^HR'''''^ ^^H"''"^^ 1 ^^^pT y R|i f^^S |TiO|^ IMs^l 1 ,^B^ m" H?Si!' ; 'f ■ni-;:!S*.r2kt ^»k^S L-i/j^' I^P^' B ^:i'ii: Class Iz " ^Q 1 Book B2,a GopyrightN° COPYRIGHT DEPOSm A NEW NATION CENTURY READINGS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY A series, made up from the best on this subject in The Century and St. Nicholas, for students of the upper grammar grades and the first year high school. Profusely illustrated. EXPLORERS AND SETTLERS THE COLONISTS AND THE REVOLUTION A NEW NATION THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT THE CIVIL WAR THE PROGRESS OF A UNITED PEOPLE 12mo. About 225 pages each. $.50 net. THE CENTURY CO. > fe w CENTURY READINGS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY A NEW NATION EDITED BY CHARLES L. ^ARSTOW NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1912 ESdl ■~BlS Copyright, 191 2, by The Century Co Pub lis lied March, jgis 4 'S^ € CI.A309841 CONTENTS PAGE Washington at Mount Vernon After the Revolution Constance C. Harrison - . . 3 The Inauguration of Washington Clarence IV. Bozven . . . . i8 How We Bought Louisiana . Helen L. Coffin 25 The Last Conquistador . . . E. S. Brooks 30 Causes of the War (1812) . . President James Madison . . 43 Laurels of the American Tar in 181 2 Edgar S. Maclay . ; . . . 47 The, Battle of New Orleans . Theodore Roosevelt .... 62 The Star-Spangled Banner 68 Robbers of the Seas .... Ernest Ingersoll yz Old Georgetown . . ... . John W. Palmer 86 Robert Fulton and the Clermont Alice Crary Sutcliire .... 95 The Missions of Alta California John T. Doyle 106 Pioneer Spanish Families in California Charles H. Shinii 122 Osceola . Major-General O. O. Hozuard . 130 The Early Life of Daniel Webster John B. McMaster . . . .138 Webster as the Defender of the Constitution John B. McMaster . . . .148 Old New York and Its Building Richard G. JVJiite 160 The Early Life of Lincoln . . Helen Nicolay 166 My Escape from Slavery . . Frederick Douglass . . . ,181 vii viii Contents PAGE The Lincoln-Douglas Debates . Frederick T. Hill i86 A Douglas Argument .... Stephen A. Douglas .... 199 The Author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " Richard Burton 203 Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of Messrs. D. Appleton & Company for permission to use the poem " Oh, Mother of a Mighty Race." A NEW NATION " OH, MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE " Oh, mother of a mighty race, Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! The elder dames, thy haughty peers. Admire and hate thy blooming years. With words of shame And taunts of scorn they join thy name. For on thy cheeks the glow is spread That tints thy morning hills with red; Thy step — the wild deer's rustling feet Within thy woods are not more fleet ; Thy hopeful eye Is bright as thine own sunny sky. Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones, While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. They do not know how loved thou art, How many a fond and fearless heart Would rise to throw Its life between thee and the foe. Oh, fair young mother ! on thy brow Shall sit a nobler grace than now. Deep in the brightness of the skies The thronging years in glory rise, And, as they fleet, Drop strength and riches at thy feet. William Cullen Bryant. From the Poems of William Cullen Bryant, by courtesy of D. Appleton and Company. A NEW NATION WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON AFTER THE REVOLUTION By Constance Gary Harrison There are two seasons of the year when the hilly shores of the Lower Potomac River become an earthly paradise, wherein, till summer heats return to coax him from his lair, the serpent of malaria lies torpid and restrained from active demonstration. One of them is the late autumn^ after frost has set the woods afire and filled the pale red globes of the tricksy persimmon with luscious sweetness. Then the sleepy sun lingers upon the landscape, loath to leave, and life is a delight. The other " time of joyance " is in early spring, when the swelling slopes on each side the broad silver river are first reclad in verdure. Who, that has ever known it, can forget the jubilee of Nature in Virginia's woods in April — the self assertion of every growing thing in whose green veins the sap is running; the riotous blos- soming of trees and shrubs close of kin to Virginia's soil, and nurtured accordingly by the Virginian climate; the singing of innumerable birds? Viewed from the high ground around Mount Vernon, and from the openings in the wood-road along which, just a century ago, Washington was wont to take his daily gallops, the scene that met his eyes was as fair as man could ask to look upon. Many acres of the wide, rolling country 3 A New Nation The Old Entrance to Mount Vernon. were his own, and for years had known his care. Hither, while in camp or afield, throughout the turmoil of war, his fancy had con- tinually turned. All the poetry of his self-contained nature went out to these fa- miliar haunts. None of the more grandi- ose scenery in West- ern solitudes, nothing he had seen while in command of the army, had dis- turbed his dream of Mount Vernon sitting like a queen enthroned on grassy hilltops, her feet laved by the beautiful Potomac. Good to look at still when in the saddle was he whom Lafayette thus described, long after the brave knight was dust : " Our beloved chief, mounted on a splen- did charger, rode along the ranks at Monmouth amid the shouts of the soldiers, and I thought I had never seen so superb a man." Jefferson, too, spoke of him in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, as " the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback." Although somewhat faded was the huntsman's bravery of blue and scarlet worn in the gala-days of yore, the man inside of it sat with the old ease upon his fiery " Blue-skin " — Will Lee, on " Chinkling," closely following. These two rode straight forward, over brake and brier, from sun- rise, when the gray fox of Virginia was unkenneled, till — Washington at Mount Vernon 5 no matter what hour — the fate of her lady- ship was settled and her followers drew rein be- fore one house or the other of their belong- ings, to seek pot-luck. Custis says that Wash- ington required of a horse " but one good ^^ •miT^^ »,:y 'i JHI^^Hi "^ ^K * ^^ii^^l m ^JL Ir^ ■ 1 i n I^J j ^tB Main hall as it is to-day. quality, and that was to go along. He ridiculed the idea that he could be un- horsed, provided the animal kept on his legs." . . . Of Washington's neighbors, one of the most important, still living within easy reach of Mount Vernon, was George Mason of Gunston Hall, a patriot of the finest type, the author of that noble paper, " The Virginia Bill of Rights," and who in the intervals of distinguished service in the Con- tinental Congress returned to his home on the Potomac. To this old manor-house of the Masons, built in 1739, of Scotch brick brought to the colony as ballast in empty tobacco-ships, and richly ornamented with wood carvings, the Washington fam- ily was accustomed to resort for tea-drinkings and " dining-days," re- turned in kind before the week was out. To the lover of old times and houses it may be of interest to know that Gunston Hall still Fireplace in the old kitchen. A New Nation stands, although no longer in possession of the Mason fam- ily. The ancient tobacco fields that surround it are now blossoming with the April snow of apple, peach, and pear trees; and some of the Potomac boats stop at Gunston Land- ing, below Alexandria, to take on to Washington the excel- lent milk, cream, and poultry for which Fairfax County farmers are renowned. Indeed, this business is a survival of the days when Washington set his neighbors a good example by running a market cart between Mount Vernon and the town. *' These old Alexandrians," says Parson Weems, " filled their coach-houses with gilt carriages and their dining-rooms with gilt glasses, and then sat down to a dinner of salt meat and johnny-cake," because nobody had been found to furnish supplies for the market. Good reason had M. Brissot de Warville, the traveler and author (the " brisk little Frenchman " who became chief of the Girondists and died by the guillotine in 1793), to cry out in astonishment at the general's success in farming, when he went the rounds of Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1788. The estates were then at the highest pitch of improvement they ever attained, crops of wheat, tobacco, corn, barley, and buckwheat " burdening ground.' the ground." What excited the French- man's chief surprise was that every barn and cabin, grove and clearing, field and or- chard, passed daily be- neath the eye of the master. All the busy life of the negro world Music room. Washington at Mount Vernon Banquet hall restored. was regulated by his personal directions to overseers and bailiff. No item was too insig- nificant to bring before his notice. . . In the summer of 1788 we find Washing- ton endeavoring to cap- ture or buy a healthy family of opossums to export alive to his friend Sir Edward Newenham (*' exotic animals " these must have proved to the English climate) ; George Fairfax proposes to send him English deer. Washington's care of his horses is too well known to need mention here. One ceremony of his daily round — for, rain or shine, he made the circuit of his farms, between twelve and fifteen miles — was, in season, never omitted by the chief. It was to lean over the fence around the field wherein a tall old sorrel horse, with white face and legs, was graz- ing luxuriously in the richest grass and clover Mount Vernon could afford. At the sight of him the old steed would prick up his ears and run neighing to arch his neck beneath his master's hand. This was " Nelson," the war-horse, upon whose back, at Yorktown, the Commander-in-chief of the American armies had received the surrender of Lord Corn- wallis. The war ended, " Nelson's " work was over. Turned out to graze in summer, in winter carefully groomed and stabled, he lived to a good old age, but by his master's strict command, was never again allowed to feel the burden of a saddle. These stories are familiar enough to dwellers in and about 8 A New Nation Alexandria, who, as the common saying goes, were " brought up on " General Washington. My own early views of the great man and his family were tinged with familiarity through hearing them discussed across the table as if they still lived within driving distance. Some of the features of Mount Vernon life here revived were depicted by my grand- mother and great-aunts, whose mother, Mrs. Herbert of Alexandria, was often asked, after the liberal fashion of the State, to fetch a coach-load of her offspring for a " stay- ing visit " to the Washingtons. In the happy years when Washington had settled down, as he believed and hoped, " to pass an unclouded evening after the stormy day of life," the house was greatly altered. Re- stored and extended. Mount Vernon was filled with trophies and souvenirs of its owner's glory. Even the grand mantel- piece of Italian marble in the chief parlor had been sent by an admirer of the general in London, together with two vases of old blue Indian porcelain. But the habits of his family were unchanged, remaining always on the unostentatious old Virginian lines. After an early breakfast Madam Washington, a stout, kindly dame, wearing in winter home- spun, in summer a gown of crisp white dimity, went to her storeroom. " My dear old grandfather " (the late G. W. P. Custis, Esq., of Arlington House), writes Miss Mildred Lee *' used to tell me, when I ran in from play with a dirty frock at Arlington, that his grandmamma, Mrs. Washington, wore always one white gown a week, and that when she took it off it was as spotless as the day she put it on." A mob-cap covering her gray hair, and key-basket in hand, the wife of Washington must have offered a pleasant pic- ture of the days when housekeepers were not ashamed to weigh their own supplies, and butchers' books and lounging, Washington at Mount Vernon 9 grocers' boys were not. In their stead were seen the black cook and her myrmidons, smiling, gogghng, courtesying, holding their wooden pails and " piggins " to receive the day's allowance. If there were a " sugar loaf '" to crack, a tall glittering monument like an aiguille of the Alps, emer- ging stainless from its dark-blue wrapper, it was the mistress of the house who brought her strength to bear on it; there were " whips " and " floating-islands " and jellies to com- pound ; and to " tie down " the preserves was no small piece of work. The rites of the storeroom at an end, it was Mrs. Wash- ington's practice to retire to her closet for the exercises of private devotions. Afterwards the house was opened to visits from the " quarter." Disputes were settled, eggs and chickens bought at the valuation of the seller, advice and medicine given to a succession of grown-up children — a family, varying in hue from tawny brown to the black of darkness visible, the care of whose health and welfare, how- ever onerous, was accepted as naturally by generations of Southern housewives as was the responsibility for their own flesh and blood. This business of reception went on intermittently during the morning hours ; but it is not to be supposed that Madam Washington sat with idle hands the while. Scattered about the room were black women engaged in work that must be overlooked; Flavia cutting out innumerable garments of domestic cotton for " quarter " use, Sylvia at her seam, Myrtilla at her wheel — not to mention the small dark crea- tures with wool betwigged, perched upon crickets round about the hearth, learning to sew, to mend, to darn, with " ole miss " for a teacher. During the late war Mrs. Washington's boast had been that she had kept as many as The old Family Tomb at Mount Vernon. Washington at Mount Vernon 1 1 sixteen wheels at a time whirring on the plantation. A fa- vorite gown had been woven by her maids, of cotton, striped with silk procured by raveling the general's discarded stock- ings, and enlivened by a line of crimson from some worn- out chair-covers of satin damask. Everybody looked forward to the evening when the gen- eral sat with them. This was the children's hour, when by the uncertain twinkle of homemade candles, lighting but dimly the great saloon, while their elders turned trumps around the card-table, the young people were called to show their steps, to strum their pieces, to sing their quavering lit- tle songs. The curled darling of the house was " Master " Washington. Lafayette, during his last visit to America, told Mr. G. W. P. Custis he had seen him first on the portico at Mount Vernon in 1784 — " a very little gentleman with a feather in his hat, holding fast to one finger of the good general's remarkable hand, which (so large that hand) was all, my dear sir, you could well do at the time ! " . . . I do not purpose to enter into details about what we in the South call " family company " at Mount Vernon. As well attempt to impose upon an unoffending public a table of Virginian genealogy. Friends may come and go, but cousins go on forever in our State. Kinsmen there were who rode up to the gate, hallooed for grooms, and stabled their steeds with unshaken confidence in their own acceptability. Second cousins once removed unpacked their bandboxes in the square chambers. Pretty Dandridges and Custises and Washingtons put on their patches before the high-swung mirrors. Occasionally was seen there Mrs. Fielding Lewis, Washington's " Sister Betty," a lady so like her illustrious brother, that it was a family jest to throw around her a mili- 12 A New Nation tary cloak, put a cocked hat on her head, and file by salut- ing her as " general." During these years of quiet many minor schemes engaged Washington's attention. Through Lafayette he promised her Imperial Majesty to secure a vocabulary of certain Indian tribes on the frontier, but besought the great lady to have patience with the time consumed in getting it. On Febru- ary 8, 1787, he enclosed to R. H, Lee the plan of the Countess of Huntington to evangelize the Indians of the Western territory, a vo- luminous manuscript, sent through Sir James Jay, which Washington apolo- gizes for not copying, on the ground that he is much pressed in correspondence. It is to be feared that the good countess got little comfort from her Indians, whatever she may have de- rived from the courtesy of Lee and Washington. Although his reading was chiefly military or agricultural, Washington dipped now and then into belles-lettres. The same faithful Dickey Lee to whom once in childish round- hand he had written, " I am going to get a new whip-top and you may see and whip it too," has left a letter wherein Washington acknowledges a certain " packet," regretting that his " want of knowledge of the language " prevents him from forming an opinion of his own about the '' dra- matic performances " of " Monsieur Serviteur le Bar- bier." Harpsichord and flute in the Wash- ington home at Mount Vernon. Washington at Mount Vernon 13 The general's charities were of the least conspicuous, yet most judicious character. Careful in minute expenditure, he was never known to turn a deaf ear to the country poor — and their number was not small — who begged of him an audience. For their use he kept a granary on the estate filled with corn, and a boat with seine moored- in one of his best herring-fisheries. Governor Johnson cites an example of his secret bounty to a number of miserably poor moun- taineers in the neighborhood of one of the " Virginia Springs," to whom the baker of the place was ordered to supply a daily dole of bread, without revealing the giver's name, which was found out, quite by chance, to be that of Washington. His foundation of the school for boys in Alex- andria, mentioned in this will, was a work heartily appreci- ated then, and even now, by his townspeople. No sketch of Washington's home life should omit men- tion of his servants. Chief among these, dean of the corps in point of dignity and right of precedence, was Bishop, the English soldier who had been Braddock's body-servant at the fatal Monongahela, and was by him dying, commended to the care of Washington. Bishop literally grew gray in the service of Mount Vernon, marrying there, and living in a house on the estate till his death at the age of eighty-odd years. As he got on in life the ex-militaire became some- thing whimsical ; more than once Washington fell upon the too transparent device of bidding him seek elsewhere for Washington's Inkstand, Candlestick, Snuffers, etc. H A New Nation a master if not satisfied with him. But the old fox held his own; and to his retreat choice bits continued to be sent from the house-table, while all visitors made a point of paying their respects to him. Billy, or Will, Lee, the mulatto ex-huntsman of the Fair- fax County chase, pompous and alert, stood behind his master's chair at meals. Off duty, it was his pride, espe- cially with military visitors, to assume an easy air of in- timacy with the executive proceedings of the Revo- lutionary War. Daddy Jack, the fisher- man, was a characteristic feature of a Virginian plantation. He was an aged negro, as gray of tint and as dry in texture as the lichen on a dead tree. His claim to be " Mos' a hund'ed, chile," was ac- cepted without question. Jack told many weird stories of his debut in life as the son of an African king, with chapters of fire and bloodshed in which his father's fall before the sword and his own capture and forced voy- age to America were touched with lurid tints. Old Tom Davis, weather-beaten and hearty, carrying his gun and pouch, his body wrapped with strings of game, his dogs at heel, was long a familiar spectacle of the woods on the estate. " Black Gary," a negro, freed by the terms of Washing- ton's will, lived to the reputed age of a hundred and fourteen Washington's Lamp, now in the Na- tional Museum. Washington at Mount Vernon 15 years in Washington Washington's Tomb. the city of This old fellow's stock in trade was, naturally, his past connection with the family at Mount Ver- non. He levied trib- ute on the strength of it, exacting from his own race the deference paid to a king in exile. The chief's admirable care of his servants is fully shown by his will and other writings. No master could have been more provident for their future, more considerate of their daily wants. To stop and parley with his favorite henchman formed one of the pleasures of his daily ride. The sovereign of a system genuinely feudal was the master of one of those great eighteenth-century plantations in Virginia. Happy he who, ike Washington, could induce the intolerable curse of slavery to wear the semblance of a blessing. Thus, surrounded by friends who loved them and depend- ents whose lives they continually brightened, it made little difference to sober people in the afternoon of life, like the general and his wife, that society about their home had lost something of pre-revo- View of the Potomac. lutionary sparkle. Al- i6 A New Nation ready the ebb-tide of Virginia's glory had set in, and the class inspired by Jefferson, whom the ladies of Mount Ver- non scrupled not to call " those filthy Democrats," had be- gun their work of image-breaking in the stronghold of colo- nial aristocracy. Such as it was, Washington's State was knit into the fibers of his heart. So her sons and daughters look tenderly upon Virginia wrapping around her poverty and sorrow the tattered rem- nants of a glorious past ; and in her behalf a noble voice has spoken to all Americans in these words : Virginia gave us this imperial man, Cast in the massive mould Of those high-statured ages old Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran ; She gave us this unblemished gentleman. What shall we give her back but love and praise, As in the dear old unestranged days Before the inevitable wrong began? Mother of States and undiminished men, Thou gavest us a country, giving him. Washington taking the oath as President. THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON By Clarence Winthrop Bowen The requisite number of States hav- ing adopted the Constitution, Congress reported an act for putting the new government into operation. At sunset on the evening of March 3, 1789, the old Confederation was fired out by thirteen guns from the fort op- Fromapennyofi79i. ^^^^^^ Bowhng Green in New York, and on Wednesday, the 4th, the new era was ushered in by the firing of eleven guns in honor of the eleven States that had then adopted the Constitution. (Rhode Island and North Carolina had not.) The new Constitution was considered a " Sheet anchor of Commerce and pcop of Freedom," and it was thought that Congress would again thrive, the farmer meet ihimediately a ready market for his produce, manufacturers flourish and peace and prosperity adorn our land. " After a long night of political apprehension " was at length seen *' the dawn of National happiness." . . . After the city of New York had been selected by the old Congress for the meeting of the new Congress, it was at once determined to transform the old City Hall into the new Federal Hall. A number of wealthy gentlemen advanced the thirty-two thousand dollars needed for repairs. The transformation of the building was eagerly watched and its The Inauguration of Washington 19 progress duly reported in the newspapers of the day. When thrown open to the inspection of the public a short time before the inauguration, it was seen to be an imposing structure. On Wednesday, the first of April, the House of Repre- sentatives formed a quorum and immediately proceeded to Old City Hall, Wall Street, 1776. the transaction of business, the most important of which was the counting of electoral votes for President and Vice- President of the United States. George Washington of Virginia was the unanimous choice for President, having received sixty-nine, or the total number of votes cast. The next highest number, or thirty-four votes, were cast for John Adams of Massachusetts and he was declared elected Vice-President of the United States. Only one man was thought of to carry the notice of elec- tion to Mount Vernon, and he was Charles Thomson. After Mr. Thomson had presented to the President-elect the certificate of election which the President of the Senate had 20 A New Nation Federal Edifice, New York. given him and had made a formal address, stating the pur- pose of his visit, Washington at once replied, accepting the appointment, and said : " I am so much affected by this fresh proof of my country's esteem and con- fidence that silence can best explain my gratitude. While I realize the ardu- ous nature of the task which is imposed upon me and feel my own inability to perform it, I wish that there may not be reason for regretting the choice ; for, indeed, all I can promise is only to accomplish that which can be done by an honest zeal. " Upon considering how long time some of the gentle- men of both Houses of Congress have been at New York, how anxiously desirous they must be to proceed to business, and how deeply the public mind appears to be impressed with the necessity of doing it speedily, I cannot find myself at liberty to delay my journey. I shall, therefore, be in readi- ness to set out the day after to-morrow, and shall be happy in the pleasure of your company ; for you will permit me to say that it is a peculiar gratification to have received this communication from you." And yet Washington's correspondence during the fall and winter preceding his inauguration shows how reluctant he was to accept the Presidency. To Benjamin Lincoln he wrote : " I most heartily wish the choice you allude to may not fall upon me. . . . If I should conceive myself in a manner constrained to accept, I call Heaven to The Inauguration of Washington 21 witness that this very act would be the greatest sacrifice of my personal feelings and wishes that ever I have been called upon to make:" To Samuel Hanson he said : " The first wish of my soul is to spend the evening of my days as a pri- vate citizen on my farm." " My movements to the chair of government," he wrote to Henry Knox, " will be accom- panied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to -the place of execution. . . . Integrity and firmness are all I can promise. These, be the voyage long or short, shall never forsake me." The long-expected day was now at hand. It was the 30th of April, 1789, and the first President of the United Washington's Pew in St. Paul's Church, New York. 22 A New Nation c ^ ■lllKlSJitL"' " ^.-{sp- ' ^ ■'- wl If !' ■■ -( >* Fraunce's Tavern, on Broad and Pearl Streets. States was to take the oath of fidehty to the new Constitution. With a discharge of artillery at sunrise from old Fort George near Bowling Green began the ceremonies of the day. Crowds were pouring into New York. " We shall remain here even if we have to sleep in tents, as so many will have to do," wrote Miss Bertha Ingersoll to Miss McKean ; " Mr. Williamson had promised to engage us rooms at Fraunce's^ but that was jammed long ago." At 9 the bells of the churches rang for half an hour and the congregations gathered in their respective places of wor- ship " to implore the blessings of Heaven upon their new government, its favor and protection to the President, and 1 Fraunce's Tavern, built in 1710. It was Washington's head- quarters in 1783. Here, too, Washington bade farewell to his officers, December 4, 1783. The building is still standing at loi Broad street, corner of Pearl street. The Inauguration of Washington 23 success and acceptance to his administration." The mih- tary were meanwhile preparing to parade, and at 12 o'clock marched before the President's house on Cherry street. , . . arrived within twp hundred yards of Federal Hall at I o'clock. They were drawn up on each side and Washing- ton and the assistants and the gentlemen especially invited passed through the lines and proceeded to the senate chamber of the Federal State House. Washington was dressed in a full suit of dark brown cloth manufactured at Hartford, with metal buttons, with an eagle on them, and " with a steel-hilted dress sword, white silk stockings, and plain silver shoe-buckles. His hair was dressed and powdered in the fashion of the day." . . . Secretary Otis of the Senate held before him a red vel- vet cushion, upon which rested the open Bible of St. John's Lodge. " You do solemnly swear," said Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, " that you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of your ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." " I do solemnly swear," replied Washing- ton, " that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." He then bowed his head and kissed the sacred book and with the deepest feeling uttered the words, "So help me, God." The Chancellor then proclaimed, " Long live George Washington, President of the United States." The instant discharge of Chair used by Wash- thirteen cannon followed. auguratfon. ^^ 24 A New Nation After delivering his address, the President, accompanied by the Vice-President, the Speaker, the two Houses of Con- gress, and all who attended the inauguration ceremony, pro- ceeded on foot to St. Paul's Church where services were conducted by the chaplain of the Senate. Colonial fragments.— Door trim from 55 Broadway — George Wash- ington's chair — clock at 57 Broadway. HOW WE BOUGHT LOUISIANA By Helen Lockwood Coffin It is a hard matter to tell just how much power a little thing has, because little things have the habit of growing. That was the trouble that France and England and Spain and all the other big nations had with America at first. The thirteen colonies occupied so small and unimportant a strip of land that few people thought they would ever amount to much. How could such insignificance ever bother old Eng- land, for instance, big and powerful as she was? To Eng- land's great loss she soon learned her error in underestima- ting the importance or strength of her colonies. France watched the giant and the pygmy fighting together, and learned several lessons while she was watching. For one thing, she found out that the little American colonies were going to grow, and so she said to herself : " I will be a sort of back-stop to them. These Americans are going to be foolish over this bit of success, and think that just because they have won the Revolution they can do anything they wish to do. They '11 think they can spread out all over this country and grow to be as big as England herself; and of course anybody can see that that is impossible. I '11 just put up a net along the Mississippi River, and prevent them cross- ing over it. That will be the only way to keep them within bounds." And so France held the Mississippi, and from there back to the Rocky Mountains, and whenever the United States citi- es 26 A New Nation zen desired to go west of the Mississippi, France said : " No, dear child. Stay within your own yard and play, like a good little boy," or something to that effect. Now the United States citizen did n't like this at all; he had pushed his way with much trouble and expense and hard work through bands of Indians and through for- ests and over rivers and mountains, into Wiscon- sin and Illinois, and he wished to go farther. Thomas Jefferson. And, besides, he wanted to have the right to sail up and down the Mississippi, and so save himself the trouble of walking over the land and cutting out his own roads as he went. So when France said, " No, dear," and told him to " be a good little boy and not tease," the United States citizen very naturally rebelled. Mr. Jefferson was President of the United States at that time, and he was a man who hated war of any description. He certainly did not wish to fight with his own countrymen, and he as certainly did not wish to fight with any other na- tion, so he searched around for some sort of a compro- mise. He thought that if America could own even one port on this useful river and had the right of Mississippi naviga- tion, the matter would be settled with satisfaction to all How We Bought Louisiana 27 parties. So he sent James Monroe over to Paris to join our minister, Mr. Livingston, and see if the two of them to- gether could not persuade France to sell them the island of New Orleans, on which was the city of the same name. Now Napoleon was the ruler of France, and he was dreaming dreams and seeing visions in which France was the most important power in America, because she owned this wonderful Mississippi River and all this " Louisiana " which stretched back from the river to the Rockies. He al- The United States after the Louisiana Purchase. ready held forts along the river, and he was planning to strengthen these and build some new ones. But you know what happens to the plans of mice and men sometimes. Napoleon was depending upon his army to help him out on these plans, but his armies in San Domingo were swept away 28 A New Nation by war and sickness, so that on the day he had set for them to move up into Louisiana not a man was able to go. At the same time Napoleon had on hand another scheme against England, which was even more important than his plans for America, and which demanded men and money. Besides this, he was shrewd enough to know that he could not hold this far-away territory for any long time against England, which had so many more ships than France. He suddenly changed his mind about his American possessions, and nearly sent Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston into a state of collapse by offering to sell them not only New Orleans but also the whole Province of Louisiana. There was no time to write to President Jefferson and ask his advice, and this was before the days of the cable ; so Monroe and Livingston took the matter into their own hands, and signed the contract which transferred the Louisiana territory to the United States for a consideration of $15,000,000. They were severely criticized by many of their own countrymen, and they had some doubts of their own about the wisdom of their action. You see, nobody knew then that corn and wheat would grow so abundantly in this territory, or that beyond the Mississippi there were such stretches of glorious pasture-lands, or that underneath its mountainous regions were such mines of gold, silver, and copper. Americans saw only the commercial possibilities of the river, and all they wanted was the right of navigating it and the permission to explore the unknown country to the westward. But Jefferson and Monroe and Livingston builded better than they knew. All this happened a hundred years ago; and to-day that old Louisiana territory is, in natural re- sources, the wealthiest part of the whole United States. How We Bought Louisiana 29 Without that territory in our possession we should have no Colorado and no Wyoming, no Dakotas, or Nebraska, or Minnesota, or Montana, or Missouri, or Iowa, or Kansas, or Arkansas, or Louisiana, or Oklahoma, or Indian Territory. If Columbus had nextv discovered America, you know, we could never have had a World's Fair in Chicago ; and if Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston had never purchased Louisiana, we could have had no Louisiana Purchase Expo- sition. For all these reasons we owe our most sincere and hearty thanks to the patriotic and far-sighted men who were con- cerned in buying this territory for the United States. THE LAST CONQUISTADOR ^ By E. S. Brooks There was trouble and turmoil in the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge. There was disquiet and unrest through all that section of Louisiana that was not yet free from the authority of Spain. It was the summer of the year 1810. Emigrants from the pushing States along the Atlantic seaboard and from the scarcely conquered forests of the West were seeking homes within that fair and fertile southern country, through which the mighty Mississippi cuts its winding way to the Mexican Gulf. And, as they came, they brought with them into all that soft Southland between the Mississippi and the Pearl, the sturdy breezes of personal liberty and civil freedom. With this spirit they imbued the frontier folk among whom they came to settle, and, as a result, they grew more and more aggressive toward the slender garrison that, in the tumble- down fort at Baton Rouge, sought to maintain some show of authority in that region for King Ferdinand of Spain. It was but a sorry show, withal. Rood by rood, that once magnificent empire that De Soto had conquered for his king — long held by France, and again, through fifty years, a province of Spain, — was fast slipping away from the 1 The earlier Spanish fighters in America delighted in the title of el conquistador es, the conquerors. This story of the boy who made the last stand for Spain in the Mississippi country was suggested to me by Mr. George W. Cable, who had been impressed by the pluck and loyalty of young Louis Grandpre. 