initial commit of ebook 32402HEADmain

20 files changed, 22327 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/32402-8.txt b/32402-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ab9807
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6726 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of Our Country, Edited by Jesse
+Lyman Hurlbut
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Story of Our Country
+       Every Child Can Read
+
+
+Editor: Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2010  [eBook #32402]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page
+images generously made available by Internet Archive
+(http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 32402-h.htm or 32402-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32402/32402-h/32402-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32402/32402-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/storyofourcountr00hurl
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+Every Child Can Read
+
+Edited by
+
+REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+[Illustration: STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK IN CULEBRA CUT, PANAMA CANAL.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The John C. Winston Co.
+Philadelphia
+
+Copyright, 1910, By
+The John C. Winston Co.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+  A Talk with the Young Reader                                9
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
+
+  Bold Sailors of the Northern Countries--The
+    Northmen--Columbus the Little Boy--Columbus
+    and the Egg--He Crosses the Atlantic, Braves
+    the Sea and Discovers New Land                           15
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS
+
+  John and Sebastian Cabot--Balboa Discovers the
+    Pacific--The Fountain of Youth and Ponce de
+    Leon--The Naming of America                              27
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THREE EARLY HEROES
+
+  The Story of John Smith and First English
+    Settlement--Miles Standish and the Pilgrims--Roger
+    Williams, the Hero Preacher                              36
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  HOW THE DUTCH AND QUAKERS CAME TO AMERICA
+  Captain Hudson and His Ship, the _Half Moon_--The
+    Trip up the Hudson--Adventures with the
+    Indians--William Penn and the Quakers--How They
+    Settled on the Delaware River                            48
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH
+
+  The Cavaliers and Lords of England--They Settle
+    in Virginia--The Catholics Come to Maryland--Strange
+    Form of Government in Carolina--Paupers Settle
+    Georgia--An Old Spanish Town in Florida                  59
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED
+
+  They Were the First Americans--Their Strange Customs
+    and Manners--How They Followed a Trail--How they
+    Fought--Indian Massacres                                 70
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS
+
+  How the Governor was Treated in Connecticut--The
+    Charter Oak--An Exciting Time in Virginia                81
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES
+
+  When a Tallow Candle Gave the Light--Old-Time
+    Houses--The Story of the Famous Hunter, and How
+    he Escaped from the Indians                              91
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  A HERO OF THE COLONIES
+
+  Two Boys who Crossed the Mountains--Their Adventures
+    with the Indians--George Washington, the
+    Surveyor--Messenger to the French--An Old-Time Hero     101
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
+
+  The Acadians--Their Home in Nova Scotia--Their
+    Sufferings--The Story of Evangeline--Why the Indians
+    Helped the French--The Story of a Cruel War             112
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+  How the Trouble Began--The Americans Object to Paying
+    Taxes on Various Articles--The Famous Boston Tea
+    Party--Battle of Lexington--Declaration of
+    Independence                                            121
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM
+
+  Washington the Commander-in-Chief--Bunker Hill--The
+    Wonderful Christmas--The Americans Succeed--They
+    Meet Defeat--"Molly Stark a Widow"--Help from France    133
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+  PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+  Old-Time Warships--A Daring Deed--A Great Sea Fight--The
+    British Captain Surrenders                              143
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+  MARION, THE SWAMP FOX
+
+  How the War Went in the South--The Patriots Hard to
+    Find--The British Officers Eat Sweet Potatoes--Jack
+    Davis' Adventure--General Greene and his Famous
+    Retreat--Cornwallis Surrenders--The War at an End       153
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+  THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE
+
+  How the People Rule--Illustrated by a Story--Our First
+    Trial and Failure--Making a New Form of Government--A
+    Nation of Thirteen States--The President--The
+    Congress--The Judges                                    162
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+  THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE
+
+  Washington the First President--Beloved by
+    Everyone--Benjamin Franklin's Last Hours--The Kind
+    of Money They Used--How the Quarrel was
+    Settled--Washington Dies                                170
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+  THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN
+
+  The Power of Steam--Is a Boat Like a Duck--Who
+    Thought of the First Steamboat--The Cotton Gin
+    and How it Saves Labor--Where the Cotton Grows          176
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN
+
+  How We Came to Quarrel with England--Protecting
+    the American Sailor--Interesting Land
+    Battles--Adventures at Sea--Peace is Made Again         184
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+  HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE AVENGED
+
+  How General Santa Anna Got into Trouble--Massacre
+    of the Alamo--The Famous Samuel Houston--War with
+    Mexico--The City of Mexico--Santa Anna is Defeated
+    and United States is Victorious                         193
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+  HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR
+
+  Black and White Slaves--First Slaves Brought to
+    America in 1619--Why the Slaves were Used in the
+    South--Why the North did not Believe in Slavery--What
+    the word Abolitionist Means--John Brown and Harper's
+    Ferry                                                   201
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+  HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+  The Ruler of the Republic--The President Chosen from
+    the People--Why the People Liked Him--Lincoln's School
+    Days--The North and South Differ--Lincoln, the Great
+    War President                                           208
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXII
+
+  THE GREAT CIVIL WAR
+
+  What Civil War is--Where the War was Fought--Battle of
+    Bull Run--"Stonewall" Jackson--General Ulysses S.
+    Grant and How He Came to Command the Army--His
+    "Unconditional Surrender" Message--Battle of
+    Gettysburg                                              215
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+
+  WAR ON SEA AND LAND
+
+  Fight Between the "Cheesebox" and the Ram--How the
+    Monitor Won the Fight--The Battle "Above the
+    Clouds"--Battle of the Wilderness--Sherman's March
+    to the Sea--Richmond Surrenders and the War Closes      225
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+
+  THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE
+
+  What is Seen on the Picture of History--A Reign of
+    Peace in America--The Ocean Cable and the
+    Railroad--Alaska and its Treasures--The Burning
+    of Chicago and other Disasters--Edison and His
+    Work--The Triumphs of Electricity                       234
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXV
+
+  THE MARVELS OF INVENTION
+
+  Professor Morse, the Famous Inventor--His Struggles
+    and His Success--The First Message--Telephone and
+    Other Inventions of Electricity--New Ideas in
+    Machinery and the Comfort they Bring                    242
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXVI
+
+  HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES
+
+  The Nation's Birthplace--Centennial Exhibition and
+    Columbian World's Fair--Our People's Progress--The
+    Indians--Trouble in Cuba--War with Spain--Santiago
+    and its Fleet--Dewey at Manila                          253
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXVII
+
+  HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+  Assassination of President McKinley--Theodore
+    Roosevelt's Great Ride--His Election by the
+    People--The Panama Canal--Roosevelt Declines
+    Re-election and Goes to Africa                          266
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK IN CULEBRA CUT, PANAMA CANAL     _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  COLUMBUS AND THE EGG                                              25
+
+  WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE                                 137
+
+  THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS                                        191
+
+  THE STORMING OF CHAPULTEPEC                                      199
+
+  THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR FAMOUS AEROPLANE                   242
+
+  CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT                                              258
+
+  ROOSEVELT SURPRISED BY A GIANT HIPPOPOTAMUS                      266
+
+
+
+
+A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+
+IF any of the readers of this book should have the chance to take a
+railroad ride over the vast region of the United States, from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of
+Mexico, they would see a wonderful display of cities and towns, of
+factories and farms, and a great multitude of men and women actively at
+work. They would behold, spread out on every side, one of the busiest
+and happiest lands the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the miles
+on miles of farms, they might see a forest, here and there a wild beast,
+here and there a red-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land;
+but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.
+
+If our young traveler knew nothing of history he might fancy that it had
+been always this way, or that it had taken thousands of years for all
+those cities to be built and these great fields to be cleared and
+cultivated. Yet if he had been here only three hundred years ago he
+would have seen a very different sight. He could not then have gone over
+the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He
+could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in
+the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country
+would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a
+farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with
+a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only
+clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of
+forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts; instead
+of white and black men, only red-skinned savages.
+
+Just think of it! All that we see around us is the work of less than
+three hundred years! No doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of
+wonderful things done by the Genii of the East, of palaces built in a
+night, of cities moved miles away from their sites. But here is a thing
+as wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel wrought by men instead
+of magical beings. These great forests have fallen, these great fields
+have been cleared and planted, these great cities have risen, these
+myriads of white men have taken the place of the red men of the wild
+woods, and all within a period not longer than three times the life of
+the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most
+marvelous fairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how
+this was done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let us
+forget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, and the
+magic of their work is as great as that we read of in the fables of the
+"Arabian Nights."
+
+The story of this great work is called the "History of the United
+States." This story you have before you in the book you now hold. You do
+not need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of building our noble
+nation was done, for you can read it all here in language simple enough
+for the youngest of you to understand. Here you are told how white men
+came over the seas and found beyond the waves a land none of them had
+ever seen before. You are told how they settled on these shores, cut
+down the trees and built villages and towns, fought with the red men and
+drove them back, and made themselves homes in the midst of fertile
+fields. You are told how others came, how they spread wider and wider
+over the land, how log houses grew into mansions, and villages into
+cities, and how at length they fought for and gained their liberty.
+
+Read on and you will learn of more wonderful things still. The history
+of the past hundred years is a story of magic for our land. In it you
+will learn of how the steamboat was first made and in time came to be
+seen on all our rivers and lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and
+railroads were built, until they are now long enough in our country to
+go eight times round the earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and
+telephone--the talking wire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a
+thousand factories and work away like living things, and of a multitude
+of marvels which I cannot begin to speak of here.
+
+And you will learn how men kept on coming, and wars were fought, and new
+land was gained, and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and our
+people increased and spread until we came to be one of the greatest
+nations on the earth, and our cities grew until one of them was the
+largest in the world except the vast city of London. All this and more
+you may learn from the pages of this book. It is written for the boys
+and girls of our land, but many of their fathers and mothers may find it
+pleasant and useful to read.
+
+There are hundreds who do not have time to read large histories, which
+try to tell all that has taken place. For those this little history will
+be of great service, in showing them how, from a few half-starved
+settlers on a wild coast, this great nation has grown up. How men and
+women have come to it over the seas as to a new Promised Land. How they
+have ploughed its fields, and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron
+and gold, and built thousands of workshops, and fed the nations with
+the food they did not need for themselves. Year by year it has grown in
+wealth, until now it is the richest country in the world. Great it is,
+and greater it will be. But I need say no more. The book has its own
+story to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handy
+stepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may cross the
+brook and wander on through the broad land which lies before you.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
+
+
+IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they will remember a
+wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings
+rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy palaces, and filled
+with the finest of goods of all kinds, which millions of people came to
+see.
+
+Do you know what this meant? It was what is called a World's Fair, and
+was in honor of a wonderful event that took place four hundred years
+before.
+
+Some of you may think that white men have always lived in this country.
+I hope you do not all think so, for this is not the case. A little more
+than four hundred years ago no white man had ever seen this country, and
+none knew that there was such a country on the face of the earth.
+
+It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, named Christopher
+Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new and wonderful land.
+Since then men have come here by the millions, and the mighty nation of
+the United States has grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities.
+In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, the grand Columbian
+World's Fair was held, in honor of the finding of America by the great
+navigator four hundred years before.
+
+This is what I have set out to tell you about. I am sure you will all be
+glad to know how this broad and noble land, once the home of the wild
+red men, was found and made a home for the white people of Europe.
+
+Some of you may have been told that America was really discovered more
+than four hundred years before Columbus was born. So it was. At that
+time some of the bold sailors of the northern countries of Europe, who
+made the stormy ocean their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had
+come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship from Iceland had been
+driven by the winds to a land in the far west which no man had ever seen
+before. Was this not America?
+
+Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen, named Leif Ericson,
+also known as Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There he found
+wild grapes growing, and from them he named it Vinland. This in our
+language would be called Wineland.
+
+After him came others, and there was fighting with the red men, whom
+they called Skrellings. In the end the Northmen left the country, and
+before many years all was forgotten about it. Only lately the story has
+been found again in some old writings. And so time went on for nearly
+five hundred years more, and nothing was known in Europe about the land
+beyond the seas.
+
+Now let us go from the north to the south of Europe. Here there is a
+kingdom called Italy, which runs down into the Mediterranean Sea almost
+in the shape of a boot. On the western shore of this kingdom is a famous
+old city named Genoa, in which many daring sailors have dwelt; and here,
+long ago, lived a man named Columbus, a poor man, who made his living by
+carding wool.
+
+This poor wool-carder had four children, one of whom (born about 1436)
+he named Christopher. Almost everybody who has been at school in the
+world knows the name of this little Italian boy, for he became one of
+the most famous of men.
+
+Many a boy in our times has to help his father in his shop. The great
+Benjamin Franklin began work by pouring melted tallow into moulds to
+make candles. In the same way little Columbus had to comb wool for his
+father, and very likely he got as tired of wool as Franklin did of
+candles.
+
+The city he lived in was full of sailors, and no doubt he talked to many
+of them about life on the wild waters, and heard so many stories of
+danger and adventure that he took the fancy to go to sea himself.
+
+At any rate we are told that he became a sailor when only fourteen
+years old, and made long and daring voyages while he was still young.
+Some of those were in Portuguese ships down the coast of Africa, of
+which continent very little was known at that time. He went north, too;
+some think as far as Iceland. Who knows but that he was told there of
+what the Northmen had done?
+
+Columbus spent some time in the island of Madeira, far out in the
+Atlantic ocean, and there the people told him of strange things they had
+seen. These had come over the seas before the west winds and floated on
+their island shores. Among them were pieces of carved wood, and canes so
+long that they would hold four quarts of wine between their joints. And
+the dead bodies of two men had also come ashore, whose skins were the
+color of bronze or copper.
+
+These stories set Columbus thinking. He was now a man, and had read many
+books of travel, and had studied all that was then known of geography.
+For a time he lived by making maps and charts for ship captains. This
+was in the city of Lisbon, in Portugal, where he married and settled
+down and had little boys of his own.
+
+At that time some of the most learned people had odd notions about the
+earth. You may have seen globes as round as an orange, with the
+countries laid out on them. But the people then had never seen such a
+globe, and the most of them thought that the earth was as flat as a
+table, and that any one who sailed too far over the ocean would come to
+the edge of the earth and fall off.
+
+This seems very absurd, does it not? But you must remember that people
+then knew very little about the earth they lived on, and could not
+understand how people could keep on a round globe like flies on a ball
+of glass.
+
+But there were some who thought the earth to be round, and Columbus was
+one of these.
+
+At that time silk and spices and other rich goods were brought from
+China and India, thousands of miles to the east, by caravans that
+traveled overland. Columbus thought that by sailing west, over the broad
+Atlantic, he would come to these far countries, just as a fly may walk
+around the surface of an orange, and come to the place it started from.
+
+The more Columbus thought about this, the more certain he became that he
+was right. He was so sure of it that he set out to try and make other
+people think the same way. He wanted ships with which to sail across the
+unknown seas to the west, but he had no money of his own to buy them
+with.
+
+Ah! what a task poor Columbus now had. For years and years he wandered
+about among the kings and princes of Europe, but no one would believe
+his story, and many laughed at him and mocked him.
+
+First he tried Genoa, the city where he was born, but the people there
+told him he was a fool or had lost his senses.
+
+Then he went to the king of Portugal. This king was a rascal, and tried
+to cheat him. He got his plans from him, and sent out a vessel in
+secret, hoping to get the honor of the discovery for himself. But the
+captain he sent was a coward and was scared by the rolling waves. He
+soon came back, and told the king that there was nothing to be found but
+water and storm. King John, of Portugal, was very sorry afterward that
+he had tried to rob Columbus of his honor.
+
+Columbus was very angry when he heard what the king had done. He left
+Portugal for Spain, and tried to get the king and queen of that country
+to let him have ships and sailors. But they were at war with a people
+called the Moors, and had no money to spare for anything but fighting
+and killing.
+
+Columbus stayed there for seven long years. He talked to the wise men,
+but they made sport of him. "If the earth is round," they said, "and you
+sail west, your ships will go down hill, and they will have to sail up
+hill to come back. No ship that was ever made can do that. And you may
+come to places where the waters boil with the great heat of the sun; and
+frightful monsters may rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and
+your men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing at him and
+mocking him as a man who had lost his wits.
+
+After these many years Columbus got tired of trying in Spain. He now set
+out for France, to see what the king of that country would do. He sent
+one of his brothers to England to see its king and ask him for aid.
+
+He was now so poor that he had to travel along the dusty roads on foot,
+his little son going with him. One day he stopped at a convent called La
+Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was very hungry.
+
+The good monks gave bread to the boy, and while he was eating it the
+prior of the convent came out and talked with Columbus, asking him his
+business. Columbus told him his story. He told it so well that the prior
+believed in it. He asked him to stay there with his son, and said he
+would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom he knew very well.
+
+So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter to the queen, and in
+the end the wandering sailor was sent for to come back to the king's
+court.
+
+Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of the discovery of America.
+The king would not listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen
+offered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which he needed for
+ships and sailors.
+
+Columbus had won. After years and years of toil and hunger and
+disappointment, he was to have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be
+given a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise men who were the
+fools.
+
+But such ships as they gave him! Why, you can see far better ones every
+day, sailing down your rivers. Two of them did not even have decks, but
+were like open boats. With this small fleet Columbus set sail from
+Palos, a little port in Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the
+most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.
+
+Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness," as the Atlantic ocean
+was then called. Mile after mile, day after day, on and on they went,
+seeing nothing but the endless waves, while the wind drove them steadily
+into the unknown west.
+
+The sailors never expected to see their wives and children again. They
+were frightened when they started, and every day they grew more scared.
+They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs or the frightful
+monsters of which they had been told. At one place they came upon great
+tracts of seaweed, and thought they were in shallow water and would be
+wrecked on banks of mud. Then the compass, to which they trusted,
+ceased to point due north and they were more frightened than ever. Soon
+there was hardly a stout heart in the fleet except that of Columbus.
+
+The time came when the sailors grew half mad with fear. Some of them
+made a plot to throw Columbus overboard and sail home again. They would
+tell the people there that he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.
+
+It was a terrible thing to do, was it not? But desperate men will do
+dreadful things. They thought one man had better die than all of them.
+Only good fortune saved the life of the great navigator.
+
+One day a glad sailor called his comrades and pointed over the side. A
+branch of a green bush was floating by with fresh berries on it. It
+looked as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another day one of them
+picked from the water a stick which had been carved with a knife. Land
+birds were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back to their hearts.
+They were sure now that land must be near.
+
+October 11th came. When night fell dozens of men were on the lookout.
+Each wanted to be the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night,
+Columbus, who was looking out over the waves, saw a light far off. It
+moved up and down like a lantern carried in a man's hand.
+
+Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out into the darkness. About two
+o'clock in the morning came the glad cry of "Land! Land!" A gun was
+fired from the leading vessel. One of its sailors had seen what looked
+like land in the moonlight. You may be sure no one slept any more that
+night.
+
+When daylight came the joyful sailors saw before them a low, green
+shore, on which the sunlight lay in beauty; men and women stood on it,
+looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought must be great
+white-winged birds. They had never seen such things before. We can
+hardly think what we would have done if we had been in their place.
+
+When the boats from the ships came to the shore, and Columbus landed,
+clad in shining armor, and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple
+natives fell to the ground on their faces. They thought the gods had
+come from heaven to visit them.
+
+Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments of gold. They were asked
+by signs where they had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all were
+on board again, the ships once more spread their sails, and swiftly they
+flew southward before the wind.
+
+Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose, some small, some large,
+all green and beautiful. Columbus thought this must be India, which
+he had set out to find, and he called the people Indians. He never
+knew that it was a new continent he had discovered.
+
+[Illustration: COLUMBUS AND THE EGG.]
+
+The month of March of the next year came before the little fleet sailed
+again into the port of Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy,
+for they had mourned their friends as dead.
+
+Fast spread the news. When Columbus entered Barcelona, where the king
+and queen were, bringing with him new plants, birds and animals, strange
+weapons, golden ornaments, and some of the red-skinned natives, he was
+received as if he had been a king. He was seated beside the king; he
+rode by his side in the street; he was made a grandee of Spain; all the
+honors of the kingdom were showered on him.
+
+We here recall the incident of Columbus and the egg. A dinner was given
+in his honor and many great men were there. The attention Columbus
+received made some people jealous. One of them with a sneer asked
+Columbus if he did not think any one else could have discovered the
+Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a dish on the table and
+handing it to the questioner asked him to make it stand on end.
+
+After trying several times the man gave it up. Columbus, taking the egg
+in his hand, tapping it gently on one end against the top of the table
+so as to break the shell slightly, made it balance.
+
+"Any one could do that," said the man. "So any one can discover the
+Indies after I have shown him the way," said Columbus.
+
+It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor Columbus was soon to find out
+how Spain treated those who had given to it the highest honor and the
+greatest riches. Three times again he sailed to the New World, and once
+a base Spanish governor sent him back to Spain with chains upon his
+limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room till he died, and asked
+that they should be buried with him.
+
+They who had once given him every honor, now treated him with shameful
+neglect. He who had ridden beside the king and dined with the highest
+nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely.
+
+He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great discovery.
+
+Then Spain, which had treated him so badly, began to honor his memory.
+But it came too late for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die
+almost like a pauper, after he had made Spain the richest country in
+Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS
+
+
+VERY likely some of the readers of this book have asked their fathers or
+mothers how Spain came to own the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, whose
+people they treated so badly that the United States had to go to war a
+few years ago and take these islands from Spain. Of course, you all know
+how the battleship _Maine_ was blown up in the harbor of the city of
+Havana, and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom and were
+drowned. That was one reason why we went to war. If you should ask me
+that question, I would say that these were some of the islands which
+Columbus found, when he sailed into those sunny seas four centuries ago.
+They were settled by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and have
+lived on them ever since. There they have raised sugar cane, and
+tobacco, and coffee, and also oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine
+fruits.
+
+They might have kept on owning these islands and raising these fruits
+for many years to come, if they had not been so cruel to the people that
+they rose against them, and with the help of the United States
+Government the islands were taken from Spain.
+
+When Columbus told the nobles and people of Spain of his wonderful
+discovery, and showed them the plants and animals, the gold and other
+things, he had found on these far-off islands, it made a great
+excitement in that country.
+
+You know how the finding of gold in Alaska has sent thousands of our own
+people to that cold country after the shining yellow metal. In the same
+way the gold which Columbus brought back sent thousands of Spaniards
+across the wide seas to the warm and beautiful islands of which the
+great sailor told them, where they hoped to find gold like stones in our
+streets.
+
+Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carrying thousands of people
+to the fair lands of the west, from which they expected to come back
+laden with riches. At the same time two daring sailors from England,
+John Cabot and his son Sebastian, crossed the ocean farther north, and
+found land where the Northmen had found it five hundred years before. In
+the seas into which the Cabots sailed, great fish were so plentiful that
+the ships could hardly sail through them, and bears swam out in the
+water and caught the fish in their mouths. That was certainly a queer
+way of fishing.
+
+When the Cabots came back and told what they had seen, you may be sure
+the daring fishermen of Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers
+of their stout little vessels were crossing the ocean, and most of them
+came back so full of great codfish that the water almost ran over their
+decks.
+
+Do you not think these fishermen were wiser than the Spaniards, who went
+everywhere seeking for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is only
+good to buy food and other things; but if these can be had without
+buying they are better still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought
+so, and they were more lucky in finding fish than the Spaniards were in
+finding gold.
+
+Thus the years passed on, and more and more Spaniards came to the
+islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (which is now known as Hayti or San
+Domingo). And some of them soon began to sail farther west in search of
+new lands. Columbus, in his last voyage, reached the coasts of South
+America and Central America and other Spanish ships followed to those
+new shores.
+
+I might tell you many wonderful things about these daring men. One of
+them was named Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for it is
+full of strange events. This man had gone to the island of Hispaniola to
+make his fortune, but he found there only bad fortune. He had to work on
+a farm, and in time he became so poor and owed so much money that it
+seemed as if he could never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad
+straits.
+
+No doubt the people who had lent him money often asked him to pay it
+back again, and Balboa, who got into a worse state every day, at length
+took an odd way to rid himself of his troubles. A ship was about to set
+sail for the west, and the poor debtor managed to get carried aboard it
+in a barrel. This barrel came from his farm and was supposed to contain
+provisions, and it was not till they were far away from land that it was
+opened and a living man was found in it instead of salt beef or pork.
+
+When the captain saw him he was much astonished. He had paid for a
+barrel of provisions, and he found something which he could not well
+eat. He grew so angry at being cheated that he threatened to leave
+Balboa on a desert island, but the poor fellow got on his knees and
+begged so hard for his life that the captain at length forgave him. But
+he made him work to pay his way, and very likely used the rope's end to
+stir him up.
+
+Of course you have learned from your geographies where the Isthmus of
+Darien (now called Panama) is, that narrow strip of land that is like a
+string tying together the great continents of North and South America.
+It was to the town of Darien, on this isthmus, that the ship made its
+way, and here Balboa made a surprising discovery. Some of the Indian
+chiefs told him of a mighty ocean which lay on the other side of the
+isthmus, and that beyond that ocean was the wonderful land of gold which
+the Spaniards wished to find.
+
+What would you have done if you had been in Balboa's place, and wanted
+gold to pay your debts? Some of you, I think, would have done what he
+did. You would have made your way into the thick forest and climbed the
+rugged mountains of the isthmus, until, like Balboa, you got to the top
+of the highest peak. And, like him, you would have been filled with joy
+when you saw in the far distance the vast Pacific ocean, its waves
+glittering in the summer sun.
+
+Here was glory; here was fortune. The poor debtor had become a great
+discoverer. Before his eyes spread a mighty ocean, its waves beating on
+the shore. He hurried with his men down the mountain sides to this
+shining sea, and raised on its shores the great banner of Spain. And
+soon after he set sail on its waters for Peru, the land of gold. But he
+did not get very far, for the stormy weather drove him back.
+
+Poor Balboa! he was to win fame, but not fortune, and his debts were
+never to be paid. A jealous Spanish governor seized him, condemned him
+as a traitor, and had his head cut off in the market place. And so ended
+Balboa's dream of gold and glory. I could tell you of other wonderful
+adventures in these new lands. There is the story of Cortez, who found
+the great kingdom of Mexico, and conquered it with a few hundred
+Spaniards in armor of steel. And there is the story of Pizarro, who
+sailed to Peru, Balboa's land of gold, and won it for Spain, and sent
+home tons of silver and gold. But these stories have nothing to do with
+the history of the United States, so we must pass them by and go back to
+the early days of the country in which we dwell.
+
+The first Spaniard to set foot on what is now the United States was an
+old man named Ponce de Leon, who was governor of Porto Rico. If he had
+lived until now he would have been on our soil while on that island, for
+it now belongs to the United States. But no one had dreamed of our great
+republic four hundred years ago.
+
+At that time there was a fable which many believed, which said that
+somewhere in Asia was a wonderful Fountain of Youth. It was thought that
+everybody who bathed in its waters would grow young again. An old man in
+a moment would become as fresh and strong as a boy. De Leon wanted youth
+more than he did gold, and like all men at that time he thought the land
+he was in was part of Asia, and might contain the Fountain of Youth. He
+asked the Indians if they knew of such a magic spring. The red men, who
+wanted to get rid of the Spaniards, by whom they had been cruelly
+treated, pointed to the northwest.
+
+So, in the year 1513, old Ponce de Leon took ship and sailed away in
+search of the magic spring. And not many days passed before, on Easter
+Sunday, he saw before him a land so bright with flowers that he named it
+"Flowery Easter." It is still called Florida, the Spanish word for
+"flowery."
+
+I am sure none of my young readers believe in such a Fountain of Youth,
+and that none of you would have hunted for it as old De Leon did. Up and
+down that flowery land he wandered, seeking its wonderful waters. He
+found many sparkling springs, and eagerly drank of and bathed in their
+cool, liquid waves, but out of them all he came with white hair and
+wrinkled face. In the end he gave up the search, and sailed away, a sad
+old man. Some years afterwards he came back again. But this time the
+Indians fought with the white men, and De Leon was struck with an arrow,
+and hurt so badly that he soon died. So he found death instead of youth.
+Many people go to Florida in our own days in search of health, but Ponce
+de Leon is the only man who ever went there to find the magical Fountain
+of Youth.
+
+About twenty-five years afterwards another Spaniard came to Florida. It
+was gold and glory he was after, not youth. This man, Fernando de Soto,
+had been in Peru with Pizarro, and helped him to conquer that land of
+gold. He now hoped to find a rich empire for himself in the north.
+
+So with nine ships and six hundred brave young men he sailed away from
+his native land. They were a gay and hopeful band, while their bright
+banners floated proudly from the mastheads, and waved in the western
+winds. Little did they dream of what a terrible fate lay before them.
+
+I think you will say that De Soto deserved a bad fate when I tell you
+that he brought bloodhounds to hunt the poor Indians, and chains to
+fasten on their hands and feet. That was the way the Spaniards often
+treated the poor red men. He brought also two hundred horses for his
+armed men to ride, and a drove of hogs to serve them for fresh meat. And
+in the ships were great iron chests, which he hoped to take back full of
+gold and other precious things.
+
+For two long years De Soto and his band traveled through the country,
+fighting Indians, burning their houses and robbing them of their food.
+But the Indians were brave warriors, and in one terrible battle the
+Spaniards lost eighty of their horses and many of their men.
+
+In vain De Soto sought for gold and glory. Not an ounce of the yellow
+metal was found; no mighty empire was reached. He did make one great
+discovery, that of the vast Mississippi River. But he never got home to
+tell of it, for he died on its banks, worn out with his battles and
+marches, and was buried under its waters. His men built boats and
+floated down the great river to the Gulf of Mexico. Here, at length,
+they found Spanish settlements. But of that brave and gallant band half
+were dead, and the rest were so nearly starved that they were like
+living skeletons.
+
+We must not forget that humble Italian traveler and explorer, Amerigo
+Vespucci, who in 1499, saw the part of South America where lies the
+island of Trinidad. He afterwards reached the coast of Brazil. Some
+years later, when maps were made of the country he had visited, some one
+called it _America_. In later years this name was used for the whole
+continent. So what should have been called Columbia came to be called
+America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THREE EARLY HEROES
+
+
+WHAT do you think of Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia? Was he
+not a man to dream of, a true hero? Why, I feel half ashamed to say
+anything about him, for every one of you must know his story. I am sure
+all those who love good stories of adventure have read about him.
+
+John Smith was not the kind of man to work at a trade. He ran away from
+home when a boy, and became a wanderer over the earth. And a hard life
+he had of it. At one place he was robbed, and at another place was
+shipwrecked. Once he leaped overboard from a ship and swam ashore. Once
+again he fought with three Turks and killed all of them without help.
+Then he was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave to a cruel Turk, who put
+a ring round his neck and made him work very hard.
+
+One day his master came out where he was at work and struck him with his
+whip. He soon found that John Smith was a bad man to whip. He hit the
+Turk a hard blow with the flail he was using, and killed him on the
+spot. Then he ran away, got to Russia, and in time made his way back to
+England. But England was too quiet a place for him. A ship was about to
+cross the sea to America and he volunteered to go in it. He had not half
+enough of adventure yet. Some people think that Captain Smith bragged a
+little, and did not do all he said. Well, that may be so. But it is
+certain that he was a brave and bold man, and just the man to help
+settle a new country where there were savage red men to deal with.
+
+The English were in no hurry in sending out settlers to the New World
+which Columbus had discovered. While the Spaniards were seeking gold and
+empires in the south, and the French were catching fish and exploring
+the rivers and lakes in the north, all the English did was to rob the
+Spanish ships and settlements, and to bring them negroes from Africa for
+slaves.
+
+But the time came, a hundred years after America was discovered, when
+some of the English tried to form a settlement on the coast of North
+Carolina. Poor settlers! When the next ship came out they were all gone.
+Not a soul of them could be found. Nothing was left but some letters
+they had cut into the bark of a tree. What became of them nobody ever
+knew. Likely enough they wandered away and were killed by the Indians.
+
+Nothing more was done until the year 1607, when the ship in which
+Captain John Smith had taken passage sailed up a bright and beautiful
+river in Virginia. It was the month of May, and the banks were covered
+with flowers.
+
+The colonists thought this a very good place to live in, so they landed
+and began to look around them. The river they called the James, and the
+place they named Jamestown. But instead of building a town and preparing
+for the future, as sensible men would have done, they began to seek for
+gold, and soon they were in no end of trouble. In a short time their
+food was all eaten. Then some of them were taken sick and died. Others
+were killed by the Indians. It looked as if this colony would come to
+grief as did the former one.
+
+So it would if it had not been for Captain Smith. He was only one man
+among a hundred, but he was worth more than all the rest of the hundred.
+He could not keep still, but hustled about, here, there and everywhere.
+Now he was exploring the country, sailing up the rivers or up the broad
+Chesapeake Bay. Now he was talking with the Indians, getting food from
+them for the starving colonists. Now he was doing his best to make the
+men build houses and dig and plant the ground. You can see that John
+Smith had enough to keep him busy. He had many adventures with the
+Indians. At one time he was taken prisoner by them and was in terrible
+danger of being killed. But he showed them his pocket compass, and when
+they saw the needle always pointing north, they thought there must be
+magic in it. They were still more surprised when he sent one of them
+with a letter to his friends. They did not understand how a piece of
+paper could talk, as his paper seemed to do.
+
+But all this was not enough to save his life. The great chief Powhatan
+looked on him as the leader of these white strangers who had settled in
+his land. He wanted to get rid of them, and thought that if he killed
+the man of the magic needle and the talking paper they would certainly
+be scared and go away.
+
+So Captain Smith was tied hand and foot, and laid on the ground with his
+head on a log. And a powerful Indian stood near by with a great war club
+in his hand. Only a sign from Powhatan was needed, and down would come
+that club on the white man's head, and it would be all over with the
+brave and bold John Smith.
+
+Alas! poor Captain Smith! There was no pity in Powhatan's eyes. The
+burly Indian twisted his fingers about the club and lifted it in the
+air. One minute more and it might be all over with the man who had
+killed three Turks in one fight. But before that minute was over a
+strange thing took place. A young Indian girl came running wildly toward
+him, with her hair flying and her eyes wet with tears. And she flung
+herself on the ground and laid her head on that of the bound prisoner,
+and begged the chief to give him his life.
+
+It was Pocahontas, the pretty young daughter of Powhatan. She pleaded so
+pitifully that the chief's heart was touched, and he consented that the
+captive should live, and bade them take the bonds from his limbs.
+
+Do you not think this a very pretty story? Some say that it is not true,
+but I think very likely it is. At any rate, it is so good that it ought
+to be true. Afterwards this warm-hearted Indian princess married one of
+the Virginians named John Rolfe and was taken to London and shown to the
+Queen. I am sorry to have to say that poor Pocahontas died there and
+never saw her native land again.
+
+Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown. But his troubles were not at
+an end, for the colonists were as hard to deal with as the Indians. Some
+of them had found a kind of yellow stuff which they were sure was gold.
+They loaded a ship with this and sent it to England, thinking that they
+would all be rich. But the yellow stuff proved to be what is known as "a
+fool's gold," and worth no more than so much sand. Instead of becoming
+rich, they were laughed at as great fools.
+
+After a while Smith was made governor, and he now tried a new plan to
+make the men work. He told them that if they did not work they should
+not eat. None of them wanted to starve, and they knew that John Smith
+meant just what he said, so they began to build houses and to dig the
+ground and plant crops. But some of them grumbled and some of them
+swore, and it was anything but a happy family.
+
+Captain Smith did not like this swearing, and he took a funny way to
+stop it. When the men came home at night each one who had sworn had a
+can of cold water poured down his sleeve for every time he had done so.
+Did any of my readers ever try that? If they did they would know why the
+men soon quit grumbling and swearing. All was beginning to go well in
+the colony when Captain Smith was hurt by some gunpowder that took fire
+and went off. He was hurt so badly that he had to go back to England.
+After that all went ill.
+
+As soon as their governor was gone the lazy men quit working. The
+profane men swore worse than before. They ate up all their food in a
+hurry, and the Indians would bring them no more. Sickness and hunger
+came and carried many of them to the grave. Some of them meddled with
+the Indians and were killed. There were five hundred of them when winter
+set in; but when spring came only sixty of them were alive. And all
+this took place because one wise man, Captain John Smith, was hurt and
+had to go home.
+
+The whole colony would have broken up if ships had not come out with
+more men and plenty of food. Soon after that, the people began to plant
+the ground and raise tobacco, which sold well in England. Many of them
+became rich, and the little settlement at Jamestown in time grew into
+the great colony of Virginia.
+
+This ends the story of the hero of Jamestown. Now let us say something
+about the hero of Plymouth. In the year 1620, thirteen years after Smith
+and his fellows sailed up the James River, a shipload of men and women
+came to a place called Plymouth, on the rocky coast of New England. It
+was named Plymouth by Captain Smith, who had been there before. A
+portion of the rock on which they first stepped, is still preserved and
+surrounded by a fence.
+
+These people are known as Pilgrims. They had been badly treated at home
+because they did believe in the teachings of the Church of England, and
+they had come across the stormy sea to find a place where they could
+worship God in their own way, without fear of being put in prison.
+
+With them came a soldier. He was named Captain Miles Standish. He was a
+little man, but he carried a big sword, and had a stout heart and a hot
+temper. While the Pilgrims came to work and to pray, Captain Standish
+came to fight. He was a different man from Captain Smith, and would not
+have been able to deal with the lazy folks at Jamestown. But the
+Pilgrims were different also. They expected to work and live by their
+labor, and they had no sooner landed on Plymouth Rock than they began to
+dig and plant, while the sound of the hammer rang merrily all day long,
+as they built houses and got ready for the cold winter. But after all
+their labor and carefulness, sickness and hunger came, as they had come
+to Jamestown, and by the time the winter was over, half the poor
+Pilgrims were dead.
+
+The Indians soon got to be afraid of Captain Standish. They were afraid
+of the Pilgrims, too, for they found that these religious men could
+fight as well as pray. One Indian chief, named Canonicus, sent them a
+bundle of arrows with a snake's skin tied round it. This was their way
+of saying that they were going to fight the Pilgrims and drive them from
+the country. But Governor Bradford filled the snake skin with powder and
+bullets and sent it back. When Canonicus saw this he was badly scared,
+for he knew well what it meant. He had heard the white men's guns, and
+thought they had the power of using thunder and lightning. So he made up
+his mind to let the white strangers alone.
+
+But the Pilgrims did not trust the red men. They put cannon on the roof
+of their log church, and they walked to church on Sunday like so many
+soldiers on the march, with guns in their hands and Captain Standish at
+their head. And while they were listening to the sermon one man stood
+outside on the lookout for danger.
+
+At one time some of the Indians made a plot to kill all the English. A
+friendly Indian told Captain Standish about it, and he made up his mind
+to teach them a lesson they would remember. He went to the Indian camp
+with a few men, and walked boldly into the hut where the plotting chiefs
+were talking over their plans. When they saw him and the men with him,
+they tried to frighten them. One of them showed the captain his knife
+and talked very boldly about it.
+
+A big Indian looked with scorn on the little captain. "Pah, you are only
+a little fellow, if you are a captain," he said. "I am not a chief, but
+I am strong and brave."
+
+Captain Standish was very angry, but he said nothing then. He waited
+until the next day, when he met the chiefs again. Then there was a
+quarrel and a fight, and the little captain killed the big Indian with
+his own knife. More of the Indians were slain, and the others ran for
+the woods. That put an end to the plot.
+
+There is one funny story told about Captain Standish. His wife had died,
+and he felt so lonely that he wanted another; so he picked out a pretty
+young woman named Priscilla Mullins. But the rough old soldier knew more
+about fighting than about making love, and he sent his young friend,
+John Alden, to make love for him.
+
+John told Priscilla's father what he had come for, and the father told
+Priscilla what John had told him. The pretty Priscilla had no fancy for
+the wrinkled old soldier. She looked at her father. Then she looked at
+John. Then she said: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"
+
+John did speak for himself, and Priscilla became his wife. As for the
+captain, he married another woman, and this time I fancy he "spoke for
+himself."
+
+Miles Standish lived to be 70 years old, and to have a farm of his own
+and a house on a high hill near Plymouth. This is called Captain's Hill,
+and on it there is now a stone shaft a hundred feet high, with a statue
+of bold Captain Standish on its top.
+
+We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger Williams. He was not a
+captain like the others, but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and
+showed in his way as much courage as either of the captains.
+
+The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other people, who settled at
+Boston and other places around Massachusetts Bay until there were a
+great many of them. These were called Puritans. They came across the
+seas for the same reason as the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own
+way.
+
+But they were as hard to live with as the people at home, for they
+wanted to force everybody else into their way. Some Quakers who came to
+Boston were treated very badly because they had different ways from the
+Puritans. And one young minister named Roger Williams, who thought every
+man should have the right to worship as he pleased, and said that the
+Indians had not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods for
+safety.
+
+It was winter time. The trees were bare of leaves and the ground was
+white with snow. Poor Roger had to wander through the cold woods, making
+a fire at night with his flint and steel, or sometimes creeping into a
+hollow tree to sleep.
+
+Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, for eighty long miles, to
+the house of Massasoit, an Indian chief who was his friend. The good
+chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the Indians, what Roger
+Williams had tried to do for them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave
+his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So Roger paddled away till
+he found a good place to stop. This place he called Providence. A large
+city now stands there, and is still called Providence.
+
+Roger Williams had some friends with him, and others soon came, and
+after a few years he had quite a settlement of his own. It was called
+Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth, at Boston, and at
+Providence, was called "a colony."
+
+He took care that the Indians should be treated well, and that no one
+should do them any harm, so they grew to love the good white man. And he
+said that every man in his colony should worship God in the way he liked
+best, and no one should suffer on account of his manner of worship.
+
+It was a wonderful thing in those days, when there were wars going on in
+Europe about religion or the manner of worship, and everybody was
+punished who did not believe in the religion of the state.
+
+Do you not think that Roger Williams was as brave a man as John Smith or
+Miles Standish, and as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He was
+not that kind of a hero. But he did much to make men happy and good and
+to do justice to all men, and I think that is the best kind of a hero.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO AMERICA
+
+
+I WONDER how many of my readers have ever seen the great city of New
+York. I wonder still more how many of them knew that it is the largest
+city in the world except London. But we must remember that London is ten
+times as old, so it can well afford to be larger.
+
+Why, if you should go back no farther than the time of your
+great-grandfather you would find no city of New York. All you would see
+would be a sort of large village on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of
+the Hudson River. And if you went back to the time of your grandfather's
+great-grandfather, I fancy you would see nothing on that island but
+trees, with Indian wigwams beneath them. Not a single white man or a
+single house would you see.
+
+In the year 1609, just two years after Captain Smith sailed into the
+James River, a queer-looking Dutch vessel came across the ocean and
+began to prowl up and down the coast. It was named the "Half Moon." It
+came from Holland, the land of the Dutch, but its captain was an
+Englishman named Henry Hudson, who had done so many daring things that
+men called him "the bold Englishman."
+
+What Captain Hudson would have liked to do was to sail across the United
+States and come out into the Pacific Ocean, and so make his way to the
+rich countries of Asia. Was not that a funny notion? To think that he
+could sail across three thousand miles of land and across great ranges
+of mountains!
+
+But you must not think that Captain Hudson was crazy. Nobody then knew
+how wide America was. For all they knew, it might not be fifty miles
+wide. Captain John Smith tried to get across it by sailing up James
+River. And Captain Hudson fancied he might find some stream that led
+from one ocean to the other.
+
+So on he went up and down the coast looking for an opening. And after a
+while the "Half Moon" sailed into a broad and beautiful bay, where great
+trees came down to the edge of the water and red men paddled about in
+their canoes. Captain Hudson was delighted to see it. "It was," he said,
+"as pleasant with grass and flowers as he had ever seen, and very sweet
+smells."
+
+This body of water was what we now call New York Bay. A broad and swift
+river runs into it, which is now called Hudson River, after Henry
+Hudson. The bold captain thought that this was the stream to go up if he
+wished to reach the Pacific Ocean. So, after talking as well as he could
+with the Indians in their canoes, and trading beads for corn, he set his
+sails again and started up the splendid river. Some of the Indians came
+on board the "Half Moon," and the Dutch gave them brandy, which they had
+never seen or tasted before. Soon they were dancing and capering about
+the deck, and one of them fell down so stupid with drink that his
+friends thought he was dead. That was their first taste of the deadly
+"fire water" of the whites, which has killed thousands of the red men
+since then.
+
+Captain Hudson and the Dutch no doubt thought that this was great fun.
+People often do much harm without stopping to think. But on up the river
+went the "Half Moon."
+
+At some places they saw fields of green corn on the water's edge.
+Farther on were groves of lofty trees, and for miles great cliffs of
+rock rose like towers. It was all very grand and beautiful.
+
+"It was a very good land to fall in with," said Captain Hudson, "and a
+pleasant land to see."
+
+As they sailed on and on, they came to mountains, which rose on both
+sides the river. After passing the mountains, the captain went ashore to
+visit an old chief, who lived in a round house built of bark. The
+Indians here had great heaps of corn and beans. But what they liked
+best was roast dog. They roasted a dog for Captain Hudson and asked him
+to eat it, but I do not know whether he did so or not. And they broke
+their arrows and threw them into the fire, to show that they did not
+mean to do harm to the white men.
+
+After leaving the good old chief the Dutch explorers went on up the
+river till they reached a place about 150 miles above the sea, where the
+city of Albany now stands. Here the river became so narrow and shallow
+that Captain Hudson saw he could not reach the Pacific by that route, so
+he turned and sailed back to the sea again.
+
+A sad fate was that of Captain Hudson, "the bold Englishman." The next
+year he came again to America. But this time he went far to the north
+and entered the great body of water which we call Hudson Bay. He thought
+this would lead to the Pacific, and he would not turn back, though the
+food was nearly all gone. At last the crew got desperate, and they put
+the captain and some others into an open boat on the wide waters, and
+turned back again. Nothing more was ever heard of Captain Hudson, and he
+must have died miserably on that cold and lonely bay.
+
+But before his last voyage he had told the Dutch people all about Hudson
+River, and that the Indians had many fine furs which they would be glad
+to trade for beads, and knives, and other cheap things. The Dutch were
+fond of trading, and liked to make a good bargain, so they soon began to
+send ships to America. They built a fort and some log huts on Manhattan
+Island, and a number of them stayed there to trade with the red men.
+They paid the Indians for the island with some cheap goods worth about
+twenty-four dollars. I do not think any of you could guess how many
+millions of dollars that island is worth now. For the great city of New
+York stands where the log huts of the Dutch traders once stood, and
+twenty-four dollars would hardly buy as much land as you could cover
+with your hand.
+
+The country around is now all farming land, where grain and fruit are
+grown, and cattle are raised. But then it was all woodland for hundreds
+of miles away, and in these woods lived many foxes and beavers and other
+fur-bearing animals. These the Indians hunted and killed, and sold their
+furs to the Dutch, so that there was soon a good trade for both the red
+and the white men. The Dutch were glad to get the furs and the Indians
+were as glad to get the knives and beads. More and more people came from
+Holland, and the town grew larger and larger, and strong brick houses
+took the place of the log huts, and in time there was quite a town.
+
+Men were sent from Holland to govern the people. Some of these men were
+not fit to govern themselves, and the settlers did not like to have
+such men over them. One of them was a stubborn old fellow named Peter
+Stuyvesant. He had lost one of his legs, and wore a wooden leg with
+bands of silver around it, so that he was called "Old Silver Leg."
+
+While he was governor an important event took place. The English had a
+settlement in Virginia and another in New England, and they said that
+all the coast lands belonged to them, because the Cabots had been the
+first to see them. The Cabots came from Italy, but they had settled in
+England, and sailed in an English ship.
+
+So one day a small fleet of English vessels came into the bay, and a
+letter was sent on shore which said that all this land belonged to
+England and must be given up to them. The Dutch might stay there, but
+they would be under an English governor. Old Peter tore up the letter
+and stamped about in a great rage on his silver leg. But he had treated
+the people so badly that they would not fight for him, so he had to give
+up the town.
+
+The English called it New York, after the Duke of York, the king's
+brother. It grew and grew till it became a great and rich city, and sent
+ships to all parts of the world. Most of the Dutch stayed there, and
+their descendants are among the best people of New York to-day. Not
+long after these English ships came to New York Bay, other English ships
+came to a fine body of water, about 100 miles farther south, now called
+Delaware Bay. Into this also runs a great stream of fresh water, called
+Delaware River, as wide as the Hudson. I think you will like to learn
+what brought them here.
+
+No doubt you remember what I said about some people called Quakers, who
+came to Boston and were treated very badly by the Puritans. Did any of
+my young readers ever see a Quaker? In old times you would have known
+them, for they dressed in a different way from other people. They wore
+very plain clothes and broad-brimmed hats, which they would not take off
+to do honor to king or noble. To-day they generally dress more like the
+people around them.
+
+If they were treated badly in Boston they were treated worse in England.
+Thieves and highwaymen had as good a time as the poor Quakers. Some of
+them were put in jail and kept there for years. Some were whipped or put
+in the stocks, where low people called them vile names and threw mud at
+them. Indeed, these quiet people, who did no harm to any one, but were
+kind to others, had a very hard time, and were treated more cruelly than
+the Pilgrims and the Puritans.
+
+Among them was the son of a brave English admiral, who was a friend of
+the king and his brother, the Duke of York. But this did not save him
+from being put in prison for preaching as a Quaker and wearing his hat
+in court.
+
+This was William Penn, from whom Pennsylvania was named. You may well
+fancy that the son of a rich admiral and the friend of a king did not
+like being treated as though he were a thief because he chose to wear a
+hat with a broad brim and to say "thee" and "thou," and because he would
+not go to the king's church.
+
+What is more, the king owed him money, which he could not or would not
+pay. He had owed this money to Admiral Penn, and after the admiral died
+he owed it to his son.
+
+William Penn thought it would be wise to do as the Pilgrims and Puritans
+had done. There was plenty of land in America, and it would be easy
+there to make a home for the poor Quakers where they could live in peace
+and worship God in the way they thought right. This they could not do in
+England.
+
+Penn went to the king and told him how he could pay his debt. If the
+king would give him a tract of land on the west side of the Delaware
+River, he would take it as payment in full for the money owing to his
+father.
+
+King Charles, who never had money enough for his own use, was very glad
+to pay his debts in this easy way. He told Penn that he could have all
+the land he wanted, and offered him a tract that was nearly as large as
+the whole of England. This land belonged to the red men, but that did
+not trouble King Charles. It is easy to pay debts in other people's
+property. All Penn was asked to pay the king was two beaver skins every
+year and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that should be mined. As
+no gold or silver was ever mined the king got nothing but his beaver
+skins, which were a kind of rent.
+
+What do any of my young readers know about the Delaware River? Have any
+of you seen the wide, swift stream which flows between the states of
+Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into the broad body of water known
+as Delaware Bay? On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia, in
+which live more than a million people, and where there are thousands of
+busy workshops and well-filled stores. This large and fine city came
+from the way the king paid his debt. King Charles was not a good man,
+but he did one thing that had a good ending.
+
+There were white men there before the Quakers came. Many years earlier a
+number of people from Sweden had come and settled along the river. Then
+the Dutch from New York said the land was theirs, and took possession of
+the forts of the Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed the land
+as theirs. Then Quakers came and settled in New Jersey. Finally came
+William Penn, in a ship called by the pretty name of the "Welcome," and
+after that the land was governed by the Quakers or Friends, though the
+Swedes stayed there still.
+
+We have something very pleasant to say about good William Penn. He knew
+very well that King Charles did not own the land, and had no right to
+sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians together under a great
+elm tree on the river bank, and had a long talk with them, and told them
+he would pay them for all the land he wanted. This pleased the red men
+very much, and ever afterwards they loved William Penn.
+
+Do you not think it must have been a pretty scene when Penn and the
+Quakers met the Indian chiefs under the great tree--the Indians in their
+colored blankets and the Quakers in their great hats? That tree stood
+for more than a hundred years afterwards, and when the British army was
+in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution their general put a
+guard around Penn's treaty tree, so that the soldiers should not cut it
+down for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone monument marks
+where it stood. A city was laid out on the river, which Penn named
+Philadelphia, a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose some
+brotherly love is there still, but not nearly so much as there should
+be.
+
+Streets were made through the woods, and the names of the trees were
+given to these streets, which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine,
+Cherry, and the like. People soon came in numbers, and it is wonderful
+how fast the city grew. Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses,
+and in time it grew to be the largest in the country.
+
+The Indians looked on in wonder to see large houses springing up where
+they had hunted deer, and to see great ships where they had paddled
+their canoes. But the white men spread more and more into the land, and
+the red men were pushed back, and in time none of them were left in
+Penn's woodland colony. This was long after William Penn was dead.
+
+But while Penn's city was growing large and rich, he was becoming poor.
+He spent much money on his province and got very little back. At last he
+became so poor that he was put in prison for debt, as was the custom in
+those days. In the end he died and left the province to his sons. The
+Indians sent some beautiful furs to his widow in memory of their great
+and good brother. They said these were to make her a cloak "to protect
+her while she was passing without her guide through the stormy
+wilderness of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH
+
+
+VIRGINIA has often been called the Cavalier colony. Do any of you know
+why, or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I had better tell you. They were
+the lords and the proud people of England. Many of them had no money,
+but they would do no work, and cared for nothing but pleasure and
+fighting. There were plenty of working people in that country, but there
+were many who were too proud to work, and expected others to work for
+them, while they hoped to live at ease.
+
+Some of this kind of men came out with John Smith, and that is why he
+had so much trouble with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came from
+the working people of England, and nobody had to starve them to make
+them work, or to pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them from
+swearing.
+
+While religious people settled in the North, many of the proud Cavalier
+class, who cared very little about religion, came to the South. So we
+may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colonies, though many of
+the common people came there too, and it was not long before there was
+plenty of work.
+
+The first to come after John Smith and the Jamestown people were some
+shiploads of Catholics. You should know that the Catholics were treated
+in England even worse than the Puritans and the Quakers. The law said
+they must go to the English Church instead of to their own. If they did
+not they would have to pay a large sum of money or go to prison. Was not
+this very harsh and unjust?
+
+The Catholics were not all poor people. There were rich men and nobles
+among them. One of these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the King
+for some land in America where he and his friends might dwell in peace
+and have churches of their own. This was many years before William Penn
+asked for the same thing. The King was a friend of Lord Baltimore and
+told him he might have as much land as he could make use of. So he chose
+a large tract just north of Virginia, which the King named Maryland,
+after his wife, Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord Baltimore had
+to pay for this was two Indian arrows every year, and a part of the gold
+and silver, if any were found. This was done to show that the King still
+kept some claim to Maryland, and did not give away all his rights.
+
+And now comes a story much the same as I have told you several times
+already. A shipload of Catholics and other people came across the ocean
+to the new continent which Columbus had discovered many years before.
+These sailed up the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find this bay
+on your maps. They landed at a place they called St. Mary's, where there
+was a small Indian town. As it happened, the Indians at this town had
+been so much troubled by fighting tribes farther north that they were
+just going to move somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell their
+town to the white strangers.
+
+All they wanted for their houses and their corn fields were some
+hatchets, knives and beads, and other things they could use. Gold and
+silver would have been of no value to them, for they had never seen
+these metals. The only money the Indians used was round pieces of
+seashell, with holes bored through them. Before these people left their
+town they showed the white men how to hunt in the woods and how to plant
+corn. And their wives taught the white women how to make hominy out of
+corn and how to bake johnny-cakes. So the people of Maryland did not
+suffer from hunger like those of Virginia and New England, and they had
+plenty to eat and lived very well from the start.
+
+This was in the year 1634, just about the time Roger Williams went to
+Rhode Island. Lord Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams did;
+he gave the people religious liberty. Every Christian who came to
+Maryland had the right to worship God in his own way. Roger Williams
+went farther than this, for he gave the same right to Jews and all other
+people, whether they were Christians or pagans.
+
+It was not long before other people came to Maryland, and they began to
+plant tobacco, as the people were doing in Virginia. Tobacco was a good
+crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high price in England, so that
+the Maryland planters did very well, and many of them grew rich. But
+religious liberty did not last there very long, and the Catholics were
+not much better off than they had been in England. All the poor people
+who came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants. Only the rich ones were
+Catholics. Many other Protestants soon came, some of them being Puritans
+from New England, who did not know what religious liberty meant.
+
+These people said that the Catholics should not have the right to
+worship in their own churches, even in Maryland, and they went so far
+that they tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which the king had
+given him. There was much fighting between the Catholics and the
+Protestants. Now one party got the best of it, and now the other. In
+the end the province was taken from Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new
+king, named King William, came to the throne, he said that Maryland was
+his property, and that the Catholics should not have a church of their
+own or worship in their own way in that province. Do you not think this
+was very cruel and unjust? It seems so to me. It did not seem right,
+after Lord Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men, for others
+to come and take it away. But the custom in those days was that all men
+must be made to think the same way, or be punished if they didn't. This
+seems queer now-a-days, when every man has the right to think as he
+pleases.
+
+In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who became a Protestant, and the
+province was given back to him. It grew rich and full of people, and
+large towns were built. One of these was named Baltimore, after Lord
+Baltimore, and is now a great city. And Washington, the capital of the
+United States, stands on land that was once part of Maryland. But St.
+Mary's, the first town built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left
+to show where it stood.
+
+Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia. The Potomac River runs
+between them. South of Virginia was another great tract of land,
+reaching all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards then held. Some
+French Protestants tried to settle there, but they were cruelly
+murdered by the Spaniards, and no one else came there for many years.
+
+About 1660 people began to settle in what was then called "the
+Carolinas," but is now called North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of
+these came from Virginia and some from England, and small settlements
+were made here and there along the coast. One of these was called
+Charleston. This has now grown into a large and important city.
+
+There were some noblemen in England who thought that this region might
+become worth much money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to give it
+to them. This was the same king who gave the Dutch settlement to the
+Duke of York and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William Penn. He
+was very ready to give away what did not belong to him, and told these
+noblemen that they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were eight of
+these men, and they made up their minds that they would have a very nice
+form of government for their new province. So they went to a famous man
+named John Locke, who was believed to be very wise, and asked him to
+draw up a form of government for them.
+
+John Locke drew up a plan of government which they thought very fine,
+but which everybody now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy he
+knew more about books than he did about government. He called it the
+"Grand Model," and the noble lords thought they had a wonderful
+government indeed. There were to be earls, and barons, and lords, the
+same as in Europe. No one could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The
+poorer people were to be like so many slaves. They could not even leave
+one plantation for another without asking leave from the lord or baron
+who owned it.
+
+What do you think the people did? You must not imagine they came across
+the ocean to be made slaves of. No, indeed! They cared no more for the
+"Grand Model" than if it was a piece of tissue paper. They settled where
+they pleased, and would not work for the earls and barons, and fought
+with the governors, and refused to pay the heavy taxes which the eight
+noble owners asked.
+
+In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole business that they gave
+their province back to the king. It was then divided into two colonies,
+known as North Carolina and South Carolina. As for the lords and barons,
+nobody heard of them any more.
+
+The people of the Carolinas had other things beside the Grand Model of
+government to trouble them. There were savage Indians back in the
+country who attacked them and killed many of them. And there were
+pirates along the coast who attacked ships and killed all on board. But
+rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cotton, and much tar and
+turpentine were got from the pine trees in North Carolina, and as the
+years went on these colonies became rich and prosperous, and the people
+began to have a happy time.
+
+I hope none of my young readers are tired of reading about kings and
+colonies. I am sure they must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and
+Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of the great leaders. At
+any rate, there is only one more colony to talk about, and then we will
+be through with this part of our story. This is the colony of Georgia,
+which lies in the tract of land between South Carolina and Florida.
+
+I am sure that when you are done reading this book you will be glad that
+you did not live two or three hundred years ago. To-day every one can
+think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too, if he does not break the
+laws. And the laws are much more just and less cruel than they were in
+former times. Why, in those days, every man who owed money and could not
+pay it might be put in prison and kept there for years. He could not
+work there and earn money to pay his debts, and if his friends did not
+pay them he might stay there till he died. As I have told you, even the
+good William Penn was put in prison for debt, and kept there till his
+friends paid the money.
+
+There were as many poor debtors in prison as there were thieves and
+villains. Some of them become sick and died, and some were starved to
+death by cruel jailers, who would not give them anything to eat if they
+had no money to pay for food. One great and good man, named General
+James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so sorry for the poor
+debtors he saw there, that he asked the king to give him a piece of land
+in America where he could take some of these suffering people.
+
+There was now not much land left to give. Settlements had been made all
+along the coast except south of the Carolinas, and the king told General
+Oglethorpe that he could have the land which lay there, and could take
+as many debtors out of prison as he chose. He thought it would be a good
+thing to take them somewhere where they could work and earn their
+living. The king who was then on the throne was named King George, so
+Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia.
+
+It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after Lord Baltimore had come
+to Maryland. General Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison,
+and very glad they were to get out, you may be sure. He landed with them
+on the banks of a fine river away down South, where he laid out a town
+which he named Savannah.
+
+The happy debtors now found themselves in a broad and beautiful land,
+where they could prove whether they were ready to work or not. They were
+not long in doing this. Right away they began to cut down trees, and
+build houses, and plant fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be
+seen and food plants were growing in the fields. And very happy men and
+women these poor people were.
+
+General Oglethorpe knew as well as William Penn that the land did not
+belong to the king. He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the land
+was theirs, and offered to pay them for it. They were quite willing to
+sell, and soon he had all the land he wanted, and what is more, he had
+the Indians for friends.
+
+But if he had no trouble with the Indians, he had a good deal with the
+Spaniards of Florida. They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and
+that the English had no right there. And they sent an army and tried to
+drive them out.
+
+I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was an old soldier, but he
+soon showed them that he knew how to fight. He drove back their armies
+and took their ships; and they quickly made up their minds that they had
+better let the English alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the
+Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This was St. Augustine.
+
+Before long some Germans came from Europe and settled in the new
+colony. People came also from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted
+for food, and some of the colonists raised silkworms and made silk. But
+in the end, cotton came to be the chief crop of the colony.
+
+General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man. He did not die till long
+after the American Revolution. Georgia was then a flourishing state, and
+the little town he had started on the banks of the Savannah River was a
+fine city, with broad streets, fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees.
+I think the old general must have been very proud of this charming city,
+and of the great state which owed its start to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED
+
+
+NOW that you have been told about the settlement of the colonies, it is
+well to recall how many of them there were. Let us see. There were the
+Pilgrim and Puritan settlements of New England, Roger Williams's
+settlement in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in New York, the Quaker
+one in Pennsylvania, the Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier
+ones in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor settlement in
+Georgia. Then there were some smaller ones, making about a dozen in all.
+
+These stretched all along the coast, from Canada, the French country in
+the north, to Florida, the Spanish country in the south. The British
+were a long time in settling these places, for nearly 250 years passed
+after the time of Columbus before General Oglethorpe came to Georgia.
+
+While all this was going on, what was becoming of the native people of
+the country, the Indians? I am afraid they were having a very hard time
+of it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and forced them to work so
+terribly hard in the mines and the fields that they died by thousands.
+The French and the English fought with them and drove them away from
+their old homes, killing many of them.
+
+And this has gone on and on ever since, until the red men, who once
+spread over all this country, are now kept in a very small part of it.
+Some people say there are as many of them as there ever were. If that is
+so, they can live on much less land than they once occupied.
+
+What do you know about these Indians? Have you ever seen one of them?
+Your fathers or grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were
+everywhere in this country, and people saw more of them than they liked;
+but now we see them only in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools,
+except we happen to go where they live. Do you not want to know
+something about these oldest Americans? I have been busy so far talking
+about the white men and what they did, and have had no chance to tell
+you about the people they found on this continent and how they treated
+them. I think I must make this chapter an Indian one.
+
+Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south, and the French to the
+north, and the Dutch and the Swedes and the British to the middle
+country, they found everywhere a kind of people they had never seen
+before. Their skin was not white, like that of the people of Europe,
+nor black like that of the Africans, but of a reddish color, like that
+of copper, so that they called them red men. They had black eyes and
+hair, and high cheek-bones, and were not handsome according to our
+ideas; but they were tall and strong, and many of them very proud and
+dignified.
+
+These people lived in a very wild fashion. They spent much of their time
+in hunting, fishing, and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and
+beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their food was got from
+wild animals killed in the woods. They were as fond of fighting as they
+were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, some of which were
+nearly always at war with other tribes. They had no weapons but stone
+hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able with these to kill many
+of their enemies. People say that they were badly treated by the whites,
+but they treated one another worse than the whites ever did.
+
+The Indians were very cruel. The warriors shaved off all their hair
+except one lock, which was called the scalp lock. When one of them was
+killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his scalp, or the skin
+of his head. They were very proud of these scalps, for they showed how
+many men they had killed.
+
+When they took a prisoner, they would tie him to a tree and build a
+fire round him and burn him to death. And while he was burning they
+would torture him all they could. We cannot feel so much pity for the
+Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated
+them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties,
+and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once
+there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of
+prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has
+been done, good has come of it.
+
+At the time I am speaking of, forests covered much of this great
+continent. They spread everywhere, and the Indians lived under their
+shade, and had wonderful skill in following animals or enemies through
+their shady depths. They read the ground much as we read the pages of a
+book. A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint which we could not
+see, were full of meaning to them, and they would follow a trail for
+miles through the woods where we would not have been able to follow it a
+yard. Their eyes were trained to this kind of work, but in time some of
+the white men became as expert as the Indians, and could follow a trail
+as well.
+
+The red men lived mostly in little huts covered with skins or bark,
+which they called wigwams. Some of the tribes lived in villages, where
+there were large bark houses. But they did not stay much in their
+houses, for they liked better to be in the open air. Now they were
+hunting deer in the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark canoes in
+the streams, now smoking their pipes in front of their huts, now dancing
+their war dances or getting ready to fight.
+
+The men did nothing except hunting and fighting. The women had to do all
+other work, such as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building
+wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving of cloth, but most of their
+clothes were made of the skins of wild animals.
+
+In war times the warriors tried to make themselves as ugly as they
+could, painting their faces in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in
+their hair. They seemed to think they could scare their enemies by ugly
+faces.
+
+I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. Some of these tribes were
+quite large, and were made up of a great number of men and women who
+lived together and spoke the same language. Each tribe was divided up
+into clans, or small family-like groups, and each clan had its sachem,
+or peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led them to battle. The
+sachems and chiefs governed the tribes and made such laws as they had.
+
+Every clan had some animal which it called its totem, such as the wolf,
+bear, or fox. They were proud of their totems, and the form of the
+animal was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked into the
+skin with needles. All the Indians were fond of dancing, and their war
+dances were as fierce and wild as they could make them.
+
+The tribes in the south were not as savage as those in the north. They
+did more farming, and had large and well-built villages. Some of them
+had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun as a god. They kept a
+fire always burning in the temple, and seemed to think this fire was a
+part of their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled over the tribe,
+and also a head war-chief, a high-priest, and other rulers.
+
+In the far west were Indians who built houses that were almost like
+towns, for they had hundreds of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one
+of these great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand people. Other
+tribes lived in holes in the sides of steep rocks, where their enemies
+could not easily get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers. And there
+were some who lived on top of high, steep hills, which were very hard to
+climb. These Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants.
+
+Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you would have liked to see
+white people coming in ships across the waters and settling down in your
+country as if they owned it? They did not all pay for the land they
+took, like William Penn and General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted
+as if the country belonged to them, and it is no wonder the old owners
+of the country did not like it, or that there was fierce fighting
+between the white and the red men.
+
+Do you remember the story of Canonicus and the snake skin, and that of
+Miles Standish and the chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but
+there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither a number of settlers
+had come from Boston and others from England. Here there was a warlike
+tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry on seeing the white men
+in their country.
+
+They began to kill the whites whenever they found them alone. Then the
+whites began to kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war. The
+Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees, set close together in the
+ground. They thought they were safe in this fort, but the English made
+an attack on it, and got into it, and set fire to the Indian wigwams
+inside. The fight went on terribly in the smoke and flame until nearly
+all the Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost their lives. This
+so scared the Indians that it was forty years before there was another
+Indian war in New England.
+
+I have told you about the good chief Massasoit, who was so kind to Roger
+Williams. He was a friend to the white men as long as he lived, but
+after his death his son Philip became one of their greatest enemies.
+
+Philip's brother was taken sick and died after he had been to Plymouth,
+and the Indians thought that the people there had given him poison.
+Philip said that they would try to kill him next, and he made up his
+mind to fight them and drive them out of the country. The Indians had
+guns now, and knew how to use them, and they began to shoot the white
+people as they went quietly along the roads.
+
+Next they began to attack the villages of the whites. They would creep
+up at night, set the houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out.
+The war went on for a long time in this way, and there were many
+terrible fights.
+
+At one place the people, when they saw the Indians coming, all ran to a
+strong building called a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and
+yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by shooting arrows with
+blazing rags on their points. Once the roof caught fire, but some of the
+men ran up and threw water on the flames.
+
+Then the Indians got a cart and filled it with hay. Setting this on
+fire, they pushed it up against the house. It looked as if all the white
+men and women and children would be burned alive. The house caught fire
+and began to blaze. But just then came a shower of rain that put out the
+fire, and the people inside were saved once more. Before the Indians
+could do anything further some white soldiers came and the savages all
+ran into the woods.
+
+There were other wonderful escapes, but many of the settlers were
+killed, and Philip began to think he would be able to drive them out of
+the country, as he wished to do. He was called King Philip, though he
+had no crown except a string of wampum,--or bits of bored shell strung
+together and twined round his head,--and no palace better than a bark
+hut, while his finest dress was a red blanket. It took very little to
+make an Indian king. The white men knew more about war than the Indians,
+and in the end they began to drive them back. One of their forts was
+taken, and the wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the
+Pequots. A great many of the poor red men perished in the flames.
+
+The best fighter among the white men was Captain Church. He followed
+King Philip and his men to one hiding place after another, killing some
+and taking others prisoners. Among the prisoners were the wife and
+little son of the Indian king.
+
+"It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he heard of this. "Now I am
+ready to die."
+
+He did not live much longer. Captain Church chased him from place to
+place, till he came to Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasoit
+lived when Roger Williams came to him through the woods. Here King
+Philip was shot, and the war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and
+a large number had been killed on both sides. It is known in history as
+King Philip's War.
+
+There were wars with the Indians in many other parts of the country. In
+Virginia the Indians made a plot to kill all the white people. They
+pretended to be very friendly, and brought them meat and fish to sell.
+While they were talking quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or
+hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one morning nearly three
+hundred and fifty were killed, men, women, and little children.
+
+Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, except those in Jamestown,
+who were warned in time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting down
+all they could find, and killing a great many of them.
+
+This was after the death of Powhatan, who had been a friend to the
+whites. About twenty years later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took
+place. After this the Indians were driven far back into the country, and
+did not give any more trouble for thirty years. The last war with them
+broke out in 1675.
+
+The Dutch in New York also had their troubles with the Indians. They
+paid for all the lands they took, but one of their governors was
+foolish enough to start a war that went on for two years. A worse
+trouble was that in North Carolina, where there was a powerful tribe
+called the Tuscaroras. These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers
+of them. But in the end they were driven out of the country.
+
+The only colonies in which the Indians kept friendly for a long time
+were Pennsylvania and Georgia. We know the reason of this. William Penn
+and General Oglethorpe were wise enough to make friends with them at the
+start, and continued to treat them with justice and friendliness, so
+that the red men came to love these good men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS
+
+
+DO any of my young readers know what is meant by a Charter? "Yes," I
+hear some of you say. "No," say others. Well, I must speak to the "No,"
+party; the party that doesn't know, and wants to know.
+
+A charter is a something written or printed which grants certain rights
+or privileges to the party to whom it is given. It may come from a king
+or a congress, or from any person in power, and be given to any other
+person who wishes the right to hold a certain property or to do some
+special thing.
+
+Do you understand any better now? I am sorry I can not put it in plainer
+words. I think the best way will be to tell you about some charters
+which belong to American history. You should know that all the people
+who crossed the ocean to make new settlements on the Atlantic Coast had
+charters from the king of England. This was the case with the Pilgrims
+and the Puritans, with Roger Williams, William Penn, Lord Baltimore, and
+the others I have spoken about.
+
+These charters were written on parchment, which is the skin of an
+animal, made into something like paper. The charters gave these people
+the right to settle on and own certain lands, to form certain kinds of
+government, and to do a variety of things which in England no one could
+do but the king and the parliament.
+
+The colonies in New England were given the right to choose their own
+governors and make their own laws, and nobody, not even the king, could
+stop them from doing this. The king had given them this right, and no
+other king could take it away while they kept their charters.
+
+Would you care to be told what took place afterwards? All kings, you
+should know, are not alike. Some are very mild and easy, and some are
+very harsh and severe. Some are willing for the people to have liberty,
+and some are not. The kings who gave the charters to New England were of
+the easy kind. But they were followed by kings of the hard kind, who
+thought that these people beyond the sea had too much liberty, and who
+wished to take away some of it.
+
+Charles II., who gave some of these charters, was one of the easy kings,
+and did not trouble himself about the people in the colonies. James II.,
+who came after him, was one of the hard kings. He was somewhat of a
+tyrant, and wanted to make the laws himself, and to take the right to do
+this from the people. After trying to rob the people of England of
+their liberties, he thought he would do the same thing with the people
+of America. "Those folks across the seas are having too good a time," he
+thought. "They have too many rights and privileges, and I must take some
+of them away. I will let them know that I am their master."
+
+But they had their charters, which gave them these rights; so the wicked
+king thought the first thing for him to do was to take their charters
+away from them. Then their rights would be gone, and he could make for
+them a new set of laws, and force them to do everything he wished.
+
+What King James did was to send a nobleman named Sir Edmund Andros to
+New England to rule as royal governor. He was the agent of the king, and
+was to do all that the king ordered. He began by undertaking to rob the
+people of their charters. You see, even a tyrant king did not like to go
+against the charters, for a charter was a sacred pledge.
+
+Well, the new governor went about ordering the people to give him their
+charters. One of the places to which he went was Hartford, Connecticut,
+and there he told the officers of the colony that they must deliver up
+their charter; the king had said so, and the king's word must be obeyed.
+
+If any of you had lived in Connecticut in those days I know how you
+would have felt. The charter gave the people a great deal of liberty,
+and they did not wish to part with it. I know that you and I would have
+felt the same way. But what could they do? If they did not give it up
+peacefully, Governor Andros might come again with soldiers and take it
+from them by force. So the lawmakers and officials were in a great fret
+about what they should do.
+
+They asked Governor Andros to come to the State-house and talk over the
+matter. Some of them fancied they could get him to leave them their
+charter, though they might have known better. There they sat--the
+governor in the lofty chair of state, the others seated in a half circle
+before him. There was a broad table between them, and on this lay the
+great parchment of the charter. Some of those present did a great deal
+of talking. They told how good King Charles had given them the charter,
+and how happy they had been under it, and how loyal they were to good
+King James, and they begged Governor Andros not to take it from them.
+But they might as well have talked to the walls. He had his orders from
+the king and was one of the men who do just what they are told.
+
+While the talk was going on a strange thing happened. It was night, and
+the room was lit up with a few tallow candles. Of course you know that
+these were the best lights people had at that time; gas or the electric
+light had never been heard of. And it was before the time of matches.
+The only way to make a light in those days was by the use of the flint
+and steel, which was a very slow method indeed.
+
+Suddenly, while one of the Hartford men was talking and the governor was
+looking at him in a tired sort of way, all the lights in the room went
+out, and the room was in deep darkness. Everybody jumped up from their
+chairs and there was no end of bustle and confusion, and likely enough
+some pretty hard words were said. They had to hunt in the dark for the
+flint and steel; and then there came snapping of steel on flint, and
+falling of sparks on tinder, so that it was some time before the candles
+were lit again.
+
+When this was done the governor opened his eyes very wide, for the table
+was empty, the charter was gone. I fancy he swore a good deal when he
+saw that. In those days even the highest people were given to swearing.
+But no matter how much he swore, he could not with hard words bring back
+the charter. It was gone, and nobody knew where. Everybody looked for
+it, right and left, in and out, in drawers and closets, but it was
+nowhere to be found. Very likely the most of them did not want to find
+it. At any rate, the governor had to go away without the charter, and
+years passed before anybody saw it again.
+
+Do you not wish to know what became of it? We are told that it had been
+taken by a bold young soldier named Captain Wadsworth. While all the
+people in the room were looking at the one who was making his speech,
+the captain quickly took off his cloak and gave it a quick fling over
+the candles, so that in a moment they were all put out. Then he snatched
+up the charter from the table and slipped quietly out of the room. While
+they were busy snapping the flint and steel, he was hurrying down the
+street towards a great oak tree which was more than a hundred years old.
+This tree was hollow in its heart, and there was a hole in its side
+which opened into the hollow. Into this hole Captain Wadsworth pushed
+the charter, and it fell into the hollow space. I do not think any of us
+would have thought of looking there for it. I know nobody did at that
+time, and there it lay for years, until the tyrant King James was driven
+from the throne and a new king had taken his place. Then it was joyfully
+brought out, and the people were ever so glad to see it again.
+
+The old tree stood for many years in the main street of the town, and
+became famous as the Charter Oak. The people loved and were proud of it
+as long as it stood. But many years ago the hoary old oak fell, and now
+only some of its wood is left. This has been made into chairs and boxes
+and other objects which are thought of great value.
+
+Do you not think that Captain Wadsworth was a bold and daring man, and
+one who knew just what to do in times of trouble? If you do not, I fancy
+you will when I have told you another story about him.
+
+This took place after the charter had been taken from the oak and
+brought to the statehouse again. At this time there was a governor in
+New York named Fletcher, who claimed that the king had given him the
+right to command the militia, or citizen soldiers, of Connecticut. So he
+came to Hartford, where Captain Wadsworth was in command, and where the
+people did not want any stranger to have power over them. He told the
+captain what he had come for, and that he had a commission to read to
+the soldiers.
+
+The militia were called out and drawn up in line in the public square of
+the town, and Governor Fletcher came before them, full of his
+importance. He took out of his pocket the paper which he said gave him
+the right to command, and began to read it in a very proud and haughty
+manner. But he had not read ten words when Captain Wadsworth told the
+drummers to beat their drums, and before you could draw your breath
+there was such a rattle and roll of noise that not a word could be
+heard.
+
+"Silence!" cried Fletcher. "Stop those drums!" The drums stopped, and he
+began to read again.
+
+"Drum!" ordered Wadsworth in a loud tone, and such a noise began that a
+giant's voice would have been drowned.
+
+"Silence!" again shouted Fletcher. He was very red in the face by this
+time.
+
+"Drum, I say!" roared the captain.
+
+Then he turned to the governor and said, laying his hand on his sword,
+"I command these men, Governor Fletcher, and if you interrupt me again I
+will make the sun shine through you in a minute." And he looked as if he
+meant what he said. All the governor's pomp and consequence were gone,
+and his face turned from red to pale. He hastily thrust the paper back
+into his pocket, and was not long in leaving Hartford for New York. No
+doubt he thought that Connecticut was not a good place for royal
+governors.
+
+Suppose I now tell you the story of another royal governor and another
+bold captain. This was down in Virginia, but it was long after Captain
+Smith was dead and after Virginia had become a large and prosperous
+colony.
+
+The king sent there a governor named Berkeley, who acted as if he was
+master and all the people were his slaves. They did not like to be
+treated this way; but Berkeley had soldiers under his command, and they
+were forced to obey. While this was going on the Indians began to murder
+the settlers. The governor ought to have stopped them, but he was
+afraid to call out the people, and he let the murders go on.
+
+There was a young man named Nathaniel Bacon who asked Governor Berkeley
+to let him raise some men to fight the Indians. The governor refused.
+But this did not stop brave young Bacon, for he called out a force of
+men and drove off the murdering savages.
+
+Governor Berkeley was very angry at this. He said that Bacon was a
+traitor and ought to be treated like one, and that the men with him were
+rebels. Bacon at once marched with his men against Jamestown, and the
+haughty governor ran away as fast as he could.
+
+But while Bacon and his men were fighting the Indians again, Governor
+Berkeley came back and talked more than ever about rebels and traitors.
+This made Bacon and the people with him very angry. To be treated in
+this way while they were saving the people from the Indian knife and
+tomahawk was too bad. They marched against Jamestown again. This time
+the governor did not run away, but prepared to defend the place with
+soldiers and cannon.
+
+But they did not fire their guns. Bacon had captured some of the wives
+of the principal men, and he put them in front of his line as he
+advanced. The governor did not dare bid his soldiers to fire on these
+women, so he left the town again in a hurry, and it was taken by the
+Indian fighters.
+
+Bacon made up his mind that Governor Berkeley should not come back to
+Jamestown again. He had the town set on fire and burned to the ground.
+Some of the men with him set fire to their own houses, so that they
+should not give shelter to the governor and his men. That was the end of
+Jamestown. It was never rebuilt. Only ashes remained of the first
+English town in America. To-day there is only an old church tower to
+show where it stood.
+
+We cannot tell what might have happened if brave young Bacon had lived.
+As it was, he was taken sick and died. His men now had no leader, and
+soon scattered. Then the governor came back full of fury, and began to
+hang all those who opposed him. He might have put a great many of them
+to death if the king had not stopped him and ordered him back to
+England. This was King Charles II., whose father had been put to death
+by Cromwell. He was angry at what Governor Berkeley had done, and said:
+
+"That old fool has hung more men in that naked land than I did for the
+murder of my father."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES
+
+
+WHAT a wonderful change has come over this great country of ours since
+the days of our grandfathers! Look at our great cities, with their grand
+buildings, and their miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric
+cars, and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great stores lit by
+brilliant electric lights, and huge workshops filled with rattling
+wheels and marvelous machines! And look at our broad fields filled with
+cattle or covered by growing crops, and divided by splendid highways and
+railroads thousands of miles in length! Is it not all very wonderful?
+
+"But has it not always been this way?" some very young persons ask. "I
+have lived so many years and have never seen anything else."
+
+My dear young friend, if you had lived fifty or sixty years, as many of
+us older folks have, you would have seen very different things. And if
+we had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and then come back
+again to-day, I fancy our eyes would open wider than Governor Andros's
+did when he saw that the charter was gone.
+
+In those days, as I told you, when any one wanted to make a light, he
+could not strike a match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must
+hammer away with flint and steel, and then had nothing better than a
+home-made tallow candle to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never
+even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then used to cut off the
+candle wick.
+
+Some of you who live in old houses with dusty lofts under the roof, full
+of worm-eaten old furniture, have, no doubt, found there odd-looking
+wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of various kinds.
+Sometimes these wheels are brought down stairs and set in the hall as
+something to be proud of. And the old eight-day clocks stand there, too,
+with their loud "tick-tack," buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they
+had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels I speak of are the old
+spinning wheels, with which our great-grandmothers spun flax into
+thread. This thread they wove into homespun cloth on old-fashioned
+looms. All work of this kind used to be done at home, though now it is
+done in great factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores, instead
+of spinning and weaving and sewing them in the great old kitchens before
+the wood-fire on the hearth.
+
+Really, I am afraid many of you do not know how people lived in the old
+times. They are often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy you
+will hardly think so when I have told you something more about them.
+Would you think it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold room,
+and go down and pump ice-cold water to wash your face, and go out in the
+snow to get wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour before the
+house began to warm up? That is only one of the things you would not
+find pleasant. I shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about
+how people lived in old times, and then you can say if you would like to
+go back to them.
+
+Would any boy and girl among you care to live in a little one-story
+house, made of rough logs laid one on another, and with a roof of
+thatch--that is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep out the
+rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or two rooms, and some of them with
+chimneys made of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that they
+could not be set on fire. These were the oldest houses. Later on people
+began to build larger houses, many of which were made of brick or stone.
+But I am afraid there was not much comfort in the best of them. They had
+no stoves, and were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big logs of
+wood were burned. They made a bright and cheerful blaze, it is true, but
+most of the heat went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little of
+it got out into the room. In the winter the people lived in their
+kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire for heat and light, and at bed-time
+went shivering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you would have
+enjoyed that?
+
+They had very little furniture, and the most of what they had was rude
+and rough, much of it chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. Some
+of the houses had glass windows--little diamond-shaped panes, set in
+lead frames--but most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which kept
+out as much light as it let in.
+
+All the cooking was done on the great kitchen hearth, where the pots
+were hung on iron cranes and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did
+not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. Mush and milk, or
+pork and beans, were their usual food, and their bread was mostly made
+of rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice books they wanted to
+read often had to do so by the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell
+you that books were very scarce things in those days.
+
+If any of us had lived then I know how glad we would have been to see
+the bright spring time, with its flowers and warm sunshine. But we might
+have shivered again when we thought of next winter. Of course, the
+people had some good times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the table
+was filled with good things to eat, and election-day and training-day,
+when they had outdoor sports. And they had quilting and husking-parties,
+and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and picnics and other amusements. A
+wedding was a happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a great
+dinner. But after all there was much more hard work than holiday, and
+nearly everybody had to labor long and got little for it. They were
+making themselves homes and a country, you know, and it was a very
+severe task. We, to-day, are getting the good of their work.
+
+Down South people had more comfort. The weather was not nearly so cold,
+so they did not have to keep up such blazing fires or shiver in their
+cold beds. Many of the rich planters built themselves large mansions of
+wood or brick, and brought costly furniture from England, and lived in
+great show, with gold and silverware on their sideboards and fine
+coaches drawn by handsome horses when they went abroad.
+
+In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses, of the kind used in
+Holland. In Philadelphia the Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses,
+with wide orchards and gardens round them, where they raised plenty of
+fruit. When any one opened a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden
+anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of goods he had to sell.
+
+In New England Sunday was kept in a very strict fashion, for the people
+were very religious. It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh, on
+Sunday, and everybody had to go to church. All who did not go were
+punished. And, mercy on us, what sermons they preached in those cold old
+churches, prosing away sometimes for two hours at a time! The boys and
+girls had to listen to them, as well as the men and women, and you know
+how hard it is now to listen for one hour.
+
+If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did, and went off into a
+snooze, they were soon wide awake again. For the constable went up and
+down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This had a rabbit's foot
+on one end of it and a rabbit's tail on the other. If he saw one of the
+women asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her face. But if a boy
+took a nap, down would come the rabbit's foot in a sharp rap on his
+head, and up he would start very wide awake. To-day we would call that
+sort of sermons cruelty to children, and I think it was cruelty to the
+old folks also.
+
+Do you think those were "good old times"? I imagine some of you will
+fancy they were "bad old times." But they were not nearly so bad as you
+may think. For you must bear in mind that the people knew nothing of
+many of the things we enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain food
+and coarse furniture and rough clothes and cold rooms, and were more
+hardy and could stand more than people who sleep in furnace-heated rooms
+and have their tables heaped with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and
+meats.
+
+But there was one thing that could not have been pleasant, and that was,
+their being afraid all the time of the Indians, and having to carry
+muskets with them even when they went to church. All around them were
+the forests in which the wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might
+be heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz out from the thick
+leaves.
+
+The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all the villages were
+strong buildings called blockhouses, to which everybody could run in
+times of danger. In these the second story spread out over the first,
+and there were holes in the floor through which the men could fire down
+on the Indians below. But it makes us tremble to think that, at any
+time, the traveler or farmer might be shot down by a lurking savage, or
+might be seized and burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the people
+grew to hate the Indians and to kill them or drive them away.
+
+There was much game in the woods and the rivers were full of fish, so
+that many of the people spent their time in hunting and fishing. They
+got to be as expert in this as the Indians themselves, and some of them
+could follow a trail as well as the most sharp-sighted of the red men.
+
+Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's novels of Indian life, and
+know what a wonderful hunter and Indian trailer old Natty Bumppo was.
+But we do not need to go to novels to read about great hunters, for the
+life of Daniel Boone is as full of adventure as that of any of the
+heroes of Indian life.
+
+Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this country has ever known. He
+lived much later than the early times I am talking about, but the
+country he lived in was as wild as that found by the first settlers of
+the country. When he was only a little boy he went into the deep woods
+and lived there by himself for several days, shooting game and making a
+fire to cook it by. He made himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and
+lived in it like an Indian, and there his father and friends found him
+when they came seeking him in the woods.
+
+Years afterwards he crossed the high mountains of North Carolina and
+went into the great forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild
+animals lived. For a long time he stayed there by himself, with the
+Indians hunting and trying to kill him. But he was too wide awake for
+the smartest of them all.
+
+One time, when they were close on his trail, he got away from them by
+catching hold of a loose grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and
+then running on. When the Indians came to the place they lost the marks
+of his footprints and gave up the chase. At another time when he was
+taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, and slipped away from
+them without one of them waking up.
+
+Many years afterwards, when he and others had built a fort in Kentucky,
+and brought out their wives and children, Boone's daughters and two
+other girls were carried off by Indians while they were out picking wild
+flowers.
+
+Boone and other hunters were soon on their trail, and followed it by the
+broken bushes and bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young girls
+had left behind them. In this way they came up to the Indians while they
+were eating their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and rescued the
+girls. These young folks did not go out of the fort to pick wild flowers
+after that.
+
+Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and would have been burned alive
+if an old woman had not taken him for her son. The Indians painted his
+face and made him wear an Indian dress and live with them as one of
+themselves. But one day he heard them talking, and found that they were
+going to attack the fort where all his friends were. Then he slipped
+out of the village and ran away. He had a long journey to make and the
+Indians followed him close. But he walked in the water to hide his
+footsteps, and lived on roots and berries, for fear they would hear his
+gun if he shot any game. In the end he got back safe to the fort. He
+found it in bad condition, but he set the men at work to make it strong,
+and when the Indians came they were beaten off.
+
+Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and kept going farther west to
+get away from the new people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.
+He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all the rest of his life
+hunting, and the Indians looked on him as the greatest woodsman and the
+most wonderful hunter the white men ever had.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A HERO OF THE COLONIES
+
+
+DO you not think there are a great many interesting stories in American
+history? I have told you some, and I could tell you many more. I am
+going to tell you one now, about a brave young man who had a great deal
+to do with the making of our glorious country. But to reach it we will
+have to take a step backward over one hundred and fifty years. That is a
+pretty long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about the year
+1750. But people had been coming into this country for more than a
+hundred and fifty years before that, and there were a great many white
+men and women in America at that time.
+
+These people came from Spain and France and Great Britain and Holland
+and Germany and Sweden and other countries besides. The Spaniards had
+spread through many regions in the south; the French had gone west by
+way of the Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi River; but the
+British were settled close to the ocean, and the country back of them
+was still forest land, where only wild men and wild beasts lived. That
+is the way things were situated at the time of the story which I now
+propose to tell.
+
+The young man I am about to speak of knew almost as much about life in
+the deep woods as Daniel Boone, the great hunter, of whom I have just
+told you. Why, when he was only sixteen years old he and another boy
+went far back into the wild country of Virginia to survey or measure the
+lands there for a rich land-holder.
+
+The two boys crossed the rough mountains and went into the broad valley
+of the Shenandoah River, and for months they lived there alone in the
+broad forest. There were no roads through the woods and they had to make
+their own paths. When they were hungry they would shoot a wild turkey or
+a squirrel, or sometimes a deer. They would cook their meat by holding
+it on a stick over a fire of fallen twigs, and for plates they would cut
+large chips from a tree with their axe.
+
+All day long they worked in the woods, measuring the land with a long
+chain. At night they would roll themselves in their blankets and go to
+sleep under the trees. If the weather was cold they gathered wood and
+made a fire. Very likely they enjoyed it all, for boys are fond of
+adventure. Sometimes a party of Indians would come up and be very
+curious to know what these white boys were doing. But the Indians were
+peaceful then, and did not try to harm them. One party amused the young
+surveyors by dancing a war dance before them. A fine time they had in
+the woods, where they stayed alone for months. When they came back the
+land-holder was much pleased with their work.
+
+Now let us go on for five years, when the backwoods boy-surveyor had
+become a young man twenty-one years of age. If we could take ourselves
+back to the year 1753, and plunge into the woods of western
+Pennsylvania, we might see this young man again in the deep forest,
+walking along with his rifle in hand and his pack on his back. He had
+with him an old frontiersman named Gill, and an Indian who acted as
+their guide through the forest.
+
+The Indian was a treacherous fellow. One day, when they were not
+looking, he fired his gun at them from behind a tree. He did not hit
+either of them. Some men would have shot him, but they did not; they let
+him go away and walked on alone through the deep woods. They built a
+fire that night, but they did not sleep before it, for they were afraid
+the Indian might come back and try to kill them while they were
+sleeping. So they left it burning and walked on a few miles and went to
+sleep without a fire.
+
+A few days after that they came to the banks of a wide river. You may
+find it on your map of Pennsylvania. It is called the Allegheny River,
+and runs into the Ohio. It had been frozen, for it was winter time; but
+now the ice was broken and floating swiftly down the stream.
+
+What were they to do? They had to get across that stream. The only plan
+they could think of was to build a raft out of logs and try to push it
+through the ice with long poles. This they did, and were soon out on the
+wild river and among the floating ice.
+
+It was a terrible passage. The great cakes of ice came swirling along
+and striking like heavy hammers against the raft, almost hard enough to
+knock it to pieces. One of these heavy ice cakes struck the pole of the
+young traveler, and gave him such a shock that he fell from the raft
+into the freezing cold water. He had a hard enough scramble to get back
+on the raft again.
+
+After a while they reached a little island in the stream and got ashore.
+There was no wood on it and they could not make a fire, so they had to
+walk about all night to keep from freezing. The young man was wet to the
+skin, but he had young blood and did not suffer as much as the older man
+with him. When morning came they found that the ice was frozen fast
+between the island and the other shore, so all they had to do was to
+walk across it.
+
+These were not the only adventures they had, but they got safe back to
+Virginia, from which they had set out months before.
+
+Do you want to know who this young traveler was? His name was George
+Washington. That is all I need say. Any one who does not know who George
+Washington was is not much of an American. But quite likely you do not
+guess what he was doing in the woods so far away from his home. He had
+been sent there by the governor of Virginia, and I shall have to tell
+you why.
+
+But first you must go back with me to an earlier time. The time I mean
+is when the French were settling in Canada along the St. Lawrence River,
+and going west over the lakes, and floating in canoes down the
+Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Wherever they went they built
+forts and claimed the country for their king. At the same time the
+English were settling along the Atlantic shores and pushing slowly back
+into the country.
+
+You should know that the French and the English were not the best of
+friends. They had their wars in Europe, and every time they got into war
+there they began to fight in America also. This made terrible times in
+the new country. The French had many of the Indians on their side, and
+they marched through the woods and attacked some of the English towns,
+and the cruel Indians murdered many of the poor settlers who had done
+them no harm. There were three such wars, lasting for many years, and a
+great many innocent men, women and children, who had nothing to do with
+the wars in Europe, lost their lives. That is what we call war. It is
+bad enough now, but it was worse still in those days.
+
+The greatest of all the wars between the French and the English was
+still to come. Between the French forts on the Mississippi and the
+English settlements on the Atlantic there was a vast forest land, and
+both the French and the English said it belonged to them. In fact, it
+did not belong to either of them, but to the Indians; but the white men
+never troubled themselves about the rights of the old owners of the
+land.
+
+While the English were talking the French were acting. About 1750 they
+built two or three forts in the country south of Lake Erie. What they
+wanted was the Ohio River, with the rich and fertile lands which lay
+along that stream. Building those forts was the first step. The next
+step would be to send soldiers to the Ohio and build forts there also.
+
+When the English heard what the French were doing they became greatly
+alarmed. If they did not do something very quickly they would lose all
+this great western country. The governor of Virginia wished to know what
+the French meant to do, and he thought the best way to find out was to
+ask them. So he chose the young backwoods surveyor, George Washington,
+and sent him through the great forest to the French forts.
+
+Washington was very young for so important a duty. But he was tall and
+strong and quick-witted, and he was not afraid of any man or anything.
+And he knew all about life in the woods. So he was chosen, and far west
+he went over plain and mountain, now on horseback and now on foot,
+following the Indian trails through the forest, until at last he came to
+the French forts.
