and makes the first settlement in Ohio.--After the war was over,
General Putnam started with a company of people from New England,
to make a settlement on the Ohio River. In the spring of 1788 he and
his emigrants built a boat at a place just above Pittsburg.[3] They
named this boat the _Mayflower_,[4] because they were Pilgrims going
west to make their home there.
[Illustration: EMIGRANTS IN THE _Mayflower_.]
At that time there was not a white settler in what is now the state
of Ohio. Most of that country was covered with thick woods. There
were no roads through those woods, and there was not a steamboat or
a railroad either in America or in the world. If you look on the map[5]
and follow down the Ohio River from Pittsburg, you will come to a
place where the Muskingum joins the Ohio. At that place the
_Mayflower_ stopped, and the emigrants landed and began to build
their settlement.
[Footnote 3: Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 140.]
[Footnote 4: _Mayflower_: see paragraph 64.]
[Footnote 5: See map in paragraph 140.]
171. What the settlers named their town; the first Fourth of July
celebration; what Washington said of the settlers.--During the
Revolutionary War the beautiful Queen Mary of France was our firm
friend, and she was very kind and helpful to Dr. Franklin when he
went to France for us. A number of the emigrants had fought in the
Revolution, and so it was decided to name the town Marietta,[6] in
honor of the queen.
When the Marietta settlers celebrated the Fourth of July, Major Denny,
who commanded a fort just across the river, came to visit them. He
said, "These people appear to be the happiest folks in the world."
President Washington said that he knew many of them and that he
believed they were just the kind of men to succeed. He was right;
for these people, with those who came later to build the city of
Cincinnati, were the ones who laid the foundation of the great and
rich state of Ohio.
[Footnote 6: The queen's full name in French was Marie Antoinette;
the name Marietta is made up from the first and the last parts of
her name.]
172. Fights with the Indians; how the settlers held their town;
Indian Rock; the "Miami[7] Slaughter House."--But the people of
Marietta had hardly begun to feel at home in their little settlement
before a terrible Indian war broke out. The village of Marietta had
a high palisade[8] built round it, and if a man ventured outside that
palisade he went at the risk of his life; for the Indians were always
hiding in the woods, ready to kill any white man they saw. When the
settlers worked in the cornfield, they had to carry their guns as
well as their hoes, and one man always stood on top of a high stump
in the middle of the field, to keep a bright lookout.
[Illustration: INDIAN ROCK.]
There is a lofty rock on the Ohio River below Marietta, which is still
called Indian Rock. It got its name because the Indians used to climb
up to the top and watch for emigrants coming down the river in boats.
When they saw a boat, they would fire a shower of bullets at it, and
perhaps leave it full of dead and wounded men to drift down the river.
In the western part of Ohio, on the Miami River, the Indians killed
so many people that the settlers called that part of the country by
the terrible name of the "Miami Slaughter House."
[Footnote 7: Miami (Mi-am'i).]
[Footnote 8: See picture of a palisade in paragraph 70.]
173. What General Wayne did.--But President Washington sent a man
to Ohio who made the Indians beg for peace. This man was General
Wayne; he had fought in the Revolution, and fought so furiously that
he was called "Mad Anthony Wayne." The Indians said that he never
slept, and named him "Black Snake," because that is the quickest and
boldest snake there is in the woods, and in a fight with any other
creature of his kind he is pretty sure to win the day. General Wayne
won, and the Indians agreed to move off and give up a very large part
of Ohio to the white settlers. After that there was not much trouble,
and emigrants poured in by thousands.
174. Summary.--In 1788 General Rufus Putnam, with a company of
emigrants, settled Marietta, Ohio. The town was named in honor of
Queen Mary of France, who had helped us during the Revolution. It
was the first town built in what is now the state of Ohio. After
General Wayne conquered the Indians that part of the country rapidly
increased in population.
What did General Rufus Putnam do for Washington? Where did General
Putnam go in 1788? What is said of Ohio at that time? Where did the
_Mayflower_ stop? What is said of Queen Mary of France? What did the
settlers name their town? What did Washington say about the settlers?
What did these people do? What is said about the Indians? What about
Indian Rock? What was the country on the Miami River called? What
is said about General Wayne? What did the Indians call him? Why did
they give him that name? What did the Indians agree to do? What
happened after that?
ELI WHITNEY
(1765-1825).
175. The name cut on a door.--Near Westboro', Massachusetts,[1]
there is an old farm-house which was built before the war of the
Revolution. Close to the house is a small wooden building; on the
door you can read a boy's name, just as he cut it with his pocket-knife
more than a hundred years ago.[2] Here is the door with the name.
If the boy had added the date of his birth, he would have cut the
figures 1765; but perhaps, just as he got to that point, his father
appeared and said rather sharply: Eli, don't be cutting that door.
No, sir, said Eli, with a start; and shutting his knife up with a
snap, he hurried off to get the cows or to do his chores.[3]
[Illustration: WOODEN DOOR CARVED WITH "ELI WHITNEY."]
[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 135.]
[Footnote 2: The house is no longer standing, and the door has
disappeared.]
[Footnote 3: Chores: getting in wood, feeding cattle, etc.]
176. What Eli Whitney used to do in his father's little workshop;
the fiddle.--Eli Whitney's father used that little wooden building
as a kind of workshop, where he mended chairs and did many other small
jobs. Eli liked to go to that workshop and make little things for
himself, such as water-wheels and windmills; for it was as natural
for him to use tools as it was to whistle.
Once when Eli's father was gone from home for several days, the boy
was very busy all the while in the little shop. When Mr. Whitney came
back he asked his housekeeper, "What has Eli been doing?" "Oh," she
replied, "he has been making a fiddle." His father shook his head,
and said that he was afraid Eli would never get on much in the world.
