and came at last to the Indian village of Mobile. There the Indians opposed their progress, and in a terrible battle the town was burned and two thousand Indians were killed. Eighteen of De Soto's men were killed and one hundred and fifty wounded; eighty of the horses were killed and all of their baggage was lost. Through forests and across streams they marched, fighting their way toward the west, until, after many months, they found, instead of gold, the great Mississippi river. De Soto erected a large wooden cross on the bluffs by the shore, and claimed the country in the name of Spain. It would take a long time to follow the march of De Soto as he wandered still farther west, always searching for treasure and never find- ing it. At length, discouraged and sick, he came back to the Mississippi. He dreamed no more of con- quest. He thought only of the beautiful wife in far-away Cuba, whom he had not seen for three long years. He thought of the castle in Spain where he had been so proud and happy in the days now gone forever. When De Soto died, ST, AUGUSTINE FOUNDED. y] the priests chanted a solemn hymn and his body was lowered, by torch-light, into the waters of the river he had found. Only three hundred and eleven of the six hundred cavaliers were alive. Ragged and half-starved, they made boats, and finally after great suffering, a very few of them reached a little Spanish settlement on the east coast of Mexico. More than twenty years later, one more attempt was made to settle Florida. On St. Augustine's day, the twenty-eighth of August, 1565, a large fleet, bearing twenty-five hundred men and wo- men, came in sight of St. ~ rX John's river. At the „^ \X~, mouth of that river, they ^^^'-^^ ' laid out the town of St. ^^^^-^-^^ Augustine, the oldest set- ^^^ tlement in the United C^^ GATEWAY AT ST. AUGUSTINE. A strong fort was begun, a chapel was built, homes were erected, and soon there was a little patch of Spain on what was afterwards to be a part of the United States. And in it there were Jesuit priests and lords and ladies, with many Indian slaves to do their bidding. CHAPTER V. ENGLISH AND FRENCH VOYAGES. In the seaport town of Bristol, England, lived an old Venetian sailor, named John Cabot, who had been all over the known world. When he heard about the discoveries of Co- lumbus he felt sure that he could find a western passage to India. So, about the year 1497, he fitted out a ship, and got permission of King Henry VII. to take possession, in the name of England, of any land not claimed by other coun- tries. After a long voyage north of the course taken by Columbus, he reached the barren coast of Labrador. It was cold and dreary there. The hungry white bears and wide stretches of snow and ice were not very inviting. He set up the flag of England on the coast and sailed back home. Cabot was sure he had found the east end of Asia; the people thought so, too, and honored him greatly; the king called him the " Great Admiral" and gave him a high place at court. The following year the admiral's son, Sebas- tian Cabot, sailed from Bristol to find a north- 38 THE DISCOVERIES OF THE CABOTS. 39 west passage to India. The icebergs of Green- land came in sight and he changed the course of his ship to the south. He passed through great schools of cod fish, such as he had never seen before; and after touching on the coast ^^ of Labrador where his father had been, Sebastian sailed still farther ^1 TT 1 J ^1 ^1. SEBASTIAN CABOT. south. He explored the coastline of America as far as Maryland, and took posses- sion of all that country in the name of England. As the Cabots did not find the rich country of India, the English lost interest in the new world, and it was many years before any settlements were made by them. Some fishermen of Brittany and Normandy heard of the great fishing grounds which the Cabots had seen. They steered their frail barks to the shoals of Newfoundland, filled them with fish, and hurried back to tell of their good fortune. Soon very many French fishermen sailed boldly out to the banks of Newfoundland, dried their fish upon the rocks and then returned to sell them in the seaports of Europe. Fishing smacks were the only vessels that sailed from France to America until Francis I. came to the throne. This king declared that he 40 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. would explore the new world as his neighbors in Spain and England had done. So in 1524, Francis sent out an Italian sailor, Verrazano, to find a short passage to Asia. After a stormy voyage, Verrazano reached the coast of North Carolina. Then he sailed north to the harbor of New ' ir^^sk York. Then he touched *^^^^^^r>^ at Rhode Island, where :;^^^^'"r'^^^ "I^^*^^^"^^^ ^^ found many grapes, iust as Leif the Lucky - isj-v. -;=i^': had done, five hundred COD FISHING. years before. He next traced the long and broken line of the New Eng- land coast, passed to the east of Nova Scotia, and finally sailed on to Newfoundland. When \^errazano reached home he wrote a book about his voyage. He said he had sailed close to the shore and that he had seen fires blazing all along the coast, which showed that the country was inhabited. He said the country was very beautiful, that gold and silver were there, and that he thought the natives looked much like the Chinese. King Francis I. was very much pleased with this report and gave the name New France to all the land that had been discovered. JACyUES CAKTIER. 41 But wars broke out and the gay, ambitious monarch was kept so bu-sy that for ten years he thought very Httle about America. Then, in 1534, Jacques Cartier of Brittany made a voyage. He entered a bay in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and while the Indians stood about, not know- ^^^ ing what he was doing, he raised fW\3ki up a tall wooden cross, bearing a /W^ shield with the arms of France, and *^ proclaimed the French king mas- ^ " JACQUES CARTIER. ter of all that country. The Indians were not very friendly at first; but Cartier soon pleased them with gifts of beads and penknives and trinkets. He told them, as well as he could, about the Great Father in -France who had many warriors and would punish them if they did not let the cross stand where he had put it. When, a few weeks later, he sailed back to France, Cartier had so won the hearts of the na- tives that an Indian chief sent his two sons with him to see whether the white man had spoken truly. Fancy how those Indian boys felt when they saw the great armies of France, with their bright armor and waving plumes. How frightened they 42 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. must have been at the wagons rattling over the streets of the great city of Paris. How high the houses must have looked! How carefully the boys must have stepped, the first time they climbed the steep stairways! The next year these Indian lads returned to America with Cartier. They were received with a great shout by their people, who had begun to fear they would never return. They described the many wonderful things they had seen; and when they told how kindly the Great Father on the throne of gold had treated them, the Indians became more friendly than ever to the French. They went with Cartier in boats up the St. Lawrence river till they came to an Indian vil- lage at the foot of a high hill, in the middle of an island. Climbing to the top of the hill, Cartier named the island and town Montreal. After spending the long cold winter in New France, Cartier returned home. The French were greatly discouraged. Neither silver nor gold had been found; and what was a new world good for that did not have silver and gold ? CHAPTER VI. FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. It was a long time before a permanent settle- ment was made by the French in America. But, at last, in 1605, a colony was established on the west coast of Nova Scotia. The name of Port Royal was given to the harbor. The whole country, including Nova Scotia and the land as far south as the St. Croix river, was called Acadia. In 1 60S, Samuel Champlain laid the founda- tions of Quebec, which soon became a flourishing trading post. Afterwards Montreal, which Car- tier had visited in 1535, became settled. The French Jesuit priests now came to New France in large numbers. They made friends with the Indians, and trading posts sprang up all along the St. Lawrence river and the lakes. It was bitter cold in winter; but the French learned to wear snowshoes and ride in sledges over the ice, and they were quite as healthy and happy as the Spaniards farther south in the Land of Plowers. 44 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The missionaries heard of a great river in the west, flowing to the sea. And as they thought this might be the long-sought passage to India, they determined to explore it. In the year ^^73> good Father Marquette and a merchant named Joliet went by way of the Fox river into the Wisconsin river. Here the guides left them; for they said that beyond was the Mississippi, the Father of Waters, and that far out in its yellow current dwelt a demon, who would swal- low both man and canoe. But Father Marquette was not afraid of de- mons, and he paddled on to the great river. He traveled many days down its broad current till his food gave out, and he was obliged to return. In the meantime. La Salle, a young Norman merchant, had discovered the Ohio river, and when he heard of the explo- rations of Marquette and Joliet, he determined to follow the Mis- sissippi to its mouth. La Salle had many ad ventures. He passed the spot where poor De Soto had once set up the cross of Spain; but, of course, he had never i,A SALLE. heard of that. When at last he came to the mouth of the river, La Salle set up HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS. 45 LOUIS XIV. the cross, with the arms of France, and took pos- session of the Mississippi and of all its tributa- ries, and of all the lands through which they flowed. He called the country Louis- iana, in honor of the king of France, Louis XIV. This whole country was a para- dise for hunters and trappers. There were droves of buffalo and herds of deer and towns of the velvet- coated beaver. The Indians were friendly and gladly exchanged their furs for the { ^fl\):-^ ^'' JP'^' ^ trinkets of the Frenchmen. In a few years. New Orleans, above the mouth of the river, was built. A line of trading posts sprang up along the Mississippi and the Illinois, and the Ohio and the Wabash. And so we find the French making a great deal of money with their fur trade. They lived at peace with the Indians; they married Indian girls after they had become good Catholics, and ^ir< iH' II III MrH^Jjgyfy^ fe^^Sf^f BEAVER TOWN. 46 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. A FRENCH GEN- TLEMAN. they had their half-Indian children baptized by the priest in the parish church. The wigwams grew into huts and the huts soon clustered together into villages. Neat gardens were laid out, and fruit trees were planted, and cattle were raised. Their farming was done in a rude way, to be sure. They stirred the ground with a wooden plowshare drawn by lazy oxen, whose only harness was strings of untanned hide, tied to the horns. But the rich soil gave forth great harvests of grain. Soon many boats, filled with flour, pork, tal- low, tobacco, hemp, and leather were floated down the Ohio and the Missis- sippi to New Orleans. There the goods were exchanged for sugar, metal goods, and cloth- ing. As there were no coopers to make barrels, the flour was packed in elk skins; as there were no churns, butter was made by shak- ing the cream in a bottle; and as there were no tubs, the soiled linen was pounded with ^Sv% A eri-;nch TRAPPER. FRENCH COLONISTS. 47 Sticks in the nearest streams, as is done to-day in the country villages of France. The black-eyed French women wore bright red and blue petticoats with white handkerchiefs over their neat jackets, and little white caps on their smooth black hair. The men wore long leggings of doeskin, and a short cape. On their feet were beaded moccasins; in their ears were little round earrings; and their long hair was done up in a queue. When the day's work was over, a whole village gathered on the square, and to the music of the vio- lin joined in the dance; while the priest of the parish and the sedate Indian war- riors looked gravely on. In Montreal, Quebec, and New Orleans there was more bustle and life. Military garrisons were stationed in these larger towns. The wives of the officers came there to live, and brought with them many of the fashions from the gay city of Paris. The French colonists in New France and in Louisiana were prosperous and happy, and soon began to think that America was a delightful country to live in. CHAPTER VII. DUTCH SETTLEMENTS. In the city of Amsterdam, in Holland, was a rich company of merchants, called the Dutch East India Company. These merchants wanted very much to get to India by a cheaper and quicker way than across the desert. So they fitted out a ship for Henry Hudson, a British seaman, who had already been on two long voyages hunting for a north- west passage to India. - f 1 "^ N I^ 1609 Hudson sailed north to ''Ifdr'^^j^J 1 Lapland. The ocean there was ^* filled with icebergs, and so he , turned the prow of his good ship, Half Moon, toward America. He HENRY HUDSON. ., , ^, it-) 1 sailed to Chesapeake Bay; then he sailed north, sounding all the bays and tr}'- ing in vain to find a river which would carry him west. It was in September that Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name. Here the corn was ripening on the banks; yonder were groups of magnificent forest trees; still farther on, great DUTCH EXPLORATIONS. 49 cliffs and towers of rock, like castles, mirrored themselves in the placid waters of the river. Hud- son thought he had never seen anything half so beautiful, and when he returned to Holland he told the merchants that a fine fur trade might be carried on in that region. Afterwards, this brave sea-captain explored the bay which now bears his name. It was so cold there that the sailors would not go any farther, and because Hudson would not turn back, they tied him with ropes and put him and his son and a few others into a boat and left them among the ice. What became of them nobody ever knew. Soon Dutch ships sailed up the Hudson river to engage in the fur trade. Fleets of boats carried powder and shot and hatchets and beads to a trading post on the river, called Fort Orange, where Albany now stands. A long line of canoes would often come down the Mohawk with packs of beaver skins. When they reached the mouth of that river, the Indians and their squaws would load the packs on their shoulders and walk down the narrow trail to the fort where the trading would begin. There were always some Indians there loitering around, gaz- ing with longing eyes at the beads and the little 50 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. mirrors and the tinkling bells, which only their furs could buy. A fort and some huts were built on Manhattan Island, and soon many thrifty Dutch colonists settled there. In 1614, the name of New Am- sterdam was given to the place; and this was the beginning of New York City. Across the sound on Long Island and all around New Amsterdam lived many Indians be- cause of the oysters and clams to be found in the coves along the coast. Here too, on the long stretches of beach, were the beautiful blue and white shells which they made into wampum belts and often used for money. Fishes swarmed in the creeks, timid deer sprang through the forest, and all the marshes were full of wild fowls. It was just the spot for an Indian summer resort. At first the Dutch had a great deal of trouble with their Indian neighbors, and many a stout burgher was scalped or taken captive. After a time, they bought the land from the Indians and built forts along the shore, and then they began to feel quite safe from attack. They explored all the country between Cape Henlopen and Cape Cod, and called it New Netherlands. Their houses were wooden, with steep roofs and gables of black and yellow bricks, brought over THE DUTCH COLONY IN NEW YORK. 5 1 from Holland. Everything was kept neat and clean ; for the Dutch women were great house- keepers, and they were good cooks, too. Tables and chairs were big and heavy. Sometimes three little fellows could sit all in a row, in one big chair. In the open fireplace, at night, the great logs crackled and blazed and showed the curious pictures ^^° dutch house 1-11111 1 1 ^^^ ^'^'^^ YORK. on the tiles that had been brought from the old country. The floors were sprinkled every day with fresh white sand, and the little Dutch girls were taught to draw pretty figures on the sand with their stiff birch brooms. At night the children gathered around the fire and told fairy stories. Sometimes the pine knots threw long shadows into the room, when some one would tell an Indian story which made the bravest of them almost afraid to go to bed. On Christmas and Easter and New Year's they had great times with their sports, and were quite as happy as their cousins back in Holland. The Dutch burghers had neat little gardens just out of their towns. After their day's work was done they would sit on the stoops, and smoke, and talk to their neighbors. They were slow 52 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. DUTCH COSTUMES. and did not make as much money as the French; but they did not spend so much either, and so they prospered. They built their own ships, and sent tobacco and furs and tar and timber to Europe. The women wore white muslin caps, and several short bright- colored petticoats, and red or blue or green stockings, and high-heeled shoes. The men had coats with wide skirts and big buttons. They wore small- clothes and long stockings and high-heeled shoes with buckles. Their hair was long and tied up in a queue. One of the governors of New Netherlands was Peter Stuyvesant. He was honest and brave, but so stubborn that he was called "Headstrong Peter"; some called him " Old Silver Leg," because he had a wooden leg with bands of silver on ito He was so headstrong that the ^^ Dutch settlers sometimes wished they had the freedom of the i-eter stuyvesant. English traders who were settling on either side of New Amsterdam. NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK. 53 There was soon much quarreling with these EngHsh; for the Dutch began to fear they would take their trade away. On account of the discoveries made by the Cabots, England claimed all of this country, and in 1664 some English vessels sailed up to New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the town. Peter Stuyvesant, after he had stamped around on his wooden leg and said many ugly things in a very loud voice, tore the letter, containing the terms of surrender, all to pieces ; but his people made him put it together again and accept the terms of the English. So New Netherlands became an English prov- ince, and the name New Amsterdam was changed to New York. But the Dutch language was spoken for a long time after that ; and even to-day, some of the oldest and richest families of New York are justly proud of their ancestors ; for they were a thrifty and honest people. NEW YORK IN 1064. CHAPTER VIII. ENGLISH VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES. On account of the discoveries made by the Cabots, the EngHsh claimed all the country lying north of South Carolina, except a part of Maine, which belonged to the French; but for many years there was no attempt at settlement. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth some gold quartz was taken to England, and great excite- ment arose over the promise of finding gold in America. The queen herself helped fit out several ves- sels. Some of the ships were crushed by icebergs when they sailed too far to the north. Some, heavy laden with yellow dirt, thought to be gold, were overtaken by storms and swallowed up by the sea. Others were captured or sunk by Spanish pirates. There were many roving sailors in those days, but the most famous was Sir Francis Drake. He sailed DRAKE. o^ 3-11 the seas and was the first Englishman to travel round the world. 54 DRAKE SAILS ROUND THE WORLD. 55 In 1578, he plundered the treasure-ships of Spahi off the coast of Peru. Then he sailed north- ward along the coast of North America, hoping to find a short way to England. He found no passage; but the perfumed air and luscious fruit on the shore tempted him to land. He cast anchor off the coast of California, in a " fair and good bay"; and after he had ex- plored the region, he claimed the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth and called it New Albion. He so won the hearts of the natives that they made him king, and wept sorely when he went away. Drake knew that Spanish vessels lay in wait for him beyond Cape Horn, so he sailed to the west over the Pacific Ocean, stopped at several islands in the Indian Ocean, and returned at last to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope. When the great admiral arrived home with his ship full of treasure, the queen loaded him with honors. She made him a knight and partook of abanqueton board of his ship, "Pelican." After- wards she ordered the ship to be preserved as a monument of the glory that Sir Francis Drake had brought to England, by going around the world. 56 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. After a hundred years, the " Pelican" fell to pieces; but from some of its timber a chair was made which may still be seen in the University of Oxford. The queen now desired more than ever to colonize her new posses- sions, and a great deal of money was spent in try- ing to settle the coun- try lying between New France and Florida. Sir Walter Raleigh was very zealous in this. He was a brave knight and was renowned for his heroic deeds in the wars with France. It is said that as Queen Elizabeth was once passing down the street in London, he threw his velvet cloak over a muddy crossing that she might step upon it. However that may be, Sir Walter became a great favorite with the queen. He was a noble gentleman, kind to rich and poor alike. He was very rich, and as the queen was pleased with his plans to settle OUEEN ELIZABETH SIR WALTER RALEIGH. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 57 America, he sent out two vessels at his own expense. The ships cast anchor off the coast of CaroHna in 1584 and after a few weeks returned to England heavily laden with furs and fine woods. Elizabeth was delighted with the account of the voyage, and the country was named Vir- ginia after the virgin queen, as she was called. Sir Walter Raleigh sent a shipload of people to Virginia to settle on Roanoke Island. The men spent their time in hunting gold mines instead of planting corn, and were nearly starving when Sir Francis Drake chanced to pass that way with his ships. He took them back with him to England. Two years afterward, Raleigh sent out an- other company, with John White as governor. They settled on Roanoke Island and built a stout fort and some houses, and there, one day, a little girl-baby was born, the granddaughter of Gover- nor White. She was the first English child born in America, and she was named Virginia Dare. White soon had to go back to England for pro- TOBACCO Pi:£. |/ at first with the governors; ".r^~1?^-- vU^^x^ the yellow fever broke out ^,,„^, , ^ -^ StTri ] MI NT IN CA.ROI.IN t. and a great many colo- nists died. Then there were wars with the Indians; but in the end, peace was made and the Tuscarora Indians, who had given so much trou- ble, went north. 68 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. In South Carolina, the town of Charleston was laid out in 1680. The soil was very fertile. Rice was cultivated and large shiploads of it were sent to England. Protestant refugees from France introduced the silk worm and planted the grape. A system of cheap rents was adopted. Everything was done to encourage immigration. Several ships were sent to New York, and returned, bringing many settlers down to Charleston, free of expense. Plantations spread out; and negroes were imported so rapidly that they soon outnum- bered the whites. After a time the masters grew rich from the labor of the slaves. But those that could not afford slaves became very poor. They could not get w^ork to do unless they would work side by side with the negroes, and they were too proud to do that. So it came about that there were two very different classes of white people in South Caro- lina — the very poor and the very rich. The poorer classes found homes in the western part of the state, among the mountains, and lived by hunting and cutting down timber to sell. The rich planters lived on their farms about Charles- ton, which soon became a gay city, famous for its dinner parties and fashionable life. CHAPTER XL THE PILGRIMS. The Plymouth company, to whom King James had given the north half of Virginia, made no permanent settlement for a long time. Captain John Smith, when he left Jamestown in 1609, went back to England and formed a partnership with four Lon- don merchants in the fur trade. Two ships were freighted with goods and put under Smith's command. While the crews were having a profitable traffic with the Lidians on the coast of Maine, their captain was exploring the coast from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod; he drew a map of the region and called / it New England. /'> YkM_^ Captain Smith now joined the Ply- '/i:/0]fi 1 1 ""/'h^iti«? '' mouthcompany, and many unsuccess- m:^^7m \ ful attempts were made to colonize 'S the country. fV^,. At last, however, without the con- , ,T^TT^^.. ' ' A MERCHANT S sent of king or company, a settle- '^^'^^^• ment was made on the shores of New England. A LONDON MERCHANT. 