+
+The French officers told him that they had come there to stay. They were
+not going to give up their forts to please the governor of Virginia. And
+Washington's quick eye saw that they were getting canoes ready to go
+down the streams to the Ohio River the next spring. This was the news
+the young messenger was taking back to the governor when he had his
+adventures with the Indian and the ice.
+
+If any of you know anything about how wars are brought on, you may well
+think there was soon going to be war in America. Both parties wanted the
+land, and both were ready to fight to get it, and when people feel that
+way fighting is not far off.
+
+Indeed, the spring of 1754 was not far advanced before both sides were
+on the move. Washington had picked out a beautiful spot for a fort.
+This was where the two rivers which form the Ohio come together. On
+that spot the city of Pittsburg now stands; but then it was a very wild
+place.
+
+As soon as the governor heard Washington's report he sent a party of men
+in great haste to build a fort at that point. But in a short time a
+larger party of French came down the Allegheny River in canoes and drove
+the English workmen away. Then they finished the fort for themselves and
+called it Fort Duquesne.
+
+Meanwhile Washington was on his way back. A force of four hundred
+Virginians had been sent out under an officer named Colonel Frye. But
+the colonel died on the march, and young Washington, then only
+twenty-two years old, found himself at the head of a regiment of
+soldiers, and about to start a great war. Was it not a difficult
+position for so young a man? Not many men of that age would have known
+what to do, but George Washington was not an ordinary man.
+
+While the Virginians were marching west, the French were marching south,
+and it was not long before they came together. A party of French hid in
+a thicket to watch the English, and Washington, thinking they were there
+for no good, ordered his men to fire. They did so, and the leader of the
+French was killed. This was the first shot in the coming war.
+
+But the youthful commander soon found that the French were too strong
+for him. He built a sort of fort at a place called Great Meadows, and
+named it Fort Necessity. It was hardly finished before the French and
+Indians came swarming all around it and a severe fight began.
+
+The Virginians fought well, but the French were too strong, and fired
+into the fort till Washington had to surrender. This took place on July
+4, 1754, just twenty-two years before the American Declaration of
+Independence. Washington and his men were allowed to march home with
+their arms, and the young colonel was very much praised when he got
+home, for everybody thought he had done his work in the best possible
+way.
+
+When the news of this battle crossed the ocean there was great
+excitement in England and France, and both countries sent soldiers to
+America. Those from England were under a general named Braddock, a man
+who knew all about fighting in England, but knew nothing about fighting
+in America. And what was worse, he would let nobody tell him. Washington
+generously tried to do so, but he got snubbed by the proud British
+general for his pains.
+
+After a while away marched General Braddock, with his British soldiers
+in their fine red coats. Washington went with him with a body of
+Virginians dressed in plain colony clothes. On and on they went, through
+the woods and over the mountains, cutting down trees and opening a road
+for their wagons, and bravely beating their drums and waving their
+flags. At length they came near Fort Duquesne, the drums still beating,
+the flags still flying, the gun barrels glittering in the bright
+sunshine.
+
+"Let me go ahead with my Virginians," said Washington. "They know all
+about Indian fighting."
+
+"That for your Indians!" said Braddock, snapping his fingers. "They will
+not stay in their hiding places long when my men come up."
+
+Soon after they came into a narrow place, with steep banks and thick
+bushes all around. And suddenly loud Indian war-whoops and the crack of
+guns came from those bushes. Not a man could be seen, but bullets flew
+like hail-stones among the red-coats. The soldiers fired back, but they
+wasted their bullets on the bushes. Washington and his men ran into the
+woods and got behind trees like the Indians, but Braddock would not let
+his men do the same, and they were shot down like sheep. At length
+General Braddock fell wounded, and then his brave red-coats turned and
+ran for their lives. Very likely not a man of them would have got away
+if Washington and his men had not kept back the French and Indians.
+
+This defeat was a bad business for the poor settlers, for the savage
+redskins began murdering them on all sides, and during all the rest of
+the war Washington was kept busy fighting with these Indians. Not till
+four years afterwards was he able to take Fort Duquesne from the French.
+
+Then another body of men was sent through the woods and over the
+mountains to capture this fort. But their general did as Braddock had
+done before him, spending so much time cutting a highroad through the
+woods that the whole season passed away and he was ready to turn and
+march back. Then Washington, who was with him, asked permission to go
+forward with his rangers. The general told him to go and he hurried
+through the woods and to the fort. When he came near it the French took
+to their boats and paddled off down the river, so that Washington took
+the fort without firing a shot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR AND THE STORY OF THE ACADIANS
+
+
+HAVE any of my young readers read the beautiful poem of "Evangeline,"
+written by the poet Longfellow? Very likely it is too old for you,
+though the time will come when you will read it and enjoy it greatly.
+Evangeline was a pretty and pious woman who lived in a French settlement
+called Acadia, on the Atlantic coast. You will not find this name on any
+of your maps, but must look for Nova Scotia, by which name Acadia is now
+known. The story of Evangeline tells us about the cruel way in which the
+poor Acadians were treated by the English. It is a sad and pathetic
+story, as you will see when you have read it.
+
+It was one of the wicked results of the war between the French and the
+English. There were many cruel deeds in this war, and the people who
+suffered the most were those who had the least to do with the fighting.
+In one place a quiet, happy family of father, mother and children,
+living on a lonely farm, and not dreaming of any danger, suddenly hear
+the wild war-whoop of the Indians, and soon see their doors broken open
+and their house blazing, and are carried off into cruel captivity--those
+who are not killed on the spot. In another place all the people of a
+village are driven from their comfortable homes by soldiers and forced
+to wander and beg their bread in distant lands. And all this takes place
+because the kings of England and France, three thousand miles away, are
+quarreling about some lands which do not belong to either of them. If
+those who brought on wars had to suffer for them they would soon come to
+an end. But they revel and feast in their splendid palaces while poor
+and innocent people endure the suffering. The war that began in the
+wilds of western Pennsylvania, between the French and Indians and the
+English lasted seven years, from 1754 to 1761. During that time there
+were many terrible battles, and thousands of soldiers were killed, and
+there was much suffering and slaughter among the people, and burning of
+houses, and destruction of property, and horrors of all sorts.
+
+It is called the French and Indian War, because there were many Indians
+on the side of the French. There were some on the side of the English,
+also. Indians are very savage and cruel in their way of fighting, as you
+already know. I shall have to tell you one instance of their love of
+bloodshed. One of the English forts, called Fort William Henry, which
+stood at the southern end of Lake George, had to surrender to the
+French, and its soldiers were obliged to march out and give up their
+guns.
+
+There were a great many Indians with the French, and while the prisoners
+stood outside the fort, without a gun in their hands, the savage men
+attacked them and began to kill them with knives and tomahawks. The
+French had promised to protect them, but they stood by and did nothing
+to stop this terrible slaughter, and many of the helpless soldiers were
+murdered. Others were carried off by the Indians as prisoners. It was
+the most dreadful event of the whole cruel war.
+
+I must now ask you to look on a map of the State of New York, if you
+have any. There you will find the Hudson River, and follow it up north
+from the city of New York, past Albany, the capital of the state, until
+it ends in a region of mountains. Near its upper waters is a long,
+narrow lake named Lake George, which is full of beautiful islands. North
+of that is a much larger lake named Lake Champlain, which reaches up
+nearly to Canada.
+
+The British had forts on the Hudson River and Lake George and the French
+on Lake Champlain, and also between the two lakes, where stood the
+strong Fort Ticonderoga. It was around these forts and along these
+lakes that most of the fighting took place. For a long time the French
+had the best of it. The British lost many battles and were driven back.
+But they had the most soldiers, and in the end they began to defeat the
+French and drive them back, and Canada became the seat of war. But let
+me tell you the story of the Acadians.
+
+Acadia was a country which had been settled by the French a long, long
+time before, away back in 1604, before there was an English settlement
+in America. Captain John Smith, you know, came to America in 1607, three
+years afterwards. Acadia was a very fertile country, and the settlers
+planted fields of grain and orchards of apples and other fruits, and
+lived a very happy life, with neat houses and plenty of good food, and
+in time the whole country became a rich farming land.
+
+But the British would not let these happy farmers alone. Every time
+there was trouble with the French, soldiers were sent to Acadia. It was
+captured by the British in 1690, but was given back to France in 1697,
+when that war ended. It was taken again by the British in the war that
+began in 1702, and this time it was not given back. Even its name of
+Acadia was taken away, and it was called Nova Scotia, which is not
+nearly so pretty a name.
+
+Thus it was that, when the new war with France began, Acadia was held
+as a province of Great Britain. To be sure the most of its people were
+descended from the old French settlers and did not like their British
+masters, but they could not help themselves, and went on farming in
+their old fashion. They were ignorant, simple-minded countrymen, who
+looked upon France as their country, and were not willing to be British
+subjects.
+
+That is the way with the French. It is the same to-day in Canada, which
+has been a colony of Great Britain for nearly a century and a half. The
+descendants of the former French still speak their old language and love
+their old country, and now sometimes fight the British with their votes
+as they once did with their swords.
+
+The British did not hold the whole of Acadia. The country now called New
+Brunswick, which lies north of Nova Scotia, was part of it, and was
+still held by the French. In 1755 the British government decided to
+attempt the capture of this country, and sent out soldiers for that
+purpose. Fighting began, but the French defended themselves bravely, and
+the British found they had a hard task to perform.
+
+What made it worse for them was that some of the Acadians, who did not
+want to see the British succeed, acted as spies upon them, and told the
+French soldiers about their movements, so that the French were
+everywhere ready for them. And the Acadians helped the French in other
+ways, and gave the British a great deal of trouble.
+
+This may have been wrong, but it was natural. Every one feels like
+helping his friends against his enemies. But you may be sure that it
+made the British very angry, and in the end they took a cruel
+resolution. This was to send all the Acadians away from their native
+land to far-off, foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who were
+acting as spies, so the English government ordered them all to be
+removed. They were told they might stay if they would swear to be true
+subjects of the king of England, but this the most of them would not do,
+for they were French at heart, and looked on King Louis of France as
+their true and rightful ruler.
+
+Was not this very cruel? There were hundreds of boys and girls like
+yourselves among these poor Acadians, who had happy homes, and loved to
+work and play in their pretty gardens and green fields, and whose
+fathers and mothers did no harm to any one. But because a few busy men
+gave news to the French, all of these were to be torn from their
+comfortable homes and sent far away to wander in strange lands, where
+many of them would have to beg for bread. It was a heartless act, and
+the world has ever since said so, and among all the cruel things the
+British have done, the removal of the Acadians from their homes is
+looked upon as one of the worst.
+
+When soldiers are sent to do a cruel thing they are very apt to do it in
+the most brutal fashion. The Acadians did not know what was to be done.
+It was kept secret for fear they might run away and hide. A large number
+of soldiers were sent out, and they spread like a net over a wide
+stretch of country. Then they marched together and drove the people
+before them. The poor farmers might be at their dinners or working in
+their fields, but they were told that they must stop everything and
+leave their homes at once, for they were to be sent out of the country.
+Just think of it! What a grief and terror they must have been in!
+
+They were hardly given time to gather the few things they could carry
+with them, and on all sides they were driven like so many sheep to the
+seaside town of Annapolis, to which ships had been brought to carry them
+away. More than six thousand of these unhappy people, old and young,
+men, women and little ones, were gathered there; many of them weeping
+bitterly, many more with looks of despair on their faces, all of them
+sad at heart and very likely wishing they were dead.
+
+Around them were soldiers to keep them from running away. They were made
+to get on the ships in such haste that families were often separated,
+husband and wife, or children and their mothers, being put on different
+ships and sent to different places. And for fear that some of them might
+come back again their houses were burned and their farms laid waste.
+Many of them went to the French settlements in Louisiana, and others to
+other parts of America. Poor exiles! they were scattered widely over the
+earth. Some of them in time came back to their loved Acadia, but the
+most of them never saw it again. It was this dreadful act about which
+Longfellow wrote in his poem of Evangeline.
+
+Now I must tell you how the French and Indian War ended. The French had
+two important cities in Canada, Montreal and Quebec. Quebec was built on
+a high and steep hill and was surrounded by strong walls, behind which
+were more than eight thousand soldiers. It was not an easy city to
+capture.
+
+A large British fleet was sent against it, and also an army of eight
+thousand men, under General Wolfe. For two or three months they fired at
+the city from the river below, but the French scorned them from their
+steep hill-top. At length General Wolfe was told of a narrow path by
+which he might climb the hill. One dark night he tried it, and by
+daybreak a large body of men had reached the hill-top, and had dragged
+up a number of cannon with them.
+
+When the French saw this they were frightened. They hurried out of the
+city, thinking they could drive the English over the precipice before
+any more of them got up. They were mistaken in this. The English met
+them boldly, and in the battle that followed they gained the victory and
+Quebec fell into their hands.
+
+General Wolfe was mortally wounded, but when he was told that the French
+were in flight, he said: "God be praised! I die happy."
+
+Montcalm, the French general, also fell wounded. When he knew that he
+must die he said: "So much the better; I shall not live to see the
+surrender of Quebec."
+
+The next year Montreal was taken, and the war ended. And in the treaty
+of peace France gave up all her colonies in America. England got Canada
+and Spain got Louisiana. All North America now belonged to two nations,
+England and Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+I SHOULD be glad to have some of you take a steamboat ride up the broad
+Hudson River, past the city of New York, and onward in the track of the
+"Half Moon," Henry Hudson's ship. If you did so, you would come in time
+to the point where this ship stopped and turned back. Here, where Hudson
+and his Dutch sailors saw only a great spread of forest trees,
+stretching far back from the river bank, our modern travelers would see
+the large and handsome city of Albany, the capital of the State of New
+York.
+
+This is one of the hundreds of fine cities which have grown up in our
+country since Henry Hudson's time. A hundred and fifty years ago it was
+a small place, not much larger than many of our villages. But even then
+it was of importance, for in it was taken the first step towards our
+great Union of States. I shall have to tell you what this step was, for
+you will certainly want to know.
+
+Well, at the time I speak of there was no such thing as an American
+Union. There were thirteen colonies, reaching from New Hampshire down
+to Georgia. But each of these was like a little nation of its own; each
+had its own government, made its own laws, and fought its own fights.
+This was well enough in one way, but it was not so well in another. At
+one time the people had the Indians to fight with, at another time the
+French, and sometimes both of these together, and many of them thought
+that they could do their fighting better if they were united into one
+country.
+
+So in the year 1754 the colonies sent some of their best men to Albany,
+to talk over this matter, and see if a union of the colonies could not
+be made. This is what I meant when I said that the first step towards
+the American Union was taken at Albany.
+
+Of these men, there is only one I shall say anything about. This man's
+name you should know and remember, for he was one of the noblest and
+wisest men that ever lived in this country. His name was Benjamin
+Franklin. Forty years before this time he was a little Boston boy at
+work in his father's shop, helping him make candles. Afterwards he
+learned how to print, and then, in 1723, he went to Philadelphia, where
+he soon had a shop and a newspaper office, and in time became rich.
+
+There was nothing going on that Franklin did not take part in. In his
+shop he bound books, he made ink, he sold rags, soap, and coffee. He was
+not ashamed of honest work, and would take off his coat and wheel his
+papers along the street in a wheelbarrow. He started many institutions
+in Philadelphia which are now very important. Among these there are a
+great university, a large hospital, and a fine library. No doubt you
+have read how he brought down the lightning from the clouds along the
+string of a kite, and proved that lightning is the same thing as
+electricity. And he took an active part in all the political movements
+of the time. That is why he came to be sent to Albany in 1754, as a
+member of the Albany Convention.
+
+Franklin always did things in ways that set people to thinking. When he
+went to Albany he took with him copies of a queer picture which he had
+printed in his newspaper. This was a snake cut into thirteen pieces.
+Under each piece was the first letter of the name of a colony, such as
+"P" for Pennsylvania. Beneath the whole were the words "Unite or die."
+
+That was like Franklin; he was always doing something odd. The cut-up
+snake stood for the thirteen divided colonies. What Franklin meant was
+that they could not exist alone. A snake is not of much account when it
+is chopped up into bits, but it is a dangerous creature when it is
+whole. He proposed that there should be a grand council of all the
+colonies, a sort of Congress, meeting every year in Philadelphia, which
+was the most central large city. Over them all was to be a
+governor-general appointed by the king. This council could make laws,
+lay taxes, and perform other important duties.
+
+That is enough to say about Franklin's plan, for it was not accepted. It
+was passed by the convention, it is true, but the king would not have it
+and the colonies did not want it; so the snake still lay stretched out
+along the Atlantic in thirteen pieces. Then came the great war with the
+French of which I have told you. After that was over, things came to
+pass which in the end forced the colonies to combine. Thus Franklin's
+plan, or something like it, was in time carried out, but for many years
+the country was in a terrible state. This is what I am now going to tell
+you about.
+
+You should know that the war with the French cost the king and the
+colonies a great deal of money. The king of England at that time was
+named George. He was an obstinate man, but not a very wise one, as you
+will think when you have learned more about him. One thing he wanted to
+do was to send soldiers to America to keep the French from getting back
+what they had lost, and he asked the people to pay these soldiers. He
+also asked them to send him money to pay the governors and judges whom
+he had chosen to rule over them. But the people thought they could take
+care of themselves, and did not want British soldiers. And they
+preferred to pay the governors and judges themselves as they had always
+done, and did not want King George to do it for them. So they would not
+send him the money he asked for.
+
+Some of you may think this was very mean in the Americans, after all the
+British had done to help them in their war with the French. But they
+knew very well what they were about. They thought that if they gave the
+king a dollar to-day he might want five dollars to-morrow, and ten
+dollars the next day. They judged it best not to begin with the dollar.
+Kings, you should know, do not always make the best use of money that is
+given them by their people.
+
+And that was not all. The people in the colonies did not like the way
+they had been treated by the English. They had mountains full of iron,
+but the king would not let them make this iron into tools. They had
+plenty of wool, but he would not let them weave it into cloth. They must
+buy these and other things in England, and must keep at farming; but
+they were not allowed to send their grain to England, but had to eat it
+all at home. They could not even send goods from one colony to another.
+Thus they were to be kept poor that the rich English merchants and
+manufacturers might grow rich.
+
+These were some of the things the American people had to complain of.
+There were still other things, and a good many of the Americans had very
+little love for the English king and people. They felt that they were in
+a sort of slavery, and almost as if they had ropes on their hands and
+chains on their feet.
+
+When King George was told that the Americans would not send him money he
+was very angry. I am afraid he called them bad names. They were a low,
+ignorant, ungrateful set, he said, and he would show them who was their
+master. He would tax them and get money from them in that way. So the
+English Parliament, which is a body of lawmakers like our Congress, came
+together and passed laws to tax the Americans.
+
+The first tax they laid is what is called a stamp tax. I fancy you know
+very well what that is, for we have had a stamp tax in this country more
+than once, when the government was in need of money. Everybody who wrote
+a bank check, or made any legal paper, or sent away an express package,
+had to buy a stamp from the government and put it on the paper; and
+stamps had to be used on many other things.
+
+But there is this difference. Our people were quite willing to buy these
+stamps, but they were not willing to buy the stamps which the British
+government sent them in 1765. Why? Well, they had a good reason for it,
+and this was that they had nothing to do with making the law. The
+English would not pay any taxes except those made by the people whom
+they elected to Parliament, and the Americans said they had the same
+right. They were not allowed to send any members to Parliament, so they
+said that Parliament had no right to tax them. Their own legislatures
+might vote to send the king money, but the English Parliament had no
+right to vote for them.
+
+When the king found that the Americans would not use his stamps he tried
+another plan. He laid a tax on tea and some other goods. He thought that
+our people could not do without tea, so he sent several shiploads across
+the ocean, expecting them to buy it and pay the tax. But he soon found
+that the colonists had no more use for taxed tea than for stamps. They
+would not even let the captains bring their tea on shore, except at
+Charleston, and there it was packed in damp cellars, where it soon
+rotted. A ship sent to Annapolis was set on fire and burned to the
+water's edge with the tea in it.
+
+But the most stirring event took place at Boston. There one night, while
+the tea-ship lay at a wharf in the harbor, a number of young men dressed
+like Indians rushed on board with a loud war-whoop and began to break
+open the tea-chests with their hatchets and pour the tea into the
+harbor. This was the famous "Boston tea-party."
+
+Americans liked tea, but not tea with an English tax on it. They boiled
+leaves and roots and made some sort of tea out of them. It was poor
+stuff, but they did not pay any tax. And they would not buy any cloth or
+other goods brought from England. If the king was angry and stubborn
+they were angry and stubborn, too, and every day they grew more angry,
+until many of them began to think that they would be better off without
+a king. They were not the kind of people to be made slaves of easily by
+King George or any other king.
+
+When the king heard of the "Boston tea-party" he was in a fury. He would
+make Boston pay well for its tea, he said. So he sent soldiers there,
+and he gave orders that no ships should go into or out of Boston harbor.
+This stopped most of the business of the town, and soon the poor people
+had no work to do and very little to eat. But they had crowded meetings
+at Faneuil Hall, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock and other patriots
+talked to them of their rights and wrongs. It began to look as if war
+would soon come.
+
+The time had come at last for a union of the colonies. What Franklin had
+failed to do at Albany in 1754 was done at Philadelphia in 1774. A
+meeting was held there which was called a Congress, and was made up of
+some of the best men of the country sent from the colonies. One of these
+was George Washington, who had lived on his farm at Mount Vernon since
+the end of the French War.
+
+Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to give the people of
+this country the same rights that the people of England had. There was
+no harm in this, I am sure, but it made the king more obstinate still. I
+have said he was not a wise man. Most people say he was a very foolish
+one, or he would have known that the people of the colonies would fight
+for their rights if they could not get them in peace.
+
+All around Boston the farmers and villagers began to collect guns and
+powder and to drill men into soldiers. These were called "minute men,"
+which meant that they would be ready to fight at a minute's notice, if
+they were asked to. When people begin to get ready in this way, war is
+usually not far off.
+
+One night at Boston a man named Paul Revere stood watching a distant
+steeple till he saw a light suddenly flash out through the darkness.
+Then he leaped on his horse and rode at full speed away. That light was
+a signal telling him that British soldiers were on the march to Concord
+twenty miles away, to destroy some powder and guns which had been
+gathered there for the use of these "minute men."
+
+Away rode Revere through the night, rousing up the people and shouting
+to them that the British soldiers were coming. He was far ahead of the
+soldiers, so that when they reached the village of Lexington, ten miles
+from Boston, the people were wide awake, and a party of minute men was
+drawn up on the village green. The soldiers were ordered to fire on
+these men, and some of them fell dead. Those were the first shots in a
+great war. It was the 19th of April, 1775.
+
+The British marched on to Concord, but the farmers had carried away most
+of the stores and buried them in the woods. Then the red-coats started
+back, and a terrible march they had of it. For all along the road were
+farmers with guns in their hands, firing on the troops from behind trees
+and stone walls. Some of the soldiers got back to Boston, but many of
+them lay dead in the road. The poor fellows killed at Lexington were
+terribly avenged.
+
+Far and wide spread the news, and on all sides the farmers left their
+plows and took down their rifles, and thousands of them set out along
+the roads to Boston. Soon there were twenty thousand armed men around
+the town, and the British were shut up like rats in a trap. The American
+people were in rebellion against the king and war had begun.
+
+It was to be a long and dreadful war, but it led to American liberty,
+and that was a thing well worth fighting for. While the people were
+laying siege to Boston, Congress was in session at Philadelphia, talking
+about what had best be done. One good thing they did was to make George
+Washington commander-in-chief of the army and send him to Boston to
+fight the British there. They could not have found a better soldier in
+all America.
+
+The next good thing took place a year later. This was the great event
+which you celebrate with fireworks every 4th of July. Congress decided
+that this country ought to be free, and no longer to be under the rule
+of an English king. So a paper was written by a member from Virginia
+named Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Benjamin Franklin and some
+others. The paper is known by the long name of "Declaration of
+Independence." It declared that the American colonies were free from
+British rule, and in future would take care of themselves. It was on the
+4th of July, 1776, that this great paper was adopted by Congress, and on
+that day the Republic of the United States of America was born. That is
+why our people have such a glad and noisy time every 4th of July.
+
+Everywhere the people were full of joy when they heard what had been
+done. In the state house at Philadelphia rang out the great bell on
+which the words, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the
+inhabitants thereof." In New York the statue of King George was pulled
+down and thrown into the dust of the street. The people did not know
+what dark days lay before them, but they were ready to suffer much for
+the sake of liberty, and to risk all they had, life and all, for the
+freedom of their native land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM
+
+
+ANY of my readers who are true, sound-hearted Americans, and I am sure
+all of them are that, would have been glad to see how the New England
+farmers swarmed around Boston in April, 1775. Some of them had fought in
+the French War, and brought with them their old rusty muskets, which
+they knew very well how to use. And most of them were hunters and had
+learned how to shoot. And all of them were bold and brave and were
+determined to have a free country. The English red-coat soldiers in
+Boston would soon find that these countrymen were not men to be laughed
+at, even if they had not been trained in war.
+
+One morning the English woke up and rubbed their eyes hard, for there,
+on a hill that overlooked the town, was a crowd of Americans. They had
+been at work all night, digging and making earthworks to fight behind,
+and now had quite a fort. The English officers did not like the look of
+things, for the Americans could fire from that hill--Bunker Hill, they
+called it--straight down into the town. They must be driven away or
+they would drive the troops away.
+
+I can tell you that was a busy and bloody day for Boston. The great
+war-ships in the harbor thundered with their cannon at the men on the
+hill. And the soldiers began to march up the hill, thinking that the
+Yankees would run like sheep when they saw the red-coats coming near.
+But the Yankees were not there to run.
+
+"Don't fire, boys, till you see the whites of their eyes," said brave
+General Prescott.
+
+So the Yankee boys waited till the British were close at hand. Then they
+fired and the red-coats fell in rows, for the farmers did not waste
+their bullets. Those that did not fall scampered in haste down the hill.
+It was a strange sight to see British soldiers running away from Yankee
+farmers.
+
+After a while the British came again. They were not so sure this time.
+Again the Yankee muskets rattled along the earthworks, and again the
+British turned and ran--those who were able to.
+
+They could never have taken that hill if the farmer soldiers had not run
+out of powder. When the red-coats came a third time the Yankees could
+not fire, and had to fight them with the butts of their guns. So the
+British won the hill; but they had found that the Yankee farmers were
+not cowards; after that time they never liked to march against American
+earthworks.
+
+Not long after the battle of Bunker Hill General Washington came to
+command the Americans, and he spent months in drilling and making
+soldiers out of them. He also got a good supply of powder and muskets
+and some cannon, and one dark night in March, 1776, he built a fort on
+another hill that looked down on Boston.
+
+I warrant you, the British were alarmed when they looked up that hill
+the next morning and saw cannon on its top and men behind the cannon.
+They would have to climb that hill as they had done Bunker Hill, or else
+leave Boston. But they had no fancy for another Bunker Hill, so they
+decided to leave. They went on board their ships and sailed away, and
+Washington and his men marched joyfully into the town. That was a great
+day for America, and it was soon followed by the 4th of July and the
+glorious Declaration of Independence. Since that 4th of July no king has
+ever ruled over the United States.
+
+We call this war the American Revolution. Do you know what a revolution
+is? It means the doing away with a bad government and replacing it with
+a better one. In this country it meant that our people were tired of the
+rule of England and wished to govern themselves. They had to fight hard
+for their freedom, it is true, but it was well worth fighting for.
+
+The war was a long and dreadful one. It went on for seven long years. At
+one time everything seemed lost; at other times all grew bright and
+hopeful. And thus it went on, up and down, to the end. I cannot tell you
+all that took place, but I will give you the important facts.
+
+After the British left Boston, they sailed about for a time, and then
+they came with a large army to New York. Washington was there with his
+soldiers to meet them, and did his best, but everything seemed to go
+wrong. First, the Americans were beaten in battle and had to march out
+of New York and let the British march in. Then Washington and his ragged
+men were obliged to hasten across the State of New Jersey with a strong
+British force after them. They were too weak to face the British.
+
+When they got to the Delaware River the Americans crossed it and took
+all the boats, so that the British could not follow them. It was now
+near winter time, and both armies went into winter quarters. They faced
+each other, but the wide river ran between.
+
+You may well think that by this time the American people were getting
+very down-hearted. Many of them thought that all was lost, and that
+they would have to submit to King George. The army dwindled away and no
+new soldiers came in, so that it looked as if it would go to pieces. It
+was growing very dark for American liberty.
+
+[Illustration: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE.]
+
+But there was one man who did not despair, and that man was George
+Washington. He saw that something must be done to stir up the spirits of
+the people, and he was just the man to do it. It was a wonderful
+Christmas he kept that year. All Christmas day his ragged and hungry
+soldiers were marching up their side of the Delaware, and crossing the
+river in boats, though the wind was biting cold, and the air was full of
+falling snow, and the broken ice was floating in great blocks down the
+river; but nothing stopped the gallant soldiers. All Christmas night
+they marched down the other side of the river, though their shoes were
+so bad that the ground became reddened by blood from their feet. Two of
+the poor fellows were frozen to death.
+
+At Trenton, a number of miles below, there was a body of German
+soldiers. These had been hired by King George to help him fight his
+battles. That day they had been eating a good Christmas dinner while the
+hungry Americans were marching through the snow. At night they went to
+bed, not dreaming of danger.
+
+They were wakened in the morning by shots and shouts. Washington and his
+men were in the streets of the town. They had hardly time to seize
+their guns before the ragged Yankees were all around them and nearly all
+of them were made prisoners of war.
+
+Was not that a great and glorious deed? It filled the Americans with new
+hope. In a few days afterwards, Washington defeated the British in
+another battle, and then settled down with his ragged but brave men in
+the hills of New Jersey. He did not go behind a river this time. The
+British knew where he was and could come to see him if they wanted to.
+But they did not come. Very likely they had seen enough of him for that
+winter.
+
+The next year things went wrong again for Washington. A large British
+army sailed from New York and landed at the head of Chesapeake Bay. Then
+they marched overland to Philadelphia. Washington fought a battle with
+them on Brandywine Creek, but his men were defeated and the British
+marched on and entered Philadelphia. They now held the largest cities of
+the country, Philadelphia and New York.
+
+While the British were living in plenty and having a very good time in
+the Quaker city, the poor Americans spent a wretched and terrible winter
+at a place called Valley Forge. The winter was a dismally cold one, and
+the men had not half enough food to eat or clothes to wear, and very
+poor huts to live in. They suffered dreadfully, and before the spring
+came many of them died from disease and hardship.
+
+Poor fellows! they were paying dearly for their struggle for liberty.
+But there was no such despair this winter as there had been the winter
+before, for news came from the north that warmed the soldiers up like a
+fire. Though Washington had lost a battle, a great victory had been
+gained by the Americans at Saratoga, in the upper part of New York
+state.
+
+While General Howe was marching on Philadelphia, another British army,
+under General Burgoyne, had been marching south from Canada, along the
+line of Lake Champlain and Lake George. But Burgoyne and his men soon
+found themselves in a tight place. Food began to run short and a
+regiment of a thousand men was sent into Vermont to seize some stores.
+They were met by the Green Mountain boys, led by Colonel Stark, a brave
+old soldier.
+
+"There are the red-coats," said the bold colonel. "We must beat them
+to-day, or Molly Stark is a widow."[1]
+
+Beat them they did. Only seventy men got back to Burgoyne. All the rest
+were killed or captured.
+
+Another force, under Colonel St. Leger, marched south from Oswego, on
+Lake Ontario. A large body of Indians was with him. This army stopped to
+besiege a fort in the wilderness, and General Arnold marched to help the
+fort.
+
+The way Arnold defeated St. Leger was a very curious one. He sent a
+half-witted fellow into the Indian camp with the tale that a great
+American force was coming. The messenger came running in among the
+savages, with bullet-holes in his clothes. He seemed half scared to
+death, and told the Indians that a vast host was coming after him as
+thick as the leaves on the trees.
+
+This story frightened the Indians and they ran off in great haste
+through the woods. When the British soldiers saw this they fell into
+such a terror that they took to their heels, leaving all their tents and
+cannon behind them. The people in the fort did not know what it meant,
+till Arnold came up and told them how he had won a victory without
+firing a shot, by a sort of fairy story.
+
+All this was very bad for Burgoyne. The Indians he brought with him
+began to leave. At length he found himself in a terrible plight. His
+provisions were nearly gone, he was surrounded by the Americans, and
+after fighting two battles he retreated to Saratoga. Here he had to
+surrender. He and all his army became prisoners to the Americans.
+
+We cannot wonder that this warmed up the Americans like a fire. It
+filled the English with despair. They began to think that they would
+never win back the colonies.
+
+One thing the good news did was to get the French to come to the help of
+the Americans. Benjamin Franklin was then in Paris, and he asked the
+king to send ships and men and money to America. The French had no love
+for the British, who had taken from them all their colonies in America,
+so they did as Franklin wished.
+
+There are two more things I wish to tell you in this chapter, one good
+and one bad. When the British in Philadelphia heard that the French were
+coming to help the Americans, they were afraid they might be caught in a
+trap. So they left in great haste and marched for New York. Washington
+followed and fought a battle with them, but they got away. After that
+Washington's army laid siege to New York, as it had formerly done to
+Boston.
+
+That was the good thing. The bad thing was this. General Benedict
+Arnold, who had defeated St. Leger and his Indians, and who was one of
+the bravest of the American officers, turned traitor to his country. He
+had charge of West Point, a strong fort on the Hudson River, and tried
+to give this up to the British. But he was found out and had to flee for
+his life. Major André, a British officer, who had been sent to talk with
+Arnold, was caught by three American scouts on his way back to New York.
+They searched him for papers, and found what they wanted hidden in his
+boot. Poor André was hung for a spy, but the traitor Arnold escaped. But
+he was hated by the Americans and despised by the British, and twenty
+years afterwards he died in shame and remorse.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] All the accounts agree that Colonel Stark spoke of his wife as
+"Molly Stark." But it has been found that his wife's name was Elizabeth;
+so he may have said "Betty Stark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+WE are justly proud of our great war-ships, with their strong steel
+sides and their mighty guns, each of which can hurl a cannon-ball miles
+and miles away. And such balls! Why, one of them is as heavy as a dozen
+of you tied together, and can bore a hole through a plate of solid steel
+as thick as your bodies.
+
+Such ships and such guns as these had not been dreamed of in the days of
+the Revolution. Then there were only small wooden vessels, moved by
+sails instead of steam, and a cannon-ball that weighed twenty-four
+pounds was thought very heavy. Six and twelve-pound balls were common.
+And to hit a ship a mile away! It was not to be thought of. I tell you,
+in those days ships had to fight nearly side by side and men to fight
+face to face. To be a mile away was as good as being a hundred miles.
+
+But for all this there was some hard fighting done at sea in the
+Revolutionary War, in spite of the small ships and little guns. They
+fought closer together, that was all. Boast as we may about the
+wonderful work done by our ships at Santiago and Manila in the Spanish
+War, we have better right to be proud of the deeds of our great naval
+hero of the Revolutionary War, with his rotten old ship and poor little
+guns, but with his stout heart behind them all.
+
+This hero was the sturdy John Paul Jones, one of the boldest and bravest
+men that ever stood on a ship's deck. And his great sea fight has never
+been surpassed in all the history of naval war. I cannot tell you the
+story of the Revolution without telling about the great ocean victory of
+the bold-hearted Paul Jones.
+
+Ships poor enough were those we had to fight with. A little fleet of
+seven or eight small vessels, whose heaviest guns threw only nine-pound
+balls, and the most of them only six-pound. You could have thrown these
+yourself with one hand, though not so far. These were all we had at
+first to fight more than seventy British ships, with guns that threw
+eighteen-pound balls, and some still heavier. Do you not think it looked
+like a one-sided fight?
+
+But the Americans had one great advantage. They had not many merchant
+ships and not much to lose upon the seas. On the other hand, the ocean
+swarmed with the merchant ships of England, and with the store ships
+bringing supplies of guns and powder and food to the armies on shore.
+Here were splendid prizes for our gallant seamen, and out of every port
+sailed bold privateers, or war-ships sent out by their owners, and not
+by the government, sweeping the seas and bringing in many a richly-laden
+craft.
+
+Some of the best fighting of the war was done by these privateers. While
+they were hunting for merchant ships they often came across war-ships,
+and you can be sure they did not always run away. No, indeed; they were
+usually ready to fight, and during the war no less than sixteen
+war-vessels were captured by our ocean rovers. On the other hand, the
+British privateers did not capture a single American war-ship. As for
+merchant vessels, our privateers brought them in by the dozens. One
+fleet of sixty vessels set out from Ireland for the West Indies, and out
+of these thirty-five were gobbled up by our privateers, and their rich
+stores brought into American ports. During the whole war the privateers
+took more than seven hundred prizes. I might go on to tell you of some
+of their hard fights, but I think you would rather read the story of
+Paul Jones, the boldest and bravest of them all, the terror of the seas
+to the British fleet.
+
+Paul Jones, you should know, was born in Scotland. But he made America
+his home. And as he was known to be a good sailor, he was appointed
+first lieutenant of the "Alfred," the flagship of our small fleet. He
+had the honor to be the first man to raise a flag on an American
+man-of-war, and that is something to be proud of. This took place on the
+"Delaware," at Philadelphia, about Christmas, 1775.
+
+It was an important event for the fleet was just being sent out. At a
+given signal Lieutenant Jones grasped the halliards, and hauled up to
+the mizzen topmast a great flag of yellow silk. As it unfurled to the
+breeze cannon roared and crowds on the shore lustily cheered. In the
+centre of the flag was seen the figure of a green pine tree, and under
+this a rattlesnake lay coiled, with the warning motto, "Don't tread on
+me!"
+
+This was the famous rattlesnake flag. Another flag was raised on which
+were thirteen stripes, in turns red and white, and in the corner the
+British union jack. We then had the stripes but not the stars. They were
+to come after the Declaration of Independence and the union of the
+states.
+
+In August, 1776, Congress made Paul Jones captain of the brig
+"Providence," and he soon showed what kind of a man he was. He came
+across a fleet of five vessels, and made up his mind to capture the
+largest of them, which he thought to be a fine merchant ship. He got
+pretty close up before he learned his mistake. It was the British
+frigate "Solebay," strong enough to make mince-meat of his little brig.
+There was nothing for it but to run, and Captain Jones made haste to
+get away, followed by the "Solebay." But the Briton gained on the
+American, and after a four-hours' run the frigate was less than a
+hundred yards away. It might at any minute sink the daring little
+"Providence" by a broadside.
+
+But Paul Jones was not the man to be caught. Suddenly the helm of the
+brig was put hard up, as sailors say, and the little craft turned and
+dashed across the frigate's bow. As it did so the flag of the republic
+was spread to the breeze, and a broadside from the brig's guns swept the
+frigate's deck. Then, with all sail set, away dashed the "Providence"
+before the breeze. As soon as the British got back their senses they
+fired all their guns at the brig. But not a ball hit her, and with the
+best of the wind she soon left the "Solebay" far behind.
+
+And now I must tell the story of Paul Jones' greatest fight. In its way
+it was the greatest sea-fight ever known. It was fought with a fleet in
+which Jones sailed from a French port, for Congress had found what a
+hero they had in their Scotch sailor, and now they made him commodore of
+a fleet.
+
+The flagship of this fleet was a rotten old log of a ship, which had
+sailed in the East India merchant service till its timbers were in a
+state of dry rot. It was a shapeless tub of a vessel, better fitted to
+lie in port and keep rabbits in than to send out as a battle-ship. Paul
+Jones named it the "Bon Homme Richard," which, in English means "Poor
+Richard." This was a name used by Benjamin Franklin for his almanac.
+
+It was not until the summer of 1779 that Jones was able to set sail. His
+ship had thirty-six guns, such as they were, and he had with him three
+other ships under French officers--the "Alliance," the "Pallas," and the
+"Vengeance." Among his crew were a hundred American sailors, who had
+just been set free from English prisons. And his master's mate, Richard
+Dale, a man of his own sort, had just escaped from prison in England.
+
+Away they went, east and west, north and south, around the British
+isles, seeking for the men-of-war which should have swarmed in those
+seas, but finding only merchant vessels, a number of which were captured
+and their crews kept as prisoners. But the gallant commodore soon got
+tired of this. He had come out to fight, and he wanted to find something
+worth fighting. At length, on September 23d, he came in view of a large
+fleet of merchant ships, forty-two in all, under the charge of two
+frigates, the "Serapis," of forty-two guns, and the "Countess of
+Scarborough," of twenty-two smaller guns.
+
+Commodore Jones left the smaller vessel for his consorts to deal with,
+and dashed away for the "Serapis" as fast as the tub-like "Bon Homme
+Richard" could go. The British ship was much stronger than his in number
+and weight of guns, but he cared very little for that. The "Serapis" had
+ten 18-pound cannon in each battery, and the "Bon Homme Richard" only
+three. And these were such sorry excuses for cannon that two of them
+burst at the first fire, killing and wounding the most of their crews.
+After that Jones did all his fighting with 12 and 8-pound guns; that is,
+with guns which fired balls of these weights.
+
+It was night when the battle began. Soon the 18-pounders of the
+"Serapis" were playing havoc with the sides of the "Bon Homme Richard."
+Many of the balls went clear through her and plunged into the sea
+beyond. Some struck her below the water level, and soon the rotten old
+craft was "leaking like a basket."
+
+It began to look desperate for Jones and his ship. He could not half
+reply to the heavy fire of the English guns, and great chasms were made
+in the ship's side, where the 18-pound balls tore out the timbers
+between the port holes.
+
+Captain Pearson of the "Serapis" looked at his staggering and leaking
+enemy, and thought it about time for the battle to end.
+
+"Have you surrendered?" he shouted across the water to Commodore Jones.
+
+"I have not yet begun to fight," was the famous answer of the brave Paul
+Jones.
+
+Surrender, indeed! I doubt if that word was in Paul Jones' dictionary.
+He would rather have let his vessel sink. The ships now drifted
+together, and by Jones' order the jib-boom of the "Serapis" was lashed
+to his mizzen-mast. This brought the ships so close side by side that
+the English gunners could not open their ports, and had to fire through
+them and blow them off. And the gunners on both sides had to thrust the
+handles of their rammers through the enemy's port holes, in order to
+load their guns.
+
+Affairs were now desperate. The "Bon Homme Richard" was on fire in
+several places. Water was pouring into her through a dozen rents. It
+seemed as if she must sink or burn. Almost any man except Paul Jones
+would have given up the fight. I know I should, and I fancy most of you
+would have done the same. But there was no give up in that man's soul.
+
+One would think that nothing could have been worse, but worse still was
+to come. In this crisis the "Alliance," one of Jones' small fleet, came
+up and fired two broadsides into the wounded flagship, killing a number
+of her crew. Whether this was done on purpose or by mistake is not
+known. The French captain did not like Commodore Jones, and most men
+think he played the traitor.
+
+And another bad thing took place. There were two or three hundred
+English prisoners on the "Bon Homme Richard," taken from her prizes. One
+of the American officers, thinking that all was over, set these men
+free, and they came swarming up. At the same time one of the crew tried
+to haul down the flag and he cried to the British for quarter. Paul
+Jones knocked him down by flinging a pistol at his head. He might sink
+or burn--but give up the ship? never!
+
+The tide of chance now began to turn. Richard Dale, the master's mate,
+told the English prisoners that the vessel was sinking, and set them at
+work pumping and fighting the fire to save their lives. And one of the
+marines, who was fighting on the yard-arms, dropped a hand grenade into
+an open hatch of the "Serapis." It set fire to a heap of gun cartridges
+that lay below, and these exploded, killing twenty of the gunners and
+wounding many more, while the ship was set on fire. This ended the
+fight. The fire of the marines from the mast-tops had cleared the decks
+of the "Serapis" of men. Commodore Jones aided in this with the
+9-pounders on his deck, loading and firing them himself. Captain Pearson
+stood alone, and when he heard the roar of the explosion he could bear
+the strain no longer. He ran and pulled down the flag, which had been
+nailed to the mast.
+
+"Cease firing," said Paul Jones.
+
+The "Serapis" was his. Well and nobly had it been won.
+
+Never had there been a victory gained in such straits. The "Bon Homme
+Richard" was fast settling down into the sea. Pump as they would, they
+could never save her. Inch by inch she sank deeper. Jones and his
+gallant crew boarded the "Serapis," and at nine o'clock the next morning
+the noble old craft sank beneath the ocean waves, laden with honor, and
+with her victorious flag still flying. The "Serapis" was brought safely
+into port.
+
+Captain Pearson had fought bravely, and the British ministry made him a
+knight for his courage.
+
+"If I had a chance to fight him again I would make him a lord," said
+brave Paul Jones.
+
+Never before or since has a victory been won under such desperate
+circumstances as those of Paul Jones, with his sinking and burning ship,
+his bursting guns, his escaped prisoners, and his treacherous consort.
+It was a victory to put his name forever on the annals of fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARION THE SWAMP FOX AND GENERAL GREENE
+
+
+FAR away back in old English history there was a famous archer named
+Robin Hood, who lived in the deep woods with a bold band of outlaws like
+himself. He and his band were foes of the nobles and friends of the
+poor, and his name will never be forgotten by the people of England.
+
+No doubt you have read about the gallant archer. No man of his time
+could send an arrow so straight and sure as he. But we need not go back
+for hundreds of years to find our Robin Hood. We have had a man like him
+in our own country, who fought for us in the Revolution. His name was
+Francis Marion, and he was known as the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived in the
+swamps of South Carolina as Robin Hood did in the forests of England,
+and he was the stinging foe of the oppressors of the people.
+
+I have already told you about the war in the North, and of how the
+British, after doing all they could to overthrow Washington and conquer
+the country, found themselves shut up in the city of New York, with
+Washington like a watch-dog outside.
+
+When the British generals found that the North was too hard a nut to
+crack, they thought they would try what they could do in the South. So
+they sent a fleet and an army down the coast, and before long they had
+taken the cities of Savannah and Charleston, and had their soldiers
+marching all over Georgia and South Carolina. General Gates, the man to
+whom Burgoyne surrendered, came down with a force of militia to fight
+them, but he was beaten so badly that he had to run away without a
+soldier to follow him. You can imagine that the British were proud of
+their success. They thought themselves masters of the South, and fancied
+they had only to march north and become masters there, too.
+
+But you must not think that they were quite masters. Back in the woods
+and the swamps were men with arms in their hands and with love of
+country in their hearts. They were like wasps or hornets, who kept
+darting out from their nests, stinging the British troops, and then
+darting back out of sight. These gallant bands were led by Marion,
+Sumter, Pickens, and other brave men; but Marion's band was the most
+famous of them all, so I shall tell you about the Swamp Fox and what he
+did.
+
+I fancy all of my young friends would have laughed if they had seen
+Marion's band when it joined General Gates' army. Such scarecrows of
+soldiers they were! There were only about twenty of them in all, some of
+them white and some black, some men and some boys, dressed in rags that
+fluttered in the wind, and on horses that looked as if they had been fed
+on corncobs instead of corn.
+
+Gates and his men did laugh at them, though they took care not to laugh
+when Marion was at hand. He was a small man, with a thin face, and
+dressed not much better than his men. But there was a look in his eye
+that told the soldiers he was not a safe man to laugh at.
+
+Marion and his men were soon off again on a scout, and after Gates and
+his army had been beaten and scattered to the winds, they went back to
+their hiding places in the swamps to play the hornet once more.
+
+Along the Pedee River these swamps extended for miles. There were
+islands of dry land far within, but they could only be reached by narrow
+paths which the British were not able to find. Only men who had spent
+their lives in that country could make their way safely through this
+broad stretch of water plants and water-soaked ground.
+
+Marion's force kept changing. Now it went down to twenty men, now up to
+a hundred or more. It was never large, for there was not food or
+shelter for many men. But there were enough of them to give the British
+plenty of trouble. They had their sentries on the outlook, and when a
+party of British or Tories went carelessly past out would spring
+Marion's men, send their foes flying like deer, and then back they would
+go before a strong body of the enemy could reach them.
+
+These brave fellows had many hiding places in the swamps and many paths
+out of them. To-day they might strike the British in one place and
+to-morrow in another many miles away. Small as their force was they gave
+the enemy far more trouble than Gates had done with all his army.
+Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known as Snow's Island, where
+a creek ran into the Pedee. It was high and dry, was covered with trees
+and thickets, and was full of game. And all around it spread the soaking
+swamp, with paths known only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding
+places, this was their chosen home.
+
+You may be sure that the British did their best to capture a man who
+gave them so much trouble as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of
+their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down. Marion was then far from
+his hiding place and Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox was hard
+to catch. He lead the British a lively chase, and when they gave it up
+in despair he followed them back. He came upon a large body of Tories
+and struck them so suddenly that hardly a man of them escaped, while he
+lost only one man. Tories, you should know, were Americans who fought on
+the British side.
+
+The next man who tried to capture Marion was Colonel Tarleton, a hard
+rider and a good soldier, but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in
+the South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the North. There is a good
+story told about how he was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as
+he and his men were riding furiously along they came up to an old
+farmer, who was hoeing in his field beside the road.
+
+"Can you tell me what became of the man who galloped by here just ahead
+of us?" asked one of them. "I will give you fifty pounds if you put me
+on his track."
+
+"Do you mean the man on a black horse with a white star in its
+forehead?" asked the farmer.
+
+"Yes, that's the fellow."
+
+"He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of Marion's men, but he went past
+so fast that I could not be sure."
+
+"Never mind who he was. What we want to know is where to find him."
+
+"Bless your heart! he was going at such a pace that he couldn't well
+stop under four or five miles. I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty
+pounds."
+
+On rode the troop, and back into the woods went the farmer. He had not
+gone far before he came to a black horse with a white star in its
+forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The farmer was Jack Davis
+himself.
+
+That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal with, and you may be sure
+that he did not catch any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no
+game.
+
+While Marion was keeping the war alive in South Carolina, an army was
+gathering under General Greene, who was, next to Washington, the best of
+the American generals. With him were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of
+riflemen, William Washington, a cousin of the commander-in-chief, and
+Henry Lee, or "Light-horse Harry," father of the famous General Lee of
+the Civil War.
+
+General Greene got together about two thousand men, half armed and half
+supplied and knowing nothing about war, so that he had a poor chance of
+defeating the trained British soldiers. But he was a Marion on a larger
+scale, and knew when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell you
+what he did.
+
+In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the bold Colonel Tarleton and
+gave him a sound flogging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, the
+British commander in the South. Cornwallis thought he would catch Morgan
+napping, but the lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He hurried
+back with the prisoners he had taken from Tarleton, and crossed the
+Catawba River just as the British came up. That night it rained hard,
+and the river rose so that it could not be crossed for three days.
+
+General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat continued to the
+Yadkin River. This, too, was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain
+again came up and swelled the river before the British could follow.
+When the British got across there was a race for the Dan River on the
+borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, crossed the stream, and
+held the fords or crossing-place against the foe. Cornwallis by this
+time had enough of it. Provisions were growing scarce, and he turned
+back. But he soon had Greene on his track, and he did not find his march
+a very comfortable one.
+
+Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote about General Greene. Once,
+during his campaign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North
+Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy rain. Steele, the
+landlord, knew him and looked at him in surprise.
+
+"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone, very tired, hungry, and
+penniless."
+
+Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal before the hungry
+traveler. Then, while he was eating, she drew from under her apron two
+bags of silver and laid them on the table before him.
+
+"Take these, general," she said. "You need them and I can do without
+them."
+
+You may see that the women as well as the men of America did all they
+could for liberty, for there were many others like Mrs. Steele.
+
+I have told you that General Greene was one of the ablest of the
+American leaders, and you have seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in
+the retreat. Several times afterwards he fought with the British. He was
+always defeated. His country soldiers could not face the British
+veterans. But each time he managed to get as much good from the fight as
+if he had won a victory, and by the end of the year the British were
+shut up in Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free again.
+
+Where was Cornwallis during this time? Greene had led him so far north
+that he concluded to march on into Virginia and get the troops he would
+find there, and then come back. There was fighting going on in Virginia
+at this time. General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting against
+his own people. Against him was General Lafayette, a young French
+nobleman who had come to the help of the Americans.
+
+I suppose some of you have read stories of how a wolf or some other
+wild animal walked into a trap, from which it could not get out again.
+Lord Cornwallis was not a wild animal, but he walked into just such a
+trap after he got to Virginia. When he reached there he took command of
+Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet strong enough to face
+Lafayette, so he marched to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River,
+where he expected to get help by sea from New York. Yorktown was the
+trap he walked into, as you will see.
+
+France had sent a fleet and an army to help the Americans, and just then
+this fleet came up from the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake,
+shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same time Washington, who had
+been closely watching what was going on, broke camp before New York and
+marched southward as fast as his men could go. Before Cornwallis could
+guess what was about to happen the trap was closed on him. In the bay
+near Yorktown was the strong French fleet; before Yorktown was the army
+of American and French soldiers.
+
+There was no escape. The army and the fleet bombarded the town. A week
+of this was enough for Lord Cornwallis. He surrendered his army, seven
+thousand strong, on October 19, 1781, and the war was at an end. America
+was free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE
+
+
+HAVE any of my young readers ever been to Europe? Likely enough some of
+you may have been, for even young folks cross the ocean now-a-days. It
+has come to be an easy journey, with our great and swift steamers. But
+in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in which the ship was
+often tossed by terrible storms, and sometimes was broken to pieces on
+the rocks or went to the bottom with all on board.
+
+What I wish to say is, that those who come from Europe to this country
+leave countries that are governed by kings, and come to a country that
+is governed by the people. In some of the countries of Europe the people
+might almost as well be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to
+speak for them, and the man who rules them is born to power. Even in
+England, which is the freest of them all, there is a king and queen and
+a House of Lords who are born to power. The people can vote, but only
+for members of the House of Commons. They have nothing to do with the
+monarch or the lords.
+
+Of course you all know that this is not the case in our country. Here
+every man in power is put there by the votes of the people. As President
+Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and
+for the people."
+
+We did not have such a government before the 4th of July, 1776. Our
+country was then governed by a king, and, what was worse, this king was
+on the other side of the ocean, and cared nothing for the people of
+America except as money bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of
+July we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord and master; and we
+have got along very well without one.
+
+Now you can see what the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution
+meant. With the Declaration we cut loose from England. Our ship of state
+set out on its long voyage to liberty. The Declaration cut the chain
+that fastened this great ship to England's shores. The Revolution was
+like the stormy passage across the ocean waves. At times it looked as if
+our ship of state would be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back
+to the shores from which it set sail; but then the clouds would break
+and the sun shine, and onward our good ship would speed. At length it
+reached the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away from the land
+of kings.
+
+This is a sort of parable. I think every one of you will know what it
+means. The people of this country had enough of kings and their ways,
+and of being taxed without their consent. They made up their minds to be
+free to tax and govern themselves. It was for this they fought in the
+Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood.
+
+And now, before we go on with the history of our country, it will be
+wise to stop and ask what kind of government the Americans gave
+themselves. They had thrown overboard the old government of kings. They
+had to make a new government of the people. I hope you do not think this
+was an easy task. If an architect or builder is shown a house and told
+to build another like that, he finds it very easy to do. But if he is
+shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and told to build out of them
+a good strong house unlike any he has ever seen, he will find his task a
+very hard one, and may spoil the house in his building.
+
+That was what our people had to do. They could have built a king's
+government easily enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow for
+that. But they had no pattern for a people's government, and, like the
+architect and his house, they might spoil it in the making. The fact is,
+this is just what they did. Their first government was spoiled in the
+making, and they had to take it down and build it over again.
+
+This was done by what we call a Convention, made up of men called
+"delegates" sent by the several states. The Convention met in
+Philadelphia in 1787 for the purpose of forming a Constitution; that is,
+a plan of government under which the people should live and which the
+states and their citizens should have to obey.
+
+This Convention was a wonderful body of statesmen. Its like has not
+often been seen. The wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent
+to it. They included all the great men--some we know already,
+Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams and many others of fine
+ability. For four months these men worked in secret. It was a severe
+task they had to perform, for some wanted one thing and some another,
+and many times it looked as if they would never agree; but at length all
+disputes were settled and their long labors were at an end.
+
+General Washington was president of the Convention, and back of the
+chair on which he sat the figure of the sun was painted on the wall.
+When it was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this painting and
+said to those who stood near him:
+
+"Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes and fears, I have looked
+towards that figure, and asked myself if it was a rising or a setting
+sun. Now I know that it is the rising sun."
+
+The rising sun indeed it was, for when the Convention had finished its
+work it had formed the noble Constitution under which we now live, the
+greatest state paper which man has ever formed.
+
+But I fancy you want to know more about the noble framework of
+government built by the wise men of the Convention of 1787.
+
+After the Union was formed there were thirteen states still, but each of
+these had lost some of its old powers. The powers taken from the states
+were given to the general government. Every state had still the right to
+manage its own affairs, but such things as concerned the whole people
+were managed by the general government.
+
+What were these things? Let us see. There was the power to coin money,
+to lay taxes, to control the post-office, and to make laws for the good
+of the whole nation. And there was the power to form an army and navy,
+to make treaties with other countries, and to declare war if we could
+not get on in peace.
+
+Under the Confederation which was formed during the Revolutionary War,
+the states could do these things for themselves; under the Constitution
+they could do none of these things, but they could pass laws that
+affected only themselves, and could tax their own people for state
+purposes.
+
+I have spoken several times of the general government. No doubt you wish
+to know what this government was like. Well, it was made up of three
+bodies, one of which made laws for the people, the second considered if
+these laws agreed with the Constitution, the third carried out these
+laws, or put them in force.
+
+The body that made the laws was named the Congress of the United States.
+It consisted of two sections. One was called the Senate, and was made up
+of two members from each state. As we have now more than forty-five
+states the Senate at present has more than ninety members. The other
+section was called the House of Representatives, and its members were
+voted for directly by the people. The members of the Senate were voted
+for by the legislatures of the states, who had been elected by the
+people.
+
+All the laws were to be made by Congress, but not one of them could
+become a law until it was approved by the President. If he did not
+approve of a law, he vetoed it, that is, he returned it without being
+signed with his name, and then it could not be enforced as a law until
+voted for by two-thirds of the members of Congress.
+
+It was the duty of the President to execute or carry out the laws. He
+took the place of the king in other countries. But he was not born to
+his position like a king, but had to be voted for by the people, and
+could stay in office for four years only. Then he, or some one else, had
+to be voted for again.
+
+Next to the President was the Vice-President, who was to take his place
+if he should die or resign. While the President was in office the
+Vice-President had nothing to do except to act as presiding officer of
+the Senate. What we call the Cabinet are persons chosen by the President
+to help him in his work. You must understand that it takes a number of
+leading men and a great many men under these to do all the work needed
+to carry on our government.
+
+The third body of our government was called the Supreme Court. This was
+made up of some of the ablest lawyers and judges of the country. They
+were not to be voted for, but to be chosen by the President and then
+approved by the Senate. The duty of the Supreme Court is to consider any
+law brought to its notice and decide if it agrees with the Constitution.
+If the Court decides that a law is not constitutional, it ceases to be
+of any effect.
+
+This is not so very hard to understand, is it? The President and
+Congress elected by the people; the Supreme Court and Cabinet selected
+by the President; the Constitution the foundation of our government; and
+the laws passed by Congress the building erected on the foundation.
+
+Its great feature is that it is a republic--a government "of the people,
+by the people, and for the people." Ours is not the first republic.
+There have been others. But it is the greatest. It is the only one that
+covers half a continent, and is made up of states many of which are
+larger than some of the kingdoms of Europe. For more than a hundred
+years the Constitution made in 1787 has held good. Then it covered
+thirteen states and less than four million people; now it covers more
+than forty-five states and eighty million people. Then it was very poor,
+and had a hard struggle before it; now it is very rich and prosperous.
+It has grown to be the richest country in the world and one of the
+greatest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE
+
+
+EVERY four years a great question arises in this country, and all the
+states and their people are disturbed until this question is settled.
+Even business nearly stops still, for many persons can think of nothing
+but the answer to this question.
+
+Who shall be President? That is the question which at the end of every
+four years troubles the minds of our people. This question was asked for
+the first time in 1789, after the Constitution had been made and
+accepted by the states, but this time the people found it a very easy
+question to answer.
+
+There were several men who had taken a great part in the making of our
+country, and who might have been named for President. One of these was
+Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Another of
+them was Benjamin Franklin, who got France to come to our aid, and did
+many other noble things for his country. But none of them stood so high
+in the respect and admiration of the people as George Washington, who
+had led our armies through the great war, and to whom, more than to any
+other man, we owed our liberty.
+
+This time, then, there was no real question as to whom should be
+President. Washington was the man. All men, all parties, settled upon
+Washington. No one opposed him; there was no man in the country like
+him. He was unanimously elected the first President of the United
+States.
+
+In olden times, when a victorious general came back to Rome with the
+splendid spoils brought from distant countries, the people gave him a
+triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and to gaze upon the splendor
+of the show. Washington had no splendid spoils to display. But he had
+the love of the people, which was far better than gold and silver won in
+war; and all the way from his home at Mount Vernon to New York, where he
+was to take the office of President, the people honored him with a
+triumph.
+
+Along the whole journey, men, women and children crowded the roadside,
+and waited for hours to see him pass. That was before the day of
+railroads, and he had to go slowly in his carriage, so that everybody
+had a fine chance to see and greet him as he went by. Guns were fired as
+he passed through the towns; arches of triumph were erected for his
+carriage to go under; flowers were strewn in the streets for its wheels
+to roll over; cheers and cries of greeting filled the air; all that the
+people could do to honor their great hero was done.
+
+On the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took the oath of office as the
+first President of our country and people. He stood on the balcony of a
+building in front of Federal Hall, in which Congress met, and in the
+street before him was a vast multitude, full of joy and hope. When he
+had taken the oath cannon roared out, bells were rung in all the
+neighboring steeples, and a mighty shout burst from the assembled
+multitude:
+
+"Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"
+
+This, I have said, was in New York. But Philadelphia was soon chosen as
+the seat of government, and the President and Congress moved to that
+city the next year. There they stayed for ten years. In the year 1800 a
+new city, named Washington, on the banks of the Potomac, was made the
+capital of our country, and in that city Congress has met ever since.
+
+I must say something here about another of the great men of
+Revolutionary times, Alexander Hamilton. He was great in financial or
+money matters, and this was very important at that time, for the
+money-affairs of the country were in a sad state.
+
+In the Revolution our people had very little money, and that was one
+reason why they had so much suffering. Congress soon ran out of gold and
+silver, so it issued paper money. This did very well for a time, and in
+the end a great deal of paper money was set afloat, but people soon
+began to get afraid of it. There was too much money of this kind for so
+poor a country. The value of the Continental currency, as it was called,
+began to go down, and the price of everything else to go up. In time the
+paper money lost almost all its value.
+
+Such was the money the people had at the end of the Revolution. It was
+not good for much, was it? But it was the only kind of money Congress
+had to pay the soldiers with or to pay the other debts of the
+government. The country owed much more money than it could pay, so that
+it was what we call bankrupt. Nobody would trust it or take its paper in
+payment. What Alexander Hamilton did was to help the country to pay its
+debts and to bring back its lost credit, and in doing that he won great
+honor.
+
+Hamilton came to this country from the West Indies during the
+Revolution. He was then only a boy, but he soon showed himself a good
+soldier, and Washington made him an officer on his staff and one of his
+friends. He often asked young Hamilton for advice, and took it, too.
+
+Hamilton was one of the men who made the Constitution, and when
+Washington became President he chose him as his Secretary of the
+Treasury. That is, he gave him the money affairs of the government to
+look after. Hamilton was not afraid of the load of debt, and he soon
+took off its weight. He asked Congress to pay not only its own debt, but
+that of the states as well, and also to make good all the paper money.
+Congress did not like to do this, but Hamilton talked to the members
+till he persuaded them to do so.
+
+Then he set himself to pay it. He laid a tax on whiskey and brandy and
+on all goods that came into the country. He had a mint, which is a
+building where money is coined from metal, and a national bank built in
+Philadelphia. He made the debt a government fund or loan, on which he
+agreed to pay interest, and to pay off the principal as fast as
+possible. It was not long before all the fund was taken up by those who
+had money, and the country got back its lost credit, for the taxes began
+to bring in much money.
+
+Washington was President for eight years. That made two terms of four
+years each. Many wished to make him President for a third term, but he
+refused to run again. Since then no one has been made President for more
+than two terms.
+
+George Washington had done enough for his country. He loved his home,
+but he had little time to live there. When he was only a boy he was
+called away to take part in the French and Indian War. Then, after
+spending some happy years at home, he was called away again to lead the
+army in the Revolutionary War. Finally, he served his country eight
+years as President.
+
+He was now growing old and wanted rest, and he went back with joy to his
+beloved home at Mount Vernon, hoping to spend there the remainder of his
+days. But trouble arose with France, and it looked as if there would be
+a new war, and Washington was asked to take command of the army again.
+He consented, though he had had enough of fighting; but fortunately the
+war did not come, so he was not obliged to abandon his home.
+
+He died in December, 1799, near the end of the century of which he was
+one of the greatest men. The news of his death filled all American
+hearts with grief. Not while the United States exists will the name of
+Washington be forgotten or left without honor. His home and tomb at Mt.
+Vernon are visited each year by thousands of patriotic Americans. As was
+said of him long ago by General Henry Lee, he was and is, "first in war,
+first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN
+
+
+I THINK you must now have learned a great deal about the history of your
+country from the time Columbus crossed the ocean till the year 1800, the
+beginning of the Nineteenth century. You have been told about discovery,
+and settlement, and wars, and modes of life, and government, and other
+things, but you must bear in mind that these are not the whole of
+history. The story of our country is broad and deep enough to hold many
+other things beside these. For instance, there is the story of our great
+inventors, to whom we owe so much. I propose in this chapter to tell you
+about some of those who lived near the year 1800.
+
+First, I must ask you to go back with me to a kitchen in Scotland many
+years ago. On the open hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and
+near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes fixed on the
+tea-kettle which was boiling away over the fire, while its lid kept
+lifting to let the steam escape. His mother, who was bustling about, no
+doubt thought him idle, and may have scolded him a little. But he was
+far from idle; he was busy at work--not with his hands, but with his
+brain. The brain, you know, may be hard at work while the body is doing
+nothing.
+
+How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle of boiling water keeping
+up its clatter as the steam lifts it and puffs out into the air? And
+what thought has this brought into your mind? Into the mind of little
+James Watt, the Scotch boy, it brought one great thought, that of power.
+As he looked at it, he said to himself that the steam which comes from
+boiling water must have a great deal of force, if a little of it could
+keep the kettle lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself if such
+a power could not be put to some good use.
+
+Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that thought. Others had
+thought the same thing, and steam had been used to move a poor sort of
+engine. But what James Watt did when he grew up, was to invent a much
+better engine than had ever been made before. It was a great day for us
+all when that engine was invented. Before that time men had done most of
+the work of the world with their hands, and you may imagine that the
+work went on very slowly. Since that time most of the world's work has
+been done with the aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as much
+as many men could do in the past. You have seen the wheels rolling and
+heard the machines rattling and the hammers clanging in our great
+factories and workshops. And I fancy most of you know that back of all
+these is the fire under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the
+mighty magician which sets all these wheels and machines at work and
+changes raw material into so many things of use and beauty.
+
+Now let us come back to our American inventors. I have spoken about the
+steam engine because it was with this that most of them worked. They
+thought that if horses could drag a wagon over the ground and the wind
+could drive a vessel through the water, steam might do the same thing,
+and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage or a boat could be
+moved by a steam engine.
+
+Very likely you have all heard about Robert Fulton and his steamboat,
+but you may not know that steamboats were running on American waters
+years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as long ago as 1768, before
+the Revolutionary War, Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had
+made a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels. Years
+afterwards he made a large engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put
+in the boat, but there came a dry season and low water, so that the boat
+could not be used, and the owners took the engine out and set it to work
+on a sawmill. It did so well there that it was never put back in the
+boat; so that steamboat never had a chance.
+
+Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat, but there were
+others who thought they could move a boat by steam. Some of these were
+in Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia was an inventor named
+Rumsey who moved a boat at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat
+jets of water were pumped through the stern and forced the boat along.
+In Philadelphia was another man named John Fitch, who was the first man
+to make a successful steamboat. His boat was moved with paddles like an
+Indian canoe. It was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and
+Trenton in 1790, and ran for several months as a passenger boat, at the
+speed of seven or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He was
+unfortunate and in the end he killed himself.
+
+I am glad to be able to tell you a different story of the next man who
+tried to make a steamboat. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in
+Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the water, he and the other
+boys having an old flatboat which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton
+got tired of this way of getting along, and like a natural-born inventor
+set his wits to work. In the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung
+over the sides and could be moved in the water by turning a crank and
+so force the boat onward. The boys found this much easier than the pole,
+and likely enough young Fulton thought a large vessel might be moved in
+the same way.
+
+He knew all about what others had done. He had heard how Rumsey moved
+his boat by pumping water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling it
+along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland moved by a stern paddle-wheel.
+I fancy he had not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a boy to
+go fishing with, for when he set out to invent his steamboat this is the
+plan he tried.
+
+Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had bad luck there. Then he
+came to America and built a boat in New York. While he was at work on
+this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I have already told you, was
+building him an engine in England. He wanted the best engine that he
+could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor was the right man to make
+it.
+
+While Fulton was working some of the smart New Yorkers were laughing.
+They called his boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move faster
+than the tide would carry it. But he let them laugh and worked on, and
+at last, one day in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont,"
+was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial. Hundreds of curious people
+came to see it start. Some were ready to laugh again when they saw the
+boat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down in the water on both
+sides. They were not covered with wooden frames as were such wheels
+afterwards.
+
+"That boat move? So will a log move if set adrift," said the people who
+thought themselves very wise. "It will move when the tide moves it, and
+not before." But none of them felt like laughing when they saw the
+wheels begin to turn and the boat to glide out into the stream, moving
+against the tide.
+
+"She moves! she moves!" cried the crowd, and nobody said a word about
+"Fulton's Folly."
+
+Move she did. Up the Hudson she went against wind and current, and
+reached Albany, one hundred and forty-two miles away, in thirty-two
+hours. This was at the rate of four and a half miles an hour. It was not
+many years before steamboats were running on all our rivers.
+
+That is all I shall say here about the steamboat, for there is another
+story of invention I wish to tell you before I close. This is about the
+cotton fibre, which you know is the great product of the Southern
+States.
+
+The cotton plant when ripe has a white, fluffy head, and a great bunch
+of snow-white fibres, within which are the seeds. In old times these had
+to be taken out by hand, and it was a whole day's work for a negro to
+get the seeds out of a pound of the cotton. This made cotton so dear
+that not much of it could be sold. In 1784 eight bags of it were sent to
+Liverpool, and the custom-house people there seized it for duties. They
+said it must have been smuggled from some other country, for the United
+States could not have produced such a "prodigious quantity."
+
+A few years afterwards a young man named Eli Whitney went South to teach
+in a private family, but before he got there some one else had his
+situation, and he was left with nothing to do. Mrs. Greene, the widow of
+General Greene, who fought so well in the Revolution, took pity on him
+and gave him a home in her house. He paid her by fixing up things about
+her house. She found him so handy that she asked him if he could not
+invent a machine to take the seeds out of the cotton. Whitney said he
+would try, and he set himself to work. It was not long before he had a
+machine made which did the work wonderfully well. This machine is known
+as the "cotton-gin," or cotton engine, for gin is short for engine. On
+one side of it are wires so close together that the seeds cannot get
+through. Between them are circular saws which catch the cotton and draw
+it through, while the seeds pass on.
+
+The machine was a simple one, but it acted like magic. A hundred negroes
+could not clean as much cotton in a day as one machine. The price of
+cotton soon went down and a demand for it sprang up. In 1795, when the
+cotton gin was made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were produced
+in this country. By 1801 this had grown to 20,000,000 pounds. Now it has
+grown to more than 12,000,000 bales, of nearly 500 pounds each. This is
+sold to foreign countries and is worked in our own mills at home, being
+made into millions of yards of cloth of many kinds to clothe the people
+of the earth. All this comes from the work of Eli Whitney's machine. And
+the seed taken from the cotton is pressed for the oil it contains, so
+that from a year's crop we get nearly 150,000,000 gallons of useful
+oil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN
+
+
+FOR years before and after the year 1800 all Europe was filled with war
+and bloodshed. Most of my readers must have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte,
+one of the greatest generals that ever lived, and one of the most cruel
+men. He was at the head of the armies of France, and was fighting all
+Europe. England was his greatest enemy and fought him on land and sea,
+and this fighting on the sea made trouble between England and the United
+States.
+
+The English wanted men for their war-vessels and said they had a right
+to take Englishmen wherever they could find them. So they began to take
+sailors off of American merchant vessels. They said that these men were
+deserters from the British navy, but the fact is that many of them were
+true-born Americans; and our people grew very angry as this went on year
+after year.
+
+What made it worse was the insolence of some of the British captains.
+One of them went so far as to stop an American war-vessel, the
+"Chesapeake," and demand part of her crew, who, he said, were British
+deserters. When Captain Barron refused to give them up the British
+captain fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers of the
+American crew. The "Chesapeake" had no guns fit to fire back, so her
+flag had to be pulled down and the men to be given up.
+
+You may well imagine that this insult made the American blood boil.
+There would have been war at that time if the British government had not
+owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for the injury. A few years
+afterwards the insult was paid for in a different way. Another proud
+British captain thought he could treat Americans in the same saucy
+fashion. The frigate "President" met the British sloop-of-war "Little
+Belt," and hailed it, the captain calling through his trumpet, "What
+ship is that?"
+
+Instead of giving a civil reply the British captain answered with a
+cannon shot. Then the "President" fired a broadside which killed eleven
+and wounded twenty-one men on the "Little Belt." When the captain of the
+"President" hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply in a more
+civil fashion. He had been taught a useful lesson.
+
+The United States was then a poor country, and not in condition to go to
+war. But no nation could submit to such insults as these. It is said
+that more than six thousand sailors had been taken from our merchant
+ships, and among these were two nephews of General Washington, who were
+seized while they were on their way home from Europe, and put to work as
+common seamen on a British war-vessel.
+
+At length, on June 18, 1812, the United States declared war against
+Great Britain. It had put up with insults and injuries as long as it
+could bear them. It did not take long to teach the haughty British
+captains that American sea-dogs were not to be played with. The little
+American fleet put to sea, and before the end of the year it had
+captured no less than five of the best ships in the British navy and had
+not lost a single ship in return. I fancy the people of England quit
+singing their proud song, "Britannia rules the waves."
+
+Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I do not think it worth
+while, for there is much of it you would not care to hear. The war went
+on for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there were not many
+important battles, and the United States did not win much honor on land.
+But on the sea the sailors of our country covered themselves with glory.
+
+Most of the land battles were along the borders of Canada. Here there
+was a good deal of fighting, but most of it was of no great account. At
+first the British had the best of it, and then the Americans began to
+win battles, but it all came to an end about where it began. Neither
+side gained anything for the men that were killed.
+
+There was one naval battle in the north that I must tell you about. On
+Lake Erie the British had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time
+they had everything their own way. Then Captain Oliver Perry, a young
+officer, was sent to the lake to build a fleet and fight the British.
+
+When he got there the stuff for his ships was growing in the woods. He
+had to cut down trees and build ships from their timber. But he worked
+like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels built and afloat. He
+found some also on the lake, and in a wonderfully short time he had a
+fleet on the lake and was sailing out to find the British war-ships.
+
+The fleets met on September 10, 1813. The Americans had the most
+vessels, but the British had the most guns, and soon they were fighting
+like sea-dragons. The "Lawrence," Captain Perry's flagship, fought two
+of the largest British ships till it was nearly ready to sink, and so
+many of its crew were killed and wounded that it had only eight men left
+fit for fighting. What do you think the brave Perry did then? He leaped
+into a small boat and was rowed away, with the American flag floating in
+his hand, though the British ships were firing hotly at him.
+
+When he reached the "Niagara," another of his ships, he sprang on board
+and sailed right through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into
+their shattered vessels. The British soon had enough of this, and in
+fifteen minutes more they gave up the fight.
+
+"We have met the enemy and they are ours," wrote Perry to General
+Harrison. He was a born hero of the waves.
+
+Now I think we had better take a look out to sea and learn what was
+going on there. We did not have many ships, but they were like so many
+bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world looked on with surprise to
+see our little fleet of war-vessels making such havoc in the proud
+British navy which no country in Europe had ever been able to defeat.
+
+In less than two months after war was declared the frigate "Essex" met
+the British sloop-of-war "Alert" and took it in eight minutes, without
+losing a man. The "Essex" was too strong for the "Alert," but six days
+afterwards the "Constitution" met the "Guerriere," and these vessels
+were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour the "Guerriere" was
+nearly shot to pieces and ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her
+men. The others were hastily taken off, and then down went the proud
+British frigate to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
+
+All the island of Great Britain went into mourning when it learned how
+the Americans had served this good ship. There was soon more to mourn
+for. The American sloop "Wasp" captured the British sloop "Frolic." The
+frigate "United States" captured the frigate "Macedonian." The
+"Constitution" met the "Java" and served it the same way as it had done
+the "Guerriere." In two hours the "Java" was a wreck. Soon after the
+sloop "Hornet" met the ship "Peacock" and handled her so severely that
+she sank while her crew was being taken off.
+
+Later on the British won two battles at sea, and that was all they
+gained during the whole war. On the water the honors stayed with the
+Americans.
+
+There was one affair in which the British won great dishonor instead of
+honor. In July, 1814, a strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay,
+with an army of nearly five thousand men on board. These were landed and
+marched on the city of Washington, the capital of the young republic.
+
+Their coming was a surprise. There were few trained soldiers to meet
+this army, and those were not the days of railroads, so that no troops
+could be brought in haste from afar. Those that gathered were nearly all
+raw militia, and they did not stand long before the British veterans who
+had fought in the wars with Napoleon. They were soon put to flight, and
+the British army marched into our capital city.
+
+There they behaved in a way that their country has ever since been
+ashamed of. They set fire to the public buildings and burned most of
+them to the ground. The Capitol, the President's house, and other
+buildings were burned, and the records of the government were destroyed.
+Then, having acted like so many savages, the British hurried away before
+the Americans could get at them for revenge. That was a victory, I
+fancy, which the British do not like to read about.
+
+They had been so successful at Washington that they thought they would
+try the same thing with another city. This time they picked out New
+Orleans, which was so far away from the thickly settled part of the
+country that they fancied it would be an easy matter to capture it. In
+this they made a great mistake, as you will soon see.
+
+There was a general in the South who was not used to being defeated.
+This was Andrew Jackson, one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won
+fame in a war with the Indians of Georgia. He was a man who was always
+ready to fight and this the English found when they marched on New
+Orleans. There were twelve thousand of them, and Jackson, who had been
+sent there to meet them, only had half that many. And the British were
+trained soldiers, while the Americans were militia. But most of them
+were men of the backwoods, who knew how to shoot.
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.]
+
+Some of you may have heard that Jackson's men fought behind cotton
+bales. That is not quite true, but he was in such a hurry in building
+his breastworks that he did put in them some bales of cotton taken from
+the warehouses. The British, who were in as great a hurry, built a
+breastwork of sugar hogsheads which they found on the plantations. But
+the cannon balls soon set the cotton on fire and filled the air with
+flying sugar, so the bales and the hogsheads had to be pulled out. It
+was found that cotton and sugar, while good enough in their place, were
+not good things to stop cannon balls.
+
+Soon the British marched against the American works, and there was a
+terrible fight.
+
+"Stand to your guns, my men," said Jackson to his soldiers. "Make every
+shot tell. Give it to them."
+
+Many of the men were old hunters from Tennessee, some of whom could hit
+a squirrel in the eye, and when they fired the British fell in rows. Not
+a man could cross that terrible wall of fire, and they fought on until
+twenty-six hundred of them lay bleeding on the field, while only eight
+Americans were killed.
+
+That ended the battle. The men were not born who could face a fire like
+that. It ended the war also, and it was the last time Americans and
+Englishmen ever fought each other. Jackson became the hero of the
+country, and he was finally elected President of the United States. I
+cannot say that he was well fitted to be President. He was a very
+obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own way, and that is better
+in a soldier than in a President. But he was one who loved his country,
+and when one of the states of the South sought to secede from the Union,
+Jackson, though he was a son of the South himself, quickly gave the
+seceders to understand that he was a general as well as a President, and
+that no state should leave the ranks of the Union while he marched at
+its head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE REVENGED
+
+
+I HAVE told you the story of more than one war. I shall have to tell you
+now about still another in which the Americans fought the Mexicans in
+Texas.
+
+I suppose you know that Texas is one of our states, and the largest of
+them all. That is, it is largest in square miles; not in number of
+people. In former times it was part of Mexico, and was a portion of what
+is called Spanish America. But there came to be more Americans in it
+than Spaniards. People kept going there from the United States until it
+was much more of an American than a Spanish country.
+
+General Santa Anna, who was at the head of the Mexican government at the
+time I speak of, was somewhat of a tyrant, and he tried to rule the
+people of Texas in a way they would not submit to. Then he ordered them
+to give up all their guns to his soldiers, but instead of that they took
+their guns and drove the Mexican soldiers away. After that there was
+war, as you might well suppose, for a Mexican army was sent to punish
+the Texans.
+
+I wish now to tell you about what happened to some very brave Americans.
+There were only one hundred and seventy-five of them, and they were
+attacked by General Santa Anna with an army of several thousand men. But
+they were commanded by Colonel Travis, a brave young Texan, and among
+them was the famous David Crockett, a great hunter, and Colonel James
+Bowie, who invented the terrible "bowie-knife," and other bold and
+daring men who had settled in Texas. They had made a fort of an old
+Spanish building called the Alamo.
+
+The kind of men I have named do not easily give up. The Mexicans poured
+bomb-shells and cannon balls into their fort, battering down the walls
+and killing many of them, but they fought on like tigers, determined to
+die rather than surrender. At length so many of them were dead that
+there were not enough left to defend the walls, and the Mexican soldiers
+captured the Alamo. The valiant Crockett kept on fighting, and when he
+fell, the ground before him was covered with Mexican dead. Then Santa
+Anna ordered his soldiers to shoot down all that were left. That is what
+is called the "Massacre of the Alamo."
+
+It was not long before the Americans had their revenge. Their principal
+leader was a bold and able man named Samuel Houston. He had less than
+eight hundred men under him, but he marched on the Mexicans, who had
+then about eighteen hundred men.
+
+"Men, there is the enemy," said brave General Houston. "Do you wish to
+fight?"
+
+"We do," they all shouted.
+
+"Charge on them, then, for liberty or death! Remember the Alamo!"
+
+"Remember the Alamo!" they cried, as they rushed onward with the courage
+of lions.
+
+In a little time the Mexicans were running like frightened deer, and the
+daring Texans were like deer hounds on their tracks. Of the eighteen
+hundred Mexicans all but four hundred were killed, wounded, or taken
+prisoners, while the Americans lost only thirty men. They had well
+avenged the gallant Travis and the martyrs of the Alamo.
+
+The cruel Santa Anna was taken prisoner. He had only one sound leg, and
+the story was that he was caught with his wooden leg stuck fast in the
+mud. Many of the Texans wanted to hang him for his murders at the Alamo,
+but in the end he was set free.
+
+All this took place in 1835. Texas was made an independent country, the
+"Lone Star Republic," with General Houston for President. But its people
+did not want to stand alone. They were American born and wished to
+belong to the United States. So this country was asked to accept Texas
+as a state of the Union. Nine years after it was accepted as one of the
+American states.
+
+Perhaps some of my readers may think that this story has much more to do
+with the history of Mexico than that of the United States. But the
+taking of Texas as a state was United States history, and so was what
+followed. You know how one thing leads to another. Mexico did not feel
+like giving up Texas so easily, and her rulers said that the United
+States had no right to take it. It was not long before the soldiers of
+the two countries met on the border lands and blood was shed. There was
+a sharp fight at a place called Palo Alto, and a sharper one at a place
+called Resaca de la Palma. In both of them the Mexicans were defeated.
+
+Congress then declared war against Mexico, and very soon there was hard
+fighting going on elsewhere. General Zachary Taylor, a brave officer,
+who had fought the Seminole Indians in Florida, led the American troops
+across the Rio Grande River into Mexico, and some time afterwards
+marched to a place called Buena Vista. He had only five thousand men,
+while Santa Anna was marching against him with twenty thousand--four to
+one. General Taylor's army was in great danger. Santa Anna sent him a
+message, asking him to surrender if he did not want his army cut to
+pieces; but Rough and Ready, as Taylor's men called him, sent word back
+that he was there to fight, not to surrender.
+
+The battle that followed was a desperate one. It took place on February
+23, 1847. The Mexican lancers rode bravely against the American lines
+and were driven back at the cannon's mouth. For ten long hours the
+fighting went on. The Mexicans gained the high ground above the pass and
+put the American troops in danger. Charge after charge was made, but
+like bulldogs the Yankee soldiers held their ground. On came the dashing
+Mexican lancers, shouting their war-cry of "God and Liberty," and
+charging a battery commanded by Captain Bragg. The lancers captured some
+of the guns and drove the soldiers back. Captain Bragg sent a messenger
+in haste to General Taylor, saying that he must have more men or he
+could not hold his ground.
+
+"I have no more men to send you," said Rough and Ready. "Give them a
+little more grape, Captain Bragg."
+
+The cannon were loaded with grape-shot and fired into the ranks of the
+enemy, cutting great gaps through them. Again and again they were loaded
+and fired, and then the fine Mexican cavalry turned and fled. They could
+not stand any more of Captain Bragg's grape.
+
+That night both armies went to sleep on the field of battle. But when
+the next day dawned the Mexicans were gone. Santa Anna had led them
+away during the night and General Taylor had won the greatest victory of
+the war. He received a noble reward for it, for the following year he
+was elected President of the United States.
+
+The next thing done in this war was an attempt to capture the city of
+Mexico, the capital of the country. The easiest way to get there was by
+sea, for it was a long journey by land, so a fleet was got ready and an
+army sent south on the Gulf of Mexico. This army was led by General
+Winfield Scott, who had fought against the British in the War of 1812.
+
+Onward they sailed till they came before the seaport city of Vera Cruz.
+This had a strong fort, which was battered for four days by the American
+cannon, when its walls were so shattered that the Mexicans gave it up.
+In this way a good starting-point was gained.
+
+But I would have you all know that the Americans had no easy road before
+them. The city of Mexico lies in the center of the country on land that
+is as high as many mountains, and the way to it from the coast goes
+steadily upward, and has many difficult passes and rough places, where a
+small force might stop an army.
+
+[Illustration: THE STORMING OF CHAPULTEPEC.]
+
+If the Mexicans had known their business and had possessed good generals
+I am afraid the Americans might never have gotten up this rugged
+road. The Mexicans had men enough but they wanted able leaders. At one
+of the passes, named Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna waited with 15,000 men. The
+Americans had only 9,000. It looked as if they might have to turn back.
+
+What did they do? Why, they managed to drag a battery to the top of a
+steep hill that overlooked the pass. And while these guns poured their
+shot down on the astonished Mexicans the army attacked them in front. In
+a few hours they were in full flight. Five generals, and 3,000 men were
+taken prisoners, and Santa Anna himself came so near being taken that he
+left his cork leg behind. Do you not think a general ought to have two
+good legs when he has to run as often as Santa Anna had?
+
+Onward they marched until not very far away lay the beautiful city of
+Mexico. But here and there along the road were strong forts, and Santa
+Anna had collected a large army, three times as large as that of the
+Americans. You may see that General Scott had a very hard task before
+him. But there is one way to get past forts without fighting; which is,
+to go around them. This is what General Scott did. He marched to the
+south, and soon he was within ten miles of the capital without a battle.
+
+August 20th was a great day for the American army. That day our brave
+troops fought like heroes, and before night they had won five
+victories. One of these was on a steep hill called Churubusco, which
+they charged up in the face of the Mexican guns. Then on they went, and
+in a short time the old city, the most ancient in America, was in their
+hands. That ended the war. When peace was made the United States claimed
+the provinces of New Mexico and California, which had been captured by
+our soldiers, but for which Mexico was paid a large sum. No one then
+dreamed how rich the provinces were in silver and gold. Not long after
+the gold of California was discovered, and that country, which had been
+feebly held by a few Mexicans, was quickly filled by an army of
+gold-seekers. Since then it has proved one of the richest parts of the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR
+
+
+ALL of my young readers must know what a wonderful age this is that we
+live in, and what marvelous things have been done. Some of you, no
+doubt, have read the stories of magic in the "Arabian Nights
+Entertainments," and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But if any
+one, a hundred years ago, had been told about the railroad, the
+telegraph, the photograph, the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the
+surface of the water, and ships that sail in the air, I fancy they would
+have called all this nonsense and "Arabian Nights" magic. Why, think of
+it, a trolley car is as magical, in its way, as Aladdin's wonderful
+lamp.
+
+But while you know much about these things, there has been one great
+step of progress which, I fancy, you know or think very little about. I
+do not mean material but moral progress, for you must bear in mind that
+while the world has been growing richer it has also been growing better.
+
+A hundred years ago many millions of men were held as slaves in America
+and Europe. Some of these were black and some were white, but they
+could be bought and sold like so many cattle, could be whipped by their
+masters, and had no more rights than so many brute beasts.
+
+To-day there is not a slave in Europe or America. All these millions of
+slaves have been set free. Do you not think I am right in saying that
+the world has grown better as well as richer? Why, fifty years ago there
+were millions of slaves in our own country, and now there is not one in
+all the land. Is not that a great gain to mankind? But it is sad to
+think that this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall have to
+tell you about this war, after I have told you how slavery brought it
+on.
+
+In the early part of this book you read of how white men first came to
+this country. I have now to tell you that black men were brought here
+almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after Captain John Smith and
+the English colonists landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the
+James River and sold them some negroes to be held as slaves.
+
+You remember about Pocahontas, the Indian girl who saved the life of
+Captain John Smith. She was afterwards married to John Rolfe, the man
+who first planted tobacco in Virginia. John Rolfe wrote down what was
+going on in Virginia, and it was he who told us about these negroes
+brought in as slaves. This is what he wrote:
+
+"About the last of August came in, a Dutch marine-of-war, that sold us
+20 Negars."
+
+These twenty "Negars," as he called them, grew in numbers until there
+were four million negro slaves in our country in 1860, when the war
+began. There are twice that many black people in the country to-day, but
+I am glad to be able to say that none of them are slaves. Yet how sad it
+is to think that it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, and
+misery to multitudes of families, to set them free.
+
+"Where did all these black men come from?" I am sure I hear some young
+voice asking that question. Well, they came from Africa, the land of the
+negroes. In our time merchant ships are used to carry goods from one
+country to another. In old times many of these ships were used in
+carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The wicked captains would steal
+the poor black men in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had taken
+them prisoners in war. Some of them filled their ships so full of these
+miserable victims that hundreds of them died and were thrown overboard.
+Then, when they got to the West Indies or to the shores of our country,
+they would sell all that were left alive to the planters, to spend the
+rest of their lives like oxen chained to the yoke.
+
+It was a very sad and cruel business, but people then thought it right,
+and some of the best men took part in it. That is why I say the world
+has grown better. We have a higher idea of right and wrong in regard to
+such things than our forefathers had.
+
+Slaves were kept in all parts of the country, in the North as well as
+the South. There were more of them in the South than in the North, for
+they were of more use there as workers in the tobacco and rice and
+cotton fields. Most of those in the North were kept as house servants.
+Not many of them were needed in the fields.
+
+The North had not much use for slaves, and in time laws were passed,
+doing away with slavery in all the Northern states. Very likely the same
+thing would have taken place in the South if it had not been for the
+discovery of the cotton-gin. I have told you what a change this great
+invention made. Before that time it did not pay to raise cotton in our
+fields. After that time cotton grew to be a very profitable crop, and
+the cultivation of it spread wider and wider until it was planted over a
+great part of the South.
+
+This made a remarkable change. Negroes were very useful in the cotton
+fields, and no one in the South now thought of doing away with slavery.
+After 1808 no ships could bring slaves to this country, but there were a
+great many here then, and many others were afterwards born and grew up
+as slaves, so that the numbers kept increasing year after year.
+
+There were always some people, both in the North and the South, who did
+not like slavery. Among them were Franklin and Washington and Jefferson
+and other great men. In time there got to be so many of these people in
+the North that they formed what were called Anti-slavery Societies. Some
+of them said that slavery should be kept where it was and not taken into
+any new states. Others said that every slave in the United States ought
+to be set free.
+
+This brought on great excitement all over the country. The people in the
+North who believed in slavery were often violent. Now and then there
+were riots. Buildings where Anti-slavery meetings were held were burned
+down. One of the leaders of the Abolitionists, as the Anti-slavery
+people were called, was dragged through the streets of Boston with a
+rope tied round his body, and would have been hanged if his friends had
+not got him away.
+
+But as time went on the Abolitionists grew stronger in the North. Many
+slaves ran away from their masters, and these were hidden by their white
+friends until they could get to Canada, where they were safe. All
+through the South and North people were excited.
+
+I do not think many of our people expected the cruel war that was
+coming. If they had they might have been more careful what they said and
+did. But for all that, war was close at hand, and two things helped to
+bring it on.
+
+There had been fighting in Kansas, one of the territories that was to be
+made into a state, and among the fighters was an old man named John
+Brown, who thought that God had called him to do all he could for the
+freedom of the slaves.
+
+Some people think that John Brown was not quite right in his brain. What
+he did was to gather a body of men and to take possession of Harper's
+Ferry, on the Potomac River, where there was a government army. He
+thought that the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid in multitudes
+and that he could start a slave war that would run all through the
+South.
+
+It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But some troops came under
+Colonel Robert E. Lee, and Brown and his party were forced to surrender.
+Some of them were killed and wounded and the others taken prisoners.
+John Brown and six others were tried and hanged. But the half-insane old
+man had done his work. That fight at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to
+bring on the war.
+
+I said there were two things. The other was the election of Abraham
+Lincoln as President.
+
+For a long time, as I have told you, the Abolitionists, or people
+opposed to slavery, were few in number. When they grew more numerous
+they formed a political party, known as the Anti-slavery Party. In 1856
+a new party, called the Republican Party, was formed and took in all the
+Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election of that year eleven
+states voted for its candidate, John C. Fremont, the man who had taken
+California from Mexico.
+
+In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator of whom I shall soon tell you
+more, was the candidate of the Republican Party, and in the election of
+that year this new party was successful and Lincoln was elected
+President of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+
+I SHOULD like to tell you all about one of the greatest and noblest men
+who ever lived in our country, and give you his story from the time he
+was born until the time he died. But that would be biography, and this
+is a book of history. Biography is the story of a man; history is the
+story of a nation. So I cannot give you the whole life of Abraham
+Lincoln, but only that part of it which has to do with the history of
+our country.
+
+Nations, you should know, are divided into monarchies and republics. In
+a monarchy the ruler is called a king, or some other name which means
+the same thing. And when a king dies his son takes his place as king.
+The king may be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; he may be
+a genius, or he may be an idiot, without any sense at all; he may be
+kind and just, or he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he is
+king. There may be some good points in letting a man be born king, but
+you can see that there are many bad ones. The history of the nations
+has often shown this, as you may have seen in what we have said of some
+of the English kings who had to do with America.
+
+In a republic the ruler--who is called president instead of king--is not
+born to his office, but is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule the
+nation all his life, but only for a few years. In that way the best and
+wisest man in the nation may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always
+get the best man in the United States; but that is the fault of the
+people, it is not the fault of the plan. There is one thing sure, we
+never get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.
+
+There are times when we do choose our best and wisest man, and everybody
+thinks we did so when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As I have told
+you, as soon as he was made President a great war began between the two
+halves of our people. It is not so easy to rule in war as in peace, and
+I must say that poor Lincoln had a very hard time of it. But he did the
+best he could, and people say now that no man in our nation could have
+done better. Abraham Lincoln stands next to George Washington among the
+great and noble men of America.