But Eli's fiddle, though it was rough-looking, was well made. It had
music in it, and the neighbors liked to hear it: somehow it seemed
to say through all the tunes played on it, "_Whatever is worth doing,
is worth doing well._"
177. Eli Whitney begins making nails; he goes to college.--When Eli
was fifteen, he began making nails. We have machines to-day which
will make more than a hundred nails a minute; but Eli made his, one
by one, by pounding them out of a long, slender bar of red-hot iron.
Whitney's hand-made nails were not handsome, but they were strong
and tough, and as the Revolutionary War was then going on, he could
sell all he could make.
After the war was over the demand for nails was not so good. Then
Whitney threw down his hammer, and said, "I am going to college."
He had no money; but he worked his way through Yale College, partly
by teaching and partly by doing little jobs with his tools. A
carpenter who saw him at work one day, noticed how neatly and
skilfully he used his tools, and said, "There was one good mechanic
spoiled when you went to college."
178. Whitney goes to Georgia; he stops with Mrs. General Greene; the
embroidery frame.--When the young man had completed his course of
study he went to Georgia to teach in a gentleman's family. On the
way to Savannah he became acquainted with Mrs. Greene, the widow of
the famous General Greene[4] of Rhode Island. General Greene had done
such excellent fighting in the south during the Revolution that,
after the war was over, the state of Georgia gave him a large piece
of land near Savannah.
Mrs. Greene invited young Whitney to her house; as he had been
disappointed in getting the place to teach, he was very glad to accept
her kind invitation. While he was there he made her an embroidery
frame. It was much better than the old one that she had been using,
and she thought the maker of it was wonderfully skilful.
[Footnote 4: General Greene: see paragraph 140.]
179. A talk about raising cotton, and about cotton seeds.--Not long
after this, a number of cotton-planters were at Mrs. Greene's house.
In speaking about raising cotton they said that the man who could
invent a machine for stripping off the cotton seeds from the plant
would make his fortune.
For what is called raw cotton or cotton wool, as it grows in the field,
has a great number of little green seeds clinging to it. Before the
cotton wool can be spun into thread and woven into cloth, those seeds
must be pulled off.
[Illustration: POD OF THE COTTON PLANT WHEN RIPE AND OPEN. On the
right a seed with the wool attached; on the left the seed after the
wool has been picked off.]
At that time the planters set the negroes to do this. When they had
finished their day's labor of gathering the cotton in the cotton
field, the men, women, and children would sit down and pick off the
seeds, which stick so tight that getting them off is no easy task.
[Illustration: NEGROES GATHERING COTTON IN THE FIELD.]
After the planters had talked awhile about this work, Mrs. Greene
said, "If you want a machine to do it, you should apply to my young
friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." "But," said Mr. Whitney,
"I have never seen a cotton plant or a cotton seed in my life"; for
it was not the time of year then to see it growing in the fields.
180. Whitney gets some cotton wool; he invents the cotton-gin; what
that machine did.--After the planters had gone, Eli Whitney went to
Savannah and hunted about until he found, in some store or warehouse,
a little cotton wool with the seeds left on it. He took this back
with him and set to work to make a machine which would strip off the
seeds.
He said to himself, If I fasten some upright pieces of wire in a board,
and have the wires set very close together, like the teeth of a comb,
and then pull the cotton wool through the wires with my fingers, the
seeds, being too large to come through, will be torn off and left
behind. He tried it, and found that the cotton wool came through
without any seeds on it. Now, said he, if I should make a wheel, and
cover it with short steel teeth, shaped like hooks, those teeth would
pull the cotton wool through the wires better than my fingers do,
and very much faster.
[Illustration: WHITNEY'S FIRST CONTRIVANCE FOR PULLING OFF THE
COTTON SEEDS.]
He made such a wheel; it was turned by a crank; it did the work
perfectly; so, in the year 1793, he had invented the machine the
planters wanted.
Before that time it used to take one negro all day to clean a single
pound of cotton of its seeds by picking them off one by one; now,
Eli Whitney's cotton-gin,[5] as he called his machine, would clean
a thousand pounds in a day.
[Footnote 5: Gin: a shortened form of the word _engine_, meaning any
kind of a machine.]
181. Price of common cotton cloth to-day; what makes it so cheap;
"King Cotton."--To-day nothing is much cheaper than common cotton
cloth. You can buy it for ten or twelve cents a yard, but before
Whitney invented his cotton-gin it sold for a dollar and a half a
yard. A hundred years ago the planters at the south raised very little
cotton, for few people could afford to wear it; but after this
wonderful machine was made, the planters kept making their fields
bigger and bigger. At last they raised so much more of this plant
than of anything else, that they said, "Cotton is king." It was Eli
Whitney who built the throne for that king; and although he did not
make a fortune by his machine, yet he received a good deal of money
for the use of it in some of the southern states.
[Illustration: CARRYING COTTON TO THE COTTON-GIN.]
Later, Mr. Whitney built a gun-factory near New Haven, Connecticut,
at a place now called Whitneyville; at that factory he made thousands
of the muskets which we used in our second war with England in 1812.
[Illustration: THE "STAR SPANGLED BANNER."[6]]
[Footnote 6: In the war of 1812 the British war-ships attacked Fort
McHenry, one of the defences of Baltimore. Francis Scott Key, a
native of Maryland, who was then detained on board a British
man-of-war, anxiously watched the battle during the night; before
dawn the firing ceased. Key had no means of telling whether the
British had taken the fort until the sun rose; then, to his joy, he
saw the American flag still floating triumphantly above the
fort--that meant that the British had failed in their attack, and
Key, in his delight, hastily wrote the song of the _Star Spangled
Banner_ on the back of a letter which he had in his pocket. The song
was at once printed, and in a few weeks it was known and sung from
one end of the United States to the other.]