30 The Last Conquistador 31 Don's unsteady hand. The shifting fortunes of war and of diplomacy had even before this crisis-year of 1810 re- duced Spain's possessions along the Mississippi to a section not very much larger than the little Northern State of Delaware. And even this strip of Spanish territory the American pioneers openly coveted. Joining to themselves the dis- affected ones among the French colonists, and those who, remembering the Don O'Reilly's iron hand, had ever hated Spain, the new-comers, by bluster and artifice, by much talk and the most persistent scoffing at Spain's shadow of author- ity, were drawing nearer and nearer to their prize. And now the only " lion in the path " seemed but a very weak one — a boy of sixteen, stationed in an old and crumbling fort at Baton Rouge. This was the way of it. Don Carlos de Grandpre, gov- ernor and commandant for Spain at Baton Rouge, was dead. His successor, the hit aidant Delusas, had, through fear or in the hope of obtaining succor, absented himself from his post, leaving in charge as only officer, Louis Grand- pre, the son of the former governor. But Louis Grandpre was no ordinary boy. Reared amid all the dangers and hardships of a frontier post, he had been compelled to assume and accept responsibilities early in life. The mingled French and Spanish blood that flowed in his veins bore in it some strain of the old-time heroism which had marked the days of paladin and Cid ; and Louis Grand- pre's one legacy from his father, the commandant, was this maxim of the camp : A soldier's first duty is obedience ; his watchword, " Loyalty to King, to Country, and to Flag." He was a child of that fair Southern land, and its forests and savannas, its bayous, lakes, and rivers, its flowers and 32 A New Nation birds, and even its tropic tangle of morass and swamp, were all dear to his heart. Above them the flag of his king had waved for half a centnry, and to defend them from the enemies of his king was his duty as a soldier and a son of Spain. Knowing this of him, we can understand the full meaning of the defiant attitude and the flushed face of the boy com- mandant of Baton Rouge as, on a bright July morning of 1810, he listened to the report with which the old half-pay sergeant, Estevan Sera, who had served under this lad's father, came to headquarters. ''My capitan!" "Weh, sergeant?" " Here has come to us sorry news from above. Pedro the Natchez is just in from the Bayou Sara country, and tells of much plotting against us. The Americans are to march upon Baton Rouge speedily, and have vowed to drive us out." " Well, sergeant, to threaten is easy, but to do is harder work. Let the Americans try us if they will. We can but do our duty. Who leads them on? " " El capitan Thomas heads the riflemen, and with the dragoons comes that son of Satan, Depassau, to whom your father once gave life. One hundred men and forty is the force they bring — and what can we hope to do? " " What, sergeant, but hold the fort for Spain and for the King! For that we are here. To that our lives are pledged ; and, unless other orders come to me from Pensa- cola, that will I strive to do. A soldier of Spain can but do his duty — and die." With many a " caramha!" of protest and many a half- grumble at this simple but unpleasant doctrine of his young The Last Conquistador 33 commandant, the old sergeant shuffled away; and yet, even though he could not accept the alternative, he could not but rejoice over the pluck and courage of this boy whom he had watched and tutored almost from the cradle. Misfortune is fleet of foot. Even before young Grandpre had time to strengthen his works and decently equip his com- mand, the enemy was on the march. Depassau with forty dragoons was approaching by the St. Francisville road, and Thomas, with more than eighty riflemen, had bivouacked in the pinewoods to the south. Matters looked black indeed for the young commandant of the Spanish fort. Louis Grandpre knew — none better — the character of the foemen whom he must face in fight. The dragoons, as the sergeant had called them, were bold horsemen — " cow- boys " of that early day. Full of the tireless spirit, the daring, and the recklessness that a free rein on the broad savannas of the Southwest gives to every ranger of the prairie and the plains, their charges were irresistible, their saber-swings were death. The riflemen were Northern foresters — desperate fighters, quick of eye, unerring of aim, sharp-shooters, and sure shooters all. Horse and foot alike were, as he knew, distinguished for a hardihood, a dash, and an alertness in action that not one of the lazy veterans in his crippled fort was capable of resisting. For this was his condition : To this whirlwind of " Yankee " invasion he could oppose only a garrison of less than fifty worn-out Spanish soldiers in a decaying and half dismantled fort, upon which scarcely a touch of repair had been made since the days — a half-dozen years before — when his father, Don Carlos, had successfully withstood just such an invasion of Yankee malcontents — though with 34 A New Nation a much more serviceable garrison and against a much less thoroughly organized foe. Riding into the plaza, or " grand square," of the little town of Baton Rouge, Louis stood beneath the ample folds of the big Spanish banner. "He bade his men stand fast for the King." " Long live King Ferdinand ! " he cried ; and then he sum- moned all true subjects of Spain to rally to the support of the king's garrison. " Until other orders shall come to me," he said, " I am here to defend the charge that has been given into my hands — the fort of Baton Rouge, your town, and the king's au- thority in this his province. He who sides with the in- vaders is a traitor to the king, and Spain knows no mercy to The Last Conquistador 35 traitors. Let all true sons and subjects of Spain follow me into the fort ! " There was in the ringing voice and determined words of this manly boy an enthusiasm that had its effect upon certain of the townspeople. But when, with the banner still float- ing over his head and with fife and drum playing a martial air, the young commandant rode back through the gate of the fort, less than forty of the " loyal subjects of Spain " fol- lowed him from the town. Arming them hastily, he placed them in the rear rank, be- hind the regular garrison, and then, marshaling his little army on the parade, just within the gates, he bade his men, in a few earnest words, stand fast for the king. It was a most unpromising-looking army. It numbered less than a hundred men all told. Could he depend upon them? He felt assured that not much confidence was to be placed in his new recruits from the town ; and as for the soldiers of his garrison — well, even there he was uncertain. Most of them were old and in- valided soldiers who had long been strangers to a battle, and very many of them were little better than cripples — sorry- looking fellows all when it came to standing before a cavalry charge or facing riflemen's fire. But upon them alone he must depend. He could look nowhere for succor, from no quarter could he expect it. Far to the eastward lay Pensacola and the little Spanish province of Florida — scarcely better provided for defense or resistance than was his threatened post of Baton Rouge. All about him, crowding into the very smallest show of authority and space the contracted limits of the province he was set to guard, stretched the lands that the Americans had bought from France — lands forever lost to Spain. 36 A New Nation Within the " Territory of Orleans " to the south — Amer- ican in ownership, Creole and French in population — there were to be found few indeed ready to lift a hand in his behalf, to strengthen the arm or train the guns of Spain. To the east the Mississippi territory was fast filling up with Northern folk, English by birth and blood, Americans all in future and in desire. The failure of Colonel Aaron Burr had shown how hard it was to win these new settlers in the South from their allegiance to the spreading and successful American Republic. Louis Grandpre knew well enough that the end was not far off. He knew, too, that the days of Spain's sover- eignty in the Mississippi Valley were doomed, and that, when the flag of his king came down from the tall staff upon the time-stained blockhouse in the fort, the last vestige of Spain's authority would be swept away. The post of Baton Rouge was Spain's forlorn hope, left despairingly upon the bayous of Louisiana. And he, as its commander, must stand or fall with it. Los Americanos should see what it meant to face in fight the gentlemen of Spain ! Alas! it is always so easy to promise; but performance, as we shall see, is quite another matter. " The gentlemen of Spain " had not long to wait. There was a clatter of hoofs through the deserted town, a ringing Yankee cheer, and the shrill call of the bugle demanding a parley at the gate. Somewhat stiff of joint, old Sergeant Sera started to answer the summons; but even as the rickety gate swung open, the reckless and unconventional Depassau, contrary to all the rules of war, dashed through the gate at the head The Last Conquistador 37 of his forty horsemen, overthrowing in the rush the slow- going old sergeant. Dazed and dumbfounded at his sud- den overthrow and at this breach of military etiquette, old " Doffing his hat, he bent low in mock courtesy to the boy." Sera picked himself up, bruised and grumbling, and then burst into a torrent of hot Spanish exclamations more per- tinent than polite. The ranks of the Spanish garrison recoiled perceptibly 38 A New Nation before this unexpected onset. But Louis Grandpre, sword in hand, faced the intruders. " Sirs ! " he demanded, " what means this armed and hostile entrance into a fortress of the King of Spain? " " What, young Grandpre! — are you the captain here? " Depassau said, with a laugh, as he reined in his horse. " Well, we want the fort; that's what it means. Or — if you must have it in better form : In the name of the peo- ple of the sovereign State of West Florida I demand the instant surrender of the fortress of Baton Rouge ! " " Captain Depassau," the young commandant replied, " this post of Baton Rouge, belonging to His Majesty King Ferdinand of Spain, has been left in my charge, as intend- ant, by my superior, the governor of Baton Rouge. He has left with me no orders to hand over the fort to others. Much less has he permitted me to surrender it to a parcel of rebels, as are these you lead. Until other commands come to me from the governor I am here to defend this post, and that I will do with my life. Unless you retire at once, I shall order my soldiers to fire upon you ! " " Well crowed, young game-cock ! " cried Depassau, while a chorus of laughter from his band echoed his words. " Why, what a young fire-eater it is ! Most noble Sefior Intaidcntc," — and, doffing his hat, he bent low in mock courtesy to the boy, who, with drawn sword, stood so de- fiantly in his path, — " we regret to inconvenience so valiant a caballero, but we have taken a fancy to this post of Baton Rouge, and we mean to have it — town, fort, commandant, and all ! " and, swooping down upon the lad, he would have seized him as a prisoner. But Louis Grandpre was as ac- tive as he was valiant. Deftly dodging the attempt at capture — " Ha, Depassau ! " he shouted, " traitor and The Last Conquistador 39 double traitor, would you seek to turn a parley into an at- tack ? Holo, my men ! Ready ! Fire ! Drive these traitors out!" And, with ringing voice and waving sword, he turned toward the ranks of his garrison to inspire them to instant action. Not a man was there ! Those Spanish soldiers had a healthily developed fear of los Americanos. The long rifles and the ready sabers of those Yankees, their unerring aim and their resistless dash, were not pleasant enemies to face in the open field. They believed their only safety lay behind stout walls. So it was that, quietly, but hastily and unanimously, the garrison of Baton Rouge had deemed discretion the better part of valor, and, without awaiting the formality of the word of command, had withdrawn into the blockhouse that formed the inner defense of every frontier fort of the last century. Depassau's horsemen laughed in loud derision. But on Louis Grandpre's face anger and sorrow alike raised the flush of shame. " Cowards ! " he cried, turning to the blockhouse, " would you run from a parcel of Yankee rebels? Holo there! Come out ! To your captain, my men ! For Spain ! For Spain ! " " Come, come, Louis, my lad," Depassau said patron- izingly, " I don't want to hurt you. I want only this fort, and have it I will. Your men are afraid to fight. What is the use of holding out longer? Pull down your Spanish flag from the blockhouse yonder ; march out your men, and we will put you on your way to Pensacola, without a scratch. Come; give up your sword." " Never ! " answered the boy, haughtily. " My sword is 40 A New Nation my king's. I would rather die than break my promise. It is my duty to hold this post for my master, King Ferdi- nand, and hold it I will — or die ! " " We have wasted too much time on you already," De- passau angrily broke out. " For the blockhouse, boys ! Charge!" And at his word the horsemen dashed up to the tumble- down palisade that protected the door to the blockhouse, set in an angle of the fort. But, quick as was their action, Louis Grandpre was be- fore them. With a spring he cleared the space that lay be- fore the palisade, closed and barred the rickety gate, and the next instant was within the blockhouse rallying his men. But they refused to be rallied. " Of what use is it to make a stand against them, my captain? " old Ser- / geant Sera asked. I " It is only to meet death. Their rifles and their sabers are too strong for us to face." " What ! would you have me too turn traitor, and basely give up what I am charged to defend?" the boy indignantly de- manded. " Is it thus, O Sergeant, ^■^ Louis Grandpre rushed from the block- house — alone." The Last Conquistador 41 ' that my father would have done — or Galvez, the young hero who won this very fort of Baton Rouge from the Eng- lish ? No ; they would have fought to the death ! Holo, my men! twenty of you to the port-holes with your guns. Fire when I bid you. Do you, Sera, look to the defenses. The rest — you who love Spain and honor your king — follow me and drive the rebels out ! " And, sword in hand, young Grandpre rushed from the blockhouse to meet the foe — alone ! At that very instant, with a loud war-whoop, in through the southern gate of the fort dashed Thomas and his eighty border rifles. Beneath the blows of the dismounted dra- goons the crazy gate of the palisade went down with a crash, and with a mighty cheer the Americans swarmed into the inclosure. " Back, on your lives ! Ho, in the blockhouse there ! Fire on these rebels ! " With his back firmly set against the blockhouse wall, his lifted sword flashing in the sunlight, before them all he stood defiant — one against a hundred ! There came a clatter of horsemen charging up to the door of the blockhouse ; there rang out a volley from the Northern rifles as the besiegers rushed in — and that was all ! At the door that shielded his craven garrison, — within the fort which, because he had no instruction to surrender it, he deemed it his duty to defend to the last, — Louis Grandpre fell. " Long live King Ferdinand ! " he cried. " Santiago and Spain ! " And so he died — a martyr to duty. Then, surrounded by the resistless invaders, the thor- 'oughly frightened garrison cried aloud for quarter, the 42 A New Nation Spanish flag came fluttering down, and the last hold of Spain upon the valley of the Mississippi was broken. Not alone to the soldier of freedom does death in the hour of victory or defeat bring glory everlasting. Even to him, who, in the face of certain disaster, upholds the honor of his flag, is praise abounding due. Louis Grandpre died a hero. And American boys who honor the brave can assuredly pause in their pride in all that is American to bestow a word of appreciation upon the gallant lad who was faithful to his trust, and man- fully struck the last blow for Spain in the land where Spain had won and lost an empire. Desk on which the Declaration of Independence was written. From a drawing by Thomas Jefferson. CAUSES OF THE WAR (1812) By President James Madison France has done nothing towards adjusting our dif- ferences with her. It is understood that the BerHn and Milan Decrees are not in force against the United States, and no contravention of them can be estabHshed against her. On the contrary, positive cases rebut the allegation. Still, the manner of the French Government betrays the design of leaving G. Britain a pretext for enforcing her Orders in Council. And in all other respects, the grounds for our complaints remain the same. ... In the mean time, the business is become more than ever puzzling. To go to war with England and not with France arms the Federalists with new matter, and divides the Republicans, some of whom, with the Quids, make a display of impar- tiality. To go to war against both presents a thousand difficulties; above all, that of shutting all the ports of the Continent of Europe against our cruisers, who can do little without the use of them. It is pretty certain, also, that it would not gain over the Federalists, who would turn all those difficulties against the administration. The only consideration of weight in favor of this triangular war, as it is called, is, that it might hasten through a peace with G. Britain or France ; a termination, for a while, at least, of the obstinate questions now depending with both. But even this advantage is not certain. For a prolon- gation of such a war might be viewed by both belligerents 43 44 A New Nation as desirable, with as little reason for the opinion as has prevailed in the past conduct of both. [June 22.] I inclose a paper containing the Declaration of war. . . . It is understood that the Federalists in Congress are to put all the strength of their talents into a protest against the war, and that the party at large are to be brought out in all their force. ... [July 25.] The conduct of the nation against whom this resort has been proclaimed left no choice but between that and the greater evil of a surrender of our Sovereignty on the Element on which all nations have equal rights, and in the free use of which the United States, as a nation whose agriculture and commerce are so closely allied, have an essential interest. The appeal to force in opposition to the force so long continued against us had become the more urgent, as every endeavor short of it had not only been fruitless, but had been followed by fresh usurpations and oppressions. The intolerable outrages committed against the crews of our ves- sels, which, at one time, were the result of alleged searches for deserters from British ships of war, had grown into a like pretension, first, as to all British seamen, and next, as to all British subjects; with the invariable practice of seiz- ing on all neutral seamen of every Nation, and on all such of our own seamen as British officers interested in the abuse might please to demand. The Blockading orders in Council, commencing on the plea of retaliating injuries indirectly done to G. Britain, through the direct operation of French Decrees against the trade of the United States with her, and on a professed disposition to proceed step by step with France in revoking them, have been since bottomed on pretensions more and Causes of the War 45 more extended and arbitrary, till at length it is openly avowed as indispensable to a repeal of the Orders as they affect the U. States, that the French Decrees be repealed as they affect G. Britain directly, and all other neutrals, as well as the United States. To this extraordinary avowal is superadded abundant evidence that the real object of the Orders is, not to restore free- dom to the American Commerce with G. Britain, which could, in- J^^^es Madison. deed, be little interrupted by the Decrees of France, but to destroy our lawful commerce, as interfering with her own unlawful commerce with her enemies. The only founda- tion of this attempt to banish the American flag from the highway of Nations, or to render it wholly subservient to the commercial views of the British Government, is the ab- surd and exploded doctrine that the ocean, not less than the land, is susceptible of occupancy and dominion; that this dominion is in the hands of G. Britain; and that her laws, not the law of Nations, which is ours as well as hers, are to regulate our maritime intercourse with the rest of the world. When the United States assumed and established their rank among the nations of the Earth, they assumed and established a common Sovereignty on the high seas, as well as an exclusive sovereignty within their territorial limits. The one is as essential as the other to their character as an Independent Nation. However conceding they may have 46 A New Nation Deen on controvertible points, or forbearing under casual and limited injuries, they can never submit to wrongs ir- reparable in their kind, enormous in their amount, and in- definite in their duration ; and which are avowed and justi- fied on principles degrading the United States from the rank of a sovereign and independent power. In attaining this high rank, and the inestimable blessings attached to it, no part of the American people had a more meritorious share than the people of New Jersey. From none, there- fore, may more reasonably be expected a patriotic zeal in maintaining by the sword the unquestionable and unalien- able rights acquired by it . Sugar-bowl belonging to a dinner-set presented to Martha Washington by General Lafayette. LAURELS OF THE AMERICAN TAR IN 1812 By Edgar S. Maclay It was during the War of 181 2 that the advantage of building our cruisers so that " separately [they] would be superior to any single European frigate of the usual dimen- sions " was demonstrated. In the three years of that war the British navy met with disasters which were unique in its annals. Before the close of the war the British Admi- ralty were compelled to build in imitation of the American cruisers. On the 17th of March, 18 14, the following no- tice appeared in the London Times: " Sir G. Collier was to sail yesterday from Portsmouth for the American sta- tion in the Leander, 54. This ship has been built and fitted out exactly upon the plan of the large American frigates." The second idea embodied in the Secretary's report of 1794, in regard to building American cruisers, was "that if sailed by numbers they would be always able to lead ahead." At the very threshold of the War of 1812 the Constitution owt&litr escape from Captain Broke's squad- ron, in a large degree, to this very forethought in her con- struction. For three nights and two days, beginning on July 17, off New York, she was in imminent danger of capture, part of which time she was almost within gunshot of their leading ships. To this same provision in her con- struction the President owed her remarkable career and numerous escapes from British squadrons and ships of the Hne while she was scouring all corners of the navigable 47 48 A New Nation globe in her daring essays against the enemy's commerce. Such was her success in this particular that the origin of the common sea phrase " By the jumping John Rodgers " is attributable to her exploits, Commodore John Rodgers be- ing her commander during the greater part of this war. Again, in April, 181 5, while in the Southern Atlantic the sloop-of-war Hornet was chased three days and three nights by the British ship of the line Cornzvallis, Admiral Sir George Burleton. So close was the pursuit that at times " shot and shell were whistling about our ears and not a person on board had the most distant idea that there was a possible escape. We all packed our things and waited until the enemy's shot would compel us to heave to and surrender. Captain Biddle mustered the crew and told them he was pleased with their conduct during the chase, and looked still to perceive that propriety of conduct which had already marked their character and that of the American tar generally; that we might soon expect to be captured, etc. Not a dry eye was to be seen at the mention of the capture of the poor little Hornet." But notwith- standing the closeness of the chase the Hornet finally ef- fected her escape through her sailing qualities. In no instance up to the close of the War of 181 2 was an American cruiser overtaken by a vessel of her own class when she was desirous of making her escape. The case of the President when pursued by Captain Hayes's squadron on the 15th of January, 181 5, cannot be noted as an excep- tion, for the reason that while endeavoring to get out of New York harbor, the night before the chase, she grounded on the bar, where for two hours she thumped violently and became so " hogged " or " broken-backed " as to impair seriously her seaworthiness. A portion of her false keel Laurels of the American Tar 49 was displaced, several rudder braces broken, and the frigate otherwise so injured as to render a return to port imper- ative. This, however, owing to the strength and direction of the wind, was impossible, so she was forced over the bar and put to sea in a crippled condition. After dis- mantling the Endyuiion — during which action Commodore Decatur was wounded by a splinter — the President was attacked by the Tenedos and Pomona before her rigging could be repaired, and was forced to surrender. The American system of officering, manning, and carry- ing on discipline was superior to that of the English. Im- The Wounding of Decatur. pressment was rarely, if ever, resorted to; the men enlisted of their own free will, and tempted by generous wages the finest seamen flocked to our service. Many of the petty officers had been mates and even masters in merchantmen 50 A New Nation before the War of 1812, and contributed* not a little by their skill and experience to the results of that conflict. While English press-gangs were descending on quiet towns, and hurrying men into service without giving them time to arrange their affairs for the change, American frigates were having their complements filled with picked seamen by merely announcing vacancies. The superiority of most American crews during this war was so obvious as to need little discussion. William James concedes the point, and while speaking of the 44-gun frigate United States further adds: The crew of the United States were the finest set of men ever seen collected on shipboard. Had Captain Decatur and his five lieutenants been below in the hold, there were officers enough among the ship's company to have brought the action to the same successful issue.^ But it was in the matter of officering the ship that the American system had the greatest advantage. Favoritism and family influence, which elevated men to high rank over the heads of older and more deserving officers, cost the British navy many bitter humiliations during the War of 1812. The battle of Lake Champlain affords a good illus- tration of the manner in which British commanders were outmanoeuvered and outwitted. The forces engaged on this occasion were nearly equal, that of the Americans be- ing 86 guns of 1,904 pounds of metal and 850 men, while the English force was 92 guns of 1,900 pounds of metal and 1,000 men. After the battle had lasted two hours without either side being able to turn the tide, Captain Mac- donough in the Saratoga foiuid himself in a most critical condition. The Linnet had secured a very advantageous 1 James's " History of the British Navy," Vol. V., p. 401. Laurels of the American Tar 51 position off the Eagle's starboard quarter where the latter could bring but few guns to bear. Finding his springs shot away, Captain Henly of the Eagle sheeted home his top- sails, stood about, ran down the western side of the Amer- ican line, and anchored between the Saratoga and Ticonder- oga. This brought the Eagle's fresh (port) broadside in full play on the ConHance, Captain Downie's flagship, but it also enabled the Linnet to turn the American line. Cap- tain Pring of the Linnet immediately availed himself of this advantage and soon was athwart the Saratoga's fore- foot, raking her from stem to stern with great effect. As gun after gun was disabled the firing between the flagships gradually diminished until only a few cannon were in use. Aboard the Saratoga nearly all the carronades had been rendered useless by overcharging. Now that the Linnet was raking her with impunity, the situation of the American flagship was desperate in the extreme. To add to her accumulating disasters the bolt of the last carronade on the engaged side broke; the gun, flying off its carriage, tumbled down the main hatch. This left her with nearly every gun in her starboard battery dismounted, while the Confiance and Linnet were still keeping up an effective fire. It was in this extremity, when by all human calculations the day was lost, that the forethought of the American commander came into play. When arranging his line of battle he took the precaution to anchor his vessels far enough apart so that should the starboard battery of any ship become disabled her commander, by tripping his bow anchor and then dropping a stern anchor, could swing his vessel around in the northerly breeze and bring a fresh broadside to bear on the enemy without breaking the line of battle or overlapping the ship astern. 