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iWOUNGMlON 
 
Publishers' Notice. 
 
 THAT a Young Nation, like most young people, 
 must meet unexpected difficulties, and must 
 bravely struggle for success, is shown in this 
 Seventh Volume of American History, reprinted 
 from The Youth's Companion. 
 
 The beginnings of significant American institu- 
 tions and enterprises are here described in the 
 graphic and interesting style which is characteristic 
 of The Youth's Companion throughout the many 
 departments of that great family paper. 
 
 This book is Volume Forty of The Companion 
 Library, a collection of stories, travel sketches and 
 descriptive articles by some of the best writers and 
 artists for The Youth's Companion. All the 
 volumes above twenty are printed from the same 
 size of type as that used in this book. The first 
 twenty volumes are printed from the same size 
 as this notice. 
 
 The Companion Classics are monographs by eminent states- 
 men and authors of high repute on subjects of extraordinary 
 interest. They contain from thirty to forty pages, printed 
 on heavy paper from type the size of that used in this paragraph. 
 
The Young Nation 
 
 American History VII. 
 
 The Companion Library. 
 
 Number Forty. 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 From The Youth's Companion. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION Edward Stanwood 3 
 
 THE STARS AND STRIPES .... A. Y. Leech 8 
 
 EARLY ELECTIONS James Parton 13 
 
 THE "CONSTELLATION" . . . . Charles L. Norton 22 
 
 THE EARLY POST=OFFICE .... W.L.Wilson 30 
 
 THE FIRST CANAL C. G. Burnham 36 
 
 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS . . . Grace King 42 
 
 THE FIRST STEAMBOAT . . . Eugene T. Chamberlain 58 
 
 Copyright 1912. 
 
 Perry Mason Company, 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
gCl.A316938 
 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE has called the Consti- 
 tution of the United States *'the most 
 wonderful work ever struck off at a given time 
 by the brain and purpose of man." 
 
 The idea of a Continental Conference was 
 first suggested by Thomas Paine, but the result 
 of that convention was far different and far 
 superior to anything he proposed. 
 
 The immediate causes that led to the con- 
 vention were the failure of the Articles of Confed- 
 eration to secure respect at home and abroad, 
 and the inability of Congress to collect taxes on 
 the public debt, or to prevent disorders in the 
 different states. 
 
 But surprising as It may now seem, great 
 opposition was made to the convention, espe- 
 cially by the governors of the large states, 
 Virginia, New York and Massachusetts, who 
 were as great In the opinion of their own 
 people as the President of the United States is 
 to us now, and those states were unwilling to 
 give up their sovereign power and become 
 only a thirteenth of the republic. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The delegates were commissioned to propose 
 amendments to the Articles of Confederation, 
 but by the sagacity of the leaders, chief of whom 
 was Alexander Hamilton, they were persuaded to 
 do more, and posterity blesses 
 them for doing it. 
 
 The convention, numbering 
 at first fifty-eight members, 
 sat from the 25th of May to 
 the 17th of September, 1787, 
 in a room in the Old State 
 House in Philadelphia, which 
 may still be visited. An abler 
 body of statesmen has per- 
 haps never assembled, and 
 they labored with intense and anxious con- 
 centration of effort for nearly four months. 
 
 Yet the result of their exertions was a docu- 
 ment of short and easy paragraphs that could 
 be slowly read in less than an hour. It is so brief 
 and so simple that some may very naturally won- 
 der why it should have been so difficult to make. 
 But consider the knotty questions involved in 
 each of those quiet, simple little sentences. 
 The first section of the first article settled one 
 of the most perplexing of them all, by ordaining 
 that Congress should consist of two houses. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The convention had to weigh the probable 
 consequences of entrusting all the lawmaking 
 power to a single house. The short paragraph 
 which settled it in the United States for a 
 century contains the result of countless hours 
 of study, reflection and discussion. 
 
 Then, again, there was the question, so im- 
 portant to Rhode Island, New Jersey and Dela- 
 ware, How shall the smaller states be protected 
 
 THE OLD STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 against the superior power and wealth of the 
 larger? In the Continental Congress they had 
 voted by states, a system which had made 
 Delaware's vote of equal weight with that of 
 Virginia, a concession felt by the larger states 
 to be unjust, unwise, and not to be endured. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 On this rock the convention nearly went to 
 pieces, and it was only after some weeks of 
 most anxious, and we may truly say agonizing 
 discussion, that the convention reached the 
 expedient of having the states equally repre- 
 sented in the Senate, but represented according 
 to population in the House. 
 
 A fearfully difficult matter to arrange grew 
 out of slavery. No one was willing to have the 
 odious word slave, or any of its derivatives, in 
 the Constitution of a country claiming to be, 
 
 and meaning to be, the 
 freest under the sun. 
 But the slaves existed ; 
 there were supposed to 
 be a million of them. 
 They were an element 
 of power, and in some 
 of the Southern States 
 they were too important 
 not to be considered in 
 the conditions of union. 
 South Carolina, with 
 her slaves counted out, would have been so 
 insignificant a member of the Union that she 
 never could have willingly joined it with that 
 proviso. On the other hand, how could the 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 free states concede to the slave states an added 
 weight in the Union proportioned to the 
 number of their slaves, and this without so much 
 as using the offensive and 
 incongruous word ? 
 
 At the same time the 
 Northern States, where slaves 
 were few, — for there was 
 hardly a state in which there 
 were not some slaves, — were 
 compensated by adding to 
 the word "representatives" 
 the words " and direct taxes." 
 The South was to have its 
 slaves counted in making up the representation 
 of each state, but it must also pay for them. 
 
 This was the hardest problem the convention 
 had to solve, and they solved it in the way 
 which, upon the whole, was best for the time. 
 The dreadful word was not employed. The 
 slaves came in at the end of an enumeration as 
 "three-fifths of all other persons" — a dainty 
 device worthy of Doctor Franklin. 
 
 Edward Stan wood. 
 
 ENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 THE first national legislation on the flag bears 
 the date June 14, 1777, when Congress, 
 in session at Philadelphia, adopted the following : 
 
 "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen 
 United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red 
 and white; that the union be thirteen stars, 
 white in a blue fi-eld, representing a new 
 constellation." 
 
 This was about one year subsequent to the 
 Declaration of I ndependence. Prior to that time 
 colonial flags, and those improvised by the 
 parties using them, were publicly displayed as 
 occasion demanded, but these were in no sense 
 the "national standard." 
 
 The thirteen stripes had been introduced, in 
 alternate white and blue, on the upper left- 
 hand corner of a standard presented to the 
 Philadelphia Light Horse Company by its 
 captain in the early part of 1775. Moreover, 
 the flag of the thirteen united colonies raised 
 at Washington's headquarters at Cambridge, 
 January 2, 1776, had the thirteen stripes just 
 as they are this day; but it also had the cross 
 
THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 of St. George and St. Andrew on a blue ground 
 in the corner. 
 
 There is no satisfactory evidence, however, that 
 any flag bearing the union of the stars had been 
 in public use before the 
 resolution of June, 1777, 
 though the stars and 
 stripes on the shield of 
 the Washington coat of 
 arms had been known 
 
 to many Americans. 
 
 It has been impossible 
 to decide with certainty 
 who designed the Amer- 
 ican flag as first adopted 
 
 by Congress, but the best recorded evidence 
 gives part of the credit of designing it and all 
 the credit of making it to Mrs. John Ross, who 
 lived in Philadelphia. Her descendants assert 
 that a committee of Congress, accompanied by 
 General Washington, called upon Mrs. Ross 
 in June, 1776, and engaged her to make the 
 flag from a rough drawing. This drawing was, 
 at her suggestion, redrawn by General Washing- 
 ton with pencil, in her back parlor, and the flag 
 thus designed was adopted by Congress. 
 
 Although the resolution establishing the flag 
 
10 THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 was not officially promulgated by the Secretary 
 of Congress until September 3, 1777, it seems 
 well authenticated that the regulation Stars 
 and Stripes was carried at the Battle of the 
 Brandy wine, September 11, 1777, and thence- 
 forward during the battles of the Revolution. 
 
 No further action relative to the flag was 
 taken by Congress until after Vermont and 
 Kentucky were admitted to the 
 Union. Then, on January 13, 
 1 794, Congress enacted : 
 
 ''That the flag of the United 
 States be fifteen stripes, alternate 
 red and white ; that the union be 
 THE WASHINGTON fiftcen stars, white in a blue field." 
 