182. Summary.--About a hundred years ago (1793), Eli Whitney of
Westboro', Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin, a machine for
pulling off the green seeds from cotton wool, so that it may be easily
woven into cloth. That machine made thousands of cotton-planters and
cotton manufacturers rich, and by it cotton cloth became so cheap
that everybody could afford to use it.
What name did a boy cut on a door? What did Eli make in that workshop?
What did he make while his father was away? What did his father say?
What did Eli's fiddle seem to say? What did Eli make next? How did
he make his nails? Where did he go after he gave up making nails?
When he left college where did he go? What lady did he become
acquainted with? What did he make for her? What did the
cotton-planters say? What must be done to raw cotton before it can
be made into cloth? Who did this work? What did Mrs. Greene say to
the planters? What did Mr. Whitney say? What did he do? Tell how he
made his machine. What did he call it? How many pounds of cotton would
his cotton-gin clean in a day? How much could one negro clean? What
is said about the price of cotton cloth? What did the planters say
about cotton? Who built the throne for King Cotton? What did Mr.
Whitney build at Whitneyville? What did he make there?
THOMAS JEFFERSON
(1743-1826)
183. How much cotton New Orleans sends to Europe; Eli Whitney's work;
who it was that bought New Orleans and Louisiana for us.--To-day the
city of New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, sends
more cotton to England and Europe than any other city in America.
If you should visit that city and go down to the riverside, you would
see thousands of cotton bales[1] piled up, and hundreds of negroes
loading them on ocean steamers. It would be a sight you would never
forget.
[Illustration: LOADING COTTON AT NEW ORLEANS.]
Before Eli Whitney[2] invented his machine, we sent hardly a bale
of cotton abroad. Now we send so much in one year that the bales can
be counted by millions. If they were laid end to end, in a straight
line, they would reach clear across the American continent from San
Francisco to New York, and then clear across the ocean from New York
to Liverpool, England. It was Eli Whitney, more than any other man,
who helped to build up this great trade. But at the time when he
invented his cotton-gin, we did not own New Orleans, or, for that
matter, any part of Louisiana or of the country west of the
Mississippi River. The man who bought New Orleans and Louisiana for
us was Thomas Jefferson.
[Footnote 1: A bale or bundle of cotton is usually somewhat more than
five feet long, and it generally weighs from 400 to 550 pounds. The
cotton crop of this country in 1891 amounted to more than 8,650,000
bales; laid end to end, in a straight line, these bales would extend
more than 8000 miles.]
[Footnote 2: 2 See paragraph 180.]
184. Who Thomas Jefferson was; Monticello;[3] how Jefferson's slaves
met him when he came home from Europe.--Thomas Jefferson was the son
of a rich planter who lived near Charlottesville in Virginia.[4] When
his father died, he came into possession of a plantation of nearly
two thousand acres of land, with forty or fifty negro slaves on it.
There was a high hill on the plantation, which Jefferson called
Monticello, or the little mountain. Here he built a fine house. From
it he could see the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge for an
immense distance. No man in America had a more beautiful home, or
enjoyed it more, than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's slaves thought
that no one could be better than their master. He was always kind
to them, and they were ready to do anything for him. Once when he
came back from France, where he had been staying for a long time,
the negroes went to meet his carriage. They walked several miles down
the road; when they caught sight of the carriage, they shouted and
sang with delight. They would gladly have taken out the horses and
drawn it up the steep hill. When Jefferson reached Monticello and
got out, the negroes took him in their arms, and, laughing and crying
for joy, they carried him into the house. Perhaps no king ever got
such a welcome as that; for that welcome was not bought with money:
it came from the heart. Yet Jefferson hoped and prayed that the time
would come when every slave in the country might be set free.
[Illustration: JEFFERSON'S HOME AT MONTICELLO.]
[Footnote 3: Monticello (Mon-ti-cel'lo).]
[Footnote 4: See map in paragraph 140.]
185. Thomas Jefferson hears Patrick Henry speak at
Richmond.--Jefferson was educated to be a lawyer; he was not a good
public speaker, but he liked to hear men who were. Just before the
beginning of the Revolutionary War (1775), the people of Virginia
sent men to the city of Richmond to hold a meeting in old St. John's
Church. They met to see what should be done about defending those
rights which the king of England had refused to grant the Americans.
One of the speakers at that meeting was a famous Virginian named
Patrick Henry. When he got up to speak he looked very pale, but his
eyes shone like coals of fire. He made a great speech. He said, "We
must fight! I repeat it, sir,--we must _fight!_" The other Virginians
agreed with Patrick Henry, and George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, with other noted men who were present at the meeting,
began at once to make ready to fight.
[Illustration: "WE MUST FIGHT!"]
186. Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence; how
it was sent through the country.--Shortly after this the great war
began. In a little over a year from the time when the first battle
was fought, Congress asked Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and
some others to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson
really wrote almost every word of it. He was called the "Pen of the
Revolution"; for he could write quite as well as Patrick Henry could
speak.
The Declaration was printed and carried by men mounted on fast horses
all over the United States. When men heard it, they rang the church
bells and sent up cheer after cheer. General Washington had the
Declaration read to all the soldiers in his army, and if powder had
not been so scarce, they would have fired off every gun for joy.
[Illustration: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]
187. Jefferson is chosen President of the United States; what he said
about New Orleans.--A number of years after the war was over
Jefferson was chosen President of the United States; while he was
President he did something for the country which will never be
forgotten.
Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, with the lower part of the
Mississippi River, then belonged to the French; for at that time the
United States only reached west as far as the Mississippi River. Now
as New Orleans stands near the mouth of that river, the French could
say, if they chose, what vessels should go out to sea, and what should
come in. So far, then, as that part of America was concerned, we were
like a man who owns a house while another man owns one of the doors
to it. The man who has the door could say to the owner of the house,
I shall stand here on the steps, and you must pay me so many dollars
every time you go out and every time you come in this way.
[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States at the
close of the Revolution, and also when Jefferson became President
(1801).]
Jefferson saw that so long as the French held the door of New Orleans,
we should not be free to send our cotton down the river and across
the ocean to Europe. He said we must have that door, no matter how
much it costs.
188. Jefferson buys New Orleans and Louisiana for the United
States.--Mr. Robert R. Livingston, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence, was in France at that time, and
Jefferson sent over to him to see if he could buy New Orleans for
the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte[5] then ruled France. He said,
I want money to purchase war-ships with, so that I can fight England;
I will sell not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana besides, for
fifteen millions of dollars. That was cheap enough, and so in 1803
President Jefferson bought it.
[Illustration: Map showing how much larger President Jefferson made
the United States by buying Louisiana in 1803. (The Oregon country
is marked in bars to show that the ownership of it was disputed;
England and the United States both claimed it.)]
If you look on the map[6] you will see that Louisiana then was not
simply a good-sized state, as it is now, but an immense country
reaching clear back to the Rocky Mountains. It was really larger than
the whole United States east of the Mississippi River. So, through
President Jefferson's purchase, we added so much land that we now
had more than twice as much as we had before, and we had got the whole
Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, and what is now the great
city of St. Louis besides.
[Footnote 5: Napoleon Bonaparte (Na-po'le-on Bo'na-part).]
[Footnote 6: See map in this paragraph, and compare map in paragraph
187.]
189. Death of Jefferson; the words cut on his gravestone.--Jefferson
lived to be an old man. He died at Monticello on the Fourth of July,
1826, just fifty years, to a day, after he had signed the Declaration
of Independence. John Adams, who had been President next before
Jefferson, died a few hours later. So America lost two of her great
men on the same day.
Jefferson was buried at Monticello. He asked to have these words,
with some others, cut on his gravestone:--
Here Lies Buried
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
Author of the Declaration of American Independence.
190. Summary.--Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote the Declaration
of Independence. After he became President of the United States, he
bought Louisiana for us. The purchase of Louisiana, with New Orleans,
gave us the right to send our ships to sea by way of the Mississippi
River, which now belonged to us. Louisiana added so much land that
it more than doubled the size of the United States.
Before Whitney invented his cotton-gin how much cotton did we send
abroad? How much do we send from New Orleans now? Did we own New
Orleans or Louisiana when Whitney invented his cotton-gin? Who
bought them for us? Who was Thomas Jefferson? What is said about
Monticello? Tell how Jefferson's slaves welcomed him home. For what
profession was Jefferson educated? Tell about Patrick Henry. What
did he say? What did Washington and Jefferson do? What did Jefferson
write? What was he called? How was the Declaration sent to all parts
of the country? What was Jefferson chosen to be? To whom did New
Orleans and Louisiana then belong? How far did the United States then
extend towards the west? What could the French say? What were we like?
What did Jefferson say? Did we buy it? How much did we pay? How large
was Louisiana then? How much land did we get? What else did we get?
When did Jefferson die? What other great man died on the same day?
What words did Jefferson have cut on his gravestone at Monticello?
ROBERT FULTON
(1765-1815).
191. What Mr. Livingston said about Louisiana; a small family in a
big house; settlements in the west; the country beyond the
Mississippi River.--Even before we bought the great Louisiana
country, we had more land than we then knew what to do with; after
we had purchased it, it seemed to some people as though we should
not want to use what we had bought for more than a hundred years.
Such people thought that we were like a man with a small family who
lives in a house much too large for him; but who, not contented with
that, buys his neighbor's house, which is bigger still, and adds it
to his own.
If a traveller in those days went across the Alleghany Mountains[1]
to the west, he found some small settlements in Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee, but hardly any outside of those. What are now the great
states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were then a
wilderness; and this was also true of what are now the states of
Alabama and Mississippi.
If the same traveller, pushing forward, on foot or on horseback,--for
there were no steam cars,--crossed the Mississippi River, he could
hardly find a white man outside what was then the little town of St.
Louis. The country stretched away west for more than a thousand miles,
with nothing in it but wild beasts and Indians. In much of it there
were no trees, no houses, no human beings. If you shouted as hard
as you could in that solitary land, the only reply you would hear
would be the echo of your own voice; it was like shouting in an empty
room--it made it seem lonelier than ever.
[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 140.]
192. Emigration to the west, and the man who helped that
emigration.--But during the last hundred years that great empty land
of the far west has been filling up with people. Thousands upon
thousands of emigrants have gone there. They have built towns and
cities and railroads and telegraph lines. Thousands more are going
and will go. What has made such a wonderful change? Well, one man
helped to do a great deal toward it. His name was Robert Fulton. He
saw how difficult it was for people to get west; for if emigrants
wanted to go with their families in wagons, they had to chop roads
through the forest. That was slow, hard work. Fulton found a way that
was quick, easy, and cheap. Let us see who he was, and how he found
that way.
193. Robert Fulton's boyhood; the old scow; what Robert did for his
mother.--Robert Fulton was the son of a poor Irish farmer in
Pennsylvania.[2] He did not care much for books, but liked to draw
pictures with pencils which he hammered out of pieces of lead.
Like most boys, he was fond of fishing. He used to go out in an old
scow, or flat-bottomed boat, on a river near his home. He and another
boy would push the scow along with poles. But Robert said, There is
an easier way to make this boat go. I can put a pair of paddle-wheels
on her, and then we can sit comfortably on the seat and turn the wheels
by a crank. He tried it, and found that he was right. The boys now
had a boat which suited them exactly.