52 A New Nation The time had now come when the Saratoga must either surrender or bring more guns to bear. Accordingly Cap- tain Macdonough manned his capstan and tripped the bower anchor, at the same time letting go his stream anchor over the stern. But unfortunately the wind had abated so that the ship remained motionless. A line, which had been Preble," " Ticonderoga, " Chubb," " Eagle," " Saratoga, " British Galleys," " Linnet," " Confiance,' " Finch." BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN. The Saratoga and Eagle are represented in their second position ; the Chubb has been captured and is being carried within the American line, and the Confiance is being raked by the Saratoga. made fast to the stream anchor, was then carried forward and hauled on. This slowly brought the vessel around, but during all of this time the Linnet was pouring in broad- side after broadside, and now as the Saratoga exposed her stern the Confiance raked her with great effect. After sev- eral minutes of this fearful exposure Captain Macdonough succeeded in bringing his port battery into full play. The Laurels of the American Tar 53 Americans then rushed to their guns and worked with vigor. Being subjected to the fire of this fresh broadside, the Coniiance soon had the few remaining guns of her port battery disabled. Seeing the success of the Saratoga's manceuver, the British commander attempted it also. He hove in his bow cables until he tripped anchor. But fur- ther than this his ship would not move for want of wind, and lacking the quick expedients of the American officers, he saw his ship become a wreck without being able to strike a blow in return, so after a conflict of two hours and a half he surrendered. Another conspicuous illustration of the readiness of an American officer was afforded in the fourth cruise of the Constitution. Captain Charles Stewart, born of poor par- ents in the city of Philadelphia in 1778, entered upon the profession of the sea in his thirteenth year as cabin boy in a merchantman, and rose step by step through personal merit to the command of the favorite frigate of the Amer- ican navy. After his extraordinary action with the corvette Cymve and sloop Levant sixty leagues from Madeira in February, 18 1 5 (both after a gallant resistance being captured). Cap- tain Stewart dropped anchor with his prizes in Port Praya, in the island of St. Jago, on the loth of March. It was his intention to employ the merchant ship captured on the 1 8th of the preceding month as a cartel in which to send all prisoners to England, preparatory to which they were collected in groups on the Constitution's main deck. While the Americans were busily engaged the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Shubrick, was attracted by an exclamation from one of the British midshipmen. Noticing that an English lieutenant reprimanded him in an undertone. Lieutenant 54 A New Nation Shubrick became suspicious of foul play or some conspir- acy, and was about to communicate his fears to Captain Stewart, when a quartermaster called his attention to the sails of a large vessel just discernible through the fog in the ojffing. The sea at the entrance of the harbor was cov- ered with a heavy mist, but in the lighter haze above the sails of a large ship making its way to port were visible. This apparition, evidently the cause of the midshipman's exclamation, was brought to the attention of Captain Stew- art. As the fog shifted a little the sails of two more ves- sels, apparently heavy men-of-war, were discovered by the sharp-eyed quartermaster standing into the roads. After the experience of the Essex at Valparaiso, Captain Stewart well knew that English commanders could not be trusted to respect the rights of neutral ports that were not sufficiently fortified to enforce them. The defenses of Port Pray a were impotent against a first-rate frigate, and should the sails descried in the offing prove to be those of English men-of- war, as five chances to one they were, the position of the Constitution and her prizes was critical in the extreme. Captain Stewart instantly sent his crew to quarters, pris- oners were hurried below, the cables cut, topsails set, and in seven minutes from the time of the first alarm the frigate was under way. Signals were made to the Cyane and Levant to follow. Lieutenants Hoffman and Ballard pre- cipitately obeyed, and in an incredibly short time the three ships were speeding pell-mell down the harbor. A number of prisoners who had been landed were left behind, and observing the strange sails in the offing and surmising them to be English, they rushed to a battery and began firing so as to warn the approaching strangers of the presence of en- emies. Laurels of the American Tar 55 The Constitution in action with the Levant and Cyane. The wind was fresh from the northeast, while the strangers were approaching the harbor from the south. Captain Stewart therefore hugged the north shore, hoping to get to sea to the windward of them. Just as the Amer- ican vessels were clearing East Point the strangers came within long range. At this instant they discovered the Americans and crowded on all sail to intercept them. It now became a question of sailing. The Constitution crossed her topgallant yards, set foresail, mainsail, spanker, flying-jib, and her topgallant sails, while the two boats tow- ing astern w^re cut adrift. The Cyane and Levant fol- lowed in quick succession, while the enemy luffed up, close-hauled their tacks, and settled down for a long and determined chase. The strangers proved to be the English 50-gun frigate Leander, Sir George Collier, which we noticed as having " been built and fitted out exactly upon the plan of the large 56 A New Nation American frigates " ; the 50-ton frigate Nczvcastlc, Captain Lord George Stuart; and the 40-gun frigate Acasta, Cap- tain Kerr. This powerful squadron had followed the Con- stitution across the Atlantic into this obscure quarter and now had her under their guns. Although the American vessels had gained an offing it was still so foggy that the hulls of the enemy were con- cealed, so that Captain Stewart was unable to make out their force or nationality. All the ships, however, had every stitch of canvas set from royal studding-sails down, and were rushing through the water at ten knots. The Acasta, by laying her head close to the wind, succeeded in weathering the Cyane and Levant, but the splendid sailing qualities of the Constitution enabled Captain Stewart to hold his own. Observing that he was drawing away from his prizes and that the enemy must soon close on them, he, at ten minutes past one o'clock, signaled the Cyane, the sternmost vessel, to tack to the northwest, hoping thereby to divide the enemy's force. Lieutenant Hoffman tacked as ordered, but, to the surprise of all, none of the pursuing ships were detailed after her. Taking advantage of this blunder, the Cyane continued on this course, until she had run the enemy out of sight, when she made for America, arriving in New York on the loth of April. By 2.30 p. M. the Nezvcastle had gained a position off the Constitution's lee quarter and commenced firing by divi- sions. The shot splashed the water within a hundred yards of the ship, but did not reach her. At 3 p. m. the Levant was in the same danger from which the Cyaiie had so strangely been allowed to escape. Captain Stewart now signaled the Levant to head northwest also, hoping that this would draw off one of his pursuers at least. But^ to Laurels of the American Tar 57 the astonishment of every man in the American frigate, all the pursuing ships tacked after the Levant, whereupon Lieutenant Ballard changed his course to due west so as to regain the port, where he succeeded in anchoring under the guns of the fort. The conduct of Sir George Collier in allowing the Con- stitution and her prizes to escape his powerful squadron has given rise to many conflicting explanations on the part of English writers. Some claim that he did not give the order for all the ships to tack after the Levant, others that the signal was misinterpreted, while many maintain that the flags became entangled. It was in gunnery, however, that Americans attained their most conspicuous success. Long before the War of 181 2 firing at targets was a regular order of routine, so that it has well been said that for each shot fired in earnest ten had been fired in practice. The London Times for October 22, 18 1 3, while speaking of the action between the Enterprise and Boxer, said : What we regret to perceive stated, and trust will be found much exaggerated, is, that the Boxer was literally cut to pieces in sails, rigging, spars, and hull; whilst the Enterprise (her antag- onist) was in a situation to commence a similar action immedi- ately afterwards. The fact seems to be but too clearly established, that the Americans have some superior mode of firing ; and we cannot be too anxiously employed in discovering to what circum- stances that superiority is owing. Sir Edward Codrington, in writing to Lady Codrington in reference to the Peacock-Epervier fight, states : " It seems that the Peacock, American sloop-of-war, has taken our Epervier. But the worst part of our story is, that our sloop was cut to pieces and the other scarcely scratched ! " 58 A New Nation The firing of the 44-gun frigate United States, Captain Decatur, during her action on October 25, 181 2, with the 38-gun frigate Macedonian^ Captain Carden, is described as wonderful. " The firing of the American gunners was so rapid that in a few minutes their ship was enveloped in a dense volume of smoke, which from the enemy's deck ap- peared like a huge thunder-cloud rolling along the water, illumined by lurid flashes of lightning and emitting a con- tinuous roar of thunder." When the Macedonian came to close quarters with the idea of boarding, " the American carronades opened and added their fire to that of the long guns, so that by the time she was at close quarters the broad- side of the United States appeared like a continuous line of flame, and at one time the enemy believed her to be on fire." The fight between the Constitution and the Giierricre. Laurels of the American Tar 59 On the i8th of October, 181 2, the American sloop Wasp, 18 guns, had a remarkable encounter in a heavy sea with the British sloop Frolic, 19 guns. In forty-three minutes the Wasp reduced her adversary to a wreck, and killed or wounded ninety out of a crew of no men; her own loss in a crew of 135 being only ten. At the end of the engagement the British ship Poicticrs, seventy-four guns, hove in sight, and running down on the Wasp captured her and her prize. In an action, of only twenty minutes, between the new sloop Wasp (namesake of the foregoing) and the Reindeer on June 28, 1814, in the English Channel, we are informed that the hull of the Reindeer was literally cut to pieces.^ Another English writer observes : " In a line with her ports the Reindeer was literally cut to pieces; her upper works, boats, and spare spars were one complete wreck. Her masts were both badly wounded ; particularly her foremast, which was left in a tottering state," - and on the following day, in spite of all efforts, it went by the board. Finding his prize too shattered to keep afloat. Captain Blakely blew her up. The Wasp received six round shot in her hull, and 24- pound shot through her foremast and some injury to her rigging. Two months after this the Wasp had a night action with the Avon, also a sloop-of-war of her own rate, the Wasp receiving only four round shot in her hull and some inconsiderable injury to her rigging. The fact that the Avon sank two hours after the Wasp was compelled by the approach of her consorts to leave her plainly shows that she was terribly shattered by the American's gunnery. The proficiency of American gunnery in this war is per- haps best illustrated by the Constitution's first action, with 1 Allen's " Battles of the British Navy," Vol. II., p. 463. 2 James's " History of the British Navy," Vol. VI., p. 163. 6o A New Nation the Guerriere, in which she was hulled but three times, while her antagonist, to use the words of her commander, was reduced to a " perfect wreck " ^ within forty minutes from the time the Constitution began to fire. This battle occurred on August 19, 1 812. In her action with the Java, December 29, 181 2, off the coast of Brazil, the Constitution was hulled but four times, and with the exception of her maintopsail yard she did not lose a spar.^ The Java, on the other hand, was " totally dismasted," ^ while her hull was so shattered and pierced with shot-holes that it was impossi- ble to get her to the harbor of San Salvador, which was only a few hours' sail. In her action with the Cyane and Levant the forces opposed were: Constitution, 51 guns with 1287 pounds of metal; British, 55 guns with 1508 pounds of metal. In this extraordinary action the Consti- tution was hulled only thirteen times, while the Cyane had every brace and bow-line cut away, " her main and mizzen masts left in a tottering state, and other principal spars wounded, several shot in the hull, nine or ten between wind and water." * The Levant also was roughly handled. Before dismissing the subject of gunnery we should take into consideration: i. The inferior quality of American cannon and shot. 2. The deficiency in weight of American shot. 3. The fact that in two of the four actions between single frigates the English used French cannon and shot, which were eight per cent, heavier than their nominal Eng- lish equivalents. Although American frigates in point of efifectiveness were superior to those of the English, yet I am persuaded that 1 Official report of Captain Dacres. 2 Cooper's " United States Naval History," Vol. II., p. 70. 3 Allen's " Battles of the British Navy," Vol. II., p. 414. •* James's "History of the British Navy," Vol. VI., p. 249. Laurels of the American Tar 6i their victories were due not so much to the vessels as to the men who manceuvered and fought them. It will prove a matter of interest, at this late day, to ob- serve with what effect the news of the first three frigate actions with the United States was received in England. The news of the loss of the Java, which arrived in Lon- don, March 19, 181 3, seems to have drawn the following resigned soliloquy from the Times: The public will learn with sentiments which we shall not presume to anticipate that a third British frigate has struck to an American. . . . This is an occurrence that calls for serious reflection — this and the fact stated in our paper of yesterday, that Lloyd's list contains notices of upwards of five hundred British vessels captured, in seven months, by the Americans. Five hun- dred merchantmen, and three frigates? Can these statements be true; and can the English people bear them unmoved? Any one who had predicted such a result of an American war this time last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He would have been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed the American flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins. Yet down to this moment not a single American frigate has struck her flag. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS By Theodore Roosevelt When, in 1814, Napoleon was overthrown and forced to retire to Elba, the British troops that had followed Welling- ton into southern France were left free for use against the Americans. A great expedition was organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the column that delivered the fatal blow at Salamanca. In De- cember a fleet of British war-ships and transports, carrying thousands of victorious veterans from the Pen- insula, and manned by sailors who had grown old in a quarter of a century's triumphant ocean warfare, anchored off the broad lagoons of the Mississippi delta. The few American gun- boats were carried after a desperate hand-to-hand strug- gle, the troops were landed, and on December 23 the ad- vance-guard of two thousand men reached the banks of the Mississippi, but ten miles below New Orleans, and there camped for the night. It seemed as if nothing could save the Creole City from foes who had shown, in the storming of many a Spanish 62 Andrew Jackson. The Battle of New Orleans 63 walled town, that they were as ruthless in victory as they were terrible in battle. There were not forts to protect the place, and the militia were ill armed and ill trained. But the hour found the man. On the afternoon of the very day when the British reached the banks of the river the van- guard of Andrew Jackson's Tennesseeans marched into New Orleans. Clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, wearing wolfskin and coonskin caps, and carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the backwoods tramped into the little French town. They were tall men, with sinewy frames and piercing eyes. Under " Old Hick- ory's " lead they had won the bloody battle of the Horseshoe Bend against the Creeks; they had driven the Spaniards from Pensacola ; and now they were eager to pit themselves against the most renowned troops of all Europe. Jackson acted with his usual fiery, hasty decision. It was absolutely necessary to get time in which to throw up some kind of breastworks or defenses for the city, and he at once resolved on a night attack against the British. As for the British, they had no thought of being molested. They did not dream of an assault from inferior numbers of undisciplined and ill-armed militia, who did not possess so much as bayonets to their guns. They kindled fires along the levees, ate their supper, and then, as the evening fell, noticed a big schooner drop down the river in ghostly silence and bring up opposite to them. The soldiers flocked to the shore, challenging the stranger, and finally fired one or two shots at her. Then suddenly a rough voice was heard, " Now give it to them, for the honor of America ! " and a shower of shell and grape fell on the British, driving them off the levee. The stranger was an American man-of-war schooner. The British brought up artillery to drive her 64 A New Nation off, but before they succeeded Jackson's land troops burst upon them, and a fierce, indecisive struggle followed. In the night all order was speedily lost, and the two sides fought singly or in groups in the utmost confusion. Fi- nally a fog came up and the combatants separated. Jackson drew off four or five miles and camped. The British had been so roughly handled that they were unable to advance for three or four days, until the entire army came up. When they did advance, it was only to find that Jackson had made good use of the time he had gained by his daring assault. He had thrown up breast- works of mud and logs from the swamp to the river. At first the British tried to batter down these breastworks with their cannon, for they had many more guns than the Ameri- cans. A terrible artillery duel followed. For an hour or two the result seemed in doubt; but the Ameri- can gunners showed themselves to be far more skilful than their antagonists, and gradually getting the upper hand, they finally silenced every piece of British artillery. The Americans had used cotton bales in the embrasures, and the British hogsheads of sugar; but neither worked well,' for the cotton caught fire and the sugar hogsheads were ripped and splintered by the round-shot, so that both were aban- doned. By the use of red-hot shot the British succeeded in setting on fire the American schooner which had caused them such annoyance on the evening of the night attack; but she had served her purpose, and her destruction caused little anxiety to Jackson. Having failed in his effort to batter down the American breastworks, and the British artillery having been fairly worsted by the American, Pakenham decided to try open assault. He had ten thousand regular troops, while Jackson The Battle of New Orleans 65 had under him but little over five thousand men, who were trained only as he had himself trained them in his Indian campaigns. Not a fourth of them carried bayonets. Both Pakenham and the troops under him were fresh from vic- tories won over the most renowned marshals of Napoleon, and over soldiers that had proved themselves on a hundred stricken fields the masters of all others in Continental Eu- rope. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position infinitely stronger than that held by Jackson, and yet Soult had under him a veteran army. At Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they had carried by open assault fortified towns whose strength made the in- trenchments of the Americans seem like the mud walls built by children, though these towms were held by the best soldiers of France. With such troops to follow him, and with such victo- ries behind him in the past, it did not seem possible to Pakenham that the assault of the terrible British infantry could be success- fully met by rough backwoods riflemen fighting under a general as wild and untrained as them- selves. He decreed that the assault should take place on the morning of the eighth. Throughout the previous night the American ofii- cers were on the alert, for they could hear the rumbling of artillery in the British camp, the mufiled tread of the bat- talions as they were marched to their points in the line, and s Monument commemorating the battle of New Or- leans. 66 A New Nation all the smothered din of the preparation for assault. Long before dawn the riflemen were awake and drawn up be- hind the mud walls, where they lolled at ease, or, leaning on their long rifles, peered out through the fog toward the camp of their foes. At last the sun rose and the fog lifted, showing the scarlet array of the splendid British in- fantry. As soon as the air was clear Pakenham gave the word, and the heavy columns of red-coated grenadiers and kilted Highlanders moved steadily forward. From the American breastworks the great guns opened, but not a rifle cracked. Three-fourths of the distance was covered, and the eager soldiers broke into a run; then sheets of flame burst from the breastworks in their front as the wild rifle- men of the backwoods rose and fired, line upon line. Un- der the sweeping hail the head of the British advance was shattered, and the whole column stopped. Then it surged forward again, almost to the foot of the breastworks ; but not a man lived to reach them, and in a moment more the troops broke and ran back. Mad with shame and rage, Pakenham rode among them to rally and lead them for- ward, and the officers sprang around him, smiting the fugi- tives with their swords and cheering on the men who stood. For a moment the troops halted, and again came forward to the charge; but again they were met by a hail of bullets from the backwoods rifles. One shot struck Pakenham himself. He reeled and fell from the saddle, and was car- ried off the field. The second and third in command fell also, and then all attempts at further advance were aban- doned, and the British troops ran back to their lines. An- other assault had meanwhile been made by a column close to the river, the charging soldiers rushing to the top of the breastworks; but they were all killed or driven back. A The Battle of New Orleans 67 body of troops had also been sent across the river, where they routed a small detachment of Kentucky militia; but they were, of course, recalled when the main assault failed. At last the men who had conquered the conquerors of Europe had themselves met defeat. Andrew Jackson and his rough riflemen had worsted, in fair fight, a far larger force of the best of Wellington's veterans, and had accom- plished what no French marshal and no French troops had been able to accomplish throughout the long war in the Spanish peninsula. For a week the sullen British lay in their lines; then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they marched back to the ships and sailed for Europe. Street in old New Orleans. '-1^- THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER " The Star-Spangled Banner " was written during the war with Great Britain, which is generally spoken of in his- tory as the War of 1812. The British forces had captured the city of Washington and destroyed its public buildings, and were preparing to attack Baltimore. Francis Scott Key, a patriotic American, and, at the time, a citizen of Wash- ington, wrote to his mother, on the 26. of September, 1814: . . . I am going in the morning to Baltimore, to proceed in a flag-vessel to General Ross. Old Dr. Beanes, of Marlboro, is taken prisoner by the enemy, who threaten to carry him off. Some of his friends have urged me to apply for a flag and go to try to procure his release. I , hope to return in about eight or ten days, tho' it is uncertain, as I do not know where to find the fleet. . . . God bless you, my dear mother. F. S. Key. The President, James Madison, granted Mr. Key per- mission to go, and he went with a friend in a cartel-ship ^ under a flag of truce. They found the British fleet at the mouth of the Potomac, preparing to attack Baltimore. The British admiral agreed to release Dr. Beanes, but refused to let him or his friends return that night. They were placed on board of another vessel, where they were carefully guarded, to prevent them from communicating 1 Cartel, or cartel-ship: A ship used in making the exchange of prisoners of war, or in carrying propositions to an enemy; it is a ship of truce, and must not be fired upon nor captured. The Star-Spangled Banner 69 with their countrymen concerning the proposed attack. The vessel was anchored within sight of Fort McHenry, which the British fleet proceeded to bombard. 'HP Ilk mi' I'M Francis Scott Key writing "The Star-Spangled Banner." The three Americans were compelled to endure all night long the anxiety of mind produced by the cannonade; and they had no means of knowing the result of the attack, until " the dawn's early light." They waited that dawn with the 70 A New Nation most intense feeling. When it came, they saw with joy that " the old flag was still there." It was during this bombardment that Key, pacing the deck of the vessel, composed that immortal song, " The Star- Spangled Banner." The rude, first draught of it was written on the back of a letter, and he wrote it out at full length on his arrival in Baltimore. Soon after, it was printed, and at once became exceedingly popular. It was sung every- where, in public and private, and created intense enthusiasm. Although the famous song is no doubt well known, we here reprint it in full, as it was originally written by Mr. Key : THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming; Whose broad stripes and bright stars thro' the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ; And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? From the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep. Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam. In full glory reflected now shines in the stream ; 'T is the star-spangled banner ! — O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. The Star-Spangled Banner 71 No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation ; Blest with vict'ry and peace may this Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. And this be our motto : " In God is our Trust " ; And the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. ROBBERS OF THE SEAS By Ernest Ingersol As the sea has furnished opportunities for so much good, — for manly exer- tion, knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with people outside of one's own country, and for gaining wealth, — so it has given a chance for unscrupulous men to show the worst that is in them ; and the guarding of shore towns and merchant ves- sels from piratical attacks / ^ has always been a part of the usefulness and duty of a nation's naval force. As on land there are robbers and highwaymen, so on the ocean robber ships have often been lying in wait for vessels loaded with treasure, and have landed crews of marauders to make havoc with rich seaboard provinces. Such rob- bers on the high seas are termed pirates, and their crime was visited by the old laws with torturing punishments; yet they were never more daring than when the laws against them were severest. The word is Greek, and the first pirates who figure in 72 Robbers of the Seas 73 history are those of the Greek and Byzantine islands and coasts — bloody ruffians who originated the amusing method of disposing of unransomed prisoners by making them " walk the plank," as has been done within the present cen- tury. Walking the plank. The intricate channels and hidden harbors of the ^gean Sea long remained a hiding-place of sea-robbers, and are still haunted by them, though every few years, from Caesar's time till now, the kings of the surrounding countries 74 A New Nation have sent expeditions to break them up. In the sixteenth century piracy in that region was especially prevalent. The crews then were chiefly Turkish, but the great leaders were two renegade Greeks, the brothers Aruck and Hayradin Barbarossa (" Redbeard "). After their time the power of the pirates continued un- der other leaders; and not Algeria alone, but Tripoli, Morocco, and even Tunis, harbored piratical vessels in every port, and the rulers shared their spoils ; piracy, indeed, was the source of their national revenues, and was encouraged by the Sultan of Turkey inasmuch as all these states were his vassals. Every few years some European power — Spain, France, Venice, or England — would lose patience, send a fleet, and open a campaign that would be successful in destroy- ing certain strongholds, releasing a crowd of prisoners, and burning or sinking mau}^ ships. The city of Algiers was bombarded almost into ruins in 1682, and the job completed a year later, after the Algerians had tossed the French consul out to the fleet, with their compliments, from the mouth of a mortar. They were fond of such jokes. Nevertheless, the city speedily recovered, and piracy, complicated by Moslem fanaticism and Turkish politics, harassed commerce during all the next century, partly because Europe was so busy in its own wars that it had no time for outside matters, and partly because it was for the advantage of certain nations (particularly of Great Britain, which, in possession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, might have suppressed this villainy) to let the corsairs prey upon its foes — especially France. The actual result was that most or all of the European powers fell into the custom of paying to Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and other rulers of the Barbary (or Berber) Robbers of the Seas 75 States large sums of money as annual tribute to restrain them from official depredations upon their coasts and com- merce, besides other large payments for the ransom of such Christian prisoners as each sultan's lively subjects continued to take in spite of treaties. In this shameful condition of afifairs the newly independ- ent United States was obliged to join during the first years of its existence, to secure immuiiity tor our commerce in the Mediterranean, because we had not yet had time to create a navy. By the end of the century, however, the United States was able to defend itself at sea, and in 1801 an- swered the insults of Tripoli by bombarding its capital sea- port until the dey sued for mercy and promised to behave himself. Nevertheless, he needed another lesson, and in 1803 a second American fleet was sent to the Mediterranean, commanded by Preble, in the Constihition, with such sub- ordinate officers as Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, Hull, Stewart, Lawrence, and others that later became famous. One incident of this campaign, which began by frightening the Sultan of Morocco at Tangier into abject submission, but was especially directed against Tripoli, is well worth remembering. Captain Bainbridge, going alone in the fine frigate Phila- delphia into the harbor of the city of Tripoli, had unfortu- nately run aground, and there, overpowered by the number of his enemies afloat and ashore, had been compelled to give up his ship, and find himself and all his crew taken prisoners. He managed to get word of his misfortune to Commodore Preble at Malta, and that officer at once took his fleet to Tripoli — Decatur, in the Argus, gallantly capturing on the way one of the great lateen-sailed piratical crafts of the enemy, which later proved a useful instrument in the contest. ^--^-f^ L^.s^.^vf' A Pirate Fight. Robbers of the Seas 77 The fleet blockaded Tripoli for a while, and shelled the fortifications somewhat, just to give the bashaw a hint, and to encourage the poor prisoners ; but none of the big vessels was able to enter the narrow, tortuous, and ill-charted har- bor in the face of the many batteries, under whose guns the Philadelphia could be seen at anchor with the Tripolitan flag at her main, so they sailed away to Syracuse to make prep- arations for reducing this nest of barbarians. Gunboats of light draft and mortar-vessels had to be fitted out ; but the first thing was to try to carry out a plan that Decatur and all his friends had been maturing ever since they had arrived — the destruction of the Philadelphia, not only be- cause she had been refitted into a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy, but because it was galling to national as well as naval pride to see her flying a foreign flag. The plan was this : Decatur was to take a picked crew of seventy officers and men on the captured felucca (renamed Intrepid), and at- tempt at night to penetrate to the inner harbor of Tripoli in the disguise of a trader, supported as well as possible by the gun-brig Siren, also disguised as a merchantman. As his pilot was an Italian and a competent linguist, it was hoped the ketch could get near enough to set fire to the ship, whirl a shotted deck-gun into position to send a shell down the main hatch and through her bottom, fire it, and escape before the surprise was over. The chances of failure were enough to daunt the bravest, yet every man in the fleet wanted to go- On February 15, 1804, Decatur in his felucca, and Somers commanding the brig, found themselves, towards evening, again in sight of the town, with its circle of forts crowned by the frowning castle. The great Philadelphia stood out 78 A New Nation in bold relief, closely surrounded by two frigates and more than twenty gunboats and galleys. From the castle and batteries 115 guns could be trained upon an attacking force, tesides the fire of the vessels, yet the bold tars on the Intrepid did not quail. The crew having been sent below, the pilot Catalona took the wheel, while Decatur stood beside him, disguised as a common sailor. It was now nine o'clock, and bright moon- light. Standing steadily in, they rounded to close by the Philadelphia, and, boldly hailing her deck-watch, asked the privilege of mooring to her chains for the night, explaining that they had lost their anchors in the late storm, and so forth, until at last consent was given. Having dragged themselves close to the frigate, it was the work of only a moment to board her with a rush, overpower her surprised crew, and make sure of her destruction by means of the combustibles and powder they had brought with them. Before their task was done, however, they had been discovered, and it is almost a miracle that they were able to return to their felucca, and make their way out of the harbor, through a rain of harmless cannon-balls ; yet they did so, and Decatur was justly honored for one of the most gallant ex- ploits in naval annals. A few weeks later Preble's squadron shelled the pirate city and fortresses into ruin, forced Tripoli as well as Algiers and Tunis to respect then and thenceforth the American flag, and gave these arrogant rulers the new Sensation of paying in- stead of receiving money for bad deeds. It put an end to the corsairs. First Santo Domingo, then Tortugas, and finally Jamaica were headquarters of the buccaneers, who were made up of men of all nations, united by a desire to prey upon Spain as Robbers of the Seas 79 a common enemy. They were thousands in number, pos- sessed large fleets of ships and boats, were well armed, and finally formed a regular organization with a chief and under-officers. The most noted of these chiefs, perhaps, was Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who was at one time captured and taken home to England for trial. To his own surprise, instead of being executed, he was knighted by Charles II, who had not been at all grieved at seeing Spanish The chief buccaneer dividing the booty. 8o A New Nation commerce harassed; and Morgan was returned to Jamaica as commissioner of admiralty, where at one time he acted as deputy governor, using his opportunity to make it un- pleasant for those of the buccaneers with whom he had formerly disagreements as to the distribution of prizes. At last even England and France, after secretly favoring the buccaneers, became roused to the necessity of controlling them, and it was with this object in view that a certain Captain William Kidd was fitted out at private expense to- ward the end of the seventeenth century, and armed with King William's commission for seizing pirates and making reprisals, England being at war with France. Just why it was, nobody has explained, but Captain Kidd spent his time in loitering around the coast of Africa, where no pirates were to be found, until he grew quite disheartened, and, fear- ing to be dismissed by his employers and to be '' mark'd out for an unlucky man," he started a little pirate business for jbimself, in which he gained more of a certain kind of fame than any of the rest; for popular tradition supposes him to have hoarded his booty and buried it. " Captain Kidd's treasure " has been sought for until the whole eastern coast of the United States is honeycombed with diggings for it; but probably he had eaten and drunk it up before 1701, when he was captured and executed in England. About this time, however, and without his valuable aid, the combined naval forces of all the nations interested in the commerce of the New World broke the power of the buccaneers, and their depredations ceased. Their story is one of the wildest, most romantic, and most terrible in the history of the world. The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth century in the region of the West Indies by unorganized bands of desperados who had all the faults and none of the Buccaneers Landing Treasure. 82 A New Nation greatness of the men they succeeded, and who received Httle attention from the world at large. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice on the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, but in a much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John Lafitte, carried on business quite openly in New Orleans ; and their settlements on the marshy islands along the coast, and their " temple," to which persons came out from the city to buy goods, were open secrets. But in the War of 1812, al- though the British tried to buy their services, they redeemed themselves by standing true to the American government, which had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they won public pardon and an added glamour of romance. There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not very different from piracy ; it is called privateering, and his- tory shows a good many cases where it has degenerated into sea-robbery pure and simple. A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, to which authority is given by a government to act as an in- dependent war-vessel. Its commission is called a " letter of marque" {lettrc de marque in French), entitling it to " take, burn, and destroy " a certain enemy's property on the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to attack any one else. The object and plea of the government issuing com- missions to privateers is that thus a great many more armed vessels can be sent afloat than the government has money to equip, and that consequently far more damage will be done to the enemy, by crippling his trade and resources, than regular men-of-war alone can accomplish. Private capital has been willing to take the risk because rewarded by a large share of the prizes ; and from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of Robbers of the Seas 83 the eighteenth century this was one of the most profitable of marine industries, for then nearly universal wars made almost any capture legitimate. In the earlier times even the limited regulation that came later was absent, and there was small choice between a privateer and a pirate. THE BALLAD OF CAPTAIN KIDD [The following are a few of the many verses of a ballad written at the time of Capt. Kidd.] My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed, My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed; My name was Robert Kidd, God's laws I did forbid. And so wickedly I did, as I sailed. I was sick, and nigh to death, as I sailed, as I sailed; I was sick and nigh to death as I sailed ; I was sick and nigh to death. And I vowed at every breath. To walk in wisdom's ways, as I sailed. I thought I was undone, as I sailed, as I sailed; I thought I was undone, as I sailed; I thought I was undone. And my wicked glass had run, But health did soon return, as I sailed. Captain Kidd burying his treasure. Robbers of the Seas 85 I spied the ships of Spain, as I sailed, as I sailed; I spied the ships of Spain, as I sailed ; I spied the ships of Spain, I fired on them amain. Till most of them were slain, as I sailed. I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sailed, as I sailed; I "d ninety bars of gold, as I sailed ; I 'd ninety bars of gold, And dollars manifold, With riches uncontrolled, as I sailed. Thus being overtaken at last, I must die, I must die ; Thus being o'ertaken at last, I must die ; Thus being o'ertaken at last And into prison cast, And sentence being passed, I must die. OLD GEORGETOWN " three miles from the capitol " By John Williamson Palmer When the author of " The Star-spangled Banner " emerged from his quiet domicile by the Aqueduct, and went for a pensive ramble, as was his custom of an afternoon, he mounted the winding way to the heights of Georgetown to find a point of vantage there for his more comprehensive contemplation of the prospect. Very dear to the eye of that pensive singer of piety and patriotism were the several landmarks that loomed impress- ively above the river mists. Between the Convent and the creek the heights were crowned with the mansions of prosperous and influential citizens whose names are locally historic now : " Monterey," seat of the Linthicums, occupied by Mr. Calhoun, then Sec- retary of War in the Monroe cabinet; "Tudor Place," the garden home of Thomas Peter, Esq., notable in the annals of Georgetown; the storied residence of Brooke Williams, once tenanted by Sir John Crampton, British ambassador, and later by the French minister ; and other houses of much social celebrity. Low on the incline, but slowly creeping hillward from the river, the quaint and kindly burgh looked idly out through dormer-windows on a lounging, drowsy world, and sociably shouldered the highway with all its stoops and sloping cellar 86 Old Georgetown 87 doors; and comfortable little boys and girls, unembarrassed by considerations of decorum, and careless of rents and maternal rages, slid down the cellar doors, and watched the world go by — a world of shad-fishers, and fowlers of swans and ducks, and pliers of pirogues^ and pungies; a world wherein the market-master and the hay-weigher, the constable and the town-crier, the watchman and the lamp- lighter, were personages of exalted privileges and mysteri- ous powers ; where a black Juliet, gaudily coifed in bandana, and hoop-ringed as to her ears, who dispensed English muffins to the outcry of a bell, and a blacker Romeo, amply aproned, who chanted on street corners the succulent glories of hot corn and baked pears, were ever the chroniclers, con- fidants, and oracles for the children, white or black, on Key and Congress streets and the Causeway, on Bridge and Falls streets. West Landing and Duck Lane. A characteristic feature of the time and place was the Conestoga wagon, freighted with farm produce from Pennsylvania, ark-like under its long tunnel of canvas, and drawn by five or seven big, benevolent horses, each with a chime of bells making melodious announcement of butter, eggs, and fowls, garden truck, sauerkraut, schiuicrkcisc, and apple-butter ; and always a hen-coop hung at the stern, and a dog, ill-favored and unsociable, trotted between the hind wheels. No less characteristic and picturesque was the pier, the landing-place for the lighter craft that flitted beween the river-landings in excursions of business or pleasure. Hither 1 G. W. P. Custis, in his " Recollections and Private Memoirs," de- scribes the "pirogue" in which Washington, with a party of his friends, made the first survey of the Potomac above tide-water, as a canoe " hollowed out of a great poplar tree, haifled on a wagon to the bank of the Monocacy, and there launched." 88 A New Nation came the fishermen to mend their great nets, and the fowlers with their ducking-guns and dogs, and the darkies, old and young, to lend a hand on the flats, or in the blinds or the boats, or in the fish-houses that flanked the beach at con- venient points. Hither came country wagons from all the neighboring counties, to convey the shad or rockfish to in- land markets. In April and May of 1828 Potomac shad were sold on the wharves of Georgetown for five dollars a hundred. In the early spring of 1826, rockfish weighing from twenty-five to one hundred pounds were netted in great numbers; on the Virginia side of the river, at Syca- more Landing, thirty miles below Washington, four hundred and fifty of these noble fish were taken at one draught of the seine. The multitudinous fleet of small craft, bright, brisk, and bustling, that flitted to and fro between the fishing- grounds and the landings, — the boatmen shouting, singing, bantering each other, — imparted to the beautiful river the aspect of a festal panorama. In the late fall and winter myriads of canvasback ducks, then commonly called " whitebacks," came to feed on the small white celery that grew so abundantly in the swamps and flats of the Potomac and the Susquehanna. Formerly on James River they were known as " sheldrake " ; but their favorite provender failing there, they flocked to the more bountiful fields between Craney and Analostan islands. They gathered in clouds of thousands, obscuring the river, and storming the air with multitudinous clangor, only to be fusilladed from blinds, or " tolled " within range by dogs trained to play and leap, or by the waving of a red-and-yel- low handkerchief luring them by their foolish and fatal curiosity. Tom Davis, the trusty fowler of Mount Vernon, with his Newfoundland dog " Gunner," often brought Old Georgetown 89 down at a single discharge of his clumsy British " piece " as many ducks as might serve the larder for a week. Even so the snow-white swans were tolled as they floated in fleets of hundreds near the shore at the mouth of the Occoquan : superbly silly birds, spreading from six to seven feet of flashing pinions, clanging and trumpeting in melo- dious clamor that on still evenings might be heard by the dwellers on the creeks three miles away, and lured to their death by the diverting puzzle of a cunning puppy's antics. Similarly spectacular was the sport that went to the tak- ing of the ortolan ^ on dark October nights on the flats near Georgetown, when the birds had settled to their perches on the reeds and wild oats. Amidshi-ps across the gun- wale of a canoe stout boards were laid to make a platform, and these were sheathed with clay to form a hearth. Here a fire of lightwood was kindled, and the boat crept noiselessly to the flats, a boy feeding the flame as it glided in among the perches where the birds, stupefied by the glare, incapable of flight or outcry, and in plain sight of the hunters, were clubbed with light paddles, and so killed or captured by scores. Thirty or forty dozen were often taken by one canoe. In John Adams's time a witty French lady described Georgetown as "a town of houses without streets, as Washington is a town of streets without houses"; and Mrs. Adams, writing to her daughter in November, 1800, says : " Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach the City, which is only so in name — here and there a small cot without a window appearing in the For- est, through which you travel miles without seeing a Hu- 1 Sora of Virginia, rail of Pennsylvania. 90 A New Nation man being." Oliver Wolcott, writing to his wife on the Fourth of July, 1800, says: "There is one good Tavern about forty rods from the Capitol, and several other houses are building; but I do not perceive how the members of Congress can possibly secure lodgings un- less they will consent to live like Scholars in a college or Monks in a monastery, crowded ten or twenty in one house, and utterly secluded from Society. The only re- source for such as wish to live Comfortably will be found in Georgetown, three miles distant, over as bad a Road in winter as the clay grounds near Hartford." But thirty years later a four-horse coach plied almost hourly between Georgetown and Washington for the ac- commodation of the patres (and matres) conscripti, car- rying twelve inside at " a levy " each. From Gadsby's hotel, the " Indian Queen," and the Mansion House, in Washington, stages ran to Baltimore for a fare of $2.50; there were daily steamboats to Alexandria, Norfolk, and Fredericksburg, and a " mail-stage " every evening for Pittsburg and Wheeling. Meanwhile, Georgetown had grown to be a place of homes and congressmen's lodgings — a town of spindle- legged sideboards, tall clocks, marquetry tables, claw- and-ball chairs, screens and andirons and warming-pans. The " Union Tavern," a hostelry of fashionable preten- sions during the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had the honor to entertain many imposing personages, such as Louis Philippe and Talleyrand, Volney and Baron Humboldt, Jerome Bonaparte and Lafayette. Georgetown had already become the " court end," a tryst- ing place and rendezvous for persons of quality, while as yet Washington was but a huddle of booths,' taverns, Old Georgetown 91 and gambling-houses set round about a political race- course. At the houses of the cabinet and the wealthier members of the Senate and the House there were endless entertain- ments and evening parties in the season, with suppers, punch, and cards, and cotillions and contra-dances to the music of harp and violin. To the assemblies, always exclusive and ceremonious, and managed by a committee who dispensed their com- plimentary cards with the superfine discrimination of Al- mack's, officers of the army and navy and members of the diplomatic corps came in regimentals and regalia, while plain citizens disported themselves in pumps, silk stock- ings, ruffled cravats, two or even three waistcoats of dif- ferent colors, the dangling fob-ribbon with gold buckles and a big seal of topaz or carnelian, regulation frock- coats of green or claret-colored cloth with huge lapels and gilded buttons, and Hessian top-boots with gold tassels. Certain of the exquisites affected ultra-fashionable full dress, which prescribed coats with great rolling collars and short waists, voluminous cravats of white cambric, and small-clothes or tight trousers. We read of skirts of five breadths, a quarter of a yard each, of the favorite India crape, coquettishly short for the freer display of the slipper and silk stocking match- ing the color of the gown and fastened with ribbons crossed over the instep and ankle. The low waist came to an end abruptly under the arms, which were covered with gloves so fine that they were sometimes stowed cunningly in the shell of an English walnut. The hair, dressed high, was crowned with a comb of tortoise-shell, while turbans and ostrich- feathers were the peculiar ensigns of wives and matrons. 92 A New Nation After the Revolution the minuet, which had long held the place of honor in the select assemblies, began to be slighted, fashionable favor turning capriciously to less exact- ing and more democratic styles of diversion for the fantastic toe. General Washington, whose performance in the stately dance was impressive, appeared in that function for the last time in 1781, at a ball given in Fredericksburg in honor of the French and American officers on their return from the capitulation of Yorktown. The last birth-night ball he at- tended was in Alexandria in 1798. John Pendleton Kennedy, author of " Swallow Barn " and " Horseshoe Robinson," himself a conspicuous person- ality in the clubs and fashionable gatherings of 1820, was wont to gossip pleasantly concerning the wits and beaus who pranced so gallantly on the streets of Baltimore, Alexandria, and Georgetown in his childhood. " Cavaliers of the old school, full of starch and powder; most of them the iron gentlemen of the Revolution, with leathery faces ; old campaigners, displaying military carriage and much impos- ing swagger; convivial blades, too, and heroes of long stories; all in three-cornered hats and wigs and buff coats with narrow capes, long backs, and hip pockets, small- clothes that barely reached the knee, striped stockings, and great buckles to their shoes; and then the long steel chains that hung half-way to the knee, dangling with seals shaped like the sounding-board of a pulpit ! " These oppressive gentry made the little town fairly jump with the ring of their gold-headed canes on the pavement, " especially when the superfine swashbuckler accosted a lady in the street with a bow that required a whole sidewalk to make it in — the wide scrape of the foot, and the cane thrust with a flourish under the left arm till it stuck out behind Old Georgetown 93 along with the stiff cue ! And nothing could be more piquant than the pretty cox-combi-y of the lady, as she re- ciprocated the salutation with a deep, low curtsy, her chin bridled to her breast." The turnpike was a diverting novelty and the steamboat a wonder, when Dolly Madison, inspiring sprite of tea- parties and loo, and idol of the common people, warm- hearted and prodigally hospitable, cleverly blending gracious dignity with a frank condescension, queened it so kindly in her spangled turbans, paradise plumes, and resetted shoes, and ruled her little world of lovers with a snuff-box. It was at one of her receptions in Georgetown that an amus- ing incident occurred, remembered for the characteristic tact it illustrated. A shy young fellow from the country had come to pay his respects to the star of the hour. Mrs. Madison observed him neglected and embarrassed, and ap- proaching him quickly with extended hand, so startled the abashed and timid lad, who had just been served with coffee, that he dropped the saucer and thrust the half-filled cup into his pocket. "How the crowd jostles!" said the de- lightful Dolly. " Let me have the servant bring you coffee. And how is your charming mother? We were friends, you know." Ever " mistress of herself, though china fall," that dazed, dumbfounded boy was not less interesting to her gracious solicitude than the justices of the Supreme Court in their gowns, or the diplomatic corps in their regalia, or distinguished officers of the army and navy in the luster of full uniform — all dancing attendance at those memorable levees on New Year's day and the Fourth of July, when Dolly Madison was " at home " to kings, presidents, and the people, without distinction of persons. She was preeminently mistress of the arts of society, and 94 A New Nation her entertainments in Georgetown and Washington were events of memorable import in the pohtical as well as in the social world. Sectional rancor or the spites of party had no place at her teas and receptions. A ball that she gave in 1824 is chronicled as the " grand ball " of that time. Webster and Clay, Calhoun, Randolph, and Jackson, were there in their pride of blue coats and gilt buttons, buff waist- coats, silk stockings, and pumps ; while her democratic majesty was singular and conspicuous in a suit of steel — her gown of " steel lama," with brilliant ornaments of cut steel in her hair and on her throat, and arms. Her por- trait by Leslie, a reflection from the court of Napoleon, shows an American woman of the republican court in her proper panoply of grace, culture, and distinction. The obverse and reverse of a Washington one-cent piece, dated 1791. These one-cent pieces are now rare. The coin from which the pictures were made was placed under the glass of the Sharpless pastel portrait of Wash- ington, now owned by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. ROBERT FULTON AND THE CLERMONT By Alice Crary Sutcliffe Great-Granddaughter of the Inventor THE EARLY LIFE OF FULTON The farm-house at . Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to which the senior Fulton brought his fam- ily in the early spring of 1765 is still standing at the country cross-roads. There Robert Fulton the inventor was born on November 14, 1765. In 1844 the township of Little Britain was resurveyed, and a new section was set aside, to be known as " Fulton Township," in honor of the child who lived for the first few months of his eventful life within its quiet borders. There are several anecdotes which relate to Robert Ful- ton's early interest in mechanics -7- the first steps of progress toward his later skill. In 1773, when he was eight years old, his mother, having previously taught him to read and write, sent him to a school kept by Mr. Caleb Johnson, a Quaker gentleman of pronounced Tory principles — so pro- nounced, in fact, that he narrowly escaped with his life dur- 95 96 A New Nation ing the Revolution. But Robert Fulton did not care for books, and he began at a very early age to search for prob- Robert Fulton. From t}ie i.a'mting by B<>iijomln Wert. Owned by E. P. Ludlow Cla- lems never mastered and bound in print. This greatly dis- tressed the Quaker teacher, who spared not the rod; and it is said that in administering such discipline on the hand Robert Fulton and the Clermont 97 of Robert Fulton, he one day testily exclaimed : " There, that will make you do something!" To which Robert, with folded arms, replied : " Sir, I came to have something beaten into my brains, and not into my knuckles." With- out doubt he was a trial to his teacher. He entered school one day very late, and when the master inquired the reason, Robert with frank interest replied that he had been at Nicholas Miller's shop pounding out lead for a pencil. " It is the very best I ever had, sir," he affirmed as he displayed his product. The master, after an examina- tion of the pencil, pronounced it excellent. When Robert's mother, who had been distressed by his lack of application to his studies, expressed to his teacher her pleasure at signs of improvement, the latter confided to her that Robert had said to him: " My head is so full of original notions that there is no vacant chamber to store away the contents of dusty books," These incidents to the contrary, it is nevertheless true that Robert Fulton did absorb a good knowledge of the rudiments of education. In 1777, Congress held session in the old court house at Lancaster, and during this time the town became famous as a depot of supplies for the American forces. Rifles, blankets, and clothing were manufactured there, powder for the troops was stored in the town, and in that year a certain Paul Zantzinger furnished General Wayne's men with 650 suits of uniform. Fulton was nicknamed by his comrades " Quicksilver Bob," because of his frequent purchases of the illusive and glittering metal, used by him in experiments which he de- clined to describe. Before this time he had drawn designs for firearms and had become expert in experimenting with 98 A New Nation them in order to determine the comparative carrying dis- tance of different bores and balls. He is known to have manufactured an airgun in the year 1779, but there is no record of its success. At the age of seventeen, Fulton left Lancaster to seek his fortune, taking up his residence in Philadelphia as a painter of portraits and miniatures. His papers are singularly devoid of reference to these years. He was never retro- spective, but eager for new accomplishment. Life offered him delights in art and science, and his industry appears to have made alternate choice in these fields of thought and en- terprise. His energy was indefatigable; he not only earned his own living, but sent remittances to his mother in Lan- caster. He apparently seized upon any form of employ- ment which could be secured by personal endeavor. He enjoyed a personal friendship with Benjamin Frank- lin, who gave him unusual attention and kindness. In 1786, Robert Fulton sailed for England, bearing nu- merous letters of introduction to distinguished Americans abroad. Among these, a letter from his friend and patron Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin West, the Pennsylvania ar- tist who had won high honor in London, was of special help in launching Mr. Fulton in the art circles of Europe, and the previous intimacy between the West and Fulton fami- lies, and the pronounced similarity in tastes and ambitions, seem to have attracted them to an immediate and intimate comradeship. fulton's genius At no time since his death, in the prime of life, in 181 5, has the public ceased to take an interest in the personality Robert Fulton and the Clermont 99 of Robert Fulton. Since the first trip of the Clermont, in 1807, past the PaHsades of the Hudson, the whole world, in ever-expanding measure, has enjoyed with ungrudging recognition the fruit of his inventive genius. Two years after his death, his friend Cadwallader Golden ascribed his achievements to " that rare union of genius and science with practical knowledge which Mr. Fulton so hap- pily possessed." In the light of present-day opportunities for scientific study and experiment, his friends' well-con- sidered praise amounts only to say that Fulton's mechani- cal genius was intuitive, and marched to practical results by new yet well-measured steps, along the path of individual experiment. He certainly profited by the vague ideas and false starts of others, but he brought to their development an inventive power, an insight into mechanical principle, and a vision of future usefulness, that must ever find him a high place among the creative geniuses and benefactors of man- kind. . . . The bil- lions of money invested in battle-ships and sub- marine torpedo-boats in our day indicate how thoroughly Fulton was ahead of his age ; though they do not quite con- vince us of the philoso- phy of his motive for trying to do away with the terror and wastefulness of war by the application of a concentrated terror. But the minor fame of his warlike Obverse of a medal issued by tbe Fulton Institute, of Lancaster, Pa. 100 A New Nation appliances is merged in the glory of his achievements for commerce and navigation. FULTON S FOLLY Prior to the comple- tion of the Clermont, a throng of idle- minded men congre- gated in the vicinity, called it " Fulton's Folly " and scoffed at its possibilities. The actual safety of the in- vention was seriously menaced by this lawless throng and by the careless piloting of sloops in the slip. After one threatened mishap Fulton found it necessary to guard the boat. Fulton's Inkstand. FULTON S OWN DESCRIPTION " My first steamboat on the Hudson's River was 150 feet long, 13 feet wide, drawing 2 feet of water, bow and stern 60 degrees; she displaced 36.40 cubic feet, equal 100 tons of water; her bow presented 26 feet to the water, plus and minus the resistance of i foot running 4 miles an hour." Fulton did not take out a patent for his steamboat until February, 1809, and his second patent was secured October 2, 1810. Robert Fulton and the Clermont lOi HISTORIC FIRST VOYAGE OF THE CLERMONT On August 17, 1807, the Clermont made its memorable first voyage up the Hudson. At one o'clock the boat was loosed from its moorings at a dock on the North River near the State's Prison, Greenwich Village. Fulton's feelings at this crisis are set down in a letter to an unknown friend, quoted as part of a reminiscence by the late Judge Story in Sanders' early " History of Schenec- tady," and secured by Mrs. Robert Fulton Blight from al- leged original. My dear Sir: The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and al- most repented of my efforts. The signal was given and the boat moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immov- able. To the silence of the preceding moment, now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated — " I told you it was so ; it is a foolish scheme : I wish we were well out of it." I elevated myself upon a platform and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter, but if they would be quiet and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below and examined the ma- chinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight maladjust- ment of some of the work. In a short time it was obviated. The boat was again put in motion. She continued to move on. All were still incredulous. None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses. We left the fair city of New York; we passed through the romantic and ever-varying scenery of the Highlands; we descried the clustering houses of Albany; we 102 A New Nation reached its shores, — and then, even then, when all seemed achieved, I was the victim of disappointment. Imagination superseded the influence of fact. It was then doubted if it could be done again, or if done, it was doubted if it could be made of any great value. Yours, R. Fulton. After her return from the first voyage up the Hudson, the Clermont was left at the New York dock for more than two weeks. This time was considered necessary by Ful- ton and Livingston to fit the boat for regular traffic and to make certain improvements which Fulton notes in the fol- lowing letter to the Chancellor, who had remained at his country place. New York, Saturday, the 28 [29th] of August, 1807. Dear Sir: On Saturday I wrote you that I arrived here on Friday at four o'clock, which made my voyage from Albany ex- actly thirty hours. We had a little wind on Friday morning, but no waves which produced any effect. I have been making every exertion to get off on Monday inorning, but there has been much work to do — boarding all the sides, decking over the boiler and works, finishing each cabin with twelve berths to make them comfort- able, and strengthening many parts of the iron work. So much to do, and the rain, which delays the caulkers, will, I fear, not let me off till Wednesday Compass used on the Clermont. Robert Fulton and the Clermont 103 morning. Then, how- ever, the boat will be as complete as she can be made — all strong and in good order and the men well organized, and 1 hope, nothing- to do but to run her for six weeks or two months. The first week, that is if she starts on Wednesday, she will make one trip to Albany and back. Every succeed- ing week she will run three trips — that is, two to Albany and one to New York, or two to New York and one to Albany, always having Sunday and four nights for rest to the crew. By carrying for the usual price there can be no doubt but the steam- boat will have the pref- erence because of the certainty and agreeable movements. I have seen the captain of the fine sloop from Hudson. He says the average of his passages have been forty- eight hours. For the steamboat it would have been thirty certain. The persons who came down with me were so much pleased that they said were she established to run periodically they would never go in anything else. I will have her registered and everything done which I can recollect. Everything looks well and I have no doubt will be very productive. Yours truly, Robert Fulton. Statue of Robert Fulton at the Fulton Ferry-house, Brooklyn, New York. 104 A New Nation The following postscript ends the letter of August 29th : ^ You may look for me Thursday morning about seven o'clock. I think it would be well to write to your brother Edward to get information on the velocity of the Mississippi, the size and form of the boats used, the number of hands and quantity of tons in each boat, the number of miles they make against the current in. twelve hours, and the quantity of tons which go up the river in a year. On this point beg of him to be accurate. On the 2nd of September, the necessary equipment and alterations having been completed, Fulton inserted his first advertisement in The Albany Gazette, and the Evening Post of New York. It read : THE NORTH RIVER STEAMBOAT Will leave Pauler's Hook Ferry on Friday the 4*^ of Sep- tember, at 6 in the morning, and arrive at Albany, on Sat- urday, at 6 in the afternoon. Provisions, good berths and accommodations are pro- vided. The charge to each passenger is as follows : To Newburgh $3 time 14 liours To Poughkeepsie 4 17 To Esopus 4J/2 20 To Hudson 5 30 To Albany 7 36 For places, apply to Wm. Vandervoort, N°- 48 Courtlandt- street, on the corner of Greenwich-street. Way passengers to Tarry Town, etc., etc., will apply to the captain on board. 1 Robert Fulton to Robert R. Livingston, Saturday, 28 [29th] Au- gust, 1807. Original formerly in possession of Mr. Clermont Living- ston. Robert Fulton and the Clermoizt 105 The Steam Boat will leave Albany on Monday the 7'^ of September at 6 in the morning and arrive at New-York on Tuesday at 6 in the evening. She will leave New-York on Wednesday morning at 6, and arrive at Albany on Thursday evening at 6 in the even- ing. She will leave Albany on Friday morning at 6, and ar- rive at New- York on Saturday evening at 6. — Thus per- forming two voyages from Albany and one from New- York within the week. On Monday the 14**^, and Friday the i8''\ she will leave New- York at 6 in the morning, and Albany on the 16*^, at 6 in the morning, after which the ar- rangements for her departure will be announced. The Steam Boat being thoroughly repaired, and precau- tion taken that injury shall not be done to her wheels in future, it is intended to run her as a PACKET for the re- mainder of the season. She will take her departure from New-York and Albany at 9 o'clock in the morning, and al- ways perform her voyage in from 30 to 36 hours. THE MISSIONS OF ALTA CALIFORNIA By John T. Doyle '^o#4a1 Cross at ]\Ionterey. Although the peninsula of Low- er California was discovered as early as the year 1534, and many attempts were made to col- onize it, it re- mained wholly un- occupied by Spain down to 1697.' In February of that year two Jes- uit fathers, Juan Maria Salvatierra and Francisco Eusebio Kino, asked permission to attempt the spiritual conquest of the country, which was granted on condition that the king should not be called on for any part of the expense involved, and that possession should be taken distinctly in the name of the Spanish crown. Armed with this authority and the sanc- tion of their superiors in the order, the two missionaries set about collecting funds for their undertaking, and in a short time succeeded in obtaining sufficient means to commence it. These funds, subscribed by charitable individuals, whose names and contributions the gratitude of the fathers has preserved for us to this day, increased, in progress of time, 106 The Missions of Alta California 107 to an aggregate of sufficient importance to find frequent mention in Mexican legislation and history, under the name of the " Pious Fund of the Californias." It constituted afterwards the endowment and support of the Missions on all the west coast of the continent as far north as claimed by- Spain, the whole of which was called by the general name of the Californias. The thirteen Missions founded by the Jesuits in Lower California extended from Cape San Lucas, at the extremity of the peninsula, northwards. Details regarding them are deemed out of place here : they were in a flourishing con- dition at the time of the expulsion of the order in 1768, and the establishments remain to the present day ; ruined indeed and deserted by the population that once clustered round them, but attesting still the pious zeal of their founders. Father Michael Joseph Serra was born in the island of Majorca, in the year 171 3. After pursuing his studies in the Lullian University there he evinced a preference for a religious life, and was admitted to the order of St. Francis, taking instead of his baptismal names that of Junipero, by which only he is known in history. The Franciscans and Dominicans were, about that period, extending their Mis- sions among the Indians of America in rivalry with the Jesuits, and Father Serra with three of his fellow-members became inflamed with the desire to take part in these pious enterprises. The other associates were Fathers Rafael Ver- ger, Francisco Palou, and Juan Crespi. They obtained per- mission to join a body of missionaries which in 1749 was assembled at Cadiz to embark for the New World, and after a ninety-nine days' voyage they landed in Vera Cruz. After many years' successful missionary efforts in the Sierra Gorda, Father Serra was selected to take principal io8 A New Nation "'*B^iliii«^^^^^^^^ Mission of San Antonio of Padua, about twenty miles from Monterey. charge of the Missions of Cahfornia, now confided to the Franciscans, and he arrived at the port of Loreto with fif- teen associates on the 2nd of April, 1768. After having made the necessary disposition for occupying the various estabhshments of the peninsula — a task which occupied many months, as they extended over a territory seven hun- dred miles in length — he was ready to cooperate with Galvez in the subjection of Upper California to the practical dominion of the crown of Spain and the Christian religion. Two expeditions were organized for the purpose, one by sea and the other by land. The latter was formed into two de- tachments, which, after a toilsome march from San Fer- nando de Vellicata, on the Indian frontier of Lower Cali- fornia, were, on the ist of July, 1769, reunited at the bay of San Diego, where the schooners San Carlos and San The Missions of Alta California 109 Antonio, which had come up the coast to meet them, were also safely anchored. San Diego was a place of which at that time nothing more was known than that there was an excellent harbor, which had been visited by Sebastian Viz- cayno in his voyage of 1601— 2. This journey to San Diego occupied ninety-three days, during which Father Serra suf- fered excruciatingly from an injury to one of his legs, so that at times he could neither walk nor ride. The first Mission of Upper California was founded at San Diego, and before the lapse of a fortnight a second expedi- tion was organized, under Don Caspar de Portola, which was directed to proceed up the coast as far as Monterey and to found a Mission there. Monterey was also a place made known to Spanish geographers by Vizcayno's voyage of 1602, in his report of which he had described it in glowing terms as a magnificent harbor, fit to shelter the navies of the world. Fathers Juan Crespi and Francisco Comez .were the chaplains of this expe- dition, which was also to have the cooperation of the two schoon- ers, which were directed to the same destination. How this land expedition toiled up the coast from San Diego, of its " moving accidents by flood and field, of hairbreadth 'scapes, . . , of antres vast and des- erts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills," of how in its search for Monterey it stumbled on the bay of San Francisco and first 1 made known to civilized man the Pulpit of San Buenaventura. no A New Nation garden of the present State of California, I have related elsewhere and will not here repeat. Suffice it to sa}^ that having penetrated as far up the coast and over the Coast Range as to look down from the crest over what is now Searsville on the broad expanse of the Santa Clara Valley, and on the great estuary which its historian described as a " Mediterranean sea," the expedition, compelled by the ap- proach of winter, the scarcity of food, and the increasing hostility of the aborigines, turned on the nth of November to retrace its steps to San Diego. The effort at missionary colonization was not, however, abandoned. In 1770 another expedition moved up the coast, following the track of the first explorers, whose diary was their guide, and founded the Mission of San Carlos on the bay of Monterey, close to which was established the presidio of the same name. The place first selected proved unsuitable for the site of a Mission, and before the close of 1 77 1 the establishment was removed a few miles to the south- ward and planted on the banks of the Carmel River, over- looking the charming little bay of the same name. This new foundation was called " El Carmelo." The presidio re- tained its site and subsequently became the capital city of the department. Monterey has become in our day a famous watering- place frequented by visitors from the ends of the earth, and the ancient Mission, El Carmelo, now little better than a ruin, continues to attract the attention of travelers from its picturesque site and from the fact that it contains the re- mains of the venerable men whose pious efforts created the Missions and laid the foundations of civilization in Cali- fornia. There were interred the remains of Fathers Juni- pero Serra, Juan Crespi, and Rafael Verger. The Missions of Alta California ill San Diego and Monterey served to mark the extremes of the first Spanish occupancy; the interval was filled up and the area of missionary conquest gradually extended by other similar establishments. The names of these institu- tions, founded in rapid succession, are as follows : 1771. — San Gabriel, San Fernando, San Antonio. 