 SHIELD. • n • 1 
 
 This flag was the national 
 banner from 1795 to 18 18, during which period 
 occurred the war of 181 2 with Great Britain. 
 But soon five additional states — Tennessee, 
 Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi — 
 were admitted to the Union and required repre- 
 sentation on the flag. So Congress, on April 
 4, 1 8 18, enacted: 
 
 First. ''That the flag of the United States be 
 thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and 
 white; that the union have twenty stars, white 
 in a blue field." 
 
THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 11 
 
 THE STARS AND STRIPES, 
 
 JANUA.VV . 
 
 1794- 
 
 Second. "That 
 on the admission of 
 every new state into 
 the Union one star 
 be added to the union 
 of the flag, and that such 
 addition shall take effect ? 
 
 on the Fourth of July next 
 succeeding such admission." 
 
 The debate in Congress 
 shows that the return to the 
 thirteen stripes of the 1777 flag 
 was due, in a measure, to a 
 reverence for the standard of the 
 Revolution ; but it was also due to the 
 fact that a further increase of the number 
 of stripes would make the width of the flag out 
 
 JUNE 1^ 
 
 mi 
 
12 THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 of proportion to its length unless the stripes 
 were narrowed, and this would have made it 
 hard to see them at a distance. 
 
 No act has since been passed by Congress 
 altering this feature of the flag, and the standard 
 is the same as originally adopted, except as to 
 the number of stars in its union. 
 
 Although the design for the United States 
 flag was so purely American, the material for it 
 still came from England. No American bunting 
 was found sufficiently strong and durable in 
 color to stand wind and weather until after our 
 Civil War, when Gen. B. F. Butler requested 
 the Secretary of the Navy to test the bunting 
 made in Lowell, Massachusetts. 
 
 A test was accordingly ordered, and this 
 bunting was found superior to foreign fabric 
 in quality and color endurance. The Lowell 
 company presented a magnificent flag to the 
 Senate of the United States, and this, the 
 first United States flag made of United States 
 bunting, was hoisted over the Senate Chamber 
 at Washington on February 24, 1866. Ever 
 since then the bunting for the Stars and Stripes 
 has been made in America. 
 
 A. Y. Leech. 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 CONGRESS did not learn of the acceptance 
 of the new Constitution by a sufficient 
 number of states until late in the summer of 
 1788, and did not name the day for the election 
 of a President until the 13th of September. 
 
 Three interesting days were then appointed. 
 On the first Wednesday of January, 1789, the 
 people were to elect Presidential electors ; on the 
 first Wednesday of February, the electors of 
 each state were to meet and choose a President 
 and Vice-President; on the first Wednesday 
 in March (which was the 4th), Congress was 
 to meet in New York, count the electoral 
 votes, and set the new government in motion. 
 
 Out of the whole body of voters, it is ques- 
 tionable if a hundred would have cast their 
 votes against General Washington. 
 
 As to the Vice- Presidency, nobody appears 
 to have wanted the office very much. It was 
 generally agreed that since Virginia was to 
 give a President, Massachusetts ought to 
 furnish the Vice-President. 
 
14 EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 The choice fell upon John Adams, just home 
 from England and Holland, where he had 
 served his country with great ability. 
 
 If there had been any doubt about his elec- 
 tion, that doubt was dispelled by General 
 Washington, who caused it to be made known 
 to some of the electors that he himself ap- 
 proved and desired the election of John Adams. 
 
 The elections duly occurred, and the elec- 
 toral votes were forwarded in sealed packets to 
 New York. But there was no quorum present 
 of either House until the 6th of April, when 
 there was a quorum of both Houses. The 
 first business was to open the packets contain- 
 ing the votes of the thirteen electoral colleges. 
 
 For General Washington every elector had 
 given his vote ; but Mr. Adams was elected to 
 the Vice-Presidency only by a plurality of thirty- 
 four in sixty-nine. 
 
 When this great business had been done, and 
 the result announced, Mr. Madison, a member 
 of the House from Virginia, stood forth, and 
 addressed the Senate in these words : 
 
 ''Mr. President. I am directed by the 
 House of Representatives to inform the Senate 
 that the House have agreed that the notification 
 of the election of the President and of the 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 15 
 
 Vice-President of the United States should be 
 made by such persons, and in such manner, 
 as the Senate shall be pleased to direct." 
 
 He then withdrew, and the House returned 
 to its own chamber. The Senate appointed 
 Charles Thompson, the 
 Secretary of the Conti- 
 nental Congress, to pro- 
 ceed to Mount Vernon 
 and notify General Wash- 
 ington of his election, and 
 Mr. Sylvanus Bowen to 
 go to Quincy and notify 
 Mr. Adams. 
 
 If we had been alive 
 in 1792, when the second 
 Presidential election took 
 place, we should not have 
 noticed any particular signs of a political con- 
 test. There were no flags or banners flying 
 in the breeze or hanging across the streets. 
 There were no torchlight processions, no 
 mass-meetings, and no fiery articles in the 
 newspapers telling people how to vote. 
 
 Indeed, there was no difference of opinion 
 about the President. Even the few opponents 
 of General Washington's administration desired 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
16 EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 him to be elected again. There was only one 
 decided anti-Washington man in the country, 
 and that was Washington himself, who con- 
 sented to serve a second time because he loved 
 his country better than himself, and preferred 
 his duty to his pleasure. 
 
 We might call this a Vice- Presidential elec- 
 tion, because the only contest was who should be 
 Vice-President, John Adams or George Clinton, 
 Governor of New York. These men had 
 strong partizans, and, in a quiet way, there was 
 a great deal of electioneering, not so much 
 among the people in general as among the 
 leaders of the people, members of Congress, 
 and others; for in those times ordinary people 
 had not very much to do with managing politics, 
 and were apt to vote as they were advised. 
 
 Mr. Adams was supposed to have acquired 
 in England a more favorable regard for mon- 
 archy and its forms than was consistent with 
 true republicanism, and to desire a strong 
 federal government. 
 
 George Clinton was regarded as a model of 
 a plain and downright Republican, proud of 
 his state, jealous of the rights of the states, 
 and fully resolved against the slightest increase 
 of power on the part of the general government. 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 17 
 
 H'amilton and his friends, who were then 
 beginning to be called Federalists, were zealous 
 and active for Mr. Adams. Jefferson and his 
 friends, then first called Republicans (later the 
 Democratic Party), threw the whole weight of 
 their influence in favor of George Clinton. 
 
 The election took place in November, 1792, 
 and the electors met In their several states in 
 the course of the follow- 
 ing month. 
 
 For General Wash- 
 ington every electoral 
 vote was cast, one hun- 
 dred and thirty -two in 
 number. For the Vice- 
 Presidency, George Clin- 
 ton received fifty votes, 
 Mr. Adams seventy- 
 seven, and so was elect- 
 ed handsomely enough. 
 
 On the approach of the third Presidential elec- 
 tion Washington declined a reelection, and John 
 Adams and Thomas Jefferson were quietly elect- 
 ed respectively President and Vice-President. 
 
 When Mr. Adams came to the Presidency in 
 March, 1797, it seemed as if the United States 
 would be obliged to go to war with France, 
 
 JOHN ADAMS. 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 unless the French government could be induced 
 to put an end to the seizure of American 
 vessels by French cruisers. 
 
 Mr. Adams's first thought was to send as 
 ambassador to France Vice-President Jefferson, 
 who was highly esteemed in that country, and 
 
 sympathized most 
 warmly with its strug- 
 gle for freedom. Mr. 
 Jefferson declined. 
 The people had elect- 
 ed him to succeed to 
 
 JEFFERSON S WRITING DESK. 
 
 the Presidency in case 
 of Mr. Adams's death, and he did not think him- 
 self at liberty to leave the country during his term. 
 
 Mr. Adams, too, upon reflection, was of the 
 same opinion, so he sent an embassy of three 
 distinguished men; but their efforts were a 
 failure. Then preparations were made for war, 
 which was never declared, although there were 
 decisive naval battles. 
 