[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON'S PADDLE-WHEEL SCOW.]
When Robert was seventeen, he went to Philadelphia. His father was
dead, and he earned his living and helped his mother and sisters,
by painting pictures. He staid in Philadelphia until he was
twenty-one. By that time he had saved up money enough to buy a small
farm for his mother, so that she might have a home of her own.
[Footnote 2: Fulton was born in Little Britain (now called Fulton)
in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. See map in paragraph 135.]
194. Fulton goes to England and to France; his iron bridges; his
diving-boat, and what he did with it in France.--Soon after buying
the farm for his mother, young Fulton went to England and then to
France. He staid in those countries twenty years. In England Fulton
built some famous iron bridges, but he was more interested in boats
than in anything else.
While he was in France he made what he called a diving-boat. It would
go under water nearly as well as it would on top, so that wherever
a fish could go, Fulton could follow him. His object in building such
a boat was to make war in a new way. When a swordfish[3] attacks a
whale, he slips round under him and stabs the monster with his sword.
Fulton said, 'If an enemy's war-ship should come into the harbor to
do mischief, I can get into my diving-boat, slip under the ship,
fasten a torpedo[4] to it, and blow the ship "sky high."'
[Illustration: FULTON'S DIVING-BOAT. (Going under water to fasten
a torpedo on the bottom of a vessel.)]
Napoleon Bonaparte liked nothing so much as war, and he let Fulton
have an old vessel to see if he could blow it up. He tried it, and
everything happened as he expected: nothing was left of the vessel
but the pieces.
[Footnote 3: Swordfish: the name given to a large fish which has a
sword-like weapon, several feet in length, projecting from its upper
jaw.]
[Footnote 4: Torpedo: here a can filled with powder, and so
constructed that it could be fastened to the bottom of a vessel.]
195. What Fulton did in England with his diving-boat; what he said
about America.--Then Fulton went back to England and tried the same
thing there. He went out in his diving-boat and fastened a torpedo
under a vessel, and when the torpedo exploded, the vessel, as he said,
went up like a "bag of feathers," flying in all directions.
[Illustration: WHAT THE TORPEDO DID.]
The English people paid Fulton seventy-five thousand dollars for
showing them what he could do in this way. Then they offered to give
him a great deal more--in fact, to make him a very rich man--if he
would promise never to let any other country know just how he blew
vessels up. But Fulton said, 'I am an American; and if America should
ever want to use my diving-boat in war, she shall have it first of
all.'
196. Fulton makes his first steamboat.--But while Fulton was doing
these things with his diving-boat, he was always thinking of the
paddle-wheel scow he used to fish in when a boy. I turned those
paddle-wheels by a crank, said he, but what is to hinder my putting
a steam engine into such a boat, and making it turn the crank for
me? that would be a steamboat. Such boats had already been tried,
but, for one reason or another, they had not got on very well. Robert
R. Livingston was still in France, and he helped Fulton build his
first steamboat. It was put on a river there; it moved, and that was
about all.
197. Robert Fulton and Mr. Livingston go to New York and build a
steamboat; the trip up the Hudson River.--But Robert Fulton and Mr.
Livingston both believed that a steamboat could be built that would
go, and that would keep going. So they went to New York and built
one there.
In the summer of 1807 a great crowd gathered to see the boat start
on her voyage up the Hudson River. They joked and laughed as crowds
will at anything new. They called Fulton a fool and Livingston
another. But when Fulton, standing on the deck of his steamboat,
waved his hand, and the wheels began to turn, and the vessel began
to move up the river, then the crowd became silent with astonishment.
Now it was Fulton's turn to laugh, and in such a case the man who
laughs last has a right to laugh the loudest.
[Illustration: FULTON'S STEAMER LEAVING NEW YORK FOR ALBANY.]
Up the river Fulton kept going. He passed the Palisades;[5] he passed
the Highlands;[6] still he kept on, and at last he reached Albany,
a hundred and fifty miles above New York.
Nobody before had ever seen such a sight as that boat moving up the
river without the help of oars or sails; but from that time people
saw it every day. When Fulton got back to New York in his steamboat,
everybody wanted to shake hands with him--the crowd, instead of
shouting fool, now whispered among themselves, He's a great man--a
very great man, indeed.
[Footnote 5: See map in paragraph 55.]
[Footnote 6: See map in paragraph 55.]
198. The first steamboat in the west; the Great Shake.--Four years
later Fulton built a steamboat for the west. In the autumn of 1811
it started from Pittsburg[7] to go down the Ohio River, and then down
the Mississippi to New Orleans. The people of the west had never seen
a steamboat before, and when the Indians saw the smoke puffing out,
they called it the "Big Fire Canoe."
On the way down the river there was a terrible earthquake. In some
places it changed the course of the Ohio so that where there had been
dry land there was now deep water, and where there had been deep water
there was now dry land. One evening the captain of the "Big Fire
Canoe" fastened his vessel to a large tree on the end of an island.
In the morning the people on the steamboat looked out, but could not
tell where they were; the island had gone: the earthquake had carried
it away. The Indians called the earthquake the "Big Shake": it was
a good name, for it kept on shaking that part of the country, and
doing all sorts of damage for weeks.
[Footnote 7: Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 135.]
199. The "Big Fire Canoe" on the Mississippi; the fight between steam
and the Great River; what steamboats did; Robert Fulton's
grave.--When the steamboat reached the Mississippi, the settlers on
that river said that the boat would never be able to go back, because
the current is so strong. At one place a crowd had gathered to see
her as she turned against the current, in order to come up to the
landing-place. An old negro stood watching the boat. It looked as
if in spite of all the captain could do she would be carried down
stream, but at last steam conquered, and the boat came up to the shore.