1772. — San Luis Qbispo. 1776. — San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de Assisi. 1777. — Santa Clara. 1782. — San Buenaventura. 1786. — Santa Barbara. 1787. — La Purissima. 1791. — La Soledad, and Santa Cruz. 1797. — San Juan Bautista, San Jose, San Miguel. 1798. — San Luis Rey. 1802. — Santa Ynez. After this missionary efforts seem to have relaxed, but a revival at a later date led to the foundation of San Rafael in 1 81 7, and San Francisco Solano in 1823. Sonoma, at which this last was located, was as far north as the mission- aries penetrated. These Missions were, of course, designed for the instruc- tion of the rude aborigines in the truths of Christianity and in the arts of civilized life. The Franciscans, who succeeded the Jesuits in California, followed their system. In order to induce the Indians to abandon their nomadic tribal life, and to exchange their reliance for food on the fruits of the chase and the spon- taneous products of the forest for the ways of civilized men, they were at first supplied by the missionaries with food and clothing and afterwards taught to cultivate the earth and support themselves. Timber was felled wherever accessi- 112 A New Nation ble and transported to a suitable site, where, with unburned brick and tiles, the Mission church and buildings were erected. The following description of San Luis Rey, con- densed from the account of an intelligent traveler who saw it in its palmy days, will convey a fair idea of the establish- ments of which it was a type. The Mission building is in the form of a hollow square of about Mission of San Jose. one hundred and fifty yards front, along which a gallery extends. The church forms one of the wings. The edifice, a single story in height, is elevated a few feet above the ground. In the interior is a court adorned with a fountain and planted with trees, on the corridor extending around which open the apartments of the friars and the major-domo as well as those used for work-shops, school- rooms, and storehouses, and the chambers set apart for the accom- modation of travelers and guests. The male and female infirmaries, as well as the schoolrooms, are placed in the most quiet portions of the premises. The young Indian girls occupy a set of apartments secluded from the rest and commonly called the " nunnery," and they themselves are fa- miliarly styled the " nuns." They are thus entirely protected from intrusion, and, being placed under the guardianship of staid and trustworthy matrons of their own race, are taught to spin and The Missions of Alta California 113 weave wool, flax, and cotton, and do not leave the nunnery until marriageable. The Indian children attend the same schools with those of the white colonists, and are educated with them. Those who exhibit the most talent are taught some music, as the plain chant of the church, as well as the violin, flute, horn, violoncello, and other in- struments. Such as attain superior proficiency, either as carpen- ters, smiths, or even agricultural laborers, are made foremen, by the name of alcaldes, and placed in charge of the other workmen. Two ecclesiastics are stationed at each Mission ; the elder is charged with the internal administration and the duty of religious instruction, the younger, with the direction of the agricultural and mechanical labor. The Franciscans assiduously cultivate the study of the Indian dialects, of which they have compiled dictionaries and grammars, some of which are still extant. Industry is inculcated and encouraged by the constant exam- ple of the Fathers, who are always the first to put their hands to the work; and considering the meagerness of their resources, and the absence of European labor, the works they have executed with the aid of unskilled savages, of low intelligence, are marvels of architecture and mechanical skill. These comprise mills, ma- chinery, bridges, roads, and canals for irrigation, besides extensive agricultural labors. For the erection of nearly all the Mission buildings large beams had to be transported from the mountains eight and ten leagues off, and the Indians taught to burn lime, cut stone, make bricks, tiles, etc. Opposite the Mission building is usually a guard-house for lodg- ing the escort of the priests, consisting of four cavalry soldiers, under command of a sergeant, who act as couriers, carrying corre- spondence and orders from one Mission to another, besides pro- tecting the Mission from the incursions of hostile Indians. The following is a summary of the ordinary day's work at a Mission. At sunrise the bell sounded for the Angelus and the Indians assembled in the chapel, where they attended morning prayers and mass and received a short religious instruction. Then came breakfast, after which, distributed 8 114 A New Nation in squads as occasion required, they repaired to their work. At II A. M. they ate dinner, and after that rested until 2 p. M. Work was then resumed, and continued until an hour before sunset, wdien the bell again tolled for the An- gelus. After prayers and the rosary the Indians supped, and then were free to take part in a dance or some such innocent amusement. Their diet consisted of fresh beef or mutton in abundance, with vegetables and tortillas made of flour or corn-meal. They made drinks of the same ingredients, which were called atole and pinole respectively. Their dress consisted of a shirt of linen, a pair of pantaloons, and a woolen smock. The alcaldes and head workmen had also cloth clothes like those of the Spaniards; the women re- The first mission in California (San Diego). The Missions of Alta California 115 ceived every year two changes of under-clothing, a smock, and a new gown. The Indians of Cahfornia were not the sturdy warlike race of the eastern side of the continent, nor did they possess the intelligence or partial civilization of the natives of the tableland of Mexico. They were originally of low in- telligence and brutish habits. Besides what they obtained from fishing and hunting — in which they do not appear to have been specially dexterous — their food consisted largely of acorns, pine nuts, and the like, and their cloth- ing was practically nil. Though neither as subtle nor as fierce as the Iroquois, Algonquins, and Hurons of Can- ada, with whom Parkman's brilliant pages have made us familiar, they were not wanting in cunning, treachery, or ferocity, and on more than one occasion the missionaries sealed their faith with their blood — a sacrifice from which, to their honor be it said, the Franciscans never flinched, any more than the followers of Ignatius. As conversions r" m a d e progress among the na- tives, and the young people, in- structed fro m their childhood, came to maturity, they were taught various industries, be- sides farming. Ordinary smith's and carpenter's work they learned to do fairly well; their saddlery was of a superior sort, and is still sought for. As weavers, tailors, and shoe- makers they would not perhaps have obtained recognition in Paris, London, or New York, but they made service- able blankets, scrapes, cloth, and shoes, and I have seen San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. ii6 A New Nation Mission of San Miguel, San Luis Obispo County. creditable specimens of their work in silver. Domestic animals were introduced and they increased with aston- ishing rapidity, and in the care and management of them the Indians became very dexterous and serviceable — in fact, some of the most skilful horsemen in the world. Hides, tallow, grain, wine, and oil were sold to ships visiting the coast. From the proceeds the friars dis- tributed to the Indians handkerchiefs, clothing, tobacco, rosaries, trinkets, etc., and employed the surplus profits in the embellishment of the churches, the purchase of musical instruments, pictures, ornaments for the altar, etc. Where lands were found suitable for the purpose the fathers es- tablished outlying farms as appurtenances of the particular Mission on which they were made to depend. At these were gathered considerable colonies of civilized Indians selected from the most reliable. Besides instructing the natives and incidentally fulfilling the duties of parochial clergy, the Missions extended a boun- tiful hospitality to all travelers and wayfarers. Planted at intervals of about a day's journey, on the natural route of travel along the coast, they became the usual resting-place The Missions of Alta California 117 for all travelers in either direction. Horses were the only means of locomotion, and at the end of his hard day's ride the weary traveler stopped at the door of the Mission building as naturally, and with as little thought of intru- sion, as one might now at a public hotel. Throwing his rein to an Indian arricro, he was received by the missionary priest, or in his absence by the sacristan, with the patri- archal hospitality that Abraham extended to Lot. A bath was provided, followed by a plentiful meal and a com- fortable bed. He was at liberty to stay as long as his con- venience required, and on leaving was provided with a fresh horse and directions, or, if needed, a guide, for his further jour- ney. Perhaps it is a tradition from these early days, but travelers still speak kindly of the hospitality of Cali- fornia. The Missions in this State were in all twenty-one. They may be said to have attained their maximum of pros- perity during the first quarter of the present century. But the increase of white settlers, bringing with them the wants, ambi- tions, and freedom of modern life, was incompatible with the continued suc- cess of institutions based, as the Mis- sions were, on paternal authority. The Indians were infants in all respects except age and capacity for evil ; and the settlers were subject to no re- I" ^he garden of the •' _ _ _ Santa Barbara Mis- straints except those of civil authority, sion, California. ii8 A New Nation Cloisters and bell, San Fernando. which was of the weakest kind. Contact and inter- course with them corrupted the Indians and relaxed the bonds of discipHne among them. Moreover the broad acres and the vast herds of the Missions excited the cu- pidity of the settlers, who did not regard the property of the friars and Indians in the same light as that of white people. Under these influences the ^^lexican con- gress, in 1833. passed a law for secularizing the ^lis- sions, converting them into parishes, replacing the mis- sionary priests by curates, and emancipating the Indians from their pupilage to the Church. Administrators were to be appointed for the temporalities of the ^Missions, the proceeds of which, after a small allowance for the main- tenance of the priest and the charges of public worship, were to be applied to public purposes. The ruin of the Missions was completed by the American conquest. The few remaining Indians were speedily driven or enticed away, for the rough frontiersmen who came over the plains knew nothing of missionary friars or civilized Indians ; they came here to scjuat on public land and respected no possession beyond 160 acres, and that only in the hands of one familiar with the English language and modern weapons. None of the establishments retains its original character. \\'here population has grown up around the site, as at Santa Clara, San Francisco, and San The Missions of Alta California 119 Rafael, they became parish churches. At other places squatters took possession of them, extruding priests and major-domo impartially, and in more than one case even the churches were sacrilegiously degraded to the use of stables and the like. In others many parts of the build- ings were demolished for the sake of the timber, tiles, and other building material they afforded. The most extensive of the old establishments was that of San Luis Rey. I visited it with a companion in the summer of 1862. The interior court, once a garden, bright with flowers and the lustrous leaves of the orange and lemon tree, was rank with weeds and spontaneous vegetation; the fountain was f^S^: lit J^^^ ' -:!?■' The Mission of San Luis Rey, San Diego County. dried up, and the walls which confined its basin split by the swelling roots of neglected and overgrown trees. Great spider webs hung from the columns of the corridor, and the stillness was broken only by the drowsy hum of dragon- flies and humming-birds. I entered the venerable old church, and while endeavoring to accustom my eyes to the dim, uncertain light which shrouded its interior I was dis- 120 A New Nation turbed by the startled cry and hasty flight of an enormous owl, which left its perch over where the high altar had stood and rustled over to a window at the opposite end. The Mission gardens, particularly that in front of the main building, retained many traces of former beauty. But the hedgerows, once carefully trimmed, now grown rank and wild ; the old rustic seats crumbling to decay ; the vines and fruit trees, which for want of pruning had ceased to produce; and the garden flowers growing neglectedly — all told of decay and ruin. From the remains of the fountain two clear streams of water still issued, and from the little rivulet they formed, bordered with cress as green as an emerald, a lazy fish looked deliberately up at me without moving — so unaccustomed to man as not to fear him. Just before the American conquest this Mission had harbored an industrious Indian population of several thou- sand. It had been occupied by our troops as a military post during the Mexican War and for some time after its close. When it ceased to be so used the Government, as I have heard General Beale say, caused an estimate to be made of the expense of repairing and restoring it to its former condition. The figures were two millions of dol- Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County. The Missions of Alta California 121 lars, and the project of repairing was, of course, given over. It stands there to-day, magnificent, even in its ruins, a monument of the piety, devotion, industry, and disinter- M.Sta.Cli >JVI .d S.C'wlosI a.Monte Key oM.S. Louis Pta.a la Concep'if' Pta.d Pedernales . Pres'o.a Bart'a '°--, M.S. Buenaventura '^^^ S''^*2£^^«\. >. oM.S.GaL'l. ^ S.Pedroy S.Palj'o La Pur'ma Cou'oa Map of the Coast Line, Drawn in 1787. estedness of the venerahle monks v^ho wear the habit and cord of St. Francis, and who were the first colonists of Alta California. PIONEER SPANISH FAMILIES IN CALIFORNIA By Charles Howard Shinn WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE VALLEJOS The most attractive literary material left in California is to be found in the recollections and traditions of de- scendants of the pioneer Spanish families. But these men and women must be met with sympathy for their misfor- tunes, and with an unfeigned interest in the old ranch and Mission days. As soon as their confidence is fairly won they tell all they know, with almost childlike eagerness to help in the restoration of the past.' One immediately ob- serves the great stress laid upon family connections, the pleasure taken in stories of former times, and the especial reverence for the founders of the province, the governors and other officials, and the heads of the Missions. Pol- itics, though of course on an extremely small scale, occu- pies a large part of the recollections of the older men, and the animosities of the petty revolutions of half a century ago, of the years just before the American conquest, and of the conquest itself, still divide families from each other. It is remarkable how many of the daughters of the best families of the old California towns married Americans and Englishmen of standing. In the Carrillo family four daughters married foreigners ; the Ortegas, Noriegas, and many others showed a similar record. The grace, beauty, and modesty of the women of the time were the admira- 122 Pioneer Spanish Families 123 tion of every visitor. The freedom from care, the out- door life and the constant exercise, and the perfect climate of California had re-created the Andaliisian type of loveli- ness. In the Ortega family, for instance, the women,, who all had brown hair and eyes and were of pure Castilian stock, were so renowned for their beauty that their fame extended to the city of Mexico, and General Ramirez came from there with letters of introduction to win a daughter of the Ortegas. A multitude of stories of the social life of the Spanish period might be told here, but it is sufficient to give the outline as told by the descendants of those old families. Each town on the coast was the center of the hide and tal- low trade for a hundred miles or more. The low adobe stores there held piles of costly and beautiful goods in the days of which Farnham and Dana wrote — the days when the great cattle princes came from their ranches to hold festival. The young ■^'^'"^ , cavaliers rode in on fiery but well-trained and gaily capari- soned horses, and all the wonderful feats of horsemanship of as fine a race of ri- ders as the world has ever seen were per- formed daily on mesa and sea-beach and plaza. But the home life of these -f~of great families was Early Spanish Don, in Old Spanish riding dress. 124 A New Nation simplicity itself. In many a Spanish house there was no fireplace, window, or chimney. The fire for cooking was built on a clay floor, partly roofed, outside of the main building. The household utensils were few — a copper or iron kettle, a slab of rock on which to pound corn or wheat, a soapstone griddle for the tortillas. Dishes, table- ware, and furniture came slowly, and were of the most simple description. For years a raw hide stretched on the floor with a blanket spread over it formed the usual bed in early California. Everything was kept exquisitely clean, and though the Spanish families learned to spend more on their houses and belongings, they seemed to look upon such things as only affording opportunities for a more generous hospitality. In the old days there was not a hotel in California, and it was considered a grievous offense even for a stranger, much more for a friend, to pass by a ranch without stop- ping. Fresh horses were always furnished, and in many cases on record when strangers appeared to need financial help a pile of uncounted silver was left in the sleeping apart- ment, and they were given to understand that they were to take all they needed. This money was covered with a cloth, and it was a point of honor not to count it before- hand nor afterwards. It was "guest silver," and the cus- tom continued until its abuse by travelers compelled the native Calif ornians to abandon it. Among themselves no one was ever allowed to suffer or struggle for lack of help. The late Dr. Nicholas Den, of Santa Barbara, who mar- ried into the Ortega family, once needed money to carry through a speculation, and thought of going to Los Angeles to borrow it. Old Father Narciso, hearing of the matter, sent his Indian boy to him with a " cora," or four-gallon Pioneer Spanish Families 125 The Camulos Ranch, — the scene of H. H.'s " Ramona." tule basket, full of gold, and the message that he ought to come to his priest whenever he needed help. The collections of " Documents relating to the History of California " made by General Vallejo and his brother Don J. J. Vallejo, and now in the Bancroft library, and the very graphic and careful series of manuscript notes and memoranda by General Vallejo, entitled " Historia de California," all cast light upon the social and economic conditions in these Arcadian days. A very large number of the old families, such as the Castros, Picos, Arces, and Peraltas, and many of the Americans who had married native Californians, furnished manuscripts, letters, and various documents of permanent value. In fact it may be doubted if the pioneer period of any other American State has had a more complete mass of original authoritative data made ready for the historian's use. Much still re- mains to be collected from first hands, and many minor historical questions will probably be solved by documents 126 A New Nation An early mansion. still held by the nati\e Californian families, who treasure every scrap of written paper. The link between the old and the new, between the quiet and happy pastoral age of the beginning of the nineteenth century and the age of American growth and change that followed fast on the conquest, was that remarkable man. General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, whose children, as he once told me, " were born under three administrations — Spanish, Mexican, and American." At the age of sixteen he was an ofificer in the army and the private secretary of the governor of California. In 1829, when only twenty- one, he became lieutenant-commander of the northern de- partment, which included all the country north of Santa Cruz, and made his headquarters at the presidio. Here he organized the first town go\'ernment of Yerba Buena. and for five years exercised both civil and military functions there. The Solis rebellion against Governor Echeandia, who had removed the seat of government from Monterey to San Diego, began in the fall of 1829, and Vallejo aided in the defeat of the insurgents at Santa Barbara. He was Pioneer Spanish Families 127 a member of the territorial deputation in 1831, and brought articles of impeachment against Governor Victoria, who was defeated and driven from California in the revo- lution which followed. The next year General Vallejo married Sefiorita Francisca Benicia Carrillo, by whom he had seventeen children, nine of whom are now living. By 1840 the young lieutenant had reached the rank of lieutenant-general, and was the one man in California to whom the entire province turned with perfect confidence in every emergency. When Gutierrez was deposed Val- lejo took control of affairs, and he made his nephew Al- varado civil governor, retaining military control himself. Vallejo then founded the town of Sonoma, making it his military headquarters, and spent more than a quarter of a Washing day on a ranch. 128 A New Nation million dollars there. He sent to Mexico for a printing press and type, set up with his own hands his orders and proclamations, and printed and bound several pamphlets. This was in 1839. The famous Zamorano press of Mon- terey, which began work in November, 1834, with carnival ball invitations, had printed the " Catecismo " and many public documents, which are much prized by collectors. Paper was so scarce that the proof-sheets and defective prints were saved and used for fly-leaves of the curious little arisincticas and other text-books that were issued a few years later for the schools of the province. One has to go back to the days of the famous Spanish " marches," or frontier towns built and defended in Spain's heroic age by her proudest knights, to find a fit parallel in history to the position held by General Vallejo during the closing years of the Mexican rule in California. He had absolute sway for a hundred miles or more, and he " kept the border." His men rode on horseback to Monterey and to Captain Sutter's fort on the Sacramento, bringing him An adobe in Sonoma. Pioneer Spanish Families 129 news and carrying his letters. Spanish families colonized the fertile valleys under his protection, and Indians came and built in the shadows of the Sonoma Mission. He Chariot, early in Nineteenth Century. owned, as he believed by unassailable title, the largest and finest ranch in the province, and he dispensed a hospitality so generous and universal that it was adniired and extolled even among the old Spanish families. J. Quinn Thorn- ton, who visited the coast in 1848 and published his ex- periences, says: "Governor-General Vallejo owns 1,000 horses that are broken to the saddle and bridle, and 9,000 'that are not broken. Broken horses readily bring one hundred dollars apiece, but the unbroken ones can be pur- chased for a trivial sum." More and more in the closing years of the epoch and the days of the conquest General Vallejo became the representative man of his people, and so he has received, among many of the old families, the reproachful name of a traitor to California and to his na- tion. The quiet intensity of this bitterness, even to-day, is a startling thing. I have seen men of pure blood, famous in provincial history, leave the room at the name of Val- lejo. OSCEOLA By Major-general O. O. Howard I suspect " Uncle Sam " was born July 4th, 1776. If so, he was still a young man, only twenty-eight years old, when Osceola came into the world. The Red Stick tribe of the Creek Indians had a camp on the bank of the Chattahoochee. The water of this river is colored by the roots of trees, shrubs, and vines which grow along its sluggish cur- rent, and SO' it is very black. Osce- ola's mother, living near this dark river, named her baby As-sa-he-ola — black water. Spanish tongues by and by shortened it to the beautiful and Latinlike name of Osceola. Osceola's mother was the daughter of a Creek Indian chieftain. His father is said to have been an Indian trader born in England. There were three children, two girls and the boy. Osceola's mother, the proud and high-tempered Indian princess, became angry for some rea- son and taking her son went into the wilderness of southern Georgia and joined her own people, while the father took his two daughters and passed over to the Far West. The princess taught Osceola both English and her own language, but she had come to hate the white people and did not fail to bring up her son with the same unkind feelings. 130 Osceola 131 After a time troubles arose between our white settlers and the Creek Indians in Georgia, and Uncle Sam sent Gen- eral Jackson with an army to drive the Indians further south. At this time Osceola was only fourteen years old; yet he was so smart and so fierce that he became a leader of his people. Under him they fought hard, and were driven at last to the middle of Florida, where, not far from one of Uncle Sam's stockades, called Fort King, the tribe joined the Seminole Indians, who lived there. These Florida Indians, the Seminoles, w^ere really a part of the Creek nation and spoke almost the same language. They soon became fond of Osceola, and as their head chief, Micanopy, was very old, in all fighting Osceola became the real leader. He had two underchiefs, one named Jumper and the other Alligator. They were as fierce and hated the white people as much as he did, and enjoyed doing all he told them to do. As Osceola grew older he had a fine, manly bearing and a deep, soft, musical voice. He quickly learned a new language, and was very skilful in the use of the bow, though he liked better the white man's rifle with powder and ball. It is said he always hit what he aimed at. For fifteen years Osceola went from tribe to tribe and from chief to chief all over Florida and other States of the South, wherever he could find Indians. He always spoke against the white people, saying they were two-faced and would not treat the Indians with justice and mercy. I be- lieve that Uncle Sam really had a good feeling for his red children; but the white people were very few in Florida, and they were afraid of the Indians and wanted to send them away to the West. So they asked Uncle Sam to send his officers and agents to make a bargain with the redmen. 132 A New Nation This bargain came about and was called the " Treaty of Payne's Landing." It was signed at Payne's Landing on the Ocklawaha River, May 9, 1832, by some of the Indian chiefs and by Uncle Sam's white officers and agents. It was agreed that all the Indians were to go far away beyond the Mississippi River before the end of the year, and that Uncle Sam should give them $3,(X)0 each year and other things which were written in the treaty. Only a few of the Indians really agreed to go, and Osceola, now twenty- eight years old, was very much against giving away the Seminole country. He aroused the whole nation, nine- tenths of the head men were with him, and he gathered good warriors, divided them into companies and drilled them. Osceola called an Indian assembly, and rising to his full height took a strong bow in his right hand and an ar- row in his left, and said, " I will not sign a treaty to give away the Indians' land, and I will kill the chiefs or any fol- lowers who sign it." Two years passed, and then some Seminole chieftains, who had gone beyond the Mississippi, returned. They re- ported against the removal of the Indians, and the Indian Agent called a meeting of well-known Indians and white men to talk it over. The old chief, Micanopy, spoke for the Indians, but Osceola sat near and whispered into his ear what to answer the Indian Agent. Micanopy was old and wanted peace. He, Jumper, Alligator, and others said they never meant to sign away their land, but only agreed to send some men to look over the new country before they decided what to do. The meeting became very excited, and at last Osceola sprang to his feet and defied the agent, say- ing in a taunting manner, " Neither I nor my warriors care if we never receive another dollar from the Great Osceola 133 Father." The agent, spreading the treaty upon the table, remonstrated with Osceola, but the fierce chief drew his long knife from its sheath and cried: " The only treaty I Osceola. will execute is with this," and he drove the knife through and through the paper into the table. Soon after this Osceola had an interview with Captain Ming of the Coast Survey near Fort King, but he declined 134 ^ ISltw Nation every civility and said, " I will not break bread with a white man." A formal council was arranged, but here Osceola in a threatening manner seized a surveyor's chain and declared in a loud voice, "If you cross my land I will break this chain into as many pieces as there are links in it, and then throw the pieces so far you can never get them together again." The Indian Agent, in desperation, sent for Osceola and ordered him to sign the papers for trans- porting the Indians, but he answered, " I will not." When told that General Jackson, the President, would soon teach him better, Osceola replied, " I care no more for Jackson than for you." The Indian Agent knowing that Osceola stirred up his people, had him put in prison at the fort, but he escaped by making promises to his guards. As soon as he was free again he began to get his warriors ready for battle. He went from place to place very fast, hardly stopping for food, till he had a large number of braves gathered near Fort King. Their knives were kept sharp, but sheathed, and rifles were kept on hand with enough powder and balls. Five Indians who went to get food were caught and publicly whipped. Soon after, an Indian was killed ; then three white men were wounded and a white mail-carrier killed. The chief, Emaltha, who was friendly to the treaty, was assassinated. The war had begun. It was now 1836 and Osceola was thirty years old. Hearing that Major Dade, with no officers and men, was to pass along the military road from Fort Brooke at Tampa Bay, Osceola send Micanopy and Jumper with 800 of his warriors to wait in ambush for them. It was so well ar- ranged that the whole command except three men were killed. These three men escaped to Tampa and told the Osceola 135 terrible story. Osceola had himself remained with a small force near Fort King, for he wished to kill the Indian Agent, his long-time enemy. Lieutenant Smith and the agent were walking quietly toward the sutler's shop, a half mile from the stockade, when a number of Indians set upon them and both were killed. The agent was pierced by fourteen bul- lets and the lieutenant by five. The sutler and four others were killed, and the store and outbuildings burned. The fire gave the first alarm at the fort. In the meantime, Osceola's warriors under Micanopy and Jumper had been so prompt that the first battle was over before their leader joined them. Then the dreadful war went on. Osceola met General Clinch with 1,000 regular soldiers at the cross- ing of the Withlacoochee River. There were not a thou- sand Indians, but Osceola brought them into battle like an experienced general. His men followed his own brave example and fought with tiger-like ferocity. Osceola is said to have slain forty of our officers and men with his own hand. The Indians fought till their ammunition was gone, and then with bows and arrows and knives. After this, Osceola went through many battles, but he . never despaired and never surrendered till the fearful battle came when the Indians were defeated by General Taylor. Then the waters ran with the blood of Uncle Sam's quarrel- ing children and Osceola's men were scattered to the four winds. Even then Osceola would not have been captured but for an act of treachery. He was asked to come to a conference at a camp not far from St. Augustine. He came with some of his warriors, trusting to the word of the commander, but he and his companions were at once surrounded and carried to St. Augustine as prisoners of war. Our officers said it was right to do this because He drove his knife through and through the paper. Osceola 137 Osceola had not kept his promises in peace or war, but we do not like to think that the officers and agents of Uncle Sam broke their word, even if an Indian chief did not keep his. Though Osceola fought in the Indian way, and hated the treatment that the white people gave the Indians, still, we know he did not hate the white women and children, and constantly told his warriors to treat women and children with kindness. After he was taken to St. Augustine he was in a sad con- dition. His spirit was broken by defeat and imprisonment, and he grew feeble as he realized there was no escape. When he was taken to Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor he knew that he should never see his own land again. Then he refused food, would see no visitors, and died, broken-hearted, after a short illness, aged thirty-three. He was a brave enemy, and respected as he had been by the Indian nation, his manly nature was too proud to be long under the control of the white man. THE EARLY LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER By John Bach McMaster Webster's father Ebenezer Webster selected Stevenstown as his future home, took up land, and built a log cabin, to which, a year later, he brought a wife. The town was then on the very edge of the frontier, and as his cabin was farther north than any other, not a habitation save those of the red man lay between him and Canada. In this wilderness home five children were born before the mother died, after ten years of wedded life, and the father brought to it as his second wife Abigail Eastman. Wringing a livelihood from such a soil in such a climate was hard enough at any time, but the task was now made more difficult still by the opening of the long struggle be- tween the colonies and the mother-country, and the constant demand on his time for services, both civil and military. Now we see him, after the fights at Concord and Lexing- ton, hurrying at the head of his company to join the forces around Boston ; now home again to serve as delegate to the convention which framed the first constitution of New Hampshire. Now we see him, a true minuteman, resign- ing his captaincy and hastening to serve under Washington, in an hour of dire need at W'hite Plains; then home again to become a member of a committee to prevent forestalling and to regulate the prices of commodities. Now we be- 138 The Early Life of Daniel Webster 139 hold him at the head of seventy men pushing through the wilderness for the relief of Ticonderoga; now returning when he hears of the evacuation of the fort, and reaching home just in time to lead back another band that fought gallantly at Bennington. Once again at home we find him at the head of more committees to regulate prices, to enlist the town's quota for the Continental army, and finally in command of four companies raised to aid in the defense of West Point. Public services of such various sorts bespeak a man with a will not easily bent, with a capacity to do equal to any emergency, with a patriotism rising above all consid- erations of self; a man courageous, resourceful, self-reliant, and commanding the entire confidence and respect of his fellows. By the time Cornwallis surrendered and the fighting ended, three more children had been added to the little flock. The log cabin had now become too small, and a farm- house was built near by. It was the typical New England farm-house of the day — one story high, clapboarded, with the chimney in the center, the door in the middle of the south side, four rooms on the ground floor, and a lean-to in the rear for a kitchen; and in this house, on January 18, 1782, another son was born, and named Daniel. When the child was a year and more old the parents moved to the banks of the Merrimac, to Elms Farm, a place of some local interest, for on it, within a cabin whose site was plainly visible in Webster's day, had been per- petrated one of the many Indian massacres that make up so much of frontier history, and near this had stood one of the last of the forts built to protect the inhabitants of Salisbury and the neighboring towns against the savages. 