+
+There is one more thing it is well to know. It is not only the rich and
+proud that we choose to be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life
+as poor boys, and none of them began poorer than "honest Abe Lincoln,"
+as the people he lived among called him. He well deserved this name, for
+he was always good and honest.
+
+No doubt there are many poor boys among my readers, but I do not believe
+that any of you are as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as
+hard a life. So you see that while a king must have a king or great
+noble for father, a President may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any
+one of my young readers, if he can bring himself strongly to the notice
+of the people, may become President, and I should not wonder at all if
+some one among you should do so in future times.
+
+I told you that I would not speak about Abraham Lincoln's early life,
+but I see that I shall have to do so. He was born in a mean little
+log-cabin in the back woods a hundred years ago, in the year 1809. His
+father could not read and did not like to work, and the poor little
+fellow had hardly enough to eat.
+
+His mother loved him, but she could do little for him, and she died when
+he was only eight years old. Then his father married a second wife. She
+was a good woman, and she did all she could for the poor, forlorn little
+boy. But it did not look much then as if this ragged and hungry little
+chap would become President of the United States.
+
+There was one good thing about little Abe, he had a great love for
+books. He went to school only long enough to learn to read and write,
+but he borrowed and read all the books he could get. When he found he
+could not go to school he studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so
+he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen fire, working out the
+problems on the back of a wooden fire shovel. When this was full he
+would scrape it off smooth and begin again. In this way the boy got to
+be the best scholar in all the country around him. How many of you would
+have worked as hard as he did to get an education? Yet it was this kind
+of work that made him President.
+
+Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning. He was always a good
+talker, and he grew to be one of the best public speakers of his times.
+He became so well known and so well respected that at length he was sent
+to Congress. Lincoln did not believe that slavery was a good thing for
+the country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in itself. So he joined
+the Republican Party, which had just been formed.
+
+There was another fine speaker in Illinois named Douglas, who had
+different ideas about slavery from Lincoln and was a member of the
+Democratic Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about Illinois making
+speeches to the people, and great crowds came to hear them, for they
+were two of the best speakers in the country. Everywhere people were
+talking about Lincoln and Douglas and saying what able men they were.
+
+In 1860 came the time when a new President was to be chosen, and out of
+all the political leaders of the country these two men from far-west
+Illinois were selected--Douglas by those who were in favor of slavery
+and Lincoln by those who opposed slavery. When election day came round
+and the votes were counted, Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, was
+found to be elected President of the United States.
+
+The people of the South were in a terrible state of mind when they found
+that a Republican, a man opposed to slavery, was elected President. They
+could not tell what would take place. The Abolitionists who were against
+slavery were in power and might pass laws that would rob them of all
+their slaves. For years they had been fighting the North in
+Congress--fighting by words, I mean. Now they determined to leave the
+Union, and to fight with swords and guns if the North would not let them
+go in peace. One by one the Southern States passed resolutions to go out
+of the Union. And on all sides they collected powder and balls and other
+implements of war, for their leaders felt sure they would have to fight.
+But Lincoln hoped the states would not quarrel. He begged them not to.
+But if they did it was his duty to do what the people had put him there
+for. He had been elected President of the United States, and he must do
+all he could to keep these states united.
+
+It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abraham Lincoln became President.
+By the middle of April the North and South were at war. Both sides had
+their soldiers in the field and fighting had begun. The South wanted to
+take Washington, and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce battle was
+fought at a place called Bull Run, a few miles south of Washington.
+
+The Southern States formed a Union of their own, which was called the
+Southern Confederacy. They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for
+the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jefferson Davis for their
+President. Davis had fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena
+Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Congress, where he showed
+himself an able lawmaker. So the South chose him as their best man for
+President.
+
+The war was half over before President Lincoln did anything about
+slavery. He was there to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But the
+time came when he found that freeing the slaves would help him in saving
+the Union. When this time came--it was on the 1st of January, 1863--he
+declared that all the slaves should be free. It was a great thing for
+this country, for it was clear that there could be no peace while
+slavery remained.
+
+But the war went on more fiercely than ever, and it was not until April,
+1865, that it came to an end. The South was not able to fight any longer
+and had to give up, and the Union was saved. It was saved without
+slavery, which was a very good thing for both North and South, as we
+have since found out.
+
+But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not live to learn what the country
+gained by the war, for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked and
+foolish man, who thought he would avenge the South by shooting the
+President.
+
+It was a terrible deed. The whole country mourned for its noblest man,
+slain in the hour of victory. The South as well as the North suffered by
+his death, for he was too just a man to oppress those who had been
+beaten in war, and in him all the people, North and South, lost their
+best and ablest friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE GREAT CIVIL WAR
+
+
+I HAVE no doubt that some of the young folks who read this book will
+want to hear the story of the great war that was spoken of in the last
+chapter. Some of the boys will, at any rate. The girls do not care so
+much about war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world would be
+much better off if there were no wars.
+
+Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys something about it. The
+girls can skip it, if they wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil
+War would take a book five times as large as this, so all I can do is to
+draw a sort of outline map of it. A civil war, you should know, means a
+war within a nation, where part of a people fight against the other
+part. A war between two nations is called a foreign war.
+
+When our Civil War broke out we had thirty-three states--we have more
+than forty-five to-day. Eleven of these states tried to leave the Union
+and twenty-two remained, so that the Union states were two to one
+against the non-Union. But the Union states had more than twice the
+people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as you may see, the war
+was a one-sided affair. It was nearly all fought in the South, whose
+people suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the Union. Many of
+them lost all they had and became very poor.
+
+There were three fields or regions in which this war took place. One of
+these was a narrow region, lying between Washington and Richmond, the
+two capital cities. But small as it was, here the greatest battles were
+fought. Both sides were fighting fiercely to save their capitals.
+
+The second region of the war was in the West. This was a vast region,
+extending from Kentucky and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here
+there were many long, weary marches and much hard fighting and great
+loss of life. The third region was on the ocean and rivers, where
+iron-clad ships first met in battle, and where some famous combats took
+place.
+
+Over these three regions a million and more of men struggled for years,
+fighting with rifle and cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and
+wounding one another and causing no end of misery in all parts of the
+land. For the people at home suffered as much as the men on the
+battle-field, and many mothers and sisters were heartbroken when word
+came to them that their dear sons or brothers had been shot down on the
+field of blood. War is the most terrible thing upon the earth, though
+men try to make it look like a pleasant show with their banners and
+trumpets and drums.
+
+As soon as the news of the war came there was a great coming and going
+of soldiers, and beating of drums, and fluttering of banners, and making
+of speeches, and thousands marched away, some to Washington and some to
+Richmond, and many more to the strongholds of the West. Mothers wept as
+they bade good-by to their sons, whom they might never see again. And
+many of the soldier-boys had sad hearts under their brave faces. Soon
+hundreds of these poor fellows were falling dead and wounded on fields
+of battle, and then their people at home had good reason to weep and
+mourn.
+
+I have told you about the battle of Bull Run, south of Washington, the
+first great battle of the war. Here the Southern army gained the
+victory, and the people of the South were full of joy. But Congress now
+called for half a million of men and voted half a billion of dollars.
+Both sides saw that they had a great war before them.
+
+Bull Run was the only severe battle in 1861, but in 1862 both the North
+and the South had large armies, and there was much hard fighting in the
+East and the West.
+
+I must tell you first of the fighting in Virginia. General George B.
+McClellan was in command of the Union army there. He led it down close
+to Richmond, which he hoped to capture. There was a sharp fight at a
+place called Fair Oaks, where General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate
+general, was wounded. General Robert E. Lee took his place. They could
+not have picked out a better man, for he proved himself to be one of the
+greatest soldiers of modern times.
+
+The Confederates had another fine general named Thomas J. Jackson. He
+was called "Stonewall" Jackson, because, in the battle of Bull Run, some
+one had said:
+
+"Look at Jackson! There he stands like a stone wall!"
+
+General Lee and Stonewall Jackson were not the men to keep quiet. In a
+short time they drove McClellan back after a hard fight lasting a whole
+week, and then made a sudden march to the north. Here was another Union
+army, on the old battle-field of Bull Run. A dreadful battle followed;
+men fell by thousands; in the end the Union army was defeated and forced
+back towards Washington.
+
+General Lee knew that he could not take Washington, so he marched away
+north, waded his men across the Potomac River, and entered the state of
+Maryland. This was a slave state, and he hoped many of the people would
+join his army. But the farmers of Maryland loved the Union too well for
+that, so General Lee got very few of them in his ranks.
+
+Then he went west, followed by General McClellan, and at a place called
+Antietam the two armies met; and there was fought the bloodiest battle
+of the war. They kept at it all day long and neither side seemed beaten.
+But that night General Lee and his men waded back across the Potomac
+into Virginia, leaving McClellan master of the field. There was one more
+terrible battle in Virginia that year, in which General Burnside, who
+after McClellan commanded the Union army, tried to take the city of
+Fredericksburg, but was defeated and his men driven back with a dreadful
+loss of life.
+
+Both armies now rested until the spring of 1863, and then another
+desperate battle was fought. General Hooker had taken General Burnside's
+place, and thought he also must fight a battle, but he did not dare to
+try Fredericksburg as Burnside had done, so he marched up the river and
+crossed it into a rough and wild country known as the Wilderness.
+
+General Lee hurried there to meet him and the two armies came together
+at a place called Chancellorsville. They fought in the wild woods, where
+the trees in some places were so thick that the men could not see one
+another. But Stonewall Jackson marched to the left through the woods
+and made a sudden attack on the right wing of the Union army.
+
+This part of the army was taken by surprise and driven back. Hooker's
+men fought all that day and the next, but they could not recover from
+their surprise and loss, and in the end they had to cross the river back
+again. General Lee had won another great victory. But Stonewall Jackson
+was wounded and soon died, and Lee would rather have lost the battle
+than to lose this famous general.
+
+Do you not think the North had a right to feel very much out of heart by
+this time? The war had gone on for two years, and the Union army had
+been defeated in all the great battles fought in Virginia. The only
+victory won was that at Antietam in Maryland. They had been beaten at
+the two battles of Bull Run, the seven days' fight at Richmond, and the
+battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, while the battle of
+Antietam had been won with great loss of life.
+
+But there was soon to be a victory that would make up for more than one
+defeat. Shortly after the fight at Chancellorsville General Lee broke
+camp and marched north with the greatest speed. The Union army followed
+as fast as they could march, for there was danger of Baltimore or even
+Philadelphia being taken. Both armies kept on until they reached the
+town of Gettysburg, in the south of Pennsylvania. Here was fought the
+greatest battle of the war. It lasted for three days, the 1st, 2d and 3d
+of July, 1863.
+
+The loss of life on both sides was dreadful. But the Confederates lost
+the most men and lost the battle besides. They tried in vain to break
+through the Union lines, and in the end they were forced to retreat. On
+the 4th of July General Lee sadly began his backward march, and the
+telegraph wires carried all through the North the tidings of a great
+victory. This was the turning point in the war. Six months before,
+President Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom of the slaves, and the
+armies were now fighting to make his word good. Negroes after this were
+taken into the Union ranks, that they might help in the fight for their
+own liberty.
+
+I wish to say just here that the people of the North bore the defeats in
+Virginia better than you would think. They had good reason to, for while
+they had been losing battles in the East they had been winning battles
+in the West. So one helped to make up for the other. If you will follow
+me now to the West we will see what was taking place there.
+
+The North did not have to change its generals as often in the West as in
+the East, for it soon found a good one; and it was wise enough to hold
+on to him. This was General Ulysses S. Grant, who is now honored as one
+of the greatest generals of the world's history.
+
+Grant was only a captain at first. Then he was made a colonel, and was
+soon raised to the rank of general. He met the Confederates first at
+Belmont, Missouri. Here he was defeated, and had to take his men aboard
+river-boats to get them away. That was his first and nearly his last
+defeat.
+
+The Confederates had built two strong forts in Kentucky which they named
+Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. General Grant marched against them with an
+army and Commodore Foote steamed against them with a fleet of iron-clad
+steamboats. Fort Henry was taken by the fleet before Grant could get to
+it. Then he marched across country to Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland
+River. He attacked this fort so fiercely that the Confederates tried to
+get out of it but did not succeed. Then they proposed to surrender, and
+asked him what terms he would give them.
+
+"No terms except an immediate and unconditional surrender," he said. "I
+propose to move immediately on your works."
+
+This settled the matter. They surrendered--fifteen thousand in all.
+After that many said that U. S. Grant stood for "Unconditional
+Surrender" Grant.
+
+I cannot tell you about all the fights that took place in the West, but
+there was a terrible battle at a place called Pittsburg Landing, which
+lasted two days, and in which Grant came very near being defeated. There
+was a severe one at Murfreesboro on the last day of the year, and
+another three days afterwards. Grant was not there, but Bragg, the
+Confederate General, was defeated.
+
+The Confederates had an important stronghold on the Mississippi River at
+the city of Vicksburg, where they had many forts and a large number of
+cannon. General Sherman tried to capture these forts but was driven
+back. Then General Grant tried it and found it a very hard task.
+
+The country was all swamp and creeks which no army could get through, so
+Grant at last marched south on the other side of the river, and then
+crossed over and marched north again. He had to fight every step of his
+way, and to live on the food his men could carry, for he had cut loose
+from the North. But he soon reached the city and began a long siege. The
+Confederates held out until all their food was gone, and until they had
+eaten up nearly all their horses and mules. Then they surrendered.
+Twenty-seven thousand men were taken prisoners.
+
+This took place on the 4th of July, 1863, the same day that General Lee
+marched away from the field at Gettysburg. That was one of the greatest
+Fourths of July this country had ever seen, for with it the last chance
+of the South was lost. General Lee had lost many thousands of his hardy
+veterans, men whom he could never replace. And in the fighting around
+Vicksburg and the capture of that city nearly fifty thousand more fell
+on the battle-field or were taken prisoners. It was a loss which the
+leaders of the Southern army bitterly felt. Fighting kept on for two
+years more, but they would have been wiser to give up then and save all
+the death and misery that came to them afterwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+WAR ON SEA AND LAND
+
+
+I HAVE told you part of the story of how our people fought on land. Now
+suppose we take a look at the water, and see how they fought there. Have
+any of you heard of the wonderful battle between the "Monitor" and the
+"Merrimac"? If you have you will be sure to remember it, for it is one
+of the strangest stories in the history of war. In the lower part of
+Chesapeake Bay is what I may call a pocket of water named Hampton Roads,
+into which the James River flows. Here, in the month of March, 1862, lay
+a fleet of war-vessels. These were not the kind of ships-of-war which we
+see now-a-days. They were wooden vessels, such as were used in former
+wars, but which would be of no more use than floating logs against the
+sea-monsters of to-day.
+
+Something strange was soon to happen to these proud ships. On the 8th of
+March there came into the waters of the bay a very odd looking craft. It
+was a ship, but instead of a deck it had a sloping roof made of iron
+bars. It looked something like a house gone adrift. I fancy the people
+in the wooden ships must have been a little scared when they saw it
+coming, for they had never seen a war-vessel with an iron roof before.
+
+They might well be scared, for they soon found that their cannon were of
+no more use than pea-shooters against this queer craft. The cannon-balls
+bounded off from her sides like so many peas. On came the monster and
+struck one of the ships with her iron beak, tearing a great hole in its
+side. Down into the waters sunk the gallant ship, with all on board. And
+there it lay with its flag flying like a flag above a grave. Another
+ship, the "Congress," was driven on the mud and had to give up the
+fight.
+
+There were three more ships in the fleet, but it was now near night, and
+so the "Merrimac," as the iron monster was called, steamed away. Her
+captain thought it would be an easy thing to settle with them the next
+morning, and very likely the people on them did not sleep well that
+night, for they could not forget what had happened to the "Congress" and
+the "Cumberland," and felt sure their turn was to come next.
+
+But, as the old saying goes, "There is many a slip between cup and lip."
+The "Merrimac" was to learn the truth of this. For when she came grimly
+out the next day, expecting to sink the rest of the fleet and then steam
+up to the city of Washington and perhaps burn that, her captain found
+before him the queerest thing in the shape of a ship he had ever seen.
+It was an iron vessel that looked like "a cheese box on a raft." All
+that could be seen was a flat deck that came just above the water, and
+above this a round tower of iron, out of which peeped two monsters of
+cannon.
+
+This strange vessel had come into Hampton Roads during the night, and
+there it lay ready to do battle for the Union. It was a new style of
+war-ship that had been built in New York and was called the "Monitor."
+
+The "Merrimac" soon had enough to keep herself busy, and was forced to
+let the wooden fleet alone. For four long hours these two iron monsters
+battered each other with cannon balls. Such a fight had never been seen
+before. It was the first time two iron-clad ships had met in war.
+
+I cannot say that either ship was hurt much. The balls could not get
+through the iron bars and plates and glanced off into the water. But the
+"Merrimac" got the worst of it, and in the end she turned and hurried
+back to Norfolk, from which place she had come. The "Monitor" waited for
+her, but she never came out again. Soon afterwards the Confederates left
+Norfolk and sunk their iron ship, and that was the last of the
+"Merrimac."
+
+When the news of this wonderful sea-fight got to Europe the kings and
+ministers of war read it with alarm. They saw they had something to do.
+Their wooden war-vessels were out of date, and they went to work in a
+hurry to build iron-clad ships. To-day all the great nations of the
+earth have fleets of steel-covered ships-of-war, and the United States
+has some of the best and strongest of this kind of ships.
+
+All through the war there were battles of iron-clads. On the western
+rivers steamboats were plated with iron and attacked the forts on shore.
+And along the coast iron-clad vessels helped the wooden ships to
+blockade the ports of the South. More vessels like the "Monitor" were
+built in the North, and a number somewhat like the "Merrimac" were built
+in the South. I cannot say that any of them did much good either North
+or South.
+
+A great naval battle was fought in the Mississippi, which led to the
+capture of New Orleans, and another was fought in the Bay of Mobile, on
+the Gulf of Mexico. Here there were some strong forts and a powerful
+iron-clad ship. Admiral Farragut sailed into the bay with a fleet of
+wooden ships and several iron vessels like the "Monitor." When he went
+past the forts he stood in the rigging of his ship, with his spy-glass
+in his hand. He did not seem to care anything for cannon-balls. He took
+the forts, and since then Farragut has been one of our great naval
+heroes.
+
+There was one Confederate privateer, the "Alabama," which caused
+terrible loss to the merchants of the North. It took in all sixty-five
+vessels, which were set on fire and burned. In June, 1864, the "Alabama"
+was met near the coast of France by the frigate "Kearsarge," and a
+furious battle took place. For two hours they fought, and then the
+"Alabama" sagged down into the water and sank to the bottom of the sea.
+She had done much harm to the North, but her career was at an end.
+
+Now let us turn back to the war on land and see what was going on there.
+I have told you the story of the fighting up to the great 4th of July,
+1863, when Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant and General Lee
+marched away from Gettysburg. That is where we dropped the threads which
+we have now to take up again.
+
+After Grant had taken Vicksburg and opened the Mississippi from St.
+Louis to its mouth, he set out for the town of Chattanooga, which is in
+Tennessee just north of Georgia. Here there had been a great battle in
+which the Confederate army won the victory, and the Union troops were
+shut up in Chattanooga with very little to eat.
+
+Grant was not there long before there came a change. General Bragg, the
+Confederate commander, had his army on the summits of two mountains
+named Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. These were defended by
+strong forts. But the Union troops charged up the mountain sides in the
+face of the fire of rifles and cannon and soon had possession of the
+forts. General Bragg's army was defeated with great loss. This was one
+of the most brilliant victories of the war. The battle of Lookout
+Mountain has been called "the battle above the clouds."
+
+Everybody now saw that General Grant was much the best general on the
+Union side, and President Lincoln made him commander-in-chief of all the
+armies in the field. Grant at once laid his plans to have the armies all
+work together. General Sherman was left in command of the army of the
+West and Grant came to Virginia to fight General Lee.
+
+In the green month of May, 1864, all the armies were set in motion, and
+North and South came together for the last great struggle of the war.
+
+Grant led his men into the Wilderness where General Hooker and his army
+had been sadly defeated the year before. Lee was there to meet him, and
+a great battle was fought in the depth of the woods and thickets. It
+lasted two whole days, but neither side won.
+
+Then Grant marched towards Richmond and Lee hurried down to head him
+off. Several hard battles were fought, the last being at Cold Harbor,
+near Richmond. Here the Union army lost terribly. Ten thousand men were
+killed and wounded, while the Confederates, who were behind strong
+earthworks, lost only a thousand.
+
+General Grant saw he could not reach Richmond that way, so he crossed
+the James River and began a siege of Petersburg and Richmond. This siege
+lasted nine months, both sides digging instead of fighting till great
+heaps of earth were thrown up, on whose tops were hundreds of cannon.
+
+General Grant kept his men very busy, as you may see. But General
+Sherman's men were just as busy. He marched south from Chattanooga, and
+fought battle after battle until he had gone far into Georgia and
+captured the important city of Atlanta. General Hood, the Confederate
+commander, then made a rapid march to Tennessee, thinking that Sherman
+would follow him. But Sherman did not move. The brave General Thomas was
+there to take care of Hood and his army.
+
+"Let him go; he couldn't please me better," said Sherman.
+
+What Sherman did was to cut loose from the railroads and telegraphs and
+march his whole army into the center of Georgia. For a whole month the
+people of the North heard nothing of him. His sixty thousand men might
+be starving for food, or might all be killed, so far as was known. It
+was November when they started and it was near Christmas when they were
+heard of again.
+
+They had lived on the country and destroyed railroads and stores, and at
+length they came to the sea at the city of Savannah. Three daring scouts
+made their way in a boat down the river by night and brought to the
+fleet the first news of Sherman's march. No doubt you have heard the
+song "Marching through Georgia." That was written to describe Sherman's
+famous march.
+
+The South was now getting weaker, and weaker, and most men saw that the
+war was near its end. It came to an end in April, 1865. Grant kept
+moving south till he got round the Confederate earthworks at Petersburg,
+and Lee was forced to leave Richmond in great haste.
+
+The Union army followed as fast as it could march, and the cavalry rode
+on until it was ahead of the Confederates. Then General Lee saw that he
+was surrounded by an army far stronger than his own. He could fight no
+longer. His men were nearly starved. To fight would be to have them all
+killed. So on the 9th of April he offered his sword to General Grant,
+and the long and bloody war was at an end.
+
+No one was gladder of this than President Lincoln, who had done so much
+to bring it about. Poor man! five days afterwards he was shot in a
+theatre at Washington by an actor named John Wilkes Booth. This was done
+out of revenge for the defeat of the South. But the people of the South
+did not approve of this act of murder, and in Abraham Lincoln they lost
+one whom they would have found a good friend.
+
+Booth was followed and killed, but his death could not bring back to
+life the murdered President, whom the people loved so warmly that they
+mourned for him as if he had been, like Washington, the Father of his
+Country. It was a terrible crime, and it turned the joy which the people
+felt, at the end of the war, into the deepest sorrow and grief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE
+
+
+LET us suppose that the history of the whole world is spread out before
+us like a picture, and that we are looking down on it. What will we see?
+Well, we will see places where a terrible storm seems to have swept over
+the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its track. And we will
+see other places where the sun seems to have poured down its bright
+beams, and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The dark places are
+those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history
+there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all
+the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at
+home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and
+happiness to the nations.
+
+In the picture of our own history we see such dark and bright places.
+And the darkest of them all is the terrible Civil War, the story of
+which you have just read. For in this war our people fought against and
+killed one another, and all the harm was done at home, instead of in
+foreign lands. The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thousands of our
+people were killed or wounded, and the ground in hundreds of places was
+red with blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, railroads were
+torn up, ships were sunk, growing crops were trampled into the earth.
+And last of all came that horrid murder of our good and great President
+Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men who ever sat in the
+presidential chair. Such is war--the most frightful thing we can think
+of or talk about. Some of my young friends may like to play soldier; but
+if they should grow up and get to be real soldiers they would find out
+what war means. Now, if we look again at the picture of our history, we
+shall see a great bright space of peace following the dark space of the
+Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about now--the reign of
+peace, when everybody was busy at work in building up what had been torn
+down by the red hand of war, and our country grew faster than it had
+ever grown before.
+
+There is one thing I must say here. I have told you that slavery was the
+cause of the war. If there had been no slaves in the country there would
+have been no war. And the one good thing the war did for us was to get
+rid of the slaves. President Lincoln declared that all the slaves should
+be free, and since that time there has not been a slave in the land. So
+we can never have a war for that cause again.
+
+When the war was done, the soldiers marched back to their homes. Their
+old battle-flags, rent and torn by bullets, were put away as valued
+treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thousands of men, were
+given back to the government; they took up their axes, they went into
+the fields with their ploughs, they entered the workshops with their
+tools, and soon they were all at work again, as if they had never seen a
+field of battle.
+
+This took place long before any of my young readers were born. But there
+are many old soldiers living who took part in it, and when you see the
+veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, marching with their ragged
+flags and battle-scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of what
+they have seen, and make you think of the fallen comrades they left
+behind, dead or bleeding upon the battle-field.
+
+During your short lives there has been no war which came near to us in
+our homes. The angel of peace has spread her white wings over our land,
+and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. None of our young folks
+have known what it is for an army of soldiers to march past their homes,
+destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and ruins where there had been
+happy homes and fertile fields. But in the past of our country this
+happened to many as young as you, and they were glad that their lives
+were left them, after everything else was gone.
+
+Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, and go on to see what
+took place under the blessed reign of peace. The first thing of which I
+shall tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. You know how the
+telegraph wires spread over the country until they were many thousands
+of miles in length. In the next chapter you may read how the electric
+telegraph was invented. In the year after the war ended a still greater
+thing was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the ocean from Europe
+to America. This had been done before, but it had proved a failure. The
+new cable was a success, and since then a man in London has been able to
+talk with a man in New York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of
+course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the click of the
+telegraph instrument.
+
+The year after that a great addition was made to the United States.
+There was a large region in the north, known as Russian America, which
+Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million dollars. Many
+people talked about this as some of their forefathers had talked about
+the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. They said that it was
+a land of ice and snow which Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it
+would be of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all that, and it
+has proven a very good bargain.
+
+This country we now call Alaska. We get there all the sealskins from
+which the rich and warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most of the
+canned salmon, which some of you think very good food, come from Alaska.
+That country is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that is not all,
+for it is rich in gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold are obtained
+there every year. It has been something like California, whose gold was
+not found till Americans got there to dig.
+
+These are not the only things that took place in the years after the
+war. Railroads were being built in all directions. East and west, north
+and south, they went, and travel became easier than it had been before.
+The greatest thing done in this way was the building of a railroad
+across the mountains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far Pacific
+coast, three thousand miles away from the Atlantic shores. Before that
+time men who wanted to go to California had to drag along over thousands
+of miles in slow wagon trains and spend weeks and months on the road.
+Now they could go there in less than a week. It was the longest railroad
+that the world had ever seen, up to that time.
+
+While all this was going on, people were coming to this country in
+great multitudes, crossing the ocean to find new homes in our happy
+land. They did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in former
+times, but were brought here in swift steamships, that crossed the seas
+almost as fast as the iron horse crossed the land. All these new people
+went to work, some in the cities and some in the country, and they all
+helped to make our nation rich and powerful.
+
+But you must not think that everything went well, and that we had no
+dark days. Every country has its troubles, even in times of peace. War
+is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, storms sweep over the
+land, earthquakes shake down cities, and many other disasters take
+place. Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control, is the
+most terrible; and it is of a frightful fire that I wish to speak.
+
+About the year 1831 a small fort stood near the shore of Lake Michigan,
+and around this a few pioneer families had built their homes, which were
+only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years afterwards, the fort and the
+huts had long been gone and a large city stood at that place. Its growth
+had been wonderful. Only forty years old and already it was one of the
+great cities of the country. This was the famous city of Chicago, which
+has grown more rapidly than any other great city ever known.
+
+One night in October a dreadful thing took place in this city. A cow
+kicked over a lamp in a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and in
+a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The people ran for water, but
+they were too slow, and in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames.
+You may think that this was not of much account, but there happened to
+be a gale of wind, and soon great blazing fragments were flying through
+the air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not long before there
+was a terrible fire over almost the entire city.
+
+Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until
+it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two
+days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up
+in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and
+two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the
+most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire
+or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it
+is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the
+world.
+
+This was not the only disaster which came upon the country. In 1886
+there was a frightful earthquake in South Carolina, that shook down a
+great part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 there was a terrible
+flood that swept away the young city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and
+drowned more than two thousand people. And there were tornadoes, or wind
+storms, in the west that blew down whole towns as you might blow down a
+house of cardboard with your breath. And there were great strikes and
+riots that were almost like war, and various other troubles. But all
+these could not stop the growth of the country. Every year it became
+richer. New people came, new factories were built, new fields were
+farmed, and the United States seemed like a great hive of industry, and
+its people like so many bees, working away, day by day, and gathering
+wealth as bees gather honey.
+
+It not only got many of the old articles of wealth, but it found many
+new ones also. Never was there a country with so many inventors or men
+that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there
+more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors;
+I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men
+busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help
+everybody--the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the
+cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand,
+as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE MARVELS OF INVENTION
+
+
+IT is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for twenty-four hours and to go
+many days without half enough to eat. I think all my readers will agree
+with me in this. I fancy none of you would like to find an empty table
+before you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a thing that has
+happened to many inventors; and one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to
+whose genius we owe the electric telegraph.
+
+You know about the invention of the steamboat, the locomotive, the
+cotton-gin and various other early inventions; but there have been many
+later inventions, and one of the most important of these is the
+telegraph, which tells us every day what is taking place over the whole
+world.
+
+Professor Morse was a New York artist who studied painting in Europe,
+and in the year 1832 took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day a
+talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. Jackson, one of the
+passengers, told how some persons in Paris had sent an electric current
+through several miles of wire in less than a second of time.
+
+[Illustration: THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR FAMOUS AEROPLANE.]
+
+"If that is the case," said Morse, "why could not words and sentences be
+sent in the same way?"
+
+"That's a good idea. It would be a great thing if we could send news as
+fast as lightning," said one of the passengers.
+
+"Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we can do it."
+
+Very likely the rest of the passengers soon forgot all about that
+conversation, but Morse did not. During the remainder of the voyage he
+was very quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking over what he
+had heard. Before the ship had reached New York he had worked out a plan
+of telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in tubes underground, and
+to use an alphabet of dots and dashes, the same that is used by
+telegraphers to-day.
+
+When he went on shore Morse said to the captain: "Captain, if you should
+hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world,
+remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship 'Sully.'"
+
+"If I can make it go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go round
+the world," he said to a passenger.
+
+But it is easier to think out a thing than to put it in practice. Poor
+Morse was more than ten years in working out his plans and getting
+people to help him in them. He got out of money and was near starving,
+but he kept at it. After three years he managed to send a message
+through seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read it, but his
+friends could not, and no one was ready to put money in such a scheme.
+They looked at it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to Europe and
+tried to get money there, but he found the people there as hard to
+convince as those in America.
+
+"No one is in such a hurry for news as all that," they said. "People
+would rather get their news in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr.
+Morse, but it would take a great deal of money to lay miles of them
+underground, and we are not going to take such chances as that with our
+money."
+
+Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant him a sum of money. He
+wanted to build a wire from Baltimore to Washington and show how it
+would work. But it is never easy to get money from Congress, and he kept
+at it for five years in vain.
+
+It was the 3d of March, 1843. At twelve o'clock that night the session
+of Congress would end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till nearly
+midnight, in hopes his bill would pass. Then he gave it up in despair
+and went to his boarding house. He was sure his little bill would not be
+thought of in the crowd of business before Congress and was greatly
+depressed in consequence.
+
+He came down to breakfast the next morning with a very sad face, hardly
+knowing how he was to pay his board and get home. He was met by a young
+lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came to him with a smile.
+
+"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she said.
+
+"For what, my dear friend?"
+
+"For the passage of your bill."
+
+"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the passage of my bill?"
+
+"Yes; do you not know of it?"
+
+"No; it cannot be true!"
+
+"You came home too early last night, Mr. Morse. Your bill has passed,
+and I am happy to be the first to bring you the good news."
+
+"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "For your good news I
+promise you this: when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the
+honor of selecting the first message to be sent over it."
+
+Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars. It was not much, but
+Morse went actively to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his pipe
+in, through which the wire was to run. He got another inventor to help
+him, Ezra Cornell, who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr.
+Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch at a great rate, laid the
+pipe, and covered it in. In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred
+feet of pipe.
+
+But Cornell did not think the underground wire would work.
+
+"It will work," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, men
+have laid short lines in England which work very well. What can be done
+there can be done here."
+
+For all that, it would not work. A year passed and only seven thousand
+dollars of the money were left, and all the wires laid were of no use.
+
+"If it won't go underground we must try and coax it to go over-ground,"
+said Morse.
+
+Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass insulators; it now
+worked to a charm. On May 11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at
+Baltimore nominated Henry Clay for President, and the news was sent to
+Washington in all haste by the first railroad train. But the passengers
+were surprised to find that they brought stale news; everybody in
+Washington knew it already. It had reached there an hour or two before
+by telegraph. That was a great triumph for Morse. The telegraph line was
+not then finished quite to Baltimore. When it reached there, on May
+24th, the first message sent was one which Miss Ellsworth had chosen
+from the Bible, "What hath God wrought?" God had wrought wonderfully
+indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound the ends of the earth
+together.
+
+If I should attempt to tell you about all our inventors I am afraid it
+would be a long story. There is almost no end to them, and many of them
+invented wonderful machines. I might tell you, for instance, about
+Thomas Blanchard, who invented the machine by which tacks are made,
+dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick. This is only one out of
+many of his inventions. One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow
+water, and which could go hundreds of miles up rivers where Fulton's
+steamboat would have run aground.
+
+Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaping machine. When
+he showed his reaper at the London World's Fair in 1851, the newspapers
+made great fun of it. The London "Times" said it was a cross between a
+chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine. But when it was put in a
+wheat-field and gathered in the wheat like a living and thinking
+machine, they changed their tune, and the "Times" said it was worth more
+than all the rest of the Exhibition. This was the first of the great
+agricultural machines. Since then hundreds have been made, and the
+old-fashioned slow hand-work in the fields is over. McCormick made a
+fortune out of his machine. I cannot say that of all inventors, for many
+of them had as hard a time as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them,
+Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe, came as near starving as Professor
+Morse.
+
+All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe to Charles Goodyear. Before
+his time India-rubber was of very little use. It would grow stiff in the
+winter and sticky in the summer, and people said it was a nuisance. What
+was wanted was a rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this
+Goodyear set himself to make.
+
+After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the gum, and by accident
+touched a red-hot stove with the mixture. To his delight the gum did not
+melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with sulphur and exposed to heat
+would stand heat and cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it took
+him six years more to make it a success, and he never made much money
+from it. Yet everybody honors him to-day as a great inventor.
+
+Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sewing machine. For years he
+worked at it, and when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it. He
+went to London, as Morse had done, and had the same bad luck. He had to
+pawn his model and patent papers to get home again. His wife was very
+sick, and he reached home only in time to see her die.
+
+Poor fellow! life was very dark to him then. His invention had been
+stolen by others, who were making fortunes out of it while he was in
+need of bread. Friends lent him money and he brought suit against these
+robbers, but it took six years to win his rights in the courts. In the
+end he grew rich and gained great honor from his invention.
+
+There has been no man more talked of in our time than Thomas A. Edison.
+All of you must have heard of him. He went into business when he was
+only twelve years old, selling newspapers and other things on the cars,
+and he was so bright and did so well that he was able to send his
+parents five hundred dollars a year. When he was sixteen he saved the
+child of a station-master from being run over by a locomotive, and the
+father was so grateful that he taught him how to telegraph. He was so
+quick in his work that he become one of the best telegraph operators in
+the United States.
+
+After he grew up Edison began to invent. He worked out a plan by which
+he could send two messages at once over one wire. He kept at this till
+he could send sixteen messages over a wire, eight one way and eight the
+other. He made money out of his inventions, but the telegraph companies
+made much more. Instead of sending fifty or sixty words a minute, he
+showed them how they could send several thousand words a minute.
+
+Then he began experimenting with the electric light. He did not invent
+this, but he made great improvements in it. The electric light could be
+made, but it could not be controlled and used before Edison taught
+people how to keep it in its little glass bulb. How brilliantly the
+streets, the stores, and many of the houses are now lit up by
+electricity. All from Edison's wonderful discoveries.
+
+Then there was the telephone, or talking telegraph, which many of you
+may have used yourselves. That was not known before 1876; but people now
+wonder how they ever got along without it. It is certainly very
+wonderful, when you have to speak with somebody a mile or a hundred
+miles away, to ring him up and talk with him over the telephone wire as
+easily as if you were talking with some one in the next room. The
+telephone, as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It is only
+another form of the telegraph. The telephone was not invented by Edison,
+but by another American named Alexander Bell. But Edison improved it. He
+added the "transmitter," which is used in all telephones, and is very
+important indeed. So we must give credit first to Bell and second to
+Edison for the telephone.
+
+Edison's most wonderful invention is the phonograph. This word means
+"sound writer." One of you may talk with a little machine, and the sound
+of your voice will make marks on a little roll of gelatine or tinfoil
+within. Then when the machine is set going you may hear your own voice
+coming back to you. Or by the use of a great trumpet called a megaphone,
+it may be heard all over a large room.
+
+The wonderful thing is that the sound of a man's voice may be heard long
+after he is dead. If they had possessed the phonograph in old times we
+might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius Cæsar speaking to-day. Very
+likely many persons who live a hundred or two hundred years from now may
+hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his own machines. Does not this
+seem like magic?
+
+In every way this is a wonderful age of invention. Look at the trolley
+car, shooting along without any one being able to see what makes it
+move. Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and stoves heating
+from electric power. Steam was the most powerful thing which man knew a
+century ago. Electricity has taken its place as the most powerful and
+marvelous thing we know to-day. More wonderful than anything I have said
+is the power we now have of telegraphing without wires, and of
+telephoning in the same way. Thus men can now stand on the shore and
+talk with their friends hundreds of miles away on the broad sea.
+
+Such are some of the inventions which have been made in recent times. If
+you ask for more I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter, and
+the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the automobile, and the
+air-ship, and a hundred others. But they are too many for me to say
+anything about, so I shall have to stop right here.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES
+
+
+VERY likely many of my young readers live in the city of Philadelphia,
+which was founded by William Penn more than two hundred years ago on the
+banks of the broad Delaware River, and where now many more than a
+million people make their homes. And many of you who do not live there,
+but who love your country and are proud of its history, are likely to go
+there some time during your lives, to visit the birthplace of your noble
+nation.
+
+Have you ever thought that the United States, as an independent nation,
+was born in Philadelphia? In that city stands the stately Independence
+Hall, in which the Declaration of Independence was made and signed. You
+may see there the famous old bell, which rang out "Liberty throughout
+the land!" And you may stand in the room in which our grand Constitution
+was formed. So Philadelphia should be a place of pilgrimage to all
+true-hearted Americans, who wish to see where their country was born.
+
+It was such a place of pilgrimage in the year 1876. Then from every part
+of our country, from the North, the South, the West and the East, our
+people made their way in thousands towards that great city, which was
+then the proud center of all American thought. A hundred years had
+passed from the time the famous Declaration was signed, and the
+Centennial Anniversary which marked the one hundredth year after this
+great event was being celebrated in the city which may be called the
+cradle of the American nation.
+
+A grand exhibition was held. It was called a "World's Fair," for
+splendid objects were sent to it from all parts of the world, and our
+own country sent the best of everything it had to show, from Maine to
+California. On the broad lawns of Fairmount Park many handsome buildings
+were erected, all filled with objects of use or beauty, and more than
+ten million people passed through the gates, glad to see what America
+and the world had to show.
+
+If you wish to know what our own country showed, I may say that the most
+striking things were its inventions, machines that could do almost
+everything which the world wants done. And the newest and most wonderful
+of all these things was the telephone. This magical invention was shown
+there to the people for the first time, and the first voice shouted
+"Hallo!" over the talking wire.
+
+In the years that followed centennial celebrations became common. In
+1881 the centennial anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis was
+celebrated at Yorktown. In 1882 the bi-centennial (the two hundredth
+anniversary) of the landing of William Penn was celebrated at
+Philadelphia. A vessel that stood for the old ship "Welcome" sailed up
+the stream, and a man dressed like the famous old Quaker landed and was
+greeted by a number of men who took the part of Indian chiefs.
+
+In 1887 Philadelphia had another grand anniversary, that of the signing
+of the Constitution of the United States, which was celebrated by
+magnificent parades and processions, while the whole city was dressed in
+the red, white and blue. In 1889 New York celebrated the next grand
+event in the history of the nation, the taking of the oath by
+Washington, our first President.
+
+The next great anniversary was that of the discovery of America by
+Columbus, four hundred years before. This was celebrated by a
+wonderfully splendid exhibition at Chicago, the most beautiful that the
+world had ever seen. Columbus landed in October, 1492, and the buildings
+were dedicated in October, 1892, but the exhibition did not take place
+till the next year. Those who saw this exhibition will never forget it,
+and very likely some of my readers were among them. Its buildings were
+like fairy palaces, so white and grand and beautiful; and at night, when
+it was lit up by thousands of electric lights, the whole place looked
+like fairy land. The world will not soon see anything more beautiful.
+
+I cannot tell of all the exhibitions. There were others, at New Orleans,
+Atlanta, and other cities, but I think you will be satisfied with
+hearing about the large ones. The Centennial at Philadelphia set the
+fashion. After that, cities all over the country wanted to have their
+great fairs, and many of the little towns had their centennial
+celebrations, with music and parades, speeches and fireworks.
+
+During all this time the country kept growing. People crossed the ocean
+in millions. Our population went up, not like a tree growing, but like a
+deer jumping. In 1880 we had 50,000,000 people. In 1900 we had half as
+many more. Just think of that! Over 25,000,000 people added in twenty
+years! How many do you think we will have when the youngest readers of
+this book get to be old men and women? I am afraid to guess.
+
+As our people increased in number they spread more widely over the
+country. Railroads were built everywhere, steamboats ran on all the
+streams, telegraphs and telephones came near to every man's front door,
+the post-offices spread until letters and newspapers and packages were
+carried to the smallest village in the land. Nobody wanted to stay at
+home, in the old fashion. People thought nothing of a journey across the
+continent or the ocean. Wherever they were, they could talk with their
+friends by letter or telegraph, and they could go nowhere that the
+newspaper could not follow them.
+
+So the waste places of the country began rapidly to fill up. If you have
+ever seen an old-time map of our country you must have noticed places in
+the West marked "great desert," or "unknown territory," or by some such
+name. But people made their way into these unknown regions and filled
+them up. First they went with their families and household goods in
+great wagons. Then they went far more swiftly in railroad trains. Here
+they settled down and began farming; farther on, where there was not
+rain enough to farm, they raised cattle and sheep on the rich grasses;
+still farther, in the mountain regions, they set to work mining, getting
+gold, silver, copper, iron and coal from the hard rocks.
+
+Cities grew up where the Indian and the buffalo had roamed. The factory
+followed the farmer; the engine began to puff its steam into the air,
+the wheels to turn, the machines to work, goods of all kinds to be
+made. The whole country became like a great hive of workers, where
+everybody was busy, and thousands of the people grew rich.
+
+But all this great western country was not given up to the farmer, the
+miner and the wood-chopper. There were places which nature had made
+beautiful or wonderful or grand, and these were kept as places for all
+the people to visit. One of these was the beautiful Yosemite Valley, in
+California; another was the wonderful Yellowstone Park, with its
+marvelous spouting springs; others were the groves of giant trees; still
+others were great forests, from which the government told the
+wood-choppers to keep out, for the woods had been set aside for the good
+or the pleasure of all the people of the land.
+
+Some of you may ask, what became of the old people of the country--the
+Indians, who were spread all over the West? There were hundreds of
+tribes of them, and many of them were bold and brave, and when they saw
+the white men pushing into their country they fought fiercely for their
+homes. But they could not stand before the guns of the pioneers and the
+cannon of the soldiers, and in time they were all forced to submit. Then
+places were set aside for them and they were made to live in them. The
+Indians were not always treated well. They were robbed and cheated in a
+hundred ways. But that, I hope, is all over now, for they are being
+well cared for and educated, and they seem likely, before many years, to
+become good and useful citizens of our country.
+
+[Illustration: CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT.]
+
+Now I have another story to tell. Our Civil War, which you have read
+about, ended in 1865. For thirty-three years after that--one-third of a
+century--we were at peace at home and abroad, and our country had the
+wonderful growth of which you have just read. Then, in 1898, almost at
+the end of the century, war came again. By good luck, it was not a big
+war this time, and it was one I can tell you about in a few words.
+
+It was pity and charity that brought us into this war. South of Florida
+is the large and fertile island of Cuba, which had long belonged to
+Spain, and whose people had been very badly treated. At length they said
+they could stand it no longer, so they took their guns, left their
+homes, and went to war with the soldiers of Spain. For two years they
+fought bravely. Their old men, and their women and children, who had
+stayed at home, helped them all they could; so the Spaniards drove these
+from their homes into the cities, and left them there with hardly
+anything to eat. Thousands of these poor wretches starved to death.
+
+You may be sure that our people thought this very wicked. They said that
+it ought to be stopped; but Spain would not do what they wished. Then
+they sent food to the starving people. Some of it got to them and some
+of it was used by others. Everybody in our country felt very badly to
+see this terrible affair going on at our very doors, and the government
+was told that it ought to take some action. What the government did was
+to send one of its war-vessels, the "Maine," to the harbor of Havana,
+the capital of Cuba.
+
+Then something took place that would have made almost any country go to
+war. One dark night, while the "Maine" floated on the waters of the
+harbor, and nearly all her crew were fast asleep in their berths, a
+terrible explosion was heard under her, and the good vessel was torn
+nearly in half. In a minute she sank into the muddy bottom of the
+harbor, and hundreds of her sleeping crew were drowned. Only the captain
+and some of the officers and men escaped alive.
+
+I fancy all of you must know how angry our people felt when they heard
+of this dreadful event. You were angry yourselves, no doubt, and said
+that the Spaniards had done this and ought to be punished by having Cuba
+taken from them. I do not think there were many Americans who did not
+feel like taking revenge for our poor murdered sailors.
+
+War soon came. In April, 1898, the Congress declared war against Spain
+and a strong fleet of iron-clad ships was sent to Cuba. An army was
+gathered as quickly as possible, and the soldiers were put on board
+ship and sailed away to the south. There was a Spanish fleet in the
+harbor of Santiago de Cuba and an American fleet outside keeping the
+ships of Spain like prisoners in the harbor; so the soldiers were sent
+to that place, and it was not long before an army was landed and was
+marching towards the city of Santiago. I am glad to say that the
+fighting did not last very long. There was a bold charge up hill by the
+Rough Riders and others in the face of the Spanish guns, and the Spanish
+army was driven back to the city. Here they were shut up and soon
+surrendered, and the war in Cuba was at an end.
+
+But the iron-clad ships in the harbor were not given up. On the 3d of
+July a brave dash for liberty was made. They came out at full speed
+where our great ships lay waiting, and soon there was one of the
+strangest fights that had ever been seen. The Spanish ships rushed
+through the waters near the coast, firing as they fled. After them came
+the American ships at full speed, firing as they followed. But not many
+of the Spanish halls touched the American ships, while the great guns of
+the Americans raked the Spaniards fore and aft.
+
+Soon some of their ships were on fire and had to be run ashore. In an
+hour or two the chase was at an end and the fine Spanish fleet was sunk
+and burning, with hundreds of its crew killed, while on the American
+ships only one man had been killed. It was a wonderful flight and fight.
+I should tell you more about it, only that I have another story of the
+same kind to relate.
+
+Far away from Cuba, on the other side of the world, in the broad Pacific
+Ocean, near the coast of China, is a great group of islands called the
+Philippines, which had long belonged to Spain. Here, in the harbor of
+Manila, the capital of the islands, was a Spanish fleet. There was an
+American fleet in one of the harbors of China, under the command of
+Commodore George Dewey. And as soon as war had been declared Dewey was
+ordered to go to Manila and sink or take the Spanish fleet.
+
+Dewey was a man who thought it his duty to obey orders. He had been told
+to sink or take the Spanish fleet, and that was what he meant to try his
+best to do. Over the waters sped his ships, as swiftly as steam could
+carry them, and into the harbor of Manila they went at midnight while
+deep darkness lay upon the waters. It was early morning of the 1st of
+May when the American ships rounded up in front of the city and came in
+sight of the Spanish fleet. This lay across the mouth of a little bay
+with forts to guard it on the land at each side.
+
+It was a great danger which Commodore Dewey and his bold followers
+faced. Before them lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There were
+torpedo boats which might rush out and sink them. There were torpedoes
+under the waters which might send the flagship itself to the bottom.
+Some men would have stopped and felt their way, but George Dewey was not
+that kind of a man. Without stopping for a minute after his long journey
+from China, he dashed on with the fleet and ordered his men to fire.
+Soon the great guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and smoke.
+
+Round and round went the American ships, firing as they passed. Every
+shot seemed to tell. It was not long before some of the Spanish ships
+were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an American hull. After an
+hour or two of this hot work Dewey drew out and gave his men their
+breakfast. Then back he came and finished the job. When he was done, the
+whole Spanish fleet was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men dead
+and wounded, while not an American ship was badly hurt and not an
+American sailor was killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a battle
+since the world began.
+
+There, I have, as I promised, told you in few words the story of the
+war. Soon after a treaty of peace was signed and all was at an end. The
+brave Dewey was made an admiral and was greatly honored by the American
+people.
+
+If you should ask me what we gained from the war, I would answer that we
+gained in the first place what the war was fought for, the freedom of
+Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did not come out of it without
+something for ourselves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto Rico in
+the West Indies and the large group of the Philippine Islands, near the
+coast of Asia. These last named came as the prize of Dewey's victory,
+but I am sorry to say that there was a war with the people themselves
+before the United States got possession. During the war with Spain we
+obtained another fine group of islands, that known as Hawaii, in the
+Pacific Ocean. You can see from this that our country made a wide spread
+over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century. The winning of all
+these islands was an event of the greatest importance to the United
+States. It gave this country a broad foothold on the seas and a new
+outlook over the earth. Some of the proud nations of Europe had looked
+on this country as an American power only, with no voice in world
+affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot on the Hawaiian Islands,
+in the Central Pacific, and his right foot on the Philippine Islands,
+near the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened their eyes and
+began to get new ideas about the great republic of the West. It was
+plain that the United States had become a world power, and that when
+the game of empire was to be played the western giant must be asked to
+take a hand.
+
+This was seen soon after, when China began to murder missionaries and
+try to drive all white people from its soil. For the first time in
+history the United States joined hands with Europe in an Old World
+quarrel, and it was made evident that the world could not be cut up and
+divided among the powers without asking permission from Uncle Sam. But
+fortunately Uncle Sam wants to keep out of war.
+
+And now we are near the end of our long journey. We have traveled
+together for more than four hundred years, from the time of Columbus to
+the present day, looking at the interesting facts of our country's
+history, and following its growth from a tiny seed planted in the
+wilderness to a giant tree whose branches are beginning to overshadow
+the earth. We have read about what our fathers did in the times that are
+no more. We have learned something of what has been taking place during
+our own lives. There is a new history before us in which we shall live
+and act and of which our own doings will form part. A new century, the
+twentieth, has opened before us, and it only remains to tell what our
+country has done in the few years that have passed of this century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+
+I THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all, who read this book were
+born before the new century--the one we call the twentieth--began. It is
+a young century still. Yet there has been time enough for many things to
+take place in the country we call our own. Some of these you may
+remember. Others many of you were too young to know much about. So it is
+my purpose here to bring the story of our country up to the present
+time.
+
+[Illustration: ROOSEVELT SURPRISED BY A GIANT HIPPOPOTAMUS.]
+
+I have not said much about our Presidents, but there was a President
+elected in the first year of the twentieth century of whom I must speak,
+since his election led to a dreadful event. In the following year (1901)
+a beautiful exhibition was held at Buffalo, New York. It was called the
+Pan American Exhibition, and was intended to show what the nations of
+America had done in the century just closed.
+
+I shall say little about the splendid electrical display, the fountains
+with their colored lights, the shining cascades, the glittering domes
+and pinnacles, the caverns and grottoes, and all the other brilliant
+things to be seen, for I have to speak of something much less pleasant,
+the dark deed of murder and treachery which took place at this
+exhibition.
+
+President McKinley came to Buffalo early in September to see the fine
+display and let the people see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling
+face while many hundreds of visitors passed by and shook hands with him.
+In the midst of all this there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had
+been fired. The President staggered back, with pallid face. Men shouted;
+women screamed; a crowd rushed towards the spot; the man who held the
+pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged forward in fury. "He
+has shot our President! Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards had
+a hard fight to keep the murderer from being torn to pieces by the
+furious throng.
+
+The man who had shot the President belonged to a society called
+Anarchists, who hate all rulers and think it their duty to kill all
+kings and presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered the death he
+deserved. But his shot had reached its mark, and after a week of fear
+and hope, President McKinley died. He was mourned by all the people as
+if each of them had lost a member of his or her own family.
+
+You probably know that when a President dies the Vice-President takes
+his place. McKinley's Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore
+Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping through the wilds and of hunting
+wild beasts. At the time we speak of, when the news of the death of
+President McKinley was sent abroad, Vice-President Roosevelt was off on
+a long tramp through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, perhaps
+hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.
+
+When the news came, no one knew where he was, and dozens of the
+mountain-climbers were sent out to find him. As they spread out and
+pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard on all sides and
+megaphones were used to send their voices far through the mountain
+defiles. But hour after hour passed and the shades of evening were at
+hand, and still no answer came; no sign of Roosevelt and his party could
+be traced. Finally, when they were near the high top of Mount Marcy,
+answering shots and shouts were heard, and soon the hunting party came
+in sight.
+
+When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they brought--that the President
+was at the point of death--he could hardly believe it; for the last news
+had said that he was likely to get well. He knew now that he must get to
+Buffalo as soon as he could, so that the country should not be without a
+President, and he started back for the clubhouse from which he had set
+out at a pace that kept the others busy to keep up with him.
+
+Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse, but there was to be no
+sleep for him that night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, waited
+his coming, and in very few minutes he was inside it, the coachman had
+drawn his reins and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, plunging
+into the darkness of the woods that overhung the road.
+
+That was one of the great rides in our history. You would have said so
+if you had been there to see. There were thirty-five miles to be made
+before the nearest railroad station could be reached. The road was rough
+and muddy, for a very heavy thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness
+overhung the way, made more gloomy by the thick foliage of the trees.
+Here and there they stopped for a few minutes to change horses, and then
+plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts were in the mind of the
+solitary passenger whom fate was about to make President of the great
+United States, during that dark and dismal night, no one can tell.
+Fortune had built for him a mighty career and he was hastening to take
+up the reins of government, soon to be dropped by the man chosen to hold
+them.
+
+Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morning and the horses were
+again changed. The road now before them was the worst of all, for it was
+very narrow in places and had deep ravines on either side, while heavy
+forest timber shut it in. But the man who handled the horses knew his
+road and felt how great a duty had been placed in his hands, and at 5:22
+that morning, when the light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach
+dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. Here a special train,
+the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished
+passenger.
+
+News of greater weight now greeted the traveler. He was told that the
+President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before.
+The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now
+President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to
+make him such.
+
+Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night
+stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted
+away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the
+thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron
+horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute.
+Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in
+the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger
+leaped to the platform and made all haste to the house of Ainsley
+Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn
+into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have
+described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our
+country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a
+mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night
+long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the
+greatest nations on the earth!
+
+I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he
+was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another
+kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the
+great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to
+have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in
+this.
+
+This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was
+shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time
+came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by
+helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and
+men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.
+
+While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are
+worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal to
+connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but
+when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second
+thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memory
+of the purchase from France of the great Louisiana country a century
+before. Two years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed by
+earthquake and fire, with great loss of life and property.
+
+One thing more must be spoken of, for with this President Roosevelt had
+much to do. This was to have great dams built on the mountain streams of
+the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres of barren lands and
+make them rich and fertile. Also, to save the forests, nearly
+200,000,000 acres of forest land were set aside as the property of the
+nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.
+
+The time for another Presidential election came In 1908, but Mr.
+Roosevelt would not run for the office again. I fancy he was tired of it
+and wanted to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for Africa, the
+land of the largest and fiercest animals on the earth. Here is the
+elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage
+beasts, and he spent a year in killing these animals and in keeping them
+from killing him. I have no doubt you would like to read of the exciting
+time he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop here and leave
+it untold, for it is no part of the Story of Our Country.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The list of illustrations listed the photograph of the Steam Shovel at
+Work as being the frontispiece. The book itself placed the photograph
+between pages 182 and 183. As there is no reference to Panama or the
+Steam Shovel in this chapter, it was moved to the front to be the
+frontispiece as listed.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
+
+Page 16, "Northman" changed to "Northmen" (Northmen, named Leif)
+
+Page 31, "siezed" changed to "seized" (governor seized him)
+
+Page 38, "Chespeake" changed to "Chesapeake" (the broad Chesapeake)
+
+Page 142, "Andre" changed to "André" (Major André, a)
+
+Page 171, "who" changed to "whom" (to whom should be)
+
+Page 217, "Virgnia" changed to "Virginia" (fighting in Virginia)
+
+Page 270, "traveller" changed to "traveler" to match rest of book's
+usage (greeted the traveler)
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 32402-8.txt or 32402-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/4/0/32402
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/32402-8.zip b/32402-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08ec6dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-8.zip
diff --git a/32402-h.zip b/32402-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78b219d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h.zip
diff --git a/32402-h/32402-h.htm b/32402-h/32402-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..577ba03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/32402-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8859 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Story of Our Country, by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em;
+       text-align: justify;
+       text-indent: 1.25em;
+       margin-bottom: .75em;
+        }
+    img {border: 0;}
+    .tnote      {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+                  padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;}
+    ins {text-decoration:none;  border-bottom: thin dotted gray;}
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    hr { width: 33%;
+	 margin-top: 2em;
+	 margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+     .copyright {text-align: center; font-size: 70%;}
+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify;}
+
+    .bbox     {border: solid 2px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+                  padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;}
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold; font-size: 90%; font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figleft     {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top:
+                 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figright    {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;
+                 margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .unindent {margin-top: .75em;
+       text-align: justify;
+       margin-bottom: .75em;
+        }
+    .right    {text-align: right;}
+    .poem      {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem2   {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: left;}
+    .sig    {margin-right: 10%; text-align: right;}
+    .u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+               padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em;
+               float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em;
+               font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;}
+
+    .footnotes        {border: dashed 1px;}
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align:baseline;
+        position: relative;
+        bottom: 0.33em;
+        font-size: .8em;
+        text-decoration: none;}
+    .hang1 {text-indent: -3em; margin-left: 3em;}
+   .cap:first-letter {float: left; clear: left; margin: -0.2em 0.1em  0; margin-top: 0%;
+        padding: 0;  line-height: .75em; font-size: 300%; text-align: justify;}
+   .cap {text-align: justify;}
+
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+              margin-top: 3em;
+              margin-bottom: 0em;
+              margin-left: auto;
+              margin-right: auto;
+              height: 4px;
+              border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */
+              border-style: solid;
+              border-color: #000000;
+              clear: both; }
+    pre      {font-size: 85%;}
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of Our Country, Edited by Jesse
+Lyman Hurlbut</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Story of Our Country</p>
+<p>       Every Child Can Read</p>
+<p>Editor: Jesse Lyman Hurlbut</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 16, 2010  [eBook #32402]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/c/">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/">http://www.archive.org</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/storyofourcountr00hurl">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/storyofourcountr00hurl</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 335px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="335" height="500" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/frontend.jpg" width="600" height="458" alt="Endpapers" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<img src="images/i-193.jpg" width="600" height="354" alt="Steam Shovel at Work in Culebra Cut, Panama Canal." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Steam Shovel at Work in Culebra Cut, Panama Canal.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 308px;">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" width="308" height="500" alt="Title Page" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>THE STORY<br />OF<br />OUR COUNTRY</h1>
+
+<h2>EVERY CHILD CAN READ</h2>
+
+<h3>EDITED BY</h3>
+<h2>REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>ILLUSTRATED<br />
+
+
+
+<br /><br /><br />
+THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.<br />
+<small>PHILADELPHIA</small><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+Copyright, 1910, By<br />
+<span class="smcap">The John C. Winston Co.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>A Talk with the Young Reader</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER I</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Columbus, the Great Sailor</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Bold Sailors of the Northern Countries&mdash;The Northmen&mdash;Columbus the Little Boy&mdash;Columbus and the Egg&mdash;He Crosses the Atlantic, Braves the Sea and Discovers New Land</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER II</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Three Great Discoverers</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>John and Sebastian Cabot&mdash;Balboa Discovers the Pacific&mdash;The Fountain of Youth and Ponce de Leon&mdash;The Naming of America</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER III</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Three Early Heroes</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>The Story of John Smith and First English Settlement&mdash;Miles Standish and the Pilgrims&mdash;Roger Williams, the Hero Preacher</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IV</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How the Dutch and Quakers Came to America</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>Captain Hudson and His Ship, the <i>Half Moon</i>&mdash;The Trip up the Hudson&mdash;Adventures with the Indians&mdash;William Penn and the Quakers&mdash;How They Settled on the Delaware River</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER V</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Cavalier Colonies of the South</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>The Cavaliers and Lords of England&mdash;They Settle in Virginia&mdash;The Catholics Come to Maryland&mdash;Strange Form of Government in Carolina&mdash;Paupers Settle Georgia&mdash;An Old Spanish Town in Florida</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Red Men, How They Lived and were Treated</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>They Were the First Americans&mdash;Their Strange Customs and Manners&mdash;How They Followed a Trail&mdash;How they Fought&mdash;Indian Massacres</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Royal Governors and Loyal Captains</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>How the Governor was Treated in Connecticut&mdash;The Charter Oak&mdash;An Exciting Time in Virginia</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VIII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Old Times in the Colonies</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>When a Tallow Candle Gave the Light&mdash;Old-Time Houses&mdash;The Story of the Famous Hunter, and How he Escaped from the Indians</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IX</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">A Hero of the Colonies</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Two Boys who Crossed the Mountains&mdash;Their Adventures with the Indians&mdash;George Washington, the Surveyor&mdash;Messenger to the French&mdash;An Old-Time Hero</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER X</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The French and Indian War</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>The Acadians&mdash;Their Home in Nova Scotia&mdash;Their Sufferings&mdash;The Story of Evangeline&mdash;Why the Indians Helped the French&mdash;The Story of a Cruel War</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Causes of the Revolution</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>How the Trouble Began&mdash;The Americans Object to Paying Taxes on Various Articles&mdash;The Famous Boston Tea Party&mdash;Battle of Lexington&mdash;Declaration of Independence</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Fighting for Freedom</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Washington the Commander-in-Chief&mdash;Bunker Hill&mdash;The Wonderful Christmas&mdash;The Americans Succeed&mdash;They Meet Defeat&mdash;"Molly Stark a Widow"&mdash;Help from France</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XIII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Paul Jones, the Naval Hero of the Revolution</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Old-Time Warships&mdash;A Daring Deed&mdash;A Great Sea Fight&mdash;The British Captain Surrenders</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XIV</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Marion, the Swamp Fox</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>How the War Went in the South&mdash;The Patriots Hard to Find&mdash;The British Officers Eat Sweet Potatoes&mdash;Jack Davis' Adventure&mdash;General Greene and his Famous Retreat&mdash;Cornwallis Surrenders&mdash;The War at an End.</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XV</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Voyage of our Ship of State</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>How the People Rule&mdash;Illustrated by a Story&mdash;Our First Trial and Failure&mdash;Making a New Form of Government&mdash;A Nation of Thirteen States&mdash;The President&mdash;The Congress&mdash;The Judges</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XVI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The End of a Noble Life</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Washington the First President&mdash;Beloved by Everyone&mdash;Benjamin Franklin's Last Hours&mdash;The Kind of Money They Used&mdash;How the Quarrel was Settled&mdash;Washington Dies</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_170">170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XVII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Steamboat and the Cotton Gin</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>The Power of Steam&mdash;Is a Boat Like a Duck&mdash;Who Thought of the First Steamboat&mdash;The Cotton Gin and How it Saves Labor&mdash;Where the Cotton Grows</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XVIII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The English and Americans Fight Again</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>How We Came to Quarrel with England&mdash;Protecting the American Sailor&mdash;Interesting Land Battles&mdash;Adventures at Sea&mdash;Peace is Made Again</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XIX</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How the Victims of the Alamo Were Avenged</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>How General Santa Anna Got into Trouble&mdash;Massacre of the Alamo&mdash;The Famous Samuel Houston&mdash;War with Mexico&mdash;The City of Mexico&mdash;Santa Anna is Defeated and United States is Victorious</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XX</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How Slavery Led to War</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>Black and White Slaves&mdash;First Slaves Brought to America in 1619&mdash;Why the Slaves were Used in the South&mdash;Why the North did not Believe in Slavery&mdash;What the word Abolitionist Means&mdash;John Brown and Harper's Ferry</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How Lincoln Became President</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>The Ruler of the Republic&mdash;The President Chosen from the People&mdash;Why the People Liked Him&mdash;Lincoln's School Days&mdash;The North and South Differ&mdash;Lincoln, the Great War President</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Great Civil War</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>What Civil War is&mdash;Where the War was Fought&mdash;Battle of Bull Run&mdash;"Stonewall" Jackson&mdash;General Ulysses S. Grant and How He Came to Command the Army&mdash;His "Unconditional Surrender" Message&mdash;Battle of Gettysburg</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXIII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">War on Sea and Land</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Fight Between the "Cheesebox" and the Ram&mdash;How the Monitor Won the Fight&mdash;The Battle "Above the Clouds"&mdash;Battle of the Wilderness&mdash;Sherman's March to the Sea&mdash;Richmond Surrenders and the War Closes</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXIV</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Waste of War and the Wealth of Peace</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>What is Seen on the Picture of History&mdash;A Reign of Peace in America&mdash;The Ocean Cable and the Railroad&mdash;Alaska and its Treasures&mdash;The Burning of Chicago and other Disasters&mdash;Edison and His Work&mdash;The Triumphs of Electricity</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXV</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">The Marvels of Invention</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>Professor Morse, the Famous Inventor&mdash;His Struggles and His Success&mdash;The First Message&mdash;Telephone and Other Inventions of Electricity&mdash;New Ideas in Machinery and the Comfort they Bring</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXVI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How the Century Ended for the United States</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>The Nation's Birthplace&mdash;Centennial Exhibition and Columbian World's Fair&mdash;Our People's Progress&mdash;The Indians&mdash;Trouble in Cuba&mdash;War with Spain&mdash;Santiago and its Fleet&mdash;Dewey at Manila</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XXVII</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">How a Hunter Became President</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Assassination of President McKinley&mdash;Theodore Roosevelt's Great Ride&mdash;His Election by the People&mdash;The Panama Canal&mdash;Roosevelt Declines Re-election and Goes to Africa.</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Steam Shovel at Work in Culebra Cut, Panama Canal</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><i><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Columbus and the Egg</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Washington Crossing the Delaware</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Battle of New Orleans</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Storming of Chapultepec</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Custer's Last Fight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER<br />ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR<br />COUNTRY</h2>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IF any of the readers of this book should have
+the chance to take a railroad ride over the
+vast region of the United States, from the Atlantic
+to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes
+to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonderful
+display of cities and towns, of factories and
+farms, and a great multitude of men and women
+actively at work. They would behold, spread out
+on every side, one of the busiest and happiest lands
+the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the
+miles on miles of farms, they might see a forest,
+here and there a wild beast, here and there a red-faced
+Indian, one of the old people of the land;
+but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous
+scene.</div>
+
+<p>If our young traveler knew nothing of history
+he might fancy that it had been always this way,
+or that it had taken thousands of years for all
+those cities to be built and these great fields to be
+cleared and cultivated. Yet if he had been here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+only three hundred years ago he would have seen a
+very different sight. He could not then have gone
+over the country by railroad, for such a thing had
+never been thought of. He could not have gone
+by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind
+in the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere
+in this vast country would he have seen a
+city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farmhouse,
+or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep;
+nowhere a man with a white or a black face. Instead
+of great cities he would have seen only clusters
+of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast
+reaches of forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild
+and dangerous beasts; instead of white and black
+men, only red-skinned savages.</p>
+
+<p>Just think of it! All that we see around us is
+the work of less than three hundred years! No
+doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of wonderful
+things done by the Genii of the East, of
+palaces built in a night, of cities moved miles
+away from their sites. But here is a thing as
+wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel
+wrought by men instead of magical beings. These
+great forests have fallen, these great fields have
+been cleared and planted, these great cities have
+risen, these myriads of white men have taken the
+place of the red men of the wild woods, and all
+within a period not longer than three times the life
+of the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+as the most marvelous fairy tale? And is
+it not better to read the true tale of how this was
+done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians?
+Let us forget the Genii of the East;
+men are the Genii of the West, and the magic of
+their work is as great as that we read of in the
+fables of the "Arabian Nights."</p>
+
+<p>The story of this great work is called the "History
+of the United States." This story you have
+before you in the book you now hold. You do not
+need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of
+building our noble nation was done, for you can
+read it all here in language simple enough for the
+youngest of you to understand. Here you are
+told how white men came over the seas and found
+beyond the waves a land none of them had ever
+seen before. You are told how they settled on
+these shores, cut down the trees and built villages
+and towns, fought with the red men and drove
+them back, and made themselves homes in the
+midst of fertile fields. You are told how others
+came, how they spread wider and wider over the
+land, how log houses grew into mansions, and villages
+into cities, and how at length they fought for
+and gained their liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Read on and you will learn of more wonderful
+things still. The history of the past hundred
+years is a story of magic for our land. In it you
+will learn of how the steamboat was first made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+and in time came to be seen on all our rivers and
+lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and
+railroads were built, until they are now long
+enough in our country to go eight times round the
+earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and telephone&mdash;the
+talking wire; of the machines that
+rumble and roar in a thousand factories and work
+away like living things, and of a multitude of marvels
+which I cannot begin to speak of here.</p>
+
+<p>And you will learn how men kept on coming,
+and wars were fought, and new land was gained,
+and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and
+our people increased and spread until we came to
+be one of the greatest nations on the earth, and our
+cities grew until one of them was the largest in the
+world except the vast city of London. All this
+and more you may learn from the pages of this
+book. It is written for the boys and girls of our
+land, but many of their fathers and mothers may
+find it pleasant and useful to read.</p>
+
+<p>There are hundreds who do not have time to
+read large histories, which try to tell all that has
+taken place. For those this little history will be
+of great service, in showing them how, from a few
+half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this great nation
+has grown up. How men and women have
+come to it over the seas as to a new Promised
+Land. How they have ploughed its fields, and
+gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+and built thousands of workshops, and fed the
+nations with the food they did not need for themselves.
+Year by year it has grown in wealth, until
+now it is the richest country in the world. Great
+it is, and greater it will be. But I need say no
+more. The book has its own story to tell. I only
+lay this beginning before you as a handy stepping-stone
+into the history itself. By its aid you may
+cross the brook and wander on through the broad
+land which lies before you.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they
+will remember a wonderful display in that city
+in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings
+rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy
+palaces, and filled with the finest of goods of all
+kinds, which millions of people came to see.</div>
+
+<p>Do you know what this meant? It was what is
+called a World's Fair, and was in honor of a wonderful
+event that took place four hundred years
+before.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you may think that white men have always
+lived in this country. I hope you do not all
+think so, for this is not the case. A little more
+than four hundred years ago no white man had
+ever seen this country, and none knew that there
+was such a country on the face of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor,
+named Christopher Columbus, crossed a wide
+ocean and came to this new and wonderful land.
+Since then men have come here by the millions,
+and the mighty nation of the United States has
+grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago,
+the grand Columbian World's Fair was held, in
+honor of the finding of America by the great navigator
+four hundred years before.</p>
+
+<p>This is what I have set out to tell you about. I
+am sure you will all be glad to know how this
+broad and noble land, once the home of the wild
+red men, was found and made a home for the white
+people of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you may have been told that America
+was really discovered more than four hundred years
+before Columbus was born. So it was. At that
+time some of the bold sailors of the northern
+countries of Europe, who made the stormy ocean
+their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had
+come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship
+from Iceland had been driven by the winds to a
+land in the far west which no man had ever seen
+before. Was this not America?</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Northman'">Northmen</ins>, named Leif Ericson, also known as
+Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There
+he found wild grapes growing, and from them he
+named it Vinland. This in our language would
+be called Wineland.</p>
+
+<p>After him came others, and there was fighting
+with the red men, whom they called Skrellings.
+In the end the Northmen left the country, and before
+many years all was forgotten about it. Only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+lately the story has been found again in some old
+writings. And so time went on for nearly five
+hundred years more, and nothing was known in
+Europe about the land beyond the seas.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us go from the north to the south of
+Europe. Here there is a kingdom called Italy,
+which runs down into the Mediterranean Sea almost
+in the shape of a boot. On the western
+shore of this kingdom is a famous old city named
+Genoa, in which many daring sailors have dwelt;
+and here, long ago, lived a man named Columbus,
+a poor man, who made his living by carding wool.</p>
+
+<p>This poor wool-carder had four children, one of
+whom (born about 1436) he named Christopher.
+Almost everybody who has been at school in the
+world knows the name of this little Italian boy, for
+he became one of the most famous of men.</p>
+
+<p>Many a boy in our times has to help his father
+in his shop. The great Benjamin Franklin began
+work by pouring melted tallow into moulds to make
+candles. In the same way little Columbus had to
+comb wool for his father, and very likely he got as
+tired of wool as Franklin did of candles.</p>
+
+<p>The city he lived in was full of sailors, and no
+doubt he talked to many of them about life on the
+wild waters, and heard so many stories of danger
+and adventure that he took the fancy to go to sea
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate we are told that he became a sailor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+when only fourteen years old, and made long and
+daring voyages while he was still young. Some of
+those were in Portuguese ships down the coast of
+Africa, of which continent very little was known
+at that time. He went north, too; some think as
+far as Iceland. Who knows but that he was told
+there of what the Northmen had done?</p>
+
+<p>Columbus spent some time in the island of Madeira,
+far out in the Atlantic ocean, and there the
+people told him of strange things they had seen.
+These had come over the seas before the west
+winds and floated on their island shores. Among
+them were pieces of carved wood, and canes so
+long that they would hold four quarts of wine between
+their joints. And the dead bodies of two
+men had also come ashore, whose skins were the
+color of bronze or copper.</p>
+
+<p>These stories set Columbus thinking. He was
+now a man, and had read many books of travel,
+and had studied all that was then known of geography.
+For a time he lived by making maps
+and charts for ship captains. This was in the
+city of Lisbon, in Portugal, where he married and
+settled down and had little boys of his own.</p>
+
+<p>At that time some of the most learned people
+had odd notions about the earth. You may have
+seen globes as round as an orange, with the countries
+laid out on them. But the people then had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+never seen such a globe, and the most of them
+thought that the earth was as flat as a table, and
+that any one who sailed too far over the ocean
+would come to the edge of the earth and fall off.</p>
+
+<p>This seems very absurd, does it not? But you
+must remember that people then knew very little
+about the earth they lived on, and could not understand
+how people could keep on a round globe like
+flies on a ball of glass.</p>
+
+<p>But there were some who thought the earth to
+be round, and Columbus was one of these.</p>
+
+<p>At that time silk and spices and other rich goods
+were brought from China and India, thousands of
+miles to the east, by caravans that traveled overland.
+Columbus thought that by sailing west,
+over the broad Atlantic, he would come to these
+far countries, just as a fly may walk around the surface
+of an orange, and come to the place it started
+from.</p>
+
+<p>The more Columbus thought about this, the
+more certain he became that he was right. He
+was so sure of it that he set out to try and make
+other people think the same way. He wanted
+ships with which to sail across the unknown seas to
+the west, but he had no money of his own to buy
+them with.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! what a task poor Columbus now had. For
+years and years he wandered about among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+kings and princes of Europe, but no one would believe
+his story, and many laughed at him and
+mocked him.</p>
+
+<p>First he tried Genoa, the city where he was born,
+but the people there told him he was a fool or had
+lost his senses.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went to the king of Portugal. This
+king was a rascal, and tried to cheat him. He got
+his plans from him, and sent out a vessel in secret,
+hoping to get the honor of the discovery for himself.
+But the captain he sent was a coward and
+was scared by the rolling waves. He soon came
+back, and told the king that there was nothing to
+be found but water and storm. King John, of
+Portugal, was very sorry afterward that he had
+tried to rob Columbus of his honor.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was very angry when he heard what
+the king had done. He left Portugal for Spain,
+and tried to get the king and queen of that country
+to let him have ships and sailors. But they
+were at war with a people called the Moors, and
+had no money to spare for anything but fighting
+and killing.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus stayed there for seven long years.
+He talked to the wise men, but they made sport of
+him. "If the earth is round," they said, "and
+you sail west, your ships will go down hill, and
+they will have to sail up hill to come back. No
+ship that was ever made can do that. And you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+may come to places where the waters boil with the
+great heat of the sun; and frightful monsters may
+rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and your
+men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing
+at him and mocking him as a man who had lost his
+wits.</p>
+
+<p>After these many years Columbus got tired of
+trying in Spain. He now set out for France, to
+see what the king of that country would do. He
+sent one of his brothers to England to see its king
+and ask him for aid.</p>
+
+<p>He was now so poor that he had to travel along
+the dusty roads on foot, his little son going with
+him. One day he stopped at a convent called La
+Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was
+very hungry.</p>
+
+<p>The good monks gave bread to the boy, and
+while he was eating it the prior of the convent
+came out and talked with Columbus, asking him
+his business. Columbus told him his story. He
+told it so well that the prior believed in it. He
+asked him to stay there with his son, and said he
+would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom
+he knew very well.</p>
+
+<p>So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter
+to the queen, and in the end the wandering
+sailor was sent for to come back to the king's court.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of
+the discovery of America. The king would not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen offered
+to pledge her jewels to raise the money which
+he needed for ships and sailors.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus had won. After years and years of
+toil and hunger and disappointment, he was to
+have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be given
+a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise
+men who were the fools.</p>
+
+<p>But such ships as they gave him! Why, you
+can see far better ones every day, sailing down
+your rivers. Two of them did not even have
+decks, but were like open boats. With this small
+fleet Columbus set sail from Palos, a little port in
+Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the
+most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.</p>
+
+<p>Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness,"
+as the Atlantic ocean was then called. Mile
+after mile, day after day, on and on they went, seeing
+nothing but the endless waves, while the wind
+drove them steadily into the unknown west.</p>
+
+<p>The sailors never expected to see their wives
+and children again. They were frightened when
+they started, and every day they grew more scared.
+They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs
+or the frightful monsters of which they had been
+told. At one place they came upon great tracts
+of seaweed, and thought they were in shallow
+water and would be wrecked on banks of mud.
+Then the compass, to which they trusted, ceased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+to point due north and they were more frightened
+than ever. Soon there was hardly a stout heart in
+the fleet except that of Columbus.</p>
+
+<p>The time came when the sailors grew half mad
+with fear. Some of them made a plot to throw
+Columbus overboard and sail home again. They
+would tell the people there that he had fallen into
+the sea and been drowned.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible thing to do, was it not? But
+desperate men will do dreadful things. They
+thought one man had better die than all of them.
+Only good fortune saved the life of the great navigator.</p>
+
+<p>One day a glad sailor called his comrades and
+pointed over the side. A branch of a green bush
+was floating by with fresh berries on it. It looked
+as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another
+day one of them picked from the water a stick
+which had been carved with a knife. Land birds
+were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back
+to their hearts. They were sure now that land
+must be near.</p>
+
+<p>October 11th came. When night fell dozens
+of men were on the lookout. Each wanted to be
+the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night,
+Columbus, who was looking out over the waves,
+saw a light far off. It moved up and down like a
+lantern carried in a man's hand.</p>
+
+<p>Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+into the darkness. About two o'clock in the morning
+came the glad cry of "Land! Land!" A
+gun was fired from the leading vessel. One of its
+sailors had seen what looked like land in the moonlight.
+You may be sure no one slept any more
+that night.</p>
+
+<p>When daylight came the joyful sailors saw before
+them a low, green shore, on which the sunlight
+lay in beauty; men and women stood on it,
+looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought
+must be great white-winged birds. They had
+never seen such things before. We can hardly
+think what we would have done if we had been in
+their place.</p>
+
+<p>When the boats from the ships came to the
+shore, and Columbus landed, clad in shining armor,
+and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple
+natives fell to the ground on their faces. They
+thought the gods had come from heaven to visit
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments
+of gold. They were asked by signs where they
+had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all
+were on board again, the ships once more spread
+their sails, and swiftly they flew southward before
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose,
+some small, some large, all green and beautiful.
+Columbus thought this must be India, which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+had set out to find, and he called the people
+Indians. He never knew that it was a new continent
+he had discovered.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/i-032.jpg" width="600" height="377" alt="Columbus and the Egg." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Columbus and the Egg.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The month of March of the next year came before
+the little fleet sailed again into the port of
+Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy,
+for they had mourned their friends as dead.</p>
+
+<p>Fast spread the news. When Columbus entered
+Barcelona, where the king and queen were,
+bringing with him new plants, birds and animals,
+strange weapons, golden ornaments, and some of
+the red-skinned natives, he was received as if he
+had been a king. He was seated beside the king;
+he rode by his side in the street; he was made a
+grandee of Spain; all the honors of the kingdom
+were showered on him.</p>
+
+<p>We here recall the incident of Columbus and
+the egg. A dinner was given in his honor and
+many great men were there. The attention Columbus
+received made some people jealous. One
+of them with a sneer asked Columbus if he did
+not think any one else could have discovered the
+Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a
+dish on the table and handing it to the questioner
+asked him to make it stand on end.</p>
+
+<p>After trying several times the man gave it up.
+Columbus, taking the egg in his hand, tapping it
+gently on one end against the top of the table so as
+to break the shell slightly, made it balance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Any one could do that," said the man. "So
+any one can discover the Indies after I have shown
+him the way," said Columbus.</p>
+
+<p>It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor
+Columbus was soon to find out how Spain treated
+those who had given to it the highest honor and
+the greatest riches. Three times again he sailed
+to the New World, and once a base Spanish governor
+sent him back to Spain with chains upon his
+limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room
+till he died, and asked that they should be buried
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>They who had once given him every honor, now
+treated him with shameful neglect. He who had
+ridden beside the king and dined with the highest
+nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely.</p>
+
+<p>He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great
+discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Then Spain, which had treated him so badly,
+began to honor his memory. But it came too late
+for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die
+almost like a pauper, after he had made Spain the
+richest country in Europe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>VERY likely some of the readers of this
+book have asked their fathers or mothers
+how Spain came to own the islands of
+Cuba and Porto Rico, whose people they treated
+so badly that the United States had to go to war a
+few years ago and take these islands from Spain.
+Of course, you all know how the battleship <i>Maine</i>
+was blown up in the harbor of the city of Havana,
+and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom
+and were drowned. That was one reason why we
+went to war. If you should ask me that question,
+I would say that these were some of the islands
+which Columbus found, when he sailed into those
+sunny seas four centuries ago. They were settled
+by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and
+have lived on them ever since. There they have
+raised sugar cane, and tobacco, and coffee, and also
+oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine fruits.</div>
+
+<p>They might have kept on owning these islands
+and raising these fruits for many years to come, if
+they had not been so cruel to the people that they
+rose against them, and with the help of the United<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+States Government the islands were taken from
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>When Columbus told the nobles and people of
+Spain of his wonderful discovery, and showed them
+the plants and animals, the gold and other things,
+he had found on these far-off islands, it made a
+great excitement in that country.</p>
+
+<p>You know how the finding of gold in Alaska
+has sent thousands of our own people to that cold
+country after the shining yellow metal. In the
+same way the gold which Columbus brought back
+sent thousands of Spaniards across the wide seas
+to the warm and beautiful islands of which the
+great sailor told them, where they hoped to find
+gold like stones in our streets.</p>
+
+<p>Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carrying
+thousands of people to the fair lands of the
+west, from which they expected to come back laden
+with riches. At the same time two daring sailors
+from England, John Cabot and his son Sebastian,
+crossed the ocean farther north, and found land
+where the Northmen had found it five hundred
+years before. In the seas into which the Cabots
+sailed, great fish were so plentiful that the ships
+could hardly sail through them, and bears swam
+out in the water and caught the fish in their mouths.
+That was certainly a queer way of fishing.</p>
+
+<p>When the Cabots came back and told what they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+had seen, you may be sure the daring fishermen of
+Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers
+of their stout little vessels were crossing the ocean,
+and most of them came back so full of great codfish
+that the water almost ran over their decks.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not think these fishermen were wiser
+than the Spaniards, who went everywhere seeking
+for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is
+only good to buy food and other things; but if
+these can be had without buying they are better
+still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought so,
+and they were more lucky in finding fish than the
+Spaniards were in finding gold.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the years passed on, and more and more
+Spaniards came to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola
+(which is now known as Hayti or San Domingo).
+And some of them soon began to sail
+farther west in search of new lands. Columbus,
+in his last voyage, reached the coasts of South
+America and Central America and other Spanish
+ships followed to those new shores.</p>
+
+<p>I might tell you many wonderful things about
+these daring men. One of them was named
+Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for
+it is full of strange events. This man had gone
+to the island of Hispaniola to make his fortune, but
+he found there only bad fortune. He had to work
+on a farm, and in time he became so poor and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+owed so much money that it seemed as if he could
+never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad
+straits.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the people who had lent him money
+often asked him to pay it back again, and Balboa,
+who got into a worse state every day, at length
+took an odd way to rid himself of his troubles. A
+ship was about to set sail for the west, and the poor
+debtor managed to get carried aboard it in a barrel.
+This barrel came from his farm and was supposed
+to contain provisions, and it was not till they
+were far away from land that it was opened and a
+living man was found in it instead of salt beef or
+pork.</p>
+
+<p>When the captain saw him he was much astonished.
+He had paid for a barrel of provisions,
+and he found something which he could not well
+eat. He grew so angry at being cheated that he
+threatened to leave Balboa on a desert island, but
+the poor fellow got on his knees and begged so
+hard for his life that the captain at length forgave
+him. But he made him work to pay his way, and
+very likely used the rope's end to stir him up.</p>
+
+<p>Of course you have learned from your geographies
+where the Isthmus of Darien (now called
+Panama) is, that narrow strip of land that is like
+a string tying together the great continents of
+North and South America. It was to the town of
+Darien, on this isthmus, that the ship made its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+way, and here Balboa made a surprising discovery.
+Some of the Indian chiefs told him of a mighty
+ocean which lay on the other side of the isthmus,
+and that beyond that ocean was the wonderful
+land of gold which the Spaniards wished to find.</p>
+
+<p>What would you have done if you had been in
+Balboa's place, and wanted gold to pay your debts?
+Some of you, I think, would have done what he
+did. You would have made your way into the
+thick forest and climbed the rugged mountains of
+the isthmus, until, like Balboa, you got to the top
+of the highest peak. And, like him, you would
+have been filled with joy when you saw in the far
+distance the vast Pacific ocean, its waves glittering
+in the summer sun.</p>
+
+<p>Here was glory; here was fortune. The poor
+debtor had become a great discoverer. Before his
+eyes spread a mighty ocean, its waves beating on
+the shore. He hurried with his men down the
+mountain sides to this shining sea, and raised on
+its shores the great banner of Spain. And soon
+after he set sail on its waters for Peru, the land of
+gold. But he did not get very far, for the stormy
+weather drove him back.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Balboa! he was to win fame, but not fortune,
+and his debts were never to be paid. A jealous
+Spanish governor <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'siezed'">seized</ins> him, condemned him
+as a traitor, and had his head cut off in the market
+place. And so ended Balboa's dream of gold and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+glory. I could tell you of other wonderful adventures
+in these new lands. There is the story
+of Cortez, who found the great kingdom of Mexico,
+and conquered it with a few hundred Spaniards
+in armor of steel. And there is the story of
+Pizarro, who sailed to Peru, Balboa's land of gold,
+and won it for Spain, and sent home tons of silver
+and gold. But these stories have nothing to do
+with the history of the United States, so we must
+pass them by and go back to the early days of the
+country in which we dwell.</p>
+
+<p>The first Spaniard to set foot on what is now
+the United States was an old man named Ponce de
+Leon, who was governor of Porto Rico. If he
+had lived until now he would have been on our soil
+while on that island, for it now belongs to the
+United States. But no one had dreamed of our
+great republic four hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>At that time there was a fable which many believed,
+which said that somewhere in Asia was a
+wonderful Fountain of Youth. It was thought
+that everybody who bathed in its waters would
+grow young again. An old man in a moment
+would become as fresh and strong as a boy. De
+Leon wanted youth more than he did gold, and
+like all men at that time he thought the land he
+was in was part of Asia, and might contain the
+Fountain of Youth. He asked the Indians if they
+knew of such a magic spring. The red men, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+wanted to get rid of the Spaniards, by whom they
+had been cruelly treated, pointed to the northwest.</p>
+
+<p>So, in the year 1513, old Ponce de Leon took
+ship and sailed away in search of the magic spring.
+And not many days passed before, on Easter Sunday,
+he saw before him a land so bright with flowers
+that he named it "Flowery Easter." It is still
+called Florida, the Spanish word for "flowery."</p>
+
+<p>I am sure none of my young readers believe in
+such a Fountain of Youth, and that none of you
+would have hunted for it as old De Leon did. Up
+and down that flowery land he wandered, seeking
+its wonderful waters. He found many sparkling
+springs, and eagerly drank of and bathed in their
+cool, liquid waves, but out of them all he came
+with white hair and wrinkled face. In the end he
+gave up the search, and sailed away, a sad old man.
+Some years afterwards he came back again. But
+this time the Indians fought with the white men,
+and De Leon was struck with an arrow, and hurt
+so badly that he soon died. So he found death instead
+of youth. Many people go to Florida in our
+own days in search of health, but Ponce de Leon is
+the only man who ever went there to find the magical
+Fountain of Youth.</p>
+
+<p>About twenty-five years afterwards another
+Spaniard came to Florida. It was gold and glory
+he was after, not youth. This man, Fernando de
+Soto, had been in Peru with Pizarro, and helped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+him to conquer that land of gold. He now hoped
+to find a rich empire for himself in the north.</p>
+
+<p>So with nine ships and six hundred brave young
+men he sailed away from his native land. They
+were a gay and hopeful band, while their bright
+banners floated proudly from the mastheads, and
+waved in the western winds. Little did they
+dream of what a terrible fate lay before them.</p>
+
+<p>I think you will say that De Soto deserved a bad
+fate when I tell you that he brought bloodhounds
+to hunt the poor Indians, and chains to fasten on
+their hands and feet. That was the way the Spaniards
+often treated the poor red men. He brought
+also two hundred horses for his armed men to ride,
+and a drove of hogs to serve them for fresh meat.
+And in the ships were great iron chests, which he
+hoped to take back full of gold and other precious
+things.</p>
+
+<p>For two long years De Soto and his band
+traveled through the country, fighting Indians,
+burning their houses and robbing them of their
+food. But the Indians were brave warriors, and
+in one terrible battle the Spaniards lost eighty of
+their horses and many of their men.</p>
+
+<p>In vain De Soto sought for gold and glory.
+Not an ounce of the yellow metal was found; no
+mighty empire was reached. He did make one
+great discovery, that of the vast Mississippi River.
+But he never got home to tell of it, for he died on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+its banks, worn out with his battles and marches,
+and was buried under its waters. His men built
+boats and floated down the great river to the Gulf
+of Mexico. Here, at length, they found Spanish
+settlements. But of that brave and gallant band
+half were dead, and the rest were so nearly starved
+that they were like living skeletons.</p>
+
+<p>We must not forget that humble Italian traveler
+and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499, saw
+the part of South America where lies the island of
+Trinidad. He afterwards reached the coast of
+Brazil. Some years later, when maps were made
+of the country he had visited, some one called it
+<i>America</i>. In later years this name was used for
+the whole continent. So what should have been
+called Columbia came to be called America.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THREE EARLY HEROES</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WHAT do you think of Captain John
+Smith, the hero of Virginia? Was he
+not a man to dream of, a true hero?
+Why, I feel half ashamed to say anything about
+him, for every one of you must know his story. I
+am sure all those who love good stories of adventure
+have read about him.</div>
+
+<p>John Smith was not the kind of man to work at
+a trade. He ran away from home when a boy,
+and became a wanderer over the earth. And a
+hard life he had of it. At one place he was robbed,
+and at another place was shipwrecked. Once
+he leaped overboard from a ship and swam ashore.
+Once again he fought with three Turks and killed
+all of them without help. Then he was taken prisoner,
+and sold as a slave to a cruel Turk, who put
+a ring round his neck and made him work very
+hard.</p>
+
+<p>One day his master came out where he was at
+work and struck him with his whip. He soon
+found that John Smith was a bad man to whip.
+He hit the Turk a hard blow with the flail he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+using, and killed him on the spot. Then he ran
+away, got to Russia, and in time made his way
+back to England. But England was too quiet a
+place for him. A ship was about to cross the sea
+to America and he volunteered to go in it. He
+had not half enough of adventure yet. Some people
+think that Captain Smith bragged a little, and
+did not do all he said. Well, that may be so.
+But it is certain that he was a brave and bold man,
+and just the man to help settle a new country
+where there were savage red men to deal with.</p>
+
+<p>The English were in no hurry in sending out settlers
+to the New World which Columbus had discovered.
+While the Spaniards were seeking gold
+and empires in the south, and the French were
+catching fish and exploring the rivers and lakes in
+the north, all the English did was to rob the
+Spanish ships and settlements, and to bring them
+negroes from Africa for slaves.</p>
+
+<p>But the time came, a hundred years after America
+was discovered, when some of the English tried
+to form a settlement on the coast of North Carolina.
+Poor settlers! When the next ship came
+out they were all gone. Not a soul of them could
+be found. Nothing was left but some letters they
+had cut into the bark of a tree. What became of
+them nobody ever knew. Likely enough they
+wandered away and were killed by the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more was done until the year 1607,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+when the ship in which Captain John Smith had
+taken passage sailed up a bright and beautiful
+river in Virginia. It was the month of May, and
+the banks were covered with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists thought this a very good place to
+live in, so they landed and began to look around
+them. The river they called the James, and the
+place they named Jamestown. But instead of
+building a town and preparing for the future, as
+sensible men would have done, they began to seek
+for gold, and soon they were in no end of trouble.
+In a short time their food was all eaten. Then
+some of them were taken sick and died. Others
+were killed by the Indians. It looked as if this
+colony would come to grief as did the former one.</p>
+
+<p>So it would if it had not been for Captain
+Smith. He was only one man among a hundred,
+but he was worth more than all the rest of the
+hundred. He could not keep still, but hustled
+about, here, there and everywhere. Now he was
+exploring the country, sailing up the rivers or up
+the broad <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Chespeake'">Chesapeake</ins> Bay. Now he was talking
+with the Indians, getting food from them for the
+starving colonists. Now he was doing his best to
+make the men build houses and dig and plant the
+ground. You can see that John Smith had enough
+to keep him busy. He had many adventures with
+the Indians. At one time he was taken prisoner
+by them and was in terrible danger of being killed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+But he showed them his pocket compass, and when
+they saw the needle always pointing north, they
+thought there must be magic in it. They were
+still more surprised when he sent one of them with
+a letter to his friends. They did not understand
+how a piece of paper could talk, as his paper
+seemed to do.</p>
+
+<p>But all this was not enough to save his life.