 Mr. Adams had other troubles over the Alien 
 Law, which gave the President authority to expel 
 undesirable foreigners, and the Sedition Law, 
 which repressed the publication of anything 
 calculated to bring Congress or the President 
 into disrepute. 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 19 
 
 When the year of the Presidential election 
 came round again, Mr. Adams was nominated 
 by the Federalists for reelection. Gen. C. C. 
 Pinckney of South Carolina, a member of the 
 late embassy to France, was their candidate for 
 the Vice- Presidency. The 
 Republicans again placed 
 in nomination Jefferson 
 and Burr. 
 
 We have never had a 
 Presidential election so ex- 
 citing as this; and, after all, 
 it was carried more by the 
 dexterity of Aaron Burr 
 in New York than through 
 the force of conviction. 
 
 By a series of most 
 adroit measures, not dis- 
 honorable, Aaron Burr succeeded in carrying 
 the State of New York for the Republicans. 
 The result was a disappointment to both parties, 
 for there was a tie between Jefferson and Burr. 
 
 The electoral votes were thus distributed: 
 Jefferson, 73 ; Burr, 73 ; Adams, 65 ; C. C. 
 Pinckney, 64; John Jay, i. Thus no President 
 was chosen, since the law then gave the first office 
 to the candidate having the greatest number of 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
20 EARLY ELECTIONS. 
 
 electoral votes, and the Vice- Presidency to him 
 who had next to the highest number. 
 
 It now devolved upon the House of Repre- 
 sentatives to decide which of these two gentle- 
 men should be the President. 
 
 It is pleasing to know that the men most 
 interested in this controversy all behaved honor- 
 ably during this crisis. Mr. Adams sat quietly 
 in the White House, and took no part in it. 
 
 Colonel Burr refused to make any expression 
 as he said " to counteract the wishes of the 
 people." Mr. Jefferson said, " Elect Colonel 
 Burr, if you please, and I will support his 
 administration to the best of my ability." 
 
 Happily, after many ballotings, and eight 
 days of distressing suspense, Mr. Jefferson was 
 elected to the Presidency, and Colonel Burr to 
 the Vice- Presidency, in accordance with the 
 wishes of a majority of the people. 
 
 A few days after this event came the joyful 
 news that a treaty of peace between France 
 and the United States had been signed, which 
 freed the new administration from an embarrass- 
 ment that had troubled the whole administration 
 of Mr. Adams. 
 
 Early in the fourth year of the Presidency 
 of Thomas Jefferson the time had come round 
 
EARLY ELECTIONS. 21 
 
 again to prepare for the Presidential election in 
 November. 
 
 At that period Presidents were not nominated 
 by conventions of the people, but by caucuses 
 of members of Congress. When the (Demo- 
 cratic) Republican members met in caucus, 
 every man was warmly in favor of nominating 
 Mr. Jefferson for a second term. 
 
 Aaron Burr was not mentioned nor thought 
 of for reelection, but was passed over. The 
 caucus nominated for the Vice-Presidency, in 
 his stead, George Clinton, Governor of New 
 York. The Federalists nominated as their 
 candidate for the Presidency Charles Cotesworth 
 Pinckney of South Carolina, and for the Vice- 
 Presidency, Rufus King of New York. 
 
 When they came to vote for President in 
 1804, Mr. Jefferson was reelected by a great 
 majority. This was the just reward of wise and 
 bold administration, honorable to the President 
 who received it, as to the people who bestowed it. 
 
 James Parton. 
 
THE ''CONSTELLATION." 
 
 'T'HE War for Independence was still a recent 
 -■■ thing when French ships began plundering 
 Yankee merchantmen on the high seas. 
 
 War seemed unavoidable, and we had no 
 navy to speak of. The frigate United States 
 had been launched two months before; the 
 Cofistitution (''Old Ironsides") was still on the 
 stocks at Boston, when the Constellation was 
 launched at Baltimore on September 7, 1797, 
 
 She was the second formidable war-vessel of 
 what was then the "new navy" to bear the flag 
 of the young republic, and she was destined, 
 with her sister frigates above named, to compel 
 a decent measure of respect from the con- 
 temptuous Europeans of that period. 
 
 With all possible despatch she was fitted out 
 with her thirty-eight guns. They were twenty- 
 four-pounders, and redoubtable pieces in their 
 day. She became the flag-ship of gallant Com- 
 modore Truxtun, who had orders to fight any 
 French armed vessels that he might encounter. 
 
 War had not been declared formally, but in 
 spite of all friendly protests French cruisers 
 
THE "CONSTELLATION." 23 
 
 continued to capture American merchantmen, 
 until the remembrance of timely help during the 
 Revolution was well-nigh forgotten in present 
 wrath. Congress formally abrogated existing 
 treaties, and a state of things very much like 
 war was inaugurated. 
 
 Commodore Truxtun, with his little West 
 India squadron, did good preventive service for 
 some months, without firing a shot, because he 
 did not see an armed Frenchman. 
 
 At last, on a beautiful February noon in 1799, 
 just off the island of Nevis, the lookout reported 
 a big ship in sight to the southward; and the 
 Constellation, setting the Stars and Stripes, 
 bore down toward her under all sail. She could 
 reel off twelve knots an hour with a free wind, 
 according to her log-book. 
 
 The stranger set the tricolor of France, and 
 fired a gun to windward as much as to say, 
 ^'Tres-bien, monsieur, I understand that you 
 object to our little capture of your merchant 
 canaille. What are you going to do about it ? 
 I'm all ready to fight, if you like." 
 
 Commodore Truxtun merely nodded to his 
 executive officer, Lieutenant Sterritt. ''Give 
 her a good full, quartermaster," said Sterritt. 
 
 "A good full, sir ! " answered the man at the 
 
24 
 
 THE ''CONSTELLATION." 
 
 wheel, and the gallant Constellation, with her 
 yards straining at the braces and her crew at 
 quarters, rapidly drew up within hailing distance. 
 The stranger proved to be the frigate In- 
 surgente, carrying forty guns and four hundred 
 
 REDOUBTABLE I'lECES. 
 
 and nine men, against the Constellatioji s thirty- 
 eight guns and three hundred and nine men, a 
 disparity in numbers of which the Yankee com- 
 modore was well aware. 
 
 " Commence firing ! " was the word on board 
 the Constellation as soon as her broadside guns 
 could be brought to bear; and the Frenchman 
 
THE "CONSTELLATION." 25 
 
 was nothing- loath to return the compliment. A 
 huge mountain of white powder-smoke rose 
 against the blue sky and rolled down to leeward. 
 
 In the heat of the engagement, the foretop- 
 mast of the Constellation was nearly shot away 
 at the lower cap, and Midshipman David Porter, 
 captain of the foretop, hailed the deck to have 
 the lifts cast off, but the guns were thundering 
 and everybody was on the jump. He could 
 not make himself heard, and all the time the 
 old-fashioned, square topsail was straining at 
 the mast to complete the ruin that the French 
 cannon had begun. 
 
 There was no time to lose, so young Porter 
 cut the stops without much ado, and down came 
 the heavy yard by the>un, saving the foremast 
 and perhaps saving the fight, too. 
 
 It was a grave responsibility for a boy to take, 
 but this boy was "Dave" Porter, afterward 
 commodore, and father of the admiral, and he 
 was not of the stuff to hesitate when he saw a 
 good spar in danger and possible defeat as an 
 immediate consequence. 
 
 The battle went on, and just an hour and a 
 quarter after the first gun was fired, the proud 
 Insurgente, with spars shattered, rigging shot 
 away, and twenty-nine of the crew dead and 
 
26 THE ^'CONSTELLATION." 
 
 forty-one wounded, lay rolling helplessly on the 
 sea, while the American frigate wore round and 
 took position to deliver a raking fire. 
 
 Of course the tricolor had to come down ; 
 and from that day the fighting qualities of the 
 new American navy were recognized by all 
 maritime nations — except Great Britain, which 
 had to be given a special course of instruction 
 twelve years afterward. 
 
 Poor Captain Barreault, of the Insui^gente, 
 came aboard to give up his sword. He was so 
 much astonished at the treatment he received, 
 that he wrote to Commodore Truxtun : 
 
 " You have united all the qualities which 
 characterize a man of honor, courage and 
 humanity. Receive from me the most sincere 
 thanks, and be assured I shall make it a duty 
 to publish to all my fellow citizens the generous 
 conduct you have observed toward us." 
 
 A prize crew took the captured frigate into 
 St. Kitts, where she was refitted and sent to 
 sea under American colors. Within a short 
 time the refitted Constellation was at work 
 again, sweeping up the small fry of the buc- 
 caneer-ridden West Indian waters. 
 