70 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. In England, the laws about the church were very strict. There were a great many people who could not believe just as the Church of England required. So they went to other countries, where they could worship as they pleased; and because they traveled about from place to place they were called Pilgrims. Some of the Pilgrims went to Holland. The Dutch received them kindly ; but work was scarce and wages were poor ; and, besides, be- cause the people talked a strange language, the English did not feel at home in Holland. So a hundred of the youngest and strongest decided to go to America to make new homes, where, by and by, others might come. The sixteenth of -~ September, 1620, the ship"Mayfiower" set sail for America. The voyage was long. Sailors were still afraid to steer their vessels straight across the ocean. They first went to the Canary Islands, just as Columbus had done; and this made the way twice as long as it is to-day. THE MAYFLOWER. PLYMOUTH ROCK. 7 I The Pilgrims had set out for the beautiful country of the Hudson where some of their Dutch friends had already settled; but a storm drove their ship out of its course to the bleak shores of Cape Cod. Before the Pilgrims landed, they had a meet- ing in the ship. They de- * -^ clared loyalty to the English ^ft**' (^ V[> W king; they pledged them- - '*^f [(,^"[1 selves to live in peace and ^ ^l^^& W '1/ harmony ; and they agreed that every man should have > itMn an equal vote in the public J^^i^J^i affairsof the colony. An elec- ^""^ , , , 1 T 1 r^ GOING TO CHURCH. tion was held, and John Car- ver was elected governor and Miles Standish was made captain. On the following day the wind blew the ship into a harbor, and on the twenty-first of Decem- ber, 1620, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. It was wintry weather. They began at once to build a big house, where the whole colony could stay. Soon they had built houses for all on the banks of a clear brook that ran down the hillside into the bay. Then they built a meeting-house ; it had four cannon planted on the roof to protect them while they were at worship. On Sundays 72 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. the men marched with their guns to the church ; and behind them came the women and children with Governor Carver, Captain Miles Standish, and Elder Brewster. The whole town was sur- rounded by a stout wooden fence, with gates which were fastened at sunset. There were deer and wild turkeys in the woods, and shad and all kinds of fish in the sea. But for all that, the Pilgrims often did not have enough to eat. They had come too late to plant corn, and they had to depend upon the Indians for bread. About half of them died from hardships the first GOV. CARVER'S year. Governor Carver died, and CHAIR. there were so many graves that they leveled them down and planted corn over them that the Indians might not see how few remained alive to defend the town. But they kept up courage through all their troubles; and, in the spring, when the "May- flower" returned to England, not one of the colony wanted to leave the new home. William Bradford was made governor after the death of John Carver. He was kind but severe. Once the Narragansett Indians tied the skin of a rattlesnake around a bundle of arrows and MILES STANDISH. IZ sent it to Governor Bradford as a signal of war. He filled the skin with powder and bullets, and sent it back, and this so frightened the Indians that they would not fight. Miles Standish soon had enough to do to de- fend the colony from the Indians. He had fought the Spaniards in Holland and was not afraid of anybody. With eighteen picked men he once routed a large band of Indians. There were many brave men among these Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. Edward Winslow, the scholar and friend of the Indians, was governor several times. He cured the sick Indians and they taught him, in turn, how to plant corn and cure skins and make medicines from roots in the forest. The Pilgrims soon began to trade beads, knives, fish-hooks, and blankets for furs, which they ship- ped to England. In 162S, the "Mayflower" came back with four other vessels which belonged to the Massachusetts Bay Company. There were two hundred in this colony; and there were many educated men and some rich men among them. A PURITAN MAN. 74 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. A PURITAN WOMAN. They brought cattle and garden seeds and fruit-trees and farming implements and all the things needed to settle a new country; and they founded Salem, with the honest, clear- headed John Endicott as governor. They, too, had come to America to find freedom in worship; but they were not called Pilgrims, but Puri- tans, or reformers. At this time, in the reign of Charles I., Archbishop Laud, of the Church of England, was very cruel to all who did not believe as he did. If a minister preached a sermon or wrote a book that the Archbishop did not like, he was sent to the whipping-post or might even have his ears cropped. The Puritans did not believe in all the cere- monies of the Church of England; and because they would not follow all the rules of the church, they were much persecuted. In 1630 eight hundred Puritans. under Governor John Winthrop, came to America. They settled Boston, which became the capital of the colony. There were many privations, but one day just as Governor Winthrop was distribut- JOHN WINTHROP. NEW ENCxLAND TOWNS. 75 ing the last meal, a ship from England sailed into Boston harbor with food enough for all. The Puritans kept on coming. They settled Roxbury, Charlestown and other towns in Mas- sachusetts. They settled Portsmouth and Dover in New Hampshire, which was at that time a part of Massachusetts, and was a fine country for fishing and trading, and shipping lumber. They sent their boats up along the coast of Maine which was also a part of Massachusetts. There were in IMaine good harbors and fine trees for ship-building, and acres and acres of meadow lands, through which the mountain streams ran swiftly down to the sea; and the whole country was famous for its fishing and hunting. But the Indians were there; and the French from the north were troublesome. So it re- mained for many years a stretch of sea- coast where the colonists caught and dried their fish and bought furs and deerskins of the Indians. After a few years, Plymouth colony and Mas- sachusetts Bay colony joined together and made the province of Massachusetts, about which there will be a great deal to say in another chapter. CHAPTER XII. SETTLEMENT OF CONNNECTICUT. In October, 1635, a colony of sixty families started from Boston to the Connecticut valley with their cattle; for they had heard that the pastures were good along the river. It was a tiresome journey. There were hills to climb and streams to cross. Winter set in before they reached the valley. They built log cabins on the west bank of the Connecticut river, and called their town Hartford. Snow fell thick and fast. Their cattle could get no food, and starved to death. They them- selves ate the bark of trees and scraped the snow from the ground to find acorns. They bought a little corn from the Indians; but, fearing that they must die if they remained, they all went back to Boston. They gave such a good report of the valley, however, that in the spring a party of a hun- dred, led by a great and good man called the Rev. Thomas Hooker, started for the Connecti- cut valley. They drove their flocks before them and reached Hartford in the summer. Soon 76 THE PEQUOT WAR. 11 HOUSE PROTECTED BY PALISADES. they had a strong settlement which they called the Connecticut colony. This was the first colony in America to agree that a man who had a good character might vote on public questions without being obliged to belong to any church, or to have any land or money. About this time, Say- brook, at the mouth of the Connecticut river, was colonized by John Winthrop, Jr., the son of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts. A war with the Pequot Indians broke out in 1636. For months, the Indians drove off the cat- tle, burned down houses and killed men, women and children around Saybrook. Over a thou- sand Indians were on the war-path. They were swift and terrible, and at first the white men, in heavy breastplates and helmets, could not with- stand them. In 1637 Captain John Mason, with ninety men, surprised Sassacus, the Pequot chief, in his own village and set the houses on fire. Hundreds of warriors, squaws, and papooses were killed. The whole Pequot nation was de- stroyed, and for a long time after this, the settle- ments east of the Hudson river lived in peace. yS THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. In 1638, Theophilus Eaton and Rev. John Davenport of London brought over some colo- nists and settled New Haven. They purchased land from the Indians; and they all agreed together that only church members should have a voice in public affairs. When the province of New Netherlands came into possession of the English, the Connecticut country was rapidly settled, and after a time the colonies of Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook were united into the one province, Con- necticut, with John Winthrop, Jr., as governor. East of Connecticut was a colony established by a young Baptist minister, Roger Williams. He had come to Salem, Massa- chusetts, to escape religious per- secution. But in Massachusetts, too, he was persecuted. The Puritans were not willing that those who disagreed with ROGER WILLIAMS, them on religious subjects should stay in the colony. Roger Williams believed this country should be free for all religions. He said that it was wrong to force a man to belong to a certain church before he was allowed to vote. His talk caused a great deal of excitement. One man said he had a "wind-mill " in his head; ROGER WILLIAMS. 79 and Governor Endicott decided to send this bold young man back to England. But he escaped in the night from Salem, and wandered for weeks through the snow, and lived on acorns and roots. One time he began to build a house in the Plymouth country; but Governor Brad- ford told him to seek another home. Gov- ernor Winthrop of Boston wrote him a kind letter and ad- vised him to go across Narragansett Bay where the Indians owned lands. So with five friends, he crossed the bay in a canoe. He called the place where they landed Providence. The chief of the Narragansetts sold him a large tract of land, a part of which he gave to all who would settle there. Several settlements were made on Narragan- sett Bay which were at length united into the province of Rhode Island. Protestants, Catho- lics, Jews, and Quakers were all welcomed there. It used to be said that if a man lost his religion, he would be sure to find it again in Rhode Island. ROGER WILLIAMS S CHURCH AT SALEM. CHAPTER XIII. SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE. New Jersey was for a long time a province of New Netherlands. It was first occupied by Dutch traders; but Danes and Swedes also traded there and the people of the three settle- ments did not agree very well. After the English got possession of New Netherlands, Philip Carteret arrived from Eng- land as the governor of East Jersey. He named the first settlement Elizabethtown after his wife Elizabeth. The town and surrounding country were rap- idly settled by New Eng- land people. They purchased their land from the Indians. Newark was founded by a company of settlers from Con- necticut, and little hamlets sprang up along the shores '^ of the bay as far south as Sandy Hook. An assembly was elect- ed by the people. Freedom of conscience was allowed, and all the laws were just. QUAKERS. THE DUTCH AND THE SWEDES. 8l The western part of New Jersey was bought by a company of Friends, or Quakers, in 1677; and a set of laws was made as liberal as those in Connecticut. Before the end of the year, a colony of four hundred Friends arrived in West Jersey. In 16S2, William Penn and some friends bought East Jersey, so that all of New Jersey was owned by the Quakers. Under the liberal laws of these people, many persecuted Presbyterians came from Scotland; and we shall find that after awhile, when East and West Jersey were united into one province, New Jersey became a divid- ing line on slavery and on many other questions between the Puritans of the North and the Cava- liers of the South. Across the bay from New Jersey, to the south, lay a country which Lord Delaware had named and explored when he was governor of Virginia. He found the region very beautiful; but there were so many other beautiful places that it was a long time before any one went there to live. In T630, the Dutch tried to establish a colony in this country of Delaware. They built a large brick house for their thirty colonists near Cape Henlopen on Delaware Bay; and they called the place Swanendael, which means, " The vale of 82 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Swans"; and they put up a high post on \vhich \vas a bright copper plate inscribed with the coat-of-arms of Holland. The copper glittered in the sun and so pleased the fancy of a j^oung Indian brave, that he took off the plate for an ornament The Dutch made such a stirabout this, that his tribe put the thief to death. Then, in revenge, his relatives slew all the settlers in Swanendael. A Swedish colony came to Delaware in 1638. They called the country New Sweden; and they made their first p^ settlement near where Wilmington now is, and called it Christina after the little twelve- year-old queen, Christina, who was soon to be the ruler of Sweden. They planted corn and tobacco, and spun their own flax. The women were good housekeepers, and the men were strong and industrious. Soon, more colonists came, bringing cattle and farming tools, and the population increased rapidly. OLD SWEDISH CHURCH. DELAWARE BECOMES ENGLISH. 83 This did not please tlie Dutch, who said the region was a part of New Netherlands. They did not want such a thrifty people as rivals in trade with the Indians. The Dutch built a fort where New Castle now stands. The Swedes captured this fort, but the Dutch sent a fleet of seven vessels, which recaptured it and con- quered the whole country. All who would not swear allegiance to the Dutch government were forced to leave the country. Thus ended the only colony which Sweden planted in the New World. The Dutch were delighted over this territory which they now had all to themselves. The lower part of the noble Delaware abounded in shad, and on its many small tributaries were large villages of beaver. Then, when New Netherlands became English, Delaware became English too. Afterward Delaware was a part of Pennsylvania, by a grant of land given to William Penn, and he established a colony of Quakers at New Castle. For many years the settlements on both sides of the river had the same English laws. Protected from the Indians by the other colonies around it, Delaware was a peaceful little corner of the earth to live in. CHAPTER XIV. SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. The Quakers were much hated in England. They would not take off their hats in the pres- ence of their betters; they always said " thee " and "thou" to everybody, and they would not serve in the army. Besides, they were so good that they made the wicked courtiers of Charles II. feel ashamed of themselves; so they were always being impris- oned and persecuted and sent into exile. One of the proudest men in England was Admiral Penn, who was a loyal friend of King Charles and had loaned him a large sum of money. His son William was ex- pelled from the University of Oxford because he attended a Quaker meeting. When Admiral Penn found that William was really a Quaker he was much grieved, and sent him to the gay city of Paris, hoping he would forget his religion; and when the young man still kept faithful to his vows, his father turned him out of doors. CHARLES II. WILLIAM PENN. 85 But when Admiral Penn was on his death-bed, he sent for his son, asked his forgiveness and left him large estates. For the payment of the king's old debt, Penn proposed taking land in Amer- ica, and Charles gave him all the land in Pennsylvania. Penn had already been inter- ested in the Quaker colonies in New Jersey, and he now planned ^*i''h ; to take a colony of Quakers to william pknn. America, where they would be free to worship as they pleased. There was great laughing in London about the Quaker cowards, who would not fight, going out to live among the savages. No one thought there would be a soul alive in a week's time. Penn sailed from England in 16S2 with a hun- dred Quakers, and they landed at New Castle, Delaware, where many of them settled. Penn was honest and just, and believed that America really belonged to the Indians. He called all the Indians together who claimed the land which he had bought from the king, and paid them what they asked for it; he treated them so kindly that they were ever after the friends of any man who wore a broad-brimmed hat. 86 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The following year Penn laid out a town on a strip of land between the Delaware and Schuyl- kill rivers, and called it Philadelphia, or the City of Brotherly Love. That same year thirty-three ships came over, bringing a whole army of men and women; but it was an army of peace instead of war. You can fancy the bustle there was when the ships unloaded the boxes and chests. There were horses and cattle and sheep and swine. These neighed and bellowed and bleated and squealed; the sailors shouted to one an- other, and out of the forest came the sound of the axes on the trees, and then tall trees would fall with a crash. The men and women and children were as busy as they could be. Soon a great number of log houses were built; a schoolhouse was built, and then a church, and then a mill. In three years the city had six hun- dred houses, and among them were some good brick ones, after the London fashion. Of course, most of the settlers were Quakers; but Penn said there should be freedom of thought and speech for everybody in his colony, and all peo- ple found a home in this city of Brotherly Love. Thousands of industrious Germans came to escape the cruel wars on the Rhine, and they bought farms near the city. THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE. 87 A GERMAN COI.ONIST. In the year 1729, five thousand Irish Presbyte- rians came to Philadelphia, and they proved to be a brave and enterprising people. Every man who paid tax had a right to vote. The settlers did not always agree. They quarreled some- times like boys and girls in a big family, but they kept on prospering. Wharves were built out into the water; there were busy shipyards along the river; and soon a weekly mail was distributed between Philadelphia and the smaller towns of the colony. The great coal mines of Pennsyl- vania had not yet been found, but there was iron in the mountains, and foundries were soon established. Factories made linen from the flax which was raised. Horses, flour, pota- toes, and tobacco were sent to the West Indies to be exchanged for sugar, salt and a few negro slaves. But the Quakers did not believe it was right to own slaves, and soon set free all that they had. In 1 701 William Penn went back to London, never to return; but you will agree that he was one of the most wonderful men in colonial history. A GERMAN COLONIST. CHAPTER XV. SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA. In England, there were not only very severe and unjust laws about religion, but there was also a very cruel law about debt. The rich oppressed the poor, and thousands were thrown into jail every year because they were in debt. One day, a great soldier and member of Par- liament, James Oglethorpe, saw a sick man dragged from his starving family and thrown into jail. He thought that a system of laws which would allow this to be done must be bad ; and he asked Parliament to appoint him commis- sioner to visit the prisons. Through his report, many prisoners for debt were let out of the jails. But after they were free, it was hard for them to find work and hold up their heads again. The noble-hearted Oglethorpe petitioned JAMES OGLETHORPE. 88 FOUNDING OF SAVANNAH. 89 King George to permit him to plant a colony for these people in America. The king gave him a tract of land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, to be held in trust for the poor. Think of it! The poor down-trodden men, pale from prisons, where they had been thrown, often through no fault of their own, were to have lands and a chance to begin life over again. Members of Parliament, noblemen, and kind- hearted people donated money, and a hundred and thirty emigrants set sail with James Ogle- thorpe for their new home, which was called Georgia after the King. On the first day of February, 1733, they se- lected a high bluff where Savannah now stands, and began to lay out a town; and soon a large village of tents and cabins was built among the pine trees. General Oglethorpe bought the land from the Indians. An Indian chief came to see Oglethorpe and brought him a beautiful buffalo robe, painted on the inside with the head and feathers of an eagle. " The buffalo skin means protection, and the feathers of the eagle are soft and mean love," he said. " Therefore love and protect us"; and Oglethorpe made peace with all the Indians. 90 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The fierce Cherokees came a long way to smoke the pipe of peace with their white brother, Ogle- thorpe. Not only the prisoners for debt, but the oppressed from all countries soon found homes in Georgia; there were German pilgrims from the Rhine; there were Swiss peasants from the Alps; there were the Highlanders from the hills of Scotland. Some of the laws made for these colo- nists were very strict; but that was necessary for good order among so many different classes of people. A GEORGIAN ^^^^^ ^^^ colouists might not COLONIST. become idle, Oglethorpe would not permit any slaves to be bought; and that they might not be drunkards he forbade any rum to be sold. After the colony was well started, Governor Oglethorpe went back to England and soon returned with three hundred more colonists, who were nearly all good, religious people. He had trouble with the Spaniards in Florida, who claimed the territory of Georgia; but he built forts and raised volunteers to defend the province and then went to England for help. KING George's war. 91 He brought back a regiment of six hundred men, A war broke out between the Spaniards in Florida and the EngHsh settlers in Georgia, which lasted about two years. Governor Ogle- thorpe, with a thousand men and a great many- Indians, laid siege to St. Augustine; but he could not break down the strong walls which Indian slaves had toiled sixty years to build. Then the Spaniards fitted out a great fleet of thirty-six vessels, with more than three thousand troops, which sailed to the coast of Georgia. They were defeated by the Georgians, and lost over two hundred men; so they sailed back to Florida. After this war, the settlements had peace with both Spaniards and Indians. In his old age, Governor Oglethorpe, the friend of the oppressed, returned to England to live. He carried back with him the blessings of thousands whom he had made prosperous and happy. After he had gone, slavery was introduced into the colony; larger plantations of indigo, rice, tobacco, and cotton were laid out; rum was sold, and many of Oglethorpe's laws were changed by the governors who came after him. But the name of Oglethorpe is still revered as that of one of the greatest men of his times. 92 THE STORY OF OIR COUNTRY, Georgia was the last of the colonies estab- lished by England. From the bleak coast of Maine to the sunny shores of Georgia, there were settlements where the oppressed of all lands had sought homes in America. The English colonies were crowded close to- gether on the narrow slope of land between the Appalachian mountains and the sea; to the south of them were the haughty Spaniards; to the north and west, along the St. Lawrence and the Lakes and the Mississippi, were the French; while all about them and among them were the rude Indians with whom sometimes they lived in peace, but more often in deadly war. CHAPTER XVI. LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND. At first, the people who came over to America to Hve were kept very busy trying to protect themselves from the Indians and to get enough to eat and to wear; and many died from their hardships. But after the colonists learned how to plant and raise corn, they had plenty of bread; the streams furnished fish, and the forests were full of game. They raised hemp and flax, and the women were busy with spinning and knitting, so that there were enough clothes to keep everybody warm and comfortable. In New England the men wore long jackets with a belt at the waist, and loose trowsers reaching only to the knee where they were tied, and stout leather shoes; and both men and women wore short capes and high pointed felt hats. The women wore dresses of goods which they themselves had spun and woven, sometimes trimmed with lace which the Pilgrims had learned to knit in Holland. Chil- dren dressed much like their parents, and they 94 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. A SPINNING WHEEIy FOR FLAX. acted much like them, too. Life was a very serious thing in those days, and there was so much to do that even the little folks were kept busy at work. The houses were often of logs, and had but two rooms. In one room was a wide fire-place where food was cooked over the blaze in kettles, or on iron spits. Here the table was laid with neat, wooden bowls, and plates and spoons. In front of the fire, was a long settle, with a high back to keep off the cold, and there were wooden blocks on each side of the hearth for the children. On the rough walls hung snow-shoes and old- fashioned muskets and pikes, ready at a mo- ment's notice, if the In- C^ dians should come; ears of corn, and crooked- necked squashes, and strings of dried apples, and bunches of red pep- // ^^ ^ J-:jz\M!^^M:- pers,andflitchesof bacon, a spinning wheel for wool. hung from the broad beams overhead. In the other room were two wide bedsteads with big, puffy feather-beds, and a low trundle- THE MEETING-HOUSE. 95 CRADLE OE PEREGRINE WHITE- bed for children; and a ladder led up to the garret for the older boys. Pine-knots were used often instead of candles, and everybody went to bed early. They could hear the wolves howling in the distance and they must often have heard the whoops of the Indians. Fancy going to a queer little log meeting-house with can- non in front of it to protect it from the Indians! Families were not allowed to sit together in church. The men sat on benches on one side of the church and the wo- men on the other. ~' ~- -- - The boys and girls Lo^ MEETING-HOUSE. g^t in Separate places, sometimes on the gallery stairs and sometimes on the steps leading up to the pulpit. Everybody had to sit very straight and stiff in church, and it was thought a dreadful thing to smile. There was always a tithing man at hand to keep the congregation in good order during the sermon. He carried a long rod with a fox 96 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. tail on one end; and if a man or a boy was so unlucky as to fall asleep, he rapped him over the head with the hard end, but w^hen a girl or a woman nodded he tickled her face with the soft, furry end. But in spite of the strict rules it is said " a wretched boy" would sometimes give a sly dig with his square-toed shoe into the boy on the step below, or snap a dry kernel of corn at some fellow who was looking too serious, or make a wry face at a timid little girl v\-ho would straight- way hide her face in her apron and shed bitter tears. It kept the tithing man busy watching them during the long weary hours of the preach- ing. He must have " kept one eye out," too, for in the old church records it is written how Deborah Bangs, a young girl, was fined five shillings for " Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House," and a boy was fined ten shillings the same day; but it is thought that he may have laughed louder ! The little logschoolhouse had straight benches to sit on, and a wide fireplace, and windows with oiled paper instead of glass. The school- room was almost as solemn a place as the church, and the master was feared and respected next to the minister. In most of the New Eng-- THANKSGIVING. 