+The great chief Powhatan looked on him as the
+leader of these white strangers who had settled in
+his land. He wanted to get rid of them, and
+thought that if he killed the man of the magic
+needle and the talking paper they would certainly
+be scared and go away.</p>
+
+<p>So Captain Smith was tied hand and foot, and
+laid on the ground with his head on a log. And
+a powerful Indian stood near by with a great war
+club in his hand. Only a sign from Powhatan
+was needed, and down would come that club on
+the white man's head, and it would be all over
+with the brave and bold John Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! poor Captain Smith! There was no pity
+in Powhatan's eyes. The burly Indian twisted his
+fingers about the club and lifted it in the air. One
+minute more and it might be all over with the man
+who had killed three Turks in one fight. But before
+that minute was over a strange thing took
+place. A young Indian girl came running wildly
+toward him, with her hair flying and her eyes wet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+with tears. And she flung herself on the ground
+and laid her head on that of the bound prisoner,
+and begged the chief to give him his life.</p>
+
+<p>It was Pocahontas, the pretty young daughter
+of Powhatan. She pleaded so pitifully that the
+chief's heart was touched, and he consented that
+the captive should live, and bade them take the
+bonds from his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not think this a very pretty story?
+Some say that it is not true, but I think very
+likely it is. At any rate, it is so good that it
+ought to be true. Afterwards this warm-hearted
+Indian princess married one of the Virginians
+named John Rolfe and was taken to London and
+shown to the Queen. I am sorry to have to say
+that poor Pocahontas died there and never saw
+her native land again.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown.
+But his troubles were not at an end, for the colonists
+were as hard to deal with as the Indians.
+Some of them had found a kind of yellow stuff
+which they were sure was gold. They loaded a
+ship with this and sent it to England, thinking
+that they would all be rich. But the yellow stuff
+proved to be what is known as "a fool's gold,"
+and worth no more than so much sand. Instead
+of becoming rich, they were laughed at as great
+fools.</p>
+
+<p>After a while Smith was made governor, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+now tried a new plan to make the men work. He
+told them that if they did not work they should not
+eat. None of them wanted to starve, and they
+knew that John Smith meant just what he said,
+so they began to build houses and to dig the ground
+and plant crops. But some of them grumbled
+and some of them swore, and it was anything but
+a happy family.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Smith did not like this swearing, and
+he took a funny way to stop it. When the men
+came home at night each one who had sworn had
+a can of cold water poured down his sleeve for
+every time he had done so. Did any of my readers
+ever try that? If they did they would know
+why the men soon quit grumbling and swearing.
+All was beginning to go well in the colony when
+Captain Smith was hurt by some gunpowder that
+took fire and went off. He was hurt so badly that
+he had to go back to England. After that all
+went ill.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as their governor was gone the lazy
+men quit working. The profane men swore worse
+than before. They ate up all their food in a
+hurry, and the Indians would bring them no more.
+Sickness and hunger came and carried many of
+them to the grave. Some of them meddled with
+the Indians and were killed. There were five hundred
+of them when winter set in; but when spring
+came only sixty of them were alive. And all this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+took place because one wise man, Captain John
+Smith, was hurt and had to go home.</p>
+
+<p>The whole colony would have broken up if ships
+had not come out with more men and plenty of
+food. Soon after that, the people began to plant
+the ground and raise tobacco, which sold well in
+England. Many of them became rich, and the
+little settlement at Jamestown in time grew into
+the great colony of Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>This ends the story of the hero of Jamestown.
+Now let us say something about the hero of Plymouth.
+In the year 1620, thirteen years after
+Smith and his fellows sailed up the James River,
+a shipload of men and women came to a place
+called Plymouth, on the rocky coast of New England.
+It was named Plymouth by Captain Smith,
+who had been there before. A portion of the
+rock on which they first stepped, is still preserved
+and surrounded by a fence.</p>
+
+<p>These people are known as Pilgrims. They
+had been badly treated at home because they did
+believe in the teachings of the Church of England,
+and they had come across the stormy sea to find
+a place where they could worship God in their
+own way, without fear of being put in prison.</p>
+
+<p>With them came a soldier. He was named
+Captain Miles Standish. He was a little man,
+but he carried a big sword, and had a stout heart
+and a hot temper. While the Pilgrims came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+work and to pray, Captain Standish came to fight.
+He was a different man from Captain Smith, and
+would not have been able to deal with the lazy
+folks at Jamestown. But the Pilgrims were different
+also. They expected to work and live by
+their labor, and they had no sooner landed on Plymouth
+Rock than they began to dig and plant,
+while the sound of the hammer rang merrily all
+day long, as they built houses and got ready for
+the cold winter. But after all their labor and
+carefulness, sickness and hunger came, as they had
+come to Jamestown, and by the time the winter
+was over, half the poor Pilgrims were dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians soon got to be afraid of Captain
+Standish. They were afraid of the Pilgrims, too,
+for they found that these religious men could
+fight as well as pray. One Indian chief, named
+Canonicus, sent them a bundle of arrows with a
+snake's skin tied round it. This was their way of
+saying that they were going to fight the Pilgrims
+and drive them from the country. But Governor
+Bradford filled the snake skin with powder and
+bullets and sent it back. When Canonicus saw
+this he was badly scared, for he knew well what
+it meant. He had heard the white men's guns,
+and thought they had the power of using thunder
+and lightning. So he made up his mind to let the
+white strangers alone.</p>
+
+<p>But the Pilgrims did not trust the red men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+They put cannon on the roof of their log church,
+and they walked to church on Sunday like so many
+soldiers on the march, with guns in their hands
+and Captain Standish at their head. And while
+they were listening to the sermon one man stood
+outside on the lookout for danger.</p>
+
+<p>At one time some of the Indians made a plot
+to kill all the English. A friendly Indian told
+Captain Standish about it, and he made up his
+mind to teach them a lesson they would remember.
+He went to the Indian camp with a few men, and
+walked boldly into the hut where the plotting
+chiefs were talking over their plans. When they
+saw him and the men with him, they tried to
+frighten them. One of them showed the captain
+his knife and talked very boldly about it.</p>
+
+<p>A big Indian looked with scorn on the little
+captain. "Pah, you are only a little fellow, if
+you are a captain," he said. "I am not a chief,
+but I am strong and brave."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Standish was very angry, but he said
+nothing then. He waited until the next day, when
+he met the chiefs again. Then there was a quarrel
+and a fight, and the little captain killed the big
+Indian with his own knife. More of the Indians
+were slain, and the others ran for the woods.
+That put an end to the plot.</p>
+
+<p>There is one funny story told about Captain
+Standish. His wife had died, and he felt so lonely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+that he wanted another; so he picked out a pretty
+young woman named Priscilla Mullins. But the
+rough old soldier knew more about fighting than
+about making love, and he sent his young friend,
+John Alden, to make love for him.</p>
+
+<p>John told Priscilla's father what he had come
+for, and the father told Priscilla what John had
+told him. The pretty Priscilla had no fancy for
+the wrinkled old soldier. She looked at her father.
+Then she looked at John. Then she said:
+"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"</p>
+
+<p>John did speak for himself, and Priscilla became
+his wife. As for the captain, he married
+another woman, and this time I fancy he "spoke
+for himself."</p>
+
+<p>Miles Standish lived to be 70 years old, and to
+have a farm of his own and a house on a high hill
+near Plymouth. This is called Captain's Hill,
+and on it there is now a stone shaft a hundred
+feet high, with a statue of bold Captain Standish
+on its top.</p>
+
+<p>We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger
+Williams. He was not a captain like the others,
+but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and
+showed in his way as much courage as either of
+the captains.</p>
+
+<p>The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other
+people, who settled at Boston and other places
+around Massachusetts Bay until there were a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+many of them. These were called Puritans.
+They came across the seas for the same reason as
+the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own way.</p>
+
+<p>But they were as hard to live with as the people
+at home, for they wanted to force everybody
+else into their way. Some Quakers who came to
+Boston were treated very badly because they had
+different ways from the Puritans. And one
+young minister named Roger Williams, who
+thought every man should have the right to worship
+as he pleased, and said that the Indians had
+not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods
+for safety.</p>
+
+<p>It was winter time. The trees were bare of
+leaves and the ground was white with snow. Poor
+Roger had to wander through the cold woods,
+making a fire at night with his flint and steel, or
+sometimes creeping into a hollow tree to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved,
+for eighty long miles, to the house of Massasoit,
+an Indian chief who was his friend. The good
+chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the
+Indians, what Roger Williams had tried to do for
+them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave
+his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So
+Roger paddled away till he found a good place to
+stop. This place he called Providence. A large
+city now stands there, and is still called Providence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roger Williams had some friends with him, and
+others soon came, and after a few years he had
+quite a settlement of his own. It was called
+Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth,
+at Boston, and at Providence, was called
+"a colony."</p>
+
+<p>He took care that the Indians should be treated
+well, and that no one should do them any harm,
+so they grew to love the good white man. And
+he said that every man in his colony should worship
+God in the way he liked best, and no one
+should suffer on account of his manner of worship.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful thing in those days, when
+there were wars going on in Europe about religion
+or the manner of worship, and everybody was
+punished who did not believe in the religion of the
+state.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not think that Roger Williams was as
+brave a man as John Smith or Miles Standish, and
+as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He
+was not that kind of a hero. But he did much to
+make men happy and good and to do justice to
+all men, and I think that is the best kind of a
+hero.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO AMERICA</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;WONDER how many of my readers have
+ever seen the great city of New York. I
+wonder still more how many of them knew
+that it is the largest city in the world except London.
+But we must remember that London is ten
+times as old, so it can well afford to be larger.</div>
+
+<p>Why, if you should go back no farther than the
+time of your great-grandfather you would find no
+city of New York. All you would see would be a
+sort of large village on Manhattan Island, at the
+mouth of the Hudson River. And if you went
+back to the time of your grandfather's great-grandfather,
+I fancy you would see nothing on that island
+but trees, with Indian wigwams beneath them.
+Not a single white man or a single house would
+you see.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1609, just two years after Captain
+Smith sailed into the James River, a queer-looking
+Dutch vessel came across the ocean and began
+to prowl up and down the coast. It was named
+the "Half Moon." It came from Holland, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+land of the Dutch, but its captain was an Englishman
+named Henry Hudson, who had done so
+many daring things that men called him "the bold
+Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>What Captain Hudson would have liked to do
+was to sail across the United States and come out
+into the Pacific Ocean, and so make his way to the
+rich countries of Asia. Was not that a funny notion?
+To think that he could sail across three
+thousand miles of land and across great ranges of
+mountains!</p>
+
+<p>But you must not think that Captain Hudson
+was crazy. Nobody then knew how wide America
+was. For all they knew, it might not be fifty
+miles wide. Captain John Smith tried to get
+across it by sailing up James River. And Captain
+Hudson fancied he might find some stream
+that led from one ocean to the other.</p>
+
+<p>So on he went up and down the coast looking
+for an opening. And after a while the "Half
+Moon" sailed into a broad and beautiful bay,
+where great trees came down to the edge of the
+water and red men paddled about in their canoes.
+Captain Hudson was delighted to see it. "It
+was," he said, "as pleasant with grass and flowers
+as he had ever seen, and very sweet smells."</p>
+
+<p>This body of water was what we now call New
+York Bay. A broad and swift river runs into it,
+which is now called Hudson River, after Henry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+Hudson. The bold captain thought that this was
+the stream to go up if he wished to reach the
+Pacific Ocean. So, after talking as well as he
+could with the Indians in their canoes, and trading
+beads for corn, he set his sails again and started
+up the splendid river. Some of the Indians came
+on board the "Half Moon," and the Dutch gave
+them brandy, which they had never seen or tasted
+before. Soon they were dancing and capering
+about the deck, and one of them fell down so
+stupid with drink that his friends thought he was
+dead. That was their first taste of the deadly
+"fire water" of the whites, which has killed thousands
+of the red men since then.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hudson and the Dutch no doubt
+thought that this was great fun. People often do
+much harm without stopping to think. But on
+up the river went the "Half Moon."</p>
+
+<p>At some places they saw fields of green corn
+on the water's edge. Farther on were groves of
+lofty trees, and for miles great cliffs of rock rose
+like towers. It was all very grand and beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a very good land to fall in with," said
+Captain Hudson, "and a pleasant land to see."</p>
+
+<p>As they sailed on and on, they came to mountains,
+which rose on both sides the river. After
+passing the mountains, the captain went ashore to
+visit an old chief, who lived in a round house built
+of bark. The Indians here had great heaps of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+corn and beans. But what they liked best was
+roast dog. They roasted a dog for Captain Hudson
+and asked him to eat it, but I do not know
+whether he did so or not. And they broke their
+arrows and threw them into the fire, to show that
+they did not mean to do harm to the white men.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving the good old chief the Dutch explorers
+went on up the river till they reached a
+place about 150 miles above the sea, where the city
+of Albany now stands. Here the river became so
+narrow and shallow that Captain Hudson saw he
+could not reach the Pacific by that route, so he
+turned and sailed back to the sea again.</p>
+
+<p>A sad fate was that of Captain Hudson, "the
+bold Englishman." The next year he came again
+to America. But this time he went far to the
+north and entered the great body of water which
+we call Hudson Bay. He thought this would
+lead to the Pacific, and he would not turn back,
+though the food was nearly all gone. At last the
+crew got desperate, and they put the captain and
+some others into an open boat on the wide waters,
+and turned back again. Nothing more was ever
+heard of Captain Hudson, and he must have died
+miserably on that cold and lonely bay.</p>
+
+<p>But before his last voyage he had told the
+Dutch people all about Hudson River, and that the
+Indians had many fine furs which they would be
+glad to trade for beads, and knives, and other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+cheap things. The Dutch were fond of trading,
+and liked to make a good bargain, so they soon
+began to send ships to America. They built a fort
+and some log huts on Manhattan Island, and a
+number of them stayed there to trade with the
+red men. They paid the Indians for the island
+with some cheap goods worth about twenty-four
+dollars. I do not think any of you could guess
+how many millions of dollars that island is worth
+now. For the great city of New York stands
+where the log huts of the Dutch traders once stood,
+and twenty-four dollars would hardly buy as much
+land as you could cover with your hand.</p>
+
+<p>The country around is now all farming land,
+where grain and fruit are grown, and cattle are
+raised. But then it was all woodland for hundreds
+of miles away, and in these woods lived
+many foxes and beavers and other fur-bearing animals.
+These the Indians hunted and killed, and
+sold their furs to the Dutch, so that there was soon
+a good trade for both the red and the white men.
+The Dutch were glad to get the furs and the Indians
+were as glad to get the knives and beads.
+More and more people came from Holland, and
+the town grew larger and larger, and strong brick
+houses took the place of the log huts, and in time
+there was quite a town.</p>
+
+<p>Men were sent from Holland to govern the
+people. Some of these men were not fit to govern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+themselves, and the settlers did not like to
+have such men over them. One of them was a
+stubborn old fellow named Peter Stuyvesant. He
+had lost one of his legs, and wore a wooden leg
+with bands of silver around it, so that he was
+called "Old Silver Leg."</p>
+
+<p>While he was governor an important event took
+place. The English had a settlement in Virginia
+and another in New England, and they said that
+all the coast lands belonged to them, because the
+Cabots had been the first to see them. The
+Cabots came from Italy, but they had settled in
+England, and sailed in an English ship.</p>
+
+<p>So one day a small fleet of English vessels came
+into the bay, and a letter was sent on shore which
+said that all this land belonged to England and
+must be given up to them. The Dutch might
+stay there, but they would be under an English
+governor. Old Peter tore up the letter and
+stamped about in a great rage on his silver leg.
+But he had treated the people so badly that they
+would not fight for him, so he had to give up the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>The English called it New York, after the Duke
+of York, the king's brother. It grew and grew
+till it became a great and rich city, and sent
+ships to all parts of the world. Most of the
+Dutch stayed there, and their descendants are
+among the best people of New York to-day. Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+long after these English ships came to New York
+Bay, other English ships came to a fine body of water,
+about 100 miles farther south, now called Delaware
+Bay. Into this also runs a great stream of
+fresh water, called Delaware River, as wide as the
+Hudson. I think you will like to learn what
+brought them here.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt you remember what I said about some
+people called Quakers, who came to Boston and
+were treated very badly by the Puritans. Did any
+of my young readers ever see a Quaker? In old
+times you would have known them, for they
+dressed in a different way from other people.
+They wore very plain clothes and broad-brimmed
+hats, which they would not take off to do honor to
+king or noble. To-day they generally dress more
+like the people around them.</p>
+
+<p>If they were treated badly in Boston they were
+treated worse in England. Thieves and highwaymen
+had as good a time as the poor Quakers.
+Some of them were put in jail and kept there for
+years. Some were whipped or put in the stocks,
+where low people called them vile names and
+threw mud at them. Indeed, these quiet people,
+who did no harm to any one, but were kind to
+others, had a very hard time, and were treated
+more cruelly than the Pilgrims and the Puritans.</p>
+
+<p>Among them was the son of a brave English
+admiral, who was a friend of the king and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+brother, the Duke of York. But this did not save
+him from being put in prison for preaching as a
+Quaker and wearing his hat in court.</p>
+
+<p>This was William Penn, from whom Pennsylvania
+was named. You may well fancy that the
+son of a rich admiral and the friend of a king did
+not like being treated as though he were a thief
+because he chose to wear a hat with a broad brim
+and to say "thee" and "thou," and because he
+would not go to the king's church.</p>
+
+<p>What is more, the king owed him money, which
+he could not or would not pay. He had owed
+this money to Admiral Penn, and after the admiral
+died he owed it to his son.</p>
+
+<p>William Penn thought it would be wise to do as
+the Pilgrims and Puritans had done. There was
+plenty of land in America, and it would be easy
+there to make a home for the poor Quakers where
+they could live in peace and worship God in the
+way they thought right. This they could not do
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>Penn went to the king and told him how he
+could pay his debt. If the king would give him a
+tract of land on the west side of the Delaware
+River, he would take it as payment in full for the
+money owing to his father.</p>
+
+<p>King Charles, who never had money enough for
+his own use, was very glad to pay his debts in this
+easy way. He told Penn that he could have all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the land he wanted, and offered him a tract that
+was nearly as large as the whole of England.
+This land belonged to the red men, but that did
+not trouble King Charles. It is easy to pay debts
+in other people's property. All Penn was asked
+to pay the king was two beaver skins every year
+and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that should
+be mined. As no gold or silver was ever mined
+the king got nothing but his beaver skins, which
+were a kind of rent.</p>
+
+<p>What do any of my young readers know about
+the Delaware River? Have any of you seen the
+wide, swift stream which flows between the states
+of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into
+the broad body of water known as Delaware Bay?
+On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia,
+in which live more than a million people, and
+where there are thousands of busy workshops and
+well-filled stores. This large and fine city came
+from the way the king paid his debt. King
+Charles was not a good man, but he did one thing
+that had a good ending.</p>
+
+<p>There were white men there before the Quakers
+came. Many years earlier a number of people
+from Sweden had come and settled along the river.
+Then the Dutch from New York said the land was
+theirs, and took possession of the forts of the
+Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed
+the land as theirs. Then Quakers came and settled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+in New Jersey. Finally came William Penn,
+in a ship called by the pretty name of the "Welcome,"
+and after that the land was governed by
+the Quakers or Friends, though the Swedes stayed
+there still.</p>
+
+<p>We have something very pleasant to say about
+good William Penn. He knew very well that King
+Charles did not own the land, and had no right
+to sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians
+together under a great elm tree on the river bank,
+and had a long talk with them, and told them he
+would pay them for all the land he wanted. This
+pleased the red men very much, and ever afterwards
+they loved William Penn.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not think it must have been a pretty
+scene when Penn and the Quakers met the Indian
+chiefs under the great tree&mdash;the Indians in their
+colored blankets and the Quakers in their great
+hats? That tree stood for more than a hundred
+years afterwards, and when the British army was
+in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution
+their general put a guard around Penn's treaty
+tree, so that the soldiers should not cut it down
+for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone
+monument marks where it stood. A city was laid
+out on the river, which Penn named Philadelphia,
+a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose
+some brotherly love is there still, but not nearly
+so much as there should be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Streets were made through the woods, and the
+names of the trees were given to these streets,
+which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine,
+Cherry, and the like. People soon came in numbers,
+and it is wonderful how fast the city grew.
+Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses,
+and in time it grew to be the largest in the country.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians looked on in wonder to see large
+houses springing up where they had hunted deer,
+and to see great ships where they had paddled
+their canoes. But the white men spread more and
+more into the land, and the red men were pushed
+back, and in time none of them were left in Penn's
+woodland colony. This was long after William
+Penn was dead.</p>
+
+<p>But while Penn's city was growing large and
+rich, he was becoming poor. He spent much
+money on his province and got very little back.
+At last he became so poor that he was put in
+prison for debt, as was the custom in those days.
+In the end he died and left the province to his
+sons. The Indians sent some beautiful furs to his
+widow in memory of their great and good brother.
+They said these were to make her a cloak "to
+protect her while she was passing without her
+guide through the stormy wilderness of life."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>VIRGINIA has often been called the Cavalier
+colony. Do any of you know why,
+or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I
+had better tell you. They were the lords and the
+proud people of England. Many of them had no
+money, but they would do no work, and cared for
+nothing but pleasure and fighting. There were
+plenty of working people in that country, but there
+were many who were too proud to work, and expected
+others to work for them, while they hoped
+to live at ease.</div>
+
+<p>Some of this kind of men came out with John
+Smith, and that is why he had so much trouble
+with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came
+from the working people of England, and nobody
+had to starve them to make them work, or to
+pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them
+from swearing.</p>
+
+<p>While religious people settled in the North,
+many of the proud Cavalier class, who cared very
+little about religion, came to the South. So we
+may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colonies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+though many of the common people came
+there too, and it was not long before there was
+plenty of work.</p>
+
+<p>The first to come after John Smith and the
+Jamestown people were some shiploads of Catholics.
+You should know that the Catholics were
+treated in England even worse than the Puritans
+and the Quakers. The law said they must go to
+the English Church instead of to their own. If
+they did not they would have to pay a large sum
+of money or go to prison. Was not this very
+harsh and unjust?</p>
+
+<p>The Catholics were not all poor people. There
+were rich men and nobles among them. One of
+these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the
+King for some land in America where he and his
+friends might dwell in peace and have churches of
+their own. This was many years before William
+Penn asked for the same thing. The King was a
+friend of Lord Baltimore and told him he might
+have as much land as he could make use of. So
+he chose a large tract just north of Virginia,
+which the King named Maryland, after his wife,
+Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord
+Baltimore had to pay for this was two Indian arrows
+every year, and a part of the gold and silver,
+if any were found. This was done to show that
+the King still kept some claim to Maryland, and
+did not give away all his rights.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now comes a story much the same as I
+have told you several times already. A shipload
+of Catholics and other people came across the
+ocean to the new continent which Columbus had
+discovered many years before. These sailed up
+the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find
+this bay on your maps. They landed at a place
+they called St. Mary's, where there was a small
+Indian town. As it happened, the Indians at this
+town had been so much troubled by fighting tribes
+farther north that they were just going to move
+somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell
+their town to the white strangers.</p>
+
+<p>All they wanted for their houses and their corn
+fields were some hatchets, knives and beads, and
+other things they could use. Gold and silver
+would have been of no value to them, for they had
+never seen these metals. The only money the Indians
+used was round pieces of seashell, with holes
+bored through them. Before these people left
+their town they showed the white men how to hunt
+in the woods and how to plant corn. And their
+wives taught the white women how to make
+hominy out of corn and how to bake johnny-cakes.
+So the people of Maryland did not suffer from
+hunger like those of Virginia and New England,
+and they had plenty to eat and lived very well from
+the start.</p>
+
+<p>This was in the year 1634, just about the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+Roger Williams went to Rhode Island. Lord
+Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams
+did; he gave the people religious liberty. Every
+Christian who came to Maryland had the right to
+worship God in his own way. Roger Williams
+went farther than this, for he gave the same right
+to Jews and all other people, whether they were
+Christians or pagans.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before other people came to
+Maryland, and they began to plant tobacco, as the
+people were doing in Virginia. Tobacco was a
+good crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high
+price in England, so that the Maryland planters
+did very well, and many of them grew rich. But
+religious liberty did not last there very long, and
+the Catholics were not much better off than they
+had been in England. All the poor people who
+came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants.
+Only the rich ones were Catholics. Many other
+Protestants soon came, some of them being Puritans
+from New England, who did not know what
+religious liberty meant.</p>
+
+<p>These people said that the Catholics should not
+have the right to worship in their own churches,
+even in Maryland, and they went so far that they
+tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which
+the king had given him. There was much fighting
+between the Catholics and the Protestants.
+Now one party got the best of it, and now the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+other. In the end the province was taken from
+Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new king,
+named King William, came to the throne, he said
+that Maryland was his property, and that the
+Catholics should not have a church of their own
+or worship in their own way in that province. Do
+you not think this was very cruel and unjust? It
+seems so to me. It did not seem right, after Lord
+Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men,
+for others to come and take it away. But the
+custom in those days was that all men must be
+made to think the same way, or be punished if
+they didn't. This seems queer now-a-days, when
+every man has the right to think as he pleases.</p>
+
+<p>In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who
+became a Protestant, and the province was given
+back to him. It grew rich and full of people,
+and large towns were built. One of these was
+named Baltimore, after Lord Baltimore, and is
+now a great city. And Washington, the capital
+of the United States, stands on land that was once
+part of Maryland. But St. Mary's, the first town
+built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left to
+show where it stood.</p>
+
+<p>Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia.
+The Potomac River runs between them. South
+of Virginia was another great tract of land, reaching
+all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards
+then held. Some French Protestants tried to settle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+there, but they were cruelly murdered by the
+Spaniards, and no one else came there for many
+years.</p>
+
+<p>About 1660 people began to settle in what was
+then called "the Carolinas," but is now called
+North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of
+these came from Virginia and some from England,
+and small settlements were made here and there
+along the coast. One of these was called Charleston.
+This has now grown into a large and important
+city.</p>
+
+<p>There were some noblemen in England who
+thought that this region might become worth much
+money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to
+give it to them. This was the same king who
+gave the Dutch settlement to the Duke of York
+and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William
+Penn. He was very ready to give away what did
+not belong to him, and told these noblemen that
+they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were
+eight of these men, and they made up their minds
+that they would have a very nice form of government
+for their new province. So they went to a
+famous man named John Locke, who was believed
+to be very wise, and asked him to draw up a
+form of government for them.</p>
+
+<p>John Locke drew up a plan of government
+which they thought very fine, but which everybody
+now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+he knew more about books than he did about government.
+He called it the "Grand Model," and
+the noble lords thought they had a wonderful government
+indeed. There were to be earls, and
+barons, and lords, the same as in Europe. No one
+could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The
+poorer people were to be like so many slaves.
+They could not even leave one plantation for another
+without asking leave from the lord or baron
+who owned it.</p>
+
+<p>What do you think the people did? You must
+not imagine they came across the ocean to be made
+slaves of. No, indeed! They cared no more for
+the "Grand Model" than if it was a piece of tissue
+paper. They settled where they pleased, and
+would not work for the earls and barons, and
+fought with the governors, and refused to pay the
+heavy taxes which the eight noble owners asked.</p>
+
+<p>In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole
+business that they gave their province back to the
+king. It was then divided into two colonies,
+known as North Carolina and South Carolina.
+As for the lords and barons, nobody heard of them
+any more.</p>
+
+<p>The people of the Carolinas had other things
+beside the Grand Model of government to trouble
+them. There were savage Indians back in the
+country who attacked them and killed many of
+them. And there were pirates along the coast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+who attacked ships and killed all on board. But
+rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cotton,
+and much tar and turpentine were got from
+the pine trees in North Carolina, and as the years
+went on these colonies became rich and prosperous,
+and the people began to have a happy time.</p>
+
+<p>I hope none of my young readers are tired of
+reading about kings and colonies. I am sure they
+must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and
+Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of
+the great leaders. At any rate, there is only one
+more colony to talk about, and then we will be
+through with this part of our story. This is the
+colony of Georgia, which lies in the tract of land
+between South Carolina and Florida.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that when you are done reading this
+book you will be glad that you did not live two
+or three hundred years ago. To-day every one
+can think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too,
+if he does not break the laws. And the laws are
+much more just and less cruel than they were in
+former times. Why, in those days, every man
+who owed money and could not pay it might be
+put in prison and kept there for years. He could
+not work there and earn money to pay his debts,
+and if his friends did not pay them he might stay
+there till he died. As I have told you, even the
+good William Penn was put in prison for debt,
+and kept there till his friends paid the money.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were as many poor debtors in prison as
+there were thieves and villains. Some of them become
+sick and died, and some were starved to
+death by cruel jailers, who would not give them
+anything to eat if they had no money to pay for
+food. One great and good man, named General
+James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so
+sorry for the poor debtors he saw there, that he
+asked the king to give him a piece of land in
+America where he could take some of these suffering
+people.</p>
+
+<p>There was now not much land left to give.
+Settlements had been made all along the coast except
+south of the Carolinas, and the king told General
+Oglethorpe that he could have the land which
+lay there, and could take as many debtors out of
+prison as he chose. He thought it would be a
+good thing to take them somewhere where they
+could work and earn their living. The king who
+was then on the throne was named King George,
+so Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after
+Lord Baltimore had come to Maryland. General
+Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison,
+and very glad they were to get out, you may be
+sure. He landed with them on the banks of a
+fine river away down South, where he laid out a
+town which he named Savannah.</p>
+
+<p>The happy debtors now found themselves in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+broad and beautiful land, where they could prove
+whether they were ready to work or not. They
+were not long in doing this. Right away they began
+to cut down trees, and build houses, and plant
+fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be seen
+and food plants were growing in the fields. And
+very happy men and women these poor people
+were.</p>
+
+<p>General Oglethorpe knew as well as William
+Penn that the land did not belong to the king.
+He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the
+land was theirs, and offered to pay them for it.
+They were quite willing to sell, and soon he had
+all the land he wanted, and what is more, he had
+the Indians for friends.</p>
+
+<p>But if he had no trouble with the Indians, he
+had a good deal with the Spaniards of Florida.
+They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and
+that the English had no right there. And they
+sent an army and tried to drive them out.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was
+an old soldier, but he soon showed them that he
+knew how to fight. He drove back their armies
+and took their ships; and they quickly made up
+their minds that they had better let the English
+alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the
+Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This
+was St. Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>Before long some Germans came from Europe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+and settled in the new colony. People came also
+from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted
+for food, and some of the colonists raised silkworms
+and made silk. But in the end, cotton
+came to be the chief crop of the colony.</p>
+
+<p>General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man.
+He did not die till long after the American Revolution.
+Georgia was then a flourishing state, and
+the little town he had started on the banks of the
+Savannah River was a fine city, with broad streets,
+fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees. I think
+the old general must have been very proud of this
+charming city, and of the great state which owed
+its start to him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>NOW that you have been told about the settlement
+of the colonies, it is well to recall
+how many of them there were. Let us
+see. There were the Pilgrim and Puritan settlements
+of New England, Roger Williams's settlement
+in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in
+New York, the Quaker one in Pennsylvania, the
+Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier ones
+in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor settlement
+in Georgia. Then there were some
+smaller ones, making about a dozen in all.</div>
+
+<p>These stretched all along the coast, from Canada,
+the French country in the north, to Florida,
+the Spanish country in the south. The British
+were a long time in settling these places, for nearly
+250 years passed after the time of Columbus before
+General Oglethorpe came to Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>While all this was going on, what was becoming
+of the native people of the country, the Indians?
+I am afraid they were having a very hard time of
+it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+forced them to work so terribly hard in the mines
+and the fields that they died by thousands. The
+French and the English fought with them and
+drove them away from their old homes, killing
+many of them.</p>
+
+<p>And this has gone on and on ever since, until the
+red men, who once spread over all this country,
+are now kept in a very small part of it. Some
+people say there are as many of them as there ever
+were. If that is so, they can live on much less
+land than they once occupied.</p>
+
+<p>What do you know about these Indians? Have
+you ever seen one of them? Your fathers or
+grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were
+everywhere in this country, and people saw more
+of them than they liked; but now we see them only
+in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools, except
+we happen to go where they live. Do you
+not want to know something about these oldest
+Americans? I have been busy so far talking about
+the white men and what they did, and have had
+no chance to tell you about the people they found
+on this continent and how they treated them. I
+think I must make this chapter an Indian one.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south,
+and the French to the north, and the Dutch and the
+Swedes and the British to the middle country, they
+found everywhere a kind of people they had never
+seen before. Their skin was not white, like that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+of the people of Europe, nor black like that of the
+Africans, but of a reddish color, like that of copper,
+so that they called them red men. They had
+black eyes and hair, and high cheek-bones, and
+were not handsome according to our ideas; but
+they were tall and strong, and many of them very
+proud and dignified.</p>
+
+<p>These people lived in a very wild fashion.
+They spent much of their time in hunting, fishing,
+and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and
+beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their
+food was got from wild animals killed in the
+woods. They were as fond of fighting as they
+were of hunting. They were divided into tribes,
+some of which were nearly always at war with
+other tribes. They had no weapons but stone
+hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able
+with these to kill many of their enemies. People
+say that they were badly treated by the whites, but
+they treated one another worse than the whites
+ever did.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians were very cruel. The warriors
+shaved off all their hair except one lock, which was
+called the scalp lock. When one of them was
+killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his
+scalp, or the skin of his head. They were very
+proud of these scalps, for they showed how many
+men they had killed.</p>
+
+<p>When they took a prisoner, they would tie him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+to a tree and build a fire round him and burn him
+to death. And while he was burning they would
+torture him all they could. We cannot feel so
+much pity for the Indians when we think of all
+this. No doubt the white men have treated them
+very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible
+cruelties, and that is something to be thankful
+for. In this country, where once there was
+constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and
+burning of prisoners, now there is peace and kindness
+and happiness. So if evil has been done, good
+has come of it.</p>
+
+<p>At the time I am speaking of, forests covered
+much of this great continent. They spread everywhere,
+and the Indians lived under their shade,
+and had wonderful skill in following animals or
+enemies through their shady depths. They read
+the ground much as we read the pages of a book.
+A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint
+which we could not see, were full of meaning to
+them, and they would follow a trail for miles
+through the woods where we would not have been
+able to follow it a yard. Their eyes were trained
+to this kind of work, but in time some of the
+white men became as expert as the Indians, and
+could follow a trail as well.</p>
+
+<p>The red men lived mostly in little huts covered
+with skins or bark, which they called wigwams.
+Some of the tribes lived in villages, where there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+were large bark houses. But they did not stay
+much in their houses, for they liked better to be
+in the open air. Now they were hunting deer in
+the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark
+canoes in the streams, now smoking their pipes in
+front of their huts, now dancing their war dances
+or getting ready to fight.</p>
+
+<p>The men did nothing except hunting and fighting.
+The women had to do all other work, such
+as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building
+wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving
+of cloth, but most of their clothes were made of
+the skins of wild animals.</p>
+
+<p>In war times the warriors tried to make themselves
+as ugly as they could, painting their faces
+in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in their
+hair. They seemed to think they could scare their
+enemies by ugly faces.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians.
+Some of these tribes were quite large, and were
+made up of a great number of men and women
+who lived together and spoke the same language.
+Each tribe was divided up into clans, or small family-like
+groups, and each clan had its sachem, or
+peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led
+them to battle. The sachems and chiefs governed
+the tribes and made such laws as they had.</p>
+
+<p>Every clan had some animal which it called its
+totem, such as the wolf, bear, or fox. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+proud of their totems, and the form of the animal
+was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked
+into the skin with needles. All the Indians were
+fond of dancing, and their war dances were as
+fierce and wild as they could make them.</p>
+
+<p>The tribes in the south were not as savage as
+those in the north. They did more farming, and
+had large and well-built villages. Some of them
+had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun
+as a god. They kept a fire always burning in the
+temple, and seemed to think this fire was a part of
+their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled
+over the tribe, and also a head war-chief, a high-priest,
+and other rulers.</p>
+
+<p>In the far west were Indians who built houses
+that were almost like towns, for they had hundreds
+of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one of these
+great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand
+people. Other tribes lived in holes in the sides of
+steep rocks, where their enemies could not easily
+get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers.
+And there were some who lived on top of high,
+steep hills, which were very hard to climb. These
+Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you
+would have liked to see white people coming in
+ships across the waters and settling down in your
+country as if they owned it? They did not all
+pay for the land they took, like William Penn and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted as
+if the country belonged to them, and it is no wonder
+the old owners of the country did not like it,
+or that there was fierce fighting between the white
+and the red men.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember the story of Canonicus and
+the snake skin, and that of Miles Standish and the
+chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but
+there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither
+a number of settlers had come from Boston and
+others from England. Here there was a warlike
+tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry
+on seeing the white men in their country.</p>
+
+<p>They began to kill the whites whenever they
+found them alone. Then the whites began to
+kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war.
+The Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees,
+set close together in the ground. They thought
+they were safe in this fort, but the English made
+an attack on it, and got into it, and set fire to the
+Indian wigwams inside. The fight went on terribly
+in the smoke and flame until nearly all the
+Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost
+their lives. This so scared the Indians that it was
+forty years before there was another Indian war
+in New England.</p>
+
+<p>I have told you about the good chief Massasoit,
+who was so kind to Roger Williams. He was a
+friend to the white men as long as he lived, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+after his death his son Philip became one of their
+greatest enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Philip's brother was taken sick and died after
+he had been to Plymouth, and the Indians thought
+that the people there had given him poison.
+Philip said that they would try to kill him next,
+and he made up his mind to fight them and drive
+them out of the country. The Indians had guns
+now, and knew how to use them, and they began
+to shoot the white people as they went quietly along
+the roads.</p>
+
+<p>Next they began to attack the villages of the
+whites. They would creep up at night, set the
+houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out.
+The war went on for a long time in this way, and
+there were many terrible fights.</p>
+
+<p>At one place the people, when they saw the
+Indians coming, all ran to a strong building called
+a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and
+yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by
+shooting arrows with blazing rags on their points.
+Once the roof caught fire, but some of the men ran
+up and threw water on the flames.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Indians got a cart and filled it with
+hay. Setting this on fire, they pushed it up against
+the house. It looked as if all the white men and
+women and children would be burned alive. The
+house caught fire and began to blaze. But just
+then came a shower of rain that put out the fire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+and the people inside were saved once more. Before
+the Indians could do anything further some
+white soldiers came and the savages all ran into
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>There were other wonderful escapes, but many
+of the settlers were killed, and Philip began to
+think he would be able to drive them out of the
+country, as he wished to do. He was called King
+Philip, though he had no crown except a string of
+wampum,&mdash;or bits of bored shell strung together
+and twined round his head,&mdash;and no palace better
+than a bark hut, while his finest dress was a red
+blanket. It took very little to make an Indian
+king. The white men knew more about war than
+the Indians, and in the end they began to drive
+them back. One of their forts was taken, and the
+wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the
+Pequots. A great many of the poor red men
+perished in the flames.</p>
+
+<p>The best fighter among the white men was Captain
+Church. He followed King Philip and his
+men to one hiding place after another, killing
+some and taking others prisoners. Among the
+prisoners were the wife and little son of the
+Indian king.</p>
+
+<p>"It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he
+heard of this. "Now I am ready to die."</p>
+
+<p>He did not live much longer. Captain Church
+chased him from place to place, till he came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasoit
+lived when Roger Williams came to him through
+the woods. Here King Philip was shot, and the
+war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and
+a large number had been killed on both sides. It
+is known in history as King Philip's War.</p>
+
+<p>There were wars with the Indians in many other
+parts of the country. In Virginia the Indians
+made a plot to kill all the white people. They
+pretended to be very friendly, and brought them
+meat and fish to sell. While they were talking
+quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or
+hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one
+morning nearly three hundred and fifty were killed,
+men, women, and little children.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, except
+those in Jamestown, who were warned in
+time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting
+down all they could find, and killing a great many
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>This was after the death of Powhatan, who had
+been a friend to the whites. About twenty years
+later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took place.
+After this the Indians were driven far back into
+the country, and did not give any more trouble for
+thirty years. The last war with them broke out
+in 1675.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch in New York also had their troubles
+with the Indians. They paid for all the lands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+they took, but one of their governors was foolish
+enough to start a war that went on for two years.
+A worse trouble was that in North Carolina, where
+there was a powerful tribe called the Tuscaroras.
+These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers
+of them. But in the end they were driven out of
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>The only colonies in which the Indians kept
+friendly for a long time were Pennsylvania and
+Georgia. We know the reason of this. William
+Penn and General Oglethorpe were wise enough
+to make friends with them at the start, and continued
+to treat them with justice and friendliness,
+so that the red men came to love these good men.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>DO any of my young readers know what is
+meant by a Charter? "Yes," I hear
+some of you say. "No," say others.
+Well, I must speak to the "No," party; the party
+that doesn't know, and wants to know.</div>
+
+<p>A charter is a something written or printed which
+grants certain rights or privileges to the party to
+whom it is given. It may come from a king or a
+congress, or from any person in power, and be
+given to any other person who wishes the right to
+hold a certain property or to do some special thing.</p>
+
+<p>Do you understand any better now? I am
+sorry I can not put it in plainer words. I think
+the best way will be to tell you about some charters
+which belong to American history. You
+should know that all the people who crossed the
+ocean to make new settlements on the Atlantic
+Coast had charters from the king of England.
+This was the case with the Pilgrims and the Puritans,
+with Roger Williams, William Penn, Lord
+Baltimore, and the others I have spoken about.</p>
+
+<p>These charters were written on parchment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+which is the skin of an animal, made into something
+like paper. The charters gave these people
+the right to settle on and own certain lands, to
+form certain kinds of government, and to do a
+variety of things which in England no one could
+do but the king and the parliament.</p>
+
+<p>The colonies in New England were given the
+right to choose their own governors and make
+their own laws, and nobody, not even the king,
+could stop them from doing this. The king had
+given them this right, and no other king could take
+it away while they kept their charters.</p>
+
+<p>Would you care to be told what took place afterwards?
+All kings, you should know, are not alike.
+Some are very mild and easy, and some are very
+harsh and severe. Some are willing for the people
+to have liberty, and some are not. The kings
+who gave the charters to New England were of the
+easy kind. But they were followed by kings of
+the hard kind, who thought that these people beyond
+the sea had too much liberty, and who wished
+to take away some of it.</p>
+
+<p>Charles II., who gave some of these charters,
+was one of the easy kings, and did not trouble
+himself about the people in the colonies. James
+II., who came after him, was one of the hard
+kings. He was somewhat of a tyrant, and wanted
+to make the laws himself, and to take the
+right to do this from the people. After trying to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+rob the people of England of their liberties, he
+thought he would do the same thing with the people
+of America. "Those folks across the seas
+are having too good a time," he thought. "They
+have too many rights and privileges, and I must
+take some of them away. I will let them know
+that I am their master."</p>
+
+<p>But they had their charters, which gave them
+these rights; so the wicked king thought the first
+thing for him to do was to take their charters
+away from them. Then their rights would be
+gone, and he could make for them a new set of
+laws, and force them to do everything he wished.</p>
+
+<p>What King James did was to send a nobleman
+named Sir Edmund Andros to New England to
+rule as royal governor. He was the agent of the
+king, and was to do all that the king ordered.
+He began by undertaking to rob the people of
+their charters. You see, even a tyrant king did
+not like to go against the charters, for a charter
+was a sacred pledge.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the new governor went about ordering
+the people to give him their charters. One of the
+places to which he went was Hartford, Connecticut,
+and there he told the officers of the colony that
+they must deliver up their charter; the king had
+said so, and the king's word must be obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>If any of you had lived in Connecticut in those
+days I know how you would have felt. The charter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+gave the people a great deal of liberty, and
+they did not wish to part with it. I know that
+you and I would have felt the same way. But
+what could they do? If they did not give it up
+peacefully, Governor Andros might come again
+with soldiers and take it from them by force. So
+the lawmakers and officials were in a great fret
+about what they should do.</p>
+
+<p>They asked Governor Andros to come to the
+State-house and talk over the matter. Some of
+them fancied they could get him to leave them
+their charter, though they might have known better.
+There they sat&mdash;the governor in the lofty
+chair of state, the others seated in a half circle
+before him. There was a broad table between
+them, and on this lay the great parchment of the
+charter. Some of those present did a great deal
+of talking. They told how good King Charles
+had given them the charter, and how happy they
+had been under it, and how loyal they were to
+good King James, and they begged Governor Andros
+not to take it from them. But they might
+as well have talked to the walls. He had his
+orders from the king and was one of the men who
+do just what they are told.</p>
+
+<p>While the talk was going on a strange thing
+happened. It was night, and the room was lit up
+with a few tallow candles. Of course you know
+that these were the best lights people had at that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+time; gas or the electric light had never been heard
+of. And it was before the time of matches. The
+only way to make a light in those days was by the
+use of the flint and steel, which was a very slow
+method indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, while one of the Hartford men was
+talking and the governor was looking at him in a
+tired sort of way, all the lights in the room went
+out, and the room was in deep darkness. Everybody
+jumped up from their chairs and there was
+no end of bustle and confusion, and likely enough
+some pretty hard words were said. They had to
+hunt in the dark for the flint and steel; and then
+there came snapping of steel on flint, and falling
+of sparks on tinder, so that it was some time before
+the candles were lit again.</p>
+
+<p>When this was done the governor opened his
+eyes very wide, for the table was empty, the charter
+was gone. I fancy he swore a good deal when
+he saw that. In those days even the highest people
+were given to swearing. But no matter how
+much he swore, he could not with hard words
+bring back the charter. It was gone, and nobody
+knew where. Everybody looked for it, right and
+left, in and out, in drawers and closets, but it was
+nowhere to be found. Very likely the most of
+them did not want to find it. At any rate, the governor
+had to go away without the charter, and
+years passed before anybody saw it again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Do you not wish to know what became of it?
+We are told that it had been taken by a bold young
+soldier named Captain Wadsworth. While all
+the people in the room were looking at the one
+who was making his speech, the captain quickly
+took off his cloak and gave it a quick fling over the
+candles, so that in a moment they were all put out.
+Then he snatched up the charter from the table
+and slipped quietly out of the room. While they
+were busy snapping the flint and steel, he was hurrying
+down the street towards a great oak tree
+which was more than a hundred years old. This
+tree was hollow in its heart, and there was a hole
+in its side which opened into the hollow. Into
+this hole Captain Wadsworth pushed the charter,
+and it fell into the hollow space. I do not think
+any of us would have thought of looking there for
+it. I know nobody did at that time, and there it
+lay for years, until the tyrant King James was
+driven from the throne and a new king had taken
+his place. Then it was joyfully brought out, and
+the people were ever so glad to see it again.</p>
+
+<p>The old tree stood for many years in the main
+street of the town, and became famous as the Charter
+Oak. The people loved and were proud of it
+as long as it stood. But many years ago the hoary
+old oak fell, and now only some of its wood is
+left. This has been made into chairs and boxes
+and other objects which are thought of great value.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Do you not think that Captain Wadsworth was
+a bold and daring man, and one who knew just
+what to do in times of trouble? If you do not, I
+fancy you will when I have told you another story
+about him.</p>
+
+<p>This took place after the charter had been taken
+from the oak and brought to the statehouse again.
+At this time there was a governor in New York
+named Fletcher, who claimed that the king had
+given him the right to command the militia, or
+citizen soldiers, of Connecticut. So he came to
+Hartford, where Captain Wadsworth was in command,
+and where the people did not want any
+stranger to have power over them. He told the
+captain what he had come for, and that he had a
+commission to read to the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>The militia were called out and drawn up in
+line in the public square of the town, and Governor
+Fletcher came before them, full of his importance.
+He took out of his pocket the paper which he said
+gave him the right to command, and began to read
+it in a very proud and haughty manner. But he
+had not read ten words when Captain Wadsworth
+told the drummers to beat their drums, and before
+you could draw your breath there was such a rattle
+and roll of noise that not a word could be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" cried Fletcher. "Stop those
+drums!" The drums stopped, and he began to
+read again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Drum!" ordered Wadsworth in a loud tone,
+and such a noise began that a giant's voice would
+have been drowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" again shouted Fletcher. He was
+very red in the face by this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Drum, I say!" roared the captain.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to the governor and said, laying
+his hand on his sword, "I command these men,
+Governor Fletcher, and if you interrupt me again
+I will make the sun shine through you in a minute."
+And he looked as if he meant what he said. All
+the governor's pomp and consequence were gone,
+and his face turned from red to pale. He hastily
+thrust the paper back into his pocket, and was not
+long in leaving Hartford for New York. No
+doubt he thought that Connecticut was not a good
+place for royal governors.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose I now tell you the story of another royal
+governor and another bold captain. This was
+down in Virginia, but it was long after Captain
+Smith was dead and after Virginia had become a
+large and prosperous colony.</p>
+
+<p>The king sent there a governor named Berkeley,
+who acted as if he was master and all the people
+were his slaves. They did not like to be treated
+this way; but Berkeley had soldiers under his command,
+and they were forced to obey. While this
+was going on the Indians began to murder the settlers.
+The governor ought to have stopped them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+but he was afraid to call out the people, and he let
+the murders go on.</p>
+
+<p>There was a young man named Nathaniel
+Bacon who asked Governor Berkeley to let him
+raise some men to fight the Indians. The governor
+refused. But this did not stop brave young
+Bacon, for he called out a force of men and drove
+off the murdering savages.</p>
+
+<p>Governor Berkeley was very angry at this. He
+said that Bacon was a traitor and ought to be
+treated like one, and that the men with him were
+rebels. Bacon at once marched with his men
+against Jamestown, and the haughty governor ran
+away as fast as he could.</p>
+
+<p>But while Bacon and his men were fighting the
+Indians again, Governor Berkeley came back and
+talked more than ever about rebels and traitors.
+This made Bacon and the people with him very
+angry. To be treated in this way while they were
+saving the people from the Indian knife and tomahawk
+was too bad. They marched against Jamestown
+again. This time the governor did not run
+away, but prepared to defend the place with
+soldiers and cannon.</p>
+
+<p>But they did not fire their guns. Bacon had
+captured some of the wives of the principal men,
+and he put them in front of his line as he advanced.
+The governor did not dare bid his soldiers to fire
+on these women, so he left the town again in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+hurry, and it was taken by the Indian fighters.</p>
+
+<p>Bacon made up his mind that Governor Berkeley
+should not come back to Jamestown again.
+He had the town set on fire and burned to the
+ground. Some of the men with him set fire to
+their own houses, so that they should not give
+shelter to the governor and his men. That was
+the end of Jamestown. It was never rebuilt.
+Only ashes remained of the first English town in
+America. To-day there is only an old church
+tower to show where it stood.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot tell what might have happened if
+brave young Bacon had lived. As it was, he was
+taken sick and died. His men now had no leader,
+and soon scattered. Then the governor came back
+full of fury, and began to hang all those who opposed
+him. He might have put a great many of
+them to death if the king had not stopped him and
+ordered him back to England. This was King
+Charles II., whose father had been put to death
+by Cromwell. He was angry at what Governor
+Berkeley had done, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That old fool has hung more men in that
+naked land than I did for the murder of my
+father."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WHAT a wonderful change has come over
+this great country of ours since the days
+of our grandfathers! Look at our
+great cities, with their grand buildings, and their
+miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric cars,
+and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great
+stores lit by brilliant electric lights, and huge workshops
+filled with rattling wheels and marvelous
+machines! And look at our broad fields filled
+with cattle or covered by growing crops, and
+divided by splendid highways and railroads thousands
+of miles in length! Is it not all very wonderful?</div>
+
+<p>"But has it not always been this way?" some
+very young persons ask. "I have lived so many
+years and have never seen anything else."</p>
+
+<p>My dear young friend, if you had lived fifty or
+sixty years, as many of us older folks have, you
+would have seen very different things. And if we
+had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and
+then come back again to-day, I fancy our eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+would open wider than Governor Andros's did
+when he saw that the charter was gone.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, as I told you, when any one
+wanted to make a light, he could not strike a
+match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must
+hammer away with flint and steel, and then had
+nothing better than a home-made tallow candle
+to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never
+even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then
+used to cut off the candle wick.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you who live in old houses with dusty
+lofts under the roof, full of worm-eaten old furniture,
+have, no doubt, found there odd-looking
+wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of
+various kinds. Sometimes these wheels are
+brought down stairs and set in the hall as something
+to be proud of. And the old eight-day
+clocks stand there, too, with their loud "tick-tack,"
+buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they
+had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels
+I speak of are the old spinning wheels, with which
+our great-grandmothers spun flax into thread.
+This thread they wove into homespun cloth on
+old-fashioned looms. All work of this kind used
+to be done at home, though now it is done in great
+factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores,
+instead of spinning and weaving and sewing them
+in the great old kitchens before the wood-fire on
+the hearth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Really, I am afraid many of you do not know
+how people lived in the old times. They are
+often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy
+you will hardly think so when I have told you
+something more about them. Would you think
+it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold
+room, and go down and pump ice-cold water to
+wash your face, and go out in the snow to get
+wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour before
+the house began to warm up? That is only
+one of the things you would not find pleasant. I
+shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about
+how people lived in old times, and then you can
+say if you would like to go back to them.</p>
+
+<p>Would any boy and girl among you care to live
+in a little one-story house, made of rough logs laid
+one on another, and with a roof of thatch&mdash;that
+is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep
+out the rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or
+two rooms, and some of them with chimneys made
+of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that
+they could not be set on fire. These were the oldest
+houses. Later on people began to build larger
+houses, many of which were made of brick or
+stone. But I am afraid there was not much comfort
+in the best of them. They had no stoves, and
+were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big
+logs of wood were burned. They made a bright
+and cheerful blaze, it is true, but most of the heat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little
+of it got out into the room. In the winter the people
+lived in their kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire
+for heat and light, and at bed-time went shivering
+off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you
+would have enjoyed that?</p>
+
+<p>They had very little furniture, and the most of
+what they had was rude and rough, much of it
+chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe.
+Some of the houses had glass windows&mdash;little
+diamond-shaped panes, set in lead frames&mdash;but
+most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which
+kept out as much light as it let in.</p>
+
+<p>All the cooking was done on the great kitchen
+hearth, where the pots were hung on iron cranes
+and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did
+not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have.
+Mush and milk, or pork and beans, were their
+usual food, and their bread was mostly made of
+rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice
+books they wanted to read often had to do so by
+the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell you that
+books were very scarce things in those days.</p>
+
+<p>If any of us had lived then I know how glad we
+would have been to see the bright spring time, with
+its flowers and warm sunshine. But we might
+have shivered again when we thought of next
+winter. Of course, the people had some good
+times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+table was filled with good things to eat, and election-day
+and training-day, when they had outdoor
+sports. And they had quilting and husking-parties,
+and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and
+picnics and other amusements. A wedding was a
+happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a
+great dinner. But after all there was much more
+hard work than holiday, and nearly everybody had
+to labor long and got little for it. They were
+making themselves homes and a country, you
+know, and it was a very severe task. We, to-day,
+are getting the good of their work.</p>
+
+<p>Down South people had more comfort. The
+weather was not nearly so cold, so they did not
+have to keep up such blazing fires or shiver in their
+cold beds. Many of the rich planters built themselves
+large mansions of wood or brick, and
+brought costly furniture from England, and lived
+in great show, with gold and silverware on their
+sideboards and fine coaches drawn by handsome
+horses when they went abroad.</p>
+
+<p>In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses,
+of the kind used in Holland. In Philadelphia the
+Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses, with
+wide orchards and gardens round them, where
+they raised plenty of fruit. When any one opened
+a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden
+anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of
+goods he had to sell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In New England Sunday was kept in a very
+strict fashion, for the people were very religious.
+It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh,
+on Sunday, and everybody had to go to church.
+All who did not go were punished. And, mercy
+on us, what sermons they preached in those cold
+old churches, prosing away sometimes for two
+hours at a time! The boys and girls had to
+listen to them, as well as the men and women, and
+you know how hard it is now to listen for one hour.</p>
+
+<p>If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did,
+and went off into a snooze, they were soon wide
+awake again. For the constable went up and
+down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This
+had a rabbit's foot on one end of it and a rabbit's
+tail on the other. If he saw one of the women
+asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her
+face. But if a boy took a nap, down would come
+the rabbit's foot in a sharp rap on his head, and up
+he would start very wide awake. To-day we
+would call that sort of sermons cruelty to children,
+and I think it was cruelty to the old folks also.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think those were "good old times"?
+I imagine some of you will fancy they were "bad
+old times." But they were not nearly so bad as
+you may think. For you must bear in mind that
+the people knew nothing of many of the things we
+enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+food and coarse furniture and rough clothes and
+cold rooms, and were more hardy and could stand
+more than people who sleep in furnace-heated
+rooms and have their tables heaped with all kinds
+of fruits and vegetables and meats.</p>
+
+<p>But there was one thing that could not have
+been pleasant, and that was, their being afraid all
+the time of the Indians, and having to carry
+muskets with them even when they went to church.
+All around them were the forests in which the
+wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might be
+heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz
+out from the thick leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all
+the villages were strong buildings called blockhouses,
+to which everybody could run in times of
+danger. In these the second story spread out over
+the first, and there were holes in the floor through
+which the men could fire down on the Indians below.
+But it makes us tremble to think that, at
+any time, the traveler or farmer might be shot
+down by a lurking savage, or might be seized and
+burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the
+people grew to hate the Indians and to kill them
+or drive them away.</p>
+
+<p>There was much game in the woods and the
+rivers were full of fish, so that many of the people
+spent their time in hunting and fishing. They got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+to be as expert in this as the Indians themselves,
+and some of them could follow a trail as well as
+the most sharp-sighted of the red men.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's
+novels of Indian life, and know what a wonderful
+hunter and Indian trailer old Natty Bumppo was.
+But we do not need to go to novels to read about
+great hunters, for the life of Daniel Boone is as
+full of adventure as that of any of the heroes of
+Indian life.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this
+country has ever known. He lived much later
+than the early times I am talking about, but the
+country he lived in was as wild as that found by
+the first settlers of the country. When he was
+only a little boy he went into the deep woods and
+lived there by himself for several days, shooting
+game and making a fire to cook it by. He made
+himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and lived
+in it like an Indian, and there his father and
+friends found him when they came seeking him in
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Years afterwards he crossed the high mountains
+of North Carolina and went into the great
+forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild
+animals lived. For a long time he stayed there
+by himself, with the Indians hunting and trying
+to kill him. But he was too wide awake for the
+smartest of them all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One time, when they were close on his trail, he
+got away from them by catching hold of a loose
+grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and
+then running on. When the Indians came to the
+place they lost the marks of his footprints and
+gave up the chase. At another time when he was
+taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns,
+and slipped away from them without one of them
+waking up.</p>
+
+<p>Many years afterwards, when he and others had
+built a fort in Kentucky, and brought out their
+wives and children, Boone's daughters and two
+other girls were carried off by Indians while they
+were out picking wild flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Boone and other hunters were soon on their
+trail, and followed it by the broken bushes and
+bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young
+girls had left behind them. In this way they
+came up to the Indians while they were eating
+their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and
+rescued the girls. These young folks did not go
+out of the fort to pick wild flowers after that.</p>
+
+<p>Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and
+would have been burned alive if an old woman had
+not taken him for her son. The Indians painted
+his face and made him wear an Indian dress and
+live with them as one of themselves. But one
+day he heard them talking, and found that they
+were going to attack the fort where all his friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+were. Then he slipped out of the village and ran
+away. He had a long journey to make and the
+Indians followed him close. But he walked in the
+water to hide his footsteps, and lived on roots and
+berries, for fear they would hear his gun if he shot
+any game. In the end he got back safe to the
+fort. He found it in bad condition, but he set
+the men at work to make it strong, and when the
+Indians came they were beaten off.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and
+kept going farther west to get away from the new
+people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.
+He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all
+the rest of his life hunting, and the Indians looked
+on him as the greatest woodsman and the most
+wonderful hunter the white men ever had.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>A HERO OF THE COLONIES</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>DO you not think there are a great many interesting
+stories in American history? I
+have told you some, and I could tell you
+many more. I am going to tell you one now,
+about a brave young man who had a great deal to
+do with the making of our glorious country. But
+to reach it we will have to take a step backward
+over one hundred and fifty years. That is a pretty
+long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about
+the year 1750. But people had been coming into
+this country for more than a hundred and fifty
+years before that, and there were a great many
+white men and women in America at that time.</div>
+
+<p>These people came from Spain and France and
+Great Britain and Holland and Germany and
+Sweden and other countries besides. The Spaniards
+had spread through many regions in the
+south; the French had gone west by way of the
+Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi River;
+but the British were settled close to the ocean, and
+the country back of them was still forest land,
+where only wild men and wild beasts lived. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+is the way things were situated at the time of the
+story which I now propose to tell.</p>
+
+<p>The young man I am about to speak of knew
+almost as much about life in the deep woods as
+Daniel Boone, the great hunter, of whom I have
+just told you. Why, when he was only sixteen
+years old he and another boy went far back into
+the wild country of Virginia to survey or measure
+the lands there for a rich land-holder.</p>
+
+<p>The two boys crossed the rough mountains and
+went into the broad valley of the Shenandoah
+River, and for months they lived there alone in
+the broad forest. There were no roads through
+the woods and they had to make their own paths.
+When they were hungry they would shoot a wild
+turkey or a squirrel, or sometimes a deer. They
+would cook their meat by holding it on a stick
+over a fire of fallen twigs, and for plates they
+would cut large chips from a tree with their axe.</p>
+
+<p>All day long they worked in the woods, measuring
+the land with a long chain. At night they
+would roll themselves in their blankets and go to
+sleep under the trees. If the weather was cold
+they gathered wood and made a fire. Very likely
+they enjoyed it all, for boys are fond of adventure.
+Sometimes a party of Indians would come up and
+be very curious to know what these white boys
+were doing. But the Indians were peaceful then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+and did not try to harm them. One party amused
+the young surveyors by dancing a war dance before
+them. A fine time they had in the woods, where
+they stayed alone for months. When they came
+back the land-holder was much pleased with their
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us go on for five years, when the backwoods
+boy-surveyor had become a young man
+twenty-one years of age. If we could take ourselves
+back to the year 1753, and plunge into the
+woods of western Pennsylvania, we might see this
+young man again in the deep forest, walking along
+with his rifle in hand and his pack on his back.
+He had with him an old frontiersman named Gill,
+and an Indian who acted as their guide through the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian was a treacherous fellow. One day,
+when they were not looking, he fired his gun at
+them from behind a tree. He did not hit either
+of them. Some men would have shot him, but
+they did not; they let him go away and walked on
+alone through the deep woods. They built a fire
+that night, but they did not sleep before it, for
+they were afraid the Indian might come back and
+try to kill them while they were sleeping. So they
+left it burning and walked on a few miles and went
+to sleep without a fire.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after that they came to the banks of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+a wide river. You may find it on your map of
+Pennsylvania. It is called the Allegheny River,
+and runs into the Ohio. It had been frozen, for
+it was winter time; but now the ice was broken and
+floating swiftly down the stream.</p>
+
+<p>What were they to do? They had to get across
+that stream. The only plan they could think of
+was to build a raft out of logs and try to push it
+through the ice with long poles. This they did,
+and were soon out on the wild river and among the
+floating ice.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible passage. The great cakes of
+ice came swirling along and striking like heavy
+hammers against the raft, almost hard enough to
+knock it to pieces. One of these heavy ice cakes
+struck the pole of the young traveler, and gave him
+such a shock that he fell from the raft into the
+freezing cold water. He had a hard enough
+scramble to get back on the raft again.</p>
+
+<p>After a while they reached a little island in the
+stream and got ashore. There was no wood on it
+and they could not make a fire, so they had to walk
+about all night to keep from freezing. The young
+man was wet to the skin, but he had young blood
+and did not suffer as much as the older man with
+him. When morning came they found that the
+ice was frozen fast between the island and the
+other shore, so all they had to do was to walk
+across it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These were not the only adventures they had,
+but they got safe back to Virginia, from which
+they had set out months before.</p>
+
+<p>Do you want to know who this young traveler
+was? His name was George Washington. That
+is all I need say. Any one who does not know
+who George Washington was is not much of an
+American. But quite likely you do not guess
+what he was doing in the woods so far away from
+his home. He had been sent there by the governor
+of Virginia, and I shall have to tell you why.</p>
+
+<p>But first you must go back with me to an earlier
+time. The time I mean is when the French were
+settling in Canada along the St. Lawrence River,
+and going west over the lakes, and floating in
+canoes down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of
+Mexico. Wherever they went they built forts and
+claimed the country for their king. At the same
+time the English were settling along the Atlantic
+shores and pushing slowly back into the country.</p>
+
+<p>You should know that the French and the English
+were not the best of friends. They had their
+wars in Europe, and every time they got into war
+there they began to fight in America also. This
+made terrible times in the new country. The
+French had many of the Indians on their side, and
+they marched through the woods and attacked
+some of the English towns, and the cruel Indians
+murdered many of the poor settlers who had done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+them no harm. There were three such wars, lasting
+for many years, and a great many innocent
+men, women and children, who had nothing to do
+with the wars in Europe, lost their lives. That is
+what we call war. It is bad enough now, but it
+was worse still in those days.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest of all the wars between the French
+and the English was still to come. Between the
+French forts on the Mississippi and the English
+settlements on the Atlantic there was a vast forest
+land, and both the French and the English said it
+belonged to them. In fact, it did not belong to
+either of them, but to the Indians; but the white
+men never troubled themselves about the rights of
+the old owners of the land.</p>
+
+<p>While the English were talking the French were
+acting. About 1750 they built two or three forts
+in the country south of Lake Erie. What they
+wanted was the Ohio River, with the rich and
+fertile lands which lay along that stream. Building
+those forts was the first step. The next step
+would be to send soldiers to the Ohio and build
+forts there also.</p>
+
+<p>When the English heard what the French were
+doing they became greatly alarmed. If they did
+not do something very quickly they would lose all
+this great western country. The governor of Virginia
+wished to know what the French meant to do,
+and he thought the best way to find out was to ask<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+them. So he chose the young backwoods surveyor,
+George Washington, and sent him through the
+great forest to the French forts.</p>
+
+<p>Washington was very young for so important
+a duty. But he was tall and strong and quick-witted,
+and he was not afraid of any man or anything.
+And he knew all about life in the woods.
+So he was chosen, and far west he went over plain
+and mountain, now on horseback and now on foot,
+following the Indian trails through the forest, until
+at last he came to the French forts.</p>
+
+<p>The French officers told him that they had come
+there to stay. They were not going to give up
+their forts to please the governor of Virginia.
+And Washington's quick eye saw that they were
+getting canoes ready to go down the streams to the
+Ohio River the next spring. This was the news
+the young messenger was taking back to the governor
+when he had his adventures with the Indian
+and the ice.</p>
+
+<p>If any of you know anything about how wars
+are brought on, you may well think there was
+soon going to be war in America. Both parties
+wanted the land, and both were ready to fight to
+get it, and when people feel that way fighting is
+not far off.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the spring of 1754 was not far advanced
+before both sides were on the move. Washington
+had picked out a beautiful spot for a fort. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+was where the two rivers which form the Ohio
+come together. On that spot the city of Pittsburg
+now stands; but then it was a very wild place.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the governor heard Washington's report
+he sent a party of men in great haste to build
+a fort at that point. But in a short time a larger
+party of French came down the Allegheny River
+in canoes and drove the English workmen away.
+Then they finished the fort for themselves and
+called it Fort Duquesne.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Washington was on his way back.
+A force of four hundred Virginians had been sent
+out under an officer named Colonel Frye. But the
+colonel died on the march, and young Washington,
+then only twenty-two years old, found himself
+at the head of a regiment of soldiers, and about to
+start a great war. Was it not a difficult position
+for so young a man? Not many men of that age
+would have known what to do, but George Washington
+was not an ordinary man.</p>
+
+<p>While the Virginians were marching west, the
+French were marching south, and it was not long
+before they came together. A party of French hid
+in a thicket to watch the English, and Washington,
+thinking they were there for no good, ordered his
+men to fire. They did so, and the leader of the
+French was killed. This was the first shot in the
+coming war.</p>
+
+<p>But the youthful commander soon found that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+the French were too strong for him. He built a
+sort of fort at a place called Great Meadows, and
+named it Fort Necessity. It was hardly finished
+before the French and Indians came swarming all
+around it and a severe fight began.</p>
+
+<p>The Virginians fought well, but the French were
+too strong, and fired into the fort till Washington
+had to surrender. This took place on July 4,
+1754, just twenty-two years before the American
+Declaration of Independence. Washington and
+his men were allowed to march home with their
+arms, and the young colonel was very much praised
+when he got home, for everybody thought he had
+done his work in the best possible way.</p>
+
+<p>When the news of this battle crossed the ocean
+there was great excitement in England and France,
+and both countries sent soldiers to America.
+Those from England were under a general named
+Braddock, a man who knew all about fighting in
+England, but knew nothing about fighting in
+America. And what was worse, he would let nobody
+tell him. Washington generously tried to
+do so, but he got snubbed by the proud British
+general for his pains.</p>
+
+<p>After a while away marched General Braddock,
+with his British soldiers in their fine red coats.
+Washington went with him with a body of Virginians
+dressed in plain colony clothes. On and
+on they went, through the woods and over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+mountains, cutting down trees and opening a road
+for their wagons, and bravely beating their drums
+and waving their flags. At length they came near
+Fort Duquesne, the drums still beating, the flags
+still flying, the gun barrels glittering in the bright
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go ahead with my Virginians," said
+Washington. "They know all about Indian fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"That for your Indians!" said Braddock,
+snapping his fingers. "They will not stay in their
+hiding places long when my men come up."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after they came into a narrow place, with
+steep banks and thick bushes all around. And
+suddenly loud Indian war-whoops and the crack
+of guns came from those bushes. Not a man
+could be seen, but bullets flew like hail-stones
+among the red-coats. The soldiers fired back,
+but they wasted their bullets on the bushes.
+Washington and his men ran into the woods and
+got behind trees like the Indians, but Braddock
+would not let his men do the same, and they were
+shot down like sheep. At length General Braddock
+fell wounded, and then his brave red-coats
+turned and ran for their lives. Very likely not
+a man of them would have got away if Washington
+and his men had not kept back the French
+and Indians.</p>
+
+<p>This defeat was a bad business for the poor settlers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+for the savage redskins began murdering
+them on all sides, and during all the rest of the
+war Washington was kept busy fighting with
+these Indians. Not till four years afterwards was
+he able to take Fort Duquesne from the French.</p>
+
+<p>Then another body of men was sent through
+the woods and over the mountains to capture this
+fort. But their general did as Braddock had done
+before him, spending so much time cutting a highroad
+through the woods that the whole season
+passed away and he was ready to turn and march
+back. Then Washington, who was with him,
+asked permission to go forward with his rangers.
+The general told him to go and he hurried through
+the woods and to the fort. When he came near
+it the French took to their boats and paddled
+off down the river, so that Washington took the
+fort without firing a shot.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR AND THE STORY OF THE ACADIANS</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>HAVE any of my young readers read the
+beautiful poem of "Evangeline," written
+by the poet Longfellow? Very likely it
+is too old for you, though the time will come
+when you will read it and enjoy it greatly.
+Evangeline was a pretty and pious woman who
+lived in a French settlement called Acadia, on the
+Atlantic coast. You will not find this name on
+any of your maps, but must look for Nova Scotia,
+by which name Acadia is now known. The
+story of Evangeline tells us about the cruel way
+in which the poor Acadians were treated by the
+English. It is a sad and pathetic story, as you
+will see when you have read it.</div>
+
+<p>It was one of the wicked results of the war
+between the French and the English. There were
+many cruel deeds in this war, and the people who
+suffered the most were those who had the least
+to do with the fighting. In one place a quiet,
+happy family of father, mother and children, living
+on a lonely farm, and not dreaming of any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+danger, suddenly hear the wild war-whoop of the
+Indians, and soon see their doors broken open
+and their house blazing, and are carried off into
+cruel captivity&mdash;those who are not killed on the
+spot. In another place all the people of a village
+are driven from their comfortable homes by
+soldiers and forced to wander and beg their bread
+in distant lands. And all this takes place because
+the kings of England and France, three thousand
+miles away, are quarreling about some lands which
+do not belong to either of them. If those who
+brought on wars had to suffer for them they would
+soon come to an end. But they revel and feast
+in their splendid palaces while poor and innocent
+people endure the suffering. The war that began
+in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, between the
+French and Indians and the English lasted seven
+years, from 1754 to 1761. During that time
+there were many terrible battles, and thousands
+of soldiers were killed, and there was much suffering
+and slaughter among the people, and burning
+of houses, and destruction of property, and horrors
+of all sorts.</p>
+
+<p>It is called the French and Indian War, because
+there were many Indians on the side of the French.
+There were some on the side of the English, also.
+Indians are very savage and cruel in their way of
+fighting, as you already know. I shall have to
+tell you one instance of their love of bloodshed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+One of the English forts, called Fort William
+Henry, which stood at the southern end of Lake
+George, had to surrender to the French, and its
+soldiers were obliged to march out and give up
+their guns.</p>
+
+<p>There were a great many Indians with the
+French, and while the prisoners stood outside the
+fort, without a gun in their hands, the savage men
+attacked them and began to kill them with knives
+and tomahawks. The French had promised to
+protect them, but they stood by and did nothing
+to stop this terrible slaughter, and many of the
+helpless soldiers were murdered. Others were
+carried off by the Indians as prisoners. It was
+the most dreadful event of the whole cruel war.</p>
+
+<p>I must now ask you to look on a map of the
+State of New York, if you have any. There you
+will find the Hudson River, and follow it up north
+from the city of New York, past Albany, the capital
+of the state, until it ends in a region of mountains.
+Near its upper waters is a long, narrow
+lake named Lake George, which is full of beautiful
+islands. North of that is a much larger lake
+named Lake Champlain, which reaches up nearly
+to Canada.</p>
+
+<p>The British had forts on the Hudson River and
+Lake George and the French on Lake Champlain,
+and also between the two lakes, where stood the
+strong Fort Ticonderoga. It was around these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+forts and along these lakes that most of the fighting
+took place. For a long time the French had
+the best of it. The British lost many battles and
+were driven back. But they had the most soldiers,
+and in the end they began to defeat the French
+and drive them back, and Canada became the seat
+of war. But let me tell you the story of the
+Acadians.</p>
+
+<p>Acadia was a country which had been settled
+by the French a long, long time before, away
+back in 1604, before there was an English settlement
+in America. Captain John Smith, you know,
+came to America in 1607, three years afterwards.
+Acadia was a very fertile country, and the settlers
+planted fields of grain and orchards of apples and
+other fruits, and lived a very happy life, with neat
+houses and plenty of good food, and in time the
+whole country became a rich farming land.</p>
+
+<p>But the British would not let these happy farmers
+alone. Every time there was trouble with the
+French, soldiers were sent to Acadia. It was
+captured by the British in 1690, but was given
+back to France in 1697, when that war ended.
+It was taken again by the British in the war that
+began in 1702, and this time it was not given
+back. Even its name of Acadia was taken away,
+and it was called Nova Scotia, which is not nearly
+so pretty a name.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that, when the new war with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+France began, Acadia was held as a province of
+Great Britain. To be sure the most of its people
+were descended from the old French settlers and
+did not like their British masters, but they could
+not help themselves, and went on farming in their
+old fashion. They were ignorant, simple-minded
+countrymen, who looked upon France as their
+country, and were not willing to be British subjects.</p>
+
+<p>That is the way with the French. It is the
+same to-day in Canada, which has been a colony
+of Great Britain for nearly a century and a half.
+The descendants of the former French still speak
+their old language and love their old country, and
+now sometimes fight the British with their votes as
+they once did with their swords.</p>
+
+<p>The British did not hold the whole of Acadia.
+The country now called New Brunswick, which
+lies north of Nova Scotia, was part of it, and was
+still held by the French. In 1755 the British government
+decided to attempt the capture of this
+country, and sent out soldiers for that purpose.
+Fighting began, but the French defended themselves
+bravely, and the British found they had a
+hard task to perform.</p>
+
+<p>What made it worse for them was that some
+of the Acadians, who did not want to see the
+British succeed, acted as spies upon them, and told
+the French soldiers about their movements, so that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+the French were everywhere ready for them.
+And the Acadians helped the French in other ways,
+and gave the British a great deal of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>This may have been wrong, but it was natural.
+Every one feels like helping his friends against
+his enemies. But you may be sure that it made
+the British very angry, and in the end they took
+a cruel resolution. This was to send all the
+Acadians away from their native land to far-off,
+foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who
+were acting as spies, so the English government
+ordered them all to be removed. They were told
+they might stay if they would swear to be true subjects
+of the king of England, but this the most of
+them would not do, for they were French at heart,
+and looked on King Louis of France as their
+true and rightful ruler.</p>
+
+<p>Was not this very cruel? There were hundreds
+of boys and girls like yourselves among these poor
+Acadians, who had happy homes, and loved to
+work and play in their pretty gardens and green
+fields, and whose fathers and mothers did no harm
+to any one. But because a few busy men gave
+news to the French, all of these were to be torn
+from their comfortable homes and sent far away
+to wander in strange lands, where many of them
+would have to beg for bread. It was a heartless
+act, and the world has ever since said so, and
+among all the cruel things the British have done,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+the removal of the Acadians from their homes is
+looked upon as one of the worst.</p>
+
+<p>When soldiers are sent to do a cruel thing they
+are very apt to do it in the most brutal fashion.
+The Acadians did not know what was to be done.
+It was kept secret for fear they might run away
+and hide. A large number of soldiers were sent
+out, and they spread like a net over a wide stretch
+of country. Then they marched together and
+drove the people before them. The poor farmers
+might be at their dinners or working in their fields,
+but they were told that they must stop everything
+and leave their homes at once, for they were to
+be sent out of the country. Just think of it!
+What a grief and terror they must have been in!</p>
+
+<p>They were hardly given time to gather the few
+things they could carry with them, and on all sides
+they were driven like so many sheep to the seaside
+town of Annapolis, to which ships had been
+brought to carry them away. More than six
+thousand of these unhappy people, old and young,
+men, women and little ones, were gathered there;
+many of them weeping bitterly, many more with
+looks of despair on their faces, all of them sad at
+heart and very likely wishing they were dead.</p>
+
+<p>Around them were soldiers to keep them from
+running away. They were made to get on the
+ships in such haste that families were often separated,
+husband and wife, or children and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+mothers, being put on different ships and sent to
+different places. And for fear that some of them
+might come back again their houses were burned
+and their farms laid waste. Many of them went
+to the French settlements in Louisiana, and others
+to other parts of America. Poor exiles! they
+were scattered widely over the earth. Some of
+them in time came back to their loved Acadia, but
+the most of them never saw it again. It was this
+dreadful act about which Longfellow wrote in his
+poem of Evangeline.</p>
+
+<p>Now I must tell you how the French and Indian
+War ended. The French had two important cities
+in Canada, Montreal and Quebec. Quebec was
+built on a high and steep hill and was surrounded
+by strong walls, behind which were more than
+eight thousand soldiers. It was not an easy city
+to capture.</p>
+
+<p>A large British fleet was sent against it, and also
+an army of eight thousand men, under General
+Wolfe. For two or three months they fired at the
+city from the river below, but the French scorned
+them from their steep hill-top. At length General
+Wolfe was told of a narrow path by which
+he might climb the hill. One dark night he tried
+it, and by daybreak a large body of men had
+reached the hill-top, and had dragged up a number
+of cannon with them.</p>
+
+<p>When the French saw this they were frightened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+They hurried out of the city, thinking they could
+drive the English over the precipice before any
+more of them got up. They were mistaken in
+this. The English met them boldly, and in the
+battle that followed they gained the victory and
+Quebec fell into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>General Wolfe was mortally wounded, but when
+he was told that the French were in flight, he said:
+"God be praised! I die happy."</p>
+
+<p>Montcalm, the French general, also fell
+wounded. When he knew that he must die he
+said: "So much the better; I shall not live to see
+the surrender of Quebec."</p>
+
+<p>The next year Montreal was taken, and the war
+ended. And in the treaty of peace France gave
+up all her colonies in America. England got
+Canada and Spain got Louisiana. All North
+America now belonged to two nations, England
+and Spain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;SHOULD be glad to have some of you take
+a steamboat ride up the broad Hudson
+River, past the city of New York, and onward
+in the track of the "Half Moon," Henry
+Hudson's ship. If you did so, you would come in
+time to the point where this ship stopped and
+turned back. Here, where Hudson and his
+Dutch sailors saw only a great spread of forest
+trees, stretching far back from the river bank, our
+modern travelers would see the large and handsome
+city of Albany, the capital of the State of
+New York.</div>
+
+<p>This is one of the hundreds of fine cities which
+have grown up in our country since Henry Hudson's
+time. A hundred and fifty years ago it was
+a small place, not much larger than many of our
+villages. But even then it was of importance, for
+in it was taken the first step towards our great
+Union of States. I shall have to tell you what
+this step was, for you will certainly want to know.</p>
+
+<p>Well, at the time I speak of there was no such
+thing as an American Union. There were thirteen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+colonies, reaching from New Hampshire
+down to Georgia. But each of these was like a
+little nation of its own; each had its own government,
+made its own laws, and fought its own fights.
+This was well enough in one way, but it was not
+so well in another. At one time the people had
+the Indians to fight with, at another time the
+French, and sometimes both of these together, and
+many of them thought that they could do their
+fighting better if they were united into one country.</p>
+
+<p>So in the year 1754 the colonies sent some of
+their best men to Albany, to talk over this matter,
+and see if a union of the colonies could not be
+made. This is what I meant when I said that
+the first step towards the American Union was
+taken at Albany.</p>
+
+<p>Of these men, there is only one I shall say anything
+about. This man's name you should know
+and remember, for he was one of the noblest and
+wisest men that ever lived in this country. His
+name was Benjamin Franklin. Forty years before
+this time he was a little Boston boy at work
+in his father's shop, helping him make candles.
+Afterwards he learned how to print, and then, in
+1723, he went to Philadelphia, where he soon had
+a shop and a newspaper office, and in time became
+rich.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing going on that Franklin did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+not take part in. In his shop he bound books, he
+made ink, he sold rags, soap, and coffee. He was
+not ashamed of honest work, and would take off
+his coat and wheel his papers along the street in
+a wheelbarrow. He started many institutions in
+Philadelphia which are now very important.
+Among these there are a great university, a large
+hospital, and a fine library. No doubt you have
+read how he brought down the lightning from the
+clouds along the string of a kite, and proved that
+lightning is the same thing as electricity. And he
+took an active part in all the political movements
+of the time. That is why he came to be sent to
+Albany in 1754, as a member of the Albany Convention.</p>
+
+<p>Franklin always did things in ways that set people
+to thinking. When he went to Albany he took
+with him copies of a queer picture which he had
+printed in his newspaper. This was a snake cut
+into thirteen pieces. Under each piece was the
+first letter of the name of a colony, such as "P"
+for Pennsylvania. Beneath the whole were the
+words "Unite or die."</p>
+
+<p>That was like Franklin; he was always doing
+something odd. The cut-up snake stood for the
+thirteen divided colonies. What Franklin meant
+was that they could not exist alone. A snake is
+not of much account when it is chopped up into
+bits, but it is a dangerous creature when it is whole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+He proposed that there should be a grand council
+of all the colonies, a sort of Congress, meeting
+every year in Philadelphia, which was the most
+central large city. Over them all was to be a governor-general
+appointed by the king. This council
+could make laws, lay taxes, and perform other important
+duties.</p>
+
+<p>That is enough to say about Franklin's plan,
+for it was not accepted. It was passed by the convention,
+it is true, but the king would not have it
+and the colonies did not want it; so the snake still
+lay stretched out along the Atlantic in thirteen
+pieces. Then came the great war with the French
+of which I have told you. After that was over,
+things came to pass which in the end forced the
+colonies to combine. Thus Franklin's plan, or
+something like it, was in time carried out, but for
+many years the country was in a terrible state.
+This is what I am now going to tell you about.</p>
+
+<p>You should know that the war with the French
+cost the king and the colonies a great deal of
+money. The king of England at that time was
+named George. He was an obstinate man, but
+not a very wise one, as you will think when you
+have learned more about him. One thing he
+wanted to do was to send soldiers to America to
+keep the French from getting back what they had
+lost, and he asked the people to pay these soldiers.
+He also asked them to send him money to pay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+the governors and judges whom he had chosen to
+rule over them. But the people thought they
+could take care of themselves, and did not want
+British soldiers. And they preferred to pay
+the governors and judges themselves as they had
+always done, and did not want King George to
+do it for them. So they would not send him the
+money he asked for.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you may think this was very mean in
+the Americans, after all the British had done to
+help them in their war with the French. But they
+knew very well what they were about. They
+thought that if they gave the king a dollar to-day
+he might want five dollars to-morrow, and ten
+dollars the next day. They judged it best not to
+begin with the dollar. Kings, you should know,
+do not always make the best use of money that is
+given them by their people.</p>
+
+<p>And that was not all. The people in the colonies
+did not like the way they had been treated by
+the English. They had mountains full of iron,
+but the king would not let them make this iron
+into tools. They had plenty of wool, but he would
+not let them weave it into cloth. They must buy
+these and other things in England, and must keep
+at farming; but they were not allowed to send
+their grain to England, but had to eat it all at
+home. They could not even send goods from one
+colony to another. Thus they were to be kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+poor that the rich English merchants and manufacturers
+might grow rich.</p>
+
+<p>These were some of the things the American
+people had to complain of. There were still other
+things, and a good many of the Americans had
+very little love for the English king and people.
+They felt that they were in a sort of slavery, and
+almost as if they had ropes on their hands and
+chains on their feet.</p>
+
+<p>When King George was told that the Americans
+would not send him money he was very angry.
+I am afraid he called them bad names. They
+were a low, ignorant, ungrateful set, he said, and
+he would show them who was their master. He
+would tax them and get money from them in that
+way. So the English Parliament, which is a body
+of lawmakers like our Congress, came together
+and passed laws to tax the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>The first tax they laid is what is called a stamp
+tax. I fancy you know very well what that is, for
+we have had a stamp tax in this country more than
+once, when the government was in need of money.
+Everybody who wrote a bank check, or made any
+legal paper, or sent away an express package, had
+to buy a stamp from the government and put it on
+the paper; and stamps had to be used on many
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>But there is this difference. Our people were
+quite willing to buy these stamps, but they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+not willing to buy the stamps which the British
+government sent them in 1765. Why? Well,
+they had a good reason for it, and this was that
+they had nothing to do with making the law. The
+English would not pay any taxes except those made
+by the people whom they elected to Parliament,
+and the Americans said they had the same right.
+They were not allowed to send any members to
+Parliament, so they said that Parliament had no
+right to tax them. Their own legislatures might
+vote to send the king money, but the English Parliament
+had no right to vote for them.</p>
+
+<p>When the king found that the Americans would
+not use his stamps he tried another plan. He laid
+a tax on tea and some other goods. He thought
+that our people could not do without tea, so he sent
+several shiploads across the ocean, expecting them
+to buy it and pay the tax. But he soon found
+that the colonists had no more use for taxed tea
+than for stamps. They would not even let the
+captains bring their tea on shore, except at Charleston,
+and there it was packed in damp cellars, where
+it soon rotted. A ship sent to Annapolis was set
+on fire and burned to the water's edge with the
+tea in it.</p>
+
+<p>But the most stirring event took place at Boston.
+There one night, while the tea-ship lay at a
+wharf in the harbor, a number of young men
+dressed like Indians rushed on board with a loud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+war-whoop and began to break open the tea-chests
+with their hatchets and pour the tea into the harbor.
+This was the famous "Boston tea-party."</p>
+
+<p>Americans liked tea, but not tea with an English
+tax on it. They boiled leaves and roots and made
+some sort of tea out of them. It was poor stuff,
+but they did not pay any tax. And they would not
+buy any cloth or other goods brought from England.
+If the king was angry and stubborn they
+were angry and stubborn, too, and every day they
+grew more angry, until many of them began to
+think that they would be better off without a king.
+They were not the kind of people to be made
+slaves of easily by King George or any other king.</p>
+
+<p>When the king heard of the "Boston tea-party"
+he was in a fury. He would make Boston pay
+well for its tea, he said. So he sent soldiers there,
+and he gave orders that no ships should go into
+or out of Boston harbor. This stopped most of
+the business of the town, and soon the poor people
+had no work to do and very little to eat. But
+they had crowded meetings at Faneuil Hall, where
+Samuel Adams and John Hancock and other patriots
+talked to them of their rights and wrongs.
+It began to look as if war would soon come.</p>
+
+<p>The time had come at last for a union of the
+colonies. What Franklin had failed to do at Albany
+in 1754 was done at Philadelphia in 1774.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+A meeting was held there which was called a Congress,
+and was made up of some of the best men
+of the country sent from the colonies. One of
+these was George Washington, who had lived on
+his farm at Mount Vernon since the end of the
+French War.</p>
+
+<p>Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to
+give the people of this country the same rights that
+the people of England had. There was no harm
+in this, I am sure, but it made the king more obstinate
+still. I have said he was not a wise man.
+Most people say he was a very foolish one, or he
+would have known that the people of the colonies
+would fight for their rights if they could not get
+them in peace.</p>
+
+<p>All around Boston the farmers and villagers
+began to collect guns and powder and to drill men
+into soldiers. These were called "minute men,"
+which meant that they would be ready to fight at
+a minute's notice, if they were asked to. When
+people begin to get ready in this way, war is usually
+not far off.</p>
+
+<p>One night at Boston a man named Paul Revere
+stood watching a distant steeple till he saw a
+light suddenly flash out through the darkness.
+Then he leaped on his horse and rode at full speed
+away. That light was a signal telling him that
+British soldiers were on the march to Concord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+twenty miles away, to destroy some powder and
+guns which had been gathered there for the use
+of these "minute men."</p>
+
+<p>Away rode Revere through the night, rousing
+up the people and shouting to them that the British
+soldiers were coming. He was far ahead of the
+soldiers, so that when they reached the village of
+Lexington, ten miles from Boston, the people were
+wide awake, and a party of minute men was drawn
+up on the village green. The soldiers were ordered
+to fire on these men, and some of them fell
+dead. Those were the first shots in a great war.
+It was the 19th of April, 1775.</p>
+
+<p>The British marched on to Concord, but the
+farmers had carried away most of the stores and
+buried them in the woods. Then the red-coats
+started back, and a terrible march they had of it.
+For all along the road were farmers with guns
+in their hands, firing on the troops from behind
+trees and stone walls. Some of the soldiers
+got back to Boston, but many of them lay dead in
+the road. The poor fellows killed at Lexington
+were terribly avenged.</p>
+
+<p>Far and wide spread the news, and on all sides the
+farmers left their plows and took down their rifles,
+and thousands of them set out along the roads to
+Boston. Soon there were twenty thousand armed
+men around the town, and the British were shut
+up like rats in a trap. The American people were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+in rebellion against the king and war had begun.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be a long and dreadful war, but it led
+to American liberty, and that was a thing well
+worth fighting for. While the people were laying
+siege to Boston, Congress was in session at Philadelphia,
+talking about what had best be done.
+One good thing they did was to make George
+Washington commander-in-chief of the army and
+send him to Boston to fight the British there.
+They could not have found a better soldier in all
+America.</p>
+
+<p>The next good thing took place a year later.
+This was the great event which you celebrate with
+fireworks every 4th of July. Congress decided
+that this country ought to be free, and no longer
+to be under the rule of an English king. So a
+paper was written by a member from Virginia
+named Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Benjamin
+Franklin and some others. The paper is
+known by the long name of "Declaration of Independence."
+It declared that the American colonies
+were free from British rule, and in future
+would take care of themselves. It was on the 4th
+of July, 1776, that this great paper was adopted
+by Congress, and on that day the Republic of the
+United States of America was born. That is why
+our people have such a glad and noisy time every
+4th of July.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere the people were full of joy when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+they heard what had been done. In the state
+house at Philadelphia rang out the great bell on
+which the words, "Proclaim liberty throughout
+the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." In
+New York the statue of King George was pulled
+down and thrown into the dust of the street. The
+people did not know what dark days lay before
+them, but they were ready to suffer much for the
+sake of liberty, and to risk all they had, life and
+all, for the freedom of their native land.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>ANY of my readers who are true, sound-hearted
+Americans, and I am sure all of
+them are that, would have been glad to
+see how the New England farmers swarmed
+around Boston in April, 1775. Some of them had
+fought in the French War, and brought with them
+their old rusty muskets, which they knew very well
+how to use. And most of them were hunters and
+had learned how to shoot. And all of them were
+bold and brave and were determined to have a
+free country. The English red-coat soldiers in
+Boston would soon find that these countrymen were
+not men to be laughed at, even if they had not
+been trained in war.</div>
+
+<p>One morning the English woke up and rubbed
+their eyes hard, for there, on a hill that overlooked
+the town, was a crowd of Americans. They had
+been at work all night, digging and making earthworks
+to fight behind, and now had quite a fort.
+The English officers did not like the look of
+things, for the Americans could fire from that hill&mdash;Bunker
+Hill, they called it&mdash;straight down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+into the town. They must be driven away or they
+would drive the troops away.</p>
+
+<p>I can tell you that was a busy and bloody day
+for Boston. The great war-ships in the harbor
+thundered with their cannon at the men on the hill.
+And the soldiers began to march up the hill, thinking
+that the Yankees would run like sheep when
+they saw the red-coats coming near. But the
+Yankees were not there to run.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't fire, boys, till you see the whites of their
+eyes," said brave General Prescott.</p>
+
+<p>So the Yankee boys waited till the British were
+close at hand. Then they fired and the red-coats
+fell in rows, for the farmers did not waste their
+bullets. Those that did not fall scampered in
+haste down the hill. It was a strange sight to see
+British soldiers running away from Yankee farmers.</p>
+
+<p>After a while the British came again. They
+were not so sure this time. Again the Yankee
+muskets rattled along the earthworks, and again
+the British turned and ran&mdash;those who were
+able to.</p>
+
+<p>They could never have taken that hill if the
+farmer soldiers had not run out of powder.
+When the red-coats came a third time the Yankees
+could not fire, and had to fight them with the butts
+of their guns. So the British won the hill; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+they had found that the Yankee farmers were not
+cowards; after that time they never liked to march
+against American earthworks.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after the battle of Bunker Hill General
+Washington came to command the Americans,
+and he spent months in drilling and making soldiers
+out of them. He also got a good supply of
+powder and muskets and some cannon, and one
+dark night in March, 1776, he built a fort on
+another hill that looked down on Boston.</p>
+
+<p>I warrant you, the British were alarmed when
+they looked up that hill the next morning and saw
+cannon on its top and men behind the cannon.
+They would have to climb that hill as they had
+done Bunker Hill, or else leave Boston. But they
+had no fancy for another Bunker Hill, so they
+decided to leave. They went on board their ships
+and sailed away, and Washington and his men
+marched joyfully into the town. That was a great
+day for America, and it was soon followed by the
+4th of July and the glorious Declaration of Independence.
+Since that 4th of July no king has ever
+ruled over the United States.</p>
+
+<p>We call this war the American Revolution. Do
+you know what a revolution is? It means the doing
+away with a bad government and replacing it
+with a better one. In this country it meant that
+our people were tired of the rule of England and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+wished to govern themselves. They had to fight
+hard for their freedom, it is true, but it was well
+worth fighting for.</p>
+
+<p>The war was a long and dreadful one. It went
+on for seven long years. At one time everything
+seemed lost; at other times all grew bright
+and hopeful. And thus it went on, up and down,
+to the end. I cannot tell you all that took place,
+but I will give you the important facts.</p>
+
+<p>After the British left Boston, they sailed about
+for a time, and then they came with a large army
+to New York. Washington was there with his soldiers
+to meet them, and did his best, but everything
+seemed to go wrong. First, the Americans were
+beaten in battle and had to march out of New
+York and let the British march in. Then Washington
+and his ragged men were obliged to hasten
+across the State of New Jersey with a strong British
+force after them. They were too weak to face
+the British.</p>
+
+<p>When they got to the Delaware River the Americans
+crossed it and took all the boats, so that the
+British could not follow them. It was now near
+winter time, and both armies went into winter
+quarters. They faced each other, but the wide
+river ran between.</p>
+
+<p>You may well think that by this time the American
+people were getting very down-hearted.