 It was nearly a year before another really 
 worthy antagonist came in her way. The 
 
THE "CONSTELLATION. 
 
 27 
 
 Constellation had heard of her, and was on the 
 lookout for her at seven o'clock in the morning 
 of February i, 1800, just off Guadaloupe. 
 
 THK BATTLE W fc.\T ON 
 
 It was the French ship La Vengeance, a for- 
 midable sloop of war, carrying fifty-four guns, 
 which the American captain knew was cruising 
 in those waters. 
 
 To the surprise of the people on the Constel- 
 lation, the Frenchman did not make a show of 
 
28 THE "CONSTELLATION." 
 
 fight on the appearance of the Yankee man-of- 
 war. On the contrary, the commander, in spite 
 of his fifty-four guns, for some reason sought to 
 avoid an engagement. He crowded on all sail 
 and made a run for it. Then followed a twelve 
 hours' race that must have been exciting indeed. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the evening the Frenchman, 
 seeing that he could not escape the fieet-footed 
 Yankee, opened on his pursuer with his stern 
 and quarter-deck guns. The Constellatioii re- 
 turned the fire, ranged alongside, and a terrific 
 combat was begun. 
 
 The fight lasted until one o'clock in the 
 morning, when the Frenchman's fire was nearly 
 silenced. In fact, he had hauled down his colors 
 some time before ; but in the smoke and dark- 
 ness the signals had not been observed, and in 
 desperation he had resumed the fight. 
 
 But now luck changed. Midshipman Jarvis, 
 in command of the Constellations maintop, 
 found that the standing rigging had pretty 
 much all been shot away. 
 
 All hands set at work with a will, Jarvis keep- 
 ing his men aloft to lend a hand. Just at this 
 juncture down came a West Indian squall, and 
 the tall mainmast went overboard, the topmen 
 and Midshipman Jarvis with it. Only one man 
 
THE "CONSTELLATION." 29 
 
 was saved, poor Jarvis going down with the rest. 
 Thus crippled, the Constellation lost sight of 
 her late antagonist. So suddenly did she dis- 
 appear, that it was feared she had foundered; 
 but with her crew at the pumps, and feeling 
 certain that the terrible Yankee could not 
 pursue until he cleared away the wreck, La 
 Vengeance effected a very lucky escape. 
 
 The Constellation went home to Norfolk for 
 repairs after this action, and was laid up until the 
 second war with Great Britain. During that war 
 she was blockaded by a British fleet in Hamp- 
 ton Roads, and only escaped capture through 
 the ceaseless vigilance of her commander. 
 
 It was fortunate for the British that she was 
 thus imprisoned, for she was a formidable ship, 
 and if she had been on the high seas during that 
 war, her record might have rivaled that of her 
 sister, the Constitution, so famous later. 
 
 The Constellation was destined thereafter 
 to a peaceful career, although she was in the 
 Mediterranean during the war with the Barbary 
 States in 1815, and took part in the operations 
 of Commodore Decatur's fleet against Algiers. 
 
 After that she cruised to the Pacific, to the 
 East Indies, to Brazil, and elsewhere, carrying the 
 flag often where it had never been seen before. 
 
 Charles L. Norton. 
 
THE EARLY POST-OFFICE. 
 
 ON February 17, 169 1-2, William and Mary 
 granted to Thomas Neale power to estab- 
 lish offices in the American colonies for receiv- 
 ing and despatching letters or packets. 
 
 Under this patent Andrew Hamilton was 
 appointed Postmaster-General of America, and 
 was successful in securing concessions from the 
 separate colonies. He established a weekly post 
 from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, southward 
 all the way to Virginia; but in doing this he 
 necessarily ran into debt, for it seems that the 
 expenses of the first four years were about five 
 thousand dollars annually, while the revenue 
 was less than two thousand dollars. 
 
 In 1707 the crown bought back the Neale 
 patent, and in 17 10 Parliament established post- 
 offices for America, with New York as the cen- 
 ter of operations, and prescribed rates of postage. 
 It may be of interest to note that Virginia, where 
 the parliamentary post-office was introduced in 
 1 7 18, at first resisted, for the people called 
 the rates of postage a tax, and believed that 
 
THE EARLY POST-OFFICE. 
 
 31 
 
 Parliament could not lay any tax on them with- 
 out the consent of their General Assembly. 
 
 This feeling soon passed away, for when 
 Franklin, in his examination before Parliament 
 in 1 766, was asked by those who were assuming 
 to justify the stamp tax upon America, " Is not 
 
 PIONEER MAIL IN WINTER. 
 
 the post-office, which they have long received, 
 a tax as well as a regulation?" He answered, 
 "No; the money paid for the postage on a 
 letter is not of the nature of a tax. It is merely 
 a quajitmn meruit for a service done. No person 
 is compellable to pay the money if he does not 
 choose to receive the service." Franklin was then 
 Deputy Postmaster-General of North America. 
 From the purchase of the Neale patent until 
 
32 THE EARLY POST-OFFICE. 
 
 1775 postmasters were appointed from London. 
 Franklin was postmaster at Philadelphia from 1737 
 to 1753' ai^d then was Postmaster-General for 
 twenty-one years ; but for a large part of this time 
 he was out of the country. He was removed 
 in 1774, as he says, by *'a freak of ministers." 
 
 The Continental Congress as early as July, 
 1 775' 3- year before the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, assumed control of the postal service 
 of the colonies, and appointed Benjamin Franklin 
 Postmaster- General for the purpose of running 
 a line of posts from Falmouth or Portland, in 
 Maine, to Savannah in Georgia, with as many 
 cross-posts as he might see fit. Franklin's son- 
 in-law, Richard Bache, was the deputy, and was 
 chosen Postmaster - General on November 7, 
 1776, owing to the absence of Franklin. 
 
 Samuel Oso^ood, of Massachusetts, was the 
 first Postmaster-General under Washington, and 
 a copy of his first report, dated December 9, 
 1789, two months after his appointment, is now 
 among the archives of the department. 
 
 The growth of the American postal system 
 from this time to the introduction of railroads, 
 nearly fifty years, which may be called the 
 stage-coach era, fully kept pace with the growth 
 of the country, and it may be interesting to 
 
THE EARLY POST-OFFICE. 
 
 33 
 
 note, in these days of large postal deficits, that 
 from 1789 to 1834 there were only eleven years 
 in which the Post-Office Department did not 
 turn in some surplus to the Treasury. 
 
 The mail originally was confined to letters, 
 and not until 1792 were newspapers admitted 
 
 by law, and then at the rate of a cent a paper 
 for the first hundred miles, and a cent and a 
 half for longer distances. At this rate the 
 postage on a daily paper, which was then gen- 
 erally a small four-page at the subscrlpdon 
 price of eight dollars a year, would be four 
 
34 THE EARLY POST-OFFICE. 
 
 dollars and sixty-eight cents for any distance 
 over a hundred miles. 
 
 While there was a steady expansion of mail 
 routes and mail facilities, and some improve- 
 ment in connections and in speed of transmis- 
 sion, there was but slight reduction in the rates 
 of postage during the stage-coach era. Postage 
 on a single letter was six and a quarter cents 
 for thirty miles, increasing with the number of 
 miles until it became twenty-five cents for all 
 distances over four hundred miles. The same 
 rate held for every enclosure, no matter how 
 small, and four times the rate if the letter 
 weighed over one ounce. 
 
 The late Secretary McCulloch, in his "Mem- 
 oirs," says that on most of the letters received 
 prior to 1845 by the bank at Fort Wayne, 
 Indiana, of which he was cashier, the postage 
 was one dollar and upward, which shows that 
 the post-oilfice clerks were very careful in 
 ascertaining how many pieces of paper consti- 
 tuted a letter, chareinof as much for an enclosed 
 check as for a letter. 
 
 What a development of our postal facilities 
 has happened since that time ! The entire 
 revenue of the post-ofTice in the first year of 
 Mr. Jefferson's administration would not now 
 
THE EARLY POST-OFFICE.. 35 
 
 pay the salaries of one-half the letter-carriers in 
 the city of Philadelphia alone. The net expend- 
 itures of the government in the last year of Mr. 
 Monroe's administration fall more than a million 
 short of the sum appropriated for the free 
 delivery system of the year 1895. 
 