Then the old negro could hold in no longer: he threw up his ragged
straw hat and shouted, 'Hoo-ray! hoo-ray! the old Mississippi's just
got her master this time, sure!'
Soon steamboats began to run regularly on the Mississippi, and in
the course of a few years they began to move up and down the Great
Lakes and the Missouri River. Emigrants could now go to the west and
the far west quickly and easily: they had to thank Robert Fulton for
that.
Robert Fulton lies buried in New York, in the shadow of the tower
of Trinity Church. There is no monument or mark over his grave, but
he has a monument in every steamboat on every great river and lake
in America.
[Illustration: TOWER OF TRINITY CHURCH.]
200. Summary.--In 1807 Robert Fulton of Pennsylvania built the first
steamboat which ran on the Hudson River, and four years later he built
the first one which navigated the rivers of the west. His boats helped
to fill the whole western country with settlers.
What did Mr. Livingston say about Louisiana? What did such people
think we were like? What would a traveller going west then find? What
is said of the country west of the Mississippi? Who helped emigration
to the west? What did he find? Tell about Robert Fulton as a boy.
Tell about his paddle-wheel scow. What did Robert do for his mother?
Where did he go? How long did he stay abroad? Tell about his
diving-boat. What did he do with it in France? What in England? What
did the English people offer him? What did Fulton say? Where did
Fulton make and try his first steamboat? Tell about the steamboat
he made in New York. How far up the Hudson did it go? Tell about the
first steamboat at the west. What did the Indians call it? What
happened on the way down the Ohio River? Tell about the steamboat
on the Mississippi River. What is said of steamboats at the west?
What about emigrants? Where is Fulton buried? Where is his monument?
GENERAL WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
(1773-1841).
201. War with the Indians; how the Indians felt about being forced
to leave their homes; the story of the log.--The year 1811, in which
the first steamboat went west, a great battle was fought with the
Indians. The battle-ground was on the Tippecanoe[1] River, in what
is now the state of Indiana.
[Illustration: Map of Indiana and the Tippecanoe River.]
The Indians fought because they wanted to keep the west for
themselves. They felt as an old chief did, who had been forced to
move many times by the white men. One day a military officer came
to his wigwam to tell him that he and his tribe must go still further
west. The chief said, General, let's sit down on this log and talk
it over. So they both sat down. After they had talked a short time,
the chief said, Please move a little further that way; I haven't room
enough. The officer moved along. In a few minutes the chief asked
him to move again, and he did so. Presently the chief gave him a push
and said, Do move further on, won't you? I can't, said the general.
Why not? asked the chief. Because I've got to the end of the log,
replied the officer. Well, said the Indian, now you see how it is
with us. You white men have kept pushing us on until you have pushed
us clear to the end of our country, and yet you come now and say,
Move on, move on.
[Illustration: "MOVE ON."]
[Footnote 1: Tippecanoe (Tip-pe-ka-noo'): see map in this
paragraph.]
202. What Tecumseh[2] and his brother, the "Prophet,"[3] tried to
do.--A famous Indian warrior named Tecumseh determined to band the
different Indian tribes together, and drive out the white men from
the west.
Tecumseh had a brother called the "Prophet," who pretended he could
tell what would happen in the future. He said, The white traders come
here, give the Indians whiskey, get them drunk, and then cheat them
out of their lands. Once we owned this whole country; now, if an
Indian strips a little bark off of a tree to shelter him when it rains,
a white man steps up, with a gun in his hand, and says, That's my
tree; let it alone, or I'll shoot you.
Then the "Prophet" said to the red men, Stop drinking
"fire-water,"[4] and you will have strength to kill off the
"pale-faces" and get your land back again. When you have killed them
off, I will bless the earth. I will make pumpkins[5] grow to be as
big as wigwams, and the corn shall be so large that one ear will be
enough for a dinner for a dozen hungry Indians. The Indians liked
to hear these things; they wanted to taste those pumpkins and that
corn, and so they got ready to fight.
[Footnote 2: Tecumseh (Te-kum'seh).]
[Footnote 3: Prophet (prof'et): one who tells what will happen in
the future.]
[Footnote 4: Fire-water: the Indian name for whiskey.]
[Footnote 5: Pumpkins (pump'kins).]
203. Who William Henry Harrison was; the march to Tippecanoe; the
"Prophet's" sacred beans; the battle of Tippecanoe.--At this time
William Henry Harrison[6] was governor of Indiana territory. He had
fought under General Wayne[7] in his war with the Indians in Ohio.
Everybody knew Governor Harrison's courage, and the Indians all
respected him; but he tried in vain to prevent the Indians from going
to war. The "Prophet" urged them on at the north, and Tecumseh had
gone south to persuade the Indians there to join the northern tribes.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR HARRISON TALKING WITH THE "PROPHET."]
Governor Harrison saw that a battle must soon be fought; so he started
with his soldiers to meet the Indians. He marched to the Tippecanoe
River, and there he stopped.
While Harrison's men were asleep in the woods, the "Prophet" told
the Indians not to wait, but to attack the soldiers at once. In his
hand he held up a string of beans. These beans, said he to the Indians,
are sacred.[8] Come and touch them, and you are safe; no white man's
bullet can hit you. The Indians hurried up in crowds to touch the
wonderful beans.
Now, said the "Prophet," let each one take his hatchet in one hand
and his gun in the other, and creep through the tall grass till he
gets to the edge of the woods. The soldiers lie there fast asleep;
when you get close to them, spring up and at them like a wild-cat
at a rabbit.