140 A New Nation THE BOY WEBSTER As the boy grew in years and stature his life was power- fully affected by the facts that he was the youngest son and ninth child in a family of ten ; that his health was far from good; that he showed tastes and mental traits that stood out in marked contrast with those of his brothers and sis- ters ; and that he was, from infancy, the pet of the family. Such daily work as a farmer's lad was then made to do was not for him. Yet he was expected to do something, and might have been seen barefooted, in frock and trousers, astride of the horse that dragged the plow between the rows of corn, or raking hay, or binding the wheat the reapers cut, or following the cows to pasture in the morning and home again at night, or tending logs in his father's sawmill. When such work was to be done it was his custom to take a book along, set the log, hoist the gates, and while the saw passed slowly through the tree-trunk, an operation which, in those days, consumed some twenty minutes, he would set- tle himself comfortably and read. He was taught to read, he tells us, by his mother and sister at so early an age that he never knew the time when he could not peruse the Bible with ease. With this humble beginning, his further education was intrusted to the village schoolmaster. Most parents were then content to send their boys and girls when school was kept in the house nearest to their homes. But the father of Daniel was determined to give his son the best education the land afforded, so he was made to follow the master from place to place. When school was held in the middle house, but a few miles off, he walked to and fro each day; when at the western end of The Early Life of Daniel Webster 141 the district, Daniel was boarded out in some family near by. When no schooling was to be had the boy roamed the woods and fields with a rough old British sailor who taught him to row and to fish, and filled his head with stories of bloody fights and strange adventures on land and sea. In 1 79 1, when Daniel had , . . Daniel Webster, just turned nme, a new honor which deeply affected his later career came to his father. The many evidences of confidence and esteem a grateful community had bestowed on Ebenezer Webster in the dark days of the Revolution did not cease with the war. The leader in strife remained a leader in peace, was sent year after year first to one and then to the other branch of the Assembly, was a delegate to the convention which ratified the Federal Constitution, and finally, in 1791, was placed on the bench of the Court of Common Pleas for the county in which he resided. These courts were composed of a presid- ing judge, always an able lawyer, and two side justices, usually laymen of hard common sense and sterling integrity ; and it was to one of these side justiceships that Ebenezer Webster was appointed. The office was one of honor and dignity, and carried with it an annual salary of several hundred dollars, just enough to enable the father to go on with his long-meditated plan for the education of Daniel. Of his five sons, Ebenezer, David, and Joseph had grown to manhood, were settled in life, and long past the school age. To educate the two remaining, Ezekiel and Daniel, 142 A New Nation was beyond his means. But if his longing to see at least one son rise above the humble calling of a farmer was to be gratified, it must be one of these, and to choose which cost the father a bitter struggle. He met it with the unfaltering courage which marked the man, made his decision, and one day in 1795 announced his determination. " On a hot day in July," said Webster, describing the scene many years later, '' it must have been in one of the last years of Wash- ington's administration, I was making hay with my father, just where I now see a remaining elm-tree. About the mid- dle of the forenoon the Hon. Abiel Foster, M. C. who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the house and came into the field to see my father. When he was gone my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the elm on a haycock. He said : ' My son, that is a worthy man ; he is a member of Con- gress; he goes to Philadelphia and gets six dollars a day, while I toil here. It is because he had an education which I never had. If I had had his education I should have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it as it was. But I missed it, and now I must work here.' ' My dear father,' said I, ' you shall not work ; brother and I will work for you, and we will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.' And I remember to have cried, and I cry now at the recollection. ' My child,' said he, 'it is of no importance to me. I now live but for my children. I could not give your elder brothers the advantages of knowl- edge, but I can do something for you. Exert yourself, im- prove your opportunities, learn, learn, and when I am gone you will not need to go through the hardships which I have undergone, and which have made me an old man before my time.' " The Early Life of Daniel Webster 143 EDUCATION Almost a year passed, however, before the plan so long cherished was fairly started, and Daniel, dressed in a brand- new home-made suit and astride a side-saddle, rode with his father to Exeter to be entered at the famous academy founded by John Phillips. The principal then and forty years thereafter was Dr. Benjamin Abbot, one of the great- est teachers our country has yet produced. As the doctor was ill, the duty of examining the new pupil fell to Joseph S. Buckminster, then an usher at the academy, but destined to influence strongly the religious life of New England. It was the custom of the doctor, we are told, to conduct the examination of applicants with pompous ceremony, and that, imitating him, young Buckminster summoned Webster to his presence, put on his hat, and said, " Well, sir, what is your age ? " " Fourteen," was the reply. " Take this Bible, my lad, and read that chapter." The passage given him was St. Luke's dramatic description of the conspiring of Judas with the chief priests and scribes, of the Last Supper, of the betrayal by Judas, of the three denials of Peter, and of the scene in the house of the high priest. But young Webster was equal to the test, and read the whole passage to the end in a voice and with a fervor such as Master Buck- minster had never listened to before. " Young man," said he, " you are qualified to enter this institution," and no more questions were put by him. The voice and manner so famous in later life were even then strikingly manifest. But one other gift of nature still lay dormant — he could not declaim. Long after he had become the greatest orator of the day he said to a friend: " I could not speak before the school. Many a piece did I commit to memory and re- 144 A New Nation hearse in my room over and over again, but when the day came, and the schoohnaster called my name, and I saw all eyes turned upon my seat, I could not raise myself from it. When the occasion was over I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification." The Second Academy building,' Phillips Exeter Academy, as it stood when attended by Daniel Webster in 1706. In August, 1797, Webster became a freshman in Dart- mouth College, more through the influence of Trustee Wood than by merit. He had now reached a turning-point in his career. Save during the nine months spent at Phillips Exeter, he had never been so far from home, had never been so completely thrown on his own resources, nor brought in close contact with so many young men of his own age and generation. He was free to make of himself what he pleased, and acted accordingly following the path of least resistance. Greek and mathematics he disliked and shunned ; but he read widely in English literature and in history, acquired a familiarity with Latin and with Latin authors, never forgot anything once acquired, was always The Early Life of Daniel Webster 145 able to display his knowledge to the best advantage, was in no sense a student or a scholar, but became the best-in- formed man in college, and impressed all who met him as a youth of uncommon parts, with promise of being a great man. " So much as I read," says he, " I made my own. When a half-hour, or one hour at most, had elapsed, I closed my book, and thought over what I had read. If there was anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I endeavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and commonly could effect my object. Then if, in debate or conversation afterward, any subject came up on which I had read something, I could talk very easily so far as I had read, and there I was very careful to stop." Webster's first fourth-of-july address When the people of Hanover were casting about for an orator to speak to them on the Fourth of July, 1800, they turned with one accord to young Webster. Judged by the side of his later efforts, the oration de- livered on that day was indeed a weak and school-boy pro- duction. Yet it is not beneath the vast mass of patriotic speeches to which our forefathers gladly listened, on fast- days and Thanksgiving days, on the 22d of every February and the 4th of every July, and it richly deserved the honor of publication. Love of country, devotion to the Union, the grandeur of the Constitution, and the blessings of a free government ad- ministered by the people, made his theme. No question of State rights troubled him. " In the adoption of our present systems of jurisprudence," said he, " we see the powers nec- essary for government voluntarily flowing from the people, their only origin, and directed to the public good, their only 146 A New Nation proper object." It was the people of these States " who engaged in the transaction which is undoubtedly the greatest approach toward human perfection the political world ever yet witnessed, and which, perhaps, will forever stand in the history of mankind without a parallel." This was rank federalism; but that the lad should be a Federalist was inevitable. He had been reared at the knee of a man who had fought and toiled and spent his sub- stance in the struggle for independence, who followed the leadership of Washington in peace with the same unfalter- ing loyalty that he had followed it in war, and had received from his father a political creed of no uncertain kind. Since coming to years of discretion nothing had occurred to weaken, but much to strengthen, the belief so inherited. He had seen a foreign power meddling in our domestic af- fairs, had read the letter in which Adet threatened the ven- geance of France if Mr. Jefferson were not elected, and had since beheld that insolent threat made good. He had seen our minister to the French republic rejected, the X. Y. Z. commissioners insulted, and the whole country roused to indignation and ring- ing with the cry: "■ Millions for de- fense, but not a cent for tribute." He had seen a provisional army raised and Washington put in command ; he had seen the young men Webster's House," Dartmouth i^oiicge, associate for defense, where Daniel Webster roomed when , , - , a student. 'iiid the old men once ■ ^^^■■in ir<^ ■ ■t'^'xw'y YfiiB [ ' R '•^jA ■s: '^af 1 i ^gf^M BIbhI Hj mM 1 ^^fl^^^^H HB 1 ^**WS5S ■'•'*P W^ ^1 ^^^ Jl The Early Life of Daniel Webster 147 again mount the black cockade of the Revo- hition, as an open de- fiance to those who, to, their shame, wore the tricolor of France ; he had seen seaport after seaport arm and equip a vessel of war, and had beheld the little navy so created triumph over every foe and bring France at last to the light of reason. All these things, in his opinion, took place because a large part of his countrymen had been deaf to the advice of Wash- ington, had quit their own to stand on foreign ground, and had formed in America a party warmly devoted to France. " But why," he asked, " shall every quarrel on the other side of the Atlantic interest us in its issue? Why shall the rise or depression of every party there produce here a correspond- Daniel Webster's house in Portsmouth, N. H. ing vibration ? Was this continent designed as a mere satel- lite to the other? The natural superiority of America clearly indicates that it was designed to be inhabited by a nobler race of men, possessing a superior form of gov- ernment, superior patriotism, superior talents, and su- perior virtues. Let, then, the nations of the East muster their strength in destroying each other. Let them aspire to conquest and contend for dominion till their continent is deluged in blood. But let none, however elated by victory, however proud of triumph, ever presume to intrude on the neutral position assumed by our country." A little later these ideas found expression in the Monroe Doctrine. WEBSTER AS THE DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION By John Bach McMaster The decision of Webster to remain in the Senate brought him to another turning-point in his poHtical career, and he went back to begin a new contest with Calhoun for the preservation of the Union. The first struggle arose over the tariff, and ended in nullification. The second began over slavery, and led to secession. Mr. Benton is author- ity for the statement that when Calhoun went back to his home in the spring of 1833, disappointed and downhearted at the slight support the South had given to the act of nul- lification, he told his friends that the South could never be united against the North on the question of the tariff, and that the basis of Southern union must henceforth be the questions that sprang from slavery. Certain it is that by 1833 the work of the abolitionists and antislavery people began to tell. It was in 1831 that the first number of the Liberator appeared, and the State of Georgia offered five thousand dollars to any one who would kidnap Garrison and bring him to the State. It was in 1833 that the Amer- icafi Antislavery Society was founded, and the Telegraph, a nullification journal published at Washington, flatly charged the people of the North with a deliberate purpose to destroy slavery in the South. Twenty newspapers in twenty different parts of the North and the South at once 148 The Defender of the Constitution 149 made answer, denied the charge, and accused Calhoun and the Nullifiers of again attempting to wreck the Union. " His object," said one, " is to fan the flame of discord and separate the South from the North. Mr. Calhoun has been defeated in his ambitious project of reaching the Presidency. He would now gladly ruin the fair fabric of the United States that he might become the chief of a Southern confederacy. The tarifif was to have been the pretext for separation. This having failed, a new cause is sought in the question of slavery, and such miserable fa- natics as Garrison and wretched publications as the Liber- ator are quoted as evidence of the feeling of the people of the North." The fate of slavery was now clearly a iiational issue, and in the Niblo's Garden speech Webster placed himself on record. Later in the session, Webster came again to the defense of the Constitution, and in a speech, famous in its day, in which he reviewed the political conduct of Calhoun since 1833, Webster charged him with a steady design to break up the Union. " The honorable member from South Car- olina," said he, " habitually indulges in charges of usurpa- tion and oppression against the Government of his coun- try. He daily denounces its important measures in the language in which our Revolutionary fathers spoke of the oppression of the mother-country. ... A principal object in his late political movement, the gentleman him- self tells us, was to unite the entire South; and against whom or against what does he wish to unite the entire South? ... I am where I ever have been, and ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the gen- eral Constitution, a platform broad enough and firm enough 150 A New Nation to uphold every interest of the whole country, I shall still be found." Calhoun replied with a review of Webster's conduct since he entered the House in 181 3; Webster an- swered with a like review of the behavior of Calhoun : and the two went their ways, the one to head the movement which ended in secession and civil war, the other to rouse that spirit of nationality which put down secession and pre- served the Union of the States. The Whig convention had not dared to frame a party platform; but the Democrats furnished one in the sneer that Harrison would be more at home in a log cabin guz- zling hard cider than seated in the White House ruling a nation. Save the little red school-house, nothing was dearer to the heart of the people than the log cabin, and no insult more galling could possibly have been uttered. That humble abode, with its puncheon floor, its mud-smeared sides, its latch-string, its window, where well-greased pa- per did duty for glass, had ever been, and was still, the symbol of American hardihood, and instantly became the true Whig watchword. On vacant lots in every city and town, on ten thousand village greens, the cabin, with a coon's skin on the wall, with the latch-string hanging out in token of welcome, and with a barrel of hard cider close be- side the door, became the Whig headquarters. Mounted on wheels and occupied by speakers, it was dragged from village to village. Log-cabin raisings, log-cabin medals, log-cabin badges, magazines, almanacs, song-books, pic- tures, were everywhere to be seen ; and into this wild cam- paign of song and laughter Webster entered with unwonted zeal. Though nobody wanted him to be President, the whole country seemed possessed to hear him speak. Count- less Tippecanoe clubs elected him a member; innumerable The Defender of the Constitution 151 " raisings " claimed his presence. New Hampshire ap- pealed to him as the State where he was born. The West clamored for him as the stanch friend of her interests. A score of towns wanted him as the orator for the Fourth of July. The candidate himself was 'not so eagerly sought. The election over and won, Harrison tendered the De- partment of State to Clay, and, when he refused, asked Webster to choose between the State Department and the Treasury. To this Webster replied : " The question of ac- cepting a seat in your cabinet, should it be tendered me, has naturally been the subject of my reflections and of consultations with friends. The result of these reflections and consultations has been that I should accept the ofiice of Secretary of State, should it be offered to me under cir- cumstances such as now exist." To this the President-elect answered : " I entirely ap- prove of your choice of the two tendered you " ; and on March 4, Webster, hax'ing resigned his seat in the Senate, became Secretary of State. Early in May the National Intelligencer announced that Daniel Webster had resigned the office of Secretary of State. For months past the newspapers had been assert- ing and then denying that he would surely leave the cab- inet ; but now, to the joy of the Locofocos and the Dem- ocrats, the report was true. Webster was now, for the first time in fifteen years, a private citizen. That he should ever again return to pub- lic life seemed far from likely. He had passed his six- tieth birthday, his private affairs were in disorder, and he was free to enjoy the delights of Marshfield, which was to him the dearest spot on earth. To Webster's plea that it was not important to the conn- 152 A New Nation try that he should return to public life the Whigs of Massa- chusetts would not listen, and on March 4, 1845, he once more took his seat in the Senate, as the successor of Rufus Choate, who was a native of Essex, Massachusetts, and a student at Dartmouth College when Webster delivered his great speech in the Dartmouth College case. We are told that Mr. Choate was so powerfully affected by the argu- ment that he determined to study law, a profession in which, in time, he won a reputation as an advocate second to none. The influence of Webster over Choate, thus early ac- quired, was never lost ; and in their later political careers the two men were closely allied. When Webster left the Senate in 1841, Choate became his successor; when Choate resigned in 1844, Webster in turn succeeded him; and in 1852 it was Choate who urged the nomination of Webster for the Presidency before the Whig National Convention at Baltimore. The annexation of Texas brought war with Mexico ; the victories of Taylor and Scott, Kearny and Stockton, brought a chance to secure more territory; fear that the new acquisition might be made slave soil called forth the Wilmot Proviso; and the great struggle for the rights of man was on once more. After the defeat of Clay in 1844, it did seem as if Web- ster's hour had really come, and that he was the only available leader the Whig party could offer for the Pres- idency in 1848. Clay, it is true, was never more idolized; but his enemies were many and active, his views on the ex- tension of slavery were opposed to the growing convic- tions of Northern Whigs, while even his warmest friends had grown very tired of following him always to defeat. The Defender of the Constitution 153 A new man was wanted ; might not Webster be that man ? His behef that slavery was a State institution and could not be meddled with by Congress made him acceptable to Southern Whigs. His services, his abilities, his devotion to the Constitution and the Union, were the admiration of Northern Whigs. His opposition to expansion, to the ac- quisition of more slave soil, might well bring to his sup- port thousands of old-line Whigs who had been driven by the conduct of Clay into the ranks of the Liberty party. But the prospect, fair as it was, proved a delusion. Web- ster did not possess one of the attributes of a popular leader. The very greatness of his abilities raised him far above the mass of men, and put him out of touch with them. He inspired awe, but not affection. No mortal man ever thought of coupling his name with any epithet of popular endearment. Jackson was " Old Hickory," " Old Roman " ; Harrison was " Old Tip " ; Clay was " Harry of the West," " the Mill-boy of the Slashes " ; and Taylor " Old Rough-and-Ready " : but the senator from Massachusetts was " the Hon. Daniel Webster " to his dy- ing day. Even the cartoonist could find no other name for him than " Black Dan." It was to " Rough-and-Ready," therefore, and not to Daniel Webster, that the Whig masses turned in 1848, when they were done with Clay. In the Senate were now brought together, for the last time, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, leaders of the old par- ties, and Jefferson Davis and Stephen A. Douglas, soon to head the wings of a hopelessly divided democracy. There, too, were Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward, destined to become chiefs of a party yet unformed; Hanni- bal Hamlin, the first Vice-President under Lincoln; Sam- uel Houston, who led the Texans on the field of San Ja- 154 ^ ^tw Nation cinto, and twice served as president of that republic; and Thomas Hart Benton, now about to close thirty years of continuous service in the Senate. To this distinguished body Clay returned fully deter- mined to take little part in its proceedings. He would support Whig measures, but would neither aid nor oppose the administration. He would be a calm looker-on, rarely speaking, and even then merely for the purpose of pouring oil on the troubled waters. But he had not been many days in Washington before he was convinced that the talk of disunion was serious, that the Union was really in dan- ger, that old associates were turning to him, and that he must again take his place as leader. During three weeks the House of Representatives wrangled and disputed over the choice of a Speaker, and this time was used by Clay to prepare a plan to serve as the basis of a compromise. By the middle of January, 1850, his work w-as ready, and one cold evening he called on Webster, and went over the scheme, and asked for aid. This was conditionally prom- ised, and a week later Clay unfolded his plan in a set of resolutions, and at the end of another week explained his purpose in a great speech delivered before a deeply inter- ested audience. A rumor that he would speak on a cer- tain day brought men and women from cities as far away as New York to swell the crowd that filled the Senate Chamber, choked every entrance, and stood in dense masses in the halls and passages. Fatigue and anxiety were telling on him. He could with difficulty climb the long flight of steps and make his way to his place on the floor. But the eager faces of the throng, the seriousness of the plea he was about to make, and the shouts of ap- plause that rose from floor and gallery when he stood up The Defender of the Constitution 155 to speak, and were taken up with yet greater vigor by the crowd without, gave him new strength. So wild was the cheering of those beyond the chamber doors, and so long did it continue, that he could not be heard in the room, and Exterior and interior of Webster's law office at Marshfield, Mass. the president was forced to order the hallways to be cleared. Again Clay spoke during two \ days, and on the second showed such signs of physical distress that senators repeatedly in- terrupted him with offers to adjourn. But he would not yield, and went on till he had finished. Clay having spoken, it was certain that Calhoun would follow, and letter after letter now came to Webster im- ploring him to raise his voice for the preservation of the Union, and speak as he had never done before. Appeals of this sort were quite unnecessary, for Web- 156 A New Nation ster was cautiously and deliberately deciding what was the wisest course to take. In a letter written as late as the middle of February he said : " I do not partake in any de- gree in those apprehensions which you say some of our friends entertain of the dissolution of the Union or the breaking up of the Government. There is no danger, be assured, and so assure our friends. I have, thus far, upon a good deal of reflection, thought it advisable for me to hold my peace. If a moment should come when it will be advisable that any temperate, national, and practical speech which I can make would be useful, I shall do the best I can. Let the North keep cool." Another week's reflection convinced him that a national speech must be made, and on the 226. of February he wrote the same friend : " As time goes on I will keep you advised by tele- graph, as well as I can, on what day I shall speak. As to what I shall say you can guess nearly as well as I can. I mean to make a Union speech, and discharge a clear con- science." His biographer assures us " there was but little preparation for it," and that " all that remains of such preparation is on two small scraps of paper." On the 4th of March, while Webster was still at work on his speech, Calhoun, then fast sinking into his grave, attended the Senate. He was far too feeble to bear the fatigue of speaking, so his argument was read, in the midst of profound silence, by Senator Mason of Virginia. The second of the great triumvirate having now been heard, it soon became noised abroad that Webster would reply on March 7, and on that day, accordingly, the floors, galleries, and ante-chambers of the Senate were so densely packed that it was with difficulty that the members reached their seats. Mr. Walker of Wisconsin had the floor to finish a The Defender of the Constitution 157 speech begun the day before; but when he rose and had looked about him, he said : " Mr. President, this vast audi- ence has not come together to hear me, and there is but one man, in my opinion, who can assemble such an audi- ence. They expect to hear him, and I feel it my duty, therefore, as it is my pleasure, to give the floor to the sen- ator from Massachusetts." Webster then rose, and after thanking the senator from Wisconsin, and Mr. Seward, the senator from New York, for their courtesy in yielding the floor, began that speech which he named " The Constitution and the Union," but which his countrymen have ever since called by the day of the month on which it was delivered. Addresses of approbation now came to him from citizens of Boston, of Newburyport, and of Medford, from the in- habitants of towns on the Kennebec River in Maine, and from innumerable places all over the South, the West, and the Middle States, coupled with calls for printed copies of the speech. By the end of March " one hundred and twenty thou- sand have gone off," and as the demand showed no decline, " I suppose that by the first day of May two hundred thou- sand will have been distributed from Washington." No speech ever delivered in the Senate of the United States produced such an effect on the country. Compro- misers, conservative men, business men with Southern connections, those willing to see the Union saved by any means, rallied to his support, and loaded him with unstinted praise. But the antislavery men, the abolitionists, the Free-soilers, and many Northern Whigs attacked him bit- terly. " Every drop of blood in that man's veins has eyes that look downward," said Emerson, after reading the 158 A New Nation speech. " Webster," said Sumner, " has placed himself in the dark list of apostates." In the opinion of hosts of his fellow-countrymen, he was indeed an apostate. He had changed his creed ; he had broken from his past ; he had deserted the cause of human liberty ; he had fallen from grace. When Whittier named him Ichabod, and mourned for him in verse as one dead, he did but express the feeling of half New England: Let not the land once prond of him Insult him now. Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Then, pay the reverence of the old days To his dead fame ; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame ! The purpose of Webster was not to put slavery in nor shut it out of the new Territories, nor make every man in the North a slave-catcher, nor bid for Southern support in the coming election. He sought a final and lasting set- tlement of a question which threatened the permanence of the Union and the Constitution, and Clay's " comprehen- sive scheme of adjustment," he believed, would effect this settlement. It was long the popular belief that disappointed ambi- The Defender of the Constitution 159 tion, chagrin over the loss of the Presidential nomination, was the cause of Webster's death; but that such was the case may well be doubted. He was now an old man, far on in his seventy-first year. His health had long been failing; his strong efforts in behalf of the compromise measures had impaired it still further; and his end was in- evitably near. That his great disappointment hastened the end is quite likely, for from the June day when the Balti- more convention adjourned he broke rapidly, and in the early morning of October 24, 1852, he died at Marshfield. Clay had preceded him by four months. The great triumvirate had now passed into history. Of these three men, Calhoun taught the most pernicious doc- trines ; Clay was the most popular leader ; Webster created the most enduring work. What John Marshall did on the Supreme Bench, Webster did in the forum. The decisions of the great judge were not read by the people. The speeches of Webster were everywhere read by the people, influenced them strongly, and inspired that great leader of the plain people, Abraham Lincoln. To Marshall, Web- ster, and Lincoln, more than to any other men, is due the belief now held by the great mass of our countrymen, not that the LTnited States are a league, but that the United States is a nation. OLD NEW YORK AND ITS BUILDINGS Richard Grant White Window in Wash ington Hotel, Num- ber I, Broadway. What were the houses and the streets of New York hke in 1830-1840? There are old prints enough to help out the recollection of a boy observer, who finds that after many years he can safely trust his observation and his memory. Many circumstances united to make that part of the town about the begin- ning of Broadway the chosen residence of persons of fortune and social distinc- tion. Three of these were of them- selves all-sufhcient : it was the oldest quarter; from the beginning it had been the place of res- idence of persons in authority; it was near the Battery, which very early in the history of New York became a de- lightful promenade. Considering the commercial character of the place, its rapid growth, and the great changes it underwent, the long period during which this quarter pre- served its distinction is remarkable. It was not until between 1835 and 1840, more than a century and a half after the neighborhood became " the court end of the town," that there was any 160 Door in old New York house. Old New York and Its Buildings 16 1 noteworthy modification of its character. Before that time, of necessity, elegant people began to live in other quarters; but this did not affect the status of the neighbor- hood of the Battery and the Bowling Green. Park Place, St. John's Square (between Hudson, Beach, Laight, and Varick streets), Bleecker street, and even Washington Square, had, before or then, become centers of fashion; but there was a clinging to the Battery. Even after the uptown movement began, which was about this time, peo- ple who were already housed near the Battery, or who could afford to get houses there, lingered lovingly around it. And well they might do so; for, except upon old Brooklyn Heights (and even then that was only " in 11 Number 7, State Street. l62 A New Nation St. John's, New York. Brooklyn " ), a place of city residence more delightful or more convenient could not be found. Within five or ten minutes' w^alk of Wall street and of South street (v^here the great mer- chants — real merchants, who traded in ships with Europe and China and the South — had their counting-houses), it was yet entirely re- moved from business ; and its surround- ings made mere -: living there a ' pleasure. State p- street, which is the eastern boun- dary of the Bat- tery, was unsur- passed, if it were ever equaled, as a place of town residence ; for livins: there was living on a park with a grand water view. The prospect from the windows and balconies of the old State street houses across the green-sward and through the elms of the Battery included the bay, with its islands and the shores of New Jersey. In summer, the western breezes blew upon these windows straight from the water. The sight here on spring and summer and autumn evenings, when splendid sunsets — common then, but rare now, because of changes in Old New York and Its Buildings 163 the surrounding country, which have affected the formation and the disposition of the clouds — made the firmament and the water blaze with gold and color, seemed sometimes in their gorgeousness almost to surpass imagination. It was matter of course that such a place should be chosen as the site of the homes of wealthy people. Of these houses, not a few are still standing. But how changed ! Close by the City Hall stands a building of architectural merit, — St. Paul's, one of the finest Wren churches now existing, if not the very finest. In all my t ^Jk^ ■^-1)' walks about London and through other cit- ies in England, I saw- not one at all equal to it. The spire is re- markable for its light- ness, its fine gradation, and its happy combina- tion of elements which are in themselves so little suited to spire treatment that the eye protests against them, even while it admires the triumph of the con- structor over his reluc- tant materials. The spire of St. John's Church, which stands on the eastern side of the square is little in- Doorway in Washington Square. 