97 LOG SCHOOLHOUSE. land towns, boys and girls were obliged to attend school and it was the duty of the tithing man to hunt up the truants. " Children should be seen and not heard," was the motto at home; and it was not often that the little folks talked ./. at the table or sat "T about the fire at --,.,' night, after the chores were done. These little Puri- tans had never heard of Santa Claus and did not enjoy Christmas like the Dutch children in New York. But there was one day they did celebrate, and that was Thanksgiving da}^ Everybody thought it was right to be merry on Thanksgiv- ing, and early in the morning there would be a great bustle getting ready to go to the meeting- house to return thanks to God for the bountiful harvests, and to remember in gratitude the time when the ships came from England with food for the starving colonies. After the meeting, there were gay times with cousins from miles away. There were games in the corners; there was a feast of cookies and 98 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. AN OLD COLONIAL HuUSE OF THE BETTER SORT. doughnuts and sugar cakes; there were stories before the great fire about witches and their black charms, and about the Indians in their war-paint and feathers. After a time, new rooms were added to the houses, bright andirons shone on the hearth and more pictures and books came into the homes. The scattered hamlets grew into large towns; more schoolhouses were built and several tithing men were kept busy hunting up the bo}'s w ho were J '[>v|h| j tardy or truant. Because there were so many t ow ns , it became "^- necessary to send i>-terior of a colonl^l house. delegates to meet at one place to make laws for the common welfare. When a vote was taken, a kernel of corn was for " yes" and a bean was for "no". A copy of the laws made was sent to each town to be read in public. SHOOTING AT A DUMMY. 99 There were severe penalties for strong drink- ing and smoking, swearing, scolding and Sabbath breaking. There was a strict law against witch- craft; for in those early days even the wisest of *he colonists believed in witchcraft. Another of the laws was that every town should muster men for drill in marching and in carrying arms. So boys of sixteen and old men of sixty shouldered their muskets on training day. They made very awkward squads, indeed; but the women and children were proud of their soldiers, and followed them along the roads with baskets of gingerbread and bottles of harmless drinks. Sometimes prizes were offered for the best shot on these training clays. A dummy was set up and whoever hit the spot most likely to kill was the winner; but there was often a difference of opinion as to where the fatal spot in a dummy might be, and so it was difficult to award the prizes. This target practice led to great skill with the gun in hunting for game necessary for food, and in defending the homes from the attacks of hostile tribes. There began to be a great need for trained soldiers, for the Indians were becoming more and more troublesome. CHAPTER XVII. KING rillLir's WAR. From the time the Pilgrims at Plymouth had received a shower of arrows, the Indians of New England had been hostile. The Indians themselves were so divided that they were always quarreling with one an- other, so that it was impossible to keep peace with them all. An alliance with one tribe was sure to bring on the enmity of some other tribe. Massasoit, the king of the Wampanoags, made a treaty with Governor Carver, which lasted for over forty years. But when Massasoit died, his son Philip be- came chief of the tribe, and there came a great change. They had sold their land, piece by piece, to the white settlers; and they had taken blankets and beads and powder for payment. After these things were gone, they began to think they had been cheated out of their lands; and when the old chief died, the young warriors sighed for the lands now blooming under the industry of the white men. KING PHILIP. lOI It is said that once when a white messenger went to tell some Indians they must move far- ther west, a chief asked him to sit on a log. Soon he asked him to sit over, and very soon to move again, and then again and again, until the white man was at the end. " Sit over farther," said the Indian. " I cannot," replied the white man. "So it is with us," said the chief. " You have moved us as far as we can go, and then ask us to go farther." From the sum- mit of Mount Hope in Rhode Island, King Philip looked down upon the lost hunting grounds. The game was scared from the forests, and the fish had been taken from the streams. His warriors were growing restless. For fifty years there had been peace, and they wanted the excitement of war. Perhaps Philip did not really want to break the pledge his father had given ; for he was noble and brave. But he feared that he would lose control of the tribes if he did not lead them in battle. Besides this, MOUNT HOPE. I02 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. his elder brother had been thrown, it is said, into a jail, and had caught his death fever there; and some of the warriors who had not obeyed the laws of the white men had been arrested, tried, and hung. So, at last. King Philip sent war belts to the different tribes, and they all united to destroy the white man. At the little town of Swansea the Puritans were attacked while going home from meeting. Six were killed and many were wounded. Messengers ran to Boston to tell the sad story, and signal fires called troops from Boston, Plymouth, and all the settlements on the coast. They hastened to Mount Hope, and Philip fled with six hundred warriors to Tiverton. Here, concealed in the swamps, the Indians lay in am- bush, and killed many English, until they were driven out into central Massachusetts. The year which followed was a sad one for the little settlements on the frontier. Town after town was attacked. The people from the weaker towns escaped for protection to the stronger ones. KING PHILIP. KING PHILIP'S WAR. 103 The Narragansetts, who had years before signed a treaty of peace with Massachusetts, broke their pledges and joined King PhiHp's army. A thousand New England troops now marched into Rhode Island, where about three thousand Indians were collected in an immense cedar swamp, southwest of Kingston. They had built a stout fort with one entrance by means of a log, which lay across a pond. The army arrived here under command of Colonel Winslow, and began an assault. The first men who mounted the log were swept off by a shower of arrows. But the white men were fight- ing for their wives and their little children and their homes for all time to come ; and they sprang on the log faster than the arrows could fly. In this way they reached the fort. A thousand warriors were slain, and hundreds were captured; the old men and women and children were burned in their wigwams. Philip and a few warriors escaped, to burn houses and massacre settlers along the frontier. At last, the wife and little son of King Philip were captured and sold as slaves in the Bermu- das. " My heart breaks ; I am ready to die," said Philip. He had fought like a true warrior, but the struggle was over. His band of warriors I04 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. were in their graves, and he himself was killed shortly after by an Indian that was friendly to the English. Six hundred white men had been killed in King Philip's war, and thirteen towns were in ashes. There was sorrow in every home, and starvation stared the settlers in the face. INDIAN. -T-1 T T 1 • 1 he Indians were driven out of New England, and the tribes beyond the Connecticut river begged that the hatchet might be buried under a church. That was their way of saying that they wanted peace. You may think that the colonists were very wicked to drive the Indians from their own lands. It is well to remember that a few thousand Indi- ans claimed vast territories which they did not cultivate or even visit the whole year round, and which really did not belong to them any more than it belonged to the buffalo which roamed over the plains. The cities and towns of Europe were crowded with poor people, and thousands were dying every year from lack of food, to whom the fertile valleys of America offered homes. The Red men would not cultivate the land themselves nor let anyone else cultivate it. CHAPTER XVni. THE INDIAN CONFEDERACIES. You will remember that Columbus called the natives he found in America, "Indians," because he thought he had found India, None of the early explorers knew of what race these Indians were ; nor do we to-day know any- thing about their origin. Perhaps no one ever will know who they were in the beginning, or how they came to live in such a savage state. In colonial times, the Indians were roaming half-naked in the forests. They were not so tall as the white men ; their eyes were very black and sunk deep under the brow ; their skin was copper-colored ; they had small hands and feet, and slender, active bodies; and the expression of their faces was always sad, but noble and dignified. In New England there were several small na- tions living in rude huts and wigwams along the rivers and bays. They were ruled by kings such as Powhatan, of Virginia, who made peace with John Smith, or Sassacus, who led the Pequots in the war upon Saybrook, or Philip, who had ravaged New England. 105 EARLY INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI 106 INDIANS OF THE SOUTH. IO7 Besides these small nations, there were three great confederacies. One lived in the south, one in the north, and one in the north-east of what is now the United States east of the Mis- sissippi river. The Indians of the South were called the Mobilians and were divided into many tribes. They did not wander about so much as the Indians of the North and so were less savage. The Cherokees were the Highlanders of Amer- ica and lived on the lofty tops of the South- ern Alleghanies in the wild and beautiful re- gions of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas. West of them were the Chickasaws on the banks of the Mississippi, who were enemies of the French and constantly plun- dered their flatboats coming down from the Ohio country to New Orleans. South of them were the Choc- taws. They were bright and in- telligent, but you would not have thought so had you seen them; fi^^thead ixdian. for while they were babies their heads were pressed flat above the forehead, which made them look as if they had no brains I08 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. at all; and they were called Flatheads by the English and French traders. They had their villages on the rich bottoms near the rivers, and lived largely by agriculture. The Creeks and the Seminoles dwelt among the palmettos along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Spaniards of Florida and the French of Louisiana. They did weaving from buffalo wool, and trimmed their blankets with beads. They wove cloth from wild hemp; and made baskets from cane, and pottery from glazed clay. They had two kinds of towns ; white towns and red towns. The white towns were for peace and no blood could be shed there ; not even an enemy in war could be slain there. The red towns were for war ; into them came the warriors of the whole tribe to plan massacres and to tor- ture prisoners taken in war. Some of the festivals of the Creeks were very beautiful. In early autumn they had the green- corn festival, when the first fruits of the season were offered as a burnt sacrifice. A high priest, in snow-white robe and snow-white moc- casins, sat on a white throne fanning the sacred fire with the white wing of a swan. The women in white and the warriors in paint and white- MOBILIAN INDIANS. IO9 feather head-dresses danced to the music of whistles and drums. We have already learned how these tribes massacred the Spaniards — how Ponce de Leon was wounded and his men cut down ; how De Soto was attacked and his followers almost all destroyed; but the Spaniards had caused this treatment by their own cruelty to the natives. These Indians of the South met the treachery of the English settlers in North Carolina with like treachery and death ; but they also made peace with the noble Oglethorpe of Georgia. Indeed, when they were treated kindly, the Mobilian In- dians were found keeping proud state in their vil- lages, living on in their old way, though adopting some of the civilization of the Spaniards and the French. But the Algonquin and the Iroquois Indians of the North were different foes for the colonies to fight. They were treacherous and cruel. North of the Mobilian confederacy, beyond Kentucky and Tennessee, were the Algonquins. They were warlike, and lived by fishing and the chase. They cultivated little besides corn. They dwelt in rude wigwams of bark or skin. They painted their naked bodies and shaved off their hair except the scalp-lock, which no THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. -=^ was one long bunch of hair on the crown of the head. The Algonquins were constantly at war with the Mobilians south of them and the Iroquois east of them. A large tract of land was used by all three of these confederacies, who called the land " Ken- tucky," which means " the dark and bloody ground." No Indians dared dwell there. If one tribe met a hostile tribe in Kentucky during the hunting season many scalps were taken. Each tribe had a to- tem or coat-of-arms, of WIGWAM. which it was as proud as any duke or marquis. They had the totem tatooed on their breasts and embroidered on their wig- wams with the colored quills of the porcupine, and carved on a /" high pole at the doorway of their '^^^ wigwams; so that when Indians """^^ met, they might know friends from ^^'^^-^^^^ '^■"■^''•^^^• foes. They had snow shoes for hunting the moose and the deer in winter, on which they DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE INDIANS. Ill sometimes traveled forty miles a day. Their canoes, made of white birchbark, glided swiftly over the rivers and lakes. They had medicine men, half doctors and half priests, who were thought to possess magical power to heal the sick. The Indian wives, or squaws, did all the drudgery ; for it was thought a disgrace for warriors to carry water or build wigwams or hoe corn. The babies, or pap- pooses, were tied on a board and were carried on the backs of their mothers, or when the squaws were busy at their work they were often swung up on the limb of a tree. If the little pappooses cried it did not matter ; for it was thought that crying hours at a time taught them patience. The boys used the bow and arrow almost as soon as they could walk. They practiced jumping and running until they never seemed to tire on the longest marches. When they were quite small they were allowed to join their fathers in torturing the victims at the burning stake, that they might learn to see suffering without pity. The Indian boys grew up to know the forest as the white boy knows his book. A fallen leaf, PAPPOOSE. 112 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. MOCCASINS. or the broken moss on the side of a tree, or a foot-print on the river's brink, told a whole story. In their moccasined feet the Indians would glide stealthily through the forest like beasts of prey, and so cruel were these Al- gonquins that the^^ have been called the tigers of the human race. Their assemblies were called Council Fires. They would light a great fire and sit about it in a circle ; and while they smoked they would talk about " digging up the hatchet," which meant war, or "burying the hatchet," which meant peace. Wampum belts were strings of beads made from shells. They were often fashioned into beautiful designs, which the warriors could read. The wampum belts were handed down from father to son, and told of treaties of peace or of war, or of cessions of land, or of great bear hunts. At certain times of the year the chiefs gathered together about the fire and passed the wampum belts from hand to hand, while the oldest war- rior told the story of each belt ; and the little A WAMPUM BELT. THE WAR DANCE. 113 sons of the chiefs could sit at these fires that they might learn the history of their tribe. Strings of wampum were also used for money and for ornament on great festivals. The northern Indians had many ceremonies before going on the war-path. At night they built a great fire in the forest ; they put on all their own ornaments and then borrowed those of the squaws and maidens. They painted their 111, Mm fcr ji' 'i.JL-i ^s!, V^InV w-,^" THE war-dance;. faces and bodies in a hideous way that they might frighten their enemies ; they put turkey feathers in their hair ; and over their shoulders they threw the finest bear and buffalo skins. Sometimes they carried shields of buffalo hide or of twisted branches of trees. Then they set up a pole for their foe, and around this imaginary foe they marched slowly 114 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. at first, singing slow chants. The march be- came swifter, the chants grew louder and were changed into blood-curdling whoops until round and round in a dizzy dance they flew like demons. They struck at the post and kicked it and stabbed it just as they intended to do to their foes on the morrow. They were great boasters, and as they whirled about in the frantic dance, nearly naked, each would shout the num- ber of scalps that he had taken and that his father, before him, had taken. When morning drew near, the warriors laid aside all their orna- ments and hurried away to meet their enemies in a real battle. The greatest enemies of the Algonquins were the Iroquois, or Five Nations. This was a con- federacy of five nations until the Tuscarora Indians came up from North Carolina, and then they were called the Six Nations. They were more closely bound together than any of the other confederacies. These Iroquois lived in central New York, and along the St. Lawrence and Lakes Erie and Ontario. Instead of the rude wigwams of the Algon- quins, the Iroquois lived generally in houses of wood covered with elm bark. These were called "long-houses," because they were very much THE IROQUOIS. II5 longer than they were wide. A long-house was divided into many rooms, and there was one family in each room. From end to end of the long-house ran a long hall, Iii>a. closed at the ends with j^^, . - "" 'J^C skins, and having openings r^X-^-^v-----^-''''''^ 'm|if in the roof above the fire -iliyJ.5.jg,,,,w.^5-^,^^^:; pits. Four rooms had one ^ . . 1 • 1 11 1 LONG-HOUSE OF THE nre pit ni this hall, where iroouois. four families warmed themselves and cooked their food. Thus, if an Indian said he lived in a house with five fires, you might know that he was an Iroquois, and lived in a long-house with twenty families in it. These long-houses were warm, roomy, and tidily kept by the squaws. There were raised bunks about the walls for beds; and from the roof-poles hung strings of dried squash and pumpkins, and rows of corn braided by the husks. The Iroquois were haughty and warlike. Sometimes they went down the Ohio in a long line of canoes and laid waste the country as far west as the Mississippi. They were much feared by all the Algonquins. The Indians of New England, east of them, ran like sheep when the cry 'Troquois! " rang through their villages and almost all of the tribes paid them tribute. Il6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Now, the French, when they came to settle on the St. Lawrence, did not know anything about the different tribes; and when the Hurons on the north bank of the river begged Samuel Cham- plain to aid them in a war against the Iroquois, he shouldered his gun and went along with them. The Iroquois had never heard the report of a gun; and when they saw this "white man with thunder in his hands " killing their warriors to the right and to the left of him, they fled in great fright. In revenge for this shame which the French had brought upon them, the Iroquois bought guns of the Dutch, who were just settling the land about the Hudson. Then they made peace with New Netherlands. The Iroquois chief held one end of a white wampum belt of peace and asked th-e Dutch governor to hold the other end; which was the Indian fashion to agree to be friends. Then they buried a hatchet, and the Dutch governor promised to build a church over the spot so that the hatchet might never be taken up; and after that there was always peace between the Iroquois and the Dutch. When the Iroquois had learned to use their guns, they soon conquered the hostile tribes. They forced the French to go up through the great lakes to reach the Ohio and the Mississippi valleys. CHAPTER XIX. TROUBLES WITH THE FREN'CH. In Europe the nations of France and England were enemies. The}' had long been jealous of each other on the sea, and now they were jeal- ous of each other on the land. We have seen how the French claimed all the rich beaver-lands of the Ohio and the ^lissis- sippi valleys, because of the dis- coveries and settlements of ^la.r- quette and La Salle. But the English claimed these lands, too. England declared that not only the x-\tlantic coast which the Cabots had explored was hers, but that the Pacific coast and all the lands lying between the two oceans were hers, because of the discoveries of Sir Francis Drake. To be sure, Queen Elizabeth herself had said that the discoveries of Sir Francis were of little worth without settlements; but the succeeding monarchs gave away grants of lands, as if they did not take the French claims Into account. FATHER MAR- OUETTE. ii; THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. JESUIT PRIEST. Then when the EngHsh colonists saw that the strip of country between the Alleghany moun- tains and the sea was too narrow for them, they began to look toward the west for settlement. But there stood the French, snapping their fingers at them as they built fort after fort along the great rivers. The French made the Indians their friends. They treated the chiefs as they did their own kings; they called the rivers, lakes, and mountains by the Indian names; they married the Indian daughters. To this day, in Canada, you may see black-eyed boys and girls trooping off to school who call themselves French; but they had grand- mothers or grandfathers whose mothers were Indians. The French missionary priests risked their lives to carry the cross among the savages; they healed the sick and comforted those who mourned. The French soldiers taught them to build strong forts that they might the better protect themselves from their enemies. A FRENCH CANADIAN. ENGLISH AND FRENCH TRADERS. II9 But the English did not marry the Indian daugh- ters; they treated the chiefs with contempt; they gave EngHsh names to all the rivers, lakes, and mountains; and instead of sharing the land with the natives, they wanted all of it for themselves. Then the English and French both wanted the fur trade of the Indians. The French pleased the Indian trappers best; but the Eng- lish gave them the highest price '■'* for their furs. It took a large bea- ver skin to buy from the French ^ what could be bought from the English with a small mink skin. At length, when these two nations came to war with each other, the Iroquois joined the Eng- lish, and the Hurons and Algonquins joined the French, and their wars were called the French and Indian wars. First, in 1689, the French and Indians attacked some English settlements in Maine; then the Iroquois and the English sur- prised some French settlements about Montreal, and killed very many and took many prisoners. One winter, when the snow was deep, the French and Indians marched against Schenec- tady, New York. The town was defended by a high palisade fence. There were two gates, but they were open. Some one had warned the I20 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. settlers that the French would come; but they laughed at the idea as they looked out over the miles of snowdrifts; and they set up snow images to guard each gate while they t h e m- rt ^\'*if*1^'*~~^^ J , J^'i^M^ selves slept. The )ii I ''''P ''iT'l^^^fe^' enemy crept into ^^ ' ^^^^'^'' the town, raised ---'5 '^'- ^ ^-----£^- '.^ l-}^g terrible war- PAUSADED TOWN. ^^^^p ^^^^ b e ga U the attack. Men, women, and children were killed, and the village was set in flames. Some escaped from their beds, and ran six- teen miles through the snow to Albany; but almost all who were not killed were taken prisoners. In 1704 Deerfield, in the western part of Massachussets, was destroyed by the French Indians. It is said that Priest Nicholas had persuaded some con- verted Indians to save up their skins of otter and ATTACK ON SCHENECTADY. THE ATTACK ON DEERFIELD. 121 FRENCH costume; OF THE ITTH CENTURY. beaver and foxes, and send them to France to buy a bell for the little parish church at St- Francis. The ship which brought the bell was captured by the English, and the bell was hung in the meeting- house at Deerfield. Father Nicholas and his braves marched to rescue the bell from the heretic English. They killed more than a hundred of the in- habitants and carried the rest away as captives. And so these cruel wars went on for many years. Sometimes the French and sometimes the English were vic- torious; but there was always loss of life and great suffering among the settlers in both countries. The war went on until the Eng- lish colonies united together to defend the settlements from their common foe. Port Royal, in Nova Scotia, was taken from the French FRENCH COSTUME 1^1 t- 1 • 1 • 11 OF THE iTTH by the English m 1710, and the CENTUR\. following year a large fleet bearing seven regiments came from England to assist the colonists, but while sailing up the St. Lawrence river to make an attack on Montreal, a storm 122 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY, ■■-rr-- \V^.»