 The average yearly revenues of the depart- 
 ment in Mr. Lincoln's administrations were less 
 than the present yearly pay of our letter- 
 carriers ; and the expenditures of the Post- 
 Office Department are now one and a half 
 times greater than the cost of the Federal 
 government at the beginning of the Civil War. 
 
 The Post-Office Department of the United 
 States is to-day the largest business machine 
 that has ever existed in the world, and is daily 
 engaged in the strenuous task of keeping pace 
 with and outstripping the growth of our country 
 and its quick adoption of all the forces of 
 modern progress, whether material or social. 
 
 W. L. Wilson. 
 
THE FIRST CANAL. 
 
 T^HE beautiful river whose navigation was 
 *■ the first in this country to be improved by 
 a canal received various names from various 
 people. The Dutch, the first of the white race 
 to navigate it and trace it upon a map, called it 
 .the Fresh-water River; the early English settlers 
 called it the Great River ; the Indians the Long 
 River. We know it by its Indian name, Con- 
 necticut — long river. 
 
 One can hardly realize the extent to which 
 this river was used as a highway before the 
 railroad displaced the rafts and fiatboats and 
 sloops of the early period, and the steamboats 
 that came with the era of steam navigation. 
 
 When the War for Independence closed, the 
 question, " How can we get our timber and 
 farm products to market more quickly and 
 cheaply?" began to be repeated by the people 
 in the Connecticut valley. Their ox - teams 
 made slow and dif^cult progress over the rough 
 roads that led to the distant market, and traf^c, 
 whenever possible, followed the river. There 
 
THE FIRST CANAL. 37 
 
 were long stretches of navigable water, but 
 nature had broken the smooth flow of the river 
 at points by a wild race down rocky rapids or a 
 wilder leap over steep falls. 
 
 '' If we could only get our boats round those 
 great falls and down to Hartford, we could ship 
 our goods to Boston or New York," the farmers 
 and merchants said. Their prosperity was bound 
 up with the improvement of the navigation of 
 the river that flowed by their farms and villages. 
 Many were thinking, " How can we get past 
 those falls ? " 
 
 By and by a word was passing up and down 
 the valley, carried by boatmen and post-riders 
 and stages and travelers. It was a new word 
 for New England. George Washington had 
 used it in Virginia before he became leader of 
 the American army, but New England ears 
 were not familiar with its sound. "Canal" was 
 the magic word that promised to solve the dif- 
 ficulties of river navigation. 
 
 The people thrilled at the thought of a safe 
 channel round the rushing, roaring, foaming, 
 tumbling waters of those impassable falls. The 
 idea was soon expressed in companies chartered 
 to build locks and canals round the three great 
 falls known as South Hadley Falls, Turners Falls 
 
38 
 
 THE FIRST CANAL. 
 
 and Bellows Falls, and thus open the river to 
 navigation far into the interior of New England. 
 To the credit of Yankee enterprise the work 
 was promptly beorun and successfully completed. 
 
 THE ABANDONED CANAL. 
 
 The story of an abandoned canal on the Con- 
 necticut River is the story of the first canal in 
 this country. It stretched along the east bank 
 of the river. Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke 
 looked down upon it. Before the nineteenth 
 century began it was in operation, and long 
 
THE FIRST CANAL. 39 
 
 before the century ended it was diverted from 
 purposes of inland navigation to the purposes 
 of manufacture. 
 
 The South Hadley canal was only two and 
 one-half miles in length, yet its building was an 
 undertaking of considerable magnitude. Some 
 of its channel was cut through the solid rock in 
 days when the power for drilling was in the 
 stout arms of men, and gunpowder was the 
 highest explosive for blasting. It was necessary 
 to'build a dam across the broad, strong current, 
 and more than once did the river rise in the 
 might of a spring or autumn freshet, and like a 
 giant in his wrath break the bonds that checked 
 its freedom. 
 
 The enterprise was costly. Over eighty-one 
 thousand dollars were assessed on the shares, 
 and the canal had been open for traffic ten years 
 before a dollar was returned to the stockholders. 
 Agents secured large subscriptions to the stock 
 from merchants of Amsterdam, Holland; and 
 when assessments came too hard and money 
 was needed for improvements, the State of Mas- 
 sachusetts, with untroubled conscience, granted 
 a lottery. The toll-gatherer's book is an inter- 
 esting relic of this old canal company. Its first 
 leaves have been torn out and lost. The earliest 
 
40 
 
 THE FIRST CANAL. 
 
 receipt for toll now found is number one hundred 
 and eighteen, and its date, June 6, 1795, tells 
 that the canal was opened in three years after 
 the company was chartered to build it. 
 
 There were other besides engineering and 
 financial difficulties to meet in building this 
 canal. The dam interrupted 
 the passage of shad and 
 other fish to their breeding- 
 grounds, and the fishermen 
 demanded its removal. An 
 epidemic of fever and ague 
 visited Northampton, and its 
 shaking victims traced the 
 cause of their malady to the 
 canal, whose dam raised the water somewhat 
 on Northampton meadows. A fishway quieted 
 the clamors of the irate fishermen, and the 
 dam was changed to appease the ague sufferers. 
 There was a curious device for raising the 
 boats and rafts of lumber from the one level of 
 this canal to the other. It was not an anticipa- 
 tion of the modern hydraulic lifts used on some 
 canals, yet water did the lifting. There was an 
 inclined plane connecting the two levels. On it 
 was a track for a car. Two water-wheels, one 
 on each side of the canal, at the head of the 
 
 THE OFFICIAL SEAL. 
 
THE FIRST CANAL. 41 
 
 inclined plane, were turned by the water of 
 the canal and made to draw up and lower this 
 car. The raft or boat was floated into the sub- 
 merged car ; then the water-wheels were set in 
 motion, and drew the car and its load out of the 
 water, up the track on the inclined plane into 
 the higher level, or reversing the process, passed 
 the car and its load to the lower level. This 
 curious device was in use for ten years before 
 modern locks superseded it. The official seal 
 of the company pictures the inclined plane and 
 the car, and bears the words, ''Sic transit y 
 
 This canal, with its twin, the canal at Turners 
 Falls, which was opened in 1800, made possible 
 in 1826 the adventurous trip of the little steam- 
 boat Bar7iet from New York, where it was built, 
 to Bellows Falls, and contributed to the opera- 
 tion later of a connecting line of steamboats 
 from Wells River to Hartford. 
 
 C. G. BURNHAM. 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 THE sun was just setting when old Sauvage 
 and young Louis paddled their pirogue to 
 the landing-place. Their journey was finished ; 
 New Orleans lay but a gunshot away. 
 
 The old hunter lifted his head and sniffed the 
 air. " Tis the lilies of France, the sweetest per- 
 fume in the world. Smell it, my boy. It's the 
 scent of youth and pleasure, glory and honor, of 
 brave men and brave deeds, as the song says." 
 
 They drew their long, sharp-pointed pirogue 
 higher up on the bank, fastened its chain to a 
 stake, shouldered their guns and wallets, and 
 began to walk slowly across the bank to the 
 high land beyond. 
 
 There was no desolation about the scene ; on 
 the contrary, as far as eye could see, there were 
 lights of hospitality, and as far as ear could hear, 
 sounds of conviviality. 
 
 Little rude cabins, through the cracks of which 
 the light streamed so plentifully that they looked 
 like lanterns, illuminated the bank along the edge 
 of the water. In the open, men in buckskin or 
 homespun were leaping about a huge bonfire ; 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 43 
 
 some were wrestling, some dancing to banjo 
 music; the flatboat men's evening frolic was on. 
 
 The old hunter and the boy looked upon it 
 from the distance, as they had often spied upon 
 Indians frolicking round their camp-fires. 
 
 '' The Americans hate the Spaniards, too," 
 said Sauvage. "They are rejoicing because the 
 French have driven them out. The Americans 
 are good fellows, but let us go where they 
 are laughing and singing in French." 
 
 So they skirted round the glare of the fire 
 and walked up the bank higher still and farther, 
 until they came to the public road. 
 
 The old man stopped and looked slowly all 
 around. "They have cleared the forest away," 
 he said, "and built houses." In truth, wherever 
 they looked in the darkness they could see the 
 twinkling of a candle or the firelight. 
 