+Many of them thought that all was lost, and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+they would have to submit to King George. The
+army dwindled away and no new soldiers came in,
+so that it looked as if it would go to pieces. It
+was growing very dark for American liberty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/i-146.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="Washington Crossing the Delaware." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Washington Crossing the Delaware.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But there was one man who did not despair, and
+that man was George Washington. He saw that
+something must be done to stir up the spirits of
+the people, and he was just the man to do it. It
+was a wonderful Christmas he kept that year. All
+Christmas day his ragged and hungry soldiers were
+marching up their side of the Delaware, and crossing
+the river in boats, though the wind was biting
+cold, and the air was full of falling snow, and the
+broken ice was floating in great blocks down the
+river; but nothing stopped the gallant soldiers.
+All Christmas night they marched down the other
+side of the river, though their shoes were so bad
+that the ground became reddened by blood from
+their feet. Two of the poor fellows were frozen
+to death.</p>
+
+<p>At Trenton, a number of miles below, there was
+a body of German soldiers. These had been hired
+by King George to help him fight his battles.
+That day they had been eating a good Christmas
+dinner while the hungry Americans were marching
+through the snow. At night they went to bed, not
+dreaming of danger.</p>
+
+<p>They were wakened in the morning by shots
+and shouts. Washington and his men were in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+streets of the town. They had hardly time to
+seize their guns before the ragged Yankees were all
+around them and nearly all of them were made
+prisoners of war.</p>
+
+<p>Was not that a great and glorious deed? It
+filled the Americans with new hope. In a few
+days afterwards, Washington defeated the British
+in another battle, and then settled down with his
+ragged but brave men in the hills of New Jersey.
+He did not go behind a river this time. The
+British knew where he was and could come to see
+him if they wanted to. But they did not come.
+Very likely they had seen enough of him for that
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>The next year things went wrong again for
+Washington. A large British army sailed from
+New York and landed at the head of Chesapeake
+Bay. Then they marched overland to Philadelphia.
+Washington fought a battle with them on
+Brandywine Creek, but his men were defeated and
+the British marched on and entered Philadelphia.
+They now held the largest cities of the country,
+Philadelphia and New York.</p>
+
+<p>While the British were living in plenty and having
+a very good time in the Quaker city, the poor
+Americans spent a wretched and terrible winter at
+a place called Valley Forge. The winter was a
+dismally cold one, and the men had not half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+enough food to eat or clothes to wear, and very
+poor huts to live in. They suffered dreadfully,
+and before the spring came many of them died
+from disease and hardship.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellows! they were paying dearly for their
+struggle for liberty. But there was no such despair
+this winter as there had been the winter before,
+for news came from the north that warmed
+the soldiers up like a fire. Though Washington
+had lost a battle, a great victory had been gained
+by the Americans at Saratoga, in the upper part of
+New York state.</p>
+
+<p>While General Howe was marching on Philadelphia,
+another British army, under General Burgoyne,
+had been marching south from Canada,
+along the line of Lake Champlain and Lake
+George. But Burgoyne and his men soon found
+themselves in a tight place. Food began to run
+short and a regiment of a thousand men was sent
+into Vermont to seize some stores. They were
+met by the Green Mountain boys, led by Colonel
+Stark, a brave old soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"There are the red-coats," said the bold colonel.
+"We must beat them to-day, or Molly Stark is a
+widow."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+<p>Beat them they did. Only seventy men got
+back to Burgoyne. All the rest were killed or
+captured.</p>
+
+<p>Another force, under Colonel St. Leger,
+marched south from Oswego, on Lake Ontario.
+A large body of Indians was with him. This
+army stopped to besiege a fort in the wilderness,
+and General Arnold marched to help the fort.</p>
+
+<p>The way Arnold defeated St. Leger was a very
+curious one. He sent a half-witted fellow into
+the Indian camp with the tale that a great American
+force was coming. The messenger came running
+in among the savages, with bullet-holes in his
+clothes. He seemed half scared to death, and
+told the Indians that a vast host was coming after
+him as thick as the leaves on the trees.</p>
+
+<p>This story frightened the Indians and they ran
+off in great haste through the woods. When the
+British soldiers saw this they fell into such a terror
+that they took to their heels, leaving all their tents
+and cannon behind them. The people in the fort
+did not know what it meant, till Arnold came up
+and told them how he had won a victory without
+firing a shot, by a sort of fairy story.</p>
+
+<p>All this was very bad for Burgoyne. The Indians
+he brought with him began to leave. At
+length he found himself in a terrible plight. His
+provisions were nearly gone, he was surrounded
+by the Americans, and after fighting two battles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+he retreated to Saratoga. Here he had to surrender.
+He and all his army became prisoners to
+the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot wonder that this warmed up the
+Americans like a fire. It filled the English with
+despair. They began to think that they would
+never win back the colonies.</p>
+
+<p>One thing the good news did was to get the
+French to come to the help of the Americans.
+Benjamin Franklin was then in Paris, and he asked
+the king to send ships and men and money to America.
+The French had no love for the British, who
+had taken from them all their colonies in America,
+so they did as Franklin wished.</p>
+
+<p>There are two more things I wish to tell you in
+this chapter, one good and one bad. When the
+British in Philadelphia heard that the French were
+coming to help the Americans, they were afraid
+they might be caught in a trap. So they left in
+great haste and marched for New York. Washington
+followed and fought a battle with them,
+but they got away. After that Washington's
+army laid siege to New York, as it had formerly
+done to Boston.</p>
+
+<p>That was the good thing. The bad thing was
+this. General Benedict Arnold, who had defeated
+St. Leger and his Indians, and who was one of the
+bravest of the American officers, turned traitor to
+his country. He had charge of West Point, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+strong fort on the Hudson River, and tried to
+give this up to the British. But he was found out
+and had to flee for his life. Major<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Andre'">Andr&eacute;</ins>, a
+British officer, who had been sent to talk with
+Arnold, was caught by three American scouts on
+his way back to New York. They searched him
+for papers, and found what they wanted hidden in
+his boot. Poor Andr&eacute; was hung for a spy, but
+the traitor Arnold escaped. But he was hated by
+the Americans and despised by the British, and
+twenty years afterwards he died in shame and remorse.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> All the accounts agree that Colonel Stark spoke of his
+wife as "Molly Stark." But it has been found that his wife's
+name was Elizabeth; so he may have said "Betty Stark."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF THE REVOLUTION</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE are justly proud of our great war-ships,
+with their strong steel sides and their
+mighty guns, each of which can hurl a
+cannon-ball miles and miles away. And such
+balls! Why, one of them is as heavy as a dozen
+of you tied together, and can bore a hole through
+a plate of solid steel as thick as your bodies.</div>
+
+<p>Such ships and such guns as these had not been
+dreamed of in the days of the Revolution. Then
+there were only small wooden vessels, moved by
+sails instead of steam, and a cannon-ball that
+weighed twenty-four pounds was thought very
+heavy. Six and twelve-pound balls were common.
+And to hit a ship a mile away! It was not to be
+thought of. I tell you, in those days ships had to
+fight nearly side by side and men to fight face to
+face. To be a mile away was as good as being a
+hundred miles.</p>
+
+<p>But for all this there was some hard fighting
+done at sea in the Revolutionary War, in spite of
+the small ships and little guns. They fought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+closer together, that was all. Boast as we may
+about the wonderful work done by our ships at
+Santiago and Manila in the Spanish War, we have
+better right to be proud of the deeds of our great
+naval hero of the Revolutionary War, with his rotten
+old ship and poor little guns, but with his stout
+heart behind them all.</p>
+
+<p>This hero was the sturdy John Paul Jones, one
+of the boldest and bravest men that ever stood on
+a ship's deck. And his great sea fight has never
+been surpassed in all the history of naval war. I
+cannot tell you the story of the Revolution without
+telling about the great ocean victory of the
+bold-hearted Paul Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Ships poor enough were those we had to fight
+with. A little fleet of seven or eight small vessels,
+whose heaviest guns threw only nine-pound balls,
+and the most of them only six-pound. You could
+have thrown these yourself with one hand, though
+not so far. These were all we had at first to fight
+more than seventy British ships, with guns that
+threw eighteen-pound balls, and some still heavier.
+Do you not think it looked like a one-sided fight?</p>
+
+<p>But the Americans had one great advantage.
+They had not many merchant ships and not much to
+lose upon the seas. On the other hand, the ocean
+swarmed with the merchant ships of England, and
+with the store ships bringing supplies of guns and
+powder and food to the armies on shore. Here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+were splendid prizes for our gallant seamen, and
+out of every port sailed bold privateers, or war-ships
+sent out by their owners, and not by the government,
+sweeping the seas and bringing in many a
+richly-laden craft.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the best fighting of the war was done
+by these privateers. While they were hunting for
+merchant ships they often came across war-ships,
+and you can be sure they did not always run away.
+No, indeed; they were usually ready to fight, and
+during the war no less than sixteen war-vessels
+were captured by our ocean rovers. On the other
+hand, the British privateers did not capture a single
+American war-ship. As for merchant vessels, our
+privateers brought them in by the dozens. One
+fleet of sixty vessels set out from Ireland for the
+West Indies, and out of these thirty-five were
+gobbled up by our privateers, and their rich stores
+brought into American ports. During the whole
+war the privateers took more than seven hundred
+prizes. I might go on to tell you of some of their
+hard fights, but I think you would rather read the
+story of Paul Jones, the boldest and bravest of
+them all, the terror of the seas to the British fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Jones, you should know, was born in Scotland.
+But he made America his home. And as
+he was known to be a good sailor, he was appointed
+first lieutenant of the "Alfred," the flagship of our
+small fleet. He had the honor to be the first man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+to raise a flag on an American man-of-war, and
+that is something to be proud of. This took place
+on the "Delaware," at Philadelphia, about Christmas,
+1775.</p>
+
+<p>It was an important event for the fleet was just
+being sent out. At a given signal Lieutenant
+Jones grasped the halliards, and hauled up to the
+mizzen topmast a great flag of yellow silk. As
+it unfurled to the breeze cannon roared and crowds
+on the shore lustily cheered. In the centre of the
+flag was seen the figure of a green pine tree, and
+under this a rattlesnake lay coiled, with the warning
+motto, "Don't tread on me!"</p>
+
+<p>This was the famous rattlesnake flag. Another
+flag was raised on which were thirteen stripes, in
+turns red and white, and in the corner the British
+union jack. We then had the stripes but not the
+stars. They were to come after the Declaration
+of Independence and the union of the states.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1776, Congress made Paul Jones
+captain of the brig "Providence," and he soon
+showed what kind of a man he was. He came
+across a fleet of five vessels, and made up his mind
+to capture the largest of them, which he thought
+to be a fine merchant ship. He got pretty close
+up before he learned his mistake. It was the
+British frigate "Solebay," strong enough to make
+mince-meat of his little brig. There was nothing
+for it but to run, and Captain Jones made haste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+to get away, followed by the "Solebay." But
+the Briton gained on the American, and after a
+four-hours' run the frigate was less than a hundred
+yards away. It might at any minute sink
+the daring little "Providence" by a broadside.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul Jones was not the man to be caught.
+Suddenly the helm of the brig was put hard up, as
+sailors say, and the little craft turned and dashed
+across the frigate's bow. As it did so the flag of
+the republic was spread to the breeze, and a broadside
+from the brig's guns swept the frigate's deck.
+Then, with all sail set, away dashed the "Providence"
+before the breeze. As soon as the British
+got back their senses they fired all their guns at
+the brig. But not a ball hit her, and with the
+best of the wind she soon left the "Solebay" far
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>And now I must tell the story of Paul Jones'
+greatest fight. In its way it was the greatest sea-fight
+ever known. It was fought with a fleet in
+which Jones sailed from a French port, for Congress
+had found what a hero they had in their
+Scotch sailor, and now they made him commodore
+of a fleet.</p>
+
+<p>The flagship of this fleet was a rotten old log
+of a ship, which had sailed in the East India merchant
+service till its timbers were in a state of dry
+rot. It was a shapeless tub of a vessel, better fitted
+to lie in port and keep rabbits in than to send<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+out as a battle-ship. Paul Jones named it the
+"Bon Homme Richard," which, in English means
+"Poor Richard." This was a name used by Benjamin
+Franklin for his almanac.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the summer of 1779 that Jones
+was able to set sail. His ship had thirty-six guns,
+such as they were, and he had with him three
+other ships under French officers&mdash;the "Alliance,"
+the "Pallas," and the "Vengeance."
+Among his crew were a hundred American sailors,
+who had just been set free from English prisons.
+And his master's mate, Richard Dale, a man of
+his own sort, had just escaped from prison in England.</p>
+
+<p>Away they went, east and west, north and south,
+around the British isles, seeking for the men-of-war
+which should have swarmed in those seas, but
+finding only merchant vessels, a number of which
+were captured and their crews kept as prisoners.
+But the gallant commodore soon got tired of this.
+He had come out to fight, and he wanted to find
+something worth fighting. At length, on September
+23d, he came in view of a large fleet of merchant
+ships, forty-two in all, under the charge of
+two frigates, the "Serapis," of forty-two guns, and
+the "Countess of Scarborough," of twenty-two
+smaller guns.</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Jones left the smaller vessel for his
+consorts to deal with, and dashed away for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+"Serapis" as fast as the tub-like "Bon Homme
+Richard" could go. The British ship was much
+stronger than his in number and weight of guns,
+but he cared very little for that. The "Serapis"
+had ten 18-pound cannon in each battery, and
+the "Bon Homme Richard" only three. And
+these were such sorry excuses for cannon that
+two of them burst at the first fire, killing and
+wounding the most of their crews. After that
+Jones did all his fighting with 12 and 8-pound
+guns; that is, with guns which fired balls of these
+weights.</p>
+
+<p>It was night when the battle began. Soon the
+18-pounders of the "Serapis" were playing havoc
+with the sides of the "Bon Homme Richard."
+Many of the balls went clear through her and
+plunged into the sea beyond. Some struck her below
+the water level, and soon the rotten old craft
+was "leaking like a basket."</p>
+
+<p>It began to look desperate for Jones and his
+ship. He could not half reply to the heavy fire
+of the English guns, and great chasms were made
+in the ship's side, where the 18-pound balls tore
+out the timbers between the port holes.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Pearson of the "Serapis" looked at
+his staggering and leaking enemy, and thought it
+about time for the battle to end.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you surrendered?" he shouted across
+the water to Commodore Jones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have not yet begun to fight," was the famous
+answer of the brave Paul Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Surrender, indeed! I doubt if that word was in
+Paul Jones' dictionary. He would rather have let
+his vessel sink. The ships now drifted together,
+and by Jones' order the jib-boom of the "Serapis"
+was lashed to his mizzen-mast. This brought the
+ships so close side by side that the English gunners
+could not open their ports, and had to fire
+through them and blow them off. And the gunners
+on both sides had to thrust the handles of
+their rammers through the enemy's port holes, in
+order to load their guns.</p>
+
+<p>Affairs were now desperate. The "Bon
+Homme Richard" was on fire in several places.
+Water was pouring into her through a dozen rents.
+It seemed as if she must sink or burn. Almost
+any man except Paul Jones would have given up
+the fight. I know I should, and I fancy most of
+you would have done the same. But there was no
+give up in that man's soul.</p>
+
+<p>One would think that nothing could have been
+worse, but worse still was to come. In this crisis
+the "Alliance," one of Jones' small fleet, came up
+and fired two broadsides into the wounded flagship,
+killing a number of her crew. Whether this
+was done on purpose or by mistake is not known.
+The French captain did not like Commodore Jones,
+and most men think he played the traitor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And another bad thing took place. There were
+two or three hundred English prisoners on the
+"Bon Homme Richard," taken from her prizes.
+One of the American officers, thinking that all was
+over, set these men free, and they came swarming
+up. At the same time one of the crew tried to
+haul down the flag and he cried to the British for
+quarter. Paul Jones knocked him down by flinging
+a pistol at his head. He might sink or burn&mdash;but
+give up the ship? never!</p>
+
+<p>The tide of chance now began to turn. Richard
+Dale, the master's mate, told the English prisoners
+that the vessel was sinking, and set them at work
+pumping and fighting the fire to save their lives.
+And one of the marines, who was fighting on the
+yard-arms, dropped a hand grenade into an open
+hatch of the "Serapis." It set fire to a heap of
+gun cartridges that lay below, and these exploded,
+killing twenty of the gunners and wounding many
+more, while the ship was set on fire. This ended
+the fight. The fire of the marines from the mast-tops
+had cleared the decks of the "Serapis" of
+men. Commodore Jones aided in this with the 9-pounders
+on his deck, loading and firing them himself.
+Captain Pearson stood alone, and when he
+heard the roar of the explosion he could bear the
+strain no longer. He ran and pulled down the
+flag, which had been nailed to the mast.</p>
+
+<p>"Cease firing," said Paul Jones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The "Serapis" was his. Well and nobly had
+it been won.</p>
+
+<p>Never had there been a victory gained in such
+straits. The "Bon Homme Richard" was fast
+settling down into the sea. Pump as they would,
+they could never save her. Inch by inch she sank
+deeper. Jones and his gallant crew boarded the
+"Serapis," and at nine o'clock the next morning
+the noble old craft sank beneath the ocean waves,
+laden with honor, and with her victorious flag still
+flying. The "Serapis" was brought safely into
+port.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Pearson had fought bravely, and the
+British ministry made him a knight for his courage.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had a chance to fight him again I would
+make him a lord," said brave Paul Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Never before or since has a victory been won
+under such desperate circumstances as those of Paul
+Jones, with his sinking and burning ship, his bursting
+guns, his escaped prisoners, and his treacherous
+consort. It was a victory to put his name forever
+on the annals of fame.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>MARION THE SWAMP FOX AND GENERAL GREENE</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>FAR away back in old English history there
+was a famous archer named Robin Hood,
+who lived in the deep woods with a bold
+band of outlaws like himself. He and his band
+were foes of the nobles and friends of the poor,
+and his name will never be forgotten by the people
+of England.</div>
+
+<p>No doubt you have read about the gallant
+archer. No man of his time could send an arrow
+so straight and sure as he. But we need not go
+back for hundreds of years to find our Robin
+Hood. We have had a man like him in our own
+country, who fought for us in the Revolution. His
+name was Francis Marion, and he was known as
+the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived in the swamps
+of South Carolina as Robin Hood did in the forests
+of England, and he was the stinging foe of the
+oppressors of the people.</p>
+
+<p>I have already told you about the war in the
+North, and of how the British, after doing all
+they could to overthrow Washington and conquer
+the country, found themselves shut up in the city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+of New York, with Washington like a watch-dog
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>When the British generals found that the North
+was too hard a nut to crack, they thought they
+would try what they could do in the South. So
+they sent a fleet and an army down the coast, and
+before long they had taken the cities of Savannah
+and Charleston, and had their soldiers marching
+all over Georgia and South Carolina. General
+Gates, the man to whom Burgoyne surrendered,
+came down with a force of militia to fight them,
+but he was beaten so badly that he had to run away
+without a soldier to follow him. You can imagine
+that the British were proud of their success.
+They thought themselves masters of the South,
+and fancied they had only to march north and become
+masters there, too.</p>
+
+<p>But you must not think that they were quite
+masters. Back in the woods and the swamps were
+men with arms in their hands and with love of
+country in their hearts. They were like wasps or
+hornets, who kept darting out from their nests,
+stinging the British troops, and then darting back
+out of sight. These gallant bands were led by
+Marion, Sumter, Pickens, and other brave men;
+but Marion's band was the most famous of them
+all, so I shall tell you about the Swamp Fox and
+what he did.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy all of my young friends would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+laughed if they had seen Marion's band when it
+joined General Gates' army. Such scarecrows of
+soldiers they were! There were only about twenty
+of them in all, some of them white and some black,
+some men and some boys, dressed in rags that
+fluttered in the wind, and on horses that looked as
+if they had been fed on corncobs instead of corn.</p>
+
+<p>Gates and his men did laugh at them, though
+they took care not to laugh when Marion was at
+hand. He was a small man, with a thin face, and
+dressed not much better than his men. But there
+was a look in his eye that told the soldiers he was
+not a safe man to laugh at.</p>
+
+<p>Marion and his men were soon off again on a
+scout, and after Gates and his army had been
+beaten and scattered to the winds, they went back
+to their hiding places in the swamps to play the
+hornet once more.</p>
+
+<p>Along the Pedee River these swamps extended
+for miles. There were islands of dry land far
+within, but they could only be reached by narrow
+paths which the British were not able to find.
+Only men who had spent their lives in that country
+could make their way safely through this
+broad stretch of water plants and water-soaked
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>Marion's force kept changing. Now it went
+down to twenty men, now up to a hundred or more.
+It was never large, for there was not food or shelter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+for many men. But there were enough of
+them to give the British plenty of trouble. They
+had their sentries on the outlook, and when a party
+of British or Tories went carelessly past out would
+spring Marion's men, send their foes flying like
+deer, and then back they would go before a strong
+body of the enemy could reach them.</p>
+
+<p>These brave fellows had many hiding places in
+the swamps and many paths out of them. To-day
+they might strike the British in one place and
+to-morrow in another many miles away. Small
+as their force was they gave the enemy far more
+trouble than Gates had done with all his army.
+Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known
+as Snow's Island, where a creek ran into the Pedee.
+It was high and dry, was covered with trees and
+thickets, and was full of game. And all around
+it spread the soaking swamp, with paths known
+only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding
+places, this was their chosen home.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure that the British did their best
+to capture a man who gave them so much trouble
+as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of
+their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down.
+Marion was then far from his hiding place and
+Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox
+was hard to catch. He lead the British a lively
+chase, and when they gave it up in despair he followed
+them back. He came upon a large body of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+Tories and struck them so suddenly that hardly a
+man of them escaped, while he lost only one man.
+Tories, you should know, were Americans who
+fought on the British side.</p>
+
+<p>The next man who tried to capture Marion was
+Colonel Tarleton, a hard rider and a good soldier,
+but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in the
+South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the
+North. There is a good story told about how he
+was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as
+he and his men were riding furiously along they
+came up to an old farmer, who was hoeing in his
+field beside the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me what became of the man who
+galloped by here just ahead of us?" asked one of
+them. "I will give you fifty pounds if you put
+me on his track."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean the man on a black horse with
+a white star in its forehead?" asked the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of
+Marion's men, but he went past so fast that I
+could not be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind who he was. What we want to
+know is where to find him."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless your heart! he was going at such a pace
+that he couldn't well stop under four or five miles.
+I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty pounds."</p>
+
+<p>On rode the troop, and back into the woods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+went the farmer. He had not gone far before
+he came to a black horse with a white star in its
+forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The
+farmer was Jack Davis himself.</p>
+
+<p>That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal
+with, and you may be sure that he did not catch
+any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no
+game.</p>
+
+<p>While Marion was keeping the war alive in
+South Carolina, an army was gathering under
+General Greene, who was, next to Washington,
+the best of the American generals. With him
+were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of riflemen,
+William Washington, a cousin of the commander-in-chief,
+and Henry Lee, or "Light-horse Harry,"
+father of the famous General Lee of the Civil
+War.</p>
+
+<p>General Greene got together about two thousand
+men, half armed and half supplied and knowing
+nothing about war, so that he had a poor
+chance of defeating the trained British soldiers.
+But he was a Marion on a larger scale, and knew
+when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell
+you what he did.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the
+bold Colonel Tarleton and gave him a sound flogging.
+Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis,
+the British commander in the South. Cornwallis
+thought he would catch Morgan napping, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He
+hurried back with the prisoners he had taken from
+Tarleton, and crossed the Catawba River just as
+the British came up. That night it rained hard,
+and the river rose so that it could not be crossed
+for three days.</p>
+
+<p>General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat
+continued to the Yadkin River. This, too,
+was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain
+again came up and swelled the river before the
+British could follow. When the British got
+across there was a race for the Dan River on the
+borders of Virginia. Greene got there first,
+crossed the stream, and held the fords or crossing-place
+against the foe. Cornwallis by this time
+had enough of it. Provisions were growing
+scarce, and he turned back. But he soon had
+Greene on his track, and he did not find his march
+a very comfortable one.</p>
+
+<p>Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote
+about General Greene. Once, during his campaign,
+he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North
+Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy
+rain. Steele, the landlord, knew him and looked
+at him in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone,
+very tired, hungry, and penniless."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+before the hungry traveler. Then, while he was
+eating, she drew from under her apron two bags
+of silver and laid them on the table before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take these, general," she said. "You need
+them and I can do without them."</p>
+
+<p>You may see that the women as well as the men
+of America did all they could for liberty, for there
+were many others like Mrs. Steele.</p>
+
+<p>I have told you that General Greene was one of
+the ablest of the American leaders, and you have
+seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in the retreat.
+Several times afterwards he fought with
+the British. He was always defeated. His
+country soldiers could not face the British veterans.
+But each time he managed to get as much good
+from the fight as if he had won a victory, and by
+the end of the year the British were shut up in
+Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Where was Cornwallis during this time?
+Greene had led him so far north that he concluded
+to march on into Virginia and get the troops he
+would find there, and then come back. There
+was fighting going on in Virginia at this time.
+General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting
+against his own people. Against him was General
+Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had
+come to the help of the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose some of you have read stories of how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+a wolf or some other wild animal walked into a
+trap, from which it could not get out again. Lord
+Cornwallis was not a wild animal, but he walked
+into just such a trap after he got to Virginia.
+When he reached there he took command of
+Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet
+strong enough to face Lafayette, so he marched
+to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River,
+where he expected to get help by sea from New
+York. Yorktown was the trap he walked into, as
+you will see.</p>
+
+<p>France had sent a fleet and an army to help the
+Americans, and just then this fleet came up from
+the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake,
+shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same
+time Washington, who had been closely watching
+what was going on, broke camp before New York
+and marched southward as fast as his men could
+go. Before Cornwallis could guess what was
+about to happen the trap was closed on him. In
+the bay near Yorktown was the strong French
+fleet; before Yorktown was the army of American
+and French soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>There was no escape. The army and the fleet
+bombarded the town. A week of this was enough
+for Lord Cornwallis. He surrendered his army,
+seven thousand strong, on October 19, 1781, and
+the war was at an end. America was free.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>HAVE any of my young readers ever been
+to Europe? Likely enough some of you
+may have been, for even young folks cross
+the ocean now-a-days. It has come to be an easy
+journey, with our great and swift steamers. But
+in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in
+which the ship was often tossed by terrible storms,
+and sometimes was broken to pieces on the rocks
+or went to the bottom with all on board.</div>
+
+<p>What I wish to say is, that those who come
+from Europe to this country leave countries that
+are governed by kings, and come to a country that
+is governed by the people. In some of the countries
+of Europe the people might almost as well
+be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to
+speak for them, and the man who rules them is
+born to power. Even in England, which is the
+freest of them all, there is a king and queen and a
+House of Lords who are born to power. The
+people can vote, but only for members of the
+House of Commons. They have nothing to do
+with the monarch or the lords.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course you all know that this is not the case
+in our country. Here every man in power is put
+there by the votes of the people. As President
+Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people,
+by the people, and for the people."</p>
+
+<p>We did not have such a government before the
+4th of July, 1776. Our country was then governed
+by a king, and, what was worse, this king
+was on the other side of the ocean, and cared
+nothing for the people of America except as money
+bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of July
+we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord
+and master; and we have got along very well without
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Now you can see what the Declaration of Independence
+and the Revolution meant. With the
+Declaration we cut loose from England. Our
+ship of state set out on its long voyage to liberty.
+The Declaration cut the chain that fastened this
+great ship to England's shores. The Revolution
+was like the stormy passage across the ocean waves.
+At times it looked as if our ship of state would
+be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back to
+the shores from which it set sail; but then the
+clouds would break and the sun shine, and onward
+our good ship would speed. At length it reached
+the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away
+from the land of kings.</p>
+
+<p>This is a sort of parable. I think every one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+of you will know what it means. The people of
+this country had enough of kings and their ways,
+and of being taxed without their consent. They
+made up their minds to be free to tax and govern
+themselves. It was for this they fought in the
+Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood.</p>
+
+<p>And now, before we go on with the history of
+our country, it will be wise to stop and ask what
+kind of government the Americans gave themselves.
+They had thrown overboard the old government
+of kings. They had to make a new government
+of the people. I hope you do not think
+this was an easy task. If an architect or builder
+is shown a house and told to build another like
+that, he finds it very easy to do. But if he is
+shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and
+told to build out of them a good strong house unlike
+any he has ever seen, he will find his task a
+very hard one, and may spoil the house in his
+building.</p>
+
+<p>That was what our people had to do. They
+could have built a king's government easily
+enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow
+for that. But they had no pattern for a people's
+government, and, like the architect and his house,
+they might spoil it in the making. The fact is,
+this is just what they did. Their first government
+was spoiled in the making, and they had to take it
+down and build it over again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was done by what we call a Convention,
+made up of men called "delegates" sent by the
+several states. The Convention met in Philadelphia
+in 1787 for the purpose of forming a Constitution;
+that is, a plan of government under
+which the people should live and which the states
+and their citizens should have to obey.</p>
+
+<p>This Convention was a wonderful body of
+statesmen. Its like has not often been seen. The
+wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent to
+it. They included all the great men&mdash;some we
+know already, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson,
+and Adams and many others of fine ability. For
+four months these men worked in secret. It was
+a severe task they had to perform, for some
+wanted one thing and some another, and many
+times it looked as if they would never agree; but
+at length all disputes were settled and their long
+labors were at an end.</p>
+
+<p>General Washington was president of the Convention,
+and back of the chair on which he sat the
+figure of the sun was painted on the wall. When
+it was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this
+painting and said to those who stood near him:</p>
+
+<p>"Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes
+and fears, I have looked towards that figure, and
+asked myself if it was a rising or a setting sun.
+Now I know that it is the rising sun."</p>
+
+<p>The rising sun indeed it was, for when the Convention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+had finished its work it had formed the
+noble Constitution under which we now live, the
+greatest state paper which man has ever formed.</p>
+
+<p>But I fancy you want to know more about the
+noble framework of government built by the wise
+men of the Convention of 1787.</p>
+
+<p>After the Union was formed there were thirteen
+states still, but each of these had lost some
+of its old powers. The powers taken from the
+states were given to the general government.
+Every state had still the right to manage its own
+affairs, but such things as concerned the whole
+people were managed by the general government.</p>
+
+<p>What were these things? Let us see. There
+was the power to coin money, to lay taxes, to control
+the post-office, and to make laws for the good
+of the whole nation. And there was the power to
+form an army and navy, to make treaties with
+other countries, and to declare war if we could
+not get on in peace.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Confederation which was formed
+during the Revolutionary War, the states could do
+these things for themselves; under the Constitution
+they could do none of these things, but they
+could pass laws that affected only themselves, and
+could tax their own people for state purposes.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken several times of the general government.
+No doubt you wish to know what this
+government was like. Well, it was made up of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+three bodies, one of which made laws for the people,
+the second considered if these laws agreed
+with the Constitution, the third carried out these
+laws, or put them in force.</p>
+
+<p>The body that made the laws was named the
+Congress of the United States. It consisted of
+two sections. One was called the Senate, and was
+made up of two members from each state. As we
+have now more than forty-five states the Senate
+at present has more than ninety members. The
+other section was called the House of Representatives,
+and its members were voted for directly by
+the people. The members of the Senate were
+voted for by the legislatures of the states, who had
+been elected by the people.</p>
+
+<p>All the laws were to be made by Congress, but
+not one of them could become a law until it was approved
+by the President. If he did not approve
+of a law, he vetoed it, that is, he returned it without
+being signed with his name, and then it could not be
+enforced as a law until voted for by two-thirds of
+the members of Congress.</p>
+
+<p>It was the duty of the President to execute or
+carry out the laws. He took the place of the king
+in other countries. But he was not born to his
+position like a king, but had to be voted for by
+the people, and could stay in office for four years
+only. Then he, or some one else, had to be voted
+for again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next to the President was the Vice-President,
+who was to take his place if he should die or resign.
+While the President was in office the Vice-President
+had nothing to do except to act as presiding
+officer of the Senate. What we call the
+Cabinet are persons chosen by the President to
+help him in his work. You must understand that
+it takes a number of leading men and a great many
+men under these to do all the work needed to carry
+on our government.</p>
+
+<p>The third body of our government was called
+the Supreme Court. This was made up of some
+of the ablest lawyers and judges of the country.
+They were not to be voted for, but to be chosen
+by the President and then approved by the Senate.
+The duty of the Supreme Court is to consider any
+law brought to its notice and decide if it agrees
+with the Constitution. If the Court decides that a
+law is not constitutional, it ceases to be of any
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>This is not so very hard to understand, is it?
+The President and Congress elected by the people;
+the Supreme Court and Cabinet selected by the
+President; the Constitution the foundation of our
+government; and the laws passed by Congress the
+building erected on the foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Its great feature is that it is a republic&mdash;a government
+"of the people, by the people, and for the
+people." Ours is not the first republic. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+have been others. But it is the greatest. It is
+the only one that covers half a continent, and is
+made up of states many of which are larger than
+some of the kingdoms of Europe. For more than
+a hundred years the Constitution made in 1787
+has held good. Then it covered thirteen states
+and less than four million people; now it covers
+more than forty-five states and eighty million people.
+Then it was very poor, and had a hard
+struggle before it; now it is very rich and prosperous.
+It has grown to be the richest country
+in the world and one of the greatest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>EVERY four years a great question arises in
+this country, and all the states and their
+people are disturbed until this question is
+settled. Even business nearly stops still, for many
+persons can think of nothing but the answer to this
+question.</div>
+
+<p>Who shall be President? That is the question
+which at the end of every four years troubles the
+minds of our people. This question was asked
+for the first time in 1789, after the Constitution
+had been made and accepted by the states, but this
+time the people found it a very easy question to
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>There were several men who had taken a great
+part in the making of our country, and who might
+have been named for President. One of these
+was Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration
+of Independence. Another of them was Benjamin
+Franklin, who got France to come to our aid,
+and did many other noble things for his country.
+But none of them stood so high in the respect and
+admiration of the people as George Washington,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+who had led our armies through the great war,
+and to whom, more than to any other man, we
+owed our liberty.</p>
+
+<p>This time, then, there was no real question as
+to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'who'">whom</ins> should be President. Washington was the
+man. All men, all parties, settled upon Washington.
+No one opposed him; there was no man in
+the country like him. He was unanimously
+elected the first President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>In olden times, when a victorious general came
+back to Rome with the splendid spoils brought
+from distant countries, the people gave him a
+triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and
+to gaze upon the splendor of the show. Washington
+had no splendid spoils to display. But he
+had the love of the people, which was far better
+than gold and silver won in war; and all the way
+from his home at Mount Vernon to New York,
+where he was to take the office of President, the
+people honored him with a triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Along the whole journey, men, women and children
+crowded the roadside, and waited for hours
+to see him pass. That was before the day of railroads,
+and he had to go slowly in his carriage, so
+that everybody had a fine chance to see and greet
+him as he went by. Guns were fired as he passed
+through the towns; arches of triumph were
+erected for his carriage to go under; flowers were
+strewn in the streets for its wheels to roll over;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+cheers and cries of greeting filled the air; all that
+the people could do to honor their great hero was
+done.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took
+the oath of office as the first President of our
+country and people. He stood on the balcony of
+a building in front of Federal Hall, in which Congress
+met, and in the street before him was a vast
+multitude, full of joy and hope. When he had
+taken the oath cannon roared out, bells were rung
+in all the neighboring steeples, and a mighty shout
+burst from the assembled multitude:</p>
+
+<p>"Long live George Washington, President of
+the United States!"</p>
+
+<p>This, I have said, was in New York. But Philadelphia
+was soon chosen as the seat of government,
+and the President and Congress moved to
+that city the next year. There they stayed for
+ten years. In the year 1800 a new city, named
+Washington, on the banks of the Potomac, was
+made the capital of our country, and in that city
+Congress has met ever since.</p>
+
+<p>I must say something here about another of the
+great men of Revolutionary times, Alexander
+Hamilton. He was great in financial or money
+matters, and this was very important at that time,
+for the money-affairs of the country were in a sad
+state.</p>
+
+<p>In the Revolution our people had very little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+money, and that was one reason why they had so
+much suffering. Congress soon ran out of gold
+and silver, so it issued paper money. This did
+very well for a time, and in the end a great deal
+of paper money was set afloat, but people soon began
+to get afraid of it. There was too much
+money of this kind for so poor a country. The
+value of the Continental currency, as it was called,
+began to go down, and the price of everything else
+to go up. In time the paper money lost almost all
+its value.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the money the people had at the end
+of the Revolution. It was not good for much,
+was it? But it was the only kind of money Congress
+had to pay the soldiers with or to pay the
+other debts of the government. The country
+owed much more money than it could pay, so that
+it was what we call bankrupt. Nobody would
+trust it or take its paper in payment. What Alexander
+Hamilton did was to help the country to pay
+its debts and to bring back its lost credit, and in
+doing that he won great honor.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton came to this country from the West
+Indies during the Revolution. He was then only
+a boy, but he soon showed himself a good soldier,
+and Washington made him an officer on his staff
+and one of his friends. He often asked young
+Hamilton for advice, and took it, too.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton was one of the men who made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+Constitution, and when Washington became President
+he chose him as his Secretary of the Treasury.
+That is, he gave him the money affairs of
+the government to look after. Hamilton was not
+afraid of the load of debt, and he soon took off its
+weight. He asked Congress to pay not only its
+own debt, but that of the states as well, and also
+to make good all the paper money. Congress did
+not like to do this, but Hamilton talked to the
+members till he persuaded them to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Then he set himself to pay it. He laid a tax
+on whiskey and brandy and on all goods that came
+into the country. He had a mint, which is a building
+where money is coined from metal, and a national
+bank built in Philadelphia. He made the
+debt a government fund or loan, on which he
+agreed to pay interest, and to pay off the principal
+as fast as possible. It was not long before all the
+fund was taken up by those who had money, and
+the country got back its lost credit, for the taxes
+began to bring in much money.</p>
+
+<p>Washington was President for eight years.
+That made two terms of four years each. Many
+wished to make him President for a third term,
+but he refused to run again. Since then no one
+has been made President for more than two terms.</p>
+
+<p>George Washington had done enough for his
+country. He loved his home, but he had little
+time to live there. When he was only a boy he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+was called away to take part in the French and
+Indian War. Then, after spending some happy
+years at home, he was called away again to lead the
+army in the Revolutionary War. Finally, he
+served his country eight years as President.</p>
+
+<p>He was now growing old and wanted rest, and
+he went back with joy to his beloved home at
+Mount Vernon, hoping to spend there the remainder
+of his days. But trouble arose with
+France, and it looked as if there would be a new
+war, and Washington was asked to take command
+of the army again. He consented, though he had
+had enough of fighting; but fortunately the war
+did not come, so he was not obliged to abandon his
+home.</p>
+
+<p>He died in December, 1799, near the end of the
+century of which he was one of the greatest men.
+The news of his death filled all American hearts
+with grief. Not while the United States exists
+will the name of Washington be forgotten or left
+without honor. His home and tomb at Mt.
+Vernon are visited each year by thousands of
+patriotic Americans. As was said of him long
+ago by General Henry Lee, he was and is, "first
+in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
+countrymen."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;THINK you must now have learned a great
+deal about the history of your country from
+the time Columbus crossed the ocean till the
+year 1800, the beginning of the Nineteenth century.
+You have been told about discovery, and
+settlement, and wars, and modes of life, and government,
+and other things, but you must bear in
+mind that these are not the whole of history. The
+story of our country is broad and deep enough to
+hold many other things beside these. For instance,
+there is the story of our great inventors,
+to whom we owe so much. I propose in this
+chapter to tell you about some of those who lived
+near the year 1800.</div>
+
+<p>First, I must ask you to go back with me to a
+kitchen in Scotland many years ago. On the open
+hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and
+near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes
+fixed on the tea-kettle which was boiling away
+over the fire, while its lid kept lifting to let the
+steam escape. His mother, who was bustling
+about, no doubt thought him idle, and may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+scolded him a little. But he was far from idle;
+he was busy at work&mdash;not with his hands, but
+with his brain. The brain, you know, may be
+hard at work while the body is doing nothing.</p>
+
+<p>How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle
+of boiling water keeping up its clatter as the steam
+lifts it and puffs out into the air? And what
+thought has this brought into your mind? Into
+the mind of little James Watt, the Scotch boy, it
+brought one great thought, that of power. As
+he looked at it, he said to himself that the steam
+which comes from boiling water must have a great
+deal of force, if a little of it could keep the kettle
+lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself
+if such a power could not be put to some good use.</p>
+
+<p>Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that
+thought. Others had thought the same thing,
+and steam had been used to move a poor sort of
+engine. But what James Watt did when he grew
+up, was to invent a much better engine than had
+ever been made before. It was a great day for
+us all when that engine was invented. Before
+that time men had done most of the work of the
+world with their hands, and you may imagine that
+the work went on very slowly. Since that time
+most of the world's work has been done with the
+aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as
+much as many men could do in the past. You
+have seen the wheels rolling and heard the machines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+rattling and the hammers clanging in
+our great factories and workshops. And I fancy
+most of you know that back of all these is the fire
+under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the
+mighty magician which sets all these wheels and
+machines at work and changes raw material into
+so many things of use and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us come back to our American inventors.
+I have spoken about the steam engine because
+it was with this that most of them worked.
+They thought that if horses could drag a wagon
+over the ground and the wind could drive a vessel
+through the water, steam might do the same thing,
+and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage
+or a boat could be moved by a steam engine.</p>
+
+<p>Very likely you have all heard about Robert
+Fulton and his steamboat, but you may not know
+that steamboats were running on American waters
+years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as
+long ago as 1768, before the Revolutionary War,
+Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had made
+a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels.
+Years afterwards he made a large
+engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put in
+the boat, but there came a dry season and low
+water, so that the boat could not be used, and the
+owners took the engine out and set it to work on a
+sawmill. It did so well there that it was never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+put back in the boat; so that steamboat never had
+a chance.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat,
+but there were others who thought they could
+move a boat by steam. Some of these were in
+Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia
+was an inventor named Rumsey who moved a boat
+at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat
+jets of water were pumped through the stern and
+forced the boat along. In Philadelphia was another
+man named John Fitch, who was the first
+man to make a successful steamboat. His boat
+was moved with paddles like an Indian canoe. It
+was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia
+and Trenton in 1790, and ran for several
+months as a passenger boat, at the speed of seven
+or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He
+was unfortunate and in the end he killed himself.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad to be able to tell you a different story
+of the next man who tried to make a steamboat.
+His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in
+Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the
+water, he and the other boys having an old flatboat
+which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton
+got tired of this way of getting along, and like
+a natural-born inventor set his wits to work. In
+the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung
+over the sides and could be moved in the water by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+turning a crank and so force the boat onward.
+The boys found this much easier than the pole,
+and likely enough young Fulton thought a large
+vessel might be moved in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>He knew all about what others had done. He
+had heard how Rumsey moved his boat by pumping
+water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling
+it along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland
+moved by a stern paddle-wheel. I fancy he had
+not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a
+boy to go fishing with, for when he set out to invent
+his steamboat this is the plan he tried.</p>
+
+<p>Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had
+bad luck there. Then he came to America and
+built a boat in New York. While he was at work
+on this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I
+have already told you, was building him an engine
+in England. He wanted the best engine that
+he could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor
+was the right man to make it.</p>
+
+<p>While Fulton was working some of the smart
+New Yorkers were laughing. They called his
+boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move
+faster than the tide would carry it. But he let
+them laugh and worked on, and at last, one day
+in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont,"
+was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial.
+Hundreds of curious people came to see it start.
+Some were ready to laugh again when they saw the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+boat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down
+in the water on both sides. They were not covered
+with wooden frames as were such wheels
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"That boat move? So will a log move if set
+adrift," said the people who thought themselves
+very wise. "It will move when the tide moves it,
+and not before." But none of them felt like
+laughing when they saw the wheels begin to turn
+and the boat to glide out into the stream, moving
+against the tide.</p>
+
+<p>"She moves! she moves!" cried the crowd, and
+nobody said a word about "Fulton's Folly."</p>
+
+<p>Move she did. Up the Hudson she went
+against wind and current, and reached Albany, one
+hundred and forty-two miles away, in thirty-two
+hours. This was at the rate of four and a half
+miles an hour. It was not many years before
+steamboats were running on all our rivers.</p>
+
+<p>That is all I shall say here about the steamboat,
+for there is another story of invention I wish to
+tell you before I close. This is about the cotton
+fibre, which you know is the great product of the
+Southern States.</p>
+
+<p>The cotton plant when ripe has a white, fluffy
+head, and a great bunch of snow-white fibres,
+within which are the seeds. In old times these
+had to be taken out by hand, and it was a whole
+day's work for a negro to get the seeds out of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+pound of the cotton. This made cotton so dear
+that not much of it could be sold. In 1784 eight
+bags of it were sent to Liverpool, and the custom-house
+people there seized it for duties. They said
+it must have been smuggled from some other
+country, for the United States could not have produced
+such a "prodigious quantity."</p>
+
+<p>A few years afterwards a young man named Eli
+Whitney went South to teach in a private family,
+but before he got there some one else had his situation,
+and he was left with nothing to do. Mrs.
+Greene, the widow of General Greene, who
+fought so well in the Revolution, took pity on him
+and gave him a home in her house. He paid her
+by fixing up things about her house. She found
+him so handy that she asked him if he could not
+invent a machine to take the seeds out of the cotton.
+Whitney said he would try, and he set himself
+to work. It was not long before he had a
+machine made which did the work wonderfully
+well. This machine is known as the "cotton-gin,"
+or cotton engine, for gin is short for engine.
+On one side of it are wires so close together that
+the seeds cannot get through. Between them are
+circular saws which catch the cotton and draw it
+through, while the seeds pass on.</p>
+
+
+<p>The machine was a simple one, but it acted like
+magic. A hundred negroes could not clean as
+much cotton in a day as one machine. The price<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+of cotton soon went down and a demand for it
+sprang up. In 1795, when the cotton gin was
+made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were
+produced in this country. By 1801 this had
+grown to 20,000,000 pounds. Now it has grown
+to more than 12,000,000 bales, of nearly 500
+pounds each. This is sold to foreign countries
+and is worked in our own mills at home, being
+made into millions of yards of cloth of many
+kinds to clothe the people of the earth. All this
+comes from the work of Eli Whitney's machine.
+And the seed taken from the cotton is pressed for
+the oil it contains, so that from a year's crop we
+get nearly 150,000,000 gallons of useful oil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>FOR years before and after the year 1800 all
+Europe was filled with war and bloodshed.
+Most of my readers must have heard of
+Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest generals
+that ever lived, and one of the most cruel men.
+He was at the head of the armies of France, and
+was fighting all Europe. England was his greatest
+enemy and fought him on land and sea, and
+this fighting on the sea made trouble between England
+and the United States.</div>
+
+<p>The English wanted men for their war-vessels
+and said they had a right to take Englishmen
+wherever they could find them. So they began to
+take sailors off of American merchant vessels.
+They said that these men were deserters from the
+British navy, but the fact is that many of them
+were true-born Americans; and our people grew
+very angry as this went on year after year.</p>
+
+<p>What made it worse was the insolence of some
+of the British captains. One of them went so far
+as to stop an American war-vessel, the "Chesapeake,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+and demand part of her crew, who, he
+said, were British deserters. When Captain Barron
+refused to give them up the British captain
+fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers
+of the American crew. The "Chesapeake" had
+no guns fit to fire back, so her flag had to be pulled
+down and the men to be given up.</p>
+
+<p>You may well imagine that this insult made the
+American blood boil. There would have been
+war at that time if the British government had not
+owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for
+the injury. A few years afterwards the insult was
+paid for in a different way. Another proud
+British captain thought he could treat Americans
+in the same saucy fashion. The frigate "President"
+met the British sloop-of-war "Little Belt,"
+and hailed it, the captain calling through his
+trumpet, "What ship is that?"</p>
+
+<p>Instead of giving a civil reply the British captain
+answered with a cannon shot. Then the
+"President" fired a broadside which killed eleven
+and wounded twenty-one men on the "Little
+Belt." When the captain of the "President"
+hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply
+in a more civil fashion. He had been taught a
+useful lesson.</p>
+
+<p>The United States was then a poor country, and
+not in condition to go to war. But no nation
+could submit to such insults as these. It is said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+that more than six thousand sailors had been
+taken from our merchant ships, and among these
+were two nephews of General Washington, who
+were seized while they were on their way home
+from Europe, and put to work as common seamen
+on a British war-vessel.</p>
+
+<p>At length, on June 18, 1812, the United States
+declared war against Great Britain. It had put
+up with insults and injuries as long as it could bear
+them. It did not take long to teach the haughty
+British captains that American sea-dogs were not
+to be played with. The little American fleet put
+to sea, and before the end of the year it had captured
+no less than five of the best ships in the
+British navy and had not lost a single ship in return.
+I fancy the people of England quit singing
+their proud song, "Britannia rules the waves."</p>
+
+<p>Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I
+do not think it worth while, for there is much of
+it you would not care to hear. The war went on
+for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there
+were not many important battles, and the United
+States did not win much honor on land. But on
+the sea the sailors of our country covered themselves
+with glory.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the land battles were along the borders
+of Canada. Here there was a good deal of fighting,
+but most of it was of no great account. At
+first the British had the best of it, and then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+Americans began to win battles, but it all came to
+an end about where it began. Neither side gained
+anything for the men that were killed.</p>
+
+<p>There was one naval battle in the north that I
+must tell you about. On Lake Erie the British
+had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time they
+had everything their own way. Then Captain
+Oliver Perry, a young officer, was sent to the lake
+to build a fleet and fight the British.</p>
+
+<p>When he got there the stuff for his ships was
+growing in the woods. He had to cut down trees
+and build ships from their timber. But he worked
+like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels
+built and afloat. He found some also on the lake,
+and in a wonderfully short time he had a fleet on
+the lake and was sailing out to find the British
+war-ships.</p>
+
+<p>The fleets met on September 10, 1813. The
+Americans had the most vessels, but the British had
+the most guns, and soon they were fighting like sea-dragons.
+The "Lawrence," Captain Perry's flagship,
+fought two of the largest British ships till it
+was nearly ready to sink, and so many of its crew
+were killed and wounded that it had only eight
+men left fit for fighting. What do you think the
+brave Perry did then? He leaped into a small
+boat and was rowed away, with the American flag
+floating in his hand, though the British ships were
+firing hotly at him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he reached the "Niagara," another of
+his ships, he sprang on board and sailed right
+through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into
+their shattered vessels. The British soon had
+enough of this, and in fifteen minutes more they
+gave up the fight.</p>
+
+<p>"We have met the enemy and they are ours,"
+wrote Perry to General Harrison. He was a born
+hero of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>Now I think we had better take a look out to
+sea and learn what was going on there. We did
+not have many ships, but they were like so many
+bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world
+looked on with surprise to see our little fleet of
+war-vessels making such havoc in the proud British
+navy which no country in Europe had ever
+been able to defeat.</p>
+
+<p>In less than two months after war was declared
+the frigate "Essex" met the British sloop-of-war
+"Alert" and took it in eight minutes, without
+losing a man. The "Essex" was too strong for
+the "Alert," but six days afterwards the "Constitution"
+met the "Guerriere," and these vessels
+were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour
+the "Guerriere" was nearly shot to pieces and
+ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her men.
+The others were hastily taken off, and then down
+went the proud British frigate to the bottom of the
+Gulf of St. Lawrence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All the island of Great Britain went into mourning
+when it learned how the Americans had served
+this good ship. There was soon more to mourn
+for. The American sloop "Wasp" captured
+the British sloop "Frolic." The frigate "United
+States" captured the frigate "Macedonian."
+The "Constitution" met the "Java" and served
+it the same way as it had done the "Guerriere."
+In two hours the "Java" was a wreck. Soon
+after the sloop "Hornet" met the ship "Peacock"
+and handled her so severely that she sank
+while her crew was being taken off.</p>
+
+<p>Later on the British won two battles at sea,
+and that was all they gained during the whole war.
+On the water the honors stayed with the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>There was one affair in which the British won
+great dishonor instead of honor. In July, 1814, a
+strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay, with
+an army of nearly five thousand men on board.
+These were landed and marched on the city of
+Washington, the capital of the young republic.</p>
+
+<p>Their coming was a surprise. There were few
+trained soldiers to meet this army, and those were
+not the days of railroads, so that no troops could
+be brought in haste from afar. Those that gathered
+were nearly all raw militia, and they did not
+stand long before the British veterans who had
+fought in the wars with Napoleon. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+soon put to flight, and the British army marched
+into our capital city.</p>
+
+<p>There they behaved in a way that their country
+has ever since been ashamed of. They set fire to
+the public buildings and burned most of them to
+the ground. The Capitol, the President's house,
+and other buildings were burned, and the records
+of the government were destroyed. Then, having
+acted like so many savages, the British hurried
+away before the Americans could get at them for
+revenge. That was a victory, I fancy, which the
+British do not like to read about.</p>
+
+<p>They had been so successful at Washington that
+they thought they would try the same thing with
+another city. This time they picked out New Orleans,
+which was so far away from the thickly settled
+part of the country that they fancied it would
+be an easy matter to capture it. In this they made
+a great mistake, as you will soon see.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general in the South who was not
+used to being defeated. This was Andrew Jackson,
+one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won
+fame in a war with the Indians of Georgia. He
+was a man who was always ready to fight and
+this the English found when they marched on
+New Orleans. There were twelve thousand of
+them, and Jackson, who had been sent there to
+meet them, only had half that many. And the
+British were trained soldiers, while the Americans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+were militia. But most of them were men of the
+backwoods, who knew how to shoot.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/i-204.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="The Battle of New Orleans." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Battle of New Orleans.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Some of you may have heard that Jackson's men
+fought behind cotton bales. That is not quite
+true, but he was in such a hurry in building his
+breastworks that he did put in them some bales of
+cotton taken from the warehouses. The British,
+who were in as great a hurry, built a breastwork
+of sugar hogsheads which they found on the plantations.
+But the cannon balls soon set the cotton
+on fire and filled the air with flying sugar, so the
+bales and the hogsheads had to be pulled out. It
+was found that cotton and sugar, while good
+enough in their place, were not good things to stop
+cannon balls.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the British marched against the American
+works, and there was a terrible fight.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand to your guns, my men," said Jackson to
+his soldiers. "Make every shot tell. Give it to
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Many of the men were old hunters from Tennessee,
+some of whom could hit a squirrel in the
+eye, and when they fired the British fell in rows.
+Not a man could cross that terrible wall of fire,
+and they fought on until twenty-six hundred of
+them lay bleeding on the field, while only eight
+Americans were killed.</p>
+
+<p>That ended the battle. The men were not born
+who could face a fire like that. It ended the war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+also, and it was the last time Americans and Englishmen
+ever fought each other. Jackson became
+the hero of the country, and he was finally elected
+President of the United States. I cannot say that
+he was well fitted to be President. He was a very
+obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own
+way, and that is better in a soldier than in a President.
+But he was one who loved his country, and
+when one of the states of the South sought to
+secede from the Union, Jackson, though he was
+a son of the South himself, quickly gave the seceders
+to understand that he was a general as well
+as a President, and that no state should leave the
+ranks of the Union while he marched at its head.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE
+REVENGED</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;HAVE told you the story of more than one
+war. I shall have to tell you now about still
+another in which the Americans fought the
+Mexicans in Texas.</div>
+
+<p>I suppose you know that Texas is one of our
+states, and the largest of them all. That is, it is
+largest in square miles; not in number of people.
+In former times it was part of Mexico, and was a
+portion of what is called Spanish America. But
+there came to be more Americans in it than Spaniards.
+People kept going there from the United
+States until it was much more of an American than
+a Spanish country.</p>
+
+<p>General Santa Anna, who was at the head of the
+Mexican government at the time I speak of, was
+somewhat of a tyrant, and he tried to rule the people
+of Texas in a way they would not submit to.
+Then he ordered them to give up all their guns to
+his soldiers, but instead of that they took their guns
+and drove the Mexican soldiers away. After that
+there was war, as you might well suppose, for a
+Mexican army was sent to punish the Texans.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I wish now to tell you about what happened to
+some very brave Americans. There were only
+one hundred and seventy-five of them, and they
+were attacked by General Santa Anna with an
+army of several thousand men. But they were
+commanded by Colonel Travis, a brave young
+Texan, and among them was the famous David
+Crockett, a great hunter, and Colonel James
+Bowie, who invented the terrible "bowie-knife,"
+and other bold and daring men who had settled
+in Texas. They had made a fort of an old
+Spanish building called the Alamo.</p>
+
+<p>The kind of men I have named do not easily
+give up. The Mexicans poured bomb-shells and
+cannon balls into their fort, battering down the
+walls and killing many of them, but they fought on
+like tigers, determined to die rather than surrender.
+At length so many of them were dead that
+there were not enough left to defend the walls, and
+the Mexican soldiers captured the Alamo. The
+valiant Crockett kept on fighting, and when he fell,
+the ground before him was covered with Mexican
+dead. Then Santa Anna ordered his soldiers to
+shoot down all that were left. That is what is
+called the "Massacre of the Alamo."</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before the Americans had their
+revenge. Their principal leader was a bold and
+able man named Samuel Houston. He had less
+than eight hundred men under him, but he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+marched on the Mexicans, who had then about
+eighteen hundred men.</p>
+
+<p>"Men, there is the enemy," said brave General
+Houston. "Do you wish to fight?"</p>
+
+<p>"We do," they all shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Charge on them, then, for liberty or death!
+Remember the Alamo!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remember the Alamo!" they cried, as they
+rushed onward with the courage of lions.</p>
+
+<p>In a little time the Mexicans were running like
+frightened deer, and the daring Texans were like
+deer hounds on their tracks. Of the eighteen
+hundred Mexicans all but four hundred were
+killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, while the
+Americans lost only thirty men. They had well
+avenged the gallant Travis and the martyrs of the
+Alamo.</p>
+
+<p>The cruel Santa Anna was taken prisoner. He
+had only one sound leg, and the story was that he
+was caught with his wooden leg stuck fast in the
+mud. Many of the Texans wanted to hang him
+for his murders at the Alamo, but in the end he
+was set free.</p>
+
+<p>All this took place in 1835. Texas was made
+an independent country, the "Lone Star Republic,"
+with General Houston for President. But its
+people did not want to stand alone. They were
+American born and wished to belong to the United
+States. So this country was asked to accept Texas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+as a state of the Union. Nine years after it was
+accepted as one of the American states.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some of my readers may think that this
+story has much more to do with the history of
+Mexico than that of the United States. But the
+taking of Texas as a state was United States history,
+and so was what followed. You know how
+one thing leads to another. Mexico did not feel
+like giving up Texas so easily, and her rulers said
+that the United States had no right to take it. It
+was not long before the soldiers of the two countries
+met on the border lands and blood was shed.
+There was a sharp fight at a place called Palo
+Alto, and a sharper one at a place called Resaca de
+la Palma. In both of them the Mexicans were defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Congress then declared war against Mexico,
+and very soon there was hard fighting going on
+elsewhere. General Zachary Taylor, a brave
+officer, who had fought the Seminole Indians in
+Florida, led the American troops across the Rio
+Grande River into Mexico, and some time afterwards
+marched to a place called Buena Vista. He
+had only five thousand men, while Santa Anna
+was marching against him with twenty thousand&mdash;four
+to one. General Taylor's army was in
+great danger. Santa Anna sent him a message,
+asking him to surrender if he did not want his
+army cut to pieces; but Rough and Ready, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+Taylor's men called him, sent word back that he
+was there to fight, not to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>The battle that followed was a desperate one.
+It took place on February 23, 1847. The Mexican
+lancers rode bravely against the American lines
+and were driven back at the cannon's mouth. For
+ten long hours the fighting went on. The Mexicans
+gained the high ground above the pass and
+put the American troops in danger. Charge after
+charge was made, but like bulldogs the Yankee
+soldiers held their ground. On came the dashing
+Mexican lancers, shouting their war-cry of "God
+and Liberty," and charging a battery commanded
+by Captain Bragg. The lancers captured some of
+the guns and drove the soldiers back. Captain
+Bragg sent a messenger in haste to General Taylor,
+saying that he must have more men or he
+could not hold his ground.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no more men to send you," said
+Rough and Ready. "Give them a little more
+grape, Captain Bragg."</p>
+
+<p>The cannon were loaded with grape-shot and
+fired into the ranks of the enemy, cutting great
+gaps through them. Again and again they were
+loaded and fired, and then the fine Mexican cavalry
+turned and fled. They could not stand any more
+of Captain Bragg's grape.</p>
+
+<p>That night both armies went to sleep on the
+field of battle. But when the next day dawned the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+Mexicans were gone. Santa Anna had led them
+away during the night and General Taylor had
+won the greatest victory of the war. He received
+a noble reward for it, for the following year he
+was elected President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing done in this war was an attempt
+to capture the city of Mexico, the capital of the
+country. The easiest way to get there was by sea,
+for it was a long journey by land, so a fleet was got
+ready and an army sent south on the Gulf of Mexico.
+This army was led by General Winfield
+Scott, who had fought against the British in the
+War of 1812.</p>
+
+<p>Onward they sailed till they came before the
+seaport city of Vera Cruz. This had a strong
+fort, which was battered for four days by the
+American cannon, when its walls were so shattered
+that the Mexicans gave it up. In this way a good
+starting-point was gained.</p>
+
+<p>But I would have you all know that the Americans
+had no easy road before them. The city of
+Mexico lies in the center of the country on land
+that is as high as many mountains, and the way to
+it from the coast goes steadily upward, and has
+many difficult passes and rough places, where a
+small force might stop an army.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 349px;">
+<img src="images/i-214.jpg" width="349" height="500" alt="The Storming of Chapultepec." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Storming of Chapultepec.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If the Mexicans had known their business and
+had possessed good generals I am afraid the
+Americans might never have gotten up this rugged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+road. The Mexicans had men enough but they
+wanted able leaders. At one of the passes, named
+Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna waited with 15,000
+men. The Americans had only 9,000. It looked
+as if they might have to turn back.</p>
+
+<p>What did they do? Why, they managed to
+drag a battery to the top of a steep hill that overlooked
+the pass. And while these guns poured
+their shot down on the astonished Mexicans the
+army attacked them in front. In a few hours
+they were in full flight. Five generals, and 3,000
+men were taken prisoners, and Santa Anna himself
+came so near being taken that he left his cork leg
+behind. Do you not think a general ought to
+have two good legs when he has to run as often as
+Santa Anna had?</p>
+
+<p>Onward they marched until not very far away
+lay the beautiful city of Mexico. But here and
+there along the road were strong forts, and Santa
+Anna had collected a large army, three times as
+large as that of the Americans. You may see that
+General Scott had a very hard task before him.
+But there is one way to get past forts without fighting;
+which is, to go around them. This is what
+General Scott did. He marched to the south, and
+soon he was within ten miles of the capital without
+a battle.</p>
+
+<p>August 20th was a great day for the American
+army. That day our brave troops fought like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+heroes, and before night they had won five victories.
+One of these was on a steep hill called
+Churubusco, which they charged up in the face of
+the Mexican guns. Then on they went, and in a
+short time the old city, the most ancient in
+America, was in their hands. That ended the
+war. When peace was made the United States
+claimed the provinces of New Mexico and California,
+which had been captured by our soldiers,
+but for which Mexico was paid a large sum. No
+one then dreamed how rich the provinces were in
+silver and gold. Not long after the gold of California
+was discovered, and that country, which
+had been feebly held by a few Mexicans, was
+quickly filled by an army of gold-seekers. Since
+then it has proved one of the richest parts of the
+earth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>ALL of my young readers must know what a
+wonderful age this is that we live in, and
+what marvelous things have been done.
+Some of you, no doubt, have read the stories of
+magic in the "Arabian Nights Entertainments,"
+and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But
+if any one, a hundred years ago, had been told
+about the railroad, the telegraph, the photograph,
+the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the surface
+of the water, and ships that sail in the air,
+I fancy they would have called all this nonsense
+and "Arabian Nights" magic. Why, think of it,
+a trolley car is as magical, in its way, as Aladdin's
+wonderful lamp.</div>
+
+<p>But while you know much about these things,
+there has been one great step of progress which,
+I fancy, you know or think very little about. I
+do not mean material but moral progress, for you
+must bear in mind that while the world has been
+growing richer it has also been growing better.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred years ago many millions of men
+were held as slaves in America and Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+Some of these were black and some were white,
+but they could be bought and sold like so many
+cattle, could be whipped by their masters, and had
+no more rights than so many brute beasts.</p>
+
+<p>To-day there is not a slave in Europe or
+America. All these millions of slaves have been
+set free. Do you not think I am right in saying
+that the world has grown better as well as
+richer? Why, fifty years ago there were millions
+of slaves in our own country, and now there
+is not one in all the land. Is not that a great
+gain to mankind? But it is sad to think that
+this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall
+have to tell you about this war, after I have told
+you how slavery brought it on.</p>
+
+<p>In the early part of this book you read of
+how white men first came to this country. I have
+now to tell you that black men were brought here
+almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after
+Captain John Smith and the English colonists
+landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the
+James River and sold them some negroes to be
+held as slaves.</p>
+
+<p>You remember about Pocahontas, the Indian
+girl who saved the life of Captain John Smith.
+She was afterwards married to John Rolfe, the
+man who first planted tobacco in Virginia. John
+Rolfe wrote down what was going on in Virginia,
+and it was he who told us about these negroes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+brought in as slaves. This is what he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"About the last of August came in, a Dutch
+marine-of-war, that sold us 20 Negars."</p>
+
+<p>These twenty "Negars," as he called them,
+grew in numbers until there were four million
+negro slaves in our country in 1860, when the
+war began. There are twice that many black people
+in the country to-day, but I am glad to be
+able to say that none of them are slaves. Yet
+how sad it is to think that it cost the lives of
+hundreds of thousands of men, and misery to multitudes
+of families, to set them free.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did all these black men come from?"
+I am sure I hear some young voice asking that
+question. Well, they came from Africa, the land
+of the negroes. In our time merchant ships are
+used to carry goods from one country to another.
+In old times many of these ships were used in
+carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The
+wicked captains would steal the poor black men
+in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had
+taken them prisoners in war. Some of them filled
+their ships so full of these miserable victims that
+hundreds of them died and were thrown overboard.
+Then, when they got to the West Indies
+or to the shores of our country, they would sell
+all that were left alive to the planters, to spend
+the rest of their lives like oxen chained to the yoke.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very sad and cruel business, but people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+then thought it right, and some of the best
+men took part in it. That is why I say the world
+has grown better. We have a higher idea of
+right and wrong in regard to such things than our
+forefathers had.</p>
+
+<p>Slaves were kept in all parts of the country, in
+the North as well as the South. There were more
+of them in the South than in the North, for they
+were of more use there as workers in the tobacco
+and rice and cotton fields. Most of those in the
+North were kept as house servants. Not many
+of them were needed in the fields.</p>
+
+<p>The North had not much use for slaves, and in
+time laws were passed, doing away with slavery in
+all the Northern states. Very likely the same
+thing would have taken place in the South if it
+had not been for the discovery of the cotton-gin.
+I have told you what a change this great invention
+made. Before that time it did not pay to raise
+cotton in our fields. After that time cotton grew
+to be a very profitable crop, and the cultivation
+of it spread wider and wider until it was planted
+over a great part of the South.</p>
+
+<p>This made a remarkable change. Negroes
+were very useful in the cotton fields, and no one
+in the South now thought of doing away with
+slavery. After 1808 no ships could bring slaves
+to this country, but there were a great many here
+then, and many others were afterwards born and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+grew up as slaves, so that the numbers kept increasing
+year after year.</p>
+
+<p>There were always some people, both in the
+North and the South, who did not like slavery.
+Among them were Franklin and Washington and
+Jefferson and other great men. In time there got
+to be so many of these people in the North that
+they formed what were called Anti-slavery Societies.
+Some of them said that slavery should
+be kept where it was and not taken into any new
+states. Others said that every slave in the United
+States ought to be set free.</p>
+
+<p>This brought on great excitement all over the
+country. The people in the North who believed
+in slavery were often violent. Now and then
+there were riots. Buildings where Anti-slavery
+meetings were held were burned down. One of
+the leaders of the Abolitionists, as the Anti-slavery
+people were called, was dragged through
+the streets of Boston with a rope tied round his
+body, and would have been hanged if his friends
+had not got him away.</p>
+
+<p>But as time went on the Abolitionists grew
+stronger in the North. Many slaves ran away
+from their masters, and these were hidden by
+their white friends until they could get to Canada,
+where they were safe. All through the South
+and North people were excited.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think many of our people expected the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+cruel war that was coming. If they had they
+might have been more careful what they said and
+did. But for all that, war was close at hand, and
+two things helped to bring it on.</p>
+
+<p>There had been fighting in Kansas, one of the
+territories that was to be made into a state, and
+among the fighters was an old man named John
+Brown, who thought that God had called him to
+do all he could for the freedom of the slaves.</p>
+
+<p>Some people think that John Brown was not
+quite right in his brain. What he did was to
+gather a body of men and to take possession of
+Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac River, where
+there was a government army. He thought that
+the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid in
+multitudes and that he could start a slave war that
+would run all through the South.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But
+some troops came under Colonel Robert E. Lee,
+and Brown and his party were forced to surrender.
+Some of them were killed and wounded
+and the others taken prisoners. John Brown and
+six others were tried and hanged. But the half-insane
+old man had done his work. That fight
+at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to bring on the
+war.</p>
+
+<p>I said there were two things. The other was
+the election of Abraham Lincoln as President.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time, as I have told you, the Abolitionists,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+or people opposed to slavery, were few
+in number. When they grew more numerous
+they formed a political party, known as the Anti-slavery
+Party. In 1856 a new party, called the
+Republican Party, was formed and took in all the
+Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election
+of that year eleven states voted for its candidate,
+John C. Fremont, the man who had taken California
+from Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator
+of whom I shall soon tell you more, was the candidate
+of the Republican Party, and in the election
+of that year this new party was successful and
+Lincoln was elected President of the United States.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;SHOULD like to tell you all about one of
+the greatest and noblest men who ever lived
+in our country, and give you his story from
+the time he was born until the time he died. But
+that would be biography, and this is a book of
+history. Biography is the story of a man; history
+is the story of a nation. So I cannot give you
+the whole life of Abraham Lincoln, but only that
+part of it which has to do with the history of our
+country.</div>
+
+<p>Nations, you should know, are divided into
+monarchies and republics. In a monarchy the
+ruler is called a king, or some other name which
+means the same thing. And when a king dies
+his son takes his place as king. The king may
+be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish;
+he may be a genius, or he may be an idiot, without
+any sense at all; he may be kind and just, or
+he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he
+is king. There may be some good points in letting
+a man be born king, but you can see that there are
+many bad ones. The history of the nations has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+often shown this, as you may have seen in what
+we have said of some of the English kings who
+had to do with America.</p>
+
+<p>In a republic the ruler&mdash;who is called president
+instead of king&mdash;is not born to his office,
+but is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule
+the nation all his life, but only for a few years.
+In that way the best and wisest man in the nation
+may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always
+get the best man in the United States; but
+that is the fault of the people, it is not the fault
+of the plan. There is one thing sure, we never
+get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.</p>
+
+<p>There are times when we do choose our best
+and wisest man, and everybody thinks we did so
+when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As
+I have told you, as soon as he was made President
+a great war began between the two halves of our
+people. It is not so easy to rule in war as in
+peace, and I must say that poor Lincoln had a
+very hard time of it. But he did the best he
+could, and people say now that no man in our nation
+could have done better. Abraham Lincoln
+stands next to George Washington among the
+great and noble men of America.</p>
+
+<p>There is one more thing it is well to know. It
+is not only the rich and proud that we choose to
+be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life
+as poor boys, and none of them began poorer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+than "honest Abe Lincoln," as the people he lived
+among called him. He well deserved this name,
+for he was always good and honest.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt there are many poor boys among my
+readers, but I do not believe that any of you are
+as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as
+hard a life. So you see that while a king must
+have a king or great noble for father, a President
+may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any one
+of my young readers, if he can bring himself
+strongly to the notice of the people, may become
+President, and I should not wonder at all if some
+one among you should do so in future times.</p>
+
+<p>I told you that I would not speak about Abraham
+Lincoln's early life, but I see that I shall
+have to do so. He was born in a mean little log-cabin
+in the back woods a hundred years ago, in
+the year 1809. His father could not read and
+did not like to work, and the poor little fellow
+had hardly enough to eat.</p>
+
+<p>His mother loved him, but she could do little
+for him, and she died when he was only eight
+years old. Then his father married a second wife.
+She was a good woman, and she did all she could
+for the poor, forlorn little boy. But it did not
+look much then as if this ragged and hungry little
+chap would become President of the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>There was one good thing about little Abe, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+had a great love for books. He went to school
+only long enough to learn to read and write, but
+he borrowed and read all the books he could get.
+When he found he could not go to school he
+studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so
+he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen
+fire, working out the problems on the back of a
+wooden fire shovel. When this was full he would
+scrape it off smooth and begin again. In this way
+the boy got to be the best scholar in all the country
+around him. How many of you would have
+worked as hard as he did to get an education?
+Yet it was this kind of work that made him
+President.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning.
+He was always a good talker, and he grew to be
+one of the best public speakers of his times. He
+became so well known and so well respected that
+at length he was sent to Congress. Lincoln did
+not believe that slavery was a good thing for the
+country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in
+itself. So he joined the Republican Party, which
+had just been formed.</p>
+
+<p>There was another fine speaker in Illinois named
+Douglas, who had different ideas about slavery
+from Lincoln and was a member of the Democratic
+Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about
+Illinois making speeches to the people, and great
+crowds came to hear them, for they were two of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+the best speakers in the country. Everywhere
+people were talking about Lincoln and Douglas
+and saying what able men they were.</p>
+
+<p>In 1860 came the time when a new President
+was to be chosen, and out of all the political
+leaders of the country these two men from far-west
+Illinois were selected&mdash;Douglas by those
+who were in favor of slavery and Lincoln by those
+who opposed slavery. When election day came
+round and the votes were counted, Abraham Lincoln,
+the rail splitter, was found to be elected President
+of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>The people of the South were in a terrible state
+of mind when they found that a Republican, a
+man opposed to slavery, was elected President.
+They could not tell what would take place. The
+Abolitionists who were against slavery were in
+power and might pass laws that would rob them
+of all their slaves. For years they had been fighting
+the North in Congress&mdash;fighting by words,
+I mean. Now they determined to leave the
+Union, and to fight with swords and guns if the
+North would not let them go in peace. One by
+one the Southern States passed resolutions to go
+out of the Union. And on all sides they collected
+powder and balls and other implements of
+war, for their leaders felt sure they would have
+to fight. But Lincoln hoped the states would not
+quarrel. He begged them not to. But if they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+did it was his duty to do what the people had put
+him there for. He had been elected President of
+the United States, and he must do all he could to
+keep these states united.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abraham
+Lincoln became President. By the middle
+of April the North and South were at war. Both
+sides had their soldiers in the field and fighting
+had begun. The South wanted to take Washington,
+and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce
+battle was fought at a place called Bull Run, a
+few miles south of Washington.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern States formed a Union of their
+own, which was called the Southern Confederacy.
+They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for
+the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jefferson
+Davis for their President. Davis had
+fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena
+Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Congress,
+where he showed himself an able lawmaker.
+So the South chose him as their best man
+for President.</p>
+
+<p>The war was half over before President Lincoln
+did anything about slavery. He was there
+to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But
+the time came when he found that freeing the
+slaves would help him in saving the Union.
+When this time came&mdash;it was on the 1st of January,
+1863&mdash;he declared that all the slaves should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+be free. It was a great thing for this country,
+for it was clear that there could be no peace while
+slavery remained.</p>
+
+<p>But the war went on more fiercely than ever,
+and it was not until April, 1865, that it came to
+an end. The South was not able to fight any
+longer and had to give up, and the Union was
+saved. It was saved without slavery, which was
+a very good thing for both North and South, as
+we have since found out.</p>
+
+<p>But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not
+live to learn what the country gained by the war,
+for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked
+and foolish man, who thought he would avenge
+the South by shooting the President.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible deed. The whole country
+mourned for its noblest man, slain in the hour of
+victory. The South as well as the North suffered
+by his death, for he was too just a man to oppress
+those who had been beaten in war, and in him all
+the people, North and South, lost their best and
+ablest friend.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREAT CIVIL WAR</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;HAVE no doubt that some of the young
+folks who read this book will want to hear
+the story of the great war that was spoken
+of in the last chapter. Some of the boys will, at
+any rate. The girls do not care so much about
+war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world
+would be much better off if there were no wars.</div>
+
+<p>Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys
+something about it. The girls can skip it, if they
+wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil War
+would take a book five times as large as this, so
+all I can do is to draw a sort of outline map of
+it. A civil war, you should know, means a war
+within a nation, where part of a people fight
+against the other part. A war between two nations
+is called a foreign war.</p>
+
+<p>When our Civil War broke out we had thirty-three
+states&mdash;we have more than forty-five to-day.
+Eleven of these states tried to leave the
+Union and twenty-two remained, so that the Union
+states were two to one against the non-Union.
+But the Union states had more than twice the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as
+you may see, the war was a one-sided affair. It
+was nearly all fought in the South, whose people
+suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the
+Union. Many of them lost all they had and became
+very poor.</p>
+
+<p>There were three fields or regions in which this
+war took place. One of these was a narrow region,
+lying between Washington and Richmond,
+the two capital cities. But small as it was, here
+the greatest battles were fought. Both sides were
+fighting fiercely to save their capitals.</p>
+
+<p>The second region of the war was in the West.
+This was a vast region, extending from Kentucky
+and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here
+there were many long, weary marches and much
+hard fighting and great loss of life. The third
+region was on the ocean and rivers, where iron-clad
+ships first met in battle, and where some
+famous combats took place.</p>
+
+<p>Over these three regions a million and more of
+men struggled for years, fighting with rifle and
+cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and
+wounding one another and causing no end of misery
+in all parts of the land. For the people at
+home suffered as much as the men on the battle-field,
+and many mothers and sisters were heartbroken
+when word came to them that their dear
+sons or brothers had been shot down on the field<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+of blood. War is the most terrible thing upon
+the earth, though men try to make it look like a
+pleasant show with their banners and trumpets
+and drums.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the news of the war came there was
+a great coming and going of soldiers, and beating
+of drums, and fluttering of banners, and making
+of speeches, and thousands marched away,
+some to Washington and some to Richmond, and
+many more to the strongholds of the West.
+Mothers wept as they bade good-by to their sons,
+whom they might never see again. And many
+of the soldier-boys had sad hearts under their
+brave faces. Soon hundreds of these poor fellows
+were falling dead and wounded on fields of
+battle, and then their people at home had good
+reason to weep and mourn.</p>
+
+<p>I have told you about the battle of Bull Run,
+south of Washington, the first great battle of the
+war. Here the Southern army gained the victory,
+and the people of the South were full of joy. But
+Congress now called for half a million of men
+and voted half a billion of dollars. Both sides
+saw that they had a great war before them.</p>
+
+<p>Bull Run was the only severe battle in 1861,
+but in 1862 both the North and the South had
+large armies, and there was much hard fighting
+in the East and the West.</p>
+
+<p>I must tell you first of the fighting in <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Virgnia'">Virginia</ins>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+General George B. McClellan was in command
+of the Union army there. He led it down close
+to Richmond, which he hoped to capture. There
+was a sharp fight at a place called Fair Oaks,
+where General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate
+general, was wounded. General Robert E. Lee
+took his place. They could not have picked out
+a better man, for he proved himself to be one of
+the greatest soldiers of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>The Confederates had another fine general
+named Thomas J. Jackson. He was called
+"Stonewall" Jackson, because, in the battle of
+Bull Run, some one had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look at Jackson! There he stands like a
+stone wall!"</p>
+
+<p>General Lee and Stonewall Jackson were not
+the men to keep quiet. In a short time they drove
+McClellan back after a hard fight lasting a whole
+week, and then made a sudden march to the north.
+Here was another Union army, on the old battle-field
+of Bull Run. A dreadful battle followed;
+men fell by thousands; in the end the Union army
+was defeated and forced back towards Washington.</p>
+
+<p>General Lee knew that he could not take Washington,
+so he marched away north, waded his men
+across the Potomac River, and entered the state of
+Maryland. This was a slave state, and he hoped
+many of the people would join his army. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+the farmers of Maryland loved the Union too well
+for that, so General Lee got very few of them
+in his ranks.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went west, followed by General McClellan,
+and at a place called Antietam the two
+armies met; and there was fought the bloodiest
+battle of the war. They kept at it all day long
+and neither side seemed beaten. But that night
+General Lee and his men waded back across the
+Potomac into Virginia, leaving McClellan master
+of the field. There was one more terrible battle
+in Virginia that year, in which General Burnside,
+who after McClellan commanded the Union
+army, tried to take the city of Fredericksburg,
+but was defeated and his men driven back with
+a dreadful loss of life.</p>
+
+<p>Both armies now rested until the spring of 1863,
+and then another desperate battle was fought.
+General Hooker had taken General Burnside's
+place, and thought he also must fight a battle, but
+he did not dare to try Fredericksburg as Burnside
+had done, so he marched up the river and crossed
+it into a rough and wild country known as the
+Wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>General Lee hurried there to meet him and the
+two armies came together at a place called Chancellorsville.
+They fought in the wild woods,
+where the trees in some places were so thick that
+the men could not see one another. But Stonewall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+Jackson marched to the left through the
+woods and made a sudden attack on the right wing
+of the Union army.</p>
+
+<p>This part of the army was taken by surprise
+and driven back. Hooker's men fought all that
+day and the next, but they could not recover from
+their surprise and loss, and in the end they had
+to cross the river back again. General Lee had
+won another great victory. But Stonewall Jackson
+was wounded and soon died, and Lee would
+rather have lost the battle than to lose this famous
+general.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not think the North had a right to feel
+very much out of heart by this time? The war
+had gone on for two years, and the Union army
+had been defeated in all the great battles fought
+in Virginia. The only victory won was that at
+Antietam in Maryland. They had been beaten
+at the two battles of Bull Run, the seven days'
+fight at Richmond, and the battles of Fredericksburg
+and Chancellorsville, while the battle of Antietam
+had been won with great loss of life.</p>
+
+<p>But there was soon to be a victory that would
+make up for more than one defeat. Shortly after
+the fight at Chancellorsville General Lee broke
+camp and marched north with the greatest speed.
+The Union army followed as fast as they could
+march, for there was danger of Baltimore or even
+Philadelphia being taken. Both armies kept on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+until they reached the town of Gettysburg, in the
+south of Pennsylvania. Here was fought the
+greatest battle of the war. It lasted for three
+days, the 1st, 2d and 3d of July, 1863.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of life on both sides was dreadful.
+But the Confederates lost the most men and lost
+the battle besides. They tried in vain to break
+through the Union lines, and in the end they were
+forced to retreat. On the 4th of July General
+Lee sadly began his backward march, and the
+telegraph wires carried all through the North the
+tidings of a great victory. This was the turning
+point in the war. Six months before, President
+Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom of the slaves,
+and the armies were now fighting to make his word
+good. Negroes after this were taken into the
+Union ranks, that they might help in the fight for
+their own liberty.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to say just here that the people of the
+North bore the defeats in Virginia better than
+you would think. They had good reason to, for
+while they had been losing battles in the East they
+had been winning battles in the West. So one
+helped to make up for the other. If you will follow
+me now to the West we will see what was
+taking place there.</p>
+
+<p>The North did not have to change its generals
+as often in the West as in the East, for it soon
+found a good one; and it was wise enough to hold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+on to him. This was General Ulysses S. Grant,
+who is now honored as one of the greatest generals
+of the world's history.</p>
+
+<p>Grant was only a captain at first. Then he was
+made a colonel, and was soon raised to the rank
+of general. He met the Confederates first at
+Belmont, Missouri. Here he was defeated, and
+had to take his men aboard river-boats to get
+them away. That was his first and nearly his last
+defeat.</p>
+
+<p>The Confederates had built two strong forts in
+Kentucky which they named Fort Henry and Fort
+Donelson. General Grant marched against them
+with an army and Commodore Foote steamed
+against them with a fleet of iron-clad steamboats.
+Fort Henry was taken by the fleet before Grant
+could get to it. Then he marched across country
+to Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. He
+attacked this fort so fiercely that the Confederates
+tried to get out of it but did not succeed. Then
+they proposed to surrender, and asked him what
+terms he would give them.</p>
+
+<p>"No terms except an immediate and unconditional
+surrender," he said. "I propose to move
+immediately on your works."</p>
+
+<p>This settled the matter. They surrendered&mdash;fifteen
+thousand in all. After that many said that
+U. S. Grant stood for "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell you about all the fights that took
+place in the West, but there was a terrible battle
+at a place called Pittsburg Landing, which lasted
+two days, and in which Grant came very near being
+defeated. There was a severe one at Murfreesboro
+on the last day of the year, and another
+three days afterwards. Grant was not there, but
+Bragg, the Confederate General, was defeated.</p>
+
+<p>The Confederates had an important stronghold
+on the Mississippi River at the city of Vicksburg,
+where they had many forts and a large number
+of cannon. General Sherman tried to capture
+these forts but was driven back. Then General
+Grant tried it and found it a very hard task.</p>
+
+<p>The country was all swamp and creeks which no
+army could get through, so Grant at last marched
+south on the other side of the river, and then
+crossed over and marched north again. He had
+to fight every step of his way, and to live on the
+food his men could carry, for he had cut loose
+from the North. But he soon reached the city
+and began a long siege. The Confederates held
+out until all their food was gone, and until they
+had eaten up nearly all their horses and mules.
+Then they surrendered. Twenty-seven thousand
+men were taken prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>This took place on the 4th of July, 1863, the
+same day that General Lee marched away from
+the field at Gettysburg. That was one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+greatest Fourths of July this country had ever
+seen, for with it the last chance of the South was
+lost. General Lee had lost many thousands of his
+hardy veterans, men whom he could never replace.
+And in the fighting around Vicksburg and the
+capture of that city nearly fifty thousand more fell
+on the battle-field or were taken prisoners. It was
+a loss which the leaders of the Southern army bitterly
+felt. Fighting kept on for two years more,
+but they would have been wiser to give up then and
+save all the death and misery that came to them
+afterwards.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>WAR ON SEA AND LAND</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;HAVE told you part of the story of how
+our people fought on land. Now suppose
+we take a look at the water, and see how
+they fought there. Have any of you heard of
+the wonderful battle between the "Monitor" and
+the "Merrimac"? If you have you will be sure
+to remember it, for it is one of the strangest
+stories in the history of war. In the lower part
+of Chesapeake Bay is what I may call a pocket of
+water named Hampton Roads, into which the
+James River flows. Here, in the month of
+March, 1862, lay a fleet of war-vessels. These
+were not the kind of ships-of-war which we see
+now-a-days. They were wooden vessels, such as
+were used in former wars, but which would be of
+no more use than floating logs against the sea-monsters
+of to-day.</div>
+
+<p>Something strange was soon to happen to these
+proud ships. On the 8th of March there came
+into the waters of the bay a very odd looking
+craft. It was a ship, but instead of a deck it had
+a sloping roof made of iron bars. It looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+something like a house gone adrift. I fancy the
+people in the wooden ships must have been a little
+scared when they saw it coming, for they had
+never seen a war-vessel with an iron roof before.</p>
+
+<p>They might well be scared, for they soon found
+that their cannon were of no more use than pea-shooters
+against this queer craft. The cannon-balls
+bounded off from her sides like so many peas.
+On came the monster and struck one of the ships
+with her iron beak, tearing a great hole in its
+side. Down into the waters sunk the gallant ship,
+with all on board. And there it lay with its flag
+flying like a flag above a grave. Another ship,
+the "Congress," was driven on the mud and had
+to give up the fight.</p>
+
+<p>There were three more ships in the fleet, but it
+was now near night, and so the "Merrimac," as
+the iron monster was called, steamed away. Her
+captain thought it would be an easy thing to settle
+with them the next morning, and very likely
+the people on them did not sleep well that night,
+for they could not forget what had happened to
+the "Congress" and the "Cumberland," and felt
+sure their turn was to come next.</p>
+
+<p>But, as the old saying goes, "There is many a
+slip between cup and lip." The "Merrimac"
+was to learn the truth of this. For when she
+came grimly out the next day, expecting to sink
+the rest of the fleet and then steam up to the city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+of Washington and perhaps burn that, her captain
+found before him the queerest thing in the
+shape of a ship he had ever seen. It was an iron
+vessel that looked like "a cheese box on a raft."
+All that could be seen was a flat deck that came
+just above the water, and above this a round tower
+of iron, out of which peeped two monsters of
+cannon.</p>
+
+<p>This strange vessel had come into Hampton
+Roads during the night, and there it lay ready
+to do battle for the Union. It was a new style
+of war-ship that had been built in New York and
+was called the "Monitor."</p>
+
+<p>The "Merrimac" soon had enough to keep
+herself busy, and was forced to let the wooden
+fleet alone. For four long hours these two iron
+monsters battered each other with cannon balls.
+Such a fight had never been seen before. It was
+the first time two iron-clad ships had met in war.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say that either ship was hurt much.
+The balls could not get through the iron bars and
+plates and glanced off into the water. But the
+"Merrimac" got the worst of it, and in the end
+she turned and hurried back to Norfolk, from
+which place she had come. The "Monitor"
+waited for her, but she never came out again.
+Soon afterwards the Confederates left Norfolk
+and sunk their iron ship, and that was the last of
+the "Merrimac."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the news of this wonderful sea-fight got
+to Europe the kings and ministers of war read
+it with alarm. They saw they had something to
+do. Their wooden war-vessels were out of date,
+and they went to work in a hurry to build iron-clad
+ships. To-day all the great nations of the
+earth have fleets of steel-covered ships-of-war, and
+the United States has some of the best and strongest
+of this kind of ships.</p>
+
+<p>All through the war there were battles of iron-clads.
+On the western rivers steamboats were
+plated with iron and attacked the forts on shore.
+And along the coast iron-clad vessels helped the
+wooden ships to blockade the ports of the South.
+More vessels like the "Monitor" were built in
+the North, and a number somewhat like the "Merrimac"
+were built in the South. I cannot say that
+any of them did much good either North or
+South.</p>
+
+<p>A great naval battle was fought in the Mississippi,
+which led to the capture of New Orleans, and
+another was fought in the Bay of Mobile, on the
+Gulf of Mexico. Here there were some strong
+forts and a powerful iron-clad ship. Admiral
+Farragut sailed into the bay with a fleet of wooden
+ships and several iron vessels like the "Monitor."
+When he went past the forts he stood in the rigging
+of his ship, with his spy-glass in his hand.
+He did not seem to care anything for cannon-balls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+He took the forts, and since then Farragut
+has been one of our great naval heroes.</p>
+
+<p>There was one Confederate privateer, the "Alabama,"
+which caused terrible loss to the merchants
+of the North. It took in all sixty-five vessels,
+which were set on fire and burned. In June,
+1864, the "Alabama" was met near the coast of
+France by the frigate "Kearsarge," and a furious
+battle took place. For two hours they fought,
+and then the "Alabama" sagged down into the
+water and sank to the bottom of the sea. She
+had done much harm to the North, but her career
+was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn back to the war on land and
+see what was going on there. I have told you the
+story of the fighting up to the great 4th of July,
+1863, when Vicksburg surrendered to General
+Grant and General Lee marched away from Gettysburg.
+That is where we dropped the threads
+which we have now to take up again.</p>
+
+<p>After Grant had taken Vicksburg and opened
+the Mississippi from St. Louis to its mouth, he
+set out for the town of Chattanooga, which is in
+Tennessee just north of Georgia. Here there had
+been a great battle in which the Confederate army
+won the victory, and the Union troops were shut
+up in Chattanooga with very little to eat.</p>
+
+<p>Grant was not there long before there came a
+change. General Bragg, the Confederate commander,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+had his army on the summits of two
+mountains named Lookout Mountain and Missionary
+Ridge. These were defended by strong
+forts. But the Union troops charged up the
+mountain sides in the face of the fire of rifles and
+cannon and soon had possession of the forts.
+General Bragg's army was defeated with great
+loss. This was one of the most brilliant victories
+of the war. The battle of Lookout Mountain has
+been called "the battle above the clouds."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody now saw that General Grant was
+much the best general on the Union side, and
+President Lincoln made him commander-in-chief
+of all the armies in the field. Grant at once laid
+his plans to have the armies all work together.
+General Sherman was left in command of the
+army of the West and Grant came to Virginia to
+fight General Lee.</p>
+
+<p>In the green month of May, 1864, all the armies
+were set in motion, and North and South came
+together for the last great struggle of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Grant led his men into the Wilderness where
+General Hooker and his army had been sadly defeated
+the year before. Lee was there to meet
+him, and a great battle was fought in the depth
+of the woods and thickets. It lasted two whole
+days, but neither side won.</p>
+
+<p>Then Grant marched towards Richmond and
+Lee hurried down to head him off. Several hard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+battles were fought, the last being at Cold Harbor,
+near Richmond. Here the Union army lost
+terribly. Ten thousand men were killed and
+wounded, while the Confederates, who were behind
+strong earthworks, lost only a thousand.</p>
+
+<p>General Grant saw he could not reach Richmond
+that way, so he crossed the James River and
+began a siege of Petersburg and Richmond. This
+siege lasted nine months, both sides digging instead
+of fighting till great heaps of earth were thrown
+up, on whose tops were hundreds of cannon.</p>
+
+<p>General Grant kept his men very busy, as you
+may see. But General Sherman's men were just
+as busy. He marched south from Chattanooga,
+and fought battle after battle until he had gone
+far into Georgia and captured the important city
+of Atlanta. General Hood, the Confederate
+commander, then made a rapid march to Tennessee,
+thinking that Sherman would follow him.
+But Sherman did not move. The brave General
+Thomas was there to take care of Hood and his
+army.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him go; he couldn't please me better,"
+said Sherman.</p>
+
+<p>What Sherman did was to cut loose from the
+railroads and telegraphs and march his whole
+army into the center of Georgia. For a whole
+month the people of the North heard nothing of
+him. His sixty thousand men might be starving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+for food, or might all be killed, so far as was
+known. It was November when they started and
+it was near Christmas when they were heard of
+again.</p>
+
+<p>They had lived on the country and destroyed
+railroads and stores, and at length they came to
+the sea at the city of Savannah. Three daring
+scouts made their way in a boat down the river
+by night and brought to the fleet the first news of
+Sherman's march. No doubt you have heard the
+song "Marching through Georgia." That was
+written to describe Sherman's famous march.</p>
+
+<p>The South was now getting weaker, and weaker,
+and most men saw that the war was near its end.
+It came to an end in April, 1865. Grant kept
+moving south till he got round the Confederate
+earthworks at Petersburg, and Lee was forced to
+leave Richmond in great haste.</p>
+
+<p>The Union army followed as fast as it could
+march, and the cavalry rode on until it was ahead
+of the Confederates. Then General Lee saw that
+he was surrounded by an army far stronger than
+his own. He could fight no longer. His men
+were nearly starved. To fight would be to have
+them all killed. So on the 9th of April he offered
+his sword to General Grant, and the long
+and bloody war was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>No one was gladder of this than President Lincoln,
+who had done so much to bring it about.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+Poor man! five days afterwards he was shot in
+a theatre at Washington by an actor named John
+Wilkes Booth. This was done out of revenge for
+the defeat of the South. But the people of the
+South did not approve of this act of murder, and
+in Abraham Lincoln they lost one whom they
+would have found a good friend.</p>
+
+<p>Booth was followed and killed, but his death
+could not bring back to life the murdered President,
+whom the people loved so warmly that they
+mourned for him as if he had been, like Washington,
+the Father of his Country. It was a terrible
+crime, and it turned the joy which the people felt,
+at the end of the war, into the deepest sorrow
+and grief.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>LET us suppose that the history of the whole
+world is spread out before us like a picture,
+and that we are looking down on it.