^ . dashed eight vessels to pieces, and nine hundred men were drowned. The remaining ships re- turned to England, and the colonial troops dis- banded at Boston. Treaties were made between England and France, and for a time there was peace. King George II. of England had promised to give to the Ohio Land Company of Virginia a large tract of land west of the Alleghany moun- tains, if the company would plant a colony there of one hundred families, and in 1750 the com- pany sent Christopher Gist down the Ohio river to examine the country. Butbefore the Ohio com- pany could settle the land, the French drove out the few English traders and sent word to the colonies that the English must keep away from French territory. It was not an easy matter, however, to keep the English trappers and traders away from this rich fur country. About this time a young trapper, John Stark, from New Hampshire, and two friends, were looking after their traps. One friend was killed by the Indians. John Stark and his other com- BEAVERS. RUNNING THE GAUNTLET. 123 panion were dragged as prisoners to the Indian village, where warriors, squaws, and children re- ceived them with shouts of cruel joy. They clam- ored to see the white men run the gauntlet. This meant that they should run between two rows of men armed with sticks; each Indian would give the prisoner a whack as he passed. First ran Stark's friend: "Whack! whack ! whack!" went the blows, and the poor man's flesh was black and blue. John Stark was young and strong, and when it came his turn to run the gauntlet he went like a flash. He snatched a stick from the nearest Indian and swung it about, strikingto the right and to the left of him, till the war- riors howled with pain. They set him running the gauntlet. to hoeing corn, but he dug up some hills of corn and then threw the hoe into the river. You think that would have made the warriors angry, but it pleased them. They said he was a brave fellow, and they wanted him to be their chief. At last Stark paid the Indians a hundred 124 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. dollars and was set free. We shall meet him again and again in the history of the colonies, and we shall always find him fearless in danger and faithful to his friends. The French and Indians destroyed whole villages of the Miami Indians who were friends of the English. So the chiefs of many tribes, led by the Iroquois, met Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and other delegates from the col- onies, at Albany, and signed a final treaty of alliance with the English. Thus we find the English and the Iroquois marshaling their forces against the French and the Algonquins in the struggle for control of the country west of the mountains. Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia now wrote a letter to the commander of ^^if i^^^Sl' ^'^^ ^^^^ French posts in the up- '"^ S ~^^i^^ P^'' Ohio valley, in which •.*' - /i " ^^.y^ he explained the claims of rr\,:l--~ England to the country. BIRTHPLACE OF WASHING- Thc letter was given to George Washington, then twenty-two years old. There is so much about George Washington in this book, that you will want to know something of his early life. He was born in Westmoreland county, Vir- THE BOY SURVEYOR. 125 ginia, on the twenty-second of February, 1732. His father died when George was only eleven years old. When he was in school he studied his lessons diligently; but he loved outdoor sports, and excelled most of his playmates in running and wrestling, and other games. He spent his vacations with his brother Law- rence, who lived at Mount Vernon on the Poto- mac river. Sometimes a ship-of-war was an- chored in the river, and its officers would be guests at Mount Vernon. So he heard a great deal about campaigns in Europe and cruisings against pirates on the seas. He became anxious to go to sea, but because his mother could not consent that he should be a sailor, he studied surveying. Most of the land in Virginia was a wilderness in those days, and good surveyors were in great demand. When George was only sixteen years old, he was employed Washington survey- by Lord Fairfax to survey his lands between the north and south branches of the Potomac. George spent several months at this work, crossing the mountains, swimming the rivers, and camping in the forests. 126 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. But this rough Hfe had helped to prepare him for the mission on which he was now sent by- Governor Dinwiddie. It was a long and danger- ous journey. Young Washington went through forests and over frozen rivers; the compass was his guide by day, and the north star by night. After much suffering, Washington reached the end of his journey and delivered the letter; but the French commander declared the country be- longed to the French and would be defended by bayonets. So Washington started back to Vir- ginia to make his report to the governor. On the way, he was nearly drowned in the Allegheny river when a block of ice slipped from under his feet; hostile Indians shot at him from behind the trees; wolves followed on his track. Soon after this, the French drove away some English who were building a fort at the place where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the great Ohio river; and they themselves built a strong fort there which they named Fort Duquesne, after the French gov- ernor at Montreal. George Washington was now made a colonel; and with a small army he tried to drive the French away from their fort; but he did not succeed, and for a time the Ohio valley remained in possession of the French. CHAPTER XX. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR. The English colonists had learned a lesson from their wars with King Philip. They had learned that in union there is strength. At Albany, in a congress of delegates from the colonies, they decided to unite together in this war against the French, and they asked England to send an army to help them. King George II. sent General Edward Brad- dock with two regiments to America. General Braddock met the governors of all the colonies at Alexandria, in Virginia, and arranged a cam- paign against Fort Duquesne. Braddock had been told by Parliament not to allow any Americans to be officers in the British army, and the red-coated British soldiers looked contemptuously at the awkward young farmers in home-spun, and made much sport of them. But young George Washington was appointed aid-de-camp to General Braddock, because he knew the road to Fort Duquesne. Washington tried in vain to explain the frontier way of fight- ing, so that the British soldiers might be pre- 127 128 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Ph','' GEORGE WASHINGTON. pared to meet the Indians. General Braddock would not listen to anything Washington said. He set the music to playing and the flags to flying as he marched forward with his vet- erans, just as they had always marched on the battle-fields of Europe. Two thousand soldiers were stretched out into a narrow column four miles long^ust what the Indians, who were skulking behind trees and lying ready in the branches overhead, would want them to do. Washington urged Braddock to send out scouting parties in advance of the army to see whether Indians were not hiding in the neighbor- hood; but at this advice Braddock flew into a great rage. "The idea," he cried, "of a green young backwoodsman trying to teach a British officer how to fight ! " It would have been better had he listened, as we shall soon see. On the ninth of Jul3% 1755, at about seven miles from Fort Duquesne, the French and Indians began firing at the advanc- ing army. Hidden foes shot down the British, who could see nothing to shoot at but trees. THE DEFEAT OF BRADDOCK. 129 When the Americans stood behind trees, or threw themselves on the ground to fight Indian fashion, Braddock swore at them for not follow- ing the rules of war. How could these brave men follow the rules of war in an American forest with Indians as their foes ? General Braddock had five horses shot from under him, and at last fell mortally wounded. For three hours the battle went on. Then, too late, Braddock turned to the brave Washington and asked him what to do. " Retreat," said Washington, whose coat was riddled with bullets. The retreat began. Seven hundred men were left dead on the field, and all the baggage was lost. The victorious Indians reaped a rich har- vest of spoils, and returned to Fort Duquesne dressed in the gold-laced coats and the cockade hats of the British officers. So France was left in possession of the Ohio V^alley for several years; but the war continued. After Braddock's defeat, the Indians despised the English more and more, and renewed the at- tacks on the settlements. The English now claimed that they feared a rebellion among the Acadians in Nova Scotia. They said that it would only be natural for these people, who were French, to join their kinsmen on 130 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. the St. Lawrence. So a fleet with about a thousand troops was sent to Acadia. The soldiers forced the inhabitants to give up their firearms and then drove them down to the coast Hke sheep, and packed them by thousands into the waiting ships. Wives were separated from husbands, sisters from brothers, and whole fami- lies were scattered among the English colonies never to see one another again. Many years afterwards the poet Longfellow wrote the story of Evangeline, which tells of the destruction of Acadia; and I am sure you will read it some day to find out how very sad this war in Acadia was. The British and colonial ar- mies made several attacks upon Crown Point on the shore of Lake Champlain, upon Niagara between the lakes, and upon Louisburg on Cape Breton at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; MARouis DE but they could not conquer the MONTCALM. 1 1 , rrench, who now had the great general, Montcalm, to command their armies. Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, enlisted a company of brave hunters and trappers, which he called Rangers; and he chose as their captain the man who had run the gauntlet be- FRENCH SUCCESSES. I3I tween the Indian warriors, John Stark. He was just the man to be a leader, for he knew all the Indian trails and was as brave as a lion. The Rangers wore green jackets, and each man had a rifle and a long knife. They were always in the thickest of the fights; but they were obliged to obey the British generals, who did not under- stand Indian warfare, and so we find that in spite of the brave deeds of the Rangers, the French were almost always victorious. Under ^Montcalm, a company of French sol- diers planned to attack Fort William Henr}', a stout British fort on Lake George. The war- riors of thirty-three Indian nations assembled at Montreal to assist the French in this enterprise. Montcalm sang the war song with the tribes, and so won their hearts by his flatter}-, that they gave pledges to obe}- him in any undertaking. On the second of August, 1757, a chain of boats surrounded the fort on the lake side, while the Iroquois and the French troops approached from the land side. Fort William Henry was defended by onl}' five hundred English, who, after a siege of six days, withdrew. At the close of the year 1757, the French were in possession of the Ohio Valley, Lake George, and Lake Champlain. CHAPTER XXI. CANADA BECOMES AN ENGLISH PROVINCE. Parliament was in despair at the misfortunes of the armies in America, when a new leader, William Pitt, became prime min- ister of England. He was a great orator and statesman. He had never been in America, but he understood the American peo- ple better than many in parlia- ment who had spent years WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM, amoug tile colonies. The new prime minister said that the Ameri- cans must be given posts of honor in the British army; for they understood the country and the Indian ways of fighting. He spread the map of the French and the American colonies out be- fore him and marked all the roads and rivers and lakes, and noted all the little settlements and the larger towns, and where the Indians had their hiding places; and at last this great man knew the map of America as well as he did that of Europe. In 1758, General Amherst seized Louisburg on Cape Breton Island; and General Forbes, with a THE KING SENDS NEW ARMIES. ^33 British army, and George Washington, with regiments from the colonies, took Fort Duquesne and named it Fort Pitt in honorof the great man who had planned these attacks. These victories aroused enthusiasm in Eng- land. Parliament voted large sums of money to carry on the war. Soldiers came from Scotland, Ireland and England ; recruits rallied from all the American colonies. Many of the colonists were farmers who had just left their plows; they were poorly clad in homespun or buckskin, and some were ragged and barefooted ; and their guns were of all shapes and sizes. The Scotch Highlanders, in their bright plaids, and the red-coated English grenadiers, looked at first in contempt at these men in linsey-woolsey, who could not march in line. But soon scorn was turned to admiration at their deeds of valor on every field; and even the generals listened to coun- sel from these sturdy frontiersmen. William Pitt now planned for a stubborn campaign which would conquer Canada and put an end to the quarrels between the French and the English colonies. General Johnson was to go west and conquer HIGHLANDER. 134 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Fort Niagara, which was the key to the great lakes, the Illinois and the Mississippi; General Amherst was to take Ticonderoga and Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and then move on to Montreal ; General Wolfe was to sail up the St. Lawrence and capture Quebec. Niagara, Ticonderoga, and Crown Point were taken, and only Quebec and Montreal remained. The gallant General Wolfe, with live thousand men, encamped on the south bank of the St. ~^'^=H V m^^- QUEBEC, FROM THE SOUTH BANK OF THE ST. LAWRENCE. Lawrence, opposite Quebec. The city, on a high cliff, was guarded for miles by batteries; and within its walls was General Montcalm with about five thousand men. English war-ships bombarded the city, crush- ing the houses and setting many of them on fire. Then a long line of French boats sailed toward the English fleet; they were smeared over with tar and filled with burning pine-knots. But the English sailors sprang into the river and THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC. 135 pushed the burning boats away with their hooks, so that they did no harm. Days passed. No landing place could be found. At last General Wolfe saw some French and Indians climb a ravine up the steep cliff; and so at midnight, on the twelfth of September, 1759, his boats crept silently up the river to the same spot. The soldiers sprang upon the beach GENERAL W01.FE. and climbed the steep cliffs. The French guards fled; and, outside of the city, on the Plains of Abraham, the English army waited till break of day. When the astonished Montcalm saw the enemy he marched against them confident of victory; but in fifteen minutes the French flag was hauled down and soon the English Cross of St. George was flying over the ramparts of Quebec. Both brave generals fell in the awful battle; and England honored both with one tall shaft of marble. Montreal was taken five days after Quebec. WOLFE-MONTCALM MONU- MENT. 136 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The territory east of the Mississippi claimed by France, was ceded to England, and that west of the Mississippi and New Orleans, to Spain. And so France lost all her possessions in America. The Indians on the Illinois, the Wabash, and the Ohio would not submit to their old-time foes. The French traders incited the Indians secretly; they told them that the Great French Father was only asleep and would soon come to deliver his children from their distress; that the cruel English would sell their wives and children as they had sold King Philip's wife and child. But the French refused to aid the Indians openly; and so Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, in heroic despair, made one last fight for the lost hunting grounds. He stationed Indian warriors at the passes of the rivers and the lakes, so that the hated English could not reach the French posts. For two years he held possession of all the west- ern forts, except Detroit. Settlers on the frontiers were massacred and villages were burned. When a large English army advanced toward the west, the allies fled. Pontiac was left alone. He declared that the French had deceived him, and signed a treaty of peace with the English. Pontiac always kept his pledge; and peace for a while came to the troubled frontier. CHAPTER XXII. TAXES ON THE COLONIES. We have already seen how different the first colonies were from one another in their religious beliefs. They were also different in their ways of liv- ing. The Southern colonies, Virginia, the Caro- linas, Maryland and Georgia were settled by two classes — the very rich and the very poor; so that some people worked hard all day long, while others did not work at all. There were many large plantations in the South and very few towns. The better class of colonists sent their children to school; and sometimes, the boys of the rich were sent off to England or to France to be educated; but there were no public schools, and many of the people were very illiterate. In the North, the climate and soil were not adapted to large plantations. The people lived in towns where they had foundries for the manufacture of iron wares, and ship-yards for the building of ships, and factories for the weaving of cloth. And there were towns on the coast where the 137 138 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. fishermen lived who salted and dried their fish for the markets. The people of the North did most of their own work, and men and women thought it a duty to be busy. There were free schools in all the villages. It was said that every grown person who had been born in New England could read and write. It was well for these colonies of the North and of the South that the mountain walls of the Appalachians had hemmed them in together so long. They had stood side by side in the Indian wars fighting for one common cause. And now that these wars were over, they had more reason than ever to join hearts and hands. Eng- land began to oppress them. The new king, George III., was stupid and selfish. He listened to the counsel of the " British Board of Trade" which had begun to grow jealous of American products. They wanted the colonies to buy everything of English merchants. They were not willing that Americans should buy wares of other countries, even if they could be bought cheaper. THE STAMP ACT. 139 They would not allow the New England colonies to build furnaces for making steel, because England wanted to sell steel to the colonies. Then negroes were forced into the Southern colonies to increase the slave-trade from Africa; the colonists thought they had enough slaves, and they were afraid that the negroes would soon outnumber the whites. They sent peti- tions to England asking that no more Africans be brought to the South; but the traffic in slaves went on just the same. There were a great many other things done which in- creased the ill-feeling of the colonists against the mother country. In 1765, while William Pitt, the friend of the Americans, lay ill, Parliament passed a law that every newspaper and every public document, such as a marriage contract or a deed to prop- erty, must have a stamp on it, bought from England. This was a new way to tax the people, and it made them very angr3^ STAMP. 140 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. There were public meetings held to protest against the new law. Patrick Henry, from the mountains of Vir- ginia, read in the House of Burgesses a declara- tion that Virginians were English with English rights; that the people of England voted their taxes and therefore the Virginians should vote theirs, too. The house where the young orator spoke was crowded with people, and among those who listened to him were two future presidents of the United States, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They believed, with all the rest, that Patrick Henry was right and that the Americans should have something to say PATRICK HENRY. _ about their own taxes. Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, and John Adams, of Massachusetts, made fiery speeches against the Stamp Act, and said that soon every- thing w^ould be taxed without the American people having a word to say about it. People began to try to get along without any goods from England. They raised flax, more and more, that they might weave their own cloth. Many in Boston signed an agree- THE TAX ON TEA. I4I ment not to eat mutton, that there might be more wool to spin. In Virginia, a hundred ladies dressed them- selves in home-spun gowns r^-' and went to a ball given by the English governor. No one would use the stamp paper, and it was burned as the ships brought it into port. So Parliament had to repeal the Stamp Act the ~ ~^ T-1 1 • BIRTHPLACE OP FRANKLIN. next year. 1 he colonies were delighted at this repeal of the tax, and for a time it seemed that all the trouble with Great Britain was at an end. But there was a strong party in Parliament which was determined that the Americans should be taxed, and a new bill was soon passed which put a duty on tea. The money collected by this duty was to be used to support a small army in America, and to pay government officials who would be under the control of Parliament. This seemed as bad as the Stamp Act. The people now said they would not drink tea; and they made hot drinks out of sage and sassafras. CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. The people of Boston were so rebellious in these troubles with England that an army of British soldiers was sent to Boston to " reduce them to reason." But the citizens would not quarter the soldiers in their houses ; so they were put in the court-house. They were very insolent ; they kicked down the snow-men and destroyed the snow-slides of the schoolboys and interfered with their sports. The boys went to the governor to complain about it. "What!" he said, "have your fathers been teaching you rebellion?" " No one sent us, sir," said a fine lad, holding his hat in his hand and looking with respect at the governor. " We have never insulted your troops, sir, but they spoil our snow-slides. They call us young rebels and tell us to help ourselves if we can ; and the captains only laugh at us when we complain. We will bear it no longer." The general ordered the damage to be re- paired. There is no doubt but the Boston boys were impudent, sometimes. It is said that they THE BRITISH TROOPS IN BOSTON. 143 called the red-coated soldiers " Lobsters" and " Bloody-backs;" but I am sure they would not have done so if they had been treated right. The ill-feeling over the army in Boston grew so strong that a street fight took place, when I A, V-J^ ^v.;ii'V^^*'/ THE THIRTEEN COLONIES at tlie end of THE nEVOLUTION. (ahadtd Areaj 144 "THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. three men were killed and many were wounded. The troops were then taken from the city. On the sixteenth of December, 1773, three ships lay at anchor in Boston Harbor laden with tea. When the English governor refused to send the tea back to England, some men disguised as Indians rowed out in the moonlight to the ships lying at anchor, and tossed all the tea overboard into the sea. The next morning young Paul Re- vere rode fast to New York to tell the people what Boston had done with the tea. The merchants did not dare unload their tea ships at the harbor of New York, but sent them back to England. At Annapolis, in Maryland, the tea was burned. At Charleston, South Carolina, it was landed ; but no one would buy it and so the tea rotted in the cellars. You may be sure something was done to punish Boston for having her tea-party. Parliament declared that nothing should enter the port or leave the port of Boston, except by way of Marblehead, where it should be examined by British officers. This stopped the commerce of Boston. All the colonies were angry now and showed sympathy with Boston by sending aid overland. Flour and rice came from the Southern colonies, corn from the Middle colonies, and droves of sheep FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 145 from different parts of New England; and money was sent in for the poor, from them all. Thus the colonies became united more and more. Then England annexed all the western lands to Canada — ■ lands which the Ameri- cans had helped to win from the French, and which Virginia and Con- necticut and sev- eral other colonies claimed as their own, because the kings had given them the land. It soon became very plain that England was trying to win the friendship of the French colonists and their Indian allies that they might aid her if war should break out. All the colonies now sent delegates to an As- sembly at Philadelphia. This assembly, which is called the First Continental Congress, met in Carpenters' Hall in September, 1774. A Decla- ration of Rights was adopted, and the King was asked to give the colonies the right to form a General Assembly and to vote their own taxes. CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA. 146 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Parliament answered the Continental Congress by sending word to General Gage, who was gov- ernor of Massachusetts, to reduce the crazy Americans to obedience; and then it sent a fleet with ten thousand British soldiers to help him. So Boston came again under military rule. Tents were pitched on the Common. Red- coats with bayonets marched up and down the streets. British warships, instead of her own merchant vessels which had once made her people so prosperous, stood in Boston's harbor. Now there w^ere some citizens of Boston who allowed the British sol- diers to live at their houses and A BRITISH treated them with a great deal of S01.DIER. respect. They did not think the col- onies were doing right to rebel against the king. Most of these w-ere rich merchants who were afraid they would lose trade with England ; or they were men in high positions where they had been put by the king. So there were two parties in Boston — the To- ries, who wished to obey the king, and the Whigs, who refused to obey his unjust laws. Soon there were Tories and Whigs all over the country ; but the great mass of the people w^ere Whigs. CHAPTER XXIV. LEXINGTON, CONCORD AND BUNKER HILL. It seemed a very serious thing to rebel against the King of England. There were many pale faces and anxious hearts as the people of Boston talked together about what they should do. Sometimes they met in dark cellars among the cobwebs, with a lantern hidden in a cask; for there were Tory spies, and the British soldiers were posted on all the corners of the streets to prevent the people from plotting together. At length an Assembly met and voted to raise troops to defend the liberty of Massachu- setts. Old soldiers, who had learned military tactics in the French and Indian wars, drilled squads of men in out-of-the-way places. A part of these were called Minute-men, who were always to be ready with their muskets. Indeed, life near the Indians for so many 3'ears had made Minute-men of most of the colonists. Ammu- nition was concealed in cart-loads of old rubbish and carried to Concord, sixteen miles away. It was agreed that if a large body of British soldiers beo^an to march out of Boston a lantern 148 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY, should be hung in the belfry of the old North Church, and the towns would rally to an attack. At midnight on the eighteenth of April, 1775, the watchers on the other side of the Charles river saw a light blazing high up in the steeple. Messengers crossed from Boston in boats to give the alarm. One of them was our old friend, Paul Revere, who mounted his horse and rode through all the sleeping towns, to tell them that eight hundred British soldiers were on the way to Concord, Farmers and men of all classes hurried with their muskets to defend their countr}^ and their homes. At Lexington Green, the colonists were de- feated, but at Concord the British retreated after a sharp skirmish, and before they reached Boston they had lost over two hundred men. The Americans had made such a brave stand against the enemy that there was great enthu- siasm all over the country. General Gage reported to Parliament that the OLD NORTH CHURCH, BOSTON. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN COYS. 149 Americans were not the "rabble" he had thought, and that the conquest of the country would not be very easy. Our old friend, John Stark, of New Hamp- shire, and Israel Putnam, of Connecticut, with his leather w^aistcoat on, and heroes from the French and Indian wars all through the colonies, left their plows and traps and fishing boats and hurried to Boston to " drive the British into the sea." When the British generals, Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton, sailed into the harbor, they found Boston surrounded by twenty thousand Conti- nental soldiers. In the meanwhile, Ethan Allen, of Vermont, with his " Green Mountain Boys," had captured Ticonderogaand Crown Point, with vast military stores. The Americans now fortified Bunker Hill, which overlooked Charlestown Neck. But Breed's Hill being nearer Boston they threw up breastworks at that point. As they worked all night, they could hear the British sentinels call out, "All's well." As soon as it was light, the British batteries opened fire on the earthworks, but the Ameri- cans worked with shot and shell flying around them until the fortifications were finished. At noon, three thousand British veterans I50 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. landed on the peninsula of Charlestown, burned the town and advanced toward the hill. They were driven back twice with great loss, but at the third advance of the British the Americans could hold their position no longer, because their ammunition had given out, and they re- treated in order. But they had made such a brave stand that the seventeenth of June, 1775, when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, is one of the proudest days in American History. Three days after the battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington received his commission as commander-in-chief of the American armies. On the third of July, Gen- eral Washington and his staff rode past his troops in re- view. General Washington was tall and commanding in appearance, and, like all Vir- ginians, he was a splendid rider. His manner was mod- est, but elegant. He seemed worthy to be the military hero of America. The troops he reviewed were awkward and ragged and poorly equipped, but they were patriotic and brave. Washington, with head- GEORGE WASHINGTON. THE SIEGE OF BOSTON. 151 quarters at Cambridge, soon set them to work making earthworks about the city of Boston. Meanwhile, the British in Boston were enjoy- ing themselves. The old South Meeting-house was turned into a riding school for the British dragoons, and Faneuil Hall was made a theater. General Burgoyne wrote a comic play called " The Siege of Boston," and one night, while it was being played, just as a ridiculous " Washing- ton," with a big wig and a rusty old sword came on the stage, an officer rushed in on the scene, calling out that the Americans were at- tacking Bunker Hill again. Everybody -^Wm laughed, at first; for they thought it was a part of the play; but soon the booming of guns was heard, and, sure- enough, it was the Americans firing their cannon. Washington threw up earthworks about the city until the British retreated from Boston. Meanwhile the Continental Congress was in session at Philadelphia, trying to raise money to carry on the war. FANEUIL HAI^I,. CHAPTER XXV. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. George III. had a hard time to persuade the English to fight against their American cousins. Wilham Pitt and Edmund Burke, the great EngHsh orators, had said that the war was unjust, and the most of the people thought that it was wrong, too. So Parliament hired troops from Germany, called Hessians ; and a great fleet of English veterans and Hessian soldiers sailed to America to quiet the rebels. With such an army before their eyes the king thought the Americans would be frightened. At first the British generals wrote General Washington a letter, trying to come to terms with him. They addressed the letter to George Washington, Esquire ; but Washington would not treat with them unless they called him com- mander-in-chief of the American armies. The generals would not acknowledge his rank ; for they thought that only the king had the right to make him commander-in-chief. The people became very angry because Eng- land had hired foreign troops to fight her own colonies. 152 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 153 LIBERTY BELL Congress declared they owed no loyalty to such a country, and on the fourth of July, 1776, adopted the Declaration of Inde- pendence. The colonies thus became an independent nation, under the name of The United States of America. It had been agreed that as soon as the Declaration of Independ- ence was adopted, the bell at the State House should be rung. It was a great day for the old bell-ringer's boy, who stood listening at the hall door for the signal. How he ran up the steps and shouted: "Ring, ring, ring, grandfather; it is done!" Out rang the joyful sounds, a little jerky, perhaps, for it was almost more than the old bell-ringer could bear; indeed, with all the rejoicing, ^ -^"ffTii^Li"-'' '^ there were m a n y TI|||||[T||f||jp| heavy hearts. The "^^"~ -~ """ ■7-^' Americans had been 1 ^ 1 . „ THE STATE HOUSE IN 1775. used to a king all their lives. They had been taught to fear him and his soldiers. They knew England could A\* 154 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. ORIGIN AIv FLAG. send troops outnumbering them two to one; and some feared that perhaps they would take their homes away from them, and separate fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, as they had done only a few years before with the French Acadians. "We must all unite. We must all hang together," said John Hancock, of Massachusetts. "Yes," replied Benjamin Franklin, "we must hang to- gether, or we shall hang separately"; and, although everybody laughed when he said it, they knew there was a good ^^ deal of truth in what Frank- lin said. Now that the colonies were declaredTheUnited States of America, they wanted a flag of their own — they did not want to use the British flag any more. Congress voted that the flag of the thirteen states should have thirteen alternate red and white stripes with thirteen stars on a blue field. This was the same flag that waves to-day over all the States; except THE PRESENT KI.AG. FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. 1 55 that a new star has been added for every new state, until now there are forty-five stars instead of thirteen; but the thirteen bars remain to remind us of the time when thirteen brave but feeble little colonies declared for human liberty. In the North some Tories persuaded the Iroquois Indians to join the British army, and they were very cruel. In the South the British tried to stir up the negroes in rebellion against their masters. There were many Tories in the South ; but there were many patriots, too — so many that they drove the British fleet away from Charleston Harbor. Sometimes the British, sometimes the Americans were victorious. In the meantime, Benjamin Franklin was in Paris trying to win over the young king Louis XVI. to the cause of America. -rr ^ J T7 BEN. FRANKLIN. r ranee wanted revenge on bng- land for her own defeat in America. But there seemed so little hope that the new Republic could stand out against the Mother Country that France was afraid to take up arms for the colonies. It was now that the genius of Franklin shone forth. This great man had struggled through pov- erty and abuse and misfortunes until he had be- come one of the most learned men in the world. 156 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. A son of a candle-maker, he had followed his father's trade until he was old enough to help his brother in a printing-office. He loved books and always read the best books he could find. Once he was in the great city of London without friends and without money ; but he soon got work as a printer. He found a friend in a man who kept a second-hand bookstore and here he read and studied French and German every moment that he could spare from his work. After Franklin returned to America he bought a printing-press of his own and published a cheap little almanac, called " Poor Richard's Almanac." It was full of wise sayings, and almost everybody bought it. He started a public library in Philadelphia, the first one in America. This helped the people who could not buy books, to read them. Franklin was in the P^rench and Indian War, and he was always found in the front. He in- vented the lightning-rod and many other curious and useful things of which the world had never heard before. When the trouble about the taxes arose with England, Franklin was sent to London to try to arrange matters. He arrived in London in 1757, not this time as FRANKLIN IN ENGLAND. 1 57 a poor printer's boy, but as a messenger from subjects loyal to their King. He stayed in Eng- land five years and then returned home. But two years later he was again sent back to Eng- land as an agent for the colonies. He appeared before Parliament and urged that the American colonies might have a representative in their body. He told Parliament how unjust the taxes on the colonies seemed, and even said that before the old clothes of the people were worn out, they might have new ones of their own making. Franklin's talk against the taxes aided greatly toward the repeal of the Stamp Act. But the next year Parliament put a tax on tea. As Franklin would not consent for the colonies to give up their liberties, peace did not come from his visits to England. Then he became a member of Congress and helped write the Declaration of Independence. When the Americans saw that England was sending over so many great armies they thought it might be that France would help In the war against her old enemy; so, because Franklin had studied French and was such a polished gentle- man, Congress sent him to France to seek aid. When Franklin was presented to King Louis, he wore a plain black suit of clothes with simple 158 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. white frills. He would not wear gold lace and fine jewels like the rest of the Court. This pleased the queen, Marie Antoinette, very much. She called him a " philosopher," and did all she could to persuade the king to help the American cause. At last the news came to Franklin of Bur- goyne's surrender. Without aid from abroad a powerful British army had been humbled ; with aid, what might not the Americans do ? The French king now promised men and money and ships to aid in the war. At that very time General Washington was sitting before his camp-fire at Valley Forge, where the army had winter quarters. He had been badly defeated at Brandywine ; a thousand soldiers lay dead on the battle-field and the French patriot, Lafayette, was badly wounded. Many had deserted ; hundreds of the men were without shoes and they marched over the frozen ground with bloody feet. Hunger and cold and disease hung about the camp,and the great commander grew sick at heart as he beheld it all. He did not know that France had promised aid, nor that the English people had forced the king and Parliament to abolish the tax on tea. CHAPTER XXVI. BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. After the British people had forced the king to agree to abolish the tax on the colonies, com- missioners were sent to Congress with promises to grant the colonies the privileges which they claimed if they would lay down their arms. Congress replied that it was too late to treat with the Americans as subjects of Great Britain; that America was now an independent govern- ment called the United States of America, and that unless Parliament would recognize her in- dependence, the war must go on. So the cruel war went on. It would take too long to tell in this book all about the battles of the Revolution. In the North, there were brave deeds by young patriots who risked their lives for their country. " There are the Red-coats," cried John Stark, just before the brilliant victory at Bennington. " Before night we must conquer them or Mollie Stark is a widow." In the South, there was the same self-sacrifice. Young Andrew Jackson and Francis Marion, the '■ Swamp Fox," with other patriots from North l6o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Carolina, attacked John Bull like an army of angry wasps and stung him with many a lance. From the swamps and forests they fretted the British army to madness. England boasted that she was mistress of the seas; but American cruisers captured twenty-six prizes, worth millions of dollars. The most noted commander in the American navy was a short, thick little fellow named Paul Jones. He was born in Scotland and went to sea when only twelve years old. He became a skillful sailor and was a mate on a slave ship at one time. He saw the poor black men caught by hundreds in Africa and driven on board ship where they were packed, like so many cattle, in the hold. He saw them lashed by the captain to keep them quiet. He saw them thrown over- board by the dozens when they died on the voy- age to America. The boy left the slave trade in disgust. On his way back to England, both the captain and the mate of the ship died and Paul brought the vessel into port so skilfully that he was made captain. He settled in Virginia, at last, and took up arms against England. Paul Jones was soon made commodore of the little American navy. Once he sailed into a Dutch port with British ships, after one of the PAUL JONES. l6l most terrible naval battles in history. He was received in France with great honor after this victory and presented with a gold-hilted sword. Congress had a gold medal struck for him. It was a grand occasion for Paul Jones when Benjamin '^^^ Franklin took him to Court ^vfi&i, and presented him to Louis XVI. 11 1 • r 1 T\ /r • A PAUL JONES. and the beautiful Mane An- toinette. John Copley and Benjamin West, the American painters, were also at Court that same evening, and every one made much over the boy sailor. " I hear," said the king, "that the British captain whom you defeated has been made a baronet for the defense of his ship." " If I meet him again, your Majesty," answered Paul, " I will make him a lord." This reply pleased the king greatly and he declared that if America had many such brave young men, Eng- land could never conquer her. But in the midst of all this honored patriotism there is one very sad story to tell. Benedict Arnold was a gallant and brave young man who had done many heroic deeds. He was a trusted friend of Washington. He had been promoted to the rank of major-general for l62 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. BENEDICT ARNOI^D. his braver}^; but he became a traitor to his country, and blotted out his name from the roll of honor in American history. Arnold had married the beau- tiful daughter of a rich Tory, and lived in great style in the old mansion of William Penn, in Philadelphia. As commandant of the troops stationed in the city, he became proud and despotic, and began to take money from the military funds which did not belong to him. For his offenses he was tried in court and convicted, and was reprimanded by General Washington, by order of the court. Arnold seemed to forget his disgrace. He ob- tained command at West Point on the Hudson river, w-hich ^.i,.,, was one of the most im- portant forts in America. But all this time he had planned to secure the fort and surrender it for money. He intended to sell his country to England. Think of it: WEST POINT. THE BRITISH IN A TRAP. 1 63 when thousands were laying down their Hves to save the country, this one man, handsome and well born and loved by many people, was selling his country for money. Major Andre, who was adjutant-general of the British army, was caught by some farmers, and a letter was found in his boot which told just what a traitor Benedict Arnold was. Major Andre was hanged as a spy. Benedict Arnold escaped to a British ship and fought for a time against his own country in the pay of England. But even the English despised the traitor, and the British soldiers spoke of him with contempt. Through all these long years of blood and famine and treason, George Washington re- mained the calm, level-headed commander. He planned retreats and attacks with equal skill, and at last the British armies were caught, as it were, in a net in Virginia, where General Cornwallis had taken his position at Yorktown, on the south bank of the York river. French ships in Chesapeake Bay shut him off from the British fleet. General Lafayette advanced with his army and encamped within eight miles of York- town. Washington in a swift march from the Hudson met Lafayette, and their united armies hemmed in the British by land. 164 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. On October nineteenth, 17S1, Cornwallis and his British and Hessian troops laid down their arms, gave up their flags and became prisoners of war. Four days afterwards a courier arrived in Philadelphia with a dispatch from Washington to Congress, telling of the final victory at York- town. Men wept and shouted for joy, and many spent the afternoon in the Dutch church with thanksgiving. The French had aided nobly in the victory, and when the news reached Paris, the whole city was illuminated. Franklin was there, and the ladies of the court loaded him with com- pliments and flowers. A final treaty between the two hostile nations was made in 1783. Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States, and surren- dered all the territory east of the Mississippi, ^, .^ except Florida and I " Louisiana territory, m^ &;=y'...S^' ^ ' which belonged to '-1 '^'^^;^y^^%:S^K: Spain. Great Britain " ' ' ^f f ?&^ kept Canada, and the ^:>(*ijH»9# ■^— ^ ■' - -'-"ir'-'*%^ control of the St. L a w r e n c e r i v e r . MOUNT VERNON. , r» •^- 1 1 he British army in America sailed away for England on the WASHINGTON RETIRES TO MOUNT VERNON. 165 twenty-fifth of November. Nine da^^s afterward, General Washington assembled his of^cers and bade them farewell. He then returned to his farm at Mount Vernon, on the Potomac, and seemed to forget that he had been the comman- l66 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. der-in-chief of the American armies; but the people did not forget the great chieftain, and we shall soon see that he had many things yet to do for his country. It was a foggy day in London on the fifth of December, when the king, George III., came into the House of Lords to announce the inde- pendence of the United States. He was in royal robes and sat on his throne, but he felt that his people were stronger than he. They had forced him to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and had refused to vote any more money for the war. His voice trembled as he read from his scroll the loss of his colonies; but in the gallery high over his head sat Copley and West and some American ladies who were shedding tears for very joy. The United States was now a separate gov- ernment; but since the war was over, there was no common cause to hold the States together. Each State had its own affairs to look after. The Union seemed ready to fall to pieces. But in 1787, some of the wisest men from the different States met in a convention at Phila- delphia to provide for a more permanent Union. CHAPTER XXVII. A PERMANENT UNION FORMED. The United States was now one nation. It had taken a long time to agree to a permanent Union. There were big states like Pennsylvania and little States like Rhode Island, and they were jealous of one another. In the convention at Philadel- phia they quarreled so badly that Benjamin Franklin rose and moved that prayer be offered every morning. That must have helped them to agree. At any rate, they soon after had the Con- stitution of the United States written and adopted. Some day you will read the Constitution, and you will find it a wonderful set of laws to govern so many States. It provided for a body of dele- gates from all the States, called Congress, who should make the laws, and for a president who should see that the laws were executed, and for judges who should decide whether the laws made by Congress and by the States agreed with the Constitution. The people now had two things to celebrate — the Declaration of Independence and the adop- tion of the Constitution of the United States, 167 l68 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. In 1/88, Philadelphia had the first great Fourth of July celebration. There was a procession a mile and a half long. Few had ever seen a parade except with regiments of soldiers in bright armor witii swords shining and cannons booming, and sometimes with prisoners marching behind in chains. But this very first procession in the United States showed that the new nation was one of peace and not of war. It was a triumphal march of tradespeople. There were great floats drawn by many horses, showing the different trades. One float, finer than all the rest, repre- sented the thirteen United States. There were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Car- olina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The thirteen States were thirteen pillars which supported the dome of a temple; but three of the pillars were unfinished, because three of the States had not yet adopted the Constitution. At night, in most of the cities, there were torch- light processions, sky-rockets were fired off, and all the bells were kept jingling till midnight. Great Britain did not like to see this good feel- ing. Parliament hoped the colonies would fight one another, so they would not become a strong THE FIRST PRESIDENT. 