The Indians started to do this, but a soldier on guard saw the tall
grass moving as though a great snake was gliding through it. He fired
his gun at the moving grass; with a yell up sprang the whole band
of Indians, and rushed forward: in a moment the battle began.
Harrison won the victory. He not only killed many of the Indians,
but he marched against their village, set fire to it, and burned it
to ashes.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.]
After that the Indians in that part of the country would not listen
to the "Prophet." They said, He is a liar; his beans didn't save us.
The battle of Tippecanoe did much good, because it prevented the
Indian tribes from uniting and beginning a great war all through the
west. Governor Harrison received high praise for what he had done,
and was made a general in the United States army.
[Footnote 6: William Henry Harrison was born in Berkeley, Charles
City County, Virginia, about twenty-five miles below Richmond. His
father, Governor Harrison of Virginia, was one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence.]
[Footnote 7: See paragraph 173.]
[Footnote 8: Sacred: something holy, or set apart for religious
uses.]
204. Tecumseh takes the "Prophet" by the hair; the War of 1812;
General Harrison's battle in Canada; President Harrison.--When
Tecumseh came back from the south, he was terribly angry with his
brother for fighting before he was ready to have him begin. He seized
the "Prophet" by his long hair, and shook him as a terrier[9] shakes
a rat. Tecumseh then left the United States and went to Canada to
help the British, who were getting ready to fight us.
The next year (1812) we began our second war with England. It is
called the War of 1812. One of the chief reasons why we fought was
that the British would not let our merchant ships alone; they stopped
them at sea, took thousands of our sailors out of them, and forced
the men to serve in their war-ships in their battles against the
French.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON IN FLAMES IN THE WAR OF
1812.]
In the course of the War of 1812 the British burned the Capitol at
Washington; but a grander building rose from its ashes. General
Harrison fought a battle in Canada in which he defeated the British
and killed Tecumseh, who was fighting on the side of the English.
[Illustration: THE DOME OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON AS IT NOW
APPEARS.]
Many years after this battle, the people of the west said, We must
have the "Hero of Tippecanoe" for President of the United States.
They went to vote for him with songs and shouts, and he was elected.
A month after he had gone to Washington, President Harrison died
(1841), and the whole country was filled with sorrow.
[Footnote 9: Terrier (ter'ri-er): a kind of small hunting-dog.]
205. Summary.--In 1811 General Harrison gained a great victory over
the Indians at Tippecanoe, in Indiana. By that victory he saved the
west from a terrible Indian war. In the War of 1812 with England
General Harrison beat the British in a battle in Canada, and killed
Tecumseh, the Indian chief who had made us so much trouble. Many years
later General Harrison was elected President of the United States.
Where was a great battle fought with the Indians in 1811? How did
the Indians feel about the west? Tell the story of the log. What did
Tecumseh determine to do? Tell about the "Prophet." Who was William
Henry Harrison? Tell about the battle of Tippecanoe. Tell about the
sacred beans. What did the Indians say about the "Prophet" after the
battle? What good did the battle of Tippecanoe do? What did Tecumseh
do when he got back? Where did he then go? What happened in 1812?
Why did we fight the British? What did General Harrison do in Canada?
What did the people of the west say? How long did General Harrison
live after he became President?
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON
(1767-1845).
206. Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812; his birthplace; his school;
wrestling-matches;[1] firing off the gun.--The greatest battle of
our second war with England--the War of 1812--was fought by General
Andrew Jackson.
He was the son of a poor emigrant who came from the North of Ireland
and settled in North Carolina.[2] When Thomas Jefferson wrote the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, Andrew was nine years old, and
his father had long been dead. He was a tall, slender, freckled-faced,
barefooted boy, with eyes full of fun; the neighbors called him
"Mischievous little Andy."
He went to school in a log hut in the pine woods; but he learned more
things from what he saw in the woods than from the books he studied
in school.
He was not a very strong boy, and in wrestling some of his companions
could throw him three times out of four; but though they could get
him down without much trouble, it was quite another thing to keep
him down. No sooner was he laid flat on his back, than he bounded
up like a steel spring, and stood ready to try again.
He had a violent[3] temper, and when, as the boys said, "Andy got
mad all over," not many cared to face him. Once some of his playmates
secretly loaded an old gun almost up to the muzzle, and then dared
him to fire it. They wanted to see what he would say when it kicked
him over. Andrew fired the gun. It knocked him sprawling; he jumped
up with eyes blazing with anger, and shaking his fist, cried out,
"If one of you boys laughs, I'll kill him." He looked as though he
meant exactly what he said, and the boys thought that perhaps it would
be just as well to wait and laugh some other day.
[Illustration: ANDY AND THE GUN.]
[Footnote 1: Wrestling (res'ling).]
[Footnote 2: He settled in Union County, North Carolina, very near
the South Carolina line. See map in paragraph 140. Mecklenburg Court
House is in the next county west of Union County.]
[Footnote 3: Violent: fierce, furious.]
207. Tarleton's[4] attack on the Americans; how Andrew helped his
mother.--When Andrew was thirteen, he learned what war means. The
country was then fighting the battles of the Revolution. A British
officer named Tarleton came suddenly upon some American soldiers
near the place where young Jackson lived. Tarleton had so many men
that the Americans saw that it was useless to try to fight, and they
made no attempt to do so. The British should have taken them all
prisoners; but, instead of that, they attacked them furiously, and
hacked and hewed them with their swords. More than a hundred of our
men were left dead, and a still larger number were so horribly wounded
that they could not be moved any distance. Such an attack was not
war, for war means a fair, stand-up fight; it was murder: and when
the people in England heard what Tarleton had done, many cried Shame!
There was a little log meeting-house near Andrew's home, and it was
turned into a hospital for the wounded men. Mrs. Jackson, with other
kind-hearted women, did all she could for the poor fellows who lay
there groaning and helpless. Andrew carried food and water to them.