 "Here used to be the Tchoupitoulas Indian 
 settlement, and the only clearing was the plan- 
 tation of the Jesuits. I can feel the soil under 
 my feet to be French. It feels as it used to 
 when I followed Bienville — he did not discover 
 it to make it Spanish soil — and God Himself 
 did not create it to make it Spanish soil ! " 
 
 When the Spaniards took possession of New 
 Orleans, when the French flag was lowered 
 
44 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 from the flagstaff where Bienville had raised it 
 for the first time in the Place d'Armes, Sauvage 
 turned his back upon home and people, swearing 
 that he would never come back into the colony 
 until the French flag floated over it again. 
 That was thirty-four years ago, and he had 
 kept his word. 
 
 Every spring, when the water in the streams 
 was high, Sauvage would load his pirogues with 
 the produce of his winter hunting and paddle 
 his way to the Mississippi. There he would 
 wait until other hunters came along with their 
 boat-loads, on the way to the market at New 
 Orleans. They would take his pack with theirs, 
 and bring back to him his supplies of ammuni- 
 tion and other necessities for the winter, and 
 what money was left over from the trade. 
 
 Every year they brought back less money 
 and more hatred of the Spaniards. Exactions 
 and duties of all kinds were laid upon the com- 
 merce of the Mississippi. A wall had been built 
 round the city, and American boatmen were 
 forced to land and camp outside. Never a year 
 passed now without the dispute leading from 
 words to blows, and the governor calling out 
 his troops to protect the peace of the city. 
 
 This last summer, however, there was a strange 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 45 
 
 and new kind of news to relate. France had 
 whipped Spain in Europe, and had taken her 
 old city back again as one of the fruits of victory. 
 A French general with troops had been sent to. 
 take possession. 
 
 When old Sauvage and Louis heard this, they 
 hurried back to their hut, put into a pack what 
 they wished to take with them, loaded their 
 pirogue and started for the Mississippi. 
 
 As they came nearer and nearer to the end of 
 their journey, old Sauvage seemed to get closer 
 and closer in his memories to the past. He 
 called over the names of friends he used to have 
 in the city ; of the children that he played with 
 as a child. He told about his mother, who had 
 died when Sauvage was a young boy and when 
 his sister, little Barbe, could barely walk. They 
 lived in the house that the father had built on 
 the lot given him by Bienville. 
 
 And Sauvage began to wonder about Barbe, 
 now that he was so soon going to see her, more 
 than he had done during his long absence. 
 
 The hilarious noise of the flatboat men followed 
 them down the public highroad inside the river 
 bank. A carriage, escorted by a gay cavalcade 
 of gentlemen, passed them on the way to the 
 city, and a troop of horsemen cantering rapidly. 
 
46 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 Suddenly the long, smooth tattoo of a drum 
 fell on the ear. The travelers stopped instinc- 
 tively to listen, with rigid, erect heads ; then 
 without a word quickened their noiseless step 
 in the direction of the sound. 
 
 They found a camp with soldiers running in 
 all directions, to where a young officer stood on 
 the stump of a tree, reading from a paper in his 
 hand, turning it to catch the light of the torches 
 held by the soldiers posted near. 
 
 Sauvage and Louis crept close to listen. 
 When the officer finished, the soldiers joined in 
 a wild hurrah, repeated over and over again, 
 throwing their caps in the air. They then rushed 
 forward and seized the young officer in their 
 arms, and bore him aloft ; and walked round in 
 procession, singing, shouting and cheering. 
 
 Louis felt his shoulder seized with a grip that 
 made him wince. "What heard you there?" 
 asked the old man. "What did the officer read ?" 
 
 " He read in English that they would take 
 possession of the city to-morrow. Surely you 
 heard that, too, Father Sauvage?" 
 
 " Yes, I heard that, too. I heard that, too." 
 
 The old fellow, without a word, turned, and 
 in the quick running walk of the Indians, went 
 swiftly down the road to the city. 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 47 
 
 A bridge lay over the moat; the wall had 
 been leveled down into an open way. Sauvage 
 and Louis crossed it, unhindered, unchallenged. 
 A sentry-box stood near, but it was deserted. 
 
 Inside the wall, at the corner of the street, 
 stood a cabaret filled with as merry a crowd 
 as that of the flatboat coffee-house. And there 
 stood the sentry in his gaiters and bandoleer and 
 bearskin cap, musket in one hand and glass in 
 the other, the merriest of the merry. 
 
 The old hunter slipped his pack to the ground, 
 loosed his knife in its sheath, and, musket in 
 hand, his gaunt frame drawn to its full height, 
 advanced with swift, firm step into the open 
 door of the cabaret ; and before he was seen, 
 he cried out as he had in his youth once heard 
 Bienville cry out to a delinquent garrison : 
 
 *' Since when, sirs, do French soldiers leave 
 his majesty's possessions unguarded in the 
 presence of an enemy,"^ — adding for himself, — 
 "and since when do Frenchmen laugh and drink 
 on the eve of surrender ? " 
 
 A sudden fright struck like lightning among 
 the carousers ; for an instant they looked upon 
 one another in appalled silence, and upon the 
 old man as if he were really the ghost he seemed 
 to be, the ghost of some old coureur de bois. 
 
48 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 *' Where do you come from ?" asked a quaver 
 ing voice in French, from some one in front. 
 
 ''We come," answered the boy, stepping for- 
 ward, "from a twenty-one days' journey; seven 
 days to the Mississippi, fourteen days down the 
 Mississippi to this place." 
 
 " How long have you been away from the 
 province?" asked the host of the cabaret. 
 
 " I left this spot," old Sauvage spoke for him- 
 self, "thirty-four years ago, when the Spaniards 
 took possession. He left it when his grand- 
 father was shot by the Spaniards. He was not 
 born in his native land." 
 
 There was no smile at this — on the contrary, 
 the answer started a tear in most of the eyes 
 present. An elderly man, dressed in sober 
 black and wearing his hair in a queue, edged 
 his way through the group of men. 
 
 "Who are you, my friend?" he asked. 
 
 " I am Rousseau, called Sauvage, the coureur 
 de bois of Bienville." 
 
 So far had men's minds traveled from that 
 period, so completely had it been left behind in 
 life, that again an awed silence fell upon the 
 room, and man looked to man in doubt and 
 questioning. The old doctor alone kept his 
 presence of mind. 
 
LAUGH AND DRINK ON THE EVE OF SUKRENDE 
 
50 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 "You heard that the French had taken pos- 
 session again of their old province ? That is 
 why you are here?" said he. "Well, my friend, 
 the French are in possession — you were right to 
 come. But what you have heard, what you 
 have seen, is also true. The Americans take 
 possession to-morrow." 
 
 The old man turned. " Come, Louis," he 
 said, simply, * ' we will go back." The pair left the 
 room unheeded in the carouse that began again. 
 
 The doctor followed them. He saw them 
 slip their packs over their shoulders and start 
 forward, with their guns in their hands. Old 
 Sauvage looked then indeed like a ghost — the 
 unhappy ghost of a time that has no longer a 
 home upon earth. 
 
 A good physician is never at the end of his 
 resources in any emergency, and the doctor who 
 had followed the pair was not only the best one 
 in the city, but one who knew the people just as 
 intimately as he did their diseases. 
 
 He had been mechanically repeating to him- 
 self, " Rousseau — Rousseau," until the name 
 opened like a magic key a door in his mind. 
 
 " Your name is Rousseau ! " he called out to 
 the old man, authoritatively. "There is an old 
 woman here named Rousseau." 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 51 
 
 *' My sister, sir ! My sister Barbe ! " answered 
 Sauvage, falling into the trap. 
 
 '' She has been waiting for you thirty-four 
 years," said the doctor, assured now of his fact. 
 " Go to see her. We do not leave a sister like 
 that on account of a flag. 
 
 " Young man," he added to the boy, with a 
 smile that was a caress, *' see if you have not 
 relatives, too, and friends here. One does not 
 desert one's native land for a flag. God made 
 the land — it's only man made the flag." 
 
 He led them himself down the street that lay 
 before them, to the Place d'Armes. 
 
 Sauvage had left a little town made up of 
 low-tiled cottages, undrained, unpaved ; he found 
 a city of great brick buildings, paved and lighted. 
 He shook his head in confusion and walked 
 doubtingly along. When he came to the Place 
 d'Armes and the doctor left them, he turned to 
 the left, as he used to do to get to the little 
 cabin by the ramparts. 
 
 " If it is not there ! " he muttered. '' The old 
 cemetery is beyond ; I will find my way there." 
 