+What will we see? Well, we will see places
+where a terrible storm seems to have swept over
+the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its
+track. And we will see other places where the
+sun seems to have poured down its bright beams,
+and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The
+dark places are those of war; the bright places
+are those of peace. All through history there
+have been times when men have gone out to kill
+and burn and do all the harm they could; and
+there have been other times when they stayed at
+home to work, and build up what war had cast
+down, and bring plenty and happiness to the nations.</div>
+
+<p>In the picture of our own history we see such
+dark and bright places. And the darkest of them
+all is the terrible Civil War, the story of which you
+have just read. For in this war our people fought
+against and killed one another, and all the harm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+was done at home, instead of in foreign lands.
+The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thousands
+of our people were killed or wounded, and
+the ground in hundreds of places was red with
+blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned,
+railroads were torn up, ships were sunk, growing
+crops were trampled into the earth. And last of
+all came that horrid murder of our good and great
+President Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men
+who ever sat in the presidential chair. Such is
+war&mdash;the most frightful thing we can think of
+or talk about. Some of my young friends may
+like to play soldier; but if they should grow up
+and get to be real soldiers they would find out
+what war means. Now, if we look again at the
+picture of our history, we shall see a great bright
+space of peace following the dark space of the
+Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about
+now&mdash;the reign of peace, when everybody was
+busy at work in building up what had been torn
+down by the red hand of war, and our country
+grew faster than it had ever grown before.</p>
+
+<p>There is one thing I must say here. I have
+told you that slavery was the cause of the war.
+If there had been no slaves in the country there
+would have been no war. And the one good thing
+the war did for us was to get rid of the slaves.
+President Lincoln declared that all the slaves
+should be free, and since that time there has not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+been a slave in the land. So we can never have
+a war for that cause again.</p>
+
+<p>When the war was done, the soldiers marched
+back to their homes. Their old battle-flags, rent
+and torn by bullets, were put away as valued
+treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thousands
+of men, were given back to the government;
+they took up their axes, they went into the fields
+with their ploughs, they entered the workshops
+with their tools, and soon they were all at work
+again, as if they had never seen a field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>This took place long before any of my young
+readers were born. But there are many old soldiers
+living who took part in it, and when you see
+the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic,
+marching with their ragged flags and battle-scarred
+faces, it may bring to you some vision of
+what they have seen, and make you think of the
+fallen comrades they left behind, dead or bleeding
+upon the battle-field.</p>
+
+<p>During your short lives there has been no war
+which came near to us in our homes. The angel
+of peace has spread her white wings over our land,
+and plenty and prosperity have been the rule.
+None of our young folks have known what it is
+for an army of soldiers to march past their homes,
+destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and
+ruins where there had been happy homes and fertile
+fields. But in the past of our country this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+happened to many as young as you, and they were
+glad that their lives were left them, after everything
+else was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Let us put the thought of war out of our minds,
+and go on to see what took place under the blessed
+reign of peace. The first thing of which I shall
+tell you was one of the most wonderful of all.
+You know how the telegraph wires spread over
+the country until they were many thousands of
+miles in length. In the next chapter you may
+read how the electric telegraph was invented. In
+the year after the war ended a still greater thing
+was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the
+ocean from Europe to America. This had been
+done before, but it had proved a failure. The
+new cable was a success, and since then a man in
+London has been able to talk with a man in New
+York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of
+course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the
+click of the telegraph instrument.</p>
+
+<p>The year after that a great addition was made
+to the United States. There was a large region
+in the north, known as Russian America, which
+Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million
+dollars. Many people talked about this as
+some of their forefathers had talked about the
+purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson.
+They said that it was a land of ice and snow which
+Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all
+that, and it has proven a very good bargain.</p>
+
+<p>This country we now call Alaska. We get
+there all the sealskins from which the rich and
+warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most
+of the canned salmon, which some of you think
+very good food, come from Alaska. That country
+is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that
+is not all, for it is rich in gold. Millions of
+dollars worth of gold are obtained there every
+year. It has been something like California,
+whose gold was not found till Americans got there
+to dig.</p>
+
+<p>These are not the only things that took place
+in the years after the war. Railroads were being
+built in all directions. East and west, north and
+south, they went, and travel became easier than it
+had been before. The greatest thing done in this
+way was the building of a railroad across the mountains
+and the plains to San Francisco, on the far
+Pacific coast, three thousand miles away from the
+Atlantic shores. Before that time men who
+wanted to go to California had to drag along over
+thousands of miles in slow wagon trains and
+spend weeks and months on the road. Now they
+could go there in less than a week. It was the
+longest railroad that the world had ever seen, up
+to that time.</p>
+
+<p>While all this was going on, people were coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+to this country in great multitudes, crossing the
+ocean to find new homes in our happy land. They
+did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in
+former times, but were brought here in swift steamships,
+that crossed the seas almost as fast as the
+iron horse crossed the land. All these new people
+went to work, some in the cities and some in the
+country, and they all helped to make our nation
+rich and powerful.</p>
+
+<p>But you must not think that everything went
+well, and that we had no dark days. Every country
+has its troubles, even in times of peace. War
+is not the only trouble. Great fires break out,
+storms sweep over the land, earthquakes shake
+down cities, and many other disasters take place.
+Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control,
+is the most terrible; and it is of a frightful
+fire that I wish to speak.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1831 a small fort stood near
+the shore of Lake Michigan, and around this a
+few pioneer families had built their homes, which
+were only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years
+afterwards, the fort and the huts had long been
+gone and a large city stood at that place. Its
+growth had been wonderful. Only forty years old
+and already it was one of the great cities of the
+country. This was the famous city of Chicago,
+which has grown more rapidly than any other
+great city ever known.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One night in October a dreadful thing took
+place in this city. A cow kicked over a lamp in
+a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and
+in a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The
+people ran for water, but they were too slow, and
+in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames.
+You may think that this was not of much account,
+but there happened to be a gale of wind, and soon
+great blazing fragments were flying through the
+air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not
+long before there was a terrible fire over almost
+the entire city.</p>
+
+<p>Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood,
+and the fire spread until it looked as if the whole
+great city would be burnt to ashes. For two days
+it kept on burning until the richest part of the
+city had gone up in smoke and flame. Many people
+were burned to death in the streets and two
+hundred million dollars worth of property was
+destroyed. It was the most frightful fire of modern
+times. But Americans do not stop for fire
+or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer
+than before, and it is now one of the greatest
+cities, not only of this country, but of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>This was not the only disaster which came upon
+the country. In 1886 there was a frightful earthquake
+in South Carolina, that shook down a great
+part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+was a terrible flood that swept away the young
+city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and drowned
+more than two thousand people. And there were
+tornadoes, or wind storms, in the west that blew
+down whole towns as you might blow down a
+house of cardboard with your breath. And there
+were great strikes and riots that were almost like
+war, and various other troubles. But all these
+could not stop the growth of the country. Every
+year it became richer. New people came, new
+factories were built, new fields were farmed, and
+the United States seemed like a great hive of industry,
+and its people like so many bees, working
+away, day by day, and gathering wealth as bees
+gather honey.</p>
+
+<p>It not only got many of the old articles of
+wealth, but it found many new ones also. Never
+was there a country with so many inventors or
+men that have made things new and useful to
+everybody, and never were there more wonderful
+inventions. I have told you about some of our
+inventors; I shall have to speak of some more of
+them. There were hundreds of men busily at
+work at inventing new machines and tools, new
+things to help everybody&mdash;the farmer, the merchant,
+the workman in the factory, and the cook
+in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not
+much done by hand, as in old times, but nearly
+everything was done by machine.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MARVELS OF INVENTION</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IT is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for
+twenty-four hours and to go many days without
+half enough to eat. I think all my
+readers will agree with me in this. I fancy none
+of you would like to find an empty table before
+you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a
+thing that has happened to many inventors; and
+one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to whose
+genius we owe the electric telegraph.</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/i-259.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>You know about the invention of the steamboat,
+the locomotive, the cotton-gin and various other
+early inventions; but there have been many later
+inventions, and one of the most important of
+these is the telegraph, which tells us every day
+what is taking place over the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Morse was a New York artist who
+studied painting in Europe, and in the year 1832
+took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day
+a talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr.
+Jackson, one of the passengers, told how some persons
+in Paris had sent an electric current through
+several miles of wire in less than a second of time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>"If that is the case," said Morse, "why could
+not words and sentences be sent in the same way?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good idea. It would be a great
+thing if we could send news as fast as lightning,"
+said one of the passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we
+can do it."</p>
+
+<p>Very likely the rest of the passengers soon forgot
+all about that conversation, but Morse did not.
+During the remainder of the voyage he was very
+quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking
+over what he had heard. Before the ship had
+reached New York he had worked out a plan of
+telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in
+tubes underground, and to use an alphabet of dots
+and dashes, the same that is used by telegraphers
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>When he went on shore Morse said to the captain:
+"Captain, if you should hear of the telegraph
+one of these days as the wonder of the
+world, remember that the discovery was made on
+board the good ship 'Sully.'"</p>
+
+<p>"If I can make it go ten miles without stopping,
+I can make it go round the world," he said to a
+passenger.</p>
+
+<p>But it is easier to think out a thing than to put
+it in practice. Poor Morse was more than ten
+years in working out his plans and getting people
+to help him in them. He got out of money and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+was near starving, but he kept at it. After three
+years he managed to send a message through
+seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read
+it, but his friends could not, and no one was ready
+to put money in such a scheme. They looked at
+it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to
+Europe and tried to get money there, but he found
+the people there as hard to convince as those in
+America.</p>
+
+<p>"No one is in such a hurry for news as all that,"
+they said. "People would rather get their news
+in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr.
+Morse, but it would take a great deal of money
+to lay miles of them underground, and we are not
+going to take such chances as that with our money."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant
+him a sum of money. He wanted to build a wire
+from Baltimore to Washington and show how it
+would work. But it is never easy to get money
+from Congress, and he kept at it for five years in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>It was the 3d of March, 1843. At twelve
+o'clock that night the session of Congress would
+end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till
+nearly midnight, in hopes his bill would pass.
+Then he gave it up in despair and went to his
+boarding house. He was sure his little bill would
+not be thought of in the crowd of business before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+Congress and was greatly depressed in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>He came down to breakfast the next morning
+with a very sad face, hardly knowing how he was
+to pay his board and get home. He was met by
+a young lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came
+to him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"For what, my dear friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the passage of your bill."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the
+passage of my bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; do you not know of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it cannot be true!"</p>
+
+<p>"You came home too early last night, Mr.
+Morse. Your bill has passed, and I am happy
+to be the first to bring you the good news."</p>
+
+<p>"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he
+said. "For your good news I promise you this:
+when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the
+honor of selecting the first message to be sent
+over it."</p>
+
+<p>Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars.
+It was not much, but Morse went actively
+to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his
+pipe in, through which the wire was to run. He
+got another inventor to help him, Ezra Cornell,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr.
+Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch
+at a great rate, laid the pipe, and covered it in.
+In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred
+feet of pipe.</p>
+
+<p>But Cornell did not think the underground wire
+would work.</p>
+
+<p>"It will work," said Morse. "While I have
+been fighting Congress, men have laid short lines
+in England which work very well. What can be
+done there can be done here."</p>
+
+<p>For all that, it would not work. A year passed
+and only seven thousand dollars of the money were
+left, and all the wires laid were of no use.</p>
+
+<p>"If it won't go underground we must try and
+coax it to go over-ground," said Morse.</p>
+
+<p>Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass
+insulators; it now worked to a charm. On May
+11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at Baltimore
+nominated Henry Clay for President, and
+the news was sent to Washington in all haste by
+the first railroad train. But the passengers were
+surprised to find that they brought stale news;
+everybody in Washington knew it already. It
+had reached there an hour or two before by telegraph.
+That was a great triumph for Morse.
+The telegraph line was not then finished quite
+to Baltimore. When it reached there, on May<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+24th, the first message sent was one which Miss
+Ellsworth had chosen from the Bible, "What hath
+God wrought?" God had wrought wonderfully
+indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound
+the ends of the earth together.</p>
+
+<p>If I should attempt to tell you about all our
+inventors I am afraid it would be a long story.
+There is almost no end to them, and many of
+them invented wonderful machines. I might tell
+you, for instance, about Thomas Blanchard, who
+invented the machine by which tacks are made,
+dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick.
+This is only one out of many of his inventions.
+One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow
+water, and which could go hundreds of miles up
+rivers where Fulton's steamboat would have run
+aground.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who invented
+the reaping machine. When he showed
+his reaper at the London World's Fair in 1851,
+the newspapers made great fun of it. The London
+"Times" said it was a cross between a
+chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine.
+But when it was put in a wheat-field and gathered
+in the wheat like a living and thinking machine,
+they changed their tune, and the "Times" said
+it was worth more than all the rest of the Exhibition.
+This was the first of the great agricultural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+machines. Since then hundreds have
+been made, and the old-fashioned slow hand-work
+in the fields is over. McCormick made a fortune
+out of his machine. I cannot say that of all inventors,
+for many of them had as hard a time
+as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them,
+Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe, came as near
+starving as Professor Morse.</p>
+
+<p>All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe
+to Charles Goodyear. Before his time India-rubber
+was of very little use. It would grow stiff in
+the winter and sticky in the summer, and people
+said it was a nuisance. What was wanted was a
+rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this
+Goodyear set himself to make.</p>
+
+<p>After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the
+gum, and by accident touched a red-hot stove with
+the mixture. To his delight the gum did not
+melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with
+sulphur and exposed to heat would stand heat and
+cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it
+took him six years more to make it a success, and
+he never made much money from it. Yet everybody
+honors him to-day as a great inventor.</p>
+
+<p>Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sewing
+machine. For years he worked at it, and
+when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it.
+He went to London, as Morse had done, and had
+the same bad luck. He had to pawn his model<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+and patent papers to get home again. His wife
+was very sick, and he reached home only in time to
+see her die.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellow! life was very dark to him then.
+His invention had been stolen by others, who were
+making fortunes out of it while he was in need of
+bread. Friends lent him money and he brought
+suit against these robbers, but it took six years to
+win his rights in the courts. In the end he grew
+rich and gained great honor from his invention.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no man more talked of in our
+time than Thomas A. Edison. All of you must
+have heard of him. He went into business when
+he was only twelve years old, selling newspapers
+and other things on the cars, and he was so bright
+and did so well that he was able to send his parents
+five hundred dollars a year. When he was
+sixteen he saved the child of a station-master
+from being run over by a locomotive, and the
+father was so grateful that he taught him how to
+telegraph. He was so quick in his work that he
+become one of the best telegraph operators in the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>After he grew up Edison began to invent. He
+worked out a plan by which he could send two
+messages at once over one wire. He kept at this
+till he could send sixteen messages over a wire,
+eight one way and eight the other. He made
+money out of his inventions, but the telegraph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+companies made much more. Instead of sending
+fifty or sixty words a minute, he showed them how
+they could send several thousand words a minute.</p>
+
+<p>Then he began experimenting with the electric
+light. He did not invent this, but he made great
+improvements in it. The electric light could be
+made, but it could not be controlled and used before
+Edison taught people how to keep it in its
+little glass bulb. How brilliantly the streets, the
+stores, and many of the houses are now lit up by
+electricity. All from Edison's wonderful discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the telephone, or talking telegraph,
+which many of you may have used yourselves.
+That was not known before 1876; but
+people now wonder how they ever got along without
+it. It is certainly very wonderful, when you
+have to speak with somebody a mile or a hundred
+miles away, to ring him up and talk with him over
+the telephone wire as easily as if you were talking
+with some one in the next room. The telephone,
+as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It
+is only another form of the telegraph. The telephone
+was not invented by Edison, but by another
+American named Alexander Bell. But Edison
+improved it. He added the "transmitter," which
+is used in all telephones, and is very important indeed.
+So we must give credit first to Bell and
+second to Edison for the telephone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Edison's most wonderful invention is the phonograph.
+This word means "sound writer." One
+of you may talk with a little machine, and the
+sound of your voice will make marks on a little
+roll of gelatine or tinfoil within. Then when the
+machine is set going you may hear your own voice
+coming back to you. Or by the use of a great
+trumpet called a megaphone, it may be heard all
+over a large room.</p>
+
+<p>The wonderful thing is that the sound of a
+man's voice may be heard long after he is dead. If
+they had possessed the phonograph in old times we
+might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius C&aelig;sar
+speaking to-day. Very likely many persons who
+live a hundred or two hundred years from now
+may hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his
+own machines. Does not this seem like magic?</p>
+
+<p>In every way this is a wonderful age of invention.
+Look at the trolley car, shooting along without
+any one being able to see what makes it move.
+Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and
+stoves heating from electric power. Steam was
+the most powerful thing which man knew a century
+ago. Electricity has taken its place as the
+most powerful and marvelous thing we know to-day.
+More wonderful than anything I have said
+is the power we now have of telegraphing without
+wires, and of telephoning in the same way. Thus
+men can now stand on the shore and talk with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+their friends hundreds of miles away on the broad
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the inventions which have
+been made in recent times. If you ask for more
+I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter,
+and the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the
+automobile, and the air-ship, and a hundred others.
+But they are too many for me to say anything
+about, so I shall have to stop right here.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>VERY likely many of my young readers live
+in the city of Philadelphia, which was
+founded by William Penn more than two
+hundred years ago on the banks of the broad Delaware
+River, and where now many more than a
+million people make their homes. And many of
+you who do not live there, but who love your country
+and are proud of its history, are likely to go
+there some time during your lives, to visit the birthplace
+of your noble nation.</div>
+
+<p>Have you ever thought that the United States,
+as an independent nation, was born in Philadelphia?
+In that city stands the stately Independence
+Hall, in which the Declaration of Independence
+was made and signed. You may see
+there the famous old bell, which rang out "Liberty
+throughout the land!" And you may stand
+in the room in which our grand Constitution was
+formed. So Philadelphia should be a place of
+pilgrimage to all true-hearted Americans, who
+wish to see where their country was born.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was such a place of pilgrimage in the year
+1876. Then from every part of our country,
+from the North, the South, the West and the
+East, our people made their way in thousands towards
+that great city, which was then the proud
+center of all American thought. A hundred
+years had passed from the time the famous Declaration
+was signed, and the Centennial Anniversary
+which marked the one hundredth year after
+this great event was being celebrated in the city
+which may be called the cradle of the American
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>A grand exhibition was held. It was called a
+"World's Fair," for splendid objects were sent
+to it from all parts of the world, and our own
+country sent the best of everything it had to show,
+from Maine to California. On the broad lawns
+of Fairmount Park many handsome buildings
+were erected, all filled with objects of use or
+beauty, and more than ten million people passed
+through the gates, glad to see what America and
+the world had to show.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to know what our own country
+showed, I may say that the most striking things
+were its inventions, machines that could do almost
+everything which the world wants done.
+And the newest and most wonderful of all these
+things was the telephone. This magical invention
+was shown there to the people for the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+time, and the first voice shouted "Hallo!" over
+the talking wire.</p>
+
+<p>In the years that followed centennial celebrations
+became common. In 1881 the centennial
+anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis was
+celebrated at Yorktown. In 1882 the bi-centennial
+(the two hundredth anniversary) of the
+landing of William Penn was celebrated at
+Philadelphia. A vessel that stood for the old
+ship "Welcome" sailed up the stream, and a man
+dressed like the famous old Quaker landed and
+was greeted by a number of men who took the
+part of Indian chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>In 1887 Philadelphia had another grand anniversary,
+that of the signing of the Constitution of
+the United States, which was celebrated by magnificent
+parades and processions, while the whole
+city was dressed in the red, white and blue. In
+1889 New York celebrated the next grand event
+in the history of the nation, the taking of the oath
+by Washington, our first President.</p>
+
+<p>The next great anniversary was that of the discovery
+of America by Columbus, four hundred
+years before. This was celebrated by a wonderfully
+splendid exhibition at Chicago, the most beautiful
+that the world had ever seen. Columbus
+landed in October, 1492, and the buildings were
+dedicated in October, 1892, but the exhibition did
+not take place till the next year. Those who saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+this exhibition will never forget it, and very likely
+some of my readers were among them. Its buildings
+were like fairy palaces, so white and grand and
+beautiful; and at night, when it was lit up by
+thousands of electric lights, the whole place looked
+like fairy land. The world will not soon see anything
+more beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell of all the exhibitions. There were
+others, at New Orleans, Atlanta, and other cities,
+but I think you will be satisfied with hearing about
+the large ones. The Centennial at Philadelphia
+set the fashion. After that, cities all over the
+country wanted to have their great fairs, and many
+of the little towns had their centennial celebrations,
+with music and parades, speeches and fireworks.</p>
+
+<p>During all this time the country kept growing.
+People crossed the ocean in millions. Our population
+went up, not like a tree growing, but like
+a deer jumping. In 1880 we had 50,000,000
+people. In 1900 we had half as many more.
+Just think of that! Over 25,000,000 people
+added in twenty years! How many do you think
+we will have when the youngest readers of this
+book get to be old men and women? I am afraid
+to guess.</p>
+
+<p>As our people increased in number they spread
+more widely over the country. Railroads were
+built everywhere, steamboats ran on all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+streams, telegraphs and telephones came near to
+every man's front door, the post-offices spread
+until letters and newspapers and packages were
+carried to the smallest village in the land. Nobody
+wanted to stay at home, in the old fashion.
+People thought nothing of a journey across the
+continent or the ocean. Wherever they were, they
+could talk with their friends by letter or telegraph,
+and they could go nowhere that the newspaper
+could not follow them.</p>
+
+<p>So the waste places of the country began rapidly
+to fill up. If you have ever seen an old-time
+map of our country you must have noticed places
+in the West marked "great desert," or "unknown
+territory," or by some such name. But people
+made their way into these unknown regions and
+filled them up. First they went with their families
+and household goods in great wagons. Then
+they went far more swiftly in railroad trains.
+Here they settled down and began farming;
+farther on, where there was not rain enough to
+farm, they raised cattle and sheep on the rich
+grasses; still farther, in the mountain regions,
+they set to work mining, getting gold, silver, copper,
+iron and coal from the hard rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Cities grew up where the Indian and the buffalo
+had roamed. The factory followed the farmer;
+the engine began to puff its steam into the air, the
+wheels to turn, the machines to work, goods of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+kinds to be made. The whole country became
+like a great hive of workers, where everybody was
+busy, and thousands of the people grew rich.</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 356px;">
+<img src="images/i-277.jpg" width="356" height="500" alt="Custer&#39;s Last Fight." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Custer&#39;s Last Fight.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But all this great western country was not given
+up to the farmer, the miner and the wood-chopper.
+There were places which nature had made beautiful
+or wonderful or grand, and these were kept
+as places for all the people to visit. One of these
+was the beautiful Yosemite Valley, in California;
+another was the wonderful Yellowstone Park, with
+its marvelous spouting springs; others were the
+groves of giant trees; still others were great
+forests, from which the government told the wood-choppers
+to keep out, for the woods had been set
+aside for the good or the pleasure of all the people
+of the land.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you may ask, what became of the old
+people of the country&mdash;the Indians, who were
+spread all over the West? There were hundreds
+of tribes of them, and many of them were bold
+and brave, and when they saw the white men pushing
+into their country they fought fiercely for their
+homes. But they could not stand before the guns
+of the pioneers and the cannon of the soldiers, and
+in time they were all forced to submit. Then
+places were set aside for them and they were made
+to live in them. The Indians were not always
+treated well. They were robbed and cheated in
+a hundred ways. But that, I hope, is all over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+now, for they are being well cared for and educated,
+and they seem likely, before many years, to
+become good and useful citizens of our country.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now I have another story to tell. Our Civil
+War, which you have read about, ended in 1865.
+For thirty-three years after that&mdash;one-third of
+a century&mdash;we were at peace at home and abroad,
+and our country had the wonderful growth of
+which you have just read. Then, in 1898, almost
+at the end of the century, war came again. By
+good luck, it was not a big war this time, and it was
+one I can tell you about in a few words.</p>
+
+<p>It was pity and charity that brought us into this
+war. South of Florida is the large and fertile
+island of Cuba, which had long belonged to Spain,
+and whose people had been very badly treated.
+At length they said they could stand it no longer,
+so they took their guns, left their homes, and went
+to war with the soldiers of Spain. For two years
+they fought bravely. Their old men, and their
+women and children, who had stayed at home,
+helped them all they could; so the Spaniards drove
+these from their homes into the cities, and left
+them there with hardly anything to eat. Thousands
+of these poor wretches starved to death.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure that our people thought this
+very wicked. They said that it ought to be
+stopped; but Spain would not do what they wished.
+Then they sent food to the starving people. Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+of it got to them and some of it was used by
+others. Everybody in our country felt very badly
+to see this terrible affair going on at our very
+doors, and the government was told that it ought
+to take some action. What the government did
+was to send one of its war-vessels, the "Maine," to
+the harbor of Havana, the capital of Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>Then something took place that would have
+made almost any country go to war. One dark
+night, while the "Maine" floated on the waters
+of the harbor, and nearly all her crew were fast
+asleep in their berths, a terrible explosion was
+heard under her, and the good vessel was torn
+nearly in half. In a minute she sank into the
+muddy bottom of the harbor, and hundreds of her
+sleeping crew were drowned. Only the captain
+and some of the officers and men escaped alive.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy all of you must know how angry our
+people felt when they heard of this dreadful event.
+You were angry yourselves, no doubt, and said
+that the Spaniards had done this and ought to be
+punished by having Cuba taken from them. I do
+not think there were many Americans who did not
+feel like taking revenge for our poor murdered
+sailors.</p>
+
+<p>War soon came. In April, 1898, the Congress
+declared war against Spain and a strong fleet of
+iron-clad ships was sent to Cuba. An army was
+gathered as quickly as possible, and the soldiers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+were put on board ship and sailed away to the
+south. There was a Spanish fleet in the harbor
+of Santiago de Cuba and an American fleet outside
+keeping the ships of Spain like prisoners in
+the harbor; so the soldiers were sent to that place,
+and it was not long before an army was landed
+and was marching towards the city of Santiago. I
+am glad to say that the fighting did not last very
+long. There was a bold charge up hill by the
+Rough Riders and others in the face of the Spanish
+guns, and the Spanish army was driven back
+to the city. Here they were shut up and soon surrendered,
+and the war in Cuba was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>But the iron-clad ships in the harbor were not
+given up. On the 3d of July a brave dash for
+liberty was made. They came out at full speed
+where our great ships lay waiting, and soon there
+was one of the strangest fights that had ever been
+seen. The Spanish ships rushed through the
+waters near the coast, firing as they fled. After
+them came the American ships at full speed, firing
+as they followed. But not many of the Spanish
+halls touched the American ships, while the great
+guns of the Americans raked the Spaniards fore
+and aft.</p>
+
+<p>Soon some of their ships were on fire and had to
+be run ashore. In an hour or two the chase was
+at an end and the fine Spanish fleet was sunk and
+burning, with hundreds of its crew killed, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+on the American ships only one man had been
+killed. It was a wonderful flight and fight. I
+should tell you more about it, only that I have another
+story of the same kind to relate.</p>
+
+<p>Far away from Cuba, on the other side of the
+world, in the broad Pacific Ocean, near the coast
+of China, is a great group of islands called the
+Philippines, which had long belonged to Spain.
+Here, in the harbor of Manila, the capital of the
+islands, was a Spanish fleet. There was an American
+fleet in one of the harbors of China, under the
+command of Commodore George Dewey. And
+as soon as war had been declared Dewey was ordered
+to go to Manila and sink or take the Spanish
+fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Dewey was a man who thought it his duty to
+obey orders. He had been told to sink or take
+the Spanish fleet, and that was what he meant to
+try his best to do. Over the waters sped his ships,
+as swiftly as steam could carry them, and into the
+harbor of Manila they went at midnight while
+deep darkness lay upon the waters. It was early
+morning of the 1st of May when the American
+ships rounded up in front of the city and came in
+sight of the Spanish fleet. This lay across the
+mouth of a little bay with forts to guard it on the
+land at each side.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great danger which Commodore
+Dewey and his bold followers faced. Before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+them lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There
+were torpedo boats which might rush out and
+sink them. There were torpedoes under the
+waters which might send the flagship itself to the
+bottom. Some men would have stopped and felt
+their way, but George Dewey was not that kind of
+a man. Without stopping for a minute after his
+long journey from China, he dashed on with the
+fleet and ordered his men to fire. Soon the great
+guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and
+smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Round and round went the American ships,
+firing as they passed. Every shot seemed to tell.
+It was not long before some of the Spanish ships
+were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an
+American hull. After an hour or two of this hot
+work Dewey drew out and gave his men their
+breakfast. Then back he came and finished the
+job. When he was done, the whole Spanish fleet
+was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men
+dead and wounded, while not an American ship
+was badly hurt and not an American sailor was
+killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a battle
+since the world began.</p>
+
+<p>There, I have, as I promised, told you in few
+words the story of the war. Soon after a treaty
+of peace was signed and all was at an end. The
+brave Dewey was made an admiral and was
+greatly honored by the American people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If you should ask me what we gained from the
+war, I would answer that we gained in the first
+place what the war was fought for, the freedom of
+Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did
+not come out of it without something for ourselves.
+We obtained the fertile island of Porto
+Rico in the West Indies and the large group of
+the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia.
+These last named came as the prize of Dewey's
+victory, but I am sorry to say that there was a war
+with the people themselves before the United
+States got possession. During the war with Spain
+we obtained another fine group of islands, that
+known as Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean. You can
+see from this that our country made a wide spread
+over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century.
+The winning of all these islands was an event of
+the greatest importance to the United States. It
+gave this country a broad foothold on the seas
+and a new outlook over the earth. Some of the
+proud nations of Europe had looked on this country
+as an American power only, with no voice in
+world affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot
+on the Hawaiian Islands, in the Central Pacific,
+and his right foot on the Philippine Islands, near
+the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened
+their eyes and began to get new ideas about the
+great republic of the West. It was plain that
+the United States had become a world power, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+that when the game of empire was to be played
+the western giant must be asked to take a hand.</p>
+
+<p>This was seen soon after, when China began to
+murder missionaries and try to drive all white people
+from its soil. For the first time in history the
+United States joined hands with Europe in an Old
+World quarrel, and it was made evident that the
+world could not be cut up and divided among the
+powers without asking permission from Uncle
+Sam. But fortunately Uncle Sam wants to keep
+out of war.</p>
+
+<p>And now we are near the end of our long journey.
+We have traveled together for more than
+four hundred years, from the time of Columbus to
+the present day, looking at the interesting facts of
+our country's history, and following its growth
+from a tiny seed planted in the wilderness to a
+giant tree whose branches are beginning to overshadow
+the earth. We have read about what our
+fathers did in the times that are no more. We
+have learned something of what has been taking
+place during our own lives. There is a new history
+before us in which we shall live and act and
+of which our own doings will form part. A new
+century, the twentieth, has opened before us, and
+it only remains to tell what our country has done
+in the few years that have passed of this century.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT</h3>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;&nbsp;THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all,
+who read this book were born before the
+new century&mdash;the one we call the twentieth&mdash;began.
+It is a young century still. Yet there
+has been time enough for many things to take
+place in the country we call our own. Some of
+these you may remember. Others many of you
+were too young to know much about. So it is my
+purpose here to bring the story of our country up
+to the present time.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 349px;">
+<img src="images/i-287.jpg" width="349" height="500" alt="Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have not said much about our Presidents, but
+there was a President elected in the first year of
+the twentieth century of whom I must speak, since
+his election led to a dreadful event. In the following
+year (1901) a beautiful exhibition was held at
+Buffalo, New York. It was called the Pan
+American Exhibition, and was intended to show
+what the nations of America had done in the
+century just closed.</p>
+
+<p>I shall say little about the splendid electrical
+display, the fountains with their colored lights, the
+shining cascades, the glittering domes and pinnacles,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+the caverns and grottoes, and all the other
+brilliant things to be seen, for I have to speak of
+something much less pleasant, the dark deed of
+murder and treachery which took place at this exhibition.</p>
+
+<p>President McKinley came to Buffalo early in
+September to see the fine display and let the people
+see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling face
+while many hundreds of visitors passed by and
+shook hands with him. In the midst of all this
+there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had been
+fired. The President staggered back, with pallid
+face. Men shouted; women screamed; a crowd
+rushed towards the spot; the man who held the
+pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged
+forward in fury. "He has shot our President!
+Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards
+had a hard fight to keep the murderer from being
+torn to pieces by the furious throng.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had shot the President belonged
+to a society called Anarchists, who hate all rulers
+and think it their duty to kill all kings and
+presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered
+the death he deserved. But his shot had reached
+its mark, and after a week of fear and hope,
+President McKinley died. He was mourned by
+all the people as if each of them had lost a member
+of his or her own family.</p>
+
+<p>You probably know that when a President dies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+the Vice-President takes his place. McKinley's
+Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore
+Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping
+through the wilds and of hunting wild beasts.
+At the time we speak of, when the news of the
+death of President McKinley was sent abroad,
+Vice-President Roosevelt was off on a long tramp
+through the Adirondack Mountains of New York,
+perhaps hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.</p>
+
+<p>When the news came, no one knew where he
+was, and dozens of the mountain-climbers were
+sent out to find him. As they spread out and
+pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard
+on all sides and megaphones were used to send
+their voices far through the mountain defiles. But
+hour after hour passed and the shades of evening
+were at hand, and still no answer came; no sign
+of Roosevelt and his party could be traced. Finally,
+when they were near the high top of Mount
+Marcy, answering shots and shouts were heard,
+and soon the hunting party came in sight.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they
+brought&mdash;that the President was at the point of
+death&mdash;he could hardly believe it; for the last
+news had said that he was likely to get well. He
+knew now that he must get to Buffalo as soon as
+he could, so that the country should not be without
+a President, and he started back for the clubhouse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+from which he had set out at a pace that kept the
+others busy to keep up with him.</p>
+
+<p>Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse,
+but there was to be no sleep for him that
+night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses,
+waited his coming, and in very few minutes he
+was inside it, the coachman had drawn his reins
+and cracked his whip, and away went the horses,
+plunging into the darkness of the woods that overhung
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>That was one of the great rides in our history.
+You would have said so if you had been there to
+see. There were thirty-five miles to be made before
+the nearest railroad station could be reached.
+The road was rough and muddy, for a very heavy
+thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness overhung
+the way, made more gloomy by the thick
+foliage of the trees. Here and there they stopped
+for a few minutes to change horses, and then
+plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts
+were in the mind of the solitary passenger whom
+fate was about to make President of the great
+United States, during that dark and dismal night,
+no one can tell. Fortune had built for him a
+mighty career and he was hastening to take up
+the reins of government, soon to be dropped by
+the man chosen to hold them.</p>
+
+<p>Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+and the horses were again changed. The road
+now before them was the worst of all, for it was
+very narrow in places and had deep ravines on
+either side, while heavy forest timber shut it in.
+But the man who handled the horses knew his
+road and felt how great a duty had been placed
+in his hands, and at 5:22 that morning, when the
+light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach
+dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek.
+Here a special train, the locomotive puffing out
+steam, lay waiting for its distinguished passenger.</p>
+
+<p>News of greater weight now greeted the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'traveller'">traveler</ins>.
+He was told that the President was dead.
+He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before.
+The man who landed as Vice-President on that
+solitary platform, was now President of the United
+States. Only the oath of office was needed to
+make him such.</p>
+
+<p>Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the
+traveler of the night stepped quickly into the car
+that waited for him, and the engine darted away
+through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed,
+speed, was the thought in the mind of the engineer,
+and over the track dashed the iron horse and its
+single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a
+minute. Hour after hour passed by as they
+rushed across the state. At 1:40 in the afternoon
+the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger
+leaped to the platform and made all haste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+to the house of Ainsley Wilcox, one of his special
+friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn
+into office as President of the United States, and
+the scene we have described came to an end, one
+of the most dramatic among those in our country's
+history. Never before had a man been
+sought in the depths of a mountain wilderness and
+ridden through rain and gloom a whole night long,
+to be told at the end that he had become the ruler
+of one of the greatest nations on the earth!</p>
+
+<p>I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was
+fond of hunting. While he was President he had
+to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another
+kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty
+and fraud among the great business concerns of the
+country. He said that every man ought to have
+an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws
+passed to help in this.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of hunting made him very popular
+among the people, which was shown by his being
+elected President by a large majority when the time
+came for the next Presidential election. He also
+won much fame by helping to put an end to the
+dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and men
+everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest
+of living rulers.</p>
+
+<p>While Mr. Roosevelt was President several
+things took place which are worth speaking about.
+One was the building of the Panama canal to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not
+yet finished, but when it is done it will be the greatest
+canal on the earth. A second thing was the
+splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904,
+in memory of the purchase from France of the
+great Louisiana country a century before. Two
+years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed
+by earthquake and fire, with great loss of
+life and property.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more must be spoken of, for with this
+President Roosevelt had much to do. This was to
+have great dams built on the mountain streams of
+the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres
+of barren lands and make them rich and fertile.
+Also, to save the forests, nearly 200,000,000 acres
+of forest land were set aside as the property of the
+nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.</p>
+
+<p>The time for another Presidential election came
+In 1908, but Mr. Roosevelt would not run for the
+office again. I fancy he was tired of it and wanted
+to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for
+Africa, the land of the largest and fiercest animals
+on the earth. Here is the elephant, the rhinoceros,
+the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage beasts,
+and he spent a year in killing these animals and
+in keeping them from killing him. I have no
+doubt you would like to read of the exciting time
+he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop
+here and leave it untold, for it is no part of the
+Story of Our Country.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+
+<p>The list of illustrations listed the photograph of the Steam Shovel
+at Work as being the frontispiece. The book itself placed the photograph
+between pages 182 and 183. As there is no reference to Panama or the
+Steam Shovel in this chapter, it was moved to the front to be the frontispiece
+as listed.</p>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 32402-h.txt or 32402-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/4/0/32402">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/4/0/32402</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/32402-h/images/cover.jpg b/32402-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59fa7fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/frontend.jpg b/32402-h/images/frontend.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5cbe12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/frontend.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-032.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-032.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b298f63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-032.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-146.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-146.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc46009
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-146.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-193.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-193.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d06740
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-193.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-204.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-204.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d00318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-204.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-214.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-214.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e67b13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-214.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-259.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-259.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85efd1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-259.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-277.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-277.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62e4f68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-277.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/i-287.jpg b/32402-h/images/i-287.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..912acb2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/i-287.jpg
diff --git a/32402-h/images/title.jpg b/32402-h/images/title.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4752da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402-h/images/title.jpg
diff --git a/32402.txt b/32402.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..167ec93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6726 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of Our Country, Edited by Jesse
+Lyman Hurlbut
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Story of Our Country
+       Every Child Can Read
+
+
+Editor: Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2010  [eBook #32402]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page
+images generously made available by Internet Archive
+(http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 32402-h.htm or 32402-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32402/32402-h/32402-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32402/32402-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/storyofourcountr00hurl
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+Every Child Can Read
+
+Edited by
+
+REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+[Illustration: STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK IN CULEBRA CUT, PANAMA CANAL.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The John C. Winston Co.
+Philadelphia
+
+Copyright, 1910, By
+The John C. Winston Co.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+  A Talk with the Young Reader                                9
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
+
+  Bold Sailors of the Northern Countries--The
+    Northmen--Columbus the Little Boy--Columbus
+    and the Egg--He Crosses the Atlantic, Braves
+    the Sea and Discovers New Land                           15
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS
+
+  John and Sebastian Cabot--Balboa Discovers the
+    Pacific--The Fountain of Youth and Ponce de
+    Leon--The Naming of America                              27
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THREE EARLY HEROES
+
+  The Story of John Smith and First English
+    Settlement--Miles Standish and the Pilgrims--Roger
+    Williams, the Hero Preacher                              36
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  HOW THE DUTCH AND QUAKERS CAME TO AMERICA
+  Captain Hudson and His Ship, the _Half Moon_--The
+    Trip up the Hudson--Adventures with the
+    Indians--William Penn and the Quakers--How They
+    Settled on the Delaware River                            48
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH
+
+  The Cavaliers and Lords of England--They Settle
+    in Virginia--The Catholics Come to Maryland--Strange
+    Form of Government in Carolina--Paupers Settle
+    Georgia--An Old Spanish Town in Florida                  59
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED
+
+  They Were the First Americans--Their Strange Customs
+    and Manners--How They Followed a Trail--How they
+    Fought--Indian Massacres                                 70
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS
+
+  How the Governor was Treated in Connecticut--The
+    Charter Oak--An Exciting Time in Virginia                81
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES
+
+  When a Tallow Candle Gave the Light--Old-Time
+    Houses--The Story of the Famous Hunter, and How
+    he Escaped from the Indians                              91
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  A HERO OF THE COLONIES
+
+  Two Boys who Crossed the Mountains--Their Adventures
+    with the Indians--George Washington, the
+    Surveyor--Messenger to the French--An Old-Time Hero     101
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
+
+  The Acadians--Their Home in Nova Scotia--Their
+    Sufferings--The Story of Evangeline--Why the Indians
+    Helped the French--The Story of a Cruel War             112
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+  How the Trouble Began--The Americans Object to Paying
+    Taxes on Various Articles--The Famous Boston Tea
+    Party--Battle of Lexington--Declaration of
+    Independence                                            121
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM
+
+  Washington the Commander-in-Chief--Bunker Hill--The
+    Wonderful Christmas--The Americans Succeed--They
+    Meet Defeat--"Molly Stark a Widow"--Help from France    133
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+  PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+  Old-Time Warships--A Daring Deed--A Great Sea Fight--The
+    British Captain Surrenders                              143
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+  MARION, THE SWAMP FOX
+
+  How the War Went in the South--The Patriots Hard to
+    Find--The British Officers Eat Sweet Potatoes--Jack
+    Davis' Adventure--General Greene and his Famous
+    Retreat--Cornwallis Surrenders--The War at an End       153
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+  THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE
+
+  How the People Rule--Illustrated by a Story--Our First
+    Trial and Failure--Making a New Form of Government--A
+    Nation of Thirteen States--The President--The
+    Congress--The Judges                                    162
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+  THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE
+
+  Washington the First President--Beloved by
+    Everyone--Benjamin Franklin's Last Hours--The Kind
+    of Money They Used--How the Quarrel was
+    Settled--Washington Dies                                170
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+  THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN
+
+  The Power of Steam--Is a Boat Like a Duck--Who
+    Thought of the First Steamboat--The Cotton Gin
+    and How it Saves Labor--Where the Cotton Grows          176
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN
+
+  How We Came to Quarrel with England--Protecting
+    the American Sailor--Interesting Land
+    Battles--Adventures at Sea--Peace is Made Again         184
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+  HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE AVENGED
+
+  How General Santa Anna Got into Trouble--Massacre
+    of the Alamo--The Famous Samuel Houston--War with
+    Mexico--The City of Mexico--Santa Anna is Defeated
+    and United States is Victorious                         193
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+  HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR
+
+  Black and White Slaves--First Slaves Brought to
+    America in 1619--Why the Slaves were Used in the
+    South--Why the North did not Believe in Slavery--What
+    the word Abolitionist Means--John Brown and Harper's
+    Ferry                                                   201
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+  HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+  The Ruler of the Republic--The President Chosen from
+    the People--Why the People Liked Him--Lincoln's School
+    Days--The North and South Differ--Lincoln, the Great
+    War President                                           208
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXII
+
+  THE GREAT CIVIL WAR
+
+  What Civil War is--Where the War was Fought--Battle of
+    Bull Run--"Stonewall" Jackson--General Ulysses S.
+    Grant and How He Came to Command the Army--His
+    "Unconditional Surrender" Message--Battle of
+    Gettysburg                                              215
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+
+  WAR ON SEA AND LAND
+
+  Fight Between the "Cheesebox" and the Ram--How the
+    Monitor Won the Fight--The Battle "Above the
+    Clouds"--Battle of the Wilderness--Sherman's March
+    to the Sea--Richmond Surrenders and the War Closes      225
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+
+  THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE
+
+  What is Seen on the Picture of History--A Reign of
+    Peace in America--The Ocean Cable and the
+    Railroad--Alaska and its Treasures--The Burning
+    of Chicago and other Disasters--Edison and His
+    Work--The Triumphs of Electricity                       234
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXV
+
+  THE MARVELS OF INVENTION
+
+  Professor Morse, the Famous Inventor--His Struggles
+    and His Success--The First Message--Telephone and
+    Other Inventions of Electricity--New Ideas in
+    Machinery and the Comfort they Bring                    242
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXVI
+
+  HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES
+
+  The Nation's Birthplace--Centennial Exhibition and
+    Columbian World's Fair--Our People's Progress--The
+    Indians--Trouble in Cuba--War with Spain--Santiago
+    and its Fleet--Dewey at Manila                          253
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXVII
+
+  HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+  Assassination of President McKinley--Theodore
+    Roosevelt's Great Ride--His Election by the
+    People--The Panama Canal--Roosevelt Declines
+    Re-election and Goes to Africa                          266
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK IN CULEBRA CUT, PANAMA CANAL     _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  COLUMBUS AND THE EGG                                              25
+
+  WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE                                 137
+
+  THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS                                        191
+
+  THE STORMING OF CHAPULTEPEC                                      199
+
+  THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR FAMOUS AEROPLANE                   242
+
+  CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT                                              258
+
+  ROOSEVELT SURPRISED BY A GIANT HIPPOPOTAMUS                      266
+
+
+
+
+A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+
+IF any of the readers of this book should have the chance to take a
+railroad ride over the vast region of the United States, from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of
+Mexico, they would see a wonderful display of cities and towns, of
+factories and farms, and a great multitude of men and women actively at
+work. They would behold, spread out on every side, one of the busiest
+and happiest lands the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the miles
+on miles of farms, they might see a forest, here and there a wild beast,
+here and there a red-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land;
+but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.
+
+If our young traveler knew nothing of history he might fancy that it had
+been always this way, or that it had taken thousands of years for all
+those cities to be built and these great fields to be cleared and
+cultivated. Yet if he had been here only three hundred years ago he
+would have seen a very different sight. He could not then have gone over
+the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He
+could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in
+the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country
+would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a
+farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with
+a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only
+clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of
+forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts; instead
+of white and black men, only red-skinned savages.
+
+Just think of it! All that we see around us is the work of less than
+three hundred years! No doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of
+wonderful things done by the Genii of the East, of palaces built in a
+night, of cities moved miles away from their sites. But here is a thing
+as wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel wrought by men instead
+of magical beings. These great forests have fallen, these great fields
+have been cleared and planted, these great cities have risen, these
+myriads of white men have taken the place of the red men of the wild
+woods, and all within a period not longer than three times the life of
+the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most
+marvelous fairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how
+this was done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let us
+forget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, and the
+magic of their work is as great as that we read of in the fables of the
+"Arabian Nights."
+
+The story of this great work is called the "History of the United
+States." This story you have before you in the book you now hold. You do
+not need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of building our noble
+nation was done, for you can read it all here in language simple enough
+for the youngest of you to understand. Here you are told how white men
+came over the seas and found beyond the waves a land none of them had
+ever seen before. You are told how they settled on these shores, cut
+down the trees and built villages and towns, fought with the red men and
+drove them back, and made themselves homes in the midst of fertile
+fields. You are told how others came, how they spread wider and wider
+over the land, how log houses grew into mansions, and villages into
+cities, and how at length they fought for and gained their liberty.
+
+Read on and you will learn of more wonderful things still. The history
+of the past hundred years is a story of magic for our land. In it you
+will learn of how the steamboat was first made and in time came to be
+seen on all our rivers and lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and
+railroads were built, until they are now long enough in our country to
+go eight times round the earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and
+telephone--the talking wire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a
+thousand factories and work away like living things, and of a multitude
+of marvels which I cannot begin to speak of here.
+
+And you will learn how men kept on coming, and wars were fought, and new
+land was gained, and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and our
+people increased and spread until we came to be one of the greatest
+nations on the earth, and our cities grew until one of them was the
+largest in the world except the vast city of London. All this and more
+you may learn from the pages of this book. It is written for the boys
+and girls of our land, but many of their fathers and mothers may find it
+pleasant and useful to read.
+
+There are hundreds who do not have time to read large histories, which
+try to tell all that has taken place. For those this little history will
+be of great service, in showing them how, from a few half-starved
+settlers on a wild coast, this great nation has grown up. How men and
+women have come to it over the seas as to a new Promised Land. How they
+have ploughed its fields, and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron
+and gold, and built thousands of workshops, and fed the nations with
+the food they did not need for themselves. Year by year it has grown in
+wealth, until now it is the richest country in the world. Great it is,
+and greater it will be. But I need say no more. The book has its own
+story to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handy
+stepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may cross the
+brook and wander on through the broad land which lies before you.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
+
+
+IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they will remember a
+wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings
+rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy palaces, and filled
+with the finest of goods of all kinds, which millions of people came to
+see.
+
+Do you know what this meant? It was what is called a World's Fair, and
+was in honor of a wonderful event that took place four hundred years
+before.
+
+Some of you may think that white men have always lived in this country.
+I hope you do not all think so, for this is not the case. A little more
+than four hundred years ago no white man had ever seen this country, and
+none knew that there was such a country on the face of the earth.
+
+It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, named Christopher
+Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new and wonderful land.
+Since then men have come here by the millions, and the mighty nation of
+the United States has grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities.
+In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, the grand Columbian
+World's Fair was held, in honor of the finding of America by the great
+navigator four hundred years before.
+
+This is what I have set out to tell you about. I am sure you will all be
+glad to know how this broad and noble land, once the home of the wild
+red men, was found and made a home for the white people of Europe.
+
+Some of you may have been told that America was really discovered more
+than four hundred years before Columbus was born. So it was. At that
+time some of the bold sailors of the northern countries of Europe, who
+made the stormy ocean their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had
+come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship from Iceland had been
+driven by the winds to a land in the far west which no man had ever seen
+before. Was this not America?
+
+Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen, named Leif Ericson,
+also known as Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There he found
+wild grapes growing, and from them he named it Vinland. This in our
+language would be called Wineland.
+
+After him came others, and there was fighting with the red men, whom
+they called Skrellings. In the end the Northmen left the country, and
+before many years all was forgotten about it. Only lately the story has
+been found again in some old writings. And so time went on for nearly
+five hundred years more, and nothing was known in Europe about the land
+beyond the seas.
+
+Now let us go from the north to the south of Europe. Here there is a
+kingdom called Italy, which runs down into the Mediterranean Sea almost
+in the shape of a boot. On the western shore of this kingdom is a famous
+old city named Genoa, in which many daring sailors have dwelt; and here,
+long ago, lived a man named Columbus, a poor man, who made his living by
+carding wool.
+
+This poor wool-carder had four children, one of whom (born about 1436)
+he named Christopher. Almost everybody who has been at school in the
+world knows the name of this little Italian boy, for he became one of
+the most famous of men.
+
+Many a boy in our times has to help his father in his shop. The great
+Benjamin Franklin began work by pouring melted tallow into moulds to
+make candles. In the same way little Columbus had to comb wool for his
+father, and very likely he got as tired of wool as Franklin did of
+candles.
+
+The city he lived in was full of sailors, and no doubt he talked to many
+of them about life on the wild waters, and heard so many stories of
+danger and adventure that he took the fancy to go to sea himself.
+
+At any rate we are told that he became a sailor when only fourteen
+years old, and made long and daring voyages while he was still young.
+Some of those were in Portuguese ships down the coast of Africa, of
+which continent very little was known at that time. He went north, too;
+some think as far as Iceland. Who knows but that he was told there of
+what the Northmen had done?
+
+Columbus spent some time in the island of Madeira, far out in the
+Atlantic ocean, and there the people told him of strange things they had
+seen. These had come over the seas before the west winds and floated on
+their island shores. Among them were pieces of carved wood, and canes so
+long that they would hold four quarts of wine between their joints. And
+the dead bodies of two men had also come ashore, whose skins were the
+color of bronze or copper.
+
+These stories set Columbus thinking. He was now a man, and had read many
+books of travel, and had studied all that was then known of geography.
+For a time he lived by making maps and charts for ship captains. This
+was in the city of Lisbon, in Portugal, where he married and settled
+down and had little boys of his own.
+
+At that time some of the most learned people had odd notions about the
+earth. You may have seen globes as round as an orange, with the
+countries laid out on them. But the people then had never seen such a
+globe, and the most of them thought that the earth was as flat as a
+table, and that any one who sailed too far over the ocean would come to
+the edge of the earth and fall off.
+
+This seems very absurd, does it not? But you must remember that people
+then knew very little about the earth they lived on, and could not
+understand how people could keep on a round globe like flies on a ball
+of glass.
+
+But there were some who thought the earth to be round, and Columbus was
+one of these.
+
+At that time silk and spices and other rich goods were brought from
+China and India, thousands of miles to the east, by caravans that
+traveled overland. Columbus thought that by sailing west, over the broad
+Atlantic, he would come to these far countries, just as a fly may walk
+around the surface of an orange, and come to the place it started from.
+
+The more Columbus thought about this, the more certain he became that he
+was right. He was so sure of it that he set out to try and make other
+people think the same way. He wanted ships with which to sail across the
+unknown seas to the west, but he had no money of his own to buy them
+with.
+
+Ah! what a task poor Columbus now had. For years and years he wandered
+about among the kings and princes of Europe, but no one would believe
+his story, and many laughed at him and mocked him.
+
+First he tried Genoa, the city where he was born, but the people there
+told him he was a fool or had lost his senses.
+
+Then he went to the king of Portugal. This king was a rascal, and tried
+to cheat him. He got his plans from him, and sent out a vessel in
+secret, hoping to get the honor of the discovery for himself. But the
+captain he sent was a coward and was scared by the rolling waves. He
+soon came back, and told the king that there was nothing to be found but
+water and storm. King John, of Portugal, was very sorry afterward that
+he had tried to rob Columbus of his honor.
+
+Columbus was very angry when he heard what the king had done. He left
+Portugal for Spain, and tried to get the king and queen of that country
+to let him have ships and sailors. But they were at war with a people
+called the Moors, and had no money to spare for anything but fighting
+and killing.
+
+Columbus stayed there for seven long years. He talked to the wise men,
+but they made sport of him. "If the earth is round," they said, "and you
+sail west, your ships will go down hill, and they will have to sail up
+hill to come back. No ship that was ever made can do that. And you may
+come to places where the waters boil with the great heat of the sun; and
+frightful monsters may rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and
+your men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing at him and
+mocking him as a man who had lost his wits.
+
+After these many years Columbus got tired of trying in Spain. He now set
+out for France, to see what the king of that country would do. He sent
+one of his brothers to England to see its king and ask him for aid.
+
+He was now so poor that he had to travel along the dusty roads on foot,
+his little son going with him. One day he stopped at a convent called La
+Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was very hungry.
+
+The good monks gave bread to the boy, and while he was eating it the
+prior of the convent came out and talked with Columbus, asking him his
+business. Columbus told him his story. He told it so well that the prior
+believed in it. He asked him to stay there with his son, and said he
+would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom he knew very well.
+
+So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter to the queen, and in
+the end the wandering sailor was sent for to come back to the king's
+court.
+
+Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of the discovery of America.
+The king would not listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen
+offered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which he needed for
+ships and sailors.
+
+Columbus had won. After years and years of toil and hunger and
+disappointment, he was to have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be
+given a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise men who were the
+fools.
+
+But such ships as they gave him! Why, you can see far better ones every
+day, sailing down your rivers. Two of them did not even have decks, but
+were like open boats. With this small fleet Columbus set sail from
+Palos, a little port in Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the
+most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.
+
+Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness," as the Atlantic ocean
+was then called. Mile after mile, day after day, on and on they went,
+seeing nothing but the endless waves, while the wind drove them steadily
+into the unknown west.
+
+The sailors never expected to see their wives and children again. They
+were frightened when they started, and every day they grew more scared.
+They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs or the frightful
+monsters of which they had been told. At one place they came upon great
+tracts of seaweed, and thought they were in shallow water and would be
+wrecked on banks of mud. Then the compass, to which they trusted,
+ceased to point due north and they were more frightened than ever. Soon
+there was hardly a stout heart in the fleet except that of Columbus.
+
+The time came when the sailors grew half mad with fear. Some of them
+made a plot to throw Columbus overboard and sail home again. They would
+tell the people there that he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.
+
+It was a terrible thing to do, was it not? But desperate men will do
+dreadful things. They thought one man had better die than all of them.
+Only good fortune saved the life of the great navigator.
+
+One day a glad sailor called his comrades and pointed over the side. A
+branch of a green bush was floating by with fresh berries on it. It
+looked as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another day one of them
+picked from the water a stick which had been carved with a knife. Land
+birds were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back to their hearts.
+They were sure now that land must be near.
+
+October 11th came. When night fell dozens of men were on the lookout.
+Each wanted to be the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night,
+Columbus, who was looking out over the waves, saw a light far off. It
+moved up and down like a lantern carried in a man's hand.
+
+Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out into the darkness. About two
+o'clock in the morning came the glad cry of "Land! Land!" A gun was
+fired from the leading vessel. One of its sailors had seen what looked
+like land in the moonlight. You may be sure no one slept any more that
+night.
+
+When daylight came the joyful sailors saw before them a low, green
+shore, on which the sunlight lay in beauty; men and women stood on it,
+looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought must be great
+white-winged birds. They had never seen such things before. We can
+hardly think what we would have done if we had been in their place.
+
+When the boats from the ships came to the shore, and Columbus landed,
+clad in shining armor, and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple
+natives fell to the ground on their faces. They thought the gods had
+come from heaven to visit them.
+
+Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments of gold. They were asked
+by signs where they had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all were
+on board again, the ships once more spread their sails, and swiftly they
+flew southward before the wind.
+
+Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose, some small, some large,
+all green and beautiful. Columbus thought this must be India, which
+he had set out to find, and he called the people Indians. He never
+knew that it was a new continent he had discovered.
+
+[Illustration: COLUMBUS AND THE EGG.]
+
+The month of March of the next year came before the little fleet sailed
+again into the port of Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy,
+for they had mourned their friends as dead.
+
+Fast spread the news. When Columbus entered Barcelona, where the king
+and queen were, bringing with him new plants, birds and animals, strange
+weapons, golden ornaments, and some of the red-skinned natives, he was
+received as if he had been a king. He was seated beside the king; he
+rode by his side in the street; he was made a grandee of Spain; all the
+honors of the kingdom were showered on him.
+
+We here recall the incident of Columbus and the egg. A dinner was given
+in his honor and many great men were there. The attention Columbus
+received made some people jealous. One of them with a sneer asked
+Columbus if he did not think any one else could have discovered the
+Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a dish on the table and
+handing it to the questioner asked him to make it stand on end.
+
+After trying several times the man gave it up. Columbus, taking the egg
+in his hand, tapping it gently on one end against the top of the table
+so as to break the shell slightly, made it balance.
+
+"Any one could do that," said the man. "So any one can discover the
+Indies after I have shown him the way," said Columbus.
+
+It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor Columbus was soon to find out
+how Spain treated those who had given to it the highest honor and the
+greatest riches. Three times again he sailed to the New World, and once
+a base Spanish governor sent him back to Spain with chains upon his
+limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room till he died, and asked
+that they should be buried with him.
+
+They who had once given him every honor, now treated him with shameful
+neglect. He who had ridden beside the king and dined with the highest
+nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely.
+
+He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great discovery.
+
+Then Spain, which had treated him so badly, began to honor his memory.
+But it came too late for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die
+almost like a pauper, after he had made Spain the richest country in
+Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS
+
+
+VERY likely some of the readers of this book have asked their fathers or
+mothers how Spain came to own the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, whose
+people they treated so badly that the United States had to go to war a
+few years ago and take these islands from Spain. Of course, you all know
+how the battleship _Maine_ was blown up in the harbor of the city of
+Havana, and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom and were
+drowned. That was one reason why we went to war. If you should ask me
+that question, I would say that these were some of the islands which
+Columbus found, when he sailed into those sunny seas four centuries ago.
+They were settled by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and have
+lived on them ever since. There they have raised sugar cane, and
+tobacco, and coffee, and also oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine
+fruits.
+
+They might have kept on owning these islands and raising these fruits
+for many years to come, if they had not been so cruel to the people that
+they rose against them, and with the help of the United States
+Government the islands were taken from Spain.
+
+When Columbus told the nobles and people of Spain of his wonderful
+discovery, and showed them the plants and animals, the gold and other
+things, he had found on these far-off islands, it made a great
+excitement in that country.
+
+You know how the finding of gold in Alaska has sent thousands of our own
+people to that cold country after the shining yellow metal. In the same
+way the gold which Columbus brought back sent thousands of Spaniards
+across the wide seas to the warm and beautiful islands of which the
+great sailor told them, where they hoped to find gold like stones in our
+streets.
+
+Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carrying thousands of people
+to the fair lands of the west, from which they expected to come back
+laden with riches. At the same time two daring sailors from England,
+John Cabot and his son Sebastian, crossed the ocean farther north, and
+found land where the Northmen had found it five hundred years before. In
+the seas into which the Cabots sailed, great fish were so plentiful that
+the ships could hardly sail through them, and bears swam out in the
+water and caught the fish in their mouths. That was certainly a queer
+way of fishing.
+
+When the Cabots came back and told what they had seen, you may be sure
+the daring fishermen of Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers
+of their stout little vessels were crossing the ocean, and most of them
+came back so full of great codfish that the water almost ran over their
+decks.
+
+Do you not think these fishermen were wiser than the Spaniards, who went
+everywhere seeking for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is only
+good to buy food and other things; but if these can be had without
+buying they are better still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought
+so, and they were more lucky in finding fish than the Spaniards were in
+finding gold.
+
+Thus the years passed on, and more and more Spaniards came to the
+islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (which is now known as Hayti or San
+Domingo). And some of them soon began to sail farther west in search of
+new lands. Columbus, in his last voyage, reached the coasts of South
+America and Central America and other Spanish ships followed to those
+new shores.
+
+I might tell you many wonderful things about these daring men. One of
+them was named Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for it is
+full of strange events. This man had gone to the island of Hispaniola to
+make his fortune, but he found there only bad fortune. He had to work on
+a farm, and in time he became so poor and owed so much money that it
+seemed as if he could never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad
+straits.
+
+No doubt the people who had lent him money often asked him to pay it
+back again, and Balboa, who got into a worse state every day, at length
+took an odd way to rid himself of his troubles. A ship was about to set
+sail for the west, and the poor debtor managed to get carried aboard it
+in a barrel. This barrel came from his farm and was supposed to contain
+provisions, and it was not till they were far away from land that it was
+opened and a living man was found in it instead of salt beef or pork.
+
+When the captain saw him he was much astonished. He had paid for a
+barrel of provisions, and he found something which he could not well
+eat. He grew so angry at being cheated that he threatened to leave
+Balboa on a desert island, but the poor fellow got on his knees and
+begged so hard for his life that the captain at length forgave him. But
+he made him work to pay his way, and very likely used the rope's end to
+stir him up.
+
+Of course you have learned from your geographies where the Isthmus of
+Darien (now called Panama) is, that narrow strip of land that is like a
+string tying together the great continents of North and South America.
+It was to the town of Darien, on this isthmus, that the ship made its
+way, and here Balboa made a surprising discovery. Some of the Indian
+chiefs told him of a mighty ocean which lay on the other side of the
+isthmus, and that beyond that ocean was the wonderful land of gold which
+the Spaniards wished to find.
+
+What would you have done if you had been in Balboa's place, and wanted
+gold to pay your debts? Some of you, I think, would have done what he
+did. You would have made your way into the thick forest and climbed the
+rugged mountains of the isthmus, until, like Balboa, you got to the top
+of the highest peak. And, like him, you would have been filled with joy
+when you saw in the far distance the vast Pacific ocean, its waves
+glittering in the summer sun.
+
+Here was glory; here was fortune. The poor debtor had become a great
+discoverer. Before his eyes spread a mighty ocean, its waves beating on
+the shore. He hurried with his men down the mountain sides to this
+shining sea, and raised on its shores the great banner of Spain. And
+soon after he set sail on its waters for Peru, the land of gold. But he
+did not get very far, for the stormy weather drove him back.
+
+Poor Balboa! he was to win fame, but not fortune, and his debts were
+never to be paid. A jealous Spanish governor seized him, condemned him
+as a traitor, and had his head cut off in the market place. And so ended
+Balboa's dream of gold and glory. I could tell you of other wonderful
+adventures in these new lands. There is the story of Cortez, who found
+the great kingdom of Mexico, and conquered it with a few hundred
+Spaniards in armor of steel. And there is the story of Pizarro, who
+sailed to Peru, Balboa's land of gold, and won it for Spain, and sent
+home tons of silver and gold. But these stories have nothing to do with
+the history of the United States, so we must pass them by and go back to
+the early days of the country in which we dwell.
+
+The first Spaniard to set foot on what is now the United States was an
+old man named Ponce de Leon, who was governor of Porto Rico. If he had
+lived until now he would have been on our soil while on that island, for
+it now belongs to the United States. But no one had dreamed of our great
+republic four hundred years ago.
+
+At that time there was a fable which many believed, which said that
+somewhere in Asia was a wonderful Fountain of Youth. It was thought that
+everybody who bathed in its waters would grow young again. An old man in
+a moment would become as fresh and strong as a boy. De Leon wanted youth
+more than he did gold, and like all men at that time he thought the land
+he was in was part of Asia, and might contain the Fountain of Youth. He
+asked the Indians if they knew of such a magic spring. The red men, who
+wanted to get rid of the Spaniards, by whom they had been cruelly
+treated, pointed to the northwest.
+
+So, in the year 1513, old Ponce de Leon took ship and sailed away in
+search of the magic spring. And not many days passed before, on Easter
+Sunday, he saw before him a land so bright with flowers that he named it
+"Flowery Easter." It is still called Florida, the Spanish word for
+"flowery."
+
+I am sure none of my young readers believe in such a Fountain of Youth,
+and that none of you would have hunted for it as old De Leon did. Up and
+down that flowery land he wandered, seeking its wonderful waters. He
+found many sparkling springs, and eagerly drank of and bathed in their
+cool, liquid waves, but out of them all he came with white hair and
+wrinkled face. In the end he gave up the search, and sailed away, a sad
+old man. Some years afterwards he came back again. But this time the
+Indians fought with the white men, and De Leon was struck with an arrow,
+and hurt so badly that he soon died. So he found death instead of youth.
+Many people go to Florida in our own days in search of health, but Ponce
+de Leon is the only man who ever went there to find the magical Fountain
+of Youth.
+
+About twenty-five years afterwards another Spaniard came to Florida. It
+was gold and glory he was after, not youth. This man, Fernando de Soto,
+had been in Peru with Pizarro, and helped him to conquer that land of
+gold. He now hoped to find a rich empire for himself in the north.
+
+So with nine ships and six hundred brave young men he sailed away from
+his native land. They were a gay and hopeful band, while their bright
+banners floated proudly from the mastheads, and waved in the western
+winds. Little did they dream of what a terrible fate lay before them.
+
+I think you will say that De Soto deserved a bad fate when I tell you
+that he brought bloodhounds to hunt the poor Indians, and chains to
+fasten on their hands and feet. That was the way the Spaniards often
+treated the poor red men. He brought also two hundred horses for his
+armed men to ride, and a drove of hogs to serve them for fresh meat. And
+in the ships were great iron chests, which he hoped to take back full of
+gold and other precious things.
+
+For two long years De Soto and his band traveled through the country,
+fighting Indians, burning their houses and robbing them of their food.
+But the Indians were brave warriors, and in one terrible battle the
+Spaniards lost eighty of their horses and many of their men.
+
+In vain De Soto sought for gold and glory. Not an ounce of the yellow
+metal was found; no mighty empire was reached. He did make one great
+discovery, that of the vast Mississippi River. But he never got home to
+tell of it, for he died on its banks, worn out with his battles and
+marches, and was buried under its waters. His men built boats and
+floated down the great river to the Gulf of Mexico. Here, at length,
+they found Spanish settlements. But of that brave and gallant band half
+were dead, and the rest were so nearly starved that they were like
+living skeletons.
+
+We must not forget that humble Italian traveler and explorer, Amerigo
+Vespucci, who in 1499, saw the part of South America where lies the
+island of Trinidad. He afterwards reached the coast of Brazil. Some
+years later, when maps were made of the country he had visited, some one
+called it _America_. In later years this name was used for the whole
+continent. So what should have been called Columbia came to be called
+America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THREE EARLY HEROES
+
+
+WHAT do you think of Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia? Was he
+not a man to dream of, a true hero? Why, I feel half ashamed to say
+anything about him, for every one of you must know his story. I am sure
+all those who love good stories of adventure have read about him.
+
+John Smith was not the kind of man to work at a trade. He ran away from
+home when a boy, and became a wanderer over the earth. And a hard life
+he had of it. At one place he was robbed, and at another place was
+shipwrecked. Once he leaped overboard from a ship and swam ashore. Once
+again he fought with three Turks and killed all of them without help.
+Then he was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave to a cruel Turk, who put
+a ring round his neck and made him work very hard.
+
+One day his master came out where he was at work and struck him with his
+whip. He soon found that John Smith was a bad man to whip. He hit the
+Turk a hard blow with the flail he was using, and killed him on the
+spot. Then he ran away, got to Russia, and in time made his way back to
+England. But England was too quiet a place for him. A ship was about to
+cross the sea to America and he volunteered to go in it. He had not half
+enough of adventure yet. Some people think that Captain Smith bragged a
+little, and did not do all he said. Well, that may be so. But it is
+certain that he was a brave and bold man, and just the man to help
+settle a new country where there were savage red men to deal with.
+
+The English were in no hurry in sending out settlers to the New World
+which Columbus had discovered. While the Spaniards were seeking gold and
+empires in the south, and the French were catching fish and exploring
+the rivers and lakes in the north, all the English did was to rob the
+Spanish ships and settlements, and to bring them negroes from Africa for
+slaves.
+
+But the time came, a hundred years after America was discovered, when
+some of the English tried to form a settlement on the coast of North
+Carolina. Poor settlers! When the next ship came out they were all gone.
+Not a soul of them could be found. Nothing was left but some letters
+they had cut into the bark of a tree. What became of them nobody ever
+knew. Likely enough they wandered away and were killed by the Indians.
+
+Nothing more was done until the year 1607, when the ship in which
+Captain John Smith had taken passage sailed up a bright and beautiful
+river in Virginia. It was the month of May, and the banks were covered
+with flowers.
+
+The colonists thought this a very good place to live in, so they landed
+and began to look around them. The river they called the James, and the
+place they named Jamestown. But instead of building a town and preparing
+for the future, as sensible men would have done, they began to seek for
+gold, and soon they were in no end of trouble. In a short time their
+food was all eaten. Then some of them were taken sick and died. Others
+were killed by the Indians. It looked as if this colony would come to
+grief as did the former one.
+
+So it would if it had not been for Captain Smith. He was only one man
+among a hundred, but he was worth more than all the rest of the hundred.
+He could not keep still, but hustled about, here, there and everywhere.
+Now he was exploring the country, sailing up the rivers or up the broad
+Chesapeake Bay. Now he was talking with the Indians, getting food from
+them for the starving colonists. Now he was doing his best to make the
+men build houses and dig and plant the ground. You can see that John
+Smith had enough to keep him busy. He had many adventures with the
+Indians. At one time he was taken prisoner by them and was in terrible
+danger of being killed. But he showed them his pocket compass, and when
+they saw the needle always pointing north, they thought there must be
+magic in it. They were still more surprised when he sent one of them
+with a letter to his friends. They did not understand how a piece of
+paper could talk, as his paper seemed to do.
+
+But all this was not enough to save his life. The great chief Powhatan
+looked on him as the leader of these white strangers who had settled in
+his land. He wanted to get rid of them, and thought that if he killed
+the man of the magic needle and the talking paper they would certainly
+be scared and go away.
+
+So Captain Smith was tied hand and foot, and laid on the ground with his
+head on a log. And a powerful Indian stood near by with a great war club
+in his hand. Only a sign from Powhatan was needed, and down would come
+that club on the white man's head, and it would be all over with the
+brave and bold John Smith.
+
+Alas! poor Captain Smith! There was no pity in Powhatan's eyes. The
+burly Indian twisted his fingers about the club and lifted it in the
+air. One minute more and it might be all over with the man who had
+killed three Turks in one fight. But before that minute was over a
+strange thing took place. A young Indian girl came running wildly toward
+him, with her hair flying and her eyes wet with tears. And she flung
+herself on the ground and laid her head on that of the bound prisoner,
+and begged the chief to give him his life.
+
+It was Pocahontas, the pretty young daughter of Powhatan. She pleaded so
+pitifully that the chief's heart was touched, and he consented that the
+captive should live, and bade them take the bonds from his limbs.
+
+Do you not think this a very pretty story? Some say that it is not true,
+but I think very likely it is. At any rate, it is so good that it ought
+to be true. Afterwards this warm-hearted Indian princess married one of
+the Virginians named John Rolfe and was taken to London and shown to the
+Queen. I am sorry to have to say that poor Pocahontas died there and
+never saw her native land again.
+
+Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown. But his troubles were not at
+an end, for the colonists were as hard to deal with as the Indians. Some
+of them had found a kind of yellow stuff which they were sure was gold.
+They loaded a ship with this and sent it to England, thinking that they
+would all be rich. But the yellow stuff proved to be what is known as "a
+fool's gold," and worth no more than so much sand. Instead of becoming
+rich, they were laughed at as great fools.
+
+After a while Smith was made governor, and he now tried a new plan to
+make the men work. He told them that if they did not work they should
+not eat. None of them wanted to starve, and they knew that John Smith
+meant just what he said, so they began to build houses and to dig the
+ground and plant crops. But some of them grumbled and some of them
+swore, and it was anything but a happy family.
+
+Captain Smith did not like this swearing, and he took a funny way to
+stop it. When the men came home at night each one who had sworn had a
+can of cold water poured down his sleeve for every time he had done so.
+Did any of my readers ever try that? If they did they would know why the
+men soon quit grumbling and swearing. All was beginning to go well in
+the colony when Captain Smith was hurt by some gunpowder that took fire
+and went off. He was hurt so badly that he had to go back to England.
+After that all went ill.
+
+As soon as their governor was gone the lazy men quit working. The
+profane men swore worse than before. They ate up all their food in a
+hurry, and the Indians would bring them no more. Sickness and hunger
+came and carried many of them to the grave. Some of them meddled with
+the Indians and were killed. There were five hundred of them when winter
+set in; but when spring came only sixty of them were alive. And all
+this took place because one wise man, Captain John Smith, was hurt and
+had to go home.
+
+The whole colony would have broken up if ships had not come out with
+more men and plenty of food. Soon after that, the people began to plant
+the ground and raise tobacco, which sold well in England. Many of them
+became rich, and the little settlement at Jamestown in time grew into
+the great colony of Virginia.
+
+This ends the story of the hero of Jamestown. Now let us say something
+about the hero of Plymouth. In the year 1620, thirteen years after Smith
+and his fellows sailed up the James River, a shipload of men and women
+came to a place called Plymouth, on the rocky coast of New England. It
+was named Plymouth by Captain Smith, who had been there before. A
+portion of the rock on which they first stepped, is still preserved and
+surrounded by a fence.
+
+These people are known as Pilgrims. They had been badly treated at home
+because they did believe in the teachings of the Church of England, and
+they had come across the stormy sea to find a place where they could
+worship God in their own way, without fear of being put in prison.
+
+With them came a soldier. He was named Captain Miles Standish. He was a
+little man, but he carried a big sword, and had a stout heart and a hot
+temper. While the Pilgrims came to work and to pray, Captain Standish
+came to fight. He was a different man from Captain Smith, and would not
+have been able to deal with the lazy folks at Jamestown. But the
+Pilgrims were different also. They expected to work and live by their
+labor, and they had no sooner landed on Plymouth Rock than they began to
+dig and plant, while the sound of the hammer rang merrily all day long,
+as they built houses and got ready for the cold winter. But after all
+their labor and carefulness, sickness and hunger came, as they had come
+to Jamestown, and by the time the winter was over, half the poor
+Pilgrims were dead.
+
+The Indians soon got to be afraid of Captain Standish. They were afraid
+of the Pilgrims, too, for they found that these religious men could
+fight as well as pray. One Indian chief, named Canonicus, sent them a
+bundle of arrows with a snake's skin tied round it. This was their way
+of saying that they were going to fight the Pilgrims and drive them from
+the country. But Governor Bradford filled the snake skin with powder and
+bullets and sent it back. When Canonicus saw this he was badly scared,
+for he knew well what it meant. He had heard the white men's guns, and
+thought they had the power of using thunder and lightning. So he made up
+his mind to let the white strangers alone.
+
+But the Pilgrims did not trust the red men. They put cannon on the roof
+of their log church, and they walked to church on Sunday like so many
+soldiers on the march, with guns in their hands and Captain Standish at
+their head. And while they were listening to the sermon one man stood
+outside on the lookout for danger.
+
+At one time some of the Indians made a plot to kill all the English. A
+friendly Indian told Captain Standish about it, and he made up his mind
+to teach them a lesson they would remember. He went to the Indian camp
+with a few men, and walked boldly into the hut where the plotting chiefs
+were talking over their plans. When they saw him and the men with him,
+they tried to frighten them. One of them showed the captain his knife
+and talked very boldly about it.
+
+A big Indian looked with scorn on the little captain. "Pah, you are only
+a little fellow, if you are a captain," he said. "I am not a chief, but
+I am strong and brave."
+
+Captain Standish was very angry, but he said nothing then. He waited
+until the next day, when he met the chiefs again. Then there was a
+quarrel and a fight, and the little captain killed the big Indian with
+his own knife. More of the Indians were slain, and the others ran for
+the woods. That put an end to the plot.
+
+There is one funny story told about Captain Standish. His wife had died,
+and he felt so lonely that he wanted another; so he picked out a pretty
+young woman named Priscilla Mullins. But the rough old soldier knew more
+about fighting than about making love, and he sent his young friend,
+John Alden, to make love for him.
+
+John told Priscilla's father what he had come for, and the father told
+Priscilla what John had told him. The pretty Priscilla had no fancy for
+the wrinkled old soldier. She looked at her father. Then she looked at
+John. Then she said: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"
+
+John did speak for himself, and Priscilla became his wife. As for the
+captain, he married another woman, and this time I fancy he "spoke for
+himself."
+
+Miles Standish lived to be 70 years old, and to have a farm of his own
+and a house on a high hill near Plymouth. This is called Captain's Hill,
+and on it there is now a stone shaft a hundred feet high, with a statue
+of bold Captain Standish on its top.
+
+We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger Williams. He was not a
+captain like the others, but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and
+showed in his way as much courage as either of the captains.
+
+The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other people, who settled at
+Boston and other places around Massachusetts Bay until there were a
+great many of them. These were called Puritans. They came across the
+seas for the same reason as the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own
+way.
+
+But they were as hard to live with as the people at home, for they
+wanted to force everybody else into their way. Some Quakers who came to
+Boston were treated very badly because they had different ways from the
+Puritans. And one young minister named Roger Williams, who thought every
+man should have the right to worship as he pleased, and said that the
+Indians had not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods for
+safety.
+
+It was winter time. The trees were bare of leaves and the ground was
+white with snow. Poor Roger had to wander through the cold woods, making
+a fire at night with his flint and steel, or sometimes creeping into a
+hollow tree to sleep.
+
+Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, for eighty long miles, to
+the house of Massasoit, an Indian chief who was his friend. The good
+chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the Indians, what Roger
+Williams had tried to do for them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave
+his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So Roger paddled away till
+he found a good place to stop. This place he called Providence. A large
+city now stands there, and is still called Providence.
+
+Roger Williams had some friends with him, and others soon came, and
+after a few years he had quite a settlement of his own. It was called
+Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth, at Boston, and at
+Providence, was called "a colony."
+
+He took care that the Indians should be treated well, and that no one
+should do them any harm, so they grew to love the good white man. And he
+said that every man in his colony should worship God in the way he liked
+best, and no one should suffer on account of his manner of worship.
+
+It was a wonderful thing in those days, when there were wars going on in
+Europe about religion or the manner of worship, and everybody was
+punished who did not believe in the religion of the state.
+
+Do you not think that Roger Williams was as brave a man as John Smith or
+Miles Standish, and as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He was
+not that kind of a hero. But he did much to make men happy and good and
+to do justice to all men, and I think that is the best kind of a hero.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO AMERICA
+
+
+I WONDER how many of my readers have ever seen the great city of New
+York. I wonder still more how many of them knew that it is the largest
+city in the world except London. But we must remember that London is ten
+times as old, so it can well afford to be larger.
+
+Why, if you should go back no farther than the time of your
+great-grandfather you would find no city of New York. All you would see
+would be a sort of large village on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of
+the Hudson River. And if you went back to the time of your grandfather's
+great-grandfather, I fancy you would see nothing on that island but
+trees, with Indian wigwams beneath them. Not a single white man or a
+single house would you see.
+
+In the year 1609, just two years after Captain Smith sailed into the
+James River, a queer-looking Dutch vessel came across the ocean and
+began to prowl up and down the coast. It was named the "Half Moon." It
+came from Holland, the land of the Dutch, but its captain was an
+Englishman named Henry Hudson, who had done so many daring things that
+men called him "the bold Englishman."
+
+What Captain Hudson would have liked to do was to sail across the United
+States and come out into the Pacific Ocean, and so make his way to the
+rich countries of Asia. Was not that a funny notion? To think that he
+could sail across three thousand miles of land and across great ranges
+of mountains!
+
+But you must not think that Captain Hudson was crazy. Nobody then knew
+how wide America was. For all they knew, it might not be fifty miles
+wide. Captain John Smith tried to get across it by sailing up James
+River. And Captain Hudson fancied he might find some stream that led
+from one ocean to the other.
+
+So on he went up and down the coast looking for an opening. And after a
+while the "Half Moon" sailed into a broad and beautiful bay, where great
+trees came down to the edge of the water and red men paddled about in
+their canoes. Captain Hudson was delighted to see it. "It was," he said,
+"as pleasant with grass and flowers as he had ever seen, and very sweet
+smells."
+
+This body of water was what we now call New York Bay. A broad and swift
+river runs into it, which is now called Hudson River, after Henry
+Hudson. The bold captain thought that this was the stream to go up if he
+wished to reach the Pacific Ocean. So, after talking as well as he could
+with the Indians in their canoes, and trading beads for corn, he set his
+sails again and started up the splendid river. Some of the Indians came
+on board the "Half Moon," and the Dutch gave them brandy, which they had
+never seen or tasted before. Soon they were dancing and capering about
+the deck, and one of them fell down so stupid with drink that his
+friends thought he was dead. That was their first taste of the deadly
+"fire water" of the whites, which has killed thousands of the red men
+since then.
+
+Captain Hudson and the Dutch no doubt thought that this was great fun.
+People often do much harm without stopping to think. But on up the river
+went the "Half Moon."
+
+At some places they saw fields of green corn on the water's edge.
+Farther on were groves of lofty trees, and for miles great cliffs of
+rock rose like towers. It was all very grand and beautiful.
+
+"It was a very good land to fall in with," said Captain Hudson, "and a
+pleasant land to see."
+
+As they sailed on and on, they came to mountains, which rose on both
+sides the river. After passing the mountains, the captain went ashore to
+visit an old chief, who lived in a round house built of bark. The
+Indians here had great heaps of corn and beans. But what they liked
+best was roast dog. They roasted a dog for Captain Hudson and asked him
+to eat it, but I do not know whether he did so or not. And they broke
+their arrows and threw them into the fire, to show that they did not
+mean to do harm to the white men.
+
+After leaving the good old chief the Dutch explorers went on up the
+river till they reached a place about 150 miles above the sea, where the
+city of Albany now stands. Here the river became so narrow and shallow
+that Captain Hudson saw he could not reach the Pacific by that route, so
+he turned and sailed back to the sea again.
+
+A sad fate was that of Captain Hudson, "the bold Englishman." The next
+year he came again to America. But this time he went far to the north
+and entered the great body of water which we call Hudson Bay. He thought
+this would lead to the Pacific, and he would not turn back, though the
+food was nearly all gone. At last the crew got desperate, and they put
+the captain and some others into an open boat on the wide waters, and
+turned back again. Nothing more was ever heard of Captain Hudson, and he
+must have died miserably on that cold and lonely bay.
+
+But before his last voyage he had told the Dutch people all about Hudson
+River, and that the Indians had many fine furs which they would be glad
+to trade for beads, and knives, and other cheap things. The Dutch were
+fond of trading, and liked to make a good bargain, so they soon began to
+send ships to America. They built a fort and some log huts on Manhattan
+Island, and a number of them stayed there to trade with the red men.
+They paid the Indians for the island with some cheap goods worth about
+twenty-four dollars. I do not think any of you could guess how many
+millions of dollars that island is worth now. For the great city of New
+York stands where the log huts of the Dutch traders once stood, and
+twenty-four dollars would hardly buy as much land as you could cover
+with your hand.
+
+The country around is now all farming land, where grain and fruit are
+grown, and cattle are raised. But then it was all woodland for hundreds
+of miles away, and in these woods lived many foxes and beavers and other
+fur-bearing animals. These the Indians hunted and killed, and sold their
+furs to the Dutch, so that there was soon a good trade for both the red
+and the white men. The Dutch were glad to get the furs and the Indians
+were as glad to get the knives and beads. More and more people came from
+Holland, and the town grew larger and larger, and strong brick houses
+took the place of the log huts, and in time there was quite a town.
+
+Men were sent from Holland to govern the people. Some of these men were
+not fit to govern themselves, and the settlers did not like to have
+such men over them. One of them was a stubborn old fellow named Peter
+Stuyvesant. He had lost one of his legs, and wore a wooden leg with
+bands of silver around it, so that he was called "Old Silver Leg."
+
+While he was governor an important event took place. The English had a
+settlement in Virginia and another in New England, and they said that
+all the coast lands belonged to them, because the Cabots had been the
+first to see them. The Cabots came from Italy, but they had settled in
+England, and sailed in an English ship.
+
+So one day a small fleet of English vessels came into the bay, and a
+letter was sent on shore which said that all this land belonged to
+England and must be given up to them. The Dutch might stay there, but
+they would be under an English governor. Old Peter tore up the letter
+and stamped about in a great rage on his silver leg. But he had treated
+the people so badly that they would not fight for him, so he had to give
+up the town.
+
+The English called it New York, after the Duke of York, the king's
+brother. It grew and grew till it became a great and rich city, and sent
+ships to all parts of the world. Most of the Dutch stayed there, and
+their descendants are among the best people of New York to-day. Not
+long after these English ships came to New York Bay, other English ships
+came to a fine body of water, about 100 miles farther south, now called
+Delaware Bay. Into this also runs a great stream of fresh water, called
+Delaware River, as wide as the Hudson. I think you will like to learn
+what brought them here.
+
+No doubt you remember what I said about some people called Quakers, who
+came to Boston and were treated very badly by the Puritans. Did any of
+my young readers ever see a Quaker? In old times you would have known
+them, for they dressed in a different way from other people. They wore
+very plain clothes and broad-brimmed hats, which they would not take off
+to do honor to king or noble. To-day they generally dress more like the
+people around them.
+
+If they were treated badly in Boston they were treated worse in England.
+Thieves and highwaymen had as good a time as the poor Quakers. Some of
+them were put in jail and kept there for years. Some were whipped or put
+in the stocks, where low people called them vile names and threw mud at
+them. Indeed, these quiet people, who did no harm to any one, but were
+kind to others, had a very hard time, and were treated more cruelly than
+the Pilgrims and the Puritans.
+
+Among them was the son of a brave English admiral, who was a friend of
+the king and his brother, the Duke of York. But this did not save him
+from being put in prison for preaching as a Quaker and wearing his hat
+in court.
+
+This was William Penn, from whom Pennsylvania was named. You may well
+fancy that the son of a rich admiral and the friend of a king did not
+like being treated as though he were a thief because he chose to wear a
+hat with a broad brim and to say "thee" and "thou," and because he would
+not go to the king's church.
+
+What is more, the king owed him money, which he could not or would not
+pay. He had owed this money to Admiral Penn, and after the admiral died
+he owed it to his son.
+
+William Penn thought it would be wise to do as the Pilgrims and Puritans
+had done. There was plenty of land in America, and it would be easy
+there to make a home for the poor Quakers where they could live in peace
+and worship God in the way they thought right. This they could not do in
+England.
+
+Penn went to the king and told him how he could pay his debt. If the
+king would give him a tract of land on the west side of the Delaware
+River, he would take it as payment in full for the money owing to his
+father.
+
+King Charles, who never had money enough for his own use, was very glad
+to pay his debts in this easy way. He told Penn that he could have all
+the land he wanted, and offered him a tract that was nearly as large as
+the whole of England. This land belonged to the red men, but that did
+not trouble King Charles. It is easy to pay debts in other people's
+property. All Penn was asked to pay the king was two beaver skins every
+year and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that should be mined. As
+no gold or silver was ever mined the king got nothing but his beaver
+skins, which were a kind of rent.
+
+What do any of my young readers know about the Delaware River? Have any
+of you seen the wide, swift stream which flows between the states of
+Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into the broad body of water known
+as Delaware Bay? On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia, in
+which live more than a million people, and where there are thousands of
+busy workshops and well-filled stores. This large and fine city came
+from the way the king paid his debt. King Charles was not a good man,
+but he did one thing that had a good ending.
+
+There were white men there before the Quakers came. Many years earlier a
+number of people from Sweden had come and settled along the river. Then
+the Dutch from New York said the land was theirs, and took possession of
+the forts of the Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed the land
+as theirs. Then Quakers came and settled in New Jersey. Finally came
+William Penn, in a ship called by the pretty name of the "Welcome," and
+after that the land was governed by the Quakers or Friends, though the
+Swedes stayed there still.
+
+We have something very pleasant to say about good William Penn. He knew
+very well that King Charles did not own the land, and had no right to
+sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians together under a great
+elm tree on the river bank, and had a long talk with them, and told them
+he would pay them for all the land he wanted. This pleased the red men
+very much, and ever afterwards they loved William Penn.
+
+Do you not think it must have been a pretty scene when Penn and the
+Quakers met the Indian chiefs under the great tree--the Indians in their
+colored blankets and the Quakers in their great hats? That tree stood
+for more than a hundred years afterwards, and when the British army was
+in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution their general put a
+guard around Penn's treaty tree, so that the soldiers should not cut it
+down for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone monument marks
+where it stood. A city was laid out on the river, which Penn named
+Philadelphia, a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose some
+brotherly love is there still, but not nearly so much as there should
+be.
+
+Streets were made through the woods, and the names of the trees were
+given to these streets, which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine,
+Cherry, and the like. People soon came in numbers, and it is wonderful
+how fast the city grew. Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses,
+and in time it grew to be the largest in the country.
+
+The Indians looked on in wonder to see large houses springing up where
+they had hunted deer, and to see great ships where they had paddled
+their canoes. But the white men spread more and more into the land, and
+the red men were pushed back, and in time none of them were left in
+Penn's woodland colony. This was long after William Penn was dead.
+
+But while Penn's city was growing large and rich, he was becoming poor.
+He spent much money on his province and got very little back. At last he
+became so poor that he was put in prison for debt, as was the custom in
+those days. In the end he died and left the province to his sons. The
+Indians sent some beautiful furs to his widow in memory of their great
+and good brother. They said these were to make her a cloak "to protect
+her while she was passing without her guide through the stormy
+wilderness of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH
+
+
+VIRGINIA has often been called the Cavalier colony. Do any of you know
+why, or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I had better tell you. They were
+the lords and the proud people of England. Many of them had no money,
+but they would do no work, and cared for nothing but pleasure and
+fighting. There were plenty of working people in that country, but there
+were many who were too proud to work, and expected others to work for
+them, while they hoped to live at ease.
+
+Some of this kind of men came out with John Smith, and that is why he
+had so much trouble with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came from
+the working people of England, and nobody had to starve them to make
+them work, or to pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them from
+swearing.
+
+While religious people settled in the North, many of the proud Cavalier
+class, who cared very little about religion, came to the South. So we
+may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colonies, though many of
+the common people came there too, and it was not long before there was
+plenty of work.
+
+The first to come after John Smith and the Jamestown people were some
+shiploads of Catholics. You should know that the Catholics were treated
+in England even worse than the Puritans and the Quakers. The law said
+they must go to the English Church instead of to their own. If they did
+not they would have to pay a large sum of money or go to prison. Was not
+this very harsh and unjust?
+
+The Catholics were not all poor people. There were rich men and nobles
+among them. One of these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the King
+for some land in America where he and his friends might dwell in peace
+and have churches of their own. This was many years before William Penn
+asked for the same thing. The King was a friend of Lord Baltimore and
+told him he might have as much land as he could make use of. So he chose
+a large tract just north of Virginia, which the King named Maryland,
+after his wife, Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord Baltimore had
+to pay for this was two Indian arrows every year, and a part of the gold
+and silver, if any were found. This was done to show that the King still
+kept some claim to Maryland, and did not give away all his rights.
+
+And now comes a story much the same as I have told you several times
+already. A shipload of Catholics and other people came across the ocean
+to the new continent which Columbus had discovered many years before.
+These sailed up the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find this bay
+on your maps. They landed at a place they called St. Mary's, where there
+was a small Indian town. As it happened, the Indians at this town had
+been so much troubled by fighting tribes farther north that they were
+just going to move somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell their
+town to the white strangers.
+
+All they wanted for their houses and their corn fields were some
+hatchets, knives and beads, and other things they could use. Gold and
+silver would have been of no value to them, for they had never seen
+these metals. The only money the Indians used was round pieces of
+seashell, with holes bored through them. Before these people left their
+town they showed the white men how to hunt in the woods and how to plant
+corn. And their wives taught the white women how to make hominy out of
+corn and how to bake johnny-cakes. So the people of Maryland did not
+suffer from hunger like those of Virginia and New England, and they had
+plenty to eat and lived very well from the start.
+
+This was in the year 1634, just about the time Roger Williams went to
+Rhode Island. Lord Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams did;
+he gave the people religious liberty. Every Christian who came to
+Maryland had the right to worship God in his own way. Roger Williams
+went farther than this, for he gave the same right to Jews and all other
+people, whether they were Christians or pagans.
+
+It was not long before other people came to Maryland, and they began to
+plant tobacco, as the people were doing in Virginia. Tobacco was a good
+crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high price in England, so that
+the Maryland planters did very well, and many of them grew rich. But
+religious liberty did not last there very long, and the Catholics were
+not much better off than they had been in England. All the poor people
+who came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants. Only the rich ones were
+Catholics. Many other Protestants soon came, some of them being Puritans
+from New England, who did not know what religious liberty meant.
+
+These people said that the Catholics should not have the right to
+worship in their own churches, even in Maryland, and they went so far
+that they tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which the king had
+given him. There was much fighting between the Catholics and the
+Protestants. Now one party got the best of it, and now the other. In
+the end the province was taken from Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new
+king, named King William, came to the throne, he said that Maryland was
+his property, and that the Catholics should not have a church of their
+own or worship in their own way in that province. Do you not think this
+was very cruel and unjust? It seems so to me. It did not seem right,
+after Lord Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men, for others
+to come and take it away. But the custom in those days was that all men
+must be made to think the same way, or be punished if they didn't. This
+seems queer now-a-days, when every man has the right to think as he
+pleases.
+
+In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who became a Protestant, and the
+province was given back to him. It grew rich and full of people, and
+large towns were built. One of these was named Baltimore, after Lord
+Baltimore, and is now a great city. And Washington, the capital of the
+United States, stands on land that was once part of Maryland. But St.
+Mary's, the first town built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left
+to show where it stood.
+
+Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia. The Potomac River runs
+between them. South of Virginia was another great tract of land,
+reaching all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards then held. Some
+French Protestants tried to settle there, but they were cruelly
+murdered by the Spaniards, and no one else came there for many years.
+
+About 1660 people began to settle in what was then called "the
+Carolinas," but is now called North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of
+these came from Virginia and some from England, and small settlements
+were made here and there along the coast. One of these was called
+Charleston. This has now grown into a large and important city.