169 nation. It is said that men were hired to come from England to make trouble between the States. Then Spain wanted the colonies of the South to join with Florida and make one government. So you see, it was very necessary that all should stand together, or pretty soon there would not be any United States. Of course after Congress was elected, the very first thing to do was to elect a president. There were many good men to choose from who were both learned and brave; but almost everyone said George Washington should be elected; and, sure enough, he was. New York was made the capital city. As Gen- eral Washington traveled from his home at Mt. Vernon to New York, a long procession of peo- ple went with him. The governors of the States and the mayors of the towns met him in great honor; arches were built at the entrance of cities, and over bridges; and girls dressed in white strewed flowers along his path. On the thirtieth day of April, 1789, a great crowd of people stood in front of Federal Hall in New York to see the president take the oath of office, and when that was over, they shouted, "Long live George Washington, President of the United States!" Cannons boomed, and every- lyo THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. body felt that the United States was really a government. There was no other government like it in the world. Many said that Washington would soon make himself king, and then the United States would be just like any of the gov- ernments in Europe. Others said that a government where the people had all the say about affairs would fall to pieces, and that there would soon be a dozen small nations instead of one great nation. Then there were different ideas about how a president should live. In New York and the larger cities, there were some who kept the coat- of-arms of their ancestors hanging in their halls and painted on their carriages. They thought Washington should live like a king in splendor, and that the common people ought not to speak with him. Others thought that the house of the president should not be any larger nor his coach any finer than any other person's. FEDERAL HALL, 1' COSTUMES OF THE TIME. 171 Washington himself beheved that the presi- dent should live in a way to be respected by the courts of Europe. He wanted the United States to be thought as good as any other nation in the world. So he lived in fine style. He was driven in a handsome coach drawn by six horses with two WASHINGTON S COACH. footmen behind, in scarlet and white livery. His birthday was celebrated all over the country like that of a king, just as we celebrate it to-day. He held receptions at his house with men in high office to assist him. He wore black velvet small- clothes, a cutaway coat, with pearl-colored vest, long white silk-stockings, and silver knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. His hair was powdered white and gathered into a silk bag and tied with a bow behind. He did not shake hands, but held a three-cornered hat in his hand and bowed to each guest, speaking a kind word to everybody. His wife, Martha Washington, had her even- ing receptions, where the guests were waited on by colored servants. When, in 1791, Philadel- 172 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. phia was made the capital, Washington contin- ued in that city his hospitable way of living, and it was said in Europe that the first president of the new Republic would do honor to a throne. At this time, ladies wore silk and taffeta gowns and high-heeled shoes. They dressed their hair very high and put black patches on their faces to improve their beauty. Gentlemen carried snuff boxes and were very polite. They wore em- broidered satin vests, with lace at the neck and on the broad cuffs. They wore powdered wigs; even little boys wore wigs and cocked hats like their fathers. But, of course, there were many poor boys who could not afford to dress so fine as that. Indeed, there were many poor people after the war. While the patriots had been fight- ing for liberty, the farms in the North had lain idle, and the mills were closed; and the cotton, and tobacco, and rice fields of the South were not profitable. After the war, the paper money of the States had little value, and trade could not revive. There was an immense war debt. Through the efforts of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, the government promised to pay the debts of the war. A tax was put on imported goods, and everybody who bought foreign wares helped to pay off the war debts. CHAPTER XXVIII. Washington's administration. President Washington lived in great state at the Presidential Mansion; but fine clothes and fine coaches were not so important to him as were a prosperous and happy people. With the wise men he had chosen to help him, called the " Cabinet," President Washington made treaties of peace and treaties of commerce with the nations of Europe. He brought to terms the pirates off the coast of Africa, who were robbing the ships of the American mer- chants. He ruled so wisely and so well that Europe said the United States had made a good beginning; but it was still thought that a gov- ernment by the people could not last long. About that time, a ship sailed to China to get a cargo of tea. Tea from English merchants tasted a little bitter since the Boston tea-party, and the American merchants thought they would try to get it themselves. No one knew much about China. Only Dutch merchants were allowed to get tea and silks at her ports,and they had never been beyond the great warehouses 173 174 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. close by the sea. Even to the wisest men, China seemed like a fairy-land, and there were many wild stories going about of the people shut in by the great Chinese wall. Some said all their houses were of marble and their temples and palaces were adorned with precious stones; that the market-places were filled with silks and cloth-of-gold, and carved mother-of-pearl and ivory; and that the king's palace was of pure gold, and that he ate from plates and dishes of gold. When the American merchant returned from his long voyage, he did not have any such wonderful things as these to tell. But he said that he had been only on the coast, and that the Chinese merchants had yellow skins and crooked eyes and wore their hair in a " pig tail." He said that the Chinese had never heard of the little republic of the United States, and that when they saw the map of America they were delighted to find such a fine market for their tea. It was in this way that our trade with China began. While ships were pushing out to widen the com- merce of the republic, the people were beginning to look beyond the mountains to the new lands lying west. The country north of the Ohio river TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS. 175 now belonged to the United States, and was called the Northwest Territory. According to the laws made for this territory, every one should have freedom in his religion; there should be free schools, and there should not be any slaves. These are the same laws we now have all over the United States; but at the time Washington was president, none of the States had so much liberty. Some still had their old laws obliging the citizens to belong to a certain church, if they were allowed to vote. Very few States had free schools; and there might be slaves in all the States. People moved west in great numbers, because they liked the laws of the new territory, and because the land was cheap. But the Indians soon began to fear they would lose their hunting grounds; and they attacked the settlers and burned many little towns. General St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, marched against the Indians, but ^kneral anthonv his army was defeated. Then wayne. General Anthony Wayne marched against them, and conquered them. After this victory, a treaty of peace was made with the Indians, by which they surrendered all claims to the land north of 176 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. the Ohio as far west as the Wabash river. So the great Northwest Territory was opened up for a prosperous settlement. Then there was an exchange of white and Indian captives. Wives and husbands, after years of separation, were reunited, and children who had grown up among the savages and did not understand a word of English, were restored to their parents. About this time, three more States were added to the thirteen. The first one was Vermont, which had been a part of New York. It was called Ver- mont on account of its beautiful mountains which are always green with hemlock, spruce, and fir trees. The "Green Mountain Boys," with Ethan Allen as their leader, had been a great help during the Revolution; and Vermont was gladly welcomed as the fourteenth State. Then Kentucky, which had been a part of Virginia, came into the Union. Kentucky, too, had played a great part in the struggle against England. It had been the old " dark and bloody ground" of the Indians. In it were many mys- terious caves, and forests of oak trees, and long stretches of blue grass that were fine for grazing. Daniel Boone explored the State when it was still full of buffalo and deer. When a boy, Boone DANIEL BOONE. 177 had many adventures in the wild mountains of North CaroHna. Once he was hunting deer at night by torch-light; he saw a pair of eyes shining in the dark, and was just ready to shoot when he found that the eyes be- longed to a little neighbor girl instead of to a deer. Afterwards, this little girl became Boone's wife. They moved into the wilderness of Ken- tucky, and lived in a log fort called Boones- borough. Boone had many narrow escapes from the Indians. Once when they were on his track, he swung far out into the air by a long wild grape- vine and dropped on the ground, so far away, that the Indians could not follow his tracks. He would often wade down streams to hide his trail, and knew the tricks of the Indians so well that it was difficult for them to catch him. But sev- eral times he was taken prisoner. Once the warriors shaved off his hair except the scalp lock, and painted his face and dressed him up like an Indian, and an old Indian squaw adopted him; but after a long while the brave hunter escaped. His daughters were once taken prisoners, too; but they tore off pieces from their dresses and scat- 178 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. tered them along the path, and broke off twigs from the trees along the Indian trail, so that their father followed and rescued them. After Kentucky became a State, Boone threw his gun over his shoulder and went off beyond the Mississippi to find better hunting-grounds. The next State to come into the Union during the administration of President Washington was Tennessee. It was a fine country beyond the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where green prairies sloped gently down to the Missis- sippi and Tennessee rivers. The settlers were mostly from North Carolina. When young Andrew Jackson came to Ten- nessee in 1788, to fight the Indians and start life as a lawyer, there were only eighty cabins in Nashville. Most of the cabins had but one room each, and people generally slept on the floor. They sometimes woke to find snakes as bed- fellows. They were also much troubled by the Indians. The early settlers had no money, and hence they made a law that peltries should pass as money. The people in the eastern States made a great deal of sport about the strange money in Tennessee. They forgot that just the same kind of fur money had been used by the first settlers WASHINGTON'S BURIAL PLACE. 1 79 of New England. After Tennessee came into the Union, the Indians called Washington the "Father of Sixteen Fires," because they said there were now sixteen tribes. Washington served four years as president and then was re-elected, without a vote against him, for another four years. W^hen the people asked him to serve still another four years, he firmly refused and went back to his farm at Mount Vernon. Two years later, Washington died. The whole country mourned his loss deeply. Congress adopted a series of resolu- tions, in one of which the words of General Henry Lee were used which called Washington the "First in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." He was buried at Mount Vernon on the Po- tomac. His old home is kept just as he left it, and is guarded as a sacred trust by the loyal Mount Vernon Association. JOHN ADAMS. CHAPTER XXIX. THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. John Adams was elected the second President of the United States. He had been to the courts of Great Britain, France and Holland and, like Benjamin Franklin, he had been a great favorite with the kings. Fie had helped write the Declaration of Independence and had been the Vice-President eight years. Although he was a good man, Adams had some enemies. One of his most bitter enemies was John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, who boasted that the Indian princess Pocahontas was one of his ances- tors, and w^io was one of the most brilliant orators of the South. The enmity came about in this way: When John Randolph was only a boy in school at Columbia College, New York, he had stood with his brother in Federal Hall, to see John Adams take the oath as Vice-President. 180 JOHN RANDOLPH. THOMAS JEFFERSON. l8l As he and his brother went out of the building, the coachman spurned Randolph's brother for coming too near the new Vice-President's elegant carriage. From that moment John Randolph was a bitter enemy of the Adamses, and after- ward used his influence against them in Congress. There were some who opposed the fine living of President Washington and President Adams. Among them was Thomas Jeffer- son, who was elected the third President. Jefferson had been much in Europe, and was for a time Minister to France. But in his life abroad, Jefferson had learned to despise the parade THOMAS JEFFERSON. of the Royal Courts. When he was to be inaugurated in Washington City, which was now the capital of the United States, it is said that he would not go in a coach-and-six, as Washington and Adams had done. He rode on horseback and hitched his horse to a fence, like any plain farmer. When President Jefferson held his receptions, he kept open house for every- body, and would shake hands with rich and poor alike. Among the first acts of President Jefferson was to purchase Louisiana from the French, who had acquired that territory from Spain. Thus l82 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. New Orleans and a great territory west of the Mississippi became a part of the United States. At first the towns of New Orleans and St. Louis, where nearly all the inhabitants were French or Spanish, did not like this change in their government. The people there did not speak the English language, and did not under- stand the laws of the United States; but after a while these people became just as loyal to their president as they had been to their kings. Nobody in the United States knew anything about this vast new territory, drained by the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers, and so Presi- dent Jefferson was determined to have the country explored. He looked about him for brave men who would be willing to venture into the unknown wilderness, and chose two young Virginians, Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke. With a small company of men, they paddled their boats down the Ohio and across the Missis- sippi to St. Louis. From thence they passed up the Missouri river to the mouth of the Platte. Here on the left bank, they held a great council with some Indians, and named the spot Council Bluffs. They spent the winter among the Indians, and then paddled on up the Missouri. Some- LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION. 1 83 times, they dragged their boats through the shallows and sometimes they carried them round the rapids. Then on past the Yellowstone they went, until they saw the Rocky Mountains with their snowy tops lifted to the clouds. They passed the Falls of the Missouri, where the river rushes down with a roar and leaps over steep rocks, and dashes its white spray high up into the air. It was a wonderful sight. When the mountains were reached, Captain Lewis set out alone to find guides to the country beyond. In his search for an Indian village he reached the highest source of the mighty Mis- souri river, and was much surprised to find that it was only a little brook playing down the moun- tain side. With Indian guides our heroes passed the mountains; and, ragged and half-starved, they built boats and paddled down the Lewis river, and then past the Clarke into the broad waters of the Columbia. At last, they heard the roar of the breakers where the waters of the Pacific beat up against the shores of America; and soon they saw the wide ocean stretched out before them as Balboa had seen it farther south almost three hundred years before. But this time it was the stars and 184 THE STOKY OF OUR COUNTRY. stripes that waved on the shore, instead of the banner of Spain. After their return, Lewis and Clarke gave President Jefferson a book in which was written all that they had learned about the animals and plants and minerals in this western country, and all that they had found out about the Indians and their villages and their ways of living. The President was very much pleased with the success of the Lewis and Clarke Expe- dition. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Z. M. Pike explored the Arkansas and the Red rivers, and climbed the peak which bears v /v. ,y ;• , his name and saw bison, AMERICAN BISON. coiiimonly called buf- falo, roaming in herds where now are some of the great States of the Union. The administration of Jefferson is noted for the growth of the territory north of the Ohio river. In the spring and fall, when the rivers were swollen, emigrants from the Northern States went down to Pittsburg by way of Lake Erie or by way of a mountain road through Pennsylva- nia. From Pittsburg, flatboats carried them down the Ohio river to their new homes. Emi- grants from the Southern States went up through LIFE ON THE FRONTIERS. 185 Kentucky to the territory. They were gen- erally a poorer class of people than those from the North; for the slaves had kept them from getting work to do. Some colonies of well-to-do Quakers went from the Carolinas, because they did not like slavery, and wanted to live in a country where the laws did not allow slaves. Here, in home-spun clothes, a new people built their homes, who were some day to give presidents and vice-presidents and many other great men to their country. After the rude huts were built for their families, the pioneers next built a schoolhouse. There was always a great fireplace in the school- houses; seats were wooden slabs set up on wooden legs; a narrow shelf ran around the wall where the older scholars could write, and the sunlight came in through greased paper instead of glass. Close by the master hung a bunch of hickory switches, which were thought very useful in helping to learn the alphabet. Boys and girls went barefoot to school when the weather was not too cold; but those who were very proud would carry their shoes to the schoolhouse door and then put them on to wear till it was time to start home. Life in these western wilds was much the same 1 86 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. as that among the early Puritans, but the laws were not so strict, and there was more merry- making. There were singing-schools and spell- ing-schools; there were husking-bees in the barns; there were log-raisings, where the men met together to build a log house for a neighbor; there were nutting parties, when early on frosty mornings the walnuts and butternuts were >'' gathered for the winter. Everybody was sure to find a welcome in these rude homes. It was the boast of the frontiersman that the "latch-string" of buck- skin always hung outside the door, and that any one who pulled the string might enter. After a while, "stores" were set community, and the bustle of trade crept in; and neat frame and brick houses took the place of log cabins. One State was soon cut out of this Northwest Territory, and called Ohio; the remainder was called the Indiana Territory, and William Henry Harrison was its governor. THE LATCH-STRING up in every WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 187 ROBERT FULTON. When he was It was toward the close of Jefferson's adminis- tration that Robert Fulton launched the first steamboat in America. From his earliest years Fulton was fond of inventing machines. He did not like books, but was always studying how to make sky-rockets and lead pencils and many other things for the amuse- ment of himself and his friends, only fourteen, he invented a crank to turn the paddles of his boat, wdiich was much easier than row- ing by hand. At last, he planned a steamboat. When it was finished he called the boat " Clermont," but the people called it " Fulton's Folly," and laughed about it as much as they now laugh about flying-machines. When the day came to launch the boat, a screw w^as wrong, and at first the vessel would not move. Then, when Fulton had fixed the screw, black columns puffed from the smoke- stack, the paddles threw spray in every direc- tion and off went the boat with great speed. It is said that as the " Clermont," with sparks THE CLERMONT. l88 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY, flying and steam hissing, passed the little sail- boats on the Hudson, many sailors hid themselves in fright. Steamboats were improved so fast after this, that in a few years steamers were crossing the ocean. But we should remember that Robert Fulton of Pennsylvania was the in- ventor of the first modern steamboat. At the close of his second term as President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson retired ^•n>,l^''\ to his home in Monticello, Skf'^ ... ^ Virginia, and was long known as the " Sage of Monticello." He said that when he died MONTICELLO. j^g wished to have written on his grave: " Here lies Thomas Jefferson, au- thor of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute for religious freedom in the State of Vir- ginia, and Father of the University of Virginia." Soon the Indians again grew jealous of the advance of the white men, and a famous chief, Tecumseh, rallied his warriors about him to defend the hunting-grounds in Indiana Territory. His brother, the Prophet, was a medicine-man, who claimed to heal the sick by magic. He had only one eye. and when dressed in the garb of his craft was an object of fear to the Indians. THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE. 1 89 This prophet, while Tecumseh was in the south getting his warriors together, persuaded the In- dians to commence war on tlie white settlers. General Harrison marched to the Prophet's town on the Tippe- canoe river, and went into camp. Just before daylight, the Indians attacked the army while it still slept. The soldiers soon rallied, put out the camp fires and fought in the dark. The Prophet stood , .,, , , , , THE PROPHET. on a hill near by and chanted a war song in a loud voice. He called to his war- riors that his charms would save them, that noth- ing would harm them, and they fought with terrible strength; but they were at last driven from the field with great loss, a little after day- light, on the seventh of November, iSii. When Tecumseh returned from the south, he found his people scattered, and he soon went to Canada to join the British, who were again mak- ing preparations for war against the United States. CHAPTER XXX. Madison's administration. There was trouble for the Republic during the next few years. The trouble really began while Jefferson was President. George III. had reigned in England almost sixty years. He was very old, and many thought he was insane. Great Britain was now at war with France, and attacked all the ships which had commerce with that nation. British seamen claimed the right to search American vessels, to see whether British sailors were on board; sometimes a whole crew were taken off, and the vessel was left alone on the high sea. So an American merchant never knew when his wares might reach port. Parliament did not listen to any complaints sent by Congress; and it was plain that the trouble could only be set- tled by war. President Madison, who had suc- ceeded Jefferson, was not a mili- tary man and wanted peace. But JAMES MADISON. ^ party was led by three young orators, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, who said HENRY CLAY. I9I there must be war before there could be any real peace. These three young orators became so famous hi American history that you would perhaps like to know something about them. Henry Clay was born on the frontier of Virginia, in a place called the "Slashes." His father died when he was four years old, and left him to the care of a mother who had little for him but love. He learned to read and to write in a log cabin. Barefooted and bareheaded, he often rode a sorry-looking -^ ° HENRY CLAY. horse to mill, with a sack of corn to be ground into meal. He clerked in a little dry-goods store in Richmond, Va.; but afterwards he found a place in the courts as a clerk. There was tittering among the other clerks as Clay took his seat at a desk. He was a lank and raw-boned lad. His clothes were home-made and ill-fitting; and his linen was so starched by his good mother and his hair was brushed back so sleek, that he looked stiff and awkward. It soon happened that Clay's companions found he could talk uncommonly well. His dili- 192 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. gence at work, and his bright, intelHgent face at- tracted the attention of Chancellor Wythe, who selected Clay from all the other clerks to write for him. "The mill-boy of the Slashes," on account of his good character, his wit and pleasant manners, was soon introduced into the best society of Richmond, He studied law, and became the leader in a debating club. When he was ready to practice law, before he was of age, Henry Clay went to Lexington, Kentucky. Here he soon won fame as a public speaker, and was sent to Congress. Clay had a pleasing face, though he was not handsome; his voice was musical and his words were eloquent. He hated slavery, and defended slaves in the courts. He wanted better canals and better roads for the country, and wanted to encourage the manufacture of goods at home, so that the American people would not be obliged to buy so many things in Europe. John C. Calhoun is called South Carolina's greatest son. His early life was spent on a farm helping his mother make a living for the family. He did not read much, because he had few books; but he thought a great deal. Whenever he found any one who knew more than he did, Calhoun CALHOUN AND WEBSTER. 193 talked with him until he had learned all he could. \\ hen he was eighteen 3'ears old, he went to Yale College. Here he studied the great questions of the times and talked so well in debate that his class- mates said he would some day be President of the United States. He never became Presi- dent, but was Vice-President, and filled many offices of honor. J°^^' ^- calhoux. When Calhoun was in Congress from South Carolina he worked with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster to bring about the war with Great Britain; but on man}^ other questions these three great men did not agree at all. Daniel Webster's father, Ebenezer Webster, was one of the famous "Xew Hampshire Ran- gers," about whom we read in the French and Indian wars. Later on he helped Washington in the siege of Boston, and scaled the breastworks at Bennington with John Stark. After it was DAxiEL WEBSTER, igamcd that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, General Washington said, one day, to Captain Webster, " I know I can trust you, Webster." 