 Fortunately, the tide of Spanish progress had 
 not reached the house of Barbe Rousseau. 
 And old Sauvage could not have slept more 
 at home in the cemetery across the ramparts 
 
62 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 than he did that night in the old house, built 
 by his father, on the lot given by Bienville. 
 
 On December 20, 1803, the sun rose so 
 clearly in New Orleans, and the day, as the 
 hours passed, grew so radiantly beautiful that it 
 seemed ordained expressly for the consumma- 
 tion of some great event. By daylight the 
 streets were thronged, and if there were sad 
 faces as well as gay ones, and if sighs often 
 broke through a merry laugh, it seemed only a 
 natural sentiment, such as wedding guests feel 
 when they see a beautiful bride married. 
 
 The ships at the levee flew their gayest bunt- 
 ing. In the Place d'Armes the French soldiers 
 were drawn up round their flagstaff, where the 
 French colors were fluttering their last good-by 
 to the American continent. At eleven o'clock 
 a gun fired the signal that told of the marching 
 of the Americans from their camp to take pos- 
 session of the city, and receive the transfer of 
 the great territory that France had ceded to the 
 United States. 
 
 Sauvage looked eagerly up to the flag, but 
 the flag that fluttered from the staff in the Place 
 d'Armes was not the flag that he knew and 
 loved, the one that Bienville planted on that 
 spot. It bore not the lilies of France, the golden 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 53 
 
 lilies whose perfume the evening before had 
 made sweet the evening air, but the tricolor, the 
 new flag of the revolution. " One does not love 
 a stepmother at first sight when one remembers 
 one's mother," Barbe had said the night before, 
 when she told about this new French flag. 
 
 The French soldiers drawn up in front of the 
 flag were not the old soldiers that he remem- 
 bered. They were strange, too, to the old 
 hunter. Bronzed and scarred veterans they 
 were, from European battle-fields. Napoleon's 
 grim war-dogs, "with no country but their camp, 
 no God but their general," as Barbe had de- 
 scribed them. They despised the colony and 
 showed contempt for the colonists. The people, 
 she said, preferred the Spaniards to them. 
 
 Louis was not troubled by the reflections of 
 his companion. He had loved the forest, its 
 untamed people and its wild animals, but this — 
 this was better ! 
 
 "Look, Father Sauvage, look!" He was 
 ever plucking the old man's sleeve to show him 
 something new and strange — sailors cutting 
 monkey antics on the rigging of the vessels ; a 
 procession of priests going into the cathedral; 
 the French commissioner, Laussat, in his re- 
 splendent uniform, driving up to the great 
 
54 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 cabildo, the city hall, where the ceremony was 
 to take place ; negro marchandes selling cakes 
 and candy, and joking with the passers-by ; 
 American fiatboat men, as noisy as they were 
 the night before ; Spanish officers in their uni- 
 forms ; and the balconies of the houses round 
 the square crowded with ladies and children. 
 
 The Americans had grouped themselves where 
 they could catch the first glimpse of their flag at 
 the head of the American column. As it came 
 down the street traveled by Sauvage and Louis 
 the night before, the shout that came from their 
 lusty throats bore down every other noise before 
 it. Then an intense silence fell, the hush that 
 the heart alone can impose upon a great throng. 
 
 With strained attention the crowd watched 
 the American commissioners dismount and enter 
 the great open portals of the cabildo, and the 
 American soldiers take up their allotted positions 
 in the square. When the clock of the cathedral 
 sounded the first stroke of twelve, the commis- 
 sioners — American and French — appeared on 
 the balcony and uncovered their heads, and 
 turned their faces toward the flag. 
 
 All heads in sight uncovered. A cannon-shot 
 boomed across the organ tones of the church- 
 bell. The French flag, fluttering, trembling. 
 
THli AMhRlCAN f LAG MOUNTUIL) INTO THE BLUE SKY. 
 
56 TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 began to descend ; midway it met its successor 
 ascending. Both paused, and the gentle breeze 
 of the place wafted them together, as it were, 
 into an embrace ; color mingled with color, fold 
 intertwined with fold. 
 
 Then they fluttered apart ; the French flag 
 dropped into the arms of the soldiers below ; 
 the American mounted into the blue sky above. 
 
 The young boy, plucking at the sleeve of his 
 companion ceaselessly without response, looked 
 to see the reason. The old hunter's eyes were 
 closed, but the tears were forcing their way 
 through the lids and running over the long, 
 thin, parchment cheeks. 
 
 The soldiers who received the flag marched 
 away with it, carrying it tenderly, as if it were a 
 corpse. All saluted as it passed by, and men, 
 women and children fell into rank and followed it 
 until a great procession was formed. In and out 
 of the streets and round the precincts of the 
 city the flag was carried, receiving its last funeral 
 honors in the land that its land had owned. 
 
 Sauvage also fell into the procession. Louis, 
 looking up at the flag above him, saw not that 
 he was left alone. 
 
 "It is a pretty flag," he said, ''and it goes 
 well up there, better than the Spanish flag ? " 
 
TRANSFER OF NEW ORLEANS. 57 
 
 Looking around, he met only the face of his 
 friend of the night before, the doctor, who caught 
 him by the arm as he hastily moved to join 
 Sauvage in the long line behind the French flag. 
 
 " No, no, my boy, you come with me in this 
 direction," said the doctor, drawing him forward 
 to where he could hear the American governor 
 reading his proclamation. 
 
 ''What said he, my boy? What said he to 
 you, the American governor?" asked old 
 Sauvage of Louis that evening, when they sat 
 together again in the house of Barbe, and Barbe 
 herself was there to hear all they could relate. 
 
 "It is just as I told you. Father Sauvage. 
 When the American governor went to mount 
 his horse, the animal reared and would have 
 run. I held him. The American governor 
 asked me who I was. I told him, and he said 
 that the grandson of a patriot who had lost his 
 life for his country was a citizen that the United 
 States was proud to own." 
 
 '' What is his name ? What is his name?" 
 
 *' Claiborne, Father Sauvage." 
 
 " Well, then, my boy, Claiborne talks like 
 Bienville. So Bienville would have spoken." 
 
 Grace King. 
 
THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 ROBERT FULTON was not the inventor of 
 the steamboat. But to his persistence, to 
 his abiUty to adapt to his own plans the results 
 of experimenters who had preceded him by a few 
 years, and above all to his persuasiveness in 
 convincing men of influence of the ultimate 
 success of his project, is due the beginning of 
 commercial steamboating. 
 
 John Fitch in 1786 built a steamboat on the 
 Delaware, and a few years later he built a larger 
 one, which ran for a few weeks from Philadelphia 
 to Bordentown ; but he could not get sufficient 
 financial backing, and wrote pitifully in his 
 diary, "The day will come when some more 
 powerful man will get fame and riches from 
 my invention." 
 
 James Rumsey of Maryland in 1784 showed 
 General Washington a model he had designed, 
 and in 1787 made a short trial trip with a 
 little steamboat on the Potomac. The Rumsey 
 Society, with Benjamin Franklin as a member, 
 was formed to promote this invention, and 
 Rumsey went abroad to obtain European 
 
THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 5^ 
 
 patents, but died after one short successful trial 
 trip on the Thames. 
 
 Col. John Stevens, while driving on the banks 
 of the Delaware, saw Fitch's little steamboat 
 making" uncertain headway up the river, and 
 thenceforward turned his great abilities as an 
 
 JOHN FITCH BUII^T A STEAMBOAT. 
 
 engineer, greater perhaps than those of any 
 other American of his time, toward the develop- 
 ment of steam navigation. The foundation of our 
 first patent law in 1790 was Stevens's petition to 
 Congress for the protection of American inventors. 
 The experiments, made before the year 1800, 
 awakened the legislatures of the states, newly 
 organized and joined in the Union, to the 
 importance of steam navigation. 
 
60 THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 In several instances they granted patents, 
 and in others the exclusive right of river steam 
 navigation to inventors who could actually 
 comply with varying requirements. 
 
 Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State 
 of New York, obtained one of these monopolies 
 in 1798. He had married the sister of Colonel 
 Stevens, and his manor-house on the Hudson, 
 "Clermont," gave its name to Fulton's first 
 steamer. This combination of three powerful 
 names, Fulton, Livingston, Stevens, ended the 
 experimental period of steamboating, and brings 
 us to the ' first voyage of Fulton's Clermo7it, 
 from which date the closer relations and better 
 friendship of the nations of the world. 
 