+
+There were some noblemen in England who thought that this region might
+become worth much money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to give it
+to them. This was the same king who gave the Dutch settlement to the
+Duke of York and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William Penn. He
+was very ready to give away what did not belong to him, and told these
+noblemen that they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were eight of
+these men, and they made up their minds that they would have a very nice
+form of government for their new province. So they went to a famous man
+named John Locke, who was believed to be very wise, and asked him to
+draw up a form of government for them.
+
+John Locke drew up a plan of government which they thought very fine,
+but which everybody now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy he
+knew more about books than he did about government. He called it the
+"Grand Model," and the noble lords thought they had a wonderful
+government indeed. There were to be earls, and barons, and lords, the
+same as in Europe. No one could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The
+poorer people were to be like so many slaves. They could not even leave
+one plantation for another without asking leave from the lord or baron
+who owned it.
+
+What do you think the people did? You must not imagine they came across
+the ocean to be made slaves of. No, indeed! They cared no more for the
+"Grand Model" than if it was a piece of tissue paper. They settled where
+they pleased, and would not work for the earls and barons, and fought
+with the governors, and refused to pay the heavy taxes which the eight
+noble owners asked.
+
+In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole business that they gave
+their province back to the king. It was then divided into two colonies,
+known as North Carolina and South Carolina. As for the lords and barons,
+nobody heard of them any more.
+
+The people of the Carolinas had other things beside the Grand Model of
+government to trouble them. There were savage Indians back in the
+country who attacked them and killed many of them. And there were
+pirates along the coast who attacked ships and killed all on board. But
+rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cotton, and much tar and
+turpentine were got from the pine trees in North Carolina, and as the
+years went on these colonies became rich and prosperous, and the people
+began to have a happy time.
+
+I hope none of my young readers are tired of reading about kings and
+colonies. I am sure they must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and
+Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of the great leaders. At
+any rate, there is only one more colony to talk about, and then we will
+be through with this part of our story. This is the colony of Georgia,
+which lies in the tract of land between South Carolina and Florida.
+
+I am sure that when you are done reading this book you will be glad that
+you did not live two or three hundred years ago. To-day every one can
+think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too, if he does not break the
+laws. And the laws are much more just and less cruel than they were in
+former times. Why, in those days, every man who owed money and could not
+pay it might be put in prison and kept there for years. He could not
+work there and earn money to pay his debts, and if his friends did not
+pay them he might stay there till he died. As I have told you, even the
+good William Penn was put in prison for debt, and kept there till his
+friends paid the money.
+
+There were as many poor debtors in prison as there were thieves and
+villains. Some of them become sick and died, and some were starved to
+death by cruel jailers, who would not give them anything to eat if they
+had no money to pay for food. One great and good man, named General
+James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so sorry for the poor
+debtors he saw there, that he asked the king to give him a piece of land
+in America where he could take some of these suffering people.
+
+There was now not much land left to give. Settlements had been made all
+along the coast except south of the Carolinas, and the king told General
+Oglethorpe that he could have the land which lay there, and could take
+as many debtors out of prison as he chose. He thought it would be a good
+thing to take them somewhere where they could work and earn their
+living. The king who was then on the throne was named King George, so
+Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia.
+
+It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after Lord Baltimore had come
+to Maryland. General Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison,
+and very glad they were to get out, you may be sure. He landed with them
+on the banks of a fine river away down South, where he laid out a town
+which he named Savannah.
+
+The happy debtors now found themselves in a broad and beautiful land,
+where they could prove whether they were ready to work or not. They were
+not long in doing this. Right away they began to cut down trees, and
+build houses, and plant fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be
+seen and food plants were growing in the fields. And very happy men and
+women these poor people were.
+
+General Oglethorpe knew as well as William Penn that the land did not
+belong to the king. He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the land
+was theirs, and offered to pay them for it. They were quite willing to
+sell, and soon he had all the land he wanted, and what is more, he had
+the Indians for friends.
+
+But if he had no trouble with the Indians, he had a good deal with the
+Spaniards of Florida. They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and
+that the English had no right there. And they sent an army and tried to
+drive them out.
+
+I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was an old soldier, but he
+soon showed them that he knew how to fight. He drove back their armies
+and took their ships; and they quickly made up their minds that they had
+better let the English alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the
+Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This was St. Augustine.
+
+Before long some Germans came from Europe and settled in the new
+colony. People came also from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted
+for food, and some of the colonists raised silkworms and made silk. But
+in the end, cotton came to be the chief crop of the colony.
+
+General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man. He did not die till long
+after the American Revolution. Georgia was then a flourishing state, and
+the little town he had started on the banks of the Savannah River was a
+fine city, with broad streets, fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees.
+I think the old general must have been very proud of this charming city,
+and of the great state which owed its start to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED
+
+
+NOW that you have been told about the settlement of the colonies, it is
+well to recall how many of them there were. Let us see. There were the
+Pilgrim and Puritan settlements of New England, Roger Williams's
+settlement in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in New York, the Quaker
+one in Pennsylvania, the Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier
+ones in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor settlement in
+Georgia. Then there were some smaller ones, making about a dozen in all.
+
+These stretched all along the coast, from Canada, the French country in
+the north, to Florida, the Spanish country in the south. The British
+were a long time in settling these places, for nearly 250 years passed
+after the time of Columbus before General Oglethorpe came to Georgia.
+
+While all this was going on, what was becoming of the native people of
+the country, the Indians? I am afraid they were having a very hard time
+of it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and forced them to work so
+terribly hard in the mines and the fields that they died by thousands.
+The French and the English fought with them and drove them away from
+their old homes, killing many of them.
+
+And this has gone on and on ever since, until the red men, who once
+spread over all this country, are now kept in a very small part of it.
+Some people say there are as many of them as there ever were. If that is
+so, they can live on much less land than they once occupied.
+
+What do you know about these Indians? Have you ever seen one of them?
+Your fathers or grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were
+everywhere in this country, and people saw more of them than they liked;
+but now we see them only in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools,
+except we happen to go where they live. Do you not want to know
+something about these oldest Americans? I have been busy so far talking
+about the white men and what they did, and have had no chance to tell
+you about the people they found on this continent and how they treated
+them. I think I must make this chapter an Indian one.
+
+Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south, and the French to the
+north, and the Dutch and the Swedes and the British to the middle
+country, they found everywhere a kind of people they had never seen
+before. Their skin was not white, like that of the people of Europe,
+nor black like that of the Africans, but of a reddish color, like that
+of copper, so that they called them red men. They had black eyes and
+hair, and high cheek-bones, and were not handsome according to our
+ideas; but they were tall and strong, and many of them very proud and
+dignified.
+
+These people lived in a very wild fashion. They spent much of their time
+in hunting, fishing, and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and
+beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their food was got from
+wild animals killed in the woods. They were as fond of fighting as they
+were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, some of which were
+nearly always at war with other tribes. They had no weapons but stone
+hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able with these to kill many
+of their enemies. People say that they were badly treated by the whites,
+but they treated one another worse than the whites ever did.
+
+The Indians were very cruel. The warriors shaved off all their hair
+except one lock, which was called the scalp lock. When one of them was
+killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his scalp, or the skin
+of his head. They were very proud of these scalps, for they showed how
+many men they had killed.
+
+When they took a prisoner, they would tie him to a tree and build a
+fire round him and burn him to death. And while he was burning they
+would torture him all they could. We cannot feel so much pity for the
+Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated
+them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties,
+and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once
+there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of
+prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has
+been done, good has come of it.
+
+At the time I am speaking of, forests covered much of this great
+continent. They spread everywhere, and the Indians lived under their
+shade, and had wonderful skill in following animals or enemies through
+their shady depths. They read the ground much as we read the pages of a
+book. A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint which we could not
+see, were full of meaning to them, and they would follow a trail for
+miles through the woods where we would not have been able to follow it a
+yard. Their eyes were trained to this kind of work, but in time some of
+the white men became as expert as the Indians, and could follow a trail
+as well.
+
+The red men lived mostly in little huts covered with skins or bark,
+which they called wigwams. Some of the tribes lived in villages, where
+there were large bark houses. But they did not stay much in their
+houses, for they liked better to be in the open air. Now they were
+hunting deer in the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark canoes in
+the streams, now smoking their pipes in front of their huts, now dancing
+their war dances or getting ready to fight.
+
+The men did nothing except hunting and fighting. The women had to do all
+other work, such as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building
+wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving of cloth, but most of their
+clothes were made of the skins of wild animals.
+
+In war times the warriors tried to make themselves as ugly as they
+could, painting their faces in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in
+their hair. They seemed to think they could scare their enemies by ugly
+faces.
+
+I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. Some of these tribes were
+quite large, and were made up of a great number of men and women who
+lived together and spoke the same language. Each tribe was divided up
+into clans, or small family-like groups, and each clan had its sachem,
+or peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led them to battle. The
+sachems and chiefs governed the tribes and made such laws as they had.
+
+Every clan had some animal which it called its totem, such as the wolf,
+bear, or fox. They were proud of their totems, and the form of the
+animal was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked into the
+skin with needles. All the Indians were fond of dancing, and their war
+dances were as fierce and wild as they could make them.
+
+The tribes in the south were not as savage as those in the north. They
+did more farming, and had large and well-built villages. Some of them
+had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun as a god. They kept a
+fire always burning in the temple, and seemed to think this fire was a
+part of their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled over the tribe,
+and also a head war-chief, a high-priest, and other rulers.
+
+In the far west were Indians who built houses that were almost like
+towns, for they had hundreds of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one
+of these great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand people. Other
+tribes lived in holes in the sides of steep rocks, where their enemies
+could not easily get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers. And there
+were some who lived on top of high, steep hills, which were very hard to
+climb. These Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants.
+
+Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you would have liked to see
+white people coming in ships across the waters and settling down in your
+country as if they owned it? They did not all pay for the land they
+took, like William Penn and General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted
+as if the country belonged to them, and it is no wonder the old owners
+of the country did not like it, or that there was fierce fighting
+between the white and the red men.
+
+Do you remember the story of Canonicus and the snake skin, and that of
+Miles Standish and the chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but
+there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither a number of settlers
+had come from Boston and others from England. Here there was a warlike
+tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry on seeing the white men
+in their country.
+
+They began to kill the whites whenever they found them alone. Then the
+whites began to kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war. The
+Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees, set close together in the
+ground. They thought they were safe in this fort, but the English made
+an attack on it, and got into it, and set fire to the Indian wigwams
+inside. The fight went on terribly in the smoke and flame until nearly
+all the Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost their lives. This
+so scared the Indians that it was forty years before there was another
+Indian war in New England.
+
+I have told you about the good chief Massasoit, who was so kind to Roger
+Williams. He was a friend to the white men as long as he lived, but
+after his death his son Philip became one of their greatest enemies.
+
+Philip's brother was taken sick and died after he had been to Plymouth,
+and the Indians thought that the people there had given him poison.
+Philip said that they would try to kill him next, and he made up his
+mind to fight them and drive them out of the country. The Indians had
+guns now, and knew how to use them, and they began to shoot the white
+people as they went quietly along the roads.
+
+Next they began to attack the villages of the whites. They would creep
+up at night, set the houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out.
+The war went on for a long time in this way, and there were many
+terrible fights.
+
+At one place the people, when they saw the Indians coming, all ran to a
+strong building called a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and
+yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by shooting arrows with
+blazing rags on their points. Once the roof caught fire, but some of the
+men ran up and threw water on the flames.
+
+Then the Indians got a cart and filled it with hay. Setting this on
+fire, they pushed it up against the house. It looked as if all the white
+men and women and children would be burned alive. The house caught fire
+and began to blaze. But just then came a shower of rain that put out the
+fire, and the people inside were saved once more. Before the Indians
+could do anything further some white soldiers came and the savages all
+ran into the woods.
+
+There were other wonderful escapes, but many of the settlers were
+killed, and Philip began to think he would be able to drive them out of
+the country, as he wished to do. He was called King Philip, though he
+had no crown except a string of wampum,--or bits of bored shell strung
+together and twined round his head,--and no palace better than a bark
+hut, while his finest dress was a red blanket. It took very little to
+make an Indian king. The white men knew more about war than the Indians,
+and in the end they began to drive them back. One of their forts was
+taken, and the wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the
+Pequots. A great many of the poor red men perished in the flames.
+
+The best fighter among the white men was Captain Church. He followed
+King Philip and his men to one hiding place after another, killing some
+and taking others prisoners. Among the prisoners were the wife and
+little son of the Indian king.
+
+"It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he heard of this. "Now I am
+ready to die."
+
+He did not live much longer. Captain Church chased him from place to
+place, till he came to Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasoit
+lived when Roger Williams came to him through the woods. Here King
+Philip was shot, and the war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and
+a large number had been killed on both sides. It is known in history as
+King Philip's War.
+
+There were wars with the Indians in many other parts of the country. In
+Virginia the Indians made a plot to kill all the white people. They
+pretended to be very friendly, and brought them meat and fish to sell.
+While they were talking quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or
+hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one morning nearly three
+hundred and fifty were killed, men, women, and little children.
+
+Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, except those in Jamestown,
+who were warned in time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting down
+all they could find, and killing a great many of them.
+
+This was after the death of Powhatan, who had been a friend to the
+whites. About twenty years later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took
+place. After this the Indians were driven far back into the country, and
+did not give any more trouble for thirty years. The last war with them
+broke out in 1675.
+
+The Dutch in New York also had their troubles with the Indians. They
+paid for all the lands they took, but one of their governors was
+foolish enough to start a war that went on for two years. A worse
+trouble was that in North Carolina, where there was a powerful tribe
+called the Tuscaroras. These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers
+of them. But in the end they were driven out of the country.
+
+The only colonies in which the Indians kept friendly for a long time
+were Pennsylvania and Georgia. We know the reason of this. William Penn
+and General Oglethorpe were wise enough to make friends with them at the
+start, and continued to treat them with justice and friendliness, so
+that the red men came to love these good men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS
+
+
+DO any of my young readers know what is meant by a Charter? "Yes," I
+hear some of you say. "No," say others. Well, I must speak to the "No,"
+party; the party that doesn't know, and wants to know.
+
+A charter is a something written or printed which grants certain rights
+or privileges to the party to whom it is given. It may come from a king
+or a congress, or from any person in power, and be given to any other
+person who wishes the right to hold a certain property or to do some
+special thing.
+
+Do you understand any better now? I am sorry I can not put it in plainer
+words. I think the best way will be to tell you about some charters
+which belong to American history. You should know that all the people
+who crossed the ocean to make new settlements on the Atlantic Coast had
+charters from the king of England. This was the case with the Pilgrims
+and the Puritans, with Roger Williams, William Penn, Lord Baltimore, and
+the others I have spoken about.
+
+These charters were written on parchment, which is the skin of an
+animal, made into something like paper. The charters gave these people
+the right to settle on and own certain lands, to form certain kinds of
+government, and to do a variety of things which in England no one could
+do but the king and the parliament.
+
+The colonies in New England were given the right to choose their own
+governors and make their own laws, and nobody, not even the king, could
+stop them from doing this. The king had given them this right, and no
+other king could take it away while they kept their charters.
+
+Would you care to be told what took place afterwards? All kings, you
+should know, are not alike. Some are very mild and easy, and some are
+very harsh and severe. Some are willing for the people to have liberty,
+and some are not. The kings who gave the charters to New England were of
+the easy kind. But they were followed by kings of the hard kind, who
+thought that these people beyond the sea had too much liberty, and who
+wished to take away some of it.
+
+Charles II., who gave some of these charters, was one of the easy kings,
+and did not trouble himself about the people in the colonies. James II.,
+who came after him, was one of the hard kings. He was somewhat of a
+tyrant, and wanted to make the laws himself, and to take the right to do
+this from the people. After trying to rob the people of England of
+their liberties, he thought he would do the same thing with the people
+of America. "Those folks across the seas are having too good a time," he
+thought. "They have too many rights and privileges, and I must take some
+of them away. I will let them know that I am their master."
+
+But they had their charters, which gave them these rights; so the wicked
+king thought the first thing for him to do was to take their charters
+away from them. Then their rights would be gone, and he could make for
+them a new set of laws, and force them to do everything he wished.
+
+What King James did was to send a nobleman named Sir Edmund Andros to
+New England to rule as royal governor. He was the agent of the king, and
+was to do all that the king ordered. He began by undertaking to rob the
+people of their charters. You see, even a tyrant king did not like to go
+against the charters, for a charter was a sacred pledge.
+
+Well, the new governor went about ordering the people to give him their
+charters. One of the places to which he went was Hartford, Connecticut,
+and there he told the officers of the colony that they must deliver up
+their charter; the king had said so, and the king's word must be obeyed.
+
+If any of you had lived in Connecticut in those days I know how you
+would have felt. The charter gave the people a great deal of liberty,
+and they did not wish to part with it. I know that you and I would have
+felt the same way. But what could they do? If they did not give it up
+peacefully, Governor Andros might come again with soldiers and take it
+from them by force. So the lawmakers and officials were in a great fret
+about what they should do.
+
+They asked Governor Andros to come to the State-house and talk over the
+matter. Some of them fancied they could get him to leave them their
+charter, though they might have known better. There they sat--the
+governor in the lofty chair of state, the others seated in a half circle
+before him. There was a broad table between them, and on this lay the
+great parchment of the charter. Some of those present did a great deal
+of talking. They told how good King Charles had given them the charter,
+and how happy they had been under it, and how loyal they were to good
+King James, and they begged Governor Andros not to take it from them.
+But they might as well have talked to the walls. He had his orders from
+the king and was one of the men who do just what they are told.
+
+While the talk was going on a strange thing happened. It was night, and
+the room was lit up with a few tallow candles. Of course you know that
+these were the best lights people had at that time; gas or the electric
+light had never been heard of. And it was before the time of matches.
+The only way to make a light in those days was by the use of the flint
+and steel, which was a very slow method indeed.
+
+Suddenly, while one of the Hartford men was talking and the governor was
+looking at him in a tired sort of way, all the lights in the room went
+out, and the room was in deep darkness. Everybody jumped up from their
+chairs and there was no end of bustle and confusion, and likely enough
+some pretty hard words were said. They had to hunt in the dark for the
+flint and steel; and then there came snapping of steel on flint, and
+falling of sparks on tinder, so that it was some time before the candles
+were lit again.
+
+When this was done the governor opened his eyes very wide, for the table
+was empty, the charter was gone. I fancy he swore a good deal when he
+saw that. In those days even the highest people were given to swearing.
+But no matter how much he swore, he could not with hard words bring back
+the charter. It was gone, and nobody knew where. Everybody looked for
+it, right and left, in and out, in drawers and closets, but it was
+nowhere to be found. Very likely the most of them did not want to find
+it. At any rate, the governor had to go away without the charter, and
+years passed before anybody saw it again.
+
+Do you not wish to know what became of it? We are told that it had been
+taken by a bold young soldier named Captain Wadsworth. While all the
+people in the room were looking at the one who was making his speech,
+the captain quickly took off his cloak and gave it a quick fling over
+the candles, so that in a moment they were all put out. Then he snatched
+up the charter from the table and slipped quietly out of the room. While
+they were busy snapping the flint and steel, he was hurrying down the
+street towards a great oak tree which was more than a hundred years old.
+This tree was hollow in its heart, and there was a hole in its side
+which opened into the hollow. Into this hole Captain Wadsworth pushed
+the charter, and it fell into the hollow space. I do not think any of us
+would have thought of looking there for it. I know nobody did at that
+time, and there it lay for years, until the tyrant King James was driven
+from the throne and a new king had taken his place. Then it was joyfully
+brought out, and the people were ever so glad to see it again.
+
+The old tree stood for many years in the main street of the town, and
+became famous as the Charter Oak. The people loved and were proud of it
+as long as it stood. But many years ago the hoary old oak fell, and now
+only some of its wood is left. This has been made into chairs and boxes
+and other objects which are thought of great value.
+
+Do you not think that Captain Wadsworth was a bold and daring man, and
+one who knew just what to do in times of trouble? If you do not, I fancy
+you will when I have told you another story about him.
+
+This took place after the charter had been taken from the oak and
+brought to the statehouse again. At this time there was a governor in
+New York named Fletcher, who claimed that the king had given him the
+right to command the militia, or citizen soldiers, of Connecticut. So he
+came to Hartford, where Captain Wadsworth was in command, and where the
+people did not want any stranger to have power over them. He told the
+captain what he had come for, and that he had a commission to read to
+the soldiers.
+
+The militia were called out and drawn up in line in the public square of
+the town, and Governor Fletcher came before them, full of his
+importance. He took out of his pocket the paper which he said gave him
+the right to command, and began to read it in a very proud and haughty
+manner. But he had not read ten words when Captain Wadsworth told the
+drummers to beat their drums, and before you could draw your breath
+there was such a rattle and roll of noise that not a word could be
+heard.
+
+"Silence!" cried Fletcher. "Stop those drums!" The drums stopped, and he
+began to read again.
+
+"Drum!" ordered Wadsworth in a loud tone, and such a noise began that a
+giant's voice would have been drowned.
+
+"Silence!" again shouted Fletcher. He was very red in the face by this
+time.
+
+"Drum, I say!" roared the captain.
+
+Then he turned to the governor and said, laying his hand on his sword,
+"I command these men, Governor Fletcher, and if you interrupt me again I
+will make the sun shine through you in a minute." And he looked as if he
+meant what he said. All the governor's pomp and consequence were gone,
+and his face turned from red to pale. He hastily thrust the paper back
+into his pocket, and was not long in leaving Hartford for New York. No
+doubt he thought that Connecticut was not a good place for royal
+governors.
+
+Suppose I now tell you the story of another royal governor and another
+bold captain. This was down in Virginia, but it was long after Captain
+Smith was dead and after Virginia had become a large and prosperous
+colony.
+
+The king sent there a governor named Berkeley, who acted as if he was
+master and all the people were his slaves. They did not like to be
+treated this way; but Berkeley had soldiers under his command, and they
+were forced to obey. While this was going on the Indians began to murder
+the settlers. The governor ought to have stopped them, but he was
+afraid to call out the people, and he let the murders go on.
+
+There was a young man named Nathaniel Bacon who asked Governor Berkeley
+to let him raise some men to fight the Indians. The governor refused.
+But this did not stop brave young Bacon, for he called out a force of
+men and drove off the murdering savages.
+
+Governor Berkeley was very angry at this. He said that Bacon was a
+traitor and ought to be treated like one, and that the men with him were
+rebels. Bacon at once marched with his men against Jamestown, and the
+haughty governor ran away as fast as he could.
+
+But while Bacon and his men were fighting the Indians again, Governor
+Berkeley came back and talked more than ever about rebels and traitors.
+This made Bacon and the people with him very angry. To be treated in
+this way while they were saving the people from the Indian knife and
+tomahawk was too bad. They marched against Jamestown again. This time
+the governor did not run away, but prepared to defend the place with
+soldiers and cannon.
+
+But they did not fire their guns. Bacon had captured some of the wives
+of the principal men, and he put them in front of his line as he
+advanced. The governor did not dare bid his soldiers to fire on these
+women, so he left the town again in a hurry, and it was taken by the
+Indian fighters.
+
+Bacon made up his mind that Governor Berkeley should not come back to
+Jamestown again. He had the town set on fire and burned to the ground.
+Some of the men with him set fire to their own houses, so that they
+should not give shelter to the governor and his men. That was the end of
+Jamestown. It was never rebuilt. Only ashes remained of the first
+English town in America. To-day there is only an old church tower to
+show where it stood.
+
+We cannot tell what might have happened if brave young Bacon had lived.
+As it was, he was taken sick and died. His men now had no leader, and
+soon scattered. Then the governor came back full of fury, and began to
+hang all those who opposed him. He might have put a great many of them
+to death if the king had not stopped him and ordered him back to
+England. This was King Charles II., whose father had been put to death
+by Cromwell. He was angry at what Governor Berkeley had done, and said:
+
+"That old fool has hung more men in that naked land than I did for the
+murder of my father."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES
+
+
+WHAT a wonderful change has come over this great country of ours since
+the days of our grandfathers! Look at our great cities, with their grand
+buildings, and their miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric
+cars, and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great stores lit by
+brilliant electric lights, and huge workshops filled with rattling
+wheels and marvelous machines! And look at our broad fields filled with
+cattle or covered by growing crops, and divided by splendid highways and
+railroads thousands of miles in length! Is it not all very wonderful?
+
+"But has it not always been this way?" some very young persons ask. "I
+have lived so many years and have never seen anything else."
+
+My dear young friend, if you had lived fifty or sixty years, as many of
+us older folks have, you would have seen very different things. And if
+we had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and then come back
+again to-day, I fancy our eyes would open wider than Governor Andros's
+did when he saw that the charter was gone.
+
+In those days, as I told you, when any one wanted to make a light, he
+could not strike a match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must
+hammer away with flint and steel, and then had nothing better than a
+home-made tallow candle to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never
+even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then used to cut off the
+candle wick.
+
+Some of you who live in old houses with dusty lofts under the roof, full
+of worm-eaten old furniture, have, no doubt, found there odd-looking
+wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of various kinds.
+Sometimes these wheels are brought down stairs and set in the hall as
+something to be proud of. And the old eight-day clocks stand there, too,
+with their loud "tick-tack," buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they
+had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels I speak of are the old
+spinning wheels, with which our great-grandmothers spun flax into
+thread. This thread they wove into homespun cloth on old-fashioned
+looms. All work of this kind used to be done at home, though now it is
+done in great factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores, instead
+of spinning and weaving and sewing them in the great old kitchens before
+the wood-fire on the hearth.
+
+Really, I am afraid many of you do not know how people lived in the old
+times. They are often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy you
+will hardly think so when I have told you something more about them.
+Would you think it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold room,
+and go down and pump ice-cold water to wash your face, and go out in the
+snow to get wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour before the
+house began to warm up? That is only one of the things you would not
+find pleasant. I shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about
+how people lived in old times, and then you can say if you would like to
+go back to them.
+
+Would any boy and girl among you care to live in a little one-story
+house, made of rough logs laid one on another, and with a roof of
+thatch--that is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep out the
+rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or two rooms, and some of them with
+chimneys made of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that they
+could not be set on fire. These were the oldest houses. Later on people
+began to build larger houses, many of which were made of brick or stone.
+But I am afraid there was not much comfort in the best of them. They had
+no stoves, and were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big logs of
+wood were burned. They made a bright and cheerful blaze, it is true, but
+most of the heat went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little of
+it got out into the room. In the winter the people lived in their
+kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire for heat and light, and at bed-time
+went shivering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you would have
+enjoyed that?
+
+They had very little furniture, and the most of what they had was rude
+and rough, much of it chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. Some
+of the houses had glass windows--little diamond-shaped panes, set in
+lead frames--but most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which kept
+out as much light as it let in.
+
+All the cooking was done on the great kitchen hearth, where the pots
+were hung on iron cranes and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did
+not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. Mush and milk, or
+pork and beans, were their usual food, and their bread was mostly made
+of rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice books they wanted to
+read often had to do so by the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell
+you that books were very scarce things in those days.
+
+If any of us had lived then I know how glad we would have been to see
+the bright spring time, with its flowers and warm sunshine. But we might
+have shivered again when we thought of next winter. Of course, the
+people had some good times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the table
+was filled with good things to eat, and election-day and training-day,
+when they had outdoor sports. And they had quilting and husking-parties,
+and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and picnics and other amusements. A
+wedding was a happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a great
+dinner. But after all there was much more hard work than holiday, and
+nearly everybody had to labor long and got little for it. They were
+making themselves homes and a country, you know, and it was a very
+severe task. We, to-day, are getting the good of their work.
+
+Down South people had more comfort. The weather was not nearly so cold,
+so they did not have to keep up such blazing fires or shiver in their
+cold beds. Many of the rich planters built themselves large mansions of
+wood or brick, and brought costly furniture from England, and lived in
+great show, with gold and silverware on their sideboards and fine
+coaches drawn by handsome horses when they went abroad.
+
+In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses, of the kind used in
+Holland. In Philadelphia the Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses,
+with wide orchards and gardens round them, where they raised plenty of
+fruit. When any one opened a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden
+anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of goods he had to sell.
+
+In New England Sunday was kept in a very strict fashion, for the people
+were very religious. It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh, on
+Sunday, and everybody had to go to church. All who did not go were
+punished. And, mercy on us, what sermons they preached in those cold old
+churches, prosing away sometimes for two hours at a time! The boys and
+girls had to listen to them, as well as the men and women, and you know
+how hard it is now to listen for one hour.
+
+If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did, and went off into a
+snooze, they were soon wide awake again. For the constable went up and
+down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This had a rabbit's foot
+on one end of it and a rabbit's tail on the other. If he saw one of the
+women asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her face. But if a boy
+took a nap, down would come the rabbit's foot in a sharp rap on his
+head, and up he would start very wide awake. To-day we would call that
+sort of sermons cruelty to children, and I think it was cruelty to the
+old folks also.
+
+Do you think those were "good old times"? I imagine some of you will
+fancy they were "bad old times." But they were not nearly so bad as you
+may think. For you must bear in mind that the people knew nothing of
+many of the things we enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain food
+and coarse furniture and rough clothes and cold rooms, and were more
+hardy and could stand more than people who sleep in furnace-heated rooms
+and have their tables heaped with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and
+meats.
+
+But there was one thing that could not have been pleasant, and that was,
+their being afraid all the time of the Indians, and having to carry
+muskets with them even when they went to church. All around them were
+the forests in which the wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might
+be heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz out from the thick
+leaves.
+
+The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all the villages were
+strong buildings called blockhouses, to which everybody could run in
+times of danger. In these the second story spread out over the first,
+and there were holes in the floor through which the men could fire down
+on the Indians below. But it makes us tremble to think that, at any
+time, the traveler or farmer might be shot down by a lurking savage, or
+might be seized and burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the people
+grew to hate the Indians and to kill them or drive them away.
+
+There was much game in the woods and the rivers were full of fish, so
+that many of the people spent their time in hunting and fishing. They
+got to be as expert in this as the Indians themselves, and some of them
+could follow a trail as well as the most sharp-sighted of the red men.
+
+Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's novels of Indian life, and
+know what a wonderful hunter and Indian trailer old Natty Bumppo was.
+But we do not need to go to novels to read about great hunters, for the
+life of Daniel Boone is as full of adventure as that of any of the
+heroes of Indian life.
+
+Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this country has ever known. He
+lived much later than the early times I am talking about, but the
+country he lived in was as wild as that found by the first settlers of
+the country. When he was only a little boy he went into the deep woods
+and lived there by himself for several days, shooting game and making a
+fire to cook it by. He made himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and
+lived in it like an Indian, and there his father and friends found him
+when they came seeking him in the woods.
+
+Years afterwards he crossed the high mountains of North Carolina and
+went into the great forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild
+animals lived. For a long time he stayed there by himself, with the
+Indians hunting and trying to kill him. But he was too wide awake for
+the smartest of them all.
+
+One time, when they were close on his trail, he got away from them by
+catching hold of a loose grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and
+then running on. When the Indians came to the place they lost the marks
+of his footprints and gave up the chase. At another time when he was
+taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, and slipped away from
+them without one of them waking up.
+
+Many years afterwards, when he and others had built a fort in Kentucky,
+and brought out their wives and children, Boone's daughters and two
+other girls were carried off by Indians while they were out picking wild
+flowers.
+
+Boone and other hunters were soon on their trail, and followed it by the
+broken bushes and bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young girls
+had left behind them. In this way they came up to the Indians while they
+were eating their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and rescued the
+girls. These young folks did not go out of the fort to pick wild flowers
+after that.
+
+Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and would have been burned alive
+if an old woman had not taken him for her son. The Indians painted his
+face and made him wear an Indian dress and live with them as one of
+themselves. But one day he heard them talking, and found that they were
+going to attack the fort where all his friends were. Then he slipped
+out of the village and ran away. He had a long journey to make and the
+Indians followed him close. But he walked in the water to hide his
+footsteps, and lived on roots and berries, for fear they would hear his
+gun if he shot any game. In the end he got back safe to the fort. He
+found it in bad condition, but he set the men at work to make it strong,
+and when the Indians came they were beaten off.
+
+Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and kept going farther west to
+get away from the new people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.
+He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all the rest of his life
+hunting, and the Indians looked on him as the greatest woodsman and the
+most wonderful hunter the white men ever had.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A HERO OF THE COLONIES
+
+
+DO you not think there are a great many interesting stories in American
+history? I have told you some, and I could tell you many more. I am
+going to tell you one now, about a brave young man who had a great deal
+to do with the making of our glorious country. But to reach it we will
+have to take a step backward over one hundred and fifty years. That is a
+pretty long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about the year
+1750. But people had been coming into this country for more than a
+hundred and fifty years before that, and there were a great many white
+men and women in America at that time.
+
+These people came from Spain and France and Great Britain and Holland
+and Germany and Sweden and other countries besides. The Spaniards had
+spread through many regions in the south; the French had gone west by
+way of the Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi River; but the
+British were settled close to the ocean, and the country back of them
+was still forest land, where only wild men and wild beasts lived. That
+is the way things were situated at the time of the story which I now
+propose to tell.
+
+The young man I am about to speak of knew almost as much about life in
+the deep woods as Daniel Boone, the great hunter, of whom I have just
+told you. Why, when he was only sixteen years old he and another boy
+went far back into the wild country of Virginia to survey or measure the
+lands there for a rich land-holder.
+
+The two boys crossed the rough mountains and went into the broad valley
+of the Shenandoah River, and for months they lived there alone in the
+broad forest. There were no roads through the woods and they had to make
+their own paths. When they were hungry they would shoot a wild turkey or
+a squirrel, or sometimes a deer. They would cook their meat by holding
+it on a stick over a fire of fallen twigs, and for plates they would cut
+large chips from a tree with their axe.
+
+All day long they worked in the woods, measuring the land with a long
+chain. At night they would roll themselves in their blankets and go to
+sleep under the trees. If the weather was cold they gathered wood and
+made a fire. Very likely they enjoyed it all, for boys are fond of
+adventure. Sometimes a party of Indians would come up and be very
+curious to know what these white boys were doing. But the Indians were
+peaceful then, and did not try to harm them. One party amused the young
+surveyors by dancing a war dance before them. A fine time they had in
+the woods, where they stayed alone for months. When they came back the
+land-holder was much pleased with their work.
+
+Now let us go on for five years, when the backwoods boy-surveyor had
+become a young man twenty-one years of age. If we could take ourselves
+back to the year 1753, and plunge into the woods of western
+Pennsylvania, we might see this young man again in the deep forest,
+walking along with his rifle in hand and his pack on his back. He had
+with him an old frontiersman named Gill, and an Indian who acted as
+their guide through the forest.
+
+The Indian was a treacherous fellow. One day, when they were not
+looking, he fired his gun at them from behind a tree. He did not hit
+either of them. Some men would have shot him, but they did not; they let
+him go away and walked on alone through the deep woods. They built a
+fire that night, but they did not sleep before it, for they were afraid
+the Indian might come back and try to kill them while they were
+sleeping. So they left it burning and walked on a few miles and went to
+sleep without a fire.
+
+A few days after that they came to the banks of a wide river. You may
+find it on your map of Pennsylvania. It is called the Allegheny River,
+and runs into the Ohio. It had been frozen, for it was winter time; but
+now the ice was broken and floating swiftly down the stream.
+
+What were they to do? They had to get across that stream. The only plan
+they could think of was to build a raft out of logs and try to push it
+through the ice with long poles. This they did, and were soon out on the
+wild river and among the floating ice.
+
+It was a terrible passage. The great cakes of ice came swirling along
+and striking like heavy hammers against the raft, almost hard enough to
+knock it to pieces. One of these heavy ice cakes struck the pole of the
+young traveler, and gave him such a shock that he fell from the raft
+into the freezing cold water. He had a hard enough scramble to get back
+on the raft again.
+
+After a while they reached a little island in the stream and got ashore.
+There was no wood on it and they could not make a fire, so they had to
+walk about all night to keep from freezing. The young man was wet to the
+skin, but he had young blood and did not suffer as much as the older man
+with him. When morning came they found that the ice was frozen fast
+between the island and the other shore, so all they had to do was to
+walk across it.
+
+These were not the only adventures they had, but they got safe back to
+Virginia, from which they had set out months before.
+
+Do you want to know who this young traveler was? His name was George
+Washington. That is all I need say. Any one who does not know who George
+Washington was is not much of an American. But quite likely you do not
+guess what he was doing in the woods so far away from his home. He had
+been sent there by the governor of Virginia, and I shall have to tell
+you why.
+
+But first you must go back with me to an earlier time. The time I mean
+is when the French were settling in Canada along the St. Lawrence River,
+and going west over the lakes, and floating in canoes down the
+Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Wherever they went they built
+forts and claimed the country for their king. At the same time the
+English were settling along the Atlantic shores and pushing slowly back
+into the country.
+
+You should know that the French and the English were not the best of
+friends. They had their wars in Europe, and every time they got into war
+there they began to fight in America also. This made terrible times in
+the new country. The French had many of the Indians on their side, and
+they marched through the woods and attacked some of the English towns,
+and the cruel Indians murdered many of the poor settlers who had done
+them no harm. There were three such wars, lasting for many years, and a
+great many innocent men, women and children, who had nothing to do with
+the wars in Europe, lost their lives. That is what we call war. It is
+bad enough now, but it was worse still in those days.
+
+The greatest of all the wars between the French and the English was
+still to come. Between the French forts on the Mississippi and the
+English settlements on the Atlantic there was a vast forest land, and
+both the French and the English said it belonged to them. In fact, it
+did not belong to either of them, but to the Indians; but the white men
+never troubled themselves about the rights of the old owners of the
+land.
+
+While the English were talking the French were acting. About 1750 they
+built two or three forts in the country south of Lake Erie. What they
+wanted was the Ohio River, with the rich and fertile lands which lay
+along that stream. Building those forts was the first step. The next
+step would be to send soldiers to the Ohio and build forts there also.
+
+When the English heard what the French were doing they became greatly
+alarmed. If they did not do something very quickly they would lose all
+this great western country. The governor of Virginia wished to know what
+the French meant to do, and he thought the best way to find out was to
+ask them. So he chose the young backwoods surveyor, George Washington,
+and sent him through the great forest to the French forts.
+
+Washington was very young for so important a duty. But he was tall and
+strong and quick-witted, and he was not afraid of any man or anything.
+And he knew all about life in the woods. So he was chosen, and far west
+he went over plain and mountain, now on horseback and now on foot,
+following the Indian trails through the forest, until at last he came to
+the French forts.
+
+The French officers told him that they had come there to stay. They were
+not going to give up their forts to please the governor of Virginia. And
+Washington's quick eye saw that they were getting canoes ready to go
+down the streams to the Ohio River the next spring. This was the news
+the young messenger was taking back to the governor when he had his
+adventures with the Indian and the ice.
+
+If any of you know anything about how wars are brought on, you may well
+think there was soon going to be war in America. Both parties wanted the
+land, and both were ready to fight to get it, and when people feel that
+way fighting is not far off.
+
+Indeed, the spring of 1754 was not far advanced before both sides were
+on the move. Washington had picked out a beautiful spot for a fort.
+This was where the two rivers which form the Ohio come together. On
+that spot the city of Pittsburg now stands; but then it was a very wild
+place.
+
+As soon as the governor heard Washington's report he sent a party of men
+in great haste to build a fort at that point. But in a short time a
+larger party of French came down the Allegheny River in canoes and drove
+the English workmen away. Then they finished the fort for themselves and
+called it Fort Duquesne.
+
+Meanwhile Washington was on his way back. A force of four hundred
+Virginians had been sent out under an officer named Colonel Frye. But
+the colonel died on the march, and young Washington, then only
+twenty-two years old, found himself at the head of a regiment of
+soldiers, and about to start a great war. Was it not a difficult
+position for so young a man? Not many men of that age would have known
+what to do, but George Washington was not an ordinary man.
+
+While the Virginians were marching west, the French were marching south,
+and it was not long before they came together. A party of French hid in
+a thicket to watch the English, and Washington, thinking they were there
+for no good, ordered his men to fire. They did so, and the leader of the
+French was killed. This was the first shot in the coming war.
+
+But the youthful commander soon found that the French were too strong
+for him. He built a sort of fort at a place called Great Meadows, and
+named it Fort Necessity. It was hardly finished before the French and
+Indians came swarming all around it and a severe fight began.
+
+The Virginians fought well, but the French were too strong, and fired
+into the fort till Washington had to surrender. This took place on July
+4, 1754, just twenty-two years before the American Declaration of
+Independence. Washington and his men were allowed to march home with
+their arms, and the young colonel was very much praised when he got
+home, for everybody thought he had done his work in the best possible
+way.
+
+When the news of this battle crossed the ocean there was great
+excitement in England and France, and both countries sent soldiers to
+America. Those from England were under a general named Braddock, a man
+who knew all about fighting in England, but knew nothing about fighting
+in America. And what was worse, he would let nobody tell him. Washington
+generously tried to do so, but he got snubbed by the proud British
+general for his pains.
+
+After a while away marched General Braddock, with his British soldiers
+in their fine red coats. Washington went with him with a body of
+Virginians dressed in plain colony clothes. On and on they went, through
+the woods and over the mountains, cutting down trees and opening a road
+for their wagons, and bravely beating their drums and waving their
+flags. At length they came near Fort Duquesne, the drums still beating,
+the flags still flying, the gun barrels glittering in the bright
+sunshine.
+
+"Let me go ahead with my Virginians," said Washington. "They know all
+about Indian fighting."
+
+"That for your Indians!" said Braddock, snapping his fingers. "They will
+not stay in their hiding places long when my men come up."
+
+Soon after they came into a narrow place, with steep banks and thick
+bushes all around. And suddenly loud Indian war-whoops and the crack of
+guns came from those bushes. Not a man could be seen, but bullets flew
+like hail-stones among the red-coats. The soldiers fired back, but they
+wasted their bullets on the bushes. Washington and his men ran into the
+woods and got behind trees like the Indians, but Braddock would not let
+his men do the same, and they were shot down like sheep. At length
+General Braddock fell wounded, and then his brave red-coats turned and
+ran for their lives. Very likely not a man of them would have got away
+if Washington and his men had not kept back the French and Indians.
+
+This defeat was a bad business for the poor settlers, for the savage
+redskins began murdering them on all sides, and during all the rest of
+the war Washington was kept busy fighting with these Indians. Not till
+four years afterwards was he able to take Fort Duquesne from the French.
+
+Then another body of men was sent through the woods and over the
+mountains to capture this fort. But their general did as Braddock had
+done before him, spending so much time cutting a highroad through the
+woods that the whole season passed away and he was ready to turn and
+march back. Then Washington, who was with him, asked permission to go
+forward with his rangers. The general told him to go and he hurried
+through the woods and to the fort. When he came near it the French took
+to their boats and paddled off down the river, so that Washington took
+the fort without firing a shot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR AND THE STORY OF THE ACADIANS
+
+
+HAVE any of my young readers read the beautiful poem of "Evangeline,"
+written by the poet Longfellow? Very likely it is too old for you,
+though the time will come when you will read it and enjoy it greatly.
+Evangeline was a pretty and pious woman who lived in a French settlement
+called Acadia, on the Atlantic coast. You will not find this name on any
+of your maps, but must look for Nova Scotia, by which name Acadia is now
+known. The story of Evangeline tells us about the cruel way in which the
+poor Acadians were treated by the English. It is a sad and pathetic
+story, as you will see when you have read it.
+
+It was one of the wicked results of the war between the French and the
+English. There were many cruel deeds in this war, and the people who
+suffered the most were those who had the least to do with the fighting.
+In one place a quiet, happy family of father, mother and children,
+living on a lonely farm, and not dreaming of any danger, suddenly hear
+the wild war-whoop of the Indians, and soon see their doors broken open
+and their house blazing, and are carried off into cruel captivity--those
+who are not killed on the spot. In another place all the people of a
+village are driven from their comfortable homes by soldiers and forced
+to wander and beg their bread in distant lands. And all this takes place
+because the kings of England and France, three thousand miles away, are
+quarreling about some lands which do not belong to either of them. If
+those who brought on wars had to suffer for them they would soon come to
+an end. But they revel and feast in their splendid palaces while poor
+and innocent people endure the suffering. The war that began in the
+wilds of western Pennsylvania, between the French and Indians and the
+English lasted seven years, from 1754 to 1761. During that time there
+were many terrible battles, and thousands of soldiers were killed, and
+there was much suffering and slaughter among the people, and burning of
+houses, and destruction of property, and horrors of all sorts.
+
+It is called the French and Indian War, because there were many Indians
+on the side of the French. There were some on the side of the English,
+also. Indians are very savage and cruel in their way of fighting, as you
+already know. I shall have to tell you one instance of their love of
+bloodshed. One of the English forts, called Fort William Henry, which
+stood at the southern end of Lake George, had to surrender to the
+French, and its soldiers were obliged to march out and give up their
+guns.
+
+There were a great many Indians with the French, and while the prisoners
+stood outside the fort, without a gun in their hands, the savage men
+attacked them and began to kill them with knives and tomahawks. The
+French had promised to protect them, but they stood by and did nothing
+to stop this terrible slaughter, and many of the helpless soldiers were
+murdered. Others were carried off by the Indians as prisoners. It was
+the most dreadful event of the whole cruel war.
+
+I must now ask you to look on a map of the State of New York, if you
+have any. There you will find the Hudson River, and follow it up north
+from the city of New York, past Albany, the capital of the state, until
+it ends in a region of mountains. Near its upper waters is a long,
+narrow lake named Lake George, which is full of beautiful islands. North
+of that is a much larger lake named Lake Champlain, which reaches up
+nearly to Canada.
+
+The British had forts on the Hudson River and Lake George and the French
+on Lake Champlain, and also between the two lakes, where stood the
+strong Fort Ticonderoga. It was around these forts and along these
+lakes that most of the fighting took place. For a long time the French
+had the best of it. The British lost many battles and were driven back.
+But they had the most soldiers, and in the end they began to defeat the
+French and drive them back, and Canada became the seat of war. But let
+me tell you the story of the Acadians.
+
+Acadia was a country which had been settled by the French a long, long
+time before, away back in 1604, before there was an English settlement
+in America. Captain John Smith, you know, came to America in 1607, three
+years afterwards. Acadia was a very fertile country, and the settlers
+planted fields of grain and orchards of apples and other fruits, and
+lived a very happy life, with neat houses and plenty of good food, and
+in time the whole country became a rich farming land.
+
+But the British would not let these happy farmers alone. Every time
+there was trouble with the French, soldiers were sent to Acadia. It was
+captured by the British in 1690, but was given back to France in 1697,
+when that war ended. It was taken again by the British in the war that
+began in 1702, and this time it was not given back. Even its name of
+Acadia was taken away, and it was called Nova Scotia, which is not
+nearly so pretty a name.
+
+Thus it was that, when the new war with France began, Acadia was held
+as a province of Great Britain. To be sure the most of its people were
+descended from the old French settlers and did not like their British
+masters, but they could not help themselves, and went on farming in
+their old fashion. They were ignorant, simple-minded countrymen, who
+looked upon France as their country, and were not willing to be British
+subjects.
+
+That is the way with the French. It is the same to-day in Canada, which
+has been a colony of Great Britain for nearly a century and a half. The
+descendants of the former French still speak their old language and love
+their old country, and now sometimes fight the British with their votes
+as they once did with their swords.
+
+The British did not hold the whole of Acadia. The country now called New
+Brunswick, which lies north of Nova Scotia, was part of it, and was
+still held by the French. In 1755 the British government decided to
+attempt the capture of this country, and sent out soldiers for that
+purpose. Fighting began, but the French defended themselves bravely, and
+the British found they had a hard task to perform.
+
+What made it worse for them was that some of the Acadians, who did not
+want to see the British succeed, acted as spies upon them, and told the
+French soldiers about their movements, so that the French were
+everywhere ready for them. And the Acadians helped the French in other
+ways, and gave the British a great deal of trouble.
+
+This may have been wrong, but it was natural. Every one feels like
+helping his friends against his enemies. But you may be sure that it
+made the British very angry, and in the end they took a cruel
+resolution. This was to send all the Acadians away from their native
+land to far-off, foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who were
+acting as spies, so the English government ordered them all to be
+removed. They were told they might stay if they would swear to be true
+subjects of the king of England, but this the most of them would not do,
+for they were French at heart, and looked on King Louis of France as
+their true and rightful ruler.
+
+Was not this very cruel? There were hundreds of boys and girls like
+yourselves among these poor Acadians, who had happy homes, and loved to
+work and play in their pretty gardens and green fields, and whose
+fathers and mothers did no harm to any one. But because a few busy men
+gave news to the French, all of these were to be torn from their
+comfortable homes and sent far away to wander in strange lands, where
+many of them would have to beg for bread. It was a heartless act, and
+the world has ever since said so, and among all the cruel things the
+British have done, the removal of the Acadians from their homes is
+looked upon as one of the worst.
+
+When soldiers are sent to do a cruel thing they are very apt to do it in
+the most brutal fashion. The Acadians did not know what was to be done.
+It was kept secret for fear they might run away and hide. A large number
+of soldiers were sent out, and they spread like a net over a wide
+stretch of country. Then they marched together and drove the people
+before them. The poor farmers might be at their dinners or working in
+their fields, but they were told that they must stop everything and
+leave their homes at once, for they were to be sent out of the country.
+Just think of it! What a grief and terror they must have been in!
+
+They were hardly given time to gather the few things they could carry
+with them, and on all sides they were driven like so many sheep to the
+seaside town of Annapolis, to which ships had been brought to carry them
+away. More than six thousand of these unhappy people, old and young,
+men, women and little ones, were gathered there; many of them weeping
+bitterly, many more with looks of despair on their faces, all of them
+sad at heart and very likely wishing they were dead.
+
+Around them were soldiers to keep them from running away. They were made
+to get on the ships in such haste that families were often separated,
+husband and wife, or children and their mothers, being put on different
+ships and sent to different places. And for fear that some of them might
+come back again their houses were burned and their farms laid waste.
+Many of them went to the French settlements in Louisiana, and others to
+other parts of America. Poor exiles! they were scattered widely over the
+earth. Some of them in time came back to their loved Acadia, but the
+most of them never saw it again. It was this dreadful act about which
+Longfellow wrote in his poem of Evangeline.
+
+Now I must tell you how the French and Indian War ended. The French had
+two important cities in Canada, Montreal and Quebec. Quebec was built on
+a high and steep hill and was surrounded by strong walls, behind which
+were more than eight thousand soldiers. It was not an easy city to
+capture.
+
+A large British fleet was sent against it, and also an army of eight
+thousand men, under General Wolfe. For two or three months they fired at
+the city from the river below, but the French scorned them from their
+steep hill-top. At length General Wolfe was told of a narrow path by
+which he might climb the hill. One dark night he tried it, and by
+daybreak a large body of men had reached the hill-top, and had dragged
+up a number of cannon with them.
+
+When the French saw this they were frightened. They hurried out of the
+city, thinking they could drive the English over the precipice before
+any more of them got up. They were mistaken in this. The English met
+them boldly, and in the battle that followed they gained the victory and
+Quebec fell into their hands.
+
+General Wolfe was mortally wounded, but when he was told that the French
+were in flight, he said: "God be praised! I die happy."
+
+Montcalm, the French general, also fell wounded. When he knew that he
+must die he said: "So much the better; I shall not live to see the
+surrender of Quebec."
+
+The next year Montreal was taken, and the war ended. And in the treaty
+of peace France gave up all her colonies in America. England got Canada
+and Spain got Louisiana. All North America now belonged to two nations,
+England and Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+I SHOULD be glad to have some of you take a steamboat ride up the broad
+Hudson River, past the city of New York, and onward in the track of the
+"Half Moon," Henry Hudson's ship. If you did so, you would come in time
+to the point where this ship stopped and turned back. Here, where Hudson
+and his Dutch sailors saw only a great spread of forest trees,
+stretching far back from the river bank, our modern travelers would see
+the large and handsome city of Albany, the capital of the State of New
+York.
+
+This is one of the hundreds of fine cities which have grown up in our
+country since Henry Hudson's time. A hundred and fifty years ago it was
+a small place, not much larger than many of our villages. But even then
+it was of importance, for in it was taken the first step towards our
+great Union of States. I shall have to tell you what this step was, for
+you will certainly want to know.
+
+Well, at the time I speak of there was no such thing as an American
+Union. There were thirteen colonies, reaching from New Hampshire down
+to Georgia. But each of these was like a little nation of its own; each
+had its own government, made its own laws, and fought its own fights.
+This was well enough in one way, but it was not so well in another. At
+one time the people had the Indians to fight with, at another time the
+French, and sometimes both of these together, and many of them thought
+that they could do their fighting better if they were united into one
+country.
+
+So in the year 1754 the colonies sent some of their best men to Albany,
+to talk over this matter, and see if a union of the colonies could not
+be made. This is what I meant when I said that the first step towards
+the American Union was taken at Albany.
+
+Of these men, there is only one I shall say anything about. This man's
+name you should know and remember, for he was one of the noblest and
+wisest men that ever lived in this country. His name was Benjamin
+Franklin. Forty years before this time he was a little Boston boy at
+work in his father's shop, helping him make candles. Afterwards he
+learned how to print, and then, in 1723, he went to Philadelphia, where
+he soon had a shop and a newspaper office, and in time became rich.
+
+There was nothing going on that Franklin did not take part in. In his
+shop he bound books, he made ink, he sold rags, soap, and coffee. He was
+not ashamed of honest work, and would take off his coat and wheel his
+papers along the street in a wheelbarrow. He started many institutions
+in Philadelphia which are now very important. Among these there are a
+great university, a large hospital, and a fine library. No doubt you
+have read how he brought down the lightning from the clouds along the
+string of a kite, and proved that lightning is the same thing as
+electricity. And he took an active part in all the political movements
+of the time. That is why he came to be sent to Albany in 1754, as a
+member of the Albany Convention.
+
+Franklin always did things in ways that set people to thinking. When he
+went to Albany he took with him copies of a queer picture which he had
+printed in his newspaper. This was a snake cut into thirteen pieces.
+Under each piece was the first letter of the name of a colony, such as
+"P" for Pennsylvania. Beneath the whole were the words "Unite or die."
+
+That was like Franklin; he was always doing something odd. The cut-up
+snake stood for the thirteen divided colonies. What Franklin meant was
+that they could not exist alone. A snake is not of much account when it
+is chopped up into bits, but it is a dangerous creature when it is
+whole. He proposed that there should be a grand council of all the
+colonies, a sort of Congress, meeting every year in Philadelphia, which
+was the most central large city. Over them all was to be a
+governor-general appointed by the king. This council could make laws,
+lay taxes, and perform other important duties.
+
+That is enough to say about Franklin's plan, for it was not accepted. It
+was passed by the convention, it is true, but the king would not have it
+and the colonies did not want it; so the snake still lay stretched out
+along the Atlantic in thirteen pieces. Then came the great war with the
+French of which I have told you. After that was over, things came to
+pass which in the end forced the colonies to combine. Thus Franklin's
+plan, or something like it, was in time carried out, but for many years
+the country was in a terrible state. This is what I am now going to tell
+you about.
+
+You should know that the war with the French cost the king and the
+colonies a great deal of money. The king of England at that time was
+named George. He was an obstinate man, but not a very wise one, as you
+will think when you have learned more about him. One thing he wanted to
+do was to send soldiers to America to keep the French from getting back
+what they had lost, and he asked the people to pay these soldiers. He
+also asked them to send him money to pay the governors and judges whom
+he had chosen to rule over them. But the people thought they could take
+care of themselves, and did not want British soldiers. And they
+preferred to pay the governors and judges themselves as they had always
+done, and did not want King George to do it for them. So they would not
+send him the money he asked for.
+
+Some of you may think this was very mean in the Americans, after all the
+British had done to help them in their war with the French. But they
+knew very well what they were about. They thought that if they gave the
+king a dollar to-day he might want five dollars to-morrow, and ten
+dollars the next day. They judged it best not to begin with the dollar.
+Kings, you should know, do not always make the best use of money that is
+given them by their people.
+
+And that was not all. The people in the colonies did not like the way
+they had been treated by the English. They had mountains full of iron,
+but the king would not let them make this iron into tools. They had
+plenty of wool, but he would not let them weave it into cloth. They must
+buy these and other things in England, and must keep at farming; but
+they were not allowed to send their grain to England, but had to eat it
+all at home. They could not even send goods from one colony to another.
+Thus they were to be kept poor that the rich English merchants and
+manufacturers might grow rich.
+
+These were some of the things the American people had to complain of.
+There were still other things, and a good many of the Americans had very
+little love for the English king and people. They felt that they were in
+a sort of slavery, and almost as if they had ropes on their hands and
+chains on their feet.
+
+When King George was told that the Americans would not send him money he
+was very angry. I am afraid he called them bad names. They were a low,
+ignorant, ungrateful set, he said, and he would show them who was their
+master. He would tax them and get money from them in that way. So the
+English Parliament, which is a body of lawmakers like our Congress, came
+together and passed laws to tax the Americans.
+
+The first tax they laid is what is called a stamp tax. I fancy you know
+very well what that is, for we have had a stamp tax in this country more
+than once, when the government was in need of money. Everybody who wrote
+a bank check, or made any legal paper, or sent away an express package,
+had to buy a stamp from the government and put it on the paper; and
+stamps had to be used on many other things.
+
+But there is this difference. Our people were quite willing to buy these
+stamps, but they were not willing to buy the stamps which the British
+government sent them in 1765. Why? Well, they had a good reason for it,
+and this was that they had nothing to do with making the law. The
+English would not pay any taxes except those made by the people whom
+they elected to Parliament, and the Americans said they had the same
+right. They were not allowed to send any members to Parliament, so they
+said that Parliament had no right to tax them. Their own legislatures
+might vote to send the king money, but the English Parliament had no
+right to vote for them.
+
+When the king found that the Americans would not use his stamps he tried
+another plan. He laid a tax on tea and some other goods. He thought that
+our people could not do without tea, so he sent several shiploads across
+the ocean, expecting them to buy it and pay the tax. But he soon found
+that the colonists had no more use for taxed tea than for stamps. They
+would not even let the captains bring their tea on shore, except at
+Charleston, and there it was packed in damp cellars, where it soon
+rotted. A ship sent to Annapolis was set on fire and burned to the
+water's edge with the tea in it.
+
+But the most stirring event took place at Boston. There one night, while
+the tea-ship lay at a wharf in the harbor, a number of young men dressed
+like Indians rushed on board with a loud war-whoop and began to break
+open the tea-chests with their hatchets and pour the tea into the
+harbor. This was the famous "Boston tea-party."
+
+Americans liked tea, but not tea with an English tax on it. They boiled
+leaves and roots and made some sort of tea out of them. It was poor
+stuff, but they did not pay any tax. And they would not buy any cloth or
+other goods brought from England. If the king was angry and stubborn
+they were angry and stubborn, too, and every day they grew more angry,
+until many of them began to think that they would be better off without
+a king. They were not the kind of people to be made slaves of easily by
+King George or any other king.
+
+When the king heard of the "Boston tea-party" he was in a fury. He would
+make Boston pay well for its tea, he said. So he sent soldiers there,
+and he gave orders that no ships should go into or out of Boston harbor.
+This stopped most of the business of the town, and soon the poor people
+had no work to do and very little to eat. But they had crowded meetings
+at Faneuil Hall, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock and other patriots
+talked to them of their rights and wrongs. It began to look as if war
+would soon come.
+
+The time had come at last for a union of the colonies. What Franklin had
+failed to do at Albany in 1754 was done at Philadelphia in 1774. A
+meeting was held there which was called a Congress, and was made up of
+some of the best men of the country sent from the colonies. One of these
+was George Washington, who had lived on his farm at Mount Vernon since
+the end of the French War.
+
+Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to give the people of
+this country the same rights that the people of England had. There was
+no harm in this, I am sure, but it made the king more obstinate still. I
+have said he was not a wise man. Most people say he was a very foolish
+one, or he would have known that the people of the colonies would fight
+for their rights if they could not get them in peace.
+
+All around Boston the farmers and villagers began to collect guns and
+powder and to drill men into soldiers. These were called "minute men,"
+which meant that they would be ready to fight at a minute's notice, if
+they were asked to. When people begin to get ready in this way, war is
+usually not far off.
+
+One night at Boston a man named Paul Revere stood watching a distant
+steeple till he saw a light suddenly flash out through the darkness.
+Then he leaped on his horse and rode at full speed away. That light was
+a signal telling him that British soldiers were on the march to Concord
+twenty miles away, to destroy some powder and guns which had been
+gathered there for the use of these "minute men."
+
+Away rode Revere through the night, rousing up the people and shouting
+to them that the British soldiers were coming. He was far ahead of the
+soldiers, so that when they reached the village of Lexington, ten miles
+from Boston, the people were wide awake, and a party of minute men was
+drawn up on the village green. The soldiers were ordered to fire on
+these men, and some of them fell dead. Those were the first shots in a
+great war. It was the 19th of April, 1775.
+
+The British marched on to Concord, but the farmers had carried away most
+of the stores and buried them in the woods. Then the red-coats started
+back, and a terrible march they had of it. For all along the road were
+farmers with guns in their hands, firing on the troops from behind trees
+and stone walls. Some of the soldiers got back to Boston, but many of
+them lay dead in the road. The poor fellows killed at Lexington were
+terribly avenged.
+
+Far and wide spread the news, and on all sides the farmers left their
+plows and took down their rifles, and thousands of them set out along
+the roads to Boston. Soon there were twenty thousand armed men around
+the town, and the British were shut up like rats in a trap. The American
+people were in rebellion against the king and war had begun.
+
+It was to be a long and dreadful war, but it led to American liberty,
+and that was a thing well worth fighting for. While the people were
+laying siege to Boston, Congress was in session at Philadelphia, talking
+about what had best be done. One good thing they did was to make George
+Washington commander-in-chief of the army and send him to Boston to
+fight the British there. They could not have found a better soldier in
+all America.
+
+The next good thing took place a year later. This was the great event
+which you celebrate with fireworks every 4th of July. Congress decided
+that this country ought to be free, and no longer to be under the rule
+of an English king. So a paper was written by a member from Virginia
+named Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Benjamin Franklin and some
+others. The paper is known by the long name of "Declaration of
+Independence." It declared that the American colonies were free from
+British rule, and in future would take care of themselves. It was on the
+4th of July, 1776, that this great paper was adopted by Congress, and on
+that day the Republic of the United States of America was born. That is
+why our people have such a glad and noisy time every 4th of July.
+
+Everywhere the people were full of joy when they heard what had been
+done. In the state house at Philadelphia rang out the great bell on
+which the words, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the
+inhabitants thereof." In New York the statue of King George was pulled
+down and thrown into the dust of the street. The people did not know
+what dark days lay before them, but they were ready to suffer much for
+the sake of liberty, and to risk all they had, life and all, for the
+freedom of their native land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM
+
+
+ANY of my readers who are true, sound-hearted Americans, and I am sure
+all of them are that, would have been glad to see how the New England
+farmers swarmed around Boston in April, 1775. Some of them had fought in
+the French War, and brought with them their old rusty muskets, which
+they knew very well how to use. And most of them were hunters and had
+learned how to shoot. And all of them were bold and brave and were
+determined to have a free country. The English red-coat soldiers in
+Boston would soon find that these countrymen were not men to be laughed
+at, even if they had not been trained in war.
+
+One morning the English woke up and rubbed their eyes hard, for there,
+on a hill that overlooked the town, was a crowd of Americans. They had
+been at work all night, digging and making earthworks to fight behind,
+and now had quite a fort. The English officers did not like the look of
+things, for the Americans could fire from that hill--Bunker Hill, they
+called it--straight down into the town. They must be driven away or
+they would drive the troops away.
+
+I can tell you that was a busy and bloody day for Boston. The great
+war-ships in the harbor thundered with their cannon at the men on the
+hill. And the soldiers began to march up the hill, thinking that the
+Yankees would run like sheep when they saw the red-coats coming near.
+But the Yankees were not there to run.
+
+"Don't fire, boys, till you see the whites of their eyes," said brave
+General Prescott.
+
+So the Yankee boys waited till the British were close at hand. Then they
+fired and the red-coats fell in rows, for the farmers did not waste
+their bullets. Those that did not fall scampered in haste down the hill.
+It was a strange sight to see British soldiers running away from Yankee
+farmers.
+
+After a while the British came again. They were not so sure this time.
+Again the Yankee muskets rattled along the earthworks, and again the
+British turned and ran--those who were able to.
+
+They could never have taken that hill if the farmer soldiers had not run
+out of powder. When the red-coats came a third time the Yankees could
+not fire, and had to fight them with the butts of their guns. So the
+British won the hill; but they had found that the Yankee farmers were
+not cowards; after that time they never liked to march against American
+earthworks.
+
+Not long after the battle of Bunker Hill General Washington came to
+command the Americans, and he spent months in drilling and making
+soldiers out of them. He also got a good supply of powder and muskets
+and some cannon, and one dark night in March, 1776, he built a fort on
+another hill that looked down on Boston.
+
+I warrant you, the British were alarmed when they looked up that hill
+the next morning and saw cannon on its top and men behind the cannon.
+They would have to climb that hill as they had done Bunker Hill, or else
+leave Boston. But they had no fancy for another Bunker Hill, so they
+decided to leave. They went on board their ships and sailed away, and
+Washington and his men marched joyfully into the town. That was a great
+day for America, and it was soon followed by the 4th of July and the
+glorious Declaration of Independence. Since that 4th of July no king has
+ever ruled over the United States.
+
+We call this war the American Revolution. Do you know what a revolution
+is? It means the doing away with a bad government and replacing it with
+a better one. In this country it meant that our people were tired of the
+rule of England and wished to govern themselves. They had to fight hard
+for their freedom, it is true, but it was well worth fighting for.
+
+The war was a long and dreadful one. It went on for seven long years. At
+one time everything seemed lost; at other times all grew bright and
+hopeful. And thus it went on, up and down, to the end. I cannot tell you
+all that took place, but I will give you the important facts.
+
+After the British left Boston, they sailed about for a time, and then
+they came with a large army to New York. Washington was there with his
+soldiers to meet them, and did his best, but everything seemed to go
+wrong. First, the Americans were beaten in battle and had to march out
+of New York and let the British march in. Then Washington and his ragged
+men were obliged to hasten across the State of New Jersey with a strong
+British force after them. They were too weak to face the British.
+
+When they got to the Delaware River the Americans crossed it and took
+all the boats, so that the British could not follow them. It was now
+near winter time, and both armies went into winter quarters. They faced
+each other, but the wide river ran between.
+
+You may well think that by this time the American people were getting
+very down-hearted. Many of them thought that all was lost, and that
+they would have to submit to King George. The army dwindled away and no
+new soldiers came in, so that it looked as if it would go to pieces. It
+was growing very dark for American liberty.
+
+[Illustration: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE.]
+
+But there was one man who did not despair, and that man was George
+Washington. He saw that something must be done to stir up the spirits of
+the people, and he was just the man to do it. It was a wonderful
+Christmas he kept that year. All Christmas day his ragged and hungry
+soldiers were marching up their side of the Delaware, and crossing the
+river in boats, though the wind was biting cold, and the air was full of
+falling snow, and the broken ice was floating in great blocks down the
+river; but nothing stopped the gallant soldiers. All Christmas night
+they marched down the other side of the river, though their shoes were
+so bad that the ground became reddened by blood from their feet. Two of
+the poor fellows were frozen to death.
+
+At Trenton, a number of miles below, there was a body of German
+soldiers. These had been hired by King George to help him fight his
+battles. That day they had been eating a good Christmas dinner while the
+hungry Americans were marching through the snow. At night they went to
+bed, not dreaming of danger.
+
+They were wakened in the morning by shots and shouts. Washington and his
+men were in the streets of the town. They had hardly time to seize
+their guns before the ragged Yankees were all around them and nearly all
+of them were made prisoners of war.
+
+Was not that a great and glorious deed? It filled the Americans with new
+hope. In a few days afterwards, Washington defeated the British in
+another battle, and then settled down with his ragged but brave men in
+the hills of New Jersey. He did not go behind a river this time. The
+British knew where he was and could come to see him if they wanted to.
+But they did not come. Very likely they had seen enough of him for that
+winter.
+
+The next year things went wrong again for Washington. A large British
+army sailed from New York and landed at the head of Chesapeake Bay. Then
+they marched overland to Philadelphia. Washington fought a battle with
+them on Brandywine Creek, but his men were defeated and the British
+marched on and entered Philadelphia. They now held the largest cities of
+the country, Philadelphia and New York.
+
+While the British were living in plenty and having a very good time in
+the Quaker city, the poor Americans spent a wretched and terrible winter
+at a place called Valley Forge. The winter was a dismally cold one, and
+the men had not half enough food to eat or clothes to wear, and very
+poor huts to live in. They suffered dreadfully, and before the spring
+came many of them died from disease and hardship.
+
+Poor fellows! they were paying dearly for their struggle for liberty.
+But there was no such despair this winter as there had been the winter
+before, for news came from the north that warmed the soldiers up like a
+fire. Though Washington had lost a battle, a great victory had been
+gained by the Americans at Saratoga, in the upper part of New York
+state.
+
+While General Howe was marching on Philadelphia, another British army,
+under General Burgoyne, had been marching south from Canada, along the
+line of Lake Champlain and Lake George. But Burgoyne and his men soon
+found themselves in a tight place. Food began to run short and a
+regiment of a thousand men was sent into Vermont to seize some stores.
+They were met by the Green Mountain boys, led by Colonel Stark, a brave
+old soldier.
+
+"There are the red-coats," said the bold colonel. "We must beat them
+to-day, or Molly Stark is a widow."[1]
+
+Beat them they did. Only seventy men got back to Burgoyne. All the rest
+were killed or captured.
+
+Another force, under Colonel St. Leger, marched south from Oswego, on
+Lake Ontario. A large body of Indians was with him. This army stopped to
+besiege a fort in the wilderness, and General Arnold marched to help the
+fort.
+
+The way Arnold defeated St. Leger was a very curious one. He sent a
+half-witted fellow into the Indian camp with the tale that a great
+American force was coming. The messenger came running in among the
+savages, with bullet-holes in his clothes. He seemed half scared to
+death, and told the Indians that a vast host was coming after him as
+thick as the leaves on the trees.
+
+This story frightened the Indians and they ran off in great haste
+through the woods. When the British soldiers saw this they fell into
+such a terror that they took to their heels, leaving all their tents and
+cannon behind them. The people in the fort did not know what it meant,
+till Arnold came up and told them how he had won a victory without
+firing a shot, by a sort of fairy story.
+
+All this was very bad for Burgoyne. The Indians he brought with him
+began to leave. At length he found himself in a terrible plight. His
+provisions were nearly gone, he was surrounded by the Americans, and
+after fighting two battles he retreated to Saratoga. Here he had to
+surrender. He and all his army became prisoners to the Americans.
+
+We cannot wonder that this warmed up the Americans like a fire. It
+filled the English with despair. They began to think that they would
+never win back the colonies.
+
+One thing the good news did was to get the French to come to the help of
+the Americans. Benjamin Franklin was then in Paris, and he asked the
+king to send ships and men and money to America. The French had no love
+for the British, who had taken from them all their colonies in America,
+so they did as Franklin wished.
+
+There are two more things I wish to tell you in this chapter, one good
+and one bad. When the British in Philadelphia heard that the French were
+coming to help the Americans, they were afraid they might be caught in a
+trap. So they left in great haste and marched for New York. Washington
+followed and fought a battle with them, but they got away. After that
+Washington's army laid siege to New York, as it had formerly done to
+Boston.
+
+That was the good thing. The bad thing was this. General Benedict
+Arnold, who had defeated St. Leger and his Indians, and who was one of
+the bravest of the American officers, turned traitor to his country. He
+had charge of West Point, a strong fort on the Hudson River, and tried
+to give this up to the British. But he was found out and had to flee for
+his life. Major Andre, a British officer, who had been sent to talk with
+Arnold, was caught by three American scouts on his way back to New York.
+They searched him for papers, and found what they wanted hidden in his
+boot. Poor Andre was hung for a spy, but the traitor Arnold escaped. But
+he was hated by the Americans and despised by the British, and twenty
+years afterwards he died in shame and remorse.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] All the accounts agree that Colonel Stark spoke of his wife as
+"Molly Stark." But it has been found that his wife's name was Elizabeth;
+so he may have said "Betty Stark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+WE are justly proud of our great war-ships, with their strong steel
+sides and their mighty guns, each of which can hurl a cannon-ball miles
+and miles away. And such balls! Why, one of them is as heavy as a dozen
+of you tied together, and can bore a hole through a plate of solid steel
+as thick as your bodies.
+
+Such ships and such guns as these had not been dreamed of in the days of
+the Revolution. Then there were only small wooden vessels, moved by
+sails instead of steam, and a cannon-ball that weighed twenty-four
+pounds was thought very heavy. Six and twelve-pound balls were common.
+And to hit a ship a mile away! It was not to be thought of. I tell you,
+in those days ships had to fight nearly side by side and men to fight
+face to face. To be a mile away was as good as being a hundred miles.
+
+But for all this there was some hard fighting done at sea in the
+Revolutionary War, in spite of the small ships and little guns. They
+fought closer together, that was all. Boast as we may about the
+wonderful work done by our ships at Santiago and Manila in the Spanish
+War, we have better right to be proud of the deeds of our great naval
+hero of the Revolutionary War, with his rotten old ship and poor little
+guns, but with his stout heart behind them all.
+
+This hero was the sturdy John Paul Jones, one of the boldest and bravest
+men that ever stood on a ship's deck. And his great sea fight has never
+been surpassed in all the history of naval war. I cannot tell you the
+story of the Revolution without telling about the great ocean victory of
+the bold-hearted Paul Jones.
+
+Ships poor enough were those we had to fight with. A little fleet of
+seven or eight small vessels, whose heaviest guns threw only nine-pound
+balls, and the most of them only six-pound. You could have thrown these
+yourself with one hand, though not so far. These were all we had at
+first to fight more than seventy British ships, with guns that threw
+eighteen-pound balls, and some still heavier. Do you not think it looked
+like a one-sided fight?
+
+But the Americans had one great advantage. They had not many merchant
+ships and not much to lose upon the seas. On the other hand, the ocean
+swarmed with the merchant ships of England, and with the store ships
+bringing supplies of guns and powder and food to the armies on shore.
+Here were splendid prizes for our gallant seamen, and out of every port
+sailed bold privateers, or war-ships sent out by their owners, and not
+by the government, sweeping the seas and bringing in many a richly-laden
+craft.
+
+Some of the best fighting of the war was done by these privateers. While
+they were hunting for merchant ships they often came across war-ships,
+and you can be sure they did not always run away. No, indeed; they were
+usually ready to fight, and during the war no less than sixteen
+war-vessels were captured by our ocean rovers. On the other hand, the
+British privateers did not capture a single American war-ship. As for
+merchant vessels, our privateers brought them in by the dozens. One
+fleet of sixty vessels set out from Ireland for the West Indies, and out
+of these thirty-five were gobbled up by our privateers, and their rich
+stores brought into American ports. During the whole war the privateers
+took more than seven hundred prizes. I might go on to tell you of some
+of their hard fights, but I think you would rather read the story of
+Paul Jones, the boldest and bravest of them all, the terror of the seas
+to the British fleet.
+
+Paul Jones, you should know, was born in Scotland. But he made America
+his home. And as he was known to be a good sailor, he was appointed
+first lieutenant of the "Alfred," the flagship of our small fleet. He
+had the honor to be the first man to raise a flag on an American
+man-of-war, and that is something to be proud of. This took place on the
+"Delaware," at Philadelphia, about Christmas, 1775.
+
+It was an important event for the fleet was just being sent out. At a
+given signal Lieutenant Jones grasped the halliards, and hauled up to
+the mizzen topmast a great flag of yellow silk. As it unfurled to the
+breeze cannon roared and crowds on the shore lustily cheered. In the
+centre of the flag was seen the figure of a green pine tree, and under
+this a rattlesnake lay coiled, with the warning motto, "Don't tread on
+me!"
+
+This was the famous rattlesnake flag. Another flag was raised on which
+were thirteen stripes, in turns red and white, and in the corner the
+British union jack. We then had the stripes but not the stars. They were
+to come after the Declaration of Independence and the union of the
+states.
+
+In August, 1776, Congress made Paul Jones captain of the brig
+"Providence," and he soon showed what kind of a man he was. He came
+across a fleet of five vessels, and made up his mind to capture the
+largest of them, which he thought to be a fine merchant ship. He got
+pretty close up before he learned his mistake. It was the British
+frigate "Solebay," strong enough to make mince-meat of his little brig.
+There was nothing for it but to run, and Captain Jones made haste to
+get away, followed by the "Solebay." But the Briton gained on the
+American, and after a four-hours' run the frigate was less than a
+hundred yards away. It might at any minute sink the daring little
+"Providence" by a broadside.
+
+But Paul Jones was not the man to be caught. Suddenly the helm of the
+brig was put hard up, as sailors say, and the little craft turned and
+dashed across the frigate's bow. As it did so the flag of the republic
+was spread to the breeze, and a broadside from the brig's guns swept the
+frigate's deck. Then, with all sail set, away dashed the "Providence"
+before the breeze. As soon as the British got back their senses they
+fired all their guns at the brig. But not a ball hit her, and with the
+best of the wind she soon left the "Solebay" far behind.
+
+And now I must tell the story of Paul Jones' greatest fight. In its way
+it was the greatest sea-fight ever known. It was fought with a fleet in
+which Jones sailed from a French port, for Congress had found what a
+hero they had in their Scotch sailor, and now they made him commodore of
+a fleet.
+
+The flagship of this fleet was a rotten old log of a ship, which had
+sailed in the East India merchant service till its timbers were in a
+state of dry rot. It was a shapeless tub of a vessel, better fitted to
+lie in port and keep rabbits in than to send out as a battle-ship. Paul
+Jones named it the "Bon Homme Richard," which, in English means "Poor
+Richard." This was a name used by Benjamin Franklin for his almanac.
+
+It was not until the summer of 1779 that Jones was able to set sail. His
+ship had thirty-six guns, such as they were, and he had with him three
+other ships under French officers--the "Alliance," the "Pallas," and the
+"Vengeance." Among his crew were a hundred American sailors, who had
+just been set free from English prisons. And his master's mate, Richard
+Dale, a man of his own sort, had just escaped from prison in England.
+
+Away they went, east and west, north and south, around the British
+isles, seeking for the men-of-war which should have swarmed in those
+seas, but finding only merchant vessels, a number of which were captured
+and their crews kept as prisoners. But the gallant commodore soon got
+tired of this. He had come out to fight, and he wanted to find something
+worth fighting. At length, on September 23d, he came in view of a large
+fleet of merchant ships, forty-two in all, under the charge of two
+frigates, the "Serapis," of forty-two guns, and the "Countess of
+Scarborough," of twenty-two smaller guns.
+
+Commodore Jones left the smaller vessel for his consorts to deal with,
+and dashed away for the "Serapis" as fast as the tub-like "Bon Homme
+Richard" could go. The British ship was much stronger than his in number
+and weight of guns, but he cared very little for that. The "Serapis" had
+ten 18-pound cannon in each battery, and the "Bon Homme Richard" only
+three. And these were such sorry excuses for cannon that two of them
+burst at the first fire, killing and wounding the most of their crews.
+After that Jones did all his fighting with 12 and 8-pound guns; that is,
+with guns which fired balls of these weights.
+
+It was night when the battle began. Soon the 18-pounders of the
+"Serapis" were playing havoc with the sides of the "Bon Homme Richard."
+Many of the balls went clear through her and plunged into the sea
+beyond. Some struck her below the water level, and soon the rotten old
+craft was "leaking like a basket."
+
+It began to look desperate for Jones and his ship. He could not half
+reply to the heavy fire of the English guns, and great chasms were made
+in the ship's side, where the 18-pound balls tore out the timbers
+between the port holes.
+
+Captain Pearson of the "Serapis" looked at his staggering and leaking
+enemy, and thought it about time for the battle to end.
+
+"Have you surrendered?" he shouted across the water to Commodore Jones.
+
+"I have not yet begun to fight," was the famous answer of the brave Paul
+Jones.
+
+Surrender, indeed! I doubt if that word was in Paul Jones' dictionary.
+He would rather have let his vessel sink. The ships now drifted
+together, and by Jones' order the jib-boom of the "Serapis" was lashed
+to his mizzen-mast. This brought the ships so close side by side that
+the English gunners could not open their ports, and had to fire through
+them and blow them off. And the gunners on both sides had to thrust the
+handles of their rammers through the enemy's port holes, in order to
+load their guns.
+
+Affairs were now desperate. The "Bon Homme Richard" was on fire in
+several places. Water was pouring into her through a dozen rents. It
+seemed as if she must sink or burn. Almost any man except Paul Jones
+would have given up the fight. I know I should, and I fancy most of you
+would have done the same. But there was no give up in that man's soul.
+
+One would think that nothing could have been worse, but worse still was
+to come. In this crisis the "Alliance," one of Jones' small fleet, came
+up and fired two broadsides into the wounded flagship, killing a number
+of her crew. Whether this was done on purpose or by mistake is not
+known. The French captain did not like Commodore Jones, and most men
+think he played the traitor.
+
+And another bad thing took place. There were two or three hundred
+English prisoners on the "Bon Homme Richard," taken from her prizes. One
+of the American officers, thinking that all was over, set these men
+free, and they came swarming up. At the same time one of the crew tried
+to haul down the flag and he cried to the British for quarter. Paul
+Jones knocked him down by flinging a pistol at his head. He might sink
+or burn--but give up the ship? never!
+
+The tide of chance now began to turn. Richard Dale, the master's mate,
+told the English prisoners that the vessel was sinking, and set them at
+work pumping and fighting the fire to save their lives. And one of the
+marines, who was fighting on the yard-arms, dropped a hand grenade into
+an open hatch of the "Serapis." It set fire to a heap of gun cartridges
+that lay below, and these exploded, killing twenty of the gunners and
+wounding many more, while the ship was set on fire. This ended the
+fight. The fire of the marines from the mast-tops had cleared the decks
+of the "Serapis" of men. Commodore Jones aided in this with the
+9-pounders on his deck, loading and firing them himself. Captain Pearson
+stood alone, and when he heard the roar of the explosion he could bear
+the strain no longer. He ran and pulled down the flag, which had been
+nailed to the mast.
+
+"Cease firing," said Paul Jones.
+
+The "Serapis" was his. Well and nobly had it been won.
+
+Never had there been a victory gained in such straits. The "Bon Homme
+Richard" was fast settling down into the sea. Pump as they would, they
+could never save her. Inch by inch she sank deeper. Jones and his
+gallant crew boarded the "Serapis," and at nine o'clock the next morning
+the noble old craft sank beneath the ocean waves, laden with honor, and
+with her victorious flag still flying. The "Serapis" was brought safely
+into port.
+
+Captain Pearson had fought bravely, and the British ministry made him a
+knight for his courage.
+
+"If I had a chance to fight him again I would make him a lord," said
+brave Paul Jones.
+
+Never before or since has a victory been won under such desperate
+circumstances as those of Paul Jones, with his sinking and burning ship,
+his bursting guns, his escaped prisoners, and his treacherous consort.
+It was a victory to put his name forever on the annals of fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARION THE SWAMP FOX AND GENERAL GREENE
+
+
+FAR away back in old English history there was a famous archer named
+Robin Hood, who lived in the deep woods with a bold band of outlaws like
+himself. He and his band were foes of the nobles and friends of the
+poor, and his name will never be forgotten by the people of England.
+
+No doubt you have read about the gallant archer. No man of his time
+could send an arrow so straight and sure as he. But we need not go back
+for hundreds of years to find our Robin Hood. We have had a man like him
+in our own country, who fought for us in the Revolution. His name was
+Francis Marion, and he was known as the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived in the
+swamps of South Carolina as Robin Hood did in the forests of England,
+and he was the stinging foe of the oppressors of the people.
+
+I have already told you about the war in the North, and of how the
+British, after doing all they could to overthrow Washington and conquer
+the country, found themselves shut up in the city of New York, with
+Washington like a watch-dog outside.
+
+When the British generals found that the North was too hard a nut to
+crack, they thought they would try what they could do in the South. So
+they sent a fleet and an army down the coast, and before long they had
+taken the cities of Savannah and Charleston, and had their soldiers
+marching all over Georgia and South Carolina. General Gates, the man to
+whom Burgoyne surrendered, came down with a force of militia to fight
+them, but he was beaten so badly that he had to run away without a
+soldier to follow him. You can imagine that the British were proud of
+their success. They thought themselves masters of the South, and fancied
+they had only to march north and become masters there, too.
+
+But you must not think that they were quite masters. Back in the woods
+and the swamps were men with arms in their hands and with love of
+country in their hearts. They were like wasps or hornets, who kept
+darting out from their nests, stinging the British troops, and then
+darting back out of sight. These gallant bands were led by Marion,
+Sumter, Pickens, and other brave men; but Marion's band was the most
+famous of them all, so I shall tell you about the Swamp Fox and what he
+did.
+
+I fancy all of my young friends would have laughed if they had seen
+Marion's band when it joined General Gates' army. Such scarecrows of
+soldiers they were! There were only about twenty of them in all, some of
+them white and some black, some men and some boys, dressed in rags that
+fluttered in the wind, and on horses that looked as if they had been fed
+on corncobs instead of corn.
+
+Gates and his men did laugh at them, though they took care not to laugh
+when Marion was at hand. He was a small man, with a thin face, and
+dressed not much better than his men. But there was a look in his eye
+that told the soldiers he was not a safe man to laugh at.
+
+Marion and his men were soon off again on a scout, and after Gates and
+his army had been beaten and scattered to the winds, they went back to
+their hiding places in the swamps to play the hornet once more.
+
+Along the Pedee River these swamps extended for miles. There were
+islands of dry land far within, but they could only be reached by narrow
+paths which the British were not able to find. Only men who had spent
+their lives in that country could make their way safely through this
+broad stretch of water plants and water-soaked ground.
+
+Marion's force kept changing. Now it went down to twenty men, now up to
+a hundred or more. It was never large, for there was not food or
+shelter for many men. But there were enough of them to give the British
+plenty of trouble. They had their sentries on the outlook, and when a
+party of British or Tories went carelessly past out would spring
+Marion's men, send their foes flying like deer, and then back they would
+go before a strong body of the enemy could reach them.
+
+These brave fellows had many hiding places in the swamps and many paths
+out of them. To-day they might strike the British in one place and
+to-morrow in another many miles away. Small as their force was they gave
+the enemy far more trouble than Gates had done with all his army.
+Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known as Snow's Island, where
+a creek ran into the Pedee. It was high and dry, was covered with trees
+and thickets, and was full of game. And all around it spread the soaking
+swamp, with paths known only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding
+places, this was their chosen home.
+
+You may be sure that the British did their best to capture a man who
+gave them so much trouble as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of
+their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down. Marion was then far from
+his hiding place and Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox was hard
+to catch. He lead the British a lively chase, and when they gave it up
+in despair he followed them back. He came upon a large body of Tories
+and struck them so suddenly that hardly a man of them escaped, while he
+lost only one man. Tories, you should know, were Americans who fought on
+the British side.
+
+The next man who tried to capture Marion was Colonel Tarleton, a hard
+rider and a good soldier, but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in
+the South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the North. There is a good
+story told about how he was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as
+he and his men were riding furiously along they came up to an old
+farmer, who was hoeing in his field beside the road.
+
+"Can you tell me what became of the man who galloped by here just ahead
+of us?" asked one of them. "I will give you fifty pounds if you put me
+on his track."
+
+"Do you mean the man on a black horse with a white star in its
+forehead?" asked the farmer.
+
+"Yes, that's the fellow."
+
+"He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of Marion's men, but he went past
+so fast that I could not be sure."
+
+"Never mind who he was. What we want to know is where to find him."
+
+"Bless your heart! he was going at such a pace that he couldn't well
+stop under four or five miles. I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty
+pounds."
+
+On rode the troop, and back into the woods went the farmer. He had not
+gone far before he came to a black horse with a white star in its
+forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The farmer was Jack Davis
+himself.
+
+That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal with, and you may be sure
+that he did not catch any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no
+game.
+
+While Marion was keeping the war alive in South Carolina, an army was
+gathering under General Greene, who was, next to Washington, the best of
+the American generals. With him were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of
+riflemen, William Washington, a cousin of the commander-in-chief, and
+Henry Lee, or "Light-horse Harry," father of the famous General Lee of
+the Civil War.
+
+General Greene got together about two thousand men, half armed and half
+supplied and knowing nothing about war, so that he had a poor chance of
+defeating the trained British soldiers. But he was a Marion on a larger
+scale, and knew when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell you
+what he did.
+
+In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the bold Colonel Tarleton and
+gave him a sound flogging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, the
+British commander in the South. Cornwallis thought he would catch Morgan
+napping, but the lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He hurried
+back with the prisoners he had taken from Tarleton, and crossed the
+Catawba River just as the British came up. That night it rained hard,
+and the river rose so that it could not be crossed for three days.
+
+General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat continued to the
+Yadkin River. This, too, was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain
+again came up and swelled the river before the British could follow.
+When the British got across there was a race for the Dan River on the
+borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, crossed the stream, and
+held the fords or crossing-place against the foe. Cornwallis by this
+time had enough of it. Provisions were growing scarce, and he turned
+back. But he soon had Greene on his track, and he did not find his march
+a very comfortable one.
+
+Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote about General Greene. Once,
+during his campaign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North
+Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy rain. Steele, the
+landlord, knew him and looked at him in surprise.
+
+"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone, very tired, hungry, and
+penniless."
+
+Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal before the hungry
+traveler. Then, while he was eating, she drew from under her apron two
+bags of silver and laid them on the table before him.
+
+"Take these, general," she said. "You need them and I can do without
+them."
+
+You may see that the women as well as the men of America did all they
+could for liberty, for there were many others like Mrs. Steele.
+
+I have told you that General Greene was one of the ablest of the
+American leaders, and you have seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in
+the retreat. Several times afterwards he fought with the British. He was
+always defeated. His country soldiers could not face the British
+veterans. But each time he managed to get as much good from the fight as
+if he had won a victory, and by the end of the year the British were
+shut up in Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free again.
+
+Where was Cornwallis during this time? Greene had led him so far north
+that he concluded to march on into Virginia and get the troops he would
+find there, and then come back. There was fighting going on in Virginia
+at this time. General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting against
+his own people. Against him was General Lafayette, a young French
+nobleman who had come to the help of the Americans.
+
+I suppose some of you have read stories of how a wolf or some other
+wild animal walked into a trap, from which it could not get out again.
+Lord Cornwallis was not a wild animal, but he walked into just such a
+trap after he got to Virginia. When he reached there he took command of
+Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet strong enough to face
+Lafayette, so he marched to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River,
+where he expected to get help by sea from New York. Yorktown was the
+trap he walked into, as you will see.
+
+France had sent a fleet and an army to help the Americans, and just then
+this fleet came up from the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake,
+shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same time Washington, who had
+been closely watching what was going on, broke camp before New York and
+marched southward as fast as his men could go. Before Cornwallis could
+guess what was about to happen the trap was closed on him. In the bay
+near Yorktown was the strong French fleet; before Yorktown was the army
+of American and French soldiers.
+
+There was no escape. The army and the fleet bombarded the town. A week
+of this was enough for Lord Cornwallis. He surrendered his army, seven
+thousand strong, on October 19, 1781, and the war was at an end. America
+was free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE
+
+
+HAVE any of my young readers ever been to Europe? Likely enough some of
+you may have been, for even young folks cross the ocean now-a-days. It
+has come to be an easy journey, with our great and swift steamers. But
+in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in which the ship was
+often tossed by terrible storms, and sometimes was broken to pieces on
+the rocks or went to the bottom with all on board.
+
+What I wish to say is, that those who come from Europe to this country
+leave countries that are governed by kings, and come to a country that
+is governed by the people. In some of the countries of Europe the people
+might almost as well be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to
+speak for them, and the man who rules them is born to power. Even in
+England, which is the freest of them all, there is a king and queen and
+a House of Lords who are born to power. The people can vote, but only
+for members of the House of Commons. They have nothing to do with the
+monarch or the lords.
+
+Of course you all know that this is not the case in our country. Here
+every man in power is put there by the votes of the people. As President
+Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and
+for the people."
+
+We did not have such a government before the 4th of July, 1776. Our
+country was then governed by a king, and, what was worse, this king was
+on the other side of the ocean, and cared nothing for the people of
+America except as money bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of
+July we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord and master; and we
+have got along very well without one.
+
+Now you can see what the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution
+meant. With the Declaration we cut loose from England. Our ship of state
+set out on its long voyage to liberty. The Declaration cut the chain
+that fastened this great ship to England's shores. The Revolution was
+like the stormy passage across the ocean waves. At times it looked as if
+our ship of state would be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back
+to the shores from which it set sail; but then the clouds would break
+and the sun shine, and onward our good ship would speed. At length it
+reached the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away from the land
+of kings.
+
+This is a sort of parable. I think every one of you will know what it
+means. The people of this country had enough of kings and their ways,
+and of being taxed without their consent. They made up their minds to be
+free to tax and govern themselves. It was for this they fought in the
+Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood.
+
+And now, before we go on with the history of our country, it will be
+wise to stop and ask what kind of government the Americans gave
+themselves. They had thrown overboard the old government of kings. They
+had to make a new government of the people. I hope you do not think this
+was an easy task. If an architect or builder is shown a house and told
+to build another like that, he finds it very easy to do. But if he is
+shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and told to build out of them
+a good strong house unlike any he has ever seen, he will find his task a
+very hard one, and may spoil the house in his building.
+
+That was what our people had to do. They could have built a king's
+government easily enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow for
+that. But they had no pattern for a people's government, and, like the
+architect and his house, they might spoil it in the making. The fact is,
+this is just what they did. Their first government was spoiled in the
+making, and they had to take it down and build it over again.
+
+This was done by what we call a Convention, made up of men called
+"delegates" sent by the several states. The Convention met in
+Philadelphia in 1787 for the purpose of forming a Constitution; that is,
+a plan of government under which the people should live and which the
+states and their citizens should have to obey.
+
+This Convention was a wonderful body of statesmen. Its like has not
+often been seen. The wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent
+to it. They included all the great men--some we know already,
+Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams and many others of fine
+ability. For four months these men worked in secret. It was a severe
+task they had to perform, for some wanted one thing and some another,
+and many times it looked as if they would never agree; but at length all
+disputes were settled and their long labors were at an end.
+
+General Washington was president of the Convention, and back of the
+chair on which he sat the figure of the sun was painted on the wall.
+When it was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this painting and
+said to those who stood near him:
+
+"Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes and fears, I have looked
+towards that figure, and asked myself if it was a rising or a setting
+sun. Now I know that it is the rising sun."
+
+The rising sun indeed it was, for when the Convention had finished its
+work it had formed the noble Constitution under which we now live, the
+greatest state paper which man has ever formed.
+
+But I fancy you want to know more about the noble framework of
+government built by the wise men of the Convention of 1787.
+
+After the Union was formed there were thirteen states still, but each of
+these had lost some of its old powers. The powers taken from the states
+were given to the general government. Every state had still the right to
+manage its own affairs, but such things as concerned the whole people
+were managed by the general government.
+
+What were these things? Let us see. There was the power to coin money,
+to lay taxes, to control the post-office, and to make laws for the good
+of the whole nation. And there was the power to form an army and navy,
+to make treaties with other countries, and to declare war if we could
+not get on in peace.
+
+Under the Confederation which was formed during the Revolutionary War,
+the states could do these things for themselves; under the Constitution
+they could do none of these things, but they could pass laws that
+affected only themselves, and could tax their own people for state
+purposes.
+
+I have spoken several times of the general government. No doubt you wish
+to know what this government was like. Well, it was made up of three
+bodies, one of which made laws for the people, the second considered if
+these laws agreed with the Constitution, the third carried out these
+laws, or put them in force.