164 A New Nation ferior to it; but St. Paul's springs more lightly from its tower, and rises to its vanishing point with a gradual grace which St. John's does not attain. The Broadway end of St. Paul's is hardly less admirable. Its pediment and lofty Ionic columns are beautifully proportioned, and are worthy of far more attention than they receive, except from well- educated architects, who show little reserve in their admira- tion of this building and of its neighbor, the old City Hall. It is true also that in construction these churches, and other buildings in this country of that period, are much superior to those in England of the same date. This I say upon the advice of competent professional men; for I pretend to approach architecture only as a dilettante and on its esthetic side. The interior of the churches, of which St. Paul's and St. John's are the best existing types, were not w^ith- out a certain kind and degree of beauty. They were, indeed, not truly ecclesiastical in spirit. They lacked entirely the sublimity and the mys- tery which the archi- tecture strangely called Gothic expresses with Doorway of a house in Oliver Street. ^uch natural facility. Old New York and Its Buildings 165 For them no soaring nave and dimly lighted clear-story. But they were better than most of the little sham Gothic tabernacles which succeeded them. They were genuine ; good of their kind ; well suited to their purpose. In them re- Old mantel, New York house. spectability and decorum were so happily expressed that they were raised with an embodied grace. If people must as- semble in large bodies to worship in pews, and take part in a ceremonial of which the most important part is the listening to a sermon, it is difficult to see how it could be more conveniently, comfortably, and appropriately done than in one of these old Wren parish churches. THE EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN By Helen Nicolay Abraham Lincoln's forefathers were pioneers — men who left their homes to open up the wilderness and make the way plain for others to follow them. For one hundred and seventy years, ever since the first American Lincoln came from England to Massachusetts in 1638, they had been moving slowly westward as new settlements were made in the forest. They faced solitude, privation, and all the dangers and hardships that beset men who take up their homes where only beasts and wild men have had homes before; but they continued to press steadily forward, though they lost fortune and sometimes even life itself in their westward progress. Back in Pennsylvania and New Jersey some of the Lincolns had been men of wealth and influence. In Kentucky, where the future President was born on February 12, 1809, his parents lived in deep pov- erty. Their home was a small log cabin of the rudest kind, and nothing seemed more unlikely than that their child, coming into the world in such humble surroundings, was destined to be the greatest man of his time. True to his race, he also was to be a pioneer — not indeed, like his ancestors, a leader into new woods and unexplored fields, but a pioneer of a nobler and grander sort, directing the thoughts of men ever toward the right, and leading the American people, through difficulties and dangers and a mighty war, to peace and freedom. 166 The Early Life of Lincoln 167 The story of this wonderful man begins and ends with a tragedy, for his grandfather, also named Abraham, was killed by a shot from an Indian's rifle while peaceably at work with his three sons on the edge of their frontier clear- ing. Eighty-one years later the President himself met death by an assassin's bullet. The murderer of one was a savage of the forest; the murderer of the other that far more cruel thing, a savage of civilization. When the Indian's shot laid the pioneer farmer low, his second son, Josiah, ran to a neighboring fort for help, and Mordecai, the eldest, hurried to the cabin for his rifle. Thomas, a child of six years, was left alone beside the dead body of his father; and as Mordecai snatched the gun from its resting-place over the door of the cabin, he saw, to his horror, an Indian, in his war-paint, just stooping to seize the child. Taking quick aim at a medal on the breast of the savage, he fired, and the Indian fell dead. The little boy, thus released, ran to the house, where Mordecai, firing through the loopholes, kept the Indians at bay until help ar- rived from the fort. It was this child Thomas who grew up to be the father of President Abraham Lincoln. After the murder of his father the fortunes of the little family grew rapidly worse, and doubtless because of poverty, as well as by reason of the marriage of his older brothers and sisters, their home was broken up, and Thomas found himself long before he was grown, a wandering laboring boy. He lived for a time with an uncle as his hired servant, and later he learned the trade of carpenter. He grew to manhood entirely without education, and when he was twenty-eight years old could neither read nor write. At that time he married Nancy Hanks, a good-looking young woman of twenty-three, as i68 A New Nation poor as himself, but so much better off as to learning that she was able to teach her husband to sign his own name. Neither of them had any money, but living cost little on the frontier in those days, and they felt that his trade would suffice to earn all that they should need. Thomas took his bride to a tiny house in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where they lived for about a year, and where a daughter was born to them. Then they moved to a small farm thirteen miles from Elizabethtown, which they bought on credit, the country being yet so new that there were places to be had for mere promises to pay. Farms obtained on such terms were usually of very poor quality, and this one of Thomas Lin- coln's was no exception to the rule. A cabin ready to be occupied stood on it, however ; and not far away, hidden in a pretty clump of trees and bushes, was a fine spring of water, because of which the .place was known as Rock View of Thomas Lincoln's farm, where Abraham Lincohi was born. The Early Life of Lincoln 169 Spring Farm. In the cabin on this farm the future Presi- dent of the United States was born on February 12, 1809, and here the first four years of his life were spent. Then the Lincohis moved to a much bigger and better farm on Knob Creek, six miles from Hodgensville, which Thomas Lincoln bought, again on credit, selling the larger part of it soon afterward to another purchaser. Here they remained until Abraham was seven years old. About this early part of his childhood almost nothing is known. He never talked of these days, even to his most intimate friends. To the pioneer child a farm offered much that a town lot could not give him — space ; woods to roam in; Knob Creek with its running water and its deep, quiet pool for a playfellow; berries to be hunted for in summer and nuts in autumn; while all the year round birds and small animals pattered across his path to people the solitude in place of human companions. The boy had few com- rades. He wandered about playing his lonesome little games, and when these were finished returned to the small and cheerless cabin. Once, when asked what he remembered about the War of 1812 with Great Britain, he replied: " Only this : I had been fishing one day and had caught a little fish, which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and having always been told at home that we must be good to soldiers, I gave him my fish." It is only a glimpse into his life, but it shows the solitary, generous child and the patriotic household. It was while living on this farm that Abraham and his sister Sarah first began going to A-B-C schools. Their earliest teacher was Zachariah Riney, who taught near the Lincoln cabin ; the next was Caleb Hazel, four miles away. In spite of the tragedy that darkened his childhood. 170 A New Nation Thomas Lincoln seems to have been a cheery, indolent, good- natured man. By means of a little farming and occasional jobs at his trade, he managed to supply his family with the absolutely necessary food and shelter, but he never got on in the world. He found it much easier to gossip with his friends, or to dream about rich new lands in the West, than to make a thrifty living in the place where he happened to be. The blood of the pioneer was in his veins, too — the desire to move westward ; and hearing glowing accounts of the new territory of Indiana, he resolved to go and see it for himself. His skill as a carpenter made this not only possi- ble but reasonably cheap, and in the fall of 181 6 he built himself a little flatboat, launched it half a mile from his cabin, at the mouth of Knob Creek on the waters of the Rolling Ford, and floated on it down that stream to Salt River, down Salt River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to a landing called Thompson's Ferry on the Indiana shore. Sixteen miles out from the river, near a small stream known as Pigeon Creek, he found a spot in the forest that suited him; and as his boat could not be made to float up- stream, he sold it, stored his goods with an obliging settler, and trudged back to Kentucky, all the way on foot, to fetch his wife and children — Sarah, who was now nine years old, and Abraham, seven. This time the journey to Indiana was made with two horses, used by the mother and children for riding, and to carry their little camping outfit for the night. The distance from their old home was, in a straight line, little more than fifty miles, but they had to go double that distance because of the very few roads it was possible to follow. Reaching the Ohio River and crossing to the Indiana shore, Thomas Lincoln hired a wagon which carried his The Early Life of Lincoln 171 family and their belongings the remaining sixteen miles through the forest to the spot he had chosen — a piece of heavily wooded land, one and a half miles east of what has since become the village of Gentry ville in Spencer County. The lateness of the autumn made it possible to put up a shelter as quickly as possible, and he built what was known on the frontier as a half-faced camp about fourteen feet square. This differed from a cabin in that it was closed on only three sides, being quite open to the weather on the fourth. A fire was usually made in front of the open side, and thus the necessity for having a chimney was done away with. Thomas Lincoln doubtless intended this only for a temporary shelter, and as such it would have done well enough in pleasant summer weather ; but it was a rude provi- sion against the storms and winds of an Indiana winter. It shows his want of energy that the family remained housed in this poor camp for nearly a \vhole year; but, after all, he must not be too hastily blamed. He was far from idle. A cabin was doubtless begun, and there was the very heavy work of clearing away the timber — cutting down large trees, chopping them into suitable lengths, and rolling them together into great heaps to be burned, or splitting them into rails to fence the small field upon which he managed to raise a patch of corn and other things during the following sum- mer. Though only seven years old, Abraham was unusually large and strong for his age, and he helped his father in all this heavy labor of clearing the farm. Writing about it in after years, he said : " An ax was put into my hands at once, and from that till within my twenty-third year I was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument — less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons." At 172 ' A New Nation first the Lincolns and their seven or eight neighbors lived in the unbroken forest. They had only the tools and house- hold goods they brought v^ith them, or such things as they could fashion with their own hands. There was no saw- mill to saw lumber. The village of Gentryville was not even begun. Breadstuff could be had only by sending young Abraham seven miles on horseback with a bag of corn to be ground in a hand grist-mill. About the time the new cabin was ready relatives and friends followed from Kentucky, and some of these in turn occupied the half-faced camp. During the autumn a severe and mysterious sickness broke out in their little settlement, and a number of people died, among them the mother of young Abraham. There was no help to be had beyond what the neighbors could give each other. The nearest doctor lived fully thirty miles away. There was not even a minis- ter to conduct the funerals. Thomas Lincoln made the coffins for the dead out of green lumber cut from the forest trees with a whip-saw, and they were laid to rest in a clear- ing in the woods. Months afterwards, largely through the efforts of the sorrowing boy, a preacher who chanced to come that way was induced to hold a service and preach a sermon over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln. Her death was indeed a serious blow to her husband and children. Abraham's sister, Sarah, was only eleven years, old, and the tasks and cares of the little household were al- together too heavy for her years and experience. Never- theless they struggled bravely through the winter and follow- ing summer; then in the autumn of 1819 Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and married Sarah Bush Johnston, whom he had known, and it is said courted, wdien she was only Sally Bush. She had The Early Life of Lincoln 173 The log-cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born. married about the time Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, and her husband had died, leaving her with three children. She came of a 7^-, better station in ^V^^ life than Thom- as, and was a woman with an excellent mind as well as a warm and gener- ous heart. The household goods that she brought with her to the Lincoln home filled a four-horse wagon, and not only were her own children well clothed and cared for, but she was able at once to provide little Abraham and Sarah with comforts to which they had been strangers during the whole of their young lives. Under her wise management all jeal- ousy was avoided between the two sets of children; urged on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln supplied the yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and life became' more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment if not happiness reigning in the little home. The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abra- ham, and encouraged him in every way in her power to study and improve himself. The chances for this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the situa- tion. " It was," he once wrote, " a wild region with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond read- 174 A New Nation ing, writing, and ciphering to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to so- journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard." The school-house was a low cabin of round logs, with split logs or " puncheons " for a floor, split logs roughly leveled with an ax and set upon legs for benches, and holes cut out in the logs and the space filled in with squares of greased paper for window-panes. The main light came in through the open door. Very often Webster's " Elementary Spelling-book " was the only text-book. This was the kind of school most common in the middle west during Mr, Lin- coln's boyhood, though already in some places there were schools of a more pretentious character. Lideed, back in Kentucky, at the very time that Abraham, a child of six, was learning his letters from Zachariah Riney, a boy only a year older was attending a Catholic seminary in the very next county. It is doubtful if- they ever met, but the des- tinies of the two were strangely interwoven, for the older boy was Jefferson Davis, who became head of the Confed- erate government shortly after Lincoln was elected Presi- dent of the United States. As Abraham had been only seven years old when he left Kentucky, the little beginnings he learned in the schools kept by Riney and Hazel in that State must have been very slight, probably only his alphabet, or at most only three or four pages of Webster's " Elementary Spelling-book." The multiplication-table was still a mystery to him, and he could read or write only the words he spelled. His first two years in Indiana seem to have passed without schooling of any sort, and the school he attended shortly after coming under the care of his stepmother was of the simplest kind, for the Pigeon Creek settlement numbered only eight or ten poor The Early Life of Lincoln 175 families, and tliey lived deep in the forest, where, even if they had had the money for such luxuries, it would have been impossible to buy books, slates, pens, ink, or paper. It is worthy of note, however, that in our Western country, even under such difficulties, a school-house was one of the first buildings to rise in every frontier settlement. Abra- ham's second school in Indiana was held when he was four- teen years old, and the third in his seventeenth year. By that time he had more books and better teachers, but he had to walk four or five miles to reach them. We know that he learned to write, and was provided with pen, ink, and a copy- book — a very small supply of writing-paper, for copies have been printed of several scraps on which he carefully wrote down tables of long measure, land measure, and dry measure, as well as examples in multiplication and compound division, from his arithmetic. He was never able to go to school again after this time and though the instruction he received from his five teachers — two in Kentucky and three in Indiana — extended over a period of nine years, it must be remembered that it made up in all less than one twelvemonth ; " that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year." The fact that he received this instruction, as he himself said, " by littles," was doubtless an advantage. A lazy or indifferent boy would of course have forgotten what was taught him at one time before he had opportunity at an- other; but Abraham was neither indifferent nor lazy, and these widely separated fragments of instruction were pre- cious steps to self-help. He pursued his studies with very unusual purpose and determination not only to understand them at the moment, but to fix them firmly in his mind. His early companions all agree that he employed every spare mo- ment in keeping on with some one of his studies. His step- 176 A New Nation mother tells us that when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it clown on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would re- write it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus pre- served them. He spent long evenings doing sums on the fire- shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers. Instead they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end nar- rowed to a handle, arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they set their " skillet " and " oven " to do their cooking. It was on such a wooden shovel that Abra- ham worked his sums by the flick- ering firelight, mak- ing his figures with a piece of charcoal, and when the shov- el was all covered, taking a drawing- knife and y<4/t4/fty*\ — -yi'i- --L -■■},% /Jbi^am Lint«fn HuBooIr Leaf, reduced in size, from Abraham Lin- coln's exercise book, written about his seventeenth year. shaving- it off clean again. The hours that he was able to de- vote to his pen- manship, his read- The Early Life of Lincoln 177 ing, and his arithmetic were by no means many; for, save for the short time that he was actually in school, he was, during all these years, laboring hard on his father's farm, or hiring his youthful strength to neighbors who had need of help in the work of field or forest. In pursuit of his knowledge he was on an up-hill path; yet in spite of all ob- stacles he worked his way to so much of an education as placed him far ahead of his schoolmates and quickly abreast of his various teachers. He borrowed every book in the neighborhood. The list is a short one : " Robinson Crusoe," " T^sop's Fables," Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," Weems's " Life of Washington," and a " History of the United States." When everything else had been read, he resolutely began on the " Revised Statutes of Indiana," which Dave Turnham, the constable, had in daily use, but permitted him to come to his house and read. Though so fond of his books, it must not be supposed that he cared only for work and serious study. He was a social, sunny-tempered lad, as fond of jokes and fun as he was kindly and industrious. His stepmother said to him : " I can say, what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never re- fused to do anything I asked him. I must say that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see." He and John Johnston, his stepmother's son, and John Hanks, a relative of his own mother's, worked barefoot to- gether in the fields, grubbing, plowing, hoeing, gathering and shucking corn, and taking part, when occasion offered, in the practical jokes and athletic exercises that enlivened the hard work of the pioneers. For both work and play Abraham had one great advantage. He was not only a tall, strong country boy : he soon grew to be a tall, strong, sinewy man. 12 178 A New Nation He early reached the unusual height of six feet four inches, and his long arms gave him a degree of power as an axmaii that few were able to rival. He therefore usually led his fellows in efforts of muscle as well as of mind. That he could outrun, outlift, outwrestle his boyish companions, that he could chop faster, split more rails in a day, carry a heavier log at a " raising," or excel the neighborhood champion in any feat of frontier athletics, was doubtless a matter of pride with him ; but stronger than all else was his eager craving for knowledge. He felt instinctively that the power of using the mind rather than the muscles was the key to success. He wished not only to wrestle with the best of them, but to be able to talk like the preacher, spell and cipher like the school- master, argue like the lawyer, and write like the editor. Yet he was as far as possible from being a prig. He was helpful, sympathetic, cheerful. In all the neighborhood gatherings, when settlers of various ages came together at corn-huskings or house-raisings, or when mere chance brought half a dozen of them at the same time to the post- office or the country store, he was able, according to his years, to add his full share to the gaiety of the company. By reason of his reading and his excellent memory, he soon became the best story-teller among his companions; and even the slight training gained from his studies greatly broadened and strengthened the strong reasoning faculty with which he had been gifted by nature. His wit might be mischievous, but it was never malicious, and his nonsense was never intended to wound or to hurt the feelings. It is told of him that he added to his fund of jokes and stories humorous imitations of the sermons of eccentric preachers. Very likely too much is made of all these boyish pranks. He grew up very like his fellows. In only one particular The Early Life of Lincoln 179 did he differ greatly from the frontier boys around him. He never took any pleasure in hunting. Almost every youth of the backwoods early became an excellent shot and confirmed sportsman. The woods still swarmed with game, and every cabin depended largely upon this for its supply of food. But to his strength was added a gentleness which made him shrink from killing or inflicting pain, and the time the other boys gave to lying in ambush, he preferred to spend in read- ing or in efforts at improving his mind. Only twice during his life in Indiana was the routine of his employment changed. When he was about sixteen years old he worked for a time for a man who lived at the mouth of Anderson's Creek, and here part of his duty was to manage a ferry-boat which carried passengers across the Ohio River. It was very likely this experience which, three 'ears later, brought him another. Mr. Gentry, the chief man of the village of Gentryville, that had grown up a mile or so from his father's cabin, loaded a flatboat on the Ohio River with the produce his store had collected, — corn, flour, pork, bacon, and other miscellaneous provisions, — and put- ting it in charge of his son Allen Gentry and of Abraham Lincoln, sent them with it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to sell its cargo at the plantations of the lower Miss- issippi, where sugar and cotton were the principal crops, and where other food supplies were needed to feed the slaves. No better proof is needed of the reputation for strength, skill, honesty, and intelligence that this tall country boy had already won for himself, than that he was chosen to navigate the flatboat a thousand miles to the " sugar-coast " of the Mississippi River, sell its load, and bring back the money. Allen Gentry was supposed to be in command, but from the record of his after life we may be sure that Abra- i8o A New Nation ham did his full share both of work and management. The elder Gentry paid Lincoln eight dollars a month and his passage home on a steamboat for this service. The voyage was made successfully, although not v^ithout adventure ; for one night, after the boat was tied up to the shore, the boys were attacked by seven negroes, who came aboard intending to kill and rob them. There was a lively scrimmage, in which, though slightly hurt, they managed to beat off their assailants, and then, hastily cutting their boat adrift, swung out on the stream. The marauding band little dreamed that they were attacking the man who in after years was to give their race its freedom; and though the future was equally hidden from Abraham, it is hard to estimate the vistas of hope and ambition that this long journey opened to him. It was his first look into the wide, wide world. MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY By Frederick Douglass ^ In the first narrative of my experience in slavery I have given the pubHc very good reasons for withholding the man- ner of my escape. In substance those reasons were, first, that such publication at any time during the existence of slavery might be used by the master against the slave, and prevent the future escape of any who used the same means that I did. The second reason was, if possible, more bind- ing to silence : the publication of details would certainly have put in peril the persons and property of those who as- sisted. Murder itself was not more certainly punished in the State of Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave. Many colored men for no other crime than that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey, perished in prison. ... In order to avoid fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and jumped on the car myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone to the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and un- doubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan, I considered the jostle of the train and the natural haste of the conductor, in 1 Afterwards editor of New National Era in Washington, D. C. Presidential elector at large for the State of New York, Marshal of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Hayti. i8i l82 A New Nation a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection, to do the rest ; for I had the papers of a friend, a sailor, de- scribing his person and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an authorized document. It did not describe my appearance very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker than myself, and a close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the very start. . . In my clothing, I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowl- edge of ships came to my assistance for I knew a ship from stern to stern and could talk sailor like an old salt. I was well on the way before the conductor came into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of the black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended upon the decision of that con- ductor. Agitated though I was while this ceremony was proceeding, still, externally at least, I was perfectly calm and self-possessed. He went on with his duty, examining sev- eral colored passengers before reaching me. He was some- what harsh in tone and peremptory in manner until he reached me, when, strange enough and to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored persons in the car had done he said to me in friendly contrast v/ith his bearing toward the others : " I suppose you have your free papers? " To which I answered : " No, sir; I never carry my free papers to sea v/ith me." My Escape From Slavery 183 " But you have something to show that you are a freeman, haven't you? " " Yes, sir," I answered. " I have a paper with the Ameri- can eagle upon it, and that will carry me around the world." With this I drew from my deep sailor's pocket my seaman's protection. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him and he took my fare and went on about his business. This moment of time was one of the most anxious I ever expe- rienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he could not have failed to discover that it called for a very different looking person from myself, and in that case it would have been his duty to arrest me on the instant and send me back to Baltimore from the first station. When he left me with the assurance that I was all right, though much relieved I realized that I was still in great danger; I was still in Maryland and subject to arrest at any moment. I saw several persons on the train who would have known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might recognize me, even in my sailor " rig " and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me to a closer examina- tion, which I knew well would be fatal to me. Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high rate of speed for that epoch of railway travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight. After Maryland I was to pass through Delaware, another slave State, where slave-catchers generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active. The border lines between free- dom and slavery were the dangerous ones for fugitives. 184 A New Nation The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia. Once across the Susquehanna River, I encountered a new danger. Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr. Price's shipyard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain Mac Gowan. On the meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the track just opposite the one going north, and it so happened that this Captain Mac Gowan, sat at a window where he could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have recog- nized me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortu- nately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their respective ways. But this was not my only hairbreadth escape. A Ger- man blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I really believe he knew me but had no heart to betray me. At any rate he saw me escaping and held his peace. The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steamboat for Philadelphia. In making the change I apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me and I was soon on the broad and beautiful Delaware speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon I asked a colored man how I could get on to New York. He directed me to the William Street depot and thither I went, taking the train that night. I reached New York in the morning, having completed the journey in less than twenty- four hours. My Escape From Slavery 185 My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of the fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a free man — one more added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves of the troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway. Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled. The bands that had held me to " Old Master " were broken. No man now had a right to call me his slave or assert his mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an out- door world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy num- ber, I have often been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my expe- rience about which I could not give a more satisfactory an- swer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the '' quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but faintly de- scribe. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES Fifty "Vfears After BY FREDERICK TREVOR HILL THE FIRST DAY OTTAWA, ILLINOIS On Friday, August 20, 1858, work was virtually suspended in the outlying districts, and all the local world was in holiday mood. Under clouds of dust and a burning summer sun, straggling processions of people on foot, on horseback, in hay carts and in canvas-covered wagons occupied every turnpike and country lane leading to Ottawa. Despite its political differences, it was a friendly, good-natured crowd that spread itself over the bluffs and rolling prairie. Fam- ily groups and neighborhood parties fraternized with one another, hospitality was proffered, provisions were shared, and the coming event was discussed without bitterness or hard feeling of any kind. Thus passed the eve of the mo- mentous duel. Saturday dawned clear, and before the sun was fairly up, the advance-guard of the audience began to pour into the lit- tle town. On the court-house green a rough, undecorated, pine- board platform had been erected, but no seats had been provided for the audience, and the square itself was without sufficient trees to protect them from the sun. Not dis- couraged by this uninviting prospect, many of the first- 186 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 187 comers sat down on the grass in front of the speakers' stand and settled themselves for a long wait rather than lose the advantage of their early start, and others manoeiivered their carts into favorable positions at the edge of the scjuare, where they formed a sort of improvised gallery. There was confidence in every line of Douglas's clear- cut, clean-shaven face as he stepped to the front of the platform and bowed to the cheering multitude, and when his awkward rival stood beside him, he had no reason to distrust the effect of the inevitable comparison. No time was lost in initiating the contest. Neither speaker required any introduction, and Douglas began by outlining the rules of the debate. He was to open with a speech of one hour, and close with another of half an hour after Lincoln had replied for an hour and a half, and at the next meeting these conditions were to be re- versed. Only a small proportion of the mighty assemblage could possibly hope to hear the speakers, and those in wagons at the outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves at a disadvantage, soon abandoned their positions and edged their way into the throng. Nevertheless, there was very little movement in the audience, and there was virtually no interruption. Once when Douglas sneeringly quoted a part of Lincoln's " House-divided-against-itself " speech, the Republicans burst into applause, which brought an angry response from the unwary orator; and when Lincoln be- gan by reading a document, some one in the crowd shouted, " Put on your specs ! " possibly anticipating a smart re- ply. But Lincoln was in no joking mood. " Yes, sir," he responded gravely : '' I am obliged to do so. I am no longer a young man." i88 A New Nation Then for an hour and a half he held that mighty audience by the sheer force of his personality and the intense in- terest of his theme. Now and again there was a burst of cheering, but the speaker made no effort at oratorical effect and employed no device to lighten his argument. Douglas was not yet as serious as his adversary, for he had entered light-heartedly upon the contest, and did not im- mediately realize the magnitude of the task he had under- taken. From the very start he assumed the offensive and continued his attack, scarcely deigning to notice his op- ponent's replies, throughout the day. Even when some Re- publican enthusiasts stormed the platform at the close of that eventful evening and attempted to carry Lincoln off upon their shoulders, he affected to believe that he had so completely exhausted his adversary as to necessitate his re- moval from the field. One week later he began to take a less jaunty view of the situation. SECOND DAY FREEPORT, ILLINOIS On Friday August 27th, Freeport heard what was per- haps the most momentous of the debates. No seats of any sort had been provided, and yet a throng even greater than that at Ottawa gathered long before the appointed time, prepared to stand during the whole of the three-hour struggle. Douglas arrived on the scene shortly before three o'clock, in the same coach and four which had been placed at his disposal earlier in the day, and his appearance was evidently designed to impress and awe the country folk. Certainly he received a rousing welcome; but the cheers had scarcely ceased before the crowd burst into a shout of laughter, for just at that moment an old- fashioned Conestoga wagon, drawn by six draft-horses, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 189 lumbered into view, and on one of the high seats of this clumsy conveyance sat Lincoln, accompanied by half a dozen farmers in their working clothes. The rear nigh horse was guided by a rider with a single rein, and the harness ot the rest of the team consisted of old-fashioned wide straps and chain traces. In fact, the burlesque on Douglas's ceremonial coach had been made as complete as possible, and the good-natured roar which greeted it demonstrated its effect. 190 A New Nation The Hon. Thomas J. Turner, Republican Moderator, promptly called the meeting to order, and it was a friendly audience to which he introduced his candidate; for Free- port was almost on the northern border of Illinois, where anti-slavery sentiment prevailed even more strongly than at Ottawa. But in this part of the State Lincoln was al- most a stranger, and his uncouth appearance and slouchy bearing were not offset by any direct knowledge of his professional attainments. On this occasion, however, he speedily dispelled all doubts of his ability by advancing boldly to the attack. Reminding his auditors that Douglas had seen fit to cross-examine him at their last meeting, he announced that he was prepared to answer the seven questions which had been put to him provided his adversary would reply to questions from him not exceeding the same number. " I give him an opportunity to respond," he an- nounced, and, turning to Douglas, paused for his reply. In an instant the vast audience was hushed. Even the fakirs and vendors at the outskirts of the crowd ceased plying their trades and strove to catch a glimpse of the platform. It was a dramatic moment, and an unequaled opportunity for Douglas ; but he merely shook his head and smiled. " The judge remains silent," continued Lincoln. " I now say that I will answer his interrogatories whether he answers mine or not." No more effective challenge was ever uttered, and the audience, quick to recognize its courage and fairness, re- sponded in a fashion that must have disconcerted and nettled Lincoln's cautious adversary. Certainly Douglas was in no amiable mood when he rose to make reply, and the interruptions of the audience speedily worked him into a passion. Again and again he assailed his hearers as " Black The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 191 Republicans," characterizing their questions as vulgar and blackguard interruptions, shaking his fist in their faces, and defying them as a mob. More than once Mr. Turner, the Republican Moderator, was drawn into the fray by the speaker's aggressive tactics, and the whole meeting was oc- casionally on the verge of tumult. Lincoln's closing ad- dress, however, had a calming effect, and when his time expired, the audience quietly dispersed, to spread the news throughout the countryside that this unknown lawyer was actually out-manoeuvering his distinguished adversary and forcing him into the open, beyond reach of cover or pos- sibility of retreat. THIRD DAY JONESBORO, ILLINOIS Nearly three weeks elapsed before the combatants re- newed their struggle, and then the scene of battle was shifted to the extreme south of Illinois, a region known as " Egypt," controlled by the Democracy, but favoring Buchanan rather than Douglas. Here Lincoln had few friends, but there was a great chance for winning them, and he had determined to make the most of his opportunity by carefully preparing for the event. Jonesboro, the site selected for this contest, was then a little village of not more than twelve hundred inhabitants. It was situated nearly a mile and a half from the railroad station, which was known as Anna, and the station, said to be as large as the town, was reputedly opposed to it polit- ically, the former being Republican and the latter Dem- ocratic. About a quarter of a mile from the center of the town lay the fair grounds, and here the speakers' platform had been erected, and some attempt made at providing the audi- 192 A New Nation ence with seats. The accommodations, however, proved wholly inadequate, though not more than fifteen hundred persons attended, and most of them were obliged to stand during the whole afternoon. No processions or demonstra- tions of any kind preceded the meeting. Douglas drove to the fair grounds in a carriage, accompanied by a few ad- mirers, and Lincoln walked there with a friend. Douglas had taunted his adversary with being afraid to appear in southern Illinois, and prophesied a sorry experi- ence for him when he was " trotted down to Egypt." This was mere pleasantry, of course, for at the first indication of hostility toward the Republican candidate, his adversary in- stantly silenced it with a sharp reproof, and the meeting passed off quietly. But Douglas was not in good form dur- ing the contest, his speech being poorly delivered, as though he were indifferent as to the effect he produced, while Lin- coln, who had come to persuade, devoted his best power to that end. Even the jeer of being afraid to visit this hotbed of Democracy he turned to his advantage. " Why, I know this people better than Judge Douglas does ! " he exclaimed. " I was raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this people." Certainly a part of that people was Lincoln's at the close of that autumn day. He had given them food for reflec- tion. He was making the whole country think. FOURTH DAY CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS Only three days intervened before the rivals met again, and this time they appeared at Charleston, in Coles County, on Saturday, September 18, 1858. A large number of benches had been prepared for the audi- ence, but the crowd which surged into the fair grounds as The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 193 early as one o'clock numbered fully five thousand and far exceeded the accommodations, and again most of the audi- tors stood while Lincoln and Douglas closed with each other for the fourth time. Not all of those who listened with rapt attention to the earnest speakers, however, were directly concerned in the contest, for the whole county was beginning to take an interest in it, and a large delegation of men, women, and children had arrived during the morning from Indiana in farm-wagons, carriages, and on horseback, and the number of women in attendance was specially noticeable. Indeed, the pilgrimage of all the countryside to this inaccessi- ble town, miles away from a railroad, was one ^f the most significant features of this remarkable campaign, and one of those who was present comments upon the " hot feverish' flush " which characterized the interest of the audience. Lincoln had the opening speech, and again he lost no time in advancing to the attack. In fact, Douglas was now clearly on the defensive, and in this position he was plainly ill at ease. For once at least his air of confidence and supe- riority completely disappeared, and his supporters were sorely disappointed at his showing. FIFTH DAY GALESBURG, ILLINOIS Election day was almost in sight, and the campaign was at its height, before the rivals met again. Meanwhile the Republicans had been gaining confidence and courage, for- cing their opponents to fight as they had not fought for years, and both sides strained every nerve to make the joint meet- ing at Galesburg, scheduled for Thursday, October 7, a memorable event. Galesburg itself began preparing for the fray weeks in advance, for accounts of the other meetings showed that a supreme effort would have to be made to sur- 13 194 A New Nation pass the reception accorded by less important centers, and the citizens rose to the occasion. Thus far there had been Httle or no effort at any of the joint debates to organize the processions upon mihtary hnes or to make any great display of flags or banners. But now the Republicans had formed marching clubs all over the State, generally known as the " Wide-awakes," uniformed with a distinctive cap and cape, and these companies were the feature of the day at Galesburg. The Democrats, whose electioneering devices had at first encountered no competi- tion, were now hard pressed to match their rivals, and their banners acclaiming " Douglas the Little Giant " and " The Constitution as it is " were met by others celebrating " Abe the Giant-Killer " and " The Constitution as it ought to be," while similar placards and mottos challenged and answered each other on every side as the rival organizations moved past each other, winding through the streets with defiant shouts and jeers, but no clash save that of the bands. All this time more and more people were pouring into the town, and by half -past two fully fifteen thousand persons were massed on the college campus. Again, as at Ottawa, a line of farm-wagons fringed the outskirts of the crowd ; but this time every available tree and roof-top was occupied as well as the space before the platform. Neither speaker any longer cared for applause. Every moment had become precious for attack or defense, and Douglas protested that he desired to be heard rather than cheered. There was now no flippancy or arrogancy about the man. He was in deadly earnest, and when aroused, there was no more formidable antagonist in the United States than he. There was no mistaking the temper of the audience when The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 195 Douglas made his closing" speech. When he charged that Lincoln included the negro in that part of the Declaration which asserts that all men are created equal, the crowd shouted, " We believe it ! " When he quoted Lincoln's statement that slavery was a crime, they answered " He's right ! " When he asserted that Lovejoy stood pledged against any more slave States, the response was "Right! So do we ! " And when he arraigned his adversary on the same charge, his hearers cheered for Lincoln. In the absence of an authoritative decision, neither candi- date can be said to have been the victor at any of the debates, but all the external evidence is that at Galesburg Lincoln car- ried the day. SIXTH DAY QUINCY, ILLINOIS In 1858, Quincy, the terminus of the Chicago, Burling- ton & Quincy Railroad, was a town of about fourteen thou- sand inhabitants, and its transportation facilities, both by land and water, made it one of the most important business centers of Illinois. Here it was to be expected that the rival candidates would meet with a great reception, and the local newspapers published full details of the preparations of both parties in honor of their visit. The Republicans were first in the field, and completed their arrangements by the nth of October, but the Democrats were only a day behind them, and their program was perhaps the more elaborate. The debate occurred on Wednesday, October 13, 1858. Lincoln arrived by rail on the evening of the 12th in the company of Carl Schurz, who had accidentally met him on the train, and a reception committee bundled him into a carriage despite his protest that he would rather " foot it to Browning's," meaning O. H. Browning's house, where he 196 A New Nation was to pass the night. No formal reception was, how- ever, forced upon him, and he was soon left to his own devices at the home of his old friend. Douglas was less fortunate, for he was met at the station by a torchlight pro- cession over half a mile long and escorted with music and cheers to the Democratic headquarters at the Ouincy House. Then followed a noisy night, during which the local and visiting political clubs fraternized, celebrated, and planned for the great to-morrow. Lincoln opened the debate, and again the first impression made upon the audience was distinctly unfavorable. The splendid carrying quality of his voice, however, enabled him to reach the very outskirts of the crowd and he soon riveted its attention, while Douglas writhed and scowled under his relentless attack. Indeed, Douglas's nerves were fast giving way under the tremendous strain of the campaign; his face had grown pufify, his voice had become so husky that what he said was audible only to those close to the platform, and his whole appearance had decid- edly changed for the worse during the last two months. But his courage did not falter, and he returned his adver- sary's thrusts with almost ferocious zeal, hoarsely denoun- cing and defying him with all the power of a skilled forensic gladiator, hard pressed and fighting desperately against time. Lincoln fully realized his advantage, and he drove it home when his turn came to close. Yet every w^ord he uttered was addressed to a far wider audience than that in his immediate presence. His aim was to make the people think, and all his personal interest in the campaign was subservient to this end. To quote his own words, the run- ning fight with Douglas had become " the successive acts of a drama enacted not merely in the face of audiences like The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 197 these, but in the face of the nation and to some extent in the face of the world." SEVENTH DAY ALTON, ILLINOIS Alton virtually held a Feast of Banners on that clear Indian summer afternoon when Lincoln and Douglas closed with each other for the seventh and last time. The speakers addressed the assemblage from a platform erected at the northeast corner of the City Hall, and here a few thousand persons had gathered, many of whom had journeyed from St. Louis on the steamers Baltimore and White Cloud which had arrived during the day. Douglas had the opening and closing word, and for the first time during the contest he indulged in no personalities, but devoted himself to argument, inveighing only against the Buchanan administration, which he bitterly attacked, to the delight of his Republican auditors. Indeed, when Lincoln rose to reply, informally heralded by an enthusias- tic Democrat, who defiantly shouted, " Now let old Long Legs come out ! " he " came out " with such humorous refer- erences to the Democratic feud that the audience, largely composed of Douglas men, was plainly disconcerted, and not a little dismayed. It was only for a moment, however, that Lincoln permitted himself to be diverted from serious discussion of the issues. He had before him a large body of Democratic voters, and to them he addressed himself with unanswerable logic and great tact. Douglas presented a really pitiable appearance, for he was utterly worn out and evidently at the point of collapse. His voice, which had been in poor condition at Ouincy, was, now almost gone, and, to quote one of his hearers, " every tone came forth enveloped in an echo. You heard the 198 A New Nation voice, but caught no meaning." Notwithstanding this, he struggled bravely to hold the attention of his auditors, and his closing words were an appeal for his favorite " Popular Sovereignty " theory, which Lincoln had stripped of its sophistical veneer until, as he said, it had as little substance as the soup which was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death. Thus ended the momentous contest which resulted in an unprecedented Republican vote and a clear popular major- ity for Lincoln; the election of Douglas to the Senate by the Legislature, where the votes of his adherents, based on an obsolete census, gave them the control ; the nomination of Lincoln for the Presidency, and the disruption of the Democratic party. Nor was this all, for as one of the keenest students of our political history has written, " The debate was not a mere episode in American politics. It marked an era," A DOUGLAS ARGUMENT • By Stephen A, Douglas Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. In his speech at Springfield to the Convention, which nominated him for the Senate, l\e said : " In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ' A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — hut I do expect it will cease to he divided. It will be- come all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States — old as well as new, North as well as South." I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say " good." I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your sentiments, and I will prove to you now, if you will listen to me, that it is revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this Gov- ernment. Mr. Lincoln, in the extract from which I have read, says that this Government cannot endure permanently in the same condition in which it was made by its framers 199 200 A New Nation — divided into free and slave States. He says that it has existed for about seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot endure permanently on the same principles and in the same relative condition in which our fathers made it. Why can it not exist divided into free and slave States? Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the sub- ject of slavery. Why can it not exist on the same principles on which our fathers made it ? They knew when they framed the Constitution that in a country as wide and broad as this, with such a variety of climate, production and inter- est, the people necessarily required different laws and in- stitutions in different localities. They knew that the laws and regulations which would suit the granite hills of New Hampshire would be unsuited to the rice plantations of South Carolina, and they, therefore, provided that each State should retain its own Legislature and its own sover- eignty, with the full and complete power to do as it pleased within its own limits, in all that was local and not national. One of the reserved rights of the States, was the right to regulate the relations between Master and Servant, on the slavery question. At the time the Constitution was framed, there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which were slaveholding States and one a free State. Suppose this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the States should all be free or all be slave had [M'evailed, and what would have been the result? Of course, the twelve slaveholding States would have overruled the one free State, and slavery would have been fastened by a Constitutional A Douglas Argument 201 provision on every inch of the American Republic, instead of being left as our fathers wisely left it, to each State to decide for itself. Here I assert that uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possi- ble nor desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to the Dred Scott decision, and will not submit to it, for the reason that he says it depri\-es the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship. That is the first and main reason which he assigns for his warfare on the Supreme Court of the United States and its decision. I ask you, are you in favor of con- ferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizen- ship ? Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thou- sand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves? If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligi- ble to ot^ce, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party,, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this Government was made on the white 202 A New Nation basis. I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of Euro- pean birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races. THE AUTHOR OF " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN " By Richard Burton In any brief sketch of the personaHty and career of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, it is proper to regard her chiefly as the creator of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," a novel which had its share in changing the Constitution of the United States, and which, as Emerson has it, " encircled the globe, and was the only book that found readers in the par- lor, the nursery, and the kitchen of every household." Harriet Beecher came of a most distinguished American family, Lyman Beecher's name speaking for itself, while his first wife, Rosanna Foote, Harriet's mother, was a re- markable woman, of stock than which Connecticut can boast no better. That a girl thus born should have had a predisposition to books and, even more, to the things of the spirit was, one might say, foreordained, if there is aught in ancestry. Her home nurture and her educational ad- vantages were such as to fit out a future writer of intense moral earnestness. Yet with these distinctly superior and cultivated antecedents w'ent the New England plainness, the Puritan simplicity, even a touch of Spartan deprivation. Lyman Beecher became a famous man, a shining light of the American pulpit ; but he was a very poor and obscure one in 1811, when in the flower month of June, and in the beautiful old Connecticut hill-town of Litchfield, his sixth child, Harriet, was born. The little daughter early showed her bookishness, and at 203 204 A New Nation the age of six was finding delight in the '* Arabian Nights." At ten she was fasci- nated A\ith the more often dreaded task of theme-writing, and at twehe she produced a paper with the fol- lowing title : " Can the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by the Liglit of Nature? "— a thesis gravely an- swered in the nega- tive. Her schooling- was obtained at the Litchfield Academy, and then at her sister Catherine's noted school at Hartford, wh.ere, at thirteen, we find her turning Ovid into English verse. Lyman Beecher's removal to Boston in 1826, ostensibly to comljat the new heresy of Unitarianism, had the incidental advantage of offering to his family a wider and richer social life; and the same is true of the new experiences which came a few years later when he was called to the presidency of Lane Semi- nary near Cincinnati, in what then seemed the very West. Harriet taught for a while in the seminary in Cincinnati of which Catherine, who had moved thither with her kith and kin, was the head. Playful fancy, quick sensibility, keen intelligence, and, underlying all, fullness of religious experience, characterized Harriet Beecher, when, in 1836, Harriet Becchcr Stowe, 1888. Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 205 at the age of twenty-five, she was married to Professor Calvin Stowe, professor of BibHcal Theology in the Lane Seminary. Mrs. Stowe was at that period of her life, and' for years thereafter, a woman of delicate health, reminding one, indeed, of j\Irs. Browning in smallness and fragility. Two years before she had won a literary prize of fifty dollars, which turned her thought toward writing as a pos- sible work. This tentative effort, a tale called " Uncle Lot " (a half prophecy in title), induced the embryo writer to devote her rather scant leisure time thereafter to her pen. Gradually, too, the great theme which was later to enlist all the sympathy of her woman's soul was suggested by local happenings. Antislavery agitations in Cincinnati dur- ing these years were stirring, and at times even spectacular. We get in letters a vivid picture of the mobbing of a news- paper office when Henry Ward Beecher was the editor of The Journal, and, with pistols in his pocket, fulminated against slavery. In 1839 a colored domestic was taken into the family, and it was found necessary to spirit her away some miles into the country, in order to prevent her re- capture by her former Southern owmer. But even when health permitted, home duties sadly interfered with literary work, of which little was accomplished. Yet there was small doubt in the Stowe household that she was called to literature, and when, in 1849, her husband accepted a pro- fessorship in Bowdoin College, Maine, and the family re- moved to New England, Mrs. Stowe knew herself to be ripe to write the epic of the slave. In 1850 she took a burn- ing interest in the Fugitive Slave Law, and when the sug- gestion came from her brother's wife, Mrs. Edward Beecher, to make a story on slavery, she was ready for the task. It was a time of moment to the world when, in the little 2o6 A New Nation Brunswick parlor, the young wife and mother, after read- ing the letter, crushed it in her hand, rose from her chair, and exclaimed: " I will write something. I will if I live! " Never was fiction born more directly and honestly of ethical interest and indignation. It was, as her son says, the cry of a woman's heart, not of her head at all. The super- eminent merits, the artistic defects, of the work are thus ex- plained. There was behind it an American mother sensi- tive to liberty, with memories of Bunker Hill and Concord in her mind,, who had loved and lost children of her own, and who came of a stock dedicated by principle and prac- tice to the pursuit of righteousness. Thus instigated by her kinsfolk to write on a subject her soul was full of, an additional incentive came in the shape of a letter from Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the Wash- ington National Era, requesting her to contribute something to its columns. This periodical was in those days of much literary merit, Whittier being a corresponding editor, and Mrs. Southworth, Alice and Phoebe Gary, and Grace Green- wood, among its contributors. Mrs. Stowe began upon the story, writing first the scene on the Legree plantation where Uncle Tom is so brutally misused. She then penned the opening chapters, and sent them to Dr. Bailey, writing in- stalment after instalment at Brunswick, as the successive parts appeared — a dangerous method of procedure, but in this case not seeming to injure the quality or power of the tale. The story was published serially from June, 1851, to April, 1852. The account of its instant and immense success reads almost like a fairytale. The shy, modest wife of the country professor awoke, like Byron, to find herself famous : the days of poverty were over ; in, four months her royalties were ten thousand dollars ; within a Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 207 year three hundred thousand copies were sold in the United States alone, while in England forty editions ap- peared within the same time. Thus was the most widely, sought book of modern times, within the domain of lit- erature, started on its course of unprecedented popularity. It was dramatized the same year of its publication, and the foreign translations also began at once, extending to twenty lands, beginning with France. Nor was " Uncle Tom's Cabin " merely a popular success. Letters received by the author from the leading writers of America and England added welcome critical appreciation. One or two such may be cited. Longfellow wrote : " I congratulate House at Brunswick, Maine, where " Uncic I om's Cabin " was written. you most cordially upon the immense success and influence of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.' It is one of the greatest triumphs recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of its moral effect." Needless to say that the 2o8 • A New Nation effect of the story upon public thought both here and abroad was electric; the air was surcharged with feeling, and ready to become impassioned. Call " Uncle Tom's Cabin " special pleading or no, as we will, after its read- ing the Missouri Compromise was fel.t to be a monstrous, an impossible thing. At the age of forty-one, then, Harriet Beecher Stowe found herself a writer of transatlantic reputation, whose every future book would be an event in the literary world. Her first novel was written at forty, when she was a ma- ture woman, acquainted with grief, and had lived widely and well in the best sense. It may be recalled that George Eliot (between whom and Mrs. Stowe a sincere friend- ship was destined to spring up) wrote her " Scenes of Clerical Life" at thirty-seven — another example of a comparatively late turning to fiction by a writer of power. Henceforth Mrs. Stowe's experiences were to be broader, richer, more varied. In 1852 she went to Europe for the first of her three foreign trips, which extended her horizon in all ways, and brought her precious friends among the chosen of England and elsewhere. Her travel was almost a royal progress in respect to the attention paid her by the populace, while affectionate ties were formed with the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, Charles Kings- ley, Lady Byron, John Ruskin, George Eliot, the Brown- ings, and many more. Throughout her wanderings, and in her contact with all classes in her own country, Mrs. Stowe remained what she always was — the simple, un- pretending American woman, who regarded her gift as a trust from God, and was weighed down with a sense of its responsibility. Naturally of a retiring, even shrinking, dis- position, she steadily preferred the quiet of the home-circle Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 209 to all else the world could offer. A letter in which she describes her personal appearance is an index of her modest estimate of herself in general: ''I am a little bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch of snnft"; never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a decidedly used-up article " BRACELET MADE IN IMITATION OF THE MANACLES OF A SLAVE. Presented to Mrs. Stowe by Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana, second Duchess of Sutherland, in 1853, at a reception at Stafford House, London. The liuK's bear, with certain anlislavery dates, the following inscription: " 56284S, March 19, 1853" (the date and number of signatures to the address by the women of England to the women of America). The sheets of this address were sent to all the Eng- lish colonies, and wherever British residents could be found. It was presented to Mrs. Stowe by the Duchess of Sutherland, and is now bound in twenty-four large volumes. INDEX American Sailors, 47-62. Barbary States, 70-79. Buccaneers, 72-76. Calhoun, 148-150, 155-156. California, 106-129. Clay, Henry, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159. Clermont, The, 95-105. Constitution, The, 47, 53, 55, 58- 60, 75. Constitution of the U. S., 148-159. Dartmouth College, 144. Decatur, Capt., 49, 50, 75, 77, 79. Douglass, Frederick, 181-186. Douglas, Stephen A., 186-198, 199- 202. France, 25-29, 43-46, 70. Fraunce's Tavern, 22. Fulton, Robert, 95-105. Georgetown, Old, 86-94. Grandpre, Louis, 30-42. Great Britain, 43-46, 62, 67, 82. Guerriere, 58. Inauguration of Washington, 18- 24. Indians, 102-109, 136, 167. Jackson, Andrew, 62, 67. Jefiferson, Thomas, 26, 28. Key, Francis Scott, 68-71. Kidd, Capt., 80, 83-85. Lake Champlain, Battle of, 50, 51, .52. Lincoln, Early Life of, 166-180. Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 186, 198. Livingston, 27-29. London Times, 57, 61. Louisiana Purchase, 25-29, 30-42. Madison, Dolly, 93-94. Madison, James, 43-46. Marque, Letters of, 82. Missions, 106-121. Mississippi River, 25-26. Morocco, 75. Mount Vernon, 3-16. Monroe Doctrine, 147. Monroe, James, 27. Napoleon, 27-29. New Orleans, Battle of, 62-67. New York, 160-165. Osceola, 130. Philadelphia, J^he, 75, 77, 79. Phillips Exeter Academy, 143. Pirates, 72-86. Privateering, 82. Slavery, Escape from, 181-186. Slavery, 199-202. Star-Spangled Banner, 68-71. Steamboat, 95-100. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 203-209. Thomson, Charles, ig. Tripoli, 74, 75, 77. Uncle Tom's Cabin, 203-209. War of 1812, 43, 47-61. Washington, D. C, 86-94. Washington, George, 3-16, 18-24, 92. Wasp, The, 59. Webster, Daniel, 138-147, 148-159. Whigs, 150, 152. 211 APR tl 1912 "•'•' 'i i- i^.