194 THE STORY OF OL'R COUNTRY. The great orator was always proud of his father's good name. Daniel was such a puny baljy that the neigh- bor women said he would not live. As he grew older, he was still frail, and was not put to work in the fields with his brother; so he roamed all day long in the woods. His companion was often an old British sailor, who had deserted his ship to enter the American army, and now lived a half vagabond life near the home of the Websters. It was this sailor's great delight to carry little Daniel out into the woods on his shoulders, and to row slowly up and down the river as he taught him how to catch the shining fish. They would lie together for hours on the mossy bank, while the old man told endless stories of adventures. As Daniel grew older and stronger he read every book he could find. It is odd that he failed in declamation when at his first school. In his own words: "There was one thing I could not do: I could not speak before the school." But later, in Dartmouth College, he became famous in de- bate. As a lawyer, Webster won great fame, and we find him taking part in all the debates in Con- gress, where he was sent by his native State, not long after he was graduated. OUR INFANT NAVY. ^95 While the old leaders in Congress wanted to jog on in the ruts, these three young orators aroused the people to the highest pitch of en- thusiasm for the defense of American rights. So war was declared with Great Britain, It is called the War of iSi2.and lasted over two years. The United States was not very well prepared for war. The Americans did not keep a large arm}' always ready to go to war as the nations of Europe do. There were onh* a few half-built forts along the coast from Maine to Mrginia. There were very few ships. But, with the bold- ness of a just cause, the little American fleet sailed out to meet the great British nav}-. Some said it was like the shepherd bo}' David going out to meet the giant Goliath. There were many battles out on the ocean and on the lakes of the north. Young Captain Lawrence, after some brilliant victories, fell in with a British frigate off the coast of Cape Ann. The Americans fought on deck until ever}- officer was either killed or wounded. As ; Lawrence himself was borne . J.'4' "^ ^ dying down the hatchway, he ^''"^ i-awrexce. cried out, "Don't give up the ship." The British 196 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. sailors were already leaping on board the ship, but the last words of the gallant Lawrence became the motto of the war all over the country. Commodore Perry, of Rhode Island, named his flagship the "Lawrence," and on the flag was written, "Don't give up the ship." In a battle on Lake Erie, the "Lawrence" was soon a wreck; her masts were gone; her sailors were killed; but the brave Perry put on his uniform, seized the O. H PERRY. n 1 1 • \ ^ riag, and passed m an open boat, under full fire of the enemy, to another American ship. Under the folds of the waving banner, the battle raged until the whole British fleet on Lake Erie surrendered. In the smoke of the battle, Perry sent his famous dispatch to General Harrison: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Other vic- tories followed until the American navy was mistress of the seas. Europe could hardly believe the report. The British newspapers expressed astonishment that a "handful of outlaws with a piece of striped bunting could disgrace the name of England." Meanwhile on land the war was raging. In ANDREW JACKSON. I97 the North, the chief Tecumseh was killed, and the Indians deserted from the British; and the armies of General Harrison and General Scott were victorious. In the South, the city of Washington was captured by the British, who set fire to the presi- dent's mansion, called the White House, and to other public buildings. It is said that the priceless Declaration of In- dependence and the famous Stuart portrait of President Washington were saved by Mrs. Madi- son, the wife of the President. So great was the haste to remove the portrait that the frame was broken, and the canvas alone was carried to a place of safety. The last battle of the war was fought by Andrew Jackson at New Orleans. This fearless gen- , . , , . . - ANDREW JACKSON. eral, with his regiment from Tennessee, had been busy during the war putting down the Creek Indians, who had massacred many white settlers in Alabama. With two brave young fellows, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, he led his men against the Indians, and in two battles put an end to the Indian war. 198 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Jackson had always hated the English. He was thirteen when the Revolutionary war broke out, and he bore to his grave a scar on the head made by a British officer, because he would not black this officer's boots. So he was very willing to fight the British at New Orleans. All night, his men built up breast- works of cotton bales. When the British tried to take these works by storm, their ranks were mowed down in hundreds by the bullets of Jackson's well-trained troops. At night, twenty- six hundred British veterans lay dead on the field. The American loss was about thirteen. This wonderful battle of New Orleans was the last in the war of 18 12, and was fought after a treaty of peace had been made between Great Britain and the United States. Neither army had yet heard of the treaty. DAVY CROCKETT. ji'fi piliiiir JACKSON'S MONUMENT. CHAPTER XXXI. ERA OF GOOD FEELING. An "era of good feeling" followed the war of 1S12, during the administration of President Monroe. Indian Territory was set aside for the Indians, and the Mobilian tribes sold their lands and moved there. Florida was bought from Spain, and most of the Spaniards emigrated to South America. At that time the countries of South America were trying to establish republics of their own; but Spain claimed the country, and it was feared that the nations of Europe might aid Spain to prevent this. In 1823, President Monroe de- clared that the United States would object to any attempt of European powers to interfere with the governments of any people on any part of this hemisphere. This declaration became famous as the " Mon- roe doctrine," and has been a great help to the republics of South America and Mexico. JAMES MOXROE. 200 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. In 1824, Marquis de Lafayette, now old and gray, came again to America. Alone he visited the tomb of Washington at Mount Vernon, and wept. With the aged Adams and Jefferson, he talked of the glory of America in the past, and of the still greater glories to come. He rode in a procession with two-hundred veter- ans of the Revolution to Breed's Hill, to lay the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument, and listened with deep emotion to the eloquent oration pronounced on that oc- casion by Daniel Webster. And as he returned to Boston, he stood by the famous elm-tree, which still stands on Cambridge common, under whose wide-spreading branches General Washington first took command of the American army after the battle of Bunker Hill. OLD ELM-TREE. IMMIGRANTS FROM EUROPE. 20I When at last Lafayette bade farewell to this country, the good ship " Brandywine " bore him back to his home in France. It was at the battle of Brandywine that this "little boy," as the British had called him, was wounded. Louisiana had come into the Union at the be- ginning of the war. After the war came Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas and Michigan, and in 1837 there were twenty-six stars on the American flag. Meanwhile thousands were passing every month through Pittsburg on their way to the great West, and for a while it seemed that the East would lose all its people. But the East really had no cause to be afraid. It was sending out colonies to the West to build up new industries which, in a few years, would add to the wealth of the East. Then while all these thousands were going West, many more thousands were coming to Eastern shores, from across the sea. The British soldiers, who had fought in the 202 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. war of 1812, when they returned home, told wonderful stories of this little Republic. The laboring classes of Great Britain were glad to hear of such a country. They were burdened with taxes and oppressed by the rich, so that very few had land of their own. They came in ship-loads from England, Ire- land, and Scotland. Carpenters, masons, cloth-weavers, black- smiths, renters on the great estates of the noble- men, sold what they had and came to find homes of their own in America. The prosperity of the new land astonished these people from the old country. " This be a main queer country," said a York- shire man who came with his family. " This be a main queer country; for I have asked the -:, , laboring folks along the -fe #' / I'oad how many meals ^ they eat in a day, and they all said three and sometimes four, if they wanted them. '''^■^-- - " We have but two back PIONEER LIFE. . „ , , , , m hngland, and they are scanty enough; and only think, sir, many of these people asked me to eat and drink with THE TRADE OF THE WEST. 203 them. We can't do so in Yorkshire, sir, for we have not enough for ourselves." There were so many who wanted to come to America, that the cost of the passage was high; so that only the well-to-do workmen could afford to make the voyage. One week brought fifteen hundred to five American ports. The next week came only eight hundred; but the very next week came one thousand and twenty-seven. And these industrious people kept on coming in such large numbers that the English newspapers said Parli- ament should make laws to prevent them from leaving England. So, you see, America troubled Great Britain in peace as much as in war. The roads were very bad all over the United States, and the lakes and rivers were not long enough to carry the trade from west to east. But the Ohio and the Mississippi took boats to the South, so that New Orleans had most of the traffic from the West. Foreign ships lay in the docks at New Orleans, while the steamboats plied busily up and down the Mississippi. The farmers of the Western valleys brought their flour, tobacco, beef, and pork to New Orleans to exchange for the pro- ducts of Europe and the West Indies. 204 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The Eastern cities, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, were eager to get the trade which was fast making New Orleans the greatest city in the Union. New York now planned a canal to unite the Hudson with Lake Erie, and a canal to join Lake Erie with the Ohio river. Philadelphia and Baltimore followed New York with plans for canals and turnpikes to the West. After eight years of building, the Erie Canal was opened for boats in 1825. This was a great event. A long line of vessels were pro- pelled down from Lake Erie to the ocean, where Governor Clinton poured a keg of water from the lake into the ocean as a sign of their union; and a busy trade was soon carried [ ^ t I ^^^S^trffi^ on between the ^i f^^WS We St a n d N e w i^ygs^s^^^^^^^^^^^^^ York City. Then the Na- FIRST RAILROAD. . , y-i i tional Koad was built from Maryland to Indiana. But before this great turnpike had become of much use, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was built, and this quickly gave Western trade to Baltimore. The first spadeful of dirt for a railroad was THE FIRST TELEGRAPH. 205 turned over by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independ- ence. As the venerable old gentleman threw the dirt from his spade, he said he considered the act only second to signing the Declaration; and if you stop a moment to think how much the railways have done for the people of the United States, you may agree with him. After the railroad came the telegraph. The inventor of the telegraph as it now is, was Samuel F. B. Morse. He struggled many years to get his invention tried. Sometimes he was ragged. "My stockings want to see my mother," he said once. He thought how neatly his mother would darn the ,0-tr^?^ holes; and he must have thought #7| !^ Jx very often of her good home-made '^^\ - W bread and butter, for he was very ^^^w often without food. s. f. b. morse. After a long time, Congress appropriated money to build a telegraph from Washington to Baltimore, and in 1844 the first message, " What hath God wrought!" was sent. At first people would not believe the messages, until the mail brought letters saying that they were true. It is said that one man asked how large a bundle could be sent over the wires, and 206 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. that a woman who saw a telegraph pole put in front of her door, said she supposed she could not say a word now without everybody knowing what she said. She thought the wire alone would carry news. A little while before this, the Subtreasury of the United States was established where money belonging to the United States could be kept. This was much safer than putting the money into private banks all over the country. Some of you may have seen the Treasury building in Washington and the iron vaults where the gold and silver are kept, and where a small army of men are busy counting and taking care of the nation's money. The intelligence of the people had been de- veloping during these years. Noah Webster's Dictionary of the English Language was a great aid to speaking the mother tongue correctly. Penny newspapers were widely distributed. The poems of Longfellow, Whittier, and Bryant, the stories of James Fenimore Cooper and Wash- ington Irving were very popular, and helped to win the favor of our cousins across the sea. CHAPTER XXXII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST. Meanwhile during all this national success the West was coming to the front. Clay of Ken- tucky had won applause for his eloquence, and Jackson of Tennessee had been made President for his bravery. In 1840, the West put up another candidate for honors. When William Henry Harrison was named as a candidate for President, some people made sport of him. He was born in Virginia; but because he had lived a long time in the West as a soldier fight- ing the Indians, and as a governor of the terri- tory of Indiana, they said he was from the "back- woods" and they called him the "Log Cabin" candidate. This pleased the farmers. Log cabins became the fashion and were carried in processions, decorated with coonskins; and hard cider, which was the farmer's drink, was passed freely around. " Old Tip " was a term of endearment, because of General Harrison's victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe in Indiana. John Tyler of Vir- 207 208 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. ginia was the farmers' candidate for Vice-Presi- dent; SO "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," sang the men in homespun, and, sure-enough, Harrison and Tyler were elected by an immense vote. But only a month after General Harrison was inaugurated, he died, and Vice-President Tyler became President for the rest of the term. The States of Florida and Texas were ad- mitted into the Union in 1845; so that now there were twenty-eight stars in our flag. During the administration of President Polk, there was war with Mexico on account of the boundary lines of Texas. The Americans were victorious in that war. A treaty of peace with Mex- ico gave the territories of New Mexico and California to the United States. Two more States, ^ Iowa and Wisconsin, were admit- JAMES K. POI.K. 11- 1 • 1 • • ted durmg this administration. Soon after California became a part of the United States, news came of wonderful gold dis- coveries in that territory. In the year 1849, there was great excitement over the gold mines. Workshops were shut up, fertile farms were deserted and thousands started on the journey to the Pacific coast. Long- lines of white-covered OUR FIRST WORLD'S FAIR. 209 wagons, called "prairie schooners," made their way from the Mississippi river to San Fran- cisco. At Salt Lake City, Utah, where a peculiar religious sect called Mor- mons, lived, the weary travelers halted for sup- T 1 J. ^ ^ PRAIRIE SCHOONER. phes and rest, in two years San Francisco became a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants; and in 1S50 California added the thirty-first star to our flag. In 185 1 England took the lead of all nations in giving the first World's Fair, to which the whole world was invited. In the wonderful Crystal Palace, the United States secured, in proportion to her exhibits, more prizes than any other country. Her carriages, pianos, india- rubber goods, reaping-machines, life-boats and engineer's tools attracted much attention. The beautiful marble statue of the Greek Slave, by Hiram Powers, gave some idea of what young America might some day do in art. There was so much benefit to England and to the world from this Fair that the United States invited all nations to join with her in an exhibit. New York was chosen as the World's Fair City. The population of New York at that time 2IO THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. was five hundred thousand and the population of the United States was twenty-six millions. The Crystal Palace was declared open to the world by President Pierce, on July fourteenth, 1S53. Foreign nations sent many fine exhibits. England seemed to forget her old tremble with the colonies and sent a large display' of objects in the fine arts and in manufactured articles. America ranked well with Europe in her in- ventions. There w^ere printing presses, such as are now used in small country tov/ns; but at that time they were thought to be wonderful for use in the largest cities; there was the Morse tele- graph, patented fifteen years before; there were fire-engines of the hand-pump pattern, which were thought to make fires almost harmless. All glass and porcelain wares were from abroad; America had not learned that she could make these things. The whole display at New York was thought to be wonderful, and the United States was very proud of her first World's Fair. About this time the foundations were laid for the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. It was the gift of the noble English chemist, James Smithson; its plants and minerals, its books and galleries of art were the beginning of like gifts THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 211 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. from other men of wealth, which helped to widen the thought of the American people. The difficulties of the way across the " Great Desert," as the land between the Mississippi and the coast was called, led to plans for a Pacific ra i 1 r o ad. Engineers were sent out to make surveys for the best route to the coast. Many people ridi- culed the idea of putting a railroad through such a vast country, overrun by roving bands of In- dians. They said it could never be done. But these same people had said the same thing about the telegraph, which very soon reached such perfection that it could tick its messages under the sea. In 1850 a telegraph cable was laid from New York to Newfoundland, and in 1858 the Atlantic cable joined the Old World to the New. A message of peace and good-will from Queen Victoria came surging across under the sea, and was answered by President Buchanan. It was during President Buchanan's adminis- tration that Minnesota, Oregon, and Kansas came into the union. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. While the United States as a nation was be- coming more prosperous every year, a great trouble was brewing between the sections on the question of slavery. Many causes brought this trouble about. First of all, the northern section of the country was very different in climate and soil from the south- ern. This led to different customs and habits of living among the people. In the North there were busy manufacturing cities, and neat little farms where the farmer toiled all day in the ,M^ .s>\ Jr \^\ ■'■■ U fields with his hired help, and sat at the same table with him to eat; and their children attended the free public schools together. In the South there were large planta- tions, far apart and tilled by gangs of slaves '%. \ SLAVES AT WORK. THE COTTON GIN. 213 ELI WHITNEY. under the lash of overseers; there were stately mansions, standing alone, with only the rude log cabins of the negroes and the "poor whites" in sight for miles around. These poor whites were too proud to work in the fields with the slaves; and as there was no other way of making a living, they became a lazy, half-starved class, despised even by the negroes. At first, there was little cotton in the South. Then Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. It was a machine which quickly and cheaply cleaned the cotton for market, and its use made the cultivation of cotton very profitable. Many slaves were needed to pick in the great fields of cotton, to delve in the rice swamps, and to hoe in the fields of sugar cane. So it came about that while in the North there were few slaves, in the South slaves increased until in some States there were more blacks than whites. There was a feeling in the North that all COTTON GIN. 214 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. slaves should be set free. Slaves escaping from their masters were pursued and carried back in chains to the South. The courts in many North- ern States were kept busy trying to settle dis- putes about the ownership of escaped slaves, and during the trials very sad stories were told which more and more aroused sympathy for the negro. Those who favored freeing the slaves were called abolitionists. One stormy night, in a back street of Boston, a young journalist, William Lloyd Garrison, founded the first antislavery society. It was not long till there were hundreds of such societies throughout the North. Places of refuge were established from the northern borders of the slave States to Canada. With the help of the abolitionists, many fugitive slaves hid by day in these places, and traveled by night until they reached Canada, when they became free. Captain John Brown, of Kansas, lost his life in trying to help slaves free themselves. He knew well all the mountains of Virginia and just where the deep forests and the dark caves were, and he planned to hide the slaves until enough might get together to fight their way to freedom. At last the feeling between the North and the South became so bitter that seven Southern States withdrew from the Union. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 215 These States established a government of their own, which they called the "Confederate States of America, "and they elect- ed Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, President. Richmond, Virginia, was made the capital city. They seized several forts and arsenals in the South, but Fort Sumter and some others held out. jefferson davis. By this time, the President of the United States was Abraham Lincoln, a man who has a place equal with Washington in the hearts of the American people. Lincoln was born on the twelfth of February, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. His parents were very poor. They belonged to the class of "poor whites" in the South who had been pushed out of employment and driven to the hills by the system of negro slavery. They moved to Indiana when little Abe was seven years ABRAHAM LINCOLN. qM; but the father did not know what it was to be industrious, and so they kept on living from hand to mouth. Very early, Abe Lincoln began chopping wood and splitting rails to earn a livelihood. 21 6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The boy had a great and busy mind. At night, when the work of the day was over, the spelHng book, the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress or /Esop's Fables was read half the night by the blaze of the logs in the rude fire-place. He read these few books over and over. After a while he got the lives of Washington and Henry Clay, and these he read until he knew them almost by heart. He had the strength of a giant, and for a time navigated fiatboats down the Ohio and the Mis- sissippi rivers to New Orleans. When he was twenty-one years old he moved with his parents to Illinois. When an Indian war broke out in Illinois, Lincoln volunteered to fight and was chosen captain of his company. He was a great favorite because he was so strong and witty and good-natured. While still a raw, awkward boy he began to study law. After many struggles he began the practice of law in Springfield, and was soon very successful. It is said that he once defended the son of a poor widow who was accused of murder. The witness was an enemy of the boy and when questioned by Lincoln, said he had seen the murder by moon- light. Then Lincoln showed by the almanac that there was no moonlight on that night, and so the boy was set free. THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 21/ After a while, Abraham Lincohi was elected to Congress from Illinois. He was opposed to slavery, and often spoke on that subject. In i860, he was nominated for President and was elected. When he entered upon his duties as President seven States had already seceded from the Union, He saw that to divide this great nation into two nations meant wars and jealousies for all time to come. It meant standing armies kept to fight each other. It became his duty to preserve the Union; but he looked upon the South as a father would look upon a rebellious child, and he hesi- tated to send an army against it. He saw that one reason of the trouble was that the two sections of the country did not under- stand each other. You have read how the great roads led east and west. There was very little travel north and south; and hence the people did not mingle together very much. Because they did not understand each other, they became jealous, just as if they were two separate nations, instead of one nation. Then, too, many books were published both north and south, which mis- represented the manners and customs of the other section, and thus increased a growing prejudice. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CIVIL WAR. President Lincoln refused to acknowledge the Confederacy as a government. South Carolina claimed that Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston belonged to the South; but the presi- dent declared that the fort belonged to the United States and should be defended, if neces- sary, by a Union army. The Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter; and so the war was begun in April, 1861. There was great excitement both North and South. At the President's call to arms a hundred thousand men enlisted in the North in a few days. Trains were busy carrying them to the battlefields; mothers and wives and sisters were in tears as they parted, many for the last time, from their loved ones; flags were fiying, drums were beating, and there was hurrah and hurry everywhere. After the fall of Fort Sumter, the new govern- ment hoped that all the Southern States would unite in the common cause, but only four other States joined the Confederacy, making eleven in 318 BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. 219 all. They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Flor- ida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In some of these States the people were divided in sentiment. In Virginia, the northwestern part remained loyal to the Union, and formed a new State, which was afterwards admitted as West Virginia. The new government hoped, too, that England would aid them in war. The great English manu- factories received their supply of cotton from the South, and the war would cause a cotton famine. But England had emancipated all her own slaves, and had for many years been sending out fleets to stop the slave trade of Africa, and could not offer aid to the Confederacy, which had slavery as its corner-stone. So the South continued the war alone. At last, the Union armies marched to the South, and for four years there raged a terrible civil war. Sometimes one side and sometimes the other was victorious. At Bull Run, in Virginia, the Union troops were defeated. On the sea, the Confederate ship Merrimac sunk the Union ship Cumberland. Then the Union ship Monitor de- feated the Merrimac and sent her limping off to a harbor for repairs. 