+
+The body that made the laws was named the Congress of the United States.
+It consisted of two sections. One was called the Senate, and was made up
+of two members from each state. As we have now more than forty-five
+states the Senate at present has more than ninety members. The other
+section was called the House of Representatives, and its members were
+voted for directly by the people. The members of the Senate were voted
+for by the legislatures of the states, who had been elected by the
+people.
+
+All the laws were to be made by Congress, but not one of them could
+become a law until it was approved by the President. If he did not
+approve of a law, he vetoed it, that is, he returned it without being
+signed with his name, and then it could not be enforced as a law until
+voted for by two-thirds of the members of Congress.
+
+It was the duty of the President to execute or carry out the laws. He
+took the place of the king in other countries. But he was not born to
+his position like a king, but had to be voted for by the people, and
+could stay in office for four years only. Then he, or some one else, had
+to be voted for again.
+
+Next to the President was the Vice-President, who was to take his place
+if he should die or resign. While the President was in office the
+Vice-President had nothing to do except to act as presiding officer of
+the Senate. What we call the Cabinet are persons chosen by the President
+to help him in his work. You must understand that it takes a number of
+leading men and a great many men under these to do all the work needed
+to carry on our government.
+
+The third body of our government was called the Supreme Court. This was
+made up of some of the ablest lawyers and judges of the country. They
+were not to be voted for, but to be chosen by the President and then
+approved by the Senate. The duty of the Supreme Court is to consider any
+law brought to its notice and decide if it agrees with the Constitution.
+If the Court decides that a law is not constitutional, it ceases to be
+of any effect.
+
+This is not so very hard to understand, is it? The President and
+Congress elected by the people; the Supreme Court and Cabinet selected
+by the President; the Constitution the foundation of our government; and
+the laws passed by Congress the building erected on the foundation.
+
+Its great feature is that it is a republic--a government "of the people,
+by the people, and for the people." Ours is not the first republic.
+There have been others. But it is the greatest. It is the only one that
+covers half a continent, and is made up of states many of which are
+larger than some of the kingdoms of Europe. For more than a hundred
+years the Constitution made in 1787 has held good. Then it covered
+thirteen states and less than four million people; now it covers more
+than forty-five states and eighty million people. Then it was very poor,
+and had a hard struggle before it; now it is very rich and prosperous.
+It has grown to be the richest country in the world and one of the
+greatest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE
+
+
+EVERY four years a great question arises in this country, and all the
+states and their people are disturbed until this question is settled.
+Even business nearly stops still, for many persons can think of nothing
+but the answer to this question.
+
+Who shall be President? That is the question which at the end of every
+four years troubles the minds of our people. This question was asked for
+the first time in 1789, after the Constitution had been made and
+accepted by the states, but this time the people found it a very easy
+question to answer.
+
+There were several men who had taken a great part in the making of our
+country, and who might have been named for President. One of these was
+Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Another of
+them was Benjamin Franklin, who got France to come to our aid, and did
+many other noble things for his country. But none of them stood so high
+in the respect and admiration of the people as George Washington, who
+had led our armies through the great war, and to whom, more than to any
+other man, we owed our liberty.
+
+This time, then, there was no real question as to whom should be
+President. Washington was the man. All men, all parties, settled upon
+Washington. No one opposed him; there was no man in the country like
+him. He was unanimously elected the first President of the United
+States.
+
+In olden times, when a victorious general came back to Rome with the
+splendid spoils brought from distant countries, the people gave him a
+triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and to gaze upon the splendor
+of the show. Washington had no splendid spoils to display. But he had
+the love of the people, which was far better than gold and silver won in
+war; and all the way from his home at Mount Vernon to New York, where he
+was to take the office of President, the people honored him with a
+triumph.
+
+Along the whole journey, men, women and children crowded the roadside,
+and waited for hours to see him pass. That was before the day of
+railroads, and he had to go slowly in his carriage, so that everybody
+had a fine chance to see and greet him as he went by. Guns were fired as
+he passed through the towns; arches of triumph were erected for his
+carriage to go under; flowers were strewn in the streets for its wheels
+to roll over; cheers and cries of greeting filled the air; all that the
+people could do to honor their great hero was done.
+
+On the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took the oath of office as the
+first President of our country and people. He stood on the balcony of a
+building in front of Federal Hall, in which Congress met, and in the
+street before him was a vast multitude, full of joy and hope. When he
+had taken the oath cannon roared out, bells were rung in all the
+neighboring steeples, and a mighty shout burst from the assembled
+multitude:
+
+"Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"
+
+This, I have said, was in New York. But Philadelphia was soon chosen as
+the seat of government, and the President and Congress moved to that
+city the next year. There they stayed for ten years. In the year 1800 a
+new city, named Washington, on the banks of the Potomac, was made the
+capital of our country, and in that city Congress has met ever since.
+
+I must say something here about another of the great men of
+Revolutionary times, Alexander Hamilton. He was great in financial or
+money matters, and this was very important at that time, for the
+money-affairs of the country were in a sad state.
+
+In the Revolution our people had very little money, and that was one
+reason why they had so much suffering. Congress soon ran out of gold and
+silver, so it issued paper money. This did very well for a time, and in
+the end a great deal of paper money was set afloat, but people soon
+began to get afraid of it. There was too much money of this kind for so
+poor a country. The value of the Continental currency, as it was called,
+began to go down, and the price of everything else to go up. In time the
+paper money lost almost all its value.
+
+Such was the money the people had at the end of the Revolution. It was
+not good for much, was it? But it was the only kind of money Congress
+had to pay the soldiers with or to pay the other debts of the
+government. The country owed much more money than it could pay, so that
+it was what we call bankrupt. Nobody would trust it or take its paper in
+payment. What Alexander Hamilton did was to help the country to pay its
+debts and to bring back its lost credit, and in doing that he won great
+honor.
+
+Hamilton came to this country from the West Indies during the
+Revolution. He was then only a boy, but he soon showed himself a good
+soldier, and Washington made him an officer on his staff and one of his
+friends. He often asked young Hamilton for advice, and took it, too.
+
+Hamilton was one of the men who made the Constitution, and when
+Washington became President he chose him as his Secretary of the
+Treasury. That is, he gave him the money affairs of the government to
+look after. Hamilton was not afraid of the load of debt, and he soon
+took off its weight. He asked Congress to pay not only its own debt, but
+that of the states as well, and also to make good all the paper money.
+Congress did not like to do this, but Hamilton talked to the members
+till he persuaded them to do so.
+
+Then he set himself to pay it. He laid a tax on whiskey and brandy and
+on all goods that came into the country. He had a mint, which is a
+building where money is coined from metal, and a national bank built in
+Philadelphia. He made the debt a government fund or loan, on which he
+agreed to pay interest, and to pay off the principal as fast as
+possible. It was not long before all the fund was taken up by those who
+had money, and the country got back its lost credit, for the taxes began
+to bring in much money.
+
+Washington was President for eight years. That made two terms of four
+years each. Many wished to make him President for a third term, but he
+refused to run again. Since then no one has been made President for more
+than two terms.
+
+George Washington had done enough for his country. He loved his home,
+but he had little time to live there. When he was only a boy he was
+called away to take part in the French and Indian War. Then, after
+spending some happy years at home, he was called away again to lead the
+army in the Revolutionary War. Finally, he served his country eight
+years as President.
+
+He was now growing old and wanted rest, and he went back with joy to his
+beloved home at Mount Vernon, hoping to spend there the remainder of his
+days. But trouble arose with France, and it looked as if there would be
+a new war, and Washington was asked to take command of the army again.
+He consented, though he had had enough of fighting; but fortunately the
+war did not come, so he was not obliged to abandon his home.
+
+He died in December, 1799, near the end of the century of which he was
+one of the greatest men. The news of his death filled all American
+hearts with grief. Not while the United States exists will the name of
+Washington be forgotten or left without honor. His home and tomb at Mt.
+Vernon are visited each year by thousands of patriotic Americans. As was
+said of him long ago by General Henry Lee, he was and is, "first in war,
+first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN
+
+
+I THINK you must now have learned a great deal about the history of your
+country from the time Columbus crossed the ocean till the year 1800, the
+beginning of the Nineteenth century. You have been told about discovery,
+and settlement, and wars, and modes of life, and government, and other
+things, but you must bear in mind that these are not the whole of
+history. The story of our country is broad and deep enough to hold many
+other things beside these. For instance, there is the story of our great
+inventors, to whom we owe so much. I propose in this chapter to tell you
+about some of those who lived near the year 1800.
+
+First, I must ask you to go back with me to a kitchen in Scotland many
+years ago. On the open hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and
+near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes fixed on the
+tea-kettle which was boiling away over the fire, while its lid kept
+lifting to let the steam escape. His mother, who was bustling about, no
+doubt thought him idle, and may have scolded him a little. But he was
+far from idle; he was busy at work--not with his hands, but with his
+brain. The brain, you know, may be hard at work while the body is doing
+nothing.
+
+How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle of boiling water keeping
+up its clatter as the steam lifts it and puffs out into the air? And
+what thought has this brought into your mind? Into the mind of little
+James Watt, the Scotch boy, it brought one great thought, that of power.
+As he looked at it, he said to himself that the steam which comes from
+boiling water must have a great deal of force, if a little of it could
+keep the kettle lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself if such
+a power could not be put to some good use.
+
+Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that thought. Others had
+thought the same thing, and steam had been used to move a poor sort of
+engine. But what James Watt did when he grew up, was to invent a much
+better engine than had ever been made before. It was a great day for us
+all when that engine was invented. Before that time men had done most of
+the work of the world with their hands, and you may imagine that the
+work went on very slowly. Since that time most of the world's work has
+been done with the aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as much
+as many men could do in the past. You have seen the wheels rolling and
+heard the machines rattling and the hammers clanging in our great
+factories and workshops. And I fancy most of you know that back of all
+these is the fire under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the
+mighty magician which sets all these wheels and machines at work and
+changes raw material into so many things of use and beauty.
+
+Now let us come back to our American inventors. I have spoken about the
+steam engine because it was with this that most of them worked. They
+thought that if horses could drag a wagon over the ground and the wind
+could drive a vessel through the water, steam might do the same thing,
+and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage or a boat could be
+moved by a steam engine.
+
+Very likely you have all heard about Robert Fulton and his steamboat,
+but you may not know that steamboats were running on American waters
+years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as long ago as 1768, before
+the Revolutionary War, Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had
+made a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels. Years
+afterwards he made a large engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put
+in the boat, but there came a dry season and low water, so that the boat
+could not be used, and the owners took the engine out and set it to work
+on a sawmill. It did so well there that it was never put back in the
+boat; so that steamboat never had a chance.
+
+Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat, but there were
+others who thought they could move a boat by steam. Some of these were
+in Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia was an inventor named
+Rumsey who moved a boat at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat
+jets of water were pumped through the stern and forced the boat along.
+In Philadelphia was another man named John Fitch, who was the first man
+to make a successful steamboat. His boat was moved with paddles like an
+Indian canoe. It was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and
+Trenton in 1790, and ran for several months as a passenger boat, at the
+speed of seven or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He was
+unfortunate and in the end he killed himself.
+
+I am glad to be able to tell you a different story of the next man who
+tried to make a steamboat. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in
+Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the water, he and the other
+boys having an old flatboat which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton
+got tired of this way of getting along, and like a natural-born inventor
+set his wits to work. In the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung
+over the sides and could be moved in the water by turning a crank and
+so force the boat onward. The boys found this much easier than the pole,
+and likely enough young Fulton thought a large vessel might be moved in
+the same way.
+
+He knew all about what others had done. He had heard how Rumsey moved
+his boat by pumping water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling it
+along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland moved by a stern paddle-wheel.
+I fancy he had not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a boy to
+go fishing with, for when he set out to invent his steamboat this is the
+plan he tried.
+
+Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had bad luck there. Then he
+came to America and built a boat in New York. While he was at work on
+this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I have already told you, was
+building him an engine in England. He wanted the best engine that he
+could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor was the right man to make
+it.
+
+While Fulton was working some of the smart New Yorkers were laughing.
+They called his boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move faster
+than the tide would carry it. But he let them laugh and worked on, and
+at last, one day in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont,"
+was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial. Hundreds of curious people
+came to see it start. Some were ready to laugh again when they saw the
+boat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down in the water on both
+sides. They were not covered with wooden frames as were such wheels
+afterwards.
+
+"That boat move? So will a log move if set adrift," said the people who
+thought themselves very wise. "It will move when the tide moves it, and
+not before." But none of them felt like laughing when they saw the
+wheels begin to turn and the boat to glide out into the stream, moving
+against the tide.
+
+"She moves! she moves!" cried the crowd, and nobody said a word about
+"Fulton's Folly."
+
+Move she did. Up the Hudson she went against wind and current, and
+reached Albany, one hundred and forty-two miles away, in thirty-two
+hours. This was at the rate of four and a half miles an hour. It was not
+many years before steamboats were running on all our rivers.
+
+That is all I shall say here about the steamboat, for there is another
+story of invention I wish to tell you before I close. This is about the
+cotton fibre, which you know is the great product of the Southern
+States.
+
+The cotton plant when ripe has a white, fluffy head, and a great bunch
+of snow-white fibres, within which are the seeds. In old times these had
+to be taken out by hand, and it was a whole day's work for a negro to
+get the seeds out of a pound of the cotton. This made cotton so dear
+that not much of it could be sold. In 1784 eight bags of it were sent to
+Liverpool, and the custom-house people there seized it for duties. They
+said it must have been smuggled from some other country, for the United
+States could not have produced such a "prodigious quantity."
+
+A few years afterwards a young man named Eli Whitney went South to teach
+in a private family, but before he got there some one else had his
+situation, and he was left with nothing to do. Mrs. Greene, the widow of
+General Greene, who fought so well in the Revolution, took pity on him
+and gave him a home in her house. He paid her by fixing up things about
+her house. She found him so handy that she asked him if he could not
+invent a machine to take the seeds out of the cotton. Whitney said he
+would try, and he set himself to work. It was not long before he had a
+machine made which did the work wonderfully well. This machine is known
+as the "cotton-gin," or cotton engine, for gin is short for engine. On
+one side of it are wires so close together that the seeds cannot get
+through. Between them are circular saws which catch the cotton and draw
+it through, while the seeds pass on.
+
+The machine was a simple one, but it acted like magic. A hundred negroes
+could not clean as much cotton in a day as one machine. The price of
+cotton soon went down and a demand for it sprang up. In 1795, when the
+cotton gin was made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were produced
+in this country. By 1801 this had grown to 20,000,000 pounds. Now it has
+grown to more than 12,000,000 bales, of nearly 500 pounds each. This is
+sold to foreign countries and is worked in our own mills at home, being
+made into millions of yards of cloth of many kinds to clothe the people
+of the earth. All this comes from the work of Eli Whitney's machine. And
+the seed taken from the cotton is pressed for the oil it contains, so
+that from a year's crop we get nearly 150,000,000 gallons of useful
+oil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN
+
+
+FOR years before and after the year 1800 all Europe was filled with war
+and bloodshed. Most of my readers must have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte,
+one of the greatest generals that ever lived, and one of the most cruel
+men. He was at the head of the armies of France, and was fighting all
+Europe. England was his greatest enemy and fought him on land and sea,
+and this fighting on the sea made trouble between England and the United
+States.
+
+The English wanted men for their war-vessels and said they had a right
+to take Englishmen wherever they could find them. So they began to take
+sailors off of American merchant vessels. They said that these men were
+deserters from the British navy, but the fact is that many of them were
+true-born Americans; and our people grew very angry as this went on year
+after year.
+
+What made it worse was the insolence of some of the British captains.
+One of them went so far as to stop an American war-vessel, the
+"Chesapeake," and demand part of her crew, who, he said, were British
+deserters. When Captain Barron refused to give them up the British
+captain fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers of the
+American crew. The "Chesapeake" had no guns fit to fire back, so her
+flag had to be pulled down and the men to be given up.
+
+You may well imagine that this insult made the American blood boil.
+There would have been war at that time if the British government had not
+owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for the injury. A few years
+afterwards the insult was paid for in a different way. Another proud
+British captain thought he could treat Americans in the same saucy
+fashion. The frigate "President" met the British sloop-of-war "Little
+Belt," and hailed it, the captain calling through his trumpet, "What
+ship is that?"
+
+Instead of giving a civil reply the British captain answered with a
+cannon shot. Then the "President" fired a broadside which killed eleven
+and wounded twenty-one men on the "Little Belt." When the captain of the
+"President" hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply in a more
+civil fashion. He had been taught a useful lesson.
+
+The United States was then a poor country, and not in condition to go to
+war. But no nation could submit to such insults as these. It is said
+that more than six thousand sailors had been taken from our merchant
+ships, and among these were two nephews of General Washington, who were
+seized while they were on their way home from Europe, and put to work as
+common seamen on a British war-vessel.
+
+At length, on June 18, 1812, the United States declared war against
+Great Britain. It had put up with insults and injuries as long as it
+could bear them. It did not take long to teach the haughty British
+captains that American sea-dogs were not to be played with. The little
+American fleet put to sea, and before the end of the year it had
+captured no less than five of the best ships in the British navy and had
+not lost a single ship in return. I fancy the people of England quit
+singing their proud song, "Britannia rules the waves."
+
+Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I do not think it worth
+while, for there is much of it you would not care to hear. The war went
+on for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there were not many
+important battles, and the United States did not win much honor on land.
+But on the sea the sailors of our country covered themselves with glory.
+
+Most of the land battles were along the borders of Canada. Here there
+was a good deal of fighting, but most of it was of no great account. At
+first the British had the best of it, and then the Americans began to
+win battles, but it all came to an end about where it began. Neither
+side gained anything for the men that were killed.
+
+There was one naval battle in the north that I must tell you about. On
+Lake Erie the British had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time
+they had everything their own way. Then Captain Oliver Perry, a young
+officer, was sent to the lake to build a fleet and fight the British.
+
+When he got there the stuff for his ships was growing in the woods. He
+had to cut down trees and build ships from their timber. But he worked
+like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels built and afloat. He
+found some also on the lake, and in a wonderfully short time he had a
+fleet on the lake and was sailing out to find the British war-ships.
+
+The fleets met on September 10, 1813. The Americans had the most
+vessels, but the British had the most guns, and soon they were fighting
+like sea-dragons. The "Lawrence," Captain Perry's flagship, fought two
+of the largest British ships till it was nearly ready to sink, and so
+many of its crew were killed and wounded that it had only eight men left
+fit for fighting. What do you think the brave Perry did then? He leaped
+into a small boat and was rowed away, with the American flag floating in
+his hand, though the British ships were firing hotly at him.
+
+When he reached the "Niagara," another of his ships, he sprang on board
+and sailed right through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into
+their shattered vessels. The British soon had enough of this, and in
+fifteen minutes more they gave up the fight.
+
+"We have met the enemy and they are ours," wrote Perry to General
+Harrison. He was a born hero of the waves.
+
+Now I think we had better take a look out to sea and learn what was
+going on there. We did not have many ships, but they were like so many
+bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world looked on with surprise to
+see our little fleet of war-vessels making such havoc in the proud
+British navy which no country in Europe had ever been able to defeat.
+
+In less than two months after war was declared the frigate "Essex" met
+the British sloop-of-war "Alert" and took it in eight minutes, without
+losing a man. The "Essex" was too strong for the "Alert," but six days
+afterwards the "Constitution" met the "Guerriere," and these vessels
+were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour the "Guerriere" was
+nearly shot to pieces and ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her
+men. The others were hastily taken off, and then down went the proud
+British frigate to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
+
+All the island of Great Britain went into mourning when it learned how
+the Americans had served this good ship. There was soon more to mourn
+for. The American sloop "Wasp" captured the British sloop "Frolic." The
+frigate "United States" captured the frigate "Macedonian." The
+"Constitution" met the "Java" and served it the same way as it had done
+the "Guerriere." In two hours the "Java" was a wreck. Soon after the
+sloop "Hornet" met the ship "Peacock" and handled her so severely that
+she sank while her crew was being taken off.
+
+Later on the British won two battles at sea, and that was all they
+gained during the whole war. On the water the honors stayed with the
+Americans.
+
+There was one affair in which the British won great dishonor instead of
+honor. In July, 1814, a strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay,
+with an army of nearly five thousand men on board. These were landed and
+marched on the city of Washington, the capital of the young republic.
+
+Their coming was a surprise. There were few trained soldiers to meet
+this army, and those were not the days of railroads, so that no troops
+could be brought in haste from afar. Those that gathered were nearly all
+raw militia, and they did not stand long before the British veterans who
+had fought in the wars with Napoleon. They were soon put to flight, and
+the British army marched into our capital city.
+
+There they behaved in a way that their country has ever since been
+ashamed of. They set fire to the public buildings and burned most of
+them to the ground. The Capitol, the President's house, and other
+buildings were burned, and the records of the government were destroyed.
+Then, having acted like so many savages, the British hurried away before
+the Americans could get at them for revenge. That was a victory, I
+fancy, which the British do not like to read about.
+
+They had been so successful at Washington that they thought they would
+try the same thing with another city. This time they picked out New
+Orleans, which was so far away from the thickly settled part of the
+country that they fancied it would be an easy matter to capture it. In
+this they made a great mistake, as you will soon see.
+
+There was a general in the South who was not used to being defeated.
+This was Andrew Jackson, one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won
+fame in a war with the Indians of Georgia. He was a man who was always
+ready to fight and this the English found when they marched on New
+Orleans. There were twelve thousand of them, and Jackson, who had been
+sent there to meet them, only had half that many. And the British were
+trained soldiers, while the Americans were militia. But most of them
+were men of the backwoods, who knew how to shoot.
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.]
+
+Some of you may have heard that Jackson's men fought behind cotton
+bales. That is not quite true, but he was in such a hurry in building
+his breastworks that he did put in them some bales of cotton taken from
+the warehouses. The British, who were in as great a hurry, built a
+breastwork of sugar hogsheads which they found on the plantations. But
+the cannon balls soon set the cotton on fire and filled the air with
+flying sugar, so the bales and the hogsheads had to be pulled out. It
+was found that cotton and sugar, while good enough in their place, were
+not good things to stop cannon balls.
+
+Soon the British marched against the American works, and there was a
+terrible fight.
+
+"Stand to your guns, my men," said Jackson to his soldiers. "Make every
+shot tell. Give it to them."
+
+Many of the men were old hunters from Tennessee, some of whom could hit
+a squirrel in the eye, and when they fired the British fell in rows. Not
+a man could cross that terrible wall of fire, and they fought on until
+twenty-six hundred of them lay bleeding on the field, while only eight
+Americans were killed.
+
+That ended the battle. The men were not born who could face a fire like
+that. It ended the war also, and it was the last time Americans and
+Englishmen ever fought each other. Jackson became the hero of the
+country, and he was finally elected President of the United States. I
+cannot say that he was well fitted to be President. He was a very
+obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own way, and that is better
+in a soldier than in a President. But he was one who loved his country,
+and when one of the states of the South sought to secede from the Union,
+Jackson, though he was a son of the South himself, quickly gave the
+seceders to understand that he was a general as well as a President, and
+that no state should leave the ranks of the Union while he marched at
+its head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE REVENGED
+
+
+I HAVE told you the story of more than one war. I shall have to tell you
+now about still another in which the Americans fought the Mexicans in
+Texas.
+
+I suppose you know that Texas is one of our states, and the largest of
+them all. That is, it is largest in square miles; not in number of
+people. In former times it was part of Mexico, and was a portion of what
+is called Spanish America. But there came to be more Americans in it
+than Spaniards. People kept going there from the United States until it
+was much more of an American than a Spanish country.
+
+General Santa Anna, who was at the head of the Mexican government at the
+time I speak of, was somewhat of a tyrant, and he tried to rule the
+people of Texas in a way they would not submit to. Then he ordered them
+to give up all their guns to his soldiers, but instead of that they took
+their guns and drove the Mexican soldiers away. After that there was
+war, as you might well suppose, for a Mexican army was sent to punish
+the Texans.
+
+I wish now to tell you about what happened to some very brave Americans.
+There were only one hundred and seventy-five of them, and they were
+attacked by General Santa Anna with an army of several thousand men. But
+they were commanded by Colonel Travis, a brave young Texan, and among
+them was the famous David Crockett, a great hunter, and Colonel James
+Bowie, who invented the terrible "bowie-knife," and other bold and
+daring men who had settled in Texas. They had made a fort of an old
+Spanish building called the Alamo.
+
+The kind of men I have named do not easily give up. The Mexicans poured
+bomb-shells and cannon balls into their fort, battering down the walls
+and killing many of them, but they fought on like tigers, determined to
+die rather than surrender. At length so many of them were dead that
+there were not enough left to defend the walls, and the Mexican soldiers
+captured the Alamo. The valiant Crockett kept on fighting, and when he
+fell, the ground before him was covered with Mexican dead. Then Santa
+Anna ordered his soldiers to shoot down all that were left. That is what
+is called the "Massacre of the Alamo."
+
+It was not long before the Americans had their revenge. Their principal
+leader was a bold and able man named Samuel Houston. He had less than
+eight hundred men under him, but he marched on the Mexicans, who had
+then about eighteen hundred men.
+
+"Men, there is the enemy," said brave General Houston. "Do you wish to
+fight?"
+
+"We do," they all shouted.
+
+"Charge on them, then, for liberty or death! Remember the Alamo!"
+
+"Remember the Alamo!" they cried, as they rushed onward with the courage
+of lions.
+
+In a little time the Mexicans were running like frightened deer, and the
+daring Texans were like deer hounds on their tracks. Of the eighteen
+hundred Mexicans all but four hundred were killed, wounded, or taken
+prisoners, while the Americans lost only thirty men. They had well
+avenged the gallant Travis and the martyrs of the Alamo.
+
+The cruel Santa Anna was taken prisoner. He had only one sound leg, and
+the story was that he was caught with his wooden leg stuck fast in the
+mud. Many of the Texans wanted to hang him for his murders at the Alamo,
+but in the end he was set free.
+
+All this took place in 1835. Texas was made an independent country, the
+"Lone Star Republic," with General Houston for President. But its people
+did not want to stand alone. They were American born and wished to
+belong to the United States. So this country was asked to accept Texas
+as a state of the Union. Nine years after it was accepted as one of the
+American states.
+
+Perhaps some of my readers may think that this story has much more to do
+with the history of Mexico than that of the United States. But the
+taking of Texas as a state was United States history, and so was what
+followed. You know how one thing leads to another. Mexico did not feel
+like giving up Texas so easily, and her rulers said that the United
+States had no right to take it. It was not long before the soldiers of
+the two countries met on the border lands and blood was shed. There was
+a sharp fight at a place called Palo Alto, and a sharper one at a place
+called Resaca de la Palma. In both of them the Mexicans were defeated.
+
+Congress then declared war against Mexico, and very soon there was hard
+fighting going on elsewhere. General Zachary Taylor, a brave officer,
+who had fought the Seminole Indians in Florida, led the American troops
+across the Rio Grande River into Mexico, and some time afterwards
+marched to a place called Buena Vista. He had only five thousand men,
+while Santa Anna was marching against him with twenty thousand--four to
+one. General Taylor's army was in great danger. Santa Anna sent him a
+message, asking him to surrender if he did not want his army cut to
+pieces; but Rough and Ready, as Taylor's men called him, sent word back
+that he was there to fight, not to surrender.
+
+The battle that followed was a desperate one. It took place on February
+23, 1847. The Mexican lancers rode bravely against the American lines
+and were driven back at the cannon's mouth. For ten long hours the
+fighting went on. The Mexicans gained the high ground above the pass and
+put the American troops in danger. Charge after charge was made, but
+like bulldogs the Yankee soldiers held their ground. On came the dashing
+Mexican lancers, shouting their war-cry of "God and Liberty," and
+charging a battery commanded by Captain Bragg. The lancers captured some
+of the guns and drove the soldiers back. Captain Bragg sent a messenger
+in haste to General Taylor, saying that he must have more men or he
+could not hold his ground.
+
+"I have no more men to send you," said Rough and Ready. "Give them a
+little more grape, Captain Bragg."
+
+The cannon were loaded with grape-shot and fired into the ranks of the
+enemy, cutting great gaps through them. Again and again they were loaded
+and fired, and then the fine Mexican cavalry turned and fled. They could
+not stand any more of Captain Bragg's grape.
+
+That night both armies went to sleep on the field of battle. But when
+the next day dawned the Mexicans were gone. Santa Anna had led them
+away during the night and General Taylor had won the greatest victory of
+the war. He received a noble reward for it, for the following year he
+was elected President of the United States.
+
+The next thing done in this war was an attempt to capture the city of
+Mexico, the capital of the country. The easiest way to get there was by
+sea, for it was a long journey by land, so a fleet was got ready and an
+army sent south on the Gulf of Mexico. This army was led by General
+Winfield Scott, who had fought against the British in the War of 1812.
+
+Onward they sailed till they came before the seaport city of Vera Cruz.
+This had a strong fort, which was battered for four days by the American
+cannon, when its walls were so shattered that the Mexicans gave it up.
+In this way a good starting-point was gained.
+
+But I would have you all know that the Americans had no easy road before
+them. The city of Mexico lies in the center of the country on land that
+is as high as many mountains, and the way to it from the coast goes
+steadily upward, and has many difficult passes and rough places, where a
+small force might stop an army.
+
+[Illustration: THE STORMING OF CHAPULTEPEC.]
+
+If the Mexicans had known their business and had possessed good generals
+I am afraid the Americans might never have gotten up this rugged
+road. The Mexicans had men enough but they wanted able leaders. At one
+of the passes, named Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna waited with 15,000 men. The
+Americans had only 9,000. It looked as if they might have to turn back.
+
+What did they do? Why, they managed to drag a battery to the top of a
+steep hill that overlooked the pass. And while these guns poured their
+shot down on the astonished Mexicans the army attacked them in front. In
+a few hours they were in full flight. Five generals, and 3,000 men were
+taken prisoners, and Santa Anna himself came so near being taken that he
+left his cork leg behind. Do you not think a general ought to have two
+good legs when he has to run as often as Santa Anna had?
+
+Onward they marched until not very far away lay the beautiful city of
+Mexico. But here and there along the road were strong forts, and Santa
+Anna had collected a large army, three times as large as that of the
+Americans. You may see that General Scott had a very hard task before
+him. But there is one way to get past forts without fighting; which is,
+to go around them. This is what General Scott did. He marched to the
+south, and soon he was within ten miles of the capital without a battle.
+
+August 20th was a great day for the American army. That day our brave
+troops fought like heroes, and before night they had won five
+victories. One of these was on a steep hill called Churubusco, which
+they charged up in the face of the Mexican guns. Then on they went, and
+in a short time the old city, the most ancient in America, was in their
+hands. That ended the war. When peace was made the United States claimed
+the provinces of New Mexico and California, which had been captured by
+our soldiers, but for which Mexico was paid a large sum. No one then
+dreamed how rich the provinces were in silver and gold. Not long after
+the gold of California was discovered, and that country, which had been
+feebly held by a few Mexicans, was quickly filled by an army of
+gold-seekers. Since then it has proved one of the richest parts of the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR
+
+
+ALL of my young readers must know what a wonderful age this is that we
+live in, and what marvelous things have been done. Some of you, no
+doubt, have read the stories of magic in the "Arabian Nights
+Entertainments," and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But if any
+one, a hundred years ago, had been told about the railroad, the
+telegraph, the photograph, the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the
+surface of the water, and ships that sail in the air, I fancy they would
+have called all this nonsense and "Arabian Nights" magic. Why, think of
+it, a trolley car is as magical, in its way, as Aladdin's wonderful
+lamp.
+
+But while you know much about these things, there has been one great
+step of progress which, I fancy, you know or think very little about. I
+do not mean material but moral progress, for you must bear in mind that
+while the world has been growing richer it has also been growing better.
+
+A hundred years ago many millions of men were held as slaves in America
+and Europe. Some of these were black and some were white, but they
+could be bought and sold like so many cattle, could be whipped by their
+masters, and had no more rights than so many brute beasts.
+
+To-day there is not a slave in Europe or America. All these millions of
+slaves have been set free. Do you not think I am right in saying that
+the world has grown better as well as richer? Why, fifty years ago there
+were millions of slaves in our own country, and now there is not one in
+all the land. Is not that a great gain to mankind? But it is sad to
+think that this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall have to
+tell you about this war, after I have told you how slavery brought it
+on.
+
+In the early part of this book you read of how white men first came to
+this country. I have now to tell you that black men were brought here
+almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after Captain John Smith and
+the English colonists landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the
+James River and sold them some negroes to be held as slaves.
+
+You remember about Pocahontas, the Indian girl who saved the life of
+Captain John Smith. She was afterwards married to John Rolfe, the man
+who first planted tobacco in Virginia. John Rolfe wrote down what was
+going on in Virginia, and it was he who told us about these negroes
+brought in as slaves. This is what he wrote:
+
+"About the last of August came in, a Dutch marine-of-war, that sold us
+20 Negars."
+
+These twenty "Negars," as he called them, grew in numbers until there
+were four million negro slaves in our country in 1860, when the war
+began. There are twice that many black people in the country to-day, but
+I am glad to be able to say that none of them are slaves. Yet how sad it
+is to think that it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, and
+misery to multitudes of families, to set them free.
+
+"Where did all these black men come from?" I am sure I hear some young
+voice asking that question. Well, they came from Africa, the land of the
+negroes. In our time merchant ships are used to carry goods from one
+country to another. In old times many of these ships were used in
+carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The wicked captains would steal
+the poor black men in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had taken
+them prisoners in war. Some of them filled their ships so full of these
+miserable victims that hundreds of them died and were thrown overboard.
+Then, when they got to the West Indies or to the shores of our country,
+they would sell all that were left alive to the planters, to spend the
+rest of their lives like oxen chained to the yoke.
+
+It was a very sad and cruel business, but people then thought it right,
+and some of the best men took part in it. That is why I say the world
+has grown better. We have a higher idea of right and wrong in regard to
+such things than our forefathers had.
+
+Slaves were kept in all parts of the country, in the North as well as
+the South. There were more of them in the South than in the North, for
+they were of more use there as workers in the tobacco and rice and
+cotton fields. Most of those in the North were kept as house servants.
+Not many of them were needed in the fields.
+
+The North had not much use for slaves, and in time laws were passed,
+doing away with slavery in all the Northern states. Very likely the same
+thing would have taken place in the South if it had not been for the
+discovery of the cotton-gin. I have told you what a change this great
+invention made. Before that time it did not pay to raise cotton in our
+fields. After that time cotton grew to be a very profitable crop, and
+the cultivation of it spread wider and wider until it was planted over a
+great part of the South.
+
+This made a remarkable change. Negroes were very useful in the cotton
+fields, and no one in the South now thought of doing away with slavery.
+After 1808 no ships could bring slaves to this country, but there were a
+great many here then, and many others were afterwards born and grew up
+as slaves, so that the numbers kept increasing year after year.
+
+There were always some people, both in the North and the South, who did
+not like slavery. Among them were Franklin and Washington and Jefferson
+and other great men. In time there got to be so many of these people in
+the North that they formed what were called Anti-slavery Societies. Some
+of them said that slavery should be kept where it was and not taken into
+any new states. Others said that every slave in the United States ought
+to be set free.
+
+This brought on great excitement all over the country. The people in the
+North who believed in slavery were often violent. Now and then there
+were riots. Buildings where Anti-slavery meetings were held were burned
+down. One of the leaders of the Abolitionists, as the Anti-slavery
+people were called, was dragged through the streets of Boston with a
+rope tied round his body, and would have been hanged if his friends had
+not got him away.
+
+But as time went on the Abolitionists grew stronger in the North. Many
+slaves ran away from their masters, and these were hidden by their white
+friends until they could get to Canada, where they were safe. All
+through the South and North people were excited.
+
+I do not think many of our people expected the cruel war that was
+coming. If they had they might have been more careful what they said and
+did. But for all that, war was close at hand, and two things helped to
+bring it on.
+
+There had been fighting in Kansas, one of the territories that was to be
+made into a state, and among the fighters was an old man named John
+Brown, who thought that God had called him to do all he could for the
+freedom of the slaves.
+
+Some people think that John Brown was not quite right in his brain. What
+he did was to gather a body of men and to take possession of Harper's
+Ferry, on the Potomac River, where there was a government army. He
+thought that the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid in multitudes
+and that he could start a slave war that would run all through the
+South.
+
+It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But some troops came under
+Colonel Robert E. Lee, and Brown and his party were forced to surrender.
+Some of them were killed and wounded and the others taken prisoners.
+John Brown and six others were tried and hanged. But the half-insane old
+man had done his work. That fight at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to
+bring on the war.
+
+I said there were two things. The other was the election of Abraham
+Lincoln as President.
+
+For a long time, as I have told you, the Abolitionists, or people
+opposed to slavery, were few in number. When they grew more numerous
+they formed a political party, known as the Anti-slavery Party. In 1856
+a new party, called the Republican Party, was formed and took in all the
+Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election of that year eleven
+states voted for its candidate, John C. Fremont, the man who had taken
+California from Mexico.
+
+In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator of whom I shall soon tell you
+more, was the candidate of the Republican Party, and in the election of
+that year this new party was successful and Lincoln was elected
+President of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+
+I SHOULD like to tell you all about one of the greatest and noblest men
+who ever lived in our country, and give you his story from the time he
+was born until the time he died. But that would be biography, and this
+is a book of history. Biography is the story of a man; history is the
+story of a nation. So I cannot give you the whole life of Abraham
+Lincoln, but only that part of it which has to do with the history of
+our country.
+
+Nations, you should know, are divided into monarchies and republics. In
+a monarchy the ruler is called a king, or some other name which means
+the same thing. And when a king dies his son takes his place as king.
+The king may be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; he may be
+a genius, or he may be an idiot, without any sense at all; he may be
+kind and just, or he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he is
+king. There may be some good points in letting a man be born king, but
+you can see that there are many bad ones. The history of the nations
+has often shown this, as you may have seen in what we have said of some
+of the English kings who had to do with America.
+
+In a republic the ruler--who is called president instead of king--is not
+born to his office, but is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule the
+nation all his life, but only for a few years. In that way the best and
+wisest man in the nation may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always
+get the best man in the United States; but that is the fault of the
+people, it is not the fault of the plan. There is one thing sure, we
+never get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.
+
+There are times when we do choose our best and wisest man, and everybody
+thinks we did so when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As I have told
+you, as soon as he was made President a great war began between the two
+halves of our people. It is not so easy to rule in war as in peace, and
+I must say that poor Lincoln had a very hard time of it. But he did the
+best he could, and people say now that no man in our nation could have
+done better. Abraham Lincoln stands next to George Washington among the
+great and noble men of America.
+
+There is one more thing it is well to know. It is not only the rich and
+proud that we choose to be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life
+as poor boys, and none of them began poorer than "honest Abe Lincoln,"
+as the people he lived among called him. He well deserved this name, for
+he was always good and honest.
+
+No doubt there are many poor boys among my readers, but I do not believe
+that any of you are as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as
+hard a life. So you see that while a king must have a king or great
+noble for father, a President may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any
+one of my young readers, if he can bring himself strongly to the notice
+of the people, may become President, and I should not wonder at all if
+some one among you should do so in future times.
+
+I told you that I would not speak about Abraham Lincoln's early life,
+but I see that I shall have to do so. He was born in a mean little
+log-cabin in the back woods a hundred years ago, in the year 1809. His
+father could not read and did not like to work, and the poor little
+fellow had hardly enough to eat.
+
+His mother loved him, but she could do little for him, and she died when
+he was only eight years old. Then his father married a second wife. She
+was a good woman, and she did all she could for the poor, forlorn little
+boy. But it did not look much then as if this ragged and hungry little
+chap would become President of the United States.
+
+There was one good thing about little Abe, he had a great love for
+books. He went to school only long enough to learn to read and write,
+but he borrowed and read all the books he could get. When he found he
+could not go to school he studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so
+he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen fire, working out the
+problems on the back of a wooden fire shovel. When this was full he
+would scrape it off smooth and begin again. In this way the boy got to
+be the best scholar in all the country around him. How many of you would
+have worked as hard as he did to get an education? Yet it was this kind
+of work that made him President.
+
+Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning. He was always a good
+talker, and he grew to be one of the best public speakers of his times.
+He became so well known and so well respected that at length he was sent
+to Congress. Lincoln did not believe that slavery was a good thing for
+the country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in itself. So he joined
+the Republican Party, which had just been formed.
+
+There was another fine speaker in Illinois named Douglas, who had
+different ideas about slavery from Lincoln and was a member of the
+Democratic Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about Illinois making
+speeches to the people, and great crowds came to hear them, for they
+were two of the best speakers in the country. Everywhere people were
+talking about Lincoln and Douglas and saying what able men they were.
+
+In 1860 came the time when a new President was to be chosen, and out of
+all the political leaders of the country these two men from far-west
+Illinois were selected--Douglas by those who were in favor of slavery
+and Lincoln by those who opposed slavery. When election day came round
+and the votes were counted, Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, was
+found to be elected President of the United States.
+
+The people of the South were in a terrible state of mind when they found
+that a Republican, a man opposed to slavery, was elected President. They
+could not tell what would take place. The Abolitionists who were against
+slavery were in power and might pass laws that would rob them of all
+their slaves. For years they had been fighting the North in
+Congress--fighting by words, I mean. Now they determined to leave the
+Union, and to fight with swords and guns if the North would not let them
+go in peace. One by one the Southern States passed resolutions to go out
+of the Union. And on all sides they collected powder and balls and other
+implements of war, for their leaders felt sure they would have to fight.
+But Lincoln hoped the states would not quarrel. He begged them not to.
+But if they did it was his duty to do what the people had put him there
+for. He had been elected President of the United States, and he must do
+all he could to keep these states united.
+
+It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abraham Lincoln became President.
+By the middle of April the North and South were at war. Both sides had
+their soldiers in the field and fighting had begun. The South wanted to
+take Washington, and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce battle was
+fought at a place called Bull Run, a few miles south of Washington.
+
+The Southern States formed a Union of their own, which was called the
+Southern Confederacy. They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for
+the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jefferson Davis for their
+President. Davis had fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena
+Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Congress, where he showed
+himself an able lawmaker. So the South chose him as their best man for
+President.
+
+The war was half over before President Lincoln did anything about
+slavery. He was there to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But the
+time came when he found that freeing the slaves would help him in saving
+the Union. When this time came--it was on the 1st of January, 1863--he
+declared that all the slaves should be free. It was a great thing for
+this country, for it was clear that there could be no peace while
+slavery remained.
+
+But the war went on more fiercely than ever, and it was not until April,
+1865, that it came to an end. The South was not able to fight any longer
+and had to give up, and the Union was saved. It was saved without
+slavery, which was a very good thing for both North and South, as we
+have since found out.
+
+But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not live to learn what the country
+gained by the war, for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked and
+foolish man, who thought he would avenge the South by shooting the
+President.
+
+It was a terrible deed. The whole country mourned for its noblest man,
+slain in the hour of victory. The South as well as the North suffered by
+his death, for he was too just a man to oppress those who had been
+beaten in war, and in him all the people, North and South, lost their
+best and ablest friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE GREAT CIVIL WAR
+
+
+I HAVE no doubt that some of the young folks who read this book will
+want to hear the story of the great war that was spoken of in the last
+chapter. Some of the boys will, at any rate. The girls do not care so
+much about war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world would be
+much better off if there were no wars.
+
+Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys something about it. The
+girls can skip it, if they wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil
+War would take a book five times as large as this, so all I can do is to
+draw a sort of outline map of it. A civil war, you should know, means a
+war within a nation, where part of a people fight against the other
+part. A war between two nations is called a foreign war.
+
+When our Civil War broke out we had thirty-three states--we have more
+than forty-five to-day. Eleven of these states tried to leave the Union
+and twenty-two remained, so that the Union states were two to one
+against the non-Union. But the Union states had more than twice the
+people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as you may see, the war
+was a one-sided affair. It was nearly all fought in the South, whose
+people suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the Union. Many of
+them lost all they had and became very poor.
+
+There were three fields or regions in which this war took place. One of
+these was a narrow region, lying between Washington and Richmond, the
+two capital cities. But small as it was, here the greatest battles were
+fought. Both sides were fighting fiercely to save their capitals.
+
+The second region of the war was in the West. This was a vast region,
+extending from Kentucky and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here
+there were many long, weary marches and much hard fighting and great
+loss of life. The third region was on the ocean and rivers, where
+iron-clad ships first met in battle, and where some famous combats took
+place.
+
+Over these three regions a million and more of men struggled for years,
+fighting with rifle and cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and
+wounding one another and causing no end of misery in all parts of the
+land. For the people at home suffered as much as the men on the
+battle-field, and many mothers and sisters were heartbroken when word
+came to them that their dear sons or brothers had been shot down on the
+field of blood. War is the most terrible thing upon the earth, though
+men try to make it look like a pleasant show with their banners and
+trumpets and drums.
+
+As soon as the news of the war came there was a great coming and going
+of soldiers, and beating of drums, and fluttering of banners, and making
+of speeches, and thousands marched away, some to Washington and some to
+Richmond, and many more to the strongholds of the West. Mothers wept as
+they bade good-by to their sons, whom they might never see again. And
+many of the soldier-boys had sad hearts under their brave faces. Soon
+hundreds of these poor fellows were falling dead and wounded on fields
+of battle, and then their people at home had good reason to weep and
+mourn.
+
+I have told you about the battle of Bull Run, south of Washington, the
+first great battle of the war. Here the Southern army gained the
+victory, and the people of the South were full of joy. But Congress now
+called for half a million of men and voted half a billion of dollars.
+Both sides saw that they had a great war before them.
+
+Bull Run was the only severe battle in 1861, but in 1862 both the North
+and the South had large armies, and there was much hard fighting in the
+East and the West.
+
+I must tell you first of the fighting in Virginia. General George B.
+McClellan was in command of the Union army there. He led it down close
+to Richmond, which he hoped to capture. There was a sharp fight at a
+place called Fair Oaks, where General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate
+general, was wounded. General Robert E. Lee took his place. They could
+not have picked out a better man, for he proved himself to be one of the
+greatest soldiers of modern times.
+
+The Confederates had another fine general named Thomas J. Jackson. He
+was called "Stonewall" Jackson, because, in the battle of Bull Run, some
+one had said:
+
+"Look at Jackson! There he stands like a stone wall!"
+
+General Lee and Stonewall Jackson were not the men to keep quiet. In a
+short time they drove McClellan back after a hard fight lasting a whole
+week, and then made a sudden march to the north. Here was another Union
+army, on the old battle-field of Bull Run. A dreadful battle followed;
+men fell by thousands; in the end the Union army was defeated and forced
+back towards Washington.
+
+General Lee knew that he could not take Washington, so he marched away
+north, waded his men across the Potomac River, and entered the state of
+Maryland. This was a slave state, and he hoped many of the people would
+join his army. But the farmers of Maryland loved the Union too well for
+that, so General Lee got very few of them in his ranks.
+
+Then he went west, followed by General McClellan, and at a place called
+Antietam the two armies met; and there was fought the bloodiest battle
+of the war. They kept at it all day long and neither side seemed beaten.
+But that night General Lee and his men waded back across the Potomac
+into Virginia, leaving McClellan master of the field. There was one more
+terrible battle in Virginia that year, in which General Burnside, who
+after McClellan commanded the Union army, tried to take the city of
+Fredericksburg, but was defeated and his men driven back with a dreadful
+loss of life.
+
+Both armies now rested until the spring of 1863, and then another
+desperate battle was fought. General Hooker had taken General Burnside's
+place, and thought he also must fight a battle, but he did not dare to
+try Fredericksburg as Burnside had done, so he marched up the river and
+crossed it into a rough and wild country known as the Wilderness.
+
+General Lee hurried there to meet him and the two armies came together
+at a place called Chancellorsville. They fought in the wild woods, where
+the trees in some places were so thick that the men could not see one
+another. But Stonewall Jackson marched to the left through the woods
+and made a sudden attack on the right wing of the Union army.
+
+This part of the army was taken by surprise and driven back. Hooker's
+men fought all that day and the next, but they could not recover from
+their surprise and loss, and in the end they had to cross the river back
+again. General Lee had won another great victory. But Stonewall Jackson
+was wounded and soon died, and Lee would rather have lost the battle
+than to lose this famous general.
+
+Do you not think the North had a right to feel very much out of heart by
+this time? The war had gone on for two years, and the Union army had
+been defeated in all the great battles fought in Virginia. The only
+victory won was that at Antietam in Maryland. They had been beaten at
+the two battles of Bull Run, the seven days' fight at Richmond, and the
+battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, while the battle of
+Antietam had been won with great loss of life.
+
+But there was soon to be a victory that would make up for more than one
+defeat. Shortly after the fight at Chancellorsville General Lee broke
+camp and marched north with the greatest speed. The Union army followed
+as fast as they could march, for there was danger of Baltimore or even
+Philadelphia being taken. Both armies kept on until they reached the
+town of Gettysburg, in the south of Pennsylvania. Here was fought the
+greatest battle of the war. It lasted for three days, the 1st, 2d and 3d
+of July, 1863.
+
+The loss of life on both sides was dreadful. But the Confederates lost
+the most men and lost the battle besides. They tried in vain to break
+through the Union lines, and in the end they were forced to retreat. On
+the 4th of July General Lee sadly began his backward march, and the
+telegraph wires carried all through the North the tidings of a great
+victory. This was the turning point in the war. Six months before,
+President Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom of the slaves, and the
+armies were now fighting to make his word good. Negroes after this were
+taken into the Union ranks, that they might help in the fight for their
+own liberty.
+
+I wish to say just here that the people of the North bore the defeats in
+Virginia better than you would think. They had good reason to, for while
+they had been losing battles in the East they had been winning battles
+in the West. So one helped to make up for the other. If you will follow
+me now to the West we will see what was taking place there.
+
+The North did not have to change its generals as often in the West as in
+the East, for it soon found a good one; and it was wise enough to hold
+on to him. This was General Ulysses S. Grant, who is now honored as one
+of the greatest generals of the world's history.
+
+Grant was only a captain at first. Then he was made a colonel, and was
+soon raised to the rank of general. He met the Confederates first at
+Belmont, Missouri. Here he was defeated, and had to take his men aboard
+river-boats to get them away. That was his first and nearly his last
+defeat.
+
+The Confederates had built two strong forts in Kentucky which they named
+Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. General Grant marched against them with an
+army and Commodore Foote steamed against them with a fleet of iron-clad
+steamboats. Fort Henry was taken by the fleet before Grant could get to
+it. Then he marched across country to Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland
+River. He attacked this fort so fiercely that the Confederates tried to
+get out of it but did not succeed. Then they proposed to surrender, and
+asked him what terms he would give them.
+
+"No terms except an immediate and unconditional surrender," he said. "I
+propose to move immediately on your works."
+
+This settled the matter. They surrendered--fifteen thousand in all.
+After that many said that U. S. Grant stood for "Unconditional
+Surrender" Grant.
+
+I cannot tell you about all the fights that took place in the West, but
+there was a terrible battle at a place called Pittsburg Landing, which
+lasted two days, and in which Grant came very near being defeated. There
+was a severe one at Murfreesboro on the last day of the year, and
+another three days afterwards. Grant was not there, but Bragg, the
+Confederate General, was defeated.
+
+The Confederates had an important stronghold on the Mississippi River at
+the city of Vicksburg, where they had many forts and a large number of
+cannon. General Sherman tried to capture these forts but was driven
+back. Then General Grant tried it and found it a very hard task.
+
+The country was all swamp and creeks which no army could get through, so
+Grant at last marched south on the other side of the river, and then
+crossed over and marched north again. He had to fight every step of his
+way, and to live on the food his men could carry, for he had cut loose
+from the North. But he soon reached the city and began a long siege. The
+Confederates held out until all their food was gone, and until they had
+eaten up nearly all their horses and mules. Then they surrendered.
+Twenty-seven thousand men were taken prisoners.
+
+This took place on the 4th of July, 1863, the same day that General Lee
+marched away from the field at Gettysburg. That was one of the greatest
+Fourths of July this country had ever seen, for with it the last chance
+of the South was lost. General Lee had lost many thousands of his hardy
+veterans, men whom he could never replace. And in the fighting around
+Vicksburg and the capture of that city nearly fifty thousand more fell
+on the battle-field or were taken prisoners. It was a loss which the
+leaders of the Southern army bitterly felt. Fighting kept on for two
+years more, but they would have been wiser to give up then and save all
+the death and misery that came to them afterwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+WAR ON SEA AND LAND
+
+
+I HAVE told you part of the story of how our people fought on land. Now
+suppose we take a look at the water, and see how they fought there. Have
+any of you heard of the wonderful battle between the "Monitor" and the
+"Merrimac"? If you have you will be sure to remember it, for it is one
+of the strangest stories in the history of war. In the lower part of
+Chesapeake Bay is what I may call a pocket of water named Hampton Roads,
+into which the James River flows. Here, in the month of March, 1862, lay
+a fleet of war-vessels. These were not the kind of ships-of-war which we
+see now-a-days. They were wooden vessels, such as were used in former
+wars, but which would be of no more use than floating logs against the
+sea-monsters of to-day.
+
+Something strange was soon to happen to these proud ships. On the 8th of
+March there came into the waters of the bay a very odd looking craft. It
+was a ship, but instead of a deck it had a sloping roof made of iron
+bars. It looked something like a house gone adrift. I fancy the people
+in the wooden ships must have been a little scared when they saw it
+coming, for they had never seen a war-vessel with an iron roof before.
+
+They might well be scared, for they soon found that their cannon were of
+no more use than pea-shooters against this queer craft. The cannon-balls
+bounded off from her sides like so many peas. On came the monster and
+struck one of the ships with her iron beak, tearing a great hole in its
+side. Down into the waters sunk the gallant ship, with all on board. And
+there it lay with its flag flying like a flag above a grave. Another
+ship, the "Congress," was driven on the mud and had to give up the
+fight.
+
+There were three more ships in the fleet, but it was now near night, and
+so the "Merrimac," as the iron monster was called, steamed away. Her
+captain thought it would be an easy thing to settle with them the next
+morning, and very likely the people on them did not sleep well that
+night, for they could not forget what had happened to the "Congress" and
+the "Cumberland," and felt sure their turn was to come next.
+
+But, as the old saying goes, "There is many a slip between cup and lip."
+The "Merrimac" was to learn the truth of this. For when she came grimly
+out the next day, expecting to sink the rest of the fleet and then steam
+up to the city of Washington and perhaps burn that, her captain found
+before him the queerest thing in the shape of a ship he had ever seen.
+It was an iron vessel that looked like "a cheese box on a raft." All
+that could be seen was a flat deck that came just above the water, and
+above this a round tower of iron, out of which peeped two monsters of
+cannon.
+
+This strange vessel had come into Hampton Roads during the night, and
+there it lay ready to do battle for the Union. It was a new style of
+war-ship that had been built in New York and was called the "Monitor."
+
+The "Merrimac" soon had enough to keep herself busy, and was forced to
+let the wooden fleet alone. For four long hours these two iron monsters
+battered each other with cannon balls. Such a fight had never been seen
+before. It was the first time two iron-clad ships had met in war.
+
+I cannot say that either ship was hurt much. The balls could not get
+through the iron bars and plates and glanced off into the water. But the
+"Merrimac" got the worst of it, and in the end she turned and hurried
+back to Norfolk, from which place she had come. The "Monitor" waited for
+her, but she never came out again. Soon afterwards the Confederates left
+Norfolk and sunk their iron ship, and that was the last of the
+"Merrimac."
+
+When the news of this wonderful sea-fight got to Europe the kings and
+ministers of war read it with alarm. They saw they had something to do.
+Their wooden war-vessels were out of date, and they went to work in a
+hurry to build iron-clad ships. To-day all the great nations of the
+earth have fleets of steel-covered ships-of-war, and the United States
+has some of the best and strongest of this kind of ships.
+
+All through the war there were battles of iron-clads. On the western
+rivers steamboats were plated with iron and attacked the forts on shore.
+And along the coast iron-clad vessels helped the wooden ships to
+blockade the ports of the South. More vessels like the "Monitor" were
+built in the North, and a number somewhat like the "Merrimac" were built
+in the South. I cannot say that any of them did much good either North
+or South.
+
+A great naval battle was fought in the Mississippi, which led to the
+capture of New Orleans, and another was fought in the Bay of Mobile, on
+the Gulf of Mexico. Here there were some strong forts and a powerful
+iron-clad ship. Admiral Farragut sailed into the bay with a fleet of
+wooden ships and several iron vessels like the "Monitor." When he went
+past the forts he stood in the rigging of his ship, with his spy-glass
+in his hand. He did not seem to care anything for cannon-balls. He took
+the forts, and since then Farragut has been one of our great naval
+heroes.
+
+There was one Confederate privateer, the "Alabama," which caused
+terrible loss to the merchants of the North. It took in all sixty-five
+vessels, which were set on fire and burned. In June, 1864, the "Alabama"
+was met near the coast of France by the frigate "Kearsarge," and a
+furious battle took place. For two hours they fought, and then the
+"Alabama" sagged down into the water and sank to the bottom of the sea.
+She had done much harm to the North, but her career was at an end.
+
+Now let us turn back to the war on land and see what was going on there.
+I have told you the story of the fighting up to the great 4th of July,
+1863, when Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant and General Lee
+marched away from Gettysburg. That is where we dropped the threads which
+we have now to take up again.
+
+After Grant had taken Vicksburg and opened the Mississippi from St.
+Louis to its mouth, he set out for the town of Chattanooga, which is in
+Tennessee just north of Georgia. Here there had been a great battle in
+which the Confederate army won the victory, and the Union troops were
+shut up in Chattanooga with very little to eat.
+
+Grant was not there long before there came a change. General Bragg, the
+Confederate commander, had his army on the summits of two mountains
+named Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. These were defended by
+strong forts. But the Union troops charged up the mountain sides in the
+face of the fire of rifles and cannon and soon had possession of the
+forts. General Bragg's army was defeated with great loss. This was one
+of the most brilliant victories of the war. The battle of Lookout
+Mountain has been called "the battle above the clouds."
+
+Everybody now saw that General Grant was much the best general on the
+Union side, and President Lincoln made him commander-in-chief of all the
+armies in the field. Grant at once laid his plans to have the armies all
+work together. General Sherman was left in command of the army of the
+West and Grant came to Virginia to fight General Lee.
+
+In the green month of May, 1864, all the armies were set in motion, and
+North and South came together for the last great struggle of the war.
+
+Grant led his men into the Wilderness where General Hooker and his army
+had been sadly defeated the year before. Lee was there to meet him, and
+a great battle was fought in the depth of the woods and thickets. It
+lasted two whole days, but neither side won.
+
+Then Grant marched towards Richmond and Lee hurried down to head him
+off. Several hard battles were fought, the last being at Cold Harbor,
+near Richmond. Here the Union army lost terribly. Ten thousand men were
+killed and wounded, while the Confederates, who were behind strong
+earthworks, lost only a thousand.
+
+General Grant saw he could not reach Richmond that way, so he crossed
+the James River and began a siege of Petersburg and Richmond. This siege
+lasted nine months, both sides digging instead of fighting till great
+heaps of earth were thrown up, on whose tops were hundreds of cannon.
+
+General Grant kept his men very busy, as you may see. But General
+Sherman's men were just as busy. He marched south from Chattanooga, and
+fought battle after battle until he had gone far into Georgia and
+captured the important city of Atlanta. General Hood, the Confederate
+commander, then made a rapid march to Tennessee, thinking that Sherman
+would follow him. But Sherman did not move. The brave General Thomas was
+there to take care of Hood and his army.
+
+"Let him go; he couldn't please me better," said Sherman.
+
+What Sherman did was to cut loose from the railroads and telegraphs and
+march his whole army into the center of Georgia. For a whole month the
+people of the North heard nothing of him. His sixty thousand men might
+be starving for food, or might all be killed, so far as was known. It
+was November when they started and it was near Christmas when they were
+heard of again.
+
+They had lived on the country and destroyed railroads and stores, and at
+length they came to the sea at the city of Savannah. Three daring scouts
+made their way in a boat down the river by night and brought to the
+fleet the first news of Sherman's march. No doubt you have heard the
+song "Marching through Georgia." That was written to describe Sherman's
+famous march.
+
+The South was now getting weaker, and weaker, and most men saw that the
+war was near its end. It came to an end in April, 1865. Grant kept
+moving south till he got round the Confederate earthworks at Petersburg,
+and Lee was forced to leave Richmond in great haste.
+
+The Union army followed as fast as it could march, and the cavalry rode
+on until it was ahead of the Confederates. Then General Lee saw that he
+was surrounded by an army far stronger than his own. He could fight no
+longer. His men were nearly starved. To fight would be to have them all
+killed. So on the 9th of April he offered his sword to General Grant,
+and the long and bloody war was at an end.
+
+No one was gladder of this than President Lincoln, who had done so much
+to bring it about. Poor man! five days afterwards he was shot in a
+theatre at Washington by an actor named John Wilkes Booth. This was done
+out of revenge for the defeat of the South. But the people of the South
+did not approve of this act of murder, and in Abraham Lincoln they lost
+one whom they would have found a good friend.
+
+Booth was followed and killed, but his death could not bring back to
+life the murdered President, whom the people loved so warmly that they
+mourned for him as if he had been, like Washington, the Father of his
+Country. It was a terrible crime, and it turned the joy which the people
+felt, at the end of the war, into the deepest sorrow and grief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE
+
+
+LET us suppose that the history of the whole world is spread out before
+us like a picture, and that we are looking down on it. What will we see?
+Well, we will see places where a terrible storm seems to have swept over
+the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its track. And we will
+see other places where the sun seems to have poured down its bright
+beams, and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The dark places are
+those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history
+there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all
+the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at
+home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and
+happiness to the nations.
+
+In the picture of our own history we see such dark and bright places.
+And the darkest of them all is the terrible Civil War, the story of
+which you have just read. For in this war our people fought against and
+killed one another, and all the harm was done at home, instead of in
+foreign lands. The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thousands of our
+people were killed or wounded, and the ground in hundreds of places was
+red with blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, railroads were
+torn up, ships were sunk, growing crops were trampled into the earth.
+And last of all came that horrid murder of our good and great President
+Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men who ever sat in the
+presidential chair. Such is war--the most frightful thing we can think
+of or talk about. Some of my young friends may like to play soldier; but
+if they should grow up and get to be real soldiers they would find out
+what war means. Now, if we look again at the picture of our history, we
+shall see a great bright space of peace following the dark space of the
+Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about now--the reign of
+peace, when everybody was busy at work in building up what had been torn
+down by the red hand of war, and our country grew faster than it had
+ever grown before.
+
+There is one thing I must say here. I have told you that slavery was the
+cause of the war. If there had been no slaves in the country there would
+have been no war. And the one good thing the war did for us was to get
+rid of the slaves. President Lincoln declared that all the slaves should
+be free, and since that time there has not been a slave in the land. So
+we can never have a war for that cause again.
+
+When the war was done, the soldiers marched back to their homes. Their
+old battle-flags, rent and torn by bullets, were put away as valued
+treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thousands of men, were
+given back to the government; they took up their axes, they went into
+the fields with their ploughs, they entered the workshops with their
+tools, and soon they were all at work again, as if they had never seen a
+field of battle.
+
+This took place long before any of my young readers were born. But there
+are many old soldiers living who took part in it, and when you see the
+veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, marching with their ragged
+flags and battle-scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of what
+they have seen, and make you think of the fallen comrades they left
+behind, dead or bleeding upon the battle-field.
+
+During your short lives there has been no war which came near to us in
+our homes. The angel of peace has spread her white wings over our land,
+and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. None of our young folks
+have known what it is for an army of soldiers to march past their homes,
+destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and ruins where there had been
+happy homes and fertile fields. But in the past of our country this
+happened to many as young as you, and they were glad that their lives
+were left them, after everything else was gone.
+
+Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, and go on to see what
+took place under the blessed reign of peace. The first thing of which I
+shall tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. You know how the
+telegraph wires spread over the country until they were many thousands
+of miles in length. In the next chapter you may read how the electric
+telegraph was invented. In the year after the war ended a still greater
+thing was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the ocean from Europe
+to America. This had been done before, but it had proved a failure. The
+new cable was a success, and since then a man in London has been able to
+talk with a man in New York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of
+course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the click of the
+telegraph instrument.
+
+The year after that a great addition was made to the United States.
+There was a large region in the north, known as Russian America, which
+Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million dollars. Many
+people talked about this as some of their forefathers had talked about
+the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. They said that it was
+a land of ice and snow which Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it
+would be of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all that, and it
+has proven a very good bargain.
+
+This country we now call Alaska. We get there all the sealskins from
+which the rich and warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most of the
+canned salmon, which some of you think very good food, come from Alaska.
+That country is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that is not all,
+for it is rich in gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold are obtained
+there every year. It has been something like California, whose gold was
+not found till Americans got there to dig.
+
+These are not the only things that took place in the years after the
+war. Railroads were being built in all directions. East and west, north
+and south, they went, and travel became easier than it had been before.
+The greatest thing done in this way was the building of a railroad
+across the mountains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far Pacific
+coast, three thousand miles away from the Atlantic shores. Before that
+time men who wanted to go to California had to drag along over thousands
+of miles in slow wagon trains and spend weeks and months on the road.
+Now they could go there in less than a week. It was the longest railroad
+that the world had ever seen, up to that time.
+
+While all this was going on, people were coming to this country in
+great multitudes, crossing the ocean to find new homes in our happy
+land. They did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in former
+times, but were brought here in swift steamships, that crossed the seas
+almost as fast as the iron horse crossed the land. All these new people
+went to work, some in the cities and some in the country, and they all
+helped to make our nation rich and powerful.
+
+But you must not think that everything went well, and that we had no
+dark days. Every country has its troubles, even in times of peace. War
+is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, storms sweep over the
+land, earthquakes shake down cities, and many other disasters take
+place. Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control, is the
+most terrible; and it is of a frightful fire that I wish to speak.
+
+About the year 1831 a small fort stood near the shore of Lake Michigan,
+and around this a few pioneer families had built their homes, which were
+only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years afterwards, the fort and the
+huts had long been gone and a large city stood at that place. Its growth
+had been wonderful. Only forty years old and already it was one of the
+great cities of the country. This was the famous city of Chicago, which
+has grown more rapidly than any other great city ever known.
+
+One night in October a dreadful thing took place in this city. A cow
+kicked over a lamp in a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and in
+a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The people ran for water, but
+they were too slow, and in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames.
+You may think that this was not of much account, but there happened to
+be a gale of wind, and soon great blazing fragments were flying through
+the air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not long before there
+was a terrible fire over almost the entire city.
+
+Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until
+it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two
+days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up
+in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and
+two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the
+most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire
+or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it
+is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the
+world.
+
+This was not the only disaster which came upon the country. In 1886
+there was a frightful earthquake in South Carolina, that shook down a
+great part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 there was a terrible
+flood that swept away the young city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and
+drowned more than two thousand people. And there were tornadoes, or wind
+storms, in the west that blew down whole towns as you might blow down a
+house of cardboard with your breath. And there were great strikes and
+riots that were almost like war, and various other troubles. But all
+these could not stop the growth of the country. Every year it became
+richer. New people came, new factories were built, new fields were
+farmed, and the United States seemed like a great hive of industry, and
+its people like so many bees, working away, day by day, and gathering
+wealth as bees gather honey.
+
+It not only got many of the old articles of wealth, but it found many
+new ones also. Never was there a country with so many inventors or men
+that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there
+more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors;
+I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men
+busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help
+everybody--the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the
+cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand,
+as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE MARVELS OF INVENTION
+
+
+IT is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for twenty-four hours and to go
+many days without half enough to eat. I think all my readers will agree
+with me in this. I fancy none of you would like to find an empty table
+before you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a thing that has
+happened to many inventors; and one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to
+whose genius we owe the electric telegraph.
+
+You know about the invention of the steamboat, the locomotive, the
+cotton-gin and various other early inventions; but there have been many
+later inventions, and one of the most important of these is the
+telegraph, which tells us every day what is taking place over the whole
+world.
+
+Professor Morse was a New York artist who studied painting in Europe,
+and in the year 1832 took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day a
+talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. Jackson, one of the
+passengers, told how some persons in Paris had sent an electric current
+through several miles of wire in less than a second of time.
+
+[Illustration: THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR FAMOUS AEROPLANE.]
+
+"If that is the case," said Morse, "why could not words and sentences be
+sent in the same way?"
+
+"That's a good idea. It would be a great thing if we could send news as
+fast as lightning," said one of the passengers.
+
+"Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we can do it."
+
+Very likely the rest of the passengers soon forgot all about that
+conversation, but Morse did not. During the remainder of the voyage he
+was very quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking over what he
+had heard. Before the ship had reached New York he had worked out a plan
+of telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in tubes underground, and
+to use an alphabet of dots and dashes, the same that is used by
+telegraphers to-day.
+
+When he went on shore Morse said to the captain: "Captain, if you should
+hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world,
+remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship 'Sully.'"
+
+"If I can make it go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go round
+the world," he said to a passenger.
+
+But it is easier to think out a thing than to put it in practice. Poor
+Morse was more than ten years in working out his plans and getting
+people to help him in them. He got out of money and was near starving,
+but he kept at it. After three years he managed to send a message
+through seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read it, but his
+friends could not, and no one was ready to put money in such a scheme.
+They looked at it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to Europe and
+tried to get money there, but he found the people there as hard to
+convince as those in America.
+
+"No one is in such a hurry for news as all that," they said. "People
+would rather get their news in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr.
+Morse, but it would take a great deal of money to lay miles of them
+underground, and we are not going to take such chances as that with our
+money."
+
+Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant him a sum of money. He
+wanted to build a wire from Baltimore to Washington and show how it
+would work. But it is never easy to get money from Congress, and he kept
+at it for five years in vain.
+
+It was the 3d of March, 1843. At twelve o'clock that night the session
+of Congress would end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till nearly
+midnight, in hopes his bill would pass. Then he gave it up in despair
+and went to his boarding house. He was sure his little bill would not be
+thought of in the crowd of business before Congress and was greatly
+depressed in consequence.
+
+He came down to breakfast the next morning with a very sad face, hardly
+knowing how he was to pay his board and get home. He was met by a young
+lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came to him with a smile.
+
+"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she said.
+
+"For what, my dear friend?"
+
+"For the passage of your bill."
+
+"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the passage of my bill?"
+
+"Yes; do you not know of it?"
+
+"No; it cannot be true!"
+
+"You came home too early last night, Mr. Morse. Your bill has passed,
+and I am happy to be the first to bring you the good news."
+
+"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "For your good news I
+promise you this: when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the
+honor of selecting the first message to be sent over it."
+
+Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars. It was not much, but
+Morse went actively to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his pipe
+in, through which the wire was to run. He got another inventor to help
+him, Ezra Cornell, who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr.
+Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch at a great rate, laid the
+pipe, and covered it in. In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred
+feet of pipe.
+
+But Cornell did not think the underground wire would work.
+
+"It will work," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, men
+have laid short lines in England which work very well. What can be done
+there can be done here."
+
+For all that, it would not work. A year passed and only seven thousand
+dollars of the money were left, and all the wires laid were of no use.
+
+"If it won't go underground we must try and coax it to go over-ground,"
+said Morse.
+
+Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass insulators; it now
+worked to a charm. On May 11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at
+Baltimore nominated Henry Clay for President, and the news was sent to
+Washington in all haste by the first railroad train. But the passengers
+were surprised to find that they brought stale news; everybody in
+Washington knew it already. It had reached there an hour or two before
+by telegraph. That was a great triumph for Morse. The telegraph line was
+not then finished quite to Baltimore. When it reached there, on May
+24th, the first message sent was one which Miss Ellsworth had chosen
+from the Bible, "What hath God wrought?" God had wrought wonderfully
+indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound the ends of the earth
+together.
+
+If I should attempt to tell you about all our inventors I am afraid it
+would be a long story. There is almost no end to them, and many of them
+invented wonderful machines. I might tell you, for instance, about
+Thomas Blanchard, who invented the machine by which tacks are made,
+dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick. This is only one out of
+many of his inventions. One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow
+water, and which could go hundreds of miles up rivers where Fulton's
+steamboat would have run aground.
+
+Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaping machine. When
+he showed his reaper at the London World's Fair in 1851, the newspapers
+made great fun of it. The London "Times" said it was a cross between a
+chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine. But when it was put in a
+wheat-field and gathered in the wheat like a living and thinking
+machine, they changed their tune, and the "Times" said it was worth more
+than all the rest of the Exhibition. This was the first of the great
+agricultural machines. Since then hundreds have been made, and the
+old-fashioned slow hand-work in the fields is over. McCormick made a
+fortune out of his machine. I cannot say that of all inventors, for many
+of them had as hard a time as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them,
+Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe, came as near starving as Professor
+Morse.
+
+All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe to Charles Goodyear. Before
+his time India-rubber was of very little use. It would grow stiff in the
+winter and sticky in the summer, and people said it was a nuisance. What
+was wanted was a rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this
+Goodyear set himself to make.
+
+After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the gum, and by accident
+touched a red-hot stove with the mixture. To his delight the gum did not
+melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with sulphur and exposed to heat
+would stand heat and cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it took
+him six years more to make it a success, and he never made much money
+from it. Yet everybody honors him to-day as a great inventor.
+
+Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sewing machine. For years he
+worked at it, and when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it. He
+went to London, as Morse had done, and had the same bad luck. He had to
+pawn his model and patent papers to get home again. His wife was very
+sick, and he reached home only in time to see her die.
+
+Poor fellow! life was very dark to him then. His invention had been
+stolen by others, who were making fortunes out of it while he was in
+need of bread. Friends lent him money and he brought suit against these
+robbers, but it took six years to win his rights in the courts. In the
+end he grew rich and gained great honor from his invention.
+
+There has been no man more talked of in our time than Thomas A. Edison.
+All of you must have heard of him. He went into business when he was
+only twelve years old, selling newspapers and other things on the cars,
+and he was so bright and did so well that he was able to send his
+parents five hundred dollars a year. When he was sixteen he saved the
+child of a station-master from being run over by a locomotive, and the
+father was so grateful that he taught him how to telegraph. He was so
+quick in his work that he become one of the best telegraph operators in
+the United States.
+
+After he grew up Edison began to invent. He worked out a plan by which
+he could send two messages at once over one wire. He kept at this till
+he could send sixteen messages over a wire, eight one way and eight the
+other. He made money out of his inventions, but the telegraph companies
+made much more. Instead of sending fifty or sixty words a minute, he
+showed them how they could send several thousand words a minute.
+
+Then he began experimenting with the electric light. He did not invent
+this, but he made great improvements in it. The electric light could be
+made, but it could not be controlled and used before Edison taught
+people how to keep it in its little glass bulb. How brilliantly the
+streets, the stores, and many of the houses are now lit up by
+electricity. All from Edison's wonderful discoveries.
+
+Then there was the telephone, or talking telegraph, which many of you
+may have used yourselves. That was not known before 1876; but people now
+wonder how they ever got along without it. It is certainly very
+wonderful, when you have to speak with somebody a mile or a hundred
+miles away, to ring him up and talk with him over the telephone wire as
+easily as if you were talking with some one in the next room. The
+telephone, as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It is only
+another form of the telegraph. The telephone was not invented by Edison,
+but by another American named Alexander Bell. But Edison improved it. He
+added the "transmitter," which is used in all telephones, and is very
+important indeed. So we must give credit first to Bell and second to
+Edison for the telephone.
+
+Edison's most wonderful invention is the phonograph. This word means
+"sound writer." One of you may talk with a little machine, and the sound
+of your voice will make marks on a little roll of gelatine or tinfoil
+within. Then when the machine is set going you may hear your own voice
+coming back to you. Or by the use of a great trumpet called a megaphone,
+it may be heard all over a large room.
+
+The wonderful thing is that the sound of a man's voice may be heard long
+after he is dead. If they had possessed the phonograph in old times we
+might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius Caesar speaking to-day. Very
+likely many persons who live a hundred or two hundred years from now may
+hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his own machines. Does not this
+seem like magic?
+
+In every way this is a wonderful age of invention. Look at the trolley
+car, shooting along without any one being able to see what makes it
+move. Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and stoves heating
+from electric power. Steam was the most powerful thing which man knew a
+century ago. Electricity has taken its place as the most powerful and
+marvelous thing we know to-day. More wonderful than anything I have said
+is the power we now have of telegraphing without wires, and of
+telephoning in the same way. Thus men can now stand on the shore and
+talk with their friends hundreds of miles away on the broad sea.
+
+Such are some of the inventions which have been made in recent times. If
+you ask for more I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter, and
+the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the automobile, and the
+air-ship, and a hundred others. But they are too many for me to say
+anything about, so I shall have to stop right here.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES
+
+
+VERY likely many of my young readers live in the city of Philadelphia,
+which was founded by William Penn more than two hundred years ago on the
+banks of the broad Delaware River, and where now many more than a
+million people make their homes. And many of you who do not live there,
+but who love your country and are proud of its history, are likely to go
+there some time during your lives, to visit the birthplace of your noble
+nation.
+
+Have you ever thought that the United States, as an independent nation,
+was born in Philadelphia? In that city stands the stately Independence
+Hall, in which the Declaration of Independence was made and signed. You
+may see there the famous old bell, which rang out "Liberty throughout
+the land!" And you may stand in the room in which our grand Constitution
+was formed. So Philadelphia should be a place of pilgrimage to all
+true-hearted Americans, who wish to see where their country was born.
+
+It was such a place of pilgrimage in the year 1876. Then from every part
+of our country, from the North, the South, the West and the East, our
+people made their way in thousands towards that great city, which was
+then the proud center of all American thought. A hundred years had
+passed from the time the famous Declaration was signed, and the
+Centennial Anniversary which marked the one hundredth year after this
+great event was being celebrated in the city which may be called the
+cradle of the American nation.
+
+A grand exhibition was held. It was called a "World's Fair," for
+splendid objects were sent to it from all parts of the world, and our
+own country sent the best of everything it had to show, from Maine to
+California. On the broad lawns of Fairmount Park many handsome buildings
+were erected, all filled with objects of use or beauty, and more than
+ten million people passed through the gates, glad to see what America
+and the world had to show.
+
+If you wish to know what our own country showed, I may say that the most
+striking things were its inventions, machines that could do almost
+everything which the world wants done. And the newest and most wonderful
+of all these things was the telephone. This magical invention was shown
+there to the people for the first time, and the first voice shouted
+"Hallo!" over the talking wire.
+
+In the years that followed centennial celebrations became common. In
+1881 the centennial anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis was
+celebrated at Yorktown. In 1882 the bi-centennial (the two hundredth
+anniversary) of the landing of William Penn was celebrated at
+Philadelphia. A vessel that stood for the old ship "Welcome" sailed up
+the stream, and a man dressed like the famous old Quaker landed and was
+greeted by a number of men who took the part of Indian chiefs.
+
+In 1887 Philadelphia had another grand anniversary, that of the signing
+of the Constitution of the United States, which was celebrated by
+magnificent parades and processions, while the whole city was dressed in
+the red, white and blue. In 1889 New York celebrated the next grand
+event in the history of the nation, the taking of the oath by
+Washington, our first President.
+
+The next great anniversary was that of the discovery of America by
+Columbus, four hundred years before. This was celebrated by a
+wonderfully splendid exhibition at Chicago, the most beautiful that the
+world had ever seen. Columbus landed in October, 1492, and the buildings
+were dedicated in October, 1892, but the exhibition did not take place
+till the next year. Those who saw this exhibition will never forget it,
+and very likely some of my readers were among them. Its buildings were
+like fairy palaces, so white and grand and beautiful; and at night, when
+it was lit up by thousands of electric lights, the whole place looked
+like fairy land. The world will not soon see anything more beautiful.
+
+I cannot tell of all the exhibitions. There were others, at New Orleans,
+Atlanta, and other cities, but I think you will be satisfied with
+hearing about the large ones. The Centennial at Philadelphia set the
+fashion. After that, cities all over the country wanted to have their
+great fairs, and many of the little towns had their centennial
+celebrations, with music and parades, speeches and fireworks.
+
+During all this time the country kept growing. People crossed the ocean
+in millions. Our population went up, not like a tree growing, but like a
+deer jumping. In 1880 we had 50,000,000 people. In 1900 we had half as
+many more. Just think of that! Over 25,000,000 people added in twenty
+years! How many do you think we will have when the youngest readers of
+this book get to be old men and women? I am afraid to guess.
+
+As our people increased in number they spread more widely over the
+country. Railroads were built everywhere, steamboats ran on all the
+streams, telegraphs and telephones came near to every man's front door,
+the post-offices spread until letters and newspapers and packages were
+carried to the smallest village in the land. Nobody wanted to stay at
+home, in the old fashion. People thought nothing of a journey across the
+continent or the ocean. Wherever they were, they could talk with their
+friends by letter or telegraph, and they could go nowhere that the
+newspaper could not follow them.
+
+So the waste places of the country began rapidly to fill up. If you have
+ever seen an old-time map of our country you must have noticed places in
+the West marked "great desert," or "unknown territory," or by some such
+name. But people made their way into these unknown regions and filled
+them up. First they went with their families and household goods in
+great wagons. Then they went far more swiftly in railroad trains. Here
+they settled down and began farming; farther on, where there was not
+rain enough to farm, they raised cattle and sheep on the rich grasses;
+still farther, in the mountain regions, they set to work mining, getting
+gold, silver, copper, iron and coal from the hard rocks.
+
+Cities grew up where the Indian and the buffalo had roamed. The factory
+followed the farmer; the engine began to puff its steam into the air,
+the wheels to turn, the machines to work, goods of all kinds to be
+made. The whole country became like a great hive of workers, where
+everybody was busy, and thousands of the people grew rich.
+
+But all this great western country was not given up to the farmer, the
+miner and the wood-chopper. There were places which nature had made
+beautiful or wonderful or grand, and these were kept as places for all
+the people to visit. One of these was the beautiful Yosemite Valley, in
+California; another was the wonderful Yellowstone Park, with its
+marvelous spouting springs; others were the groves of giant trees; still
+others were great forests, from which the government told the
+wood-choppers to keep out, for the woods had been set aside for the good
+or the pleasure of all the people of the land.
+
+Some of you may ask, what became of the old people of the country--the
+Indians, who were spread all over the West? There were hundreds of
+tribes of them, and many of them were bold and brave, and when they saw
+the white men pushing into their country they fought fiercely for their
+homes. But they could not stand before the guns of the pioneers and the
+cannon of the soldiers, and in time they were all forced to submit. Then
+places were set aside for them and they were made to live in them. The
+Indians were not always treated well. They were robbed and cheated in a
+hundred ways. But that, I hope, is all over now, for they are being
+well cared for and educated, and they seem likely, before many years, to
+become good and useful citizens of our country.
+
+[Illustration: CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT.]
+
+Now I have another story to tell. Our Civil War, which you have read
+about, ended in 1865. For thirty-three years after that--one-third of a
+century--we were at peace at home and abroad, and our country had the
+wonderful growth of which you have just read. Then, in 1898, almost at
+the end of the century, war came again. By good luck, it was not a big
+war this time, and it was one I can tell you about in a few words.
+
+It was pity and charity that brought us into this war. South of Florida
+is the large and fertile island of Cuba, which had long belonged to
+Spain, and whose people had been very badly treated. At length they said
+they could stand it no longer, so they took their guns, left their
+homes, and went to war with the soldiers of Spain. For two years they
+fought bravely. Their old men, and their women and children, who had
+stayed at home, helped them all they could; so the Spaniards drove these
+from their homes into the cities, and left them there with hardly
+anything to eat. Thousands of these poor wretches starved to death.
+
+You may be sure that our people thought this very wicked. They said that
+it ought to be stopped; but Spain would not do what they wished. Then
+they sent food to the starving people. Some of it got to them and some
+of it was used by others. Everybody in our country felt very badly to
+see this terrible affair going on at our very doors, and the government
+was told that it ought to take some action. What the government did was
+to send one of its war-vessels, the "Maine," to the harbor of Havana,
+the capital of Cuba.
+
+Then something took place that would have made almost any country go to
+war. One dark night, while the "Maine" floated on the waters of the
+harbor, and nearly all her crew were fast asleep in their berths, a
+terrible explosion was heard under her, and the good vessel was torn
+nearly in half. In a minute she sank into the muddy bottom of the
+harbor, and hundreds of her sleeping crew were drowned. Only the captain
+and some of the officers and men escaped alive.
+
+I fancy all of you must know how angry our people felt when they heard
+of this dreadful event. You were angry yourselves, no doubt, and said
+that the Spaniards had done this and ought to be punished by having Cuba
+taken from them. I do not think there were many Americans who did not
+feel like taking revenge for our poor murdered sailors.
+
+War soon came. In April, 1898, the Congress declared war against Spain
+and a strong fleet of iron-clad ships was sent to Cuba. An army was
+gathered as quickly as possible, and the soldiers were put on board
+ship and sailed away to the south. There was a Spanish fleet in the
+harbor of Santiago de Cuba and an American fleet outside keeping the
+ships of Spain like prisoners in the harbor; so the soldiers were sent
+to that place, and it was not long before an army was landed and was
+marching towards the city of Santiago. I am glad to say that the
+fighting did not last very long. There was a bold charge up hill by the
+Rough Riders and others in the face of the Spanish guns, and the Spanish
+army was driven back to the city. Here they were shut up and soon
+surrendered, and the war in Cuba was at an end.
+
+But the iron-clad ships in the harbor were not given up. On the 3d of
+July a brave dash for liberty was made. They came out at full speed
+where our great ships lay waiting, and soon there was one of the
+strangest fights that had ever been seen. The Spanish ships rushed
+through the waters near the coast, firing as they fled. After them came
+the American ships at full speed, firing as they followed. But not many
+of the Spanish halls touched the American ships, while the great guns of
+the Americans raked the Spaniards fore and aft.
+
+Soon some of their ships were on fire and had to be run ashore. In an
+hour or two the chase was at an end and the fine Spanish fleet was sunk
+and burning, with hundreds of its crew killed, while on the American
+ships only one man had been killed. It was a wonderful flight and fight.
+I should tell you more about it, only that I have another story of the
+same kind to relate.
+
+Far away from Cuba, on the other side of the world, in the broad Pacific
+Ocean, near the coast of China, is a great group of islands called the
+Philippines, which had long belonged to Spain. Here, in the harbor of
+Manila, the capital of the islands, was a Spanish fleet. There was an
+American fleet in one of the harbors of China, under the command of
+Commodore George Dewey. And as soon as war had been declared Dewey was
+ordered to go to Manila and sink or take the Spanish fleet.
+
+Dewey was a man who thought it his duty to obey orders. He had been told
+to sink or take the Spanish fleet, and that was what he meant to try his
+best to do. Over the waters sped his ships, as swiftly as steam could
+carry them, and into the harbor of Manila they went at midnight while
+deep darkness lay upon the waters. It was early morning of the 1st of
+May when the American ships rounded up in front of the city and came in
+sight of the Spanish fleet. This lay across the mouth of a little bay
+with forts to guard it on the land at each side.
+
+It was a great danger which Commodore Dewey and his bold followers
+faced. Before them lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There were
+torpedo boats which might rush out and sink them. There were torpedoes
+under the waters which might send the flagship itself to the bottom.
+Some men would have stopped and felt their way, but George Dewey was not
+that kind of a man. Without stopping for a minute after his long journey
+from China, he dashed on with the fleet and ordered his men to fire.
+Soon the great guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and smoke.
+
+Round and round went the American ships, firing as they passed. Every
+shot seemed to tell. It was not long before some of the Spanish ships
+were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an American hull. After an
+hour or two of this hot work Dewey drew out and gave his men their
+breakfast. Then back he came and finished the job. When he was done, the
+whole Spanish fleet was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men dead
+and wounded, while not an American ship was badly hurt and not an
+American sailor was killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a battle
+since the world began.
+
+There, I have, as I promised, told you in few words the story of the
+war. Soon after a treaty of peace was signed and all was at an end. The
+brave Dewey was made an admiral and was greatly honored by the American
+people.
+
+If you should ask me what we gained from the war, I would answer that we
+gained in the first place what the war was fought for, the freedom of
+Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did not come out of it without
+something for ourselves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto Rico in
+the West Indies and the large group of the Philippine Islands, near the
+coast of Asia. These last named came as the prize of Dewey's victory,
+but I am sorry to say that there was a war with the people themselves
+before the United States got possession. During the war with Spain we
+obtained another fine group of islands, that known as Hawaii, in the
+Pacific Ocean. You can see from this that our country made a wide spread
+over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century. The winning of all
+these islands was an event of the greatest importance to the United
+States. It gave this country a broad foothold on the seas and a new
+outlook over the earth. Some of the proud nations of Europe had looked
+on this country as an American power only, with no voice in world
+affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot on the Hawaiian Islands,
+in the Central Pacific, and his right foot on the Philippine Islands,
+near the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened their eyes and
+began to get new ideas about the great republic of the West. It was
+plain that the United States had become a world power, and that when
+the game of empire was to be played the western giant must be asked to
+take a hand.
+
+This was seen soon after, when China began to murder missionaries and
+try to drive all white people from its soil. For the first time in
+history the United States joined hands with Europe in an Old World
+quarrel, and it was made evident that the world could not be cut up and
+divided among the powers without asking permission from Uncle Sam. But
+fortunately Uncle Sam wants to keep out of war.
+
+And now we are near the end of our long journey. We have traveled
+together for more than four hundred years, from the time of Columbus to
+the present day, looking at the interesting facts of our country's
+history, and following its growth from a tiny seed planted in the
+wilderness to a giant tree whose branches are beginning to overshadow
+the earth. We have read about what our fathers did in the times that are
+no more. We have learned something of what has been taking place during
+our own lives. There is a new history before us in which we shall live
+and act and of which our own doings will form part. A new century, the
+twentieth, has opened before us, and it only remains to tell what our
+country has done in the few years that have passed of this century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT
+
+
+I THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all, who read this book were
+born before the new century--the one we call the twentieth--began. It is
+a young century still. Yet there has been time enough for many things to
+take place in the country we call our own. Some of these you may
+remember. Others many of you were too young to know much about. So it is
+my purpose here to bring the story of our country up to the present
+time.
+
+[Illustration: ROOSEVELT SURPRISED BY A GIANT HIPPOPOTAMUS.]
+
+I have not said much about our Presidents, but there was a President
+elected in the first year of the twentieth century of whom I must speak,
+since his election led to a dreadful event. In the following year (1901)
+a beautiful exhibition was held at Buffalo, New York. It was called the
+Pan American Exhibition, and was intended to show what the nations of
+America had done in the century just closed.
+
+I shall say little about the splendid electrical display, the fountains
+with their colored lights, the shining cascades, the glittering domes
+and pinnacles, the caverns and grottoes, and all the other brilliant
+things to be seen, for I have to speak of something much less pleasant,
+the dark deed of murder and treachery which took place at this
+exhibition.
+
+President McKinley came to Buffalo early in September to see the fine
+display and let the people see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling
+face while many hundreds of visitors passed by and shook hands with him.
+In the midst of all this there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had
+been fired. The President staggered back, with pallid face. Men shouted;
+women screamed; a crowd rushed towards the spot; the man who held the
+pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged forward in fury. "He
+has shot our President! Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards had
+a hard fight to keep the murderer from being torn to pieces by the
+furious throng.
+
+The man who had shot the President belonged to a society called
+Anarchists, who hate all rulers and think it their duty to kill all
+kings and presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered the death he
+deserved. But his shot had reached its mark, and after a week of fear
+and hope, President McKinley died. He was mourned by all the people as
+if each of them had lost a member of his or her own family.
+
+You probably know that when a President dies the Vice-President takes
+his place. McKinley's Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore
+Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping through the wilds and of hunting
+wild beasts. At the time we speak of, when the news of the death of
+President McKinley was sent abroad, Vice-President Roosevelt was off on
+a long tramp through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, perhaps
+hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.
+
+When the news came, no one knew where he was, and dozens of the
+mountain-climbers were sent out to find him. As they spread out and
+pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard on all sides and
+megaphones were used to send their voices far through the mountain
+defiles. But hour after hour passed and the shades of evening were at
+hand, and still no answer came; no sign of Roosevelt and his party could
+be traced. Finally, when they were near the high top of Mount Marcy,
+answering shots and shouts were heard, and soon the hunting party came
+in sight.
+
+When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they brought--that the President
+was at the point of death--he could hardly believe it; for the last news
+had said that he was likely to get well. He knew now that he must get to
+Buffalo as soon as he could, so that the country should not be without a
+President, and he started back for the clubhouse from which he had set
+out at a pace that kept the others busy to keep up with him.
+
+Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse, but there was to be no
+sleep for him that night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, waited
+his coming, and in very few minutes he was inside it, the coachman had
+drawn his reins and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, plunging
+into the darkness of the woods that overhung the road.
+
+That was one of the great rides in our history. You would have said so
+if you had been there to see. There were thirty-five miles to be made
+before the nearest railroad station could be reached. The road was rough
+and muddy, for a very heavy thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness
+overhung the way, made more gloomy by the thick foliage of the trees.
+Here and there they stopped for a few minutes to change horses, and then
+plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts were in the mind of the
+solitary passenger whom fate was about to make President of the great
+United States, during that dark and dismal night, no one can tell.
+Fortune had built for him a mighty career and he was hastening to take
+up the reins of government, soon to be dropped by the man chosen to hold
+them.
+
+Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morning and the horses were
+again changed. The road now before them was the worst of all, for it was
+very narrow in places and had deep ravines on either side, while heavy
+forest timber shut it in. But the man who handled the horses knew his
+road and felt how great a duty had been placed in his hands, and at 5:22
+that morning, when the light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach
+dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. Here a special train,
+the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished
+passenger.
+
+News of greater weight now greeted the traveler. He was told that the
+President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before.
+The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now
+President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to
+make him such.
+
+Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night
+stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted
+away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the
+thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron
+horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute.
+Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in
+the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger
+leaped to the platform and made all haste to the house of Ainsley
+Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn
+into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have
+described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our
+country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a
+mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night
+long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the
+greatest nations on the earth!
+
+I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he
+was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another
+kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the
+great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to
+have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in
+this.
+
+This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was
+shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time
+came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by
+helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and
+men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.
+
+While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are
+worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal to
+connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but
+when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second
+thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memory
+of the purchase from France of the great Louisiana country a century
+before. Two years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed by
+earthquake and fire, with great loss of life and property.
+
+One thing more must be spoken of, for with this President Roosevelt had
+much to do. This was to have great dams built on the mountain streams of
+the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres of barren lands and
+make them rich and fertile. Also, to save the forests, nearly
+200,000,000 acres of forest land were set aside as the property of the
+nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.
+
+The time for another Presidential election came In 1908, but Mr.
+Roosevelt would not run for the office again. I fancy he was tired of it
+and wanted to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for Africa, the
+land of the largest and fiercest animals on the earth. Here is the
+elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage
+beasts, and he spent a year in killing these animals and in keeping them
+from killing him. I have no doubt you would like to read of the exciting
+time he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop here and leave
+it untold, for it is no part of the Story of Our Country.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The list of illustrations listed the photograph of the Steam Shovel at
+Work as being the frontispiece. The book itself placed the photograph
+between pages 182 and 183. As there is no reference to Panama or the
+Steam Shovel in this chapter, it was moved to the front to be the
+frontispiece as listed.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
+
+Page 16, "Northman" changed to "Northmen" (Northmen, named Leif)
+
+Page 31, "siezed" changed to "seized" (governor seized him)
+
+Page 38, "Chespeake" changed to "Chesapeake" (the broad Chesapeake)
+
+Page 142, "Andre" changed to "Andre" (Major Andre, a)
+
+Page 171, "who" changed to "whom" (to whom should be)
+
+Page 217, "Virgnia" changed to "Virginia" (fighting in Virginia)
+
+Page 270, "traveller" changed to "traveler" to match rest of book's
+usage (greeted the traveler)
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 32402.txt or 32402.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/4/0/32402
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/32402.zip b/32402.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80baee9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32402.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4bca18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #32402 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32402)