 The hull of the Clermo7it — its ofificial name 
 was the "North River Steam Boat of 'Cler- 
 mont'" — was built at New York by Charles 
 Brown during the winter of 1806-7, under the 
 direction of Fulton, according to plans which he 
 had gone over with Livingston, who was then 
 our minister at Paris, after they had made 
 successful experiments on the Seine. 
 
 The steamboat was one hundred and thirty- 
 three feet long, eighteen feet beam, and seven 
 feet depth of hold. The engine, designed in 
 ignorance of its purpose, by Watt, and built at 
 
THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 61 
 
 Birmingham, England, was twenty-four inches 
 in cylinder diameter and had four feet stroke 
 of piston, with a boiler occupying about one- 
 sixth of the vessel's length. 
 
 When the Cle7'mont was ready to begin her 
 first trip, on the morning of Monday, August 
 17, 1807, Fulton says: 
 
 "There were not perhaps thirty persons in 
 New York City who believed that the boat 
 would ever move one mile an hour or be of 
 the least utility." 
 
 The American Citizen the same morning 
 announced the sailing of the boat with the 
 guarded comment: "It is said it will make a 
 progress of two miles against the current of the 
 Mississippi, and, if so, it will certainly be a very 
 valuable acquisition to the commerce of the 
 Western States." 
 
 In twenty-four hours the voyage to Chancellor 
 Livingston's home, a distance of one hundred 
 and ten miles, was completed, and the next 
 day's run of forty miles to Albany was made in 
 eight hours. The running time for one hundred 
 and fifty miles on the return from Albany to New 
 York was thirty hours, or five miles an hour. 
 
 Fulton wrote enthusiastically, "The power 
 of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. 
 
62 THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 ... It will give quick and cheap conveyance 
 to the merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri 
 and other great rivers, . . . and although the 
 prospect of personal emolument has been some 
 inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more 
 pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantage 
 my country will derive from the invention." 
 
 The personal emolument took the form of 
 the grant by the state to Livingston and Fulton 
 of the exclusive privilege of steam navigation 
 on the Hudson for five years for each steamer 
 they built, not in all to exceed thirty years. 
 
 An eye-witness of the first voyage of the 
 Clermo7it is credited in the "Old South Leaf- 
 lets" with the following description of it: 
 
 '' It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 
 that a knot of villagers was gathered on a high 
 bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west 
 bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance 
 of a strange, dark-looking craft, which was slowly 
 making its way up the river. Some imagined 
 it to be a sea-monster, while others did not 
 hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign 
 of the approaching judgment. 
 
 "What seemed strange in the vessel was the 
 substitution of lofty and straight smoke-pipes 
 rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully 
 
THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 63 
 
 tapered masts that commonly stood on the ves- 
 sels navigating- the stream ; and in place of the 
 spars and rigging, the curious play of the work- 
 ing beam and pistons, and the slow turning and 
 splashing of the huge and naked paddle-wheels 
 met the astonished gaze. 
 
 "The dense clouds of smoke, as they rose, 
 wave upon wave, added still more to the won- 
 derment of the rustics. . . . The fishermen 
 
 SLOWLY MAKING ITS WAY. 
 
 became terrified and rowed homeward, and they 
 saw nothing but destruction devastating their 
 fishing-grounds." 
 
 The words serve better to illustrate the stand- 
 ard of popular understanding of scientific attain- 
 ment a hundred years ago than as an accurate 
 account of the notable event itself. Such 
 
JUL 15 1912 
 
 64 THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. 
 
 understanding was not very much in advance of 
 that of a hundred years before Fulton, when the 
 fishermen of the Weser and the Fulda attacked 
 Denis Papin's crude steam paddle-boat, tore 
 loose its machinery and smashed it to atoms. 
 
 Nowadays even simple - minded folk would 
 regard, only with curiosity and speculation as to 
 its commercial value, a train of dirigible aero- 
 planes, so broad has become popular knowl- 
 edge of and belief in the marvels of invention. 
 
 Fulton's Clermont solved the problem how 
 to bring the new Western territories within the 
 reach of the people of the original Union, and 
 how the scattered settlers were to trade with 
 one another and with the world at large. 
 
 A vessel which could stem the current of the 
 Mississippi and bring into regular communica- 
 tion New Orleans at its mouth with the settle- 
 ments near its headwaters, and along the 
 Missouri to the west and the Ohio to the east, 
 was more than a valuable invention in mechan- 
 ics. It was a most powerful agency for binding 
 together and upbuilding the wide-spread parts 
 of a great nation. 
 
 Eugene Tyler Chamberlain. 
 
The Companion Library 
 
 Comprises the following volumes, each containing 64 pages, 
 illustrated and bound in heavy paper covers. Price 10 cts. each. 
 
 1. Stories of Purpose : Bravery, Tact and Fidelity. 
 
 2. Glimpses of Europe : Travel and Description. 
 3. The American Tropics: Mexico to the Equator. 
 4. Sketches of the Orient : Scenes in Asia. 
 5. Old Ocean : Winds, Currents and Perils. 
 
 6. Life in the Sea : Fish and Fishing. 
 7. Bits of Bird Life : Habits, Nests and Eggs. 
 
 8. Our Little Neighbors : Insects, Small Animals. 
 9. At Home in the Forest: Wild Animals. 
 10. In Alaska : Animals and Resources. 
 11. Among the Rockies : Scenery and Travel. 
 
 12. In the Southwest : Semi-Tropical Regions. 
 13. On the Plains : Pioneers and Ranchmen. 
 
 14. The Great Lake Country: A Land of Progress. 
 15. On the Gulf: The States, Florida to Texas. 
 
 16. Along the Atlantic : New York to Georgia. 
 17. In New England: The Home of the Puritans. 
 
 18. Stories of Success : Skill, Courage, Perseverance. 
 19. Stories of Kinaness : Examples for Rich and Poor. 
 20. Student Stories : Life in School and College. 
 21. In Porto Rico : The People, Customs, Progress. 
 
 22. In the Philippines : Possession and Experiences. 
 23. Mid-Ocean America : Hawaii, Samoa, Pacific Islands. 
 
 24. Bravest Deeds : Stories of Heroism. 
 25. Sheer Pluck : Facing Danger with a Purpose. 
 
 26. Fearless in Duty : Acts of Courage. 
 27. Our President: Executive Life and Duties. 
 
 28. Our National Senate : Routine of Legislation. 
 29. Our Congressmen : Responsibilities of Lawmakers. 
 30. Heroes of History : True Stories of Bravery. 
 31. Saved by Stratagem : Stories of Adroit Manceuver. 
 
 32. The Brink of Peril : Heroic Escapes from Danger. 
 33. Children s Festivals: What Little Folks can Do. 
 
 34. The First Comers : Early American History. 
 35. In Colonial Days : Struggles of Early Settlers. 
 
 36. The Colonies Alert: Gaining Confidence. 
 37. The Outbreak of War: For Independence. 
 
 38. The Struggle for Freedom : Perils of Patriots. 
 39. Gaining Liberty : The United States of America. 
 
 40. The Young Nation: Constitutional Government. 
 
 PERRY MASON COMPANY, Publishers, 
 201 Columbus Avenue. BOSTON, MASS. 
 
The Youth's Companion 
 
 Is an Illustrated Family Paper. It is published 
 weekly. Its illustrations are by the best artists. 
 
 Its stories represent real life and aim to interest 
 readers of all ages. They are stimulating, healthful 
 and helpful, but never sensational. Their great 
 number and variety, together with their marked 
 excellence, give The Companion acknowledged 
 pre-eminence among literary publications. 
 
 Its editorials upon current topics give facts that 
 are not ordinarily found in other papers, and that it 
 is a pleasure and a benefit to know. 
 
 Its biographical and historical articles are very 
 valuable to those who appreciate the elements of 
 progress. Successful men and women in many 
 branches of business and professional life give their 
 experiences to the readers of The Companion. 
 
 Its miscellaneous articles are read by young 
 and old with equal eagerness. Its letters of travel 
 present the picturesque features of foreign life. 
 Its articles on health and etiquette are of real 
 practical value. 
 
 The paper aims both to entertain and to instruct. 
 It seeks to become a family friend, bringing help 
 and cheer to every member of the household, 
 and to influence directly the conduct and issues 
 of daily life. 
 
 2& 
 

 
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