220 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. The Union forces captured Fort Henry and Fort Donaldson in Tennessee, and took many prisoners. New Orleans was captured in 1862, and Vicks- burg in 1863. Thus the Mississippi river was open for the North. It was the aim of the Con- federates to carry the war into the North, but their defeat at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania forced the Southern troops back into their own terri- tory, and the rest of the war was carried on in the South. There were many brave exploits on sea and on land about which you will read in another and larger book. There were great sufferings in the prisons and in the hospitals, where noble women nursed the sick and dying soldiers. The most of the war, as I have said, was carried on in the South, and all the ports of the Confed- erate States were blockaded so that ships could not come in with clothing and food. Shoes and clothes were worn to rags; paper was gone, so that envelopes were turned inside out to use a second time, and letters were written on wall paper. Heavy woolen curtains were taken from the windows to be made into clothing for the soldiers. Houses were burned; but so devoted ^- THE CLOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR. 221 were the people to their cause that they were willing to make any sacritice. At last the capital city of Richmond was taken, and on the ninth of April, 1S65. at Appomatox Court house, the Confederate General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant, and in a few days the whole South had laid down its arms. Before the T\^ -_- taking of Richmond, President * Vff-./' *j Lincoln was inaugurated for his gex. r. e. lee. second term in ofhce. In his speech he used the following beautiful words: " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to tinish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who GEx. r. s. GRANT, shall havc borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." And now the most terrible civil war in the history of the world was over, and peace had come again. The war had taught manv lessons. It had 222 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. proved that the people of the United States were as patriotic as they had been in the Revolu- tion. Both sides thought they were in the right, and both had sacrificed everything that was dear in defense of what they thought was the right. When such a people are united, as they now are, no foreign enemy can overcome them. With leaders like General Grant and General Lee, each side learned to respect the other. Slavery was abolished; and with the wisdom that has come with the years, the South would hardly wish it back again. The whole country welcomed peace. But in five days after General Lee surrendered, a crime was committed which cast its shadow upon every home. President Lincoln was shot by an assassin. The whole North was in mourning. The South had lost its best friend, who would perhaps have known better than any other how to silence the voice of discord and to bind up the broken hearts of the people. A great funeral procession fol- lowed the remains of the honored ANDREW JOHNSON, aud bcloved President to their last resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Vice- President Johnson became the President. ALASKA. 223 The armies disbanded. The States came back one by one into the union and the onward march of a united people began again. In 1867, the great territory of Alaska was pur- chased from the Russian Government. You will find it in the northwest corner of North America with only a line of ocean, called Bering Strait, between it and Asia. It is a land of snow and ice and great moun- tains, many of which have not yet been explored. Alaska contains rich deposits of precious metals and vast forests of valuable timber. Along the coast, where the climate is softened by the sea breeze, lie herds of shining seals whose fur brings millions of dollars every year; and there are other valu- able fur-bearing animals there. A queer race of fisherfolk and hunters, called Eskimos, were added to the population of the United States by the purchase of Alaska. These people have coarse black hair and small black eyes which are almost hidden in their fat, broad faces. They have short, thick bodies; and the men and women dress much alike in the fur of seals and reindeer. ESKIMO. :24 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Some live in cellars dug out of the ground, where light comes through a thin skin stretched over a round open space at the top. Sometimes they have round huts, made from solid cakes of ice, fitted neatly together, with a thin sheet of ice for a window. That is only in winter time; for in the late spring, these ice- houses begin to drip with water, and so are not comfortable dwellings. Some live in log huts with earthen floors, where beds of sod covered with skins serve both for sitting and sleeping. Except along the coast, it is very cold in Alaska most of the year; but not even the chil- dren mind zero weather. They play out of doors with snow-houses and ice-blocks. When friends meet, these Eskimos rub noses together instead of kissing, and they have a great many other queer customs. But not all of the inhabitants of Alaska are so uncivilized. Along the coast and on some of the islands the climate is mild, and the people have long been under the influence of the Russians. They dwell in villages, where missionaries have established schools in which both the Russian and the Eng- lish languages are taught. They have ceased to dress in skins, and wear " store-clothes" and live much like the peasants of Russia. CHAPTER XXXV. FROM lS6S TO iSq2. After the war of the Rebellion, the hero of the hour was Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the Union Armies, and he was elected President in 1868. West Virginia had been made a State during the war; the last of the Southern States now came back into the Union; and the negroes, who had been set free by a proclamation of President Lincoln, as well as those freed by an amendment to the Constitution, were given by Congress the right to vote. The enormous debt of the war was soon much reduced, and new industries were developed both in the North and the South; so that except for the sad hearts mourning their dead, the evil effects of the war were hardly felt. The railroad which joined the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific was finished with great cere- mony; the last tie was bound with silver and, to fasten it to its place, California sent a spike of gold, Nevada one of silver, and Arizona one of silver and iron; and soon two engines were 225 226 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. facing each other, one from the East and one from the West — in the language of Bret Harte: "Facing on a single track, Half the world behind each back. Said the Engine from the East: 'Listen! where Atlantic beats Shores of snow and summer heats; Where the Indian autumn skies Paint the woods with wampum dyes, I have chased the flying sun.' Said the Western Engine: ' Phew ! ' And a long, low whistle blew. ' Come, now, really that's the oddest Talk for one so very modest. You brag of your East ! You do ? Why, I bring the East to you ! All the Orient, all Cathay Find through me the shortest way.' " Telegraph wires had followed the iron track, and when the spikes were driven in near Ogden, where the Eastern and Western divisions of the road met, the story of the event sped quickly from one end of the country to the other, and then hurried across the sea to England and to Holland, to France and to Spain. Thus, at last, the passage to India and China was found, which Columbus and the Cabots and Hudson and Cartier and so many other bold sailors had tried to find; but it was not a north- SYMPATHY UNITES THE PEOPLE 22/ west passage by way of the icebergs, nor was it a southwest passage through the tropical region of South America. The way lay straight through fertile plains, soon to blossom as the rose, and over mountains teeming with the gold and silver for which these men had searched in vain. In 1S71 a great fire broke out in Chicago, which nearly destroyed the city, and many thousands were homeless on the shores of Lake Michigan. The whole country, south as well as north, united in rendering aid, and millions of dollars were sent to the stricken people. The following year a fire visited Boston, which was almost as great as that of Chicago, and again all the States sent aid to the sufferers. A few years afterwards the cities of the South were scourged with the yellow fever, and over twenty thousand people died before winter came to stop the plague. Money for the needy poured in from the North to the South and noble-hearted nurses from the Northern States sacrificed their lives to attend the sick. And all these calamities united the sympathies of the different sections of the country better than almost anything else could have done. Then, in 1876, something else happened to make the North and South unite more closely; 228 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. and that was when all the United States joined together to celebrate the one hundredth anniver- sary of their national freedom. Philadelphia, where Washington and Adams and Jefferson and other great men of the Revolu- tion had met to- gether, and where the Declaration of Independence had been written, was chosen as aWorld's Fair City; and you may be sure that cENTENNiAi, BUILDING. ^he old liberty bell was given a place of honor on this occasion. The nations of Europe sent their products to help make this event a success. Even England joined in this celebration. Does it not seem a little odd that England should join in celebrating the loss of her ovv^n colonies? But England now looked upon the United States as a great nation with which she wanted to carry on commerce; and, to show her good will. Queen Victoria sent embroideries made by her own hand. At this second World's Fair, there were steam printing-presses, and the Krupp guns, and the THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION. 229 Howe sewing machines, and reaping and mow- ing machines, and many things which were not dreamed of at the World's Fair in 1853. Photographs had taken the place of the old-fashioned tin-types, in which our grandmothers look smilingly out from under their high scoop bonnets. Electricity was hinted at in the ^^^'^^ ^°'^^- telegraph; but Edison, the " wizard of Menlo Park," had only just commenced his wonderful discoveries in electrical science. In many exhibits the Old World excelled the New; but so great had been the progress of the United States in all of the indus- tries, that the people were very proud of themselves. Colorado, rich in silver and gold, was admitted into the Union as the Centennial State. The peace of the last year of President Grant's administration was disturbed by a war with the Sioux Indians west of the Missouri river. The bustling gold-diggers in the Black Hills disturbed the quiet of the Indian hunting-grounds, and, encouraged by their chiefs, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Spotted Tail, THOS. A. EDISON. 230 THE STOKY OF OUR COUNTRY. the Indians held war-dances and prepared to massacre all the white settlers. A body of troops marched against the Indians and forced them to flee to the north, into the British Possessions; but, in a terrible battle on the Little Big Horn River, the brave General Custer and all his men were killed. In these years of progress for the white race, the northern Indians have remained the same. INDIANS FIGHTING. Their tents are no more changed than the robins' nests; they hunt and fish; and when these sports are over, they lie in their tents, smoking their filthy pipes. But there are schools established by the gov- ernment for the Indian children in these reser- vations of the North, where they are taught to THE EDUCATION OF THE INDIANS. 231 Speak, read, and write the English language; and where the girls learn to sew and cook, and the boys learn farming, printing, blacksmithing, and other trades. Once a year, teachers go out among the Indians and bring back as many children to their schools as they can persuade the fathers and mothers to send. In the years to come these little boys and girls may become civilized and stand side by side with 3^ou as citizens. That is what the United States is try- ing to teach them to do. And there is much reason to think that the government will succeed in this; for the Indians farther south, in Indian Territory, have reached a high state of civilization within the last fifty years. They have many schools and churches, and newspapers, and they live under written laws of their own. General James A. Garfield, who was elected President after Ruth- erford B. Hayes, was assassinated a few months later by a stranger who was a disappointed politican. Garfield had been a poor boy, like so many others who have won for themselves high places in public affairs. His ancestors were Puritans who came to America with Governor Win- J. A. GARFIELD. 232 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. throp; and from father to son was handed down a strong, heroic character, which is a greater gift than all the money in the treasury of kings. James was born and brought up on a farm in Ohio. His father died when he was two years old and left a log cabin, a rude log barn, and a farm of about twenty acres of cultivated ground, to his wife and four children. The barefoot boy, whether following the plow, or chopping cordwood, or driving horses on the tow-path of a canal, was always honest and in- dustrious. After many struggles for an educa- tion, Garfield was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts. Wherever he served the public in after life — in the Mexican War, in the Civil War, or as a United States Senator, General Garfield was a hero. After a lingering illness, he died from the effects of the assassin's bullet, and his body, like that of Presi- dent Lincoln, was borne to the grave surrounded by a grief- stricken nation. Vice-President Chester A. Arthur, of New York, now be- CHKSTER A. ARTHUR. t-. • i r ^ c came President tor the rest oi the term; and he was succeeded by Grover Cleve-. NEW STARS IN THE FLAG. 233 land, of New York. Thomas A. Hendricks, the Vice-President, died soon after the inauguration and was buried with honors at IndianapoHs. In 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were admitted to the Union. In the following year, Idaho and Wyo- ming were admitted. You will see by the map that these great States are exactly in the path of the Lewis and Clarke expedition sent out by President Jefferson. The country, once the home of the buffalo and the bear and the bounding deer, is now occupied by a great and prosperous people. Wyoming, when it became a State, gave woman the right to vote on all public questions, just as orado gave woman this right, too. W^^ iS Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, became President after President .' ^ *^^^ Cleveland. He is the grandson S^ of President William Henry f ^/^ * HI . 1 £ BENT. HARRISON, arrison, and great-grandson or •' one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepen- dence. One of the most noted events of his admin- istration was the meeting of the South American Republics in Washington to form a closer com- mercial union between the two Americas. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE world's COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION. Grover Cleveland was elected President for a second term in 1892. During his administration Utah has been admitted to the Union as the forty-fifth State. In i8q3 occurred one of the greatest events of modern times. ^^ ^ . ^^ . This was the celebration of the "" 400th anniversary of the dis- GROVER CLEVELAND j- a • ^j^, , , covery or America. I he whole world joined in this celebration. Just think what it means to have the whole world working together at one thing. There had been other World's Fairs, to be sure; but there had never been anything equal to this. Congress chose Chicago as the World's Fair City and gave large sums of money to help make the Exposition a success. Grounds were laid off more than three times larger than those of any other World's Fair. Then there was a tremendous number of invi- tations sent out. For aught we know, some of them are still sticking to icebergs off the coast ALL THE WORLD CELEBRATES. 235 of Greenland and some may still be staring down from the old Chinese wall to puzzle the tradespeople as they pass on their way to Pekin. There were so many posters sent out inviting the people to come to the World's Columbian Exposition, that even in the remotest islands of the sea people knew about it, and all nations decided to send representatives to Chicago. This Columbian celebration was something like a great Thanksgiving dinner to which grand- fathers and grandmothers and uncles and aunts and cousins had been invited. If one member of a large family goes off into a far country to make his own living, and he prospers and builds for himself a magnificent place, and then after many years, invites his relations to a Thanksgiv- ing dinner, they are all pretty sure to come to see whether the fine things they have heard about him are true. It was in much the same way that the nations of the earth came to see how America was getting along. Besides, they thought that this rich young America might want to buy some of the jewels and embroideries and velvets and silks and laces and rare pictures and other innumerable objects which the older Europe and Asia had been busy making. 236 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. And SO it happened that the "White City" at Chicago became the World's market-place. The Exposition buildings were called the "White City," because the buildings were made of a material which looked like white marble. WORI^D'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION AT CHICAGO. The domes of gold, the fountains tossing their spray into the air from the finger-tips of statues, the wonderful arches and gardens and shimmer- ing lakes made the spot seem like fairy-land. And, indeed, it was all like the work of fairies. Invisible people talked in sweet voices and sang beautiful songs; monsters swam about in water OUR NATION OF TO-DAY. 237 and air where only a moment before one saw nothing at all; night came on and in a flash there was light more dazzling than the sun; bridges that looked like cobwebs hung in the air, yet so strong were they that iron monsters of steam could not break them down; and there were looms for spinning so deftly and swiftly that the cross old god-mother, Xecessit3% was at her wit's end to find some more difficult tasks for the American Princess to do. All these and many other transformations in the fairy-land of the "White City"' were wrought by the magic wand of Science. This same science made it possible for the humblest working man to travel in rail- road coaches which Ferdinand and Isabella could not have bought with all the gold of Peru. But of all this exhibition, made by the people for the people, the greatest study was that of the American people themselves. Here was a nation of over sixty millions of people dwelling at peace together. Fifty-one states and territories were united in one great government, where each state has a voice in making the laws, where public schools give the poor an equal chance with the rich, and where churches open their doors to every passer-by. Out in the waters of Lake Michigan floated 238 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY. three outlandish ships; their awkward prows and lofty poops and clumsy yards showed them to be of a different age from the light crafts all about them in the harbor. They were copies of the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niiia which had crossed the unknown sea four hundred years before. Perhaps we might say that these ships represented the ignorance and su- perstition of the Past. While the great " WMi i t e City," on the shore of the lake, with lights from thousands of electric fires shining down upon the assembled peoples of the earth, represented the enlightened Present, which the brave men and women about whom you have read in this little book helped to make what it is. Then let us hope that this Present, beautiful as it seems, is but the beginning of a yet more enlightened Future of which you yourselves are to be a part in the years to come. BARTHOLDI'S STATUE OF LIBERTY, NEW YORK HARBOR. INDEX. Acadia, 43, 131, 130. Adams, John, 180. Alaska, 223. Allen, Ethan, 176. Alhambra, 17. Americus Vespucius, 28-29. Andre, Maj., 163. Arnold, Benedict, 162. Balboa, 29-30. Baltimore, I,ord, 64-65. Bjarni, 9-10. Boone, Daniel, 176-177. Boston, 74, 142, 146. Bradford, Governor, 72. Braddock, General Edward, 128-129. Brandywine, 158, 201. Bryant, William CuUen, 206. Buchanan, Jaines, 211. Bunker Hill, 149, 200. Burgoyne, General, 149, 151. Cable, The Atlantic, 211. Cabot John, 38. Cabot, Sebastian, 39-40. Calhoun, John C, 192-193. California, Gold in, 208. Calverts, The, 64-65. Canada, 164. Canals, 204. Carolina, 66-67. Carpenters' Hall, 145. Carteret, Philip, 80. Cartier, Jacques, 41-42. Carver, John, 71. Centennial, 228. Champlain, Samuel, 43, 136. Charleston, 68. Chesapeake Bay, 64. Church Services, 95-96. China, 173-174. Civil War, 218-221. Clay, Henry, 191-192. Clermont, The, 187. Cleveland, Grover, 232, 334. Clinton, General Henry, 149. Columbus, 12-27. Concord, Battle of, 148. Congress, First Continental, 145, Confederacies, Indian, 10.5-109. Confederate .States, 218-219. Constitution of United States, 167. Coplev, John, 161, 166. Cornwallis, 163-164. Cortez, 32-33. Costumes, 47, 50-52, 93, 121, 171. Cotton, .58, 213. Creek Indians, 108. Crockett, Davy, 197-198. Davis, Jefferson, 215, Deerfield, 120. De Leon, Ponce, 31-32. De Narvaez, 33. De Soto, ,33-37. Drake, Sir Francis, 54-55. Dutch, 48-53, 81-83. Edison, Thomas A., 329. Elm-Tree, 200. Emancipation Proclamation, 326. Endicott, John, 74. Ericson, Leif, 10-11. Expedition , Lewis and Clarke, 182-1 8 1 . Fairfax, Lord, 125. FaneuilHall, 151. Federal Hall, 170, 180. Fever, Yellow, 227. Fires, 227. Florida, Purchase of, 199. Fort Crown Point, 130, 134, 149. Fort Detroit, 136. Fort Duquesne, 126, 133. Fort Niagara, 134. Fort Pitt, 133. Fort Sumter, 218. Fort Ticonderoga. 134, 149. Fort West Point, 162. Fort William Henry, 131. Franklin, Benjamin, 124, 140-141, 1,5.V 157, 167. French, 39-45, 117-118, 124. Fulton, Robert, 187. Fur Trade, 45-47, 49, 73, 75, 123. Garfield, James A., 230-231. Garrison, William Lloyd, 214. Genoa, 12. Gettysburg, Battle of, 220. Gist, Christopher, 132. Grant, U. S., 231, 225, 229-230. Hamilton, Alexander, 173. Hancock, John, 154. Harrison, Benjamin, 233. Harrison, William Henry, 186-187, 207. Henry, Patrick, 140. Highlanders, 133. Homes, 94-95, 98. Hooker, Thomas, 76. Houston, Sam., 197, Howe, Elias, 239. Howe, General, 149. Hudson, Henry, 48-49. Immigrants, 184-185, 201. 203, 309. Independence, Declaration of, 153-154. Indians, 46-47, 65, 73, 77, 85, 110-113, 119-120, 132, 229-231. Indian Territorv, 199. Iroquois, 114-116", 155. Jackson, Andrew, 178, 197-198. Jamestown, 60-63. Jefferson, Thomas, 181-185, 189. Johnson, Andrew, 222. Jones, Paul, 160-161. Joliet, 44. 240 INDEX, Kentucky, 176. King Charles I., 74. Kiug Charles II., 66. King Charles v., 33. King Ferdinand, 17-26. King George II., \22, 127. King George III., 138. 10.5. King Henry VII., 38. King James I., 59. King John of Portugal, 15, King Louis XIV., 45. King Louis XVI., 45. King Philip, 100-103, Lafavette, Marquis de, 158, 16'', 200. La Salle, 44. Lawrence, James, 195. Lee, General Robert K-, 221. Lexington, 148. Lincoln, Abraham, 215-217, 218-523. Locke, John, 66. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 200. Louisburg, 130, 1,32. Louisiana, Purchase of, 181. Madison, James, 190. Magellan, Ferdinand, ,S0. Mandeville, Sir John, 13. Maps, 27, 92, 106, 143, 16.5. Marion , Francis, 1.59. Marquette, Father Jacques, 44. Mayflower, 70-73. Merrimac, The Ship, 219. Mexico, War with, 208. Militia, 99. Minute-Men, 147. Money, 178. Monitor, The Ship, 219. Monroe, James, 199. Montcalm, Marquis de, 130-13.5. Monticello, 188. Montreal, 43, 135. Mormons, The, 209. Morse, S. F. B., 205. Mount Vernon, 164. New Amsterdam, .50. New Orleans, 45, 203, 220. New York, ,53, 169. Northwest Territory, 174-175. Norsemen, 11. Oglethorpe, James, 88-9L Penalties, 63, 99. Penn, William, 81, 84-85. Pequots, The, 77. Perry, Oliver H., 196. Philadelphia, 86. Pike, Lieut., 184. Pilgrims, 70-71. Pioneer Life, 185-186. Pitt, William, 132-133, 152. Plymouth Rock, 71. Pocahontas, 61-62. Polk, James K., 208, Pontiac, i.S6. Potato, 58. Powhatan, 63. Prophet, The, 189. Public Schools, 137-138. Puritans, 74-75. Quakers, 80-84. Quebec, 134. Queen Elizabeth, 56. Queeu Henrietta Maria, 64. Queen IsaV)ella, 18. Queen Marie Antoinette, 158. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 56-57. Railroads, 204, 225-226. Randolph, John, 180. Rangers, The, 130. Religious Toleration, 79, 86. Reyere, Paul, 144, 148. Richmond, 215. Salem, 74. Schenectadj', 119. Schoolhouses, 96-97. Seminoles, 108. hlayes, 62, 6.5, 68, 91, 139. 212, 214. Smith, Capt. John, 60-62, 69. Smithsonian Institution, 210-211. Stamps, 139-141. Standish, Miles, 71-73. Stark, John, 122-123, 131, 149, 159. Statue of Liberty, 238. Stuyyesant, Peter, 52. Swedes in Delaware, 82. Tax on Tea, 141-144. Tecumseh, 187-188. Telegraph, 205. Tennessee, 178. Thanksgiving, 97. Tippecanoe, 187. Tobacco, 57, 62. Tories, 146. Treasury, 206. Tyler, John, 208. Valley Forge, 158. Vermont, 176. Verrazano, 40. Vicksburg, 230. War, Civil, 212-222. War, French and Indian, 127-1.35. War of Revolution, 137-164. War of 1812, 195. War, Sioux, 2,30. Washington City, 181, 197. Washington. George, 124-126, 127 129, 1,50-1.53, 163, 169, 171-172, 173, 179. Wayne, General Anthony, 175. Webster, Daniel, 193-194.' Webster, Noah, Dictionary of 206. West, Benjamin, 161, 166. WliiL;s, 146. Wliitncy, Kli, 213. Whiltier, John Greeuleaf, 206. Williams, Roger, 78-79. Wiuslow, Edward, 73. Winthrop, John, 74. Winthrop, John, Jr., 77-78. Wolfe. General Janie.s, 134-135. World's Fairs. 209, 2-:8, 234-238. Yorktown, Cornwnllis Surrenders. 163-164. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 010 546 141