He had forgotten most of the lessons he learned at school, but here
was something he would never forget.
[Footnote 4: Tarleton (Tarl'ton).]
208. Andrew's hatred of the "red-coats";[5] Tarleton's soldiers meet
their match.--From that time, when young Jackson went to the
blacksmith's shop to get a hoe or a spade mended, he was sure to come
back with a rude spear, or with some other weapon, which he had
hammered out to fight the "red-coats" with.
Tarleton said that no people in America hated the British so much
as those who lived where Andrew Jackson did. The reason was that no
other British officer was so cruel as "Butcher Tarleton," as he was
called. Once, however, his men met their match. They were robbing
a farm of its pigs and chickens and corn and hay. When they got through
carrying things off, they were going to burn down the farm-house;
but one of the "red-coats," in his haste, ran against a big hive of
bees and upset it. The bees were mad enough. They swarmed down on
the soldiers, got into their ears and eyes, and stung them so terribly
that at last the robbers were glad to drop everything and run. If
Andrew could have seen that battle, he would have laughed till he
cried.
[Illustration: THE BEES BEAT THE "RED-COATS."]
[Footnote 5: Red-coats: this nickname was given by the Americans to
the British soldiers because they wore bright red coats.]
209. Dangerous state of the country; the roving bands.--Andrew knew
that he and his mother lived in constant danger. Part of the people
in his state were in favor of the king, and part were for liberty.
Bands of armed men, belonging sometimes to one side, and sometimes
to the other, went roving about the country. When they met a farmer,
they would stop him and ask, 'Which side are you for?' If he did not
answer to suit them, the leader of the party would cry out, Hang him
up! In an instant one of the band would cut down a long piece of wild
grapevine, twist it into a noose, and throw it over the man's head;
the next moment he would be dangling from the limb of a tree.
Sometimes the band would let him down again; sometimes they would
ride on and leave him hanging there.
210. Playing at battle; what Tarleton heard about himself.--Even the
children saw and heard so much of the war that was going on that they
played at war, and fought battles with red and white corn,--red for
the British and white for the Americans.
At the battle of Cowpens[6] Colonel William Washington[7] fought on
the American side, and Tarleton got badly whipped and had to run.
Not long afterward he happened to see some boys squatting on the
ground, with a lot of corn instead of marbles. They were playing the
battle of Cowpens. A red kernel stood for Tarleton, and a white one
for Colonel Washington. The boys shoved the corn this way and that;
sometimes the red would win, sometimes the white. At last the white
kernel gained the victory, and the boys shouted, "Hurrah for
Washington--Tarleton runs!"
Tarleton had been quietly looking on without their knowing it. When
he saw how the game ended, he turned angrily away. He had seen enough
of "the little rebels,"[8] as he called them.
[Footnote 6: Cowpens: see paragraph 140.]
[Footnote 7: Colonel William Washington was a relative of General
George Washington.]
[Footnote 8: Rebels: this was the name which the British gave to the
Americans because we had been forced to take up arms to overthrow
the authority of the English king, who was still lawfully, but not
justly, the ruler of this country. Had he been a just and upright
ruler, there would probably have been no rebellion against his
authority at that time.]
211. Andrew is taken prisoner by the British; "Here, boy, clean those
boots"; the two scars.--Not long after our victory at Cowpens, Andrew
Jackson was taken prisoner by the British. The officer in command
of the soldiers had just taken off his boots, splashed with mud.
Pointing to them, he said to Andrew, Here, boy, clean those boots.
Andrew replied, Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and it is not my place
to clean boots. The officer, in a great passion, whipped out his sword
and struck a blow at the boy. It cut a gash on his head and another
on his hand. Andrew Jackson lived to be an old man, but the marks
of that blow never disappeared: he carried the scars to his grave.
[Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON AND THE OFFICER'S BOOTS.]
212. The prisoners in the yard of Camden jail; seeing a battle through
a knot-hole.--Andrew was sent with other prisoners to Camden, South
Carolina,[9] and shut up in the jail-yard. There many fell sick and
died of small-pox.
One day some of the prisoners heard that General Greene--the greatest
American general in the Revolution, next to Washington--was coming
to fight the British at Camden. Andrew's heart leaped for joy, for
he knew that if General Greene should win he would set all the
prisoners at liberty.
General Greene, with his little army, was on a hill in sight Of the
jail, but there was a high, tight board fence round the jail-yard,
and the prisoners could not see them. With the help of an old razor
Andrew managed to dig out a knot from one of the boards. Through that
knot-hole he watched the battle.
Our men were beaten in the fight, and Andrew saw their horses, with
empty saddles, running wildly about. Then the boy turned away, sick
at heart. Soon after that he was seized with the small-pox, and would
have died of it if his mother had not succeeded in getting him set
free.
[Footnote 9: Camden: see map in paragraph 140.]
213. Mrs. Jackson goes to visit the American prisoners at Charleston;
Andrew loses his best friend; what he said of her.--In the summer
Mrs. Jackson made a journey on horseback to Charleston, a hundred
and sixty miles away. She went to carry some little comforts to the
poor American prisoners, who were starving and dying of disease in
the crowded and filthy British prison-ships in the harbor. While
visiting these unfortunate men she caught the fever which raged among
them. Two weeks later she was in her grave, and Andrew, then a lad
of fourteen, stood alone in the world.
Years afterward, when he had risen to be a noted man, people would
sometimes praise him because he was never afraid to say and do what
he believed to be right; then Jackson would answer, "_That_ I learned
from my good old mother."
214. Andrew begins to learn a trade; he studies law and goes west;
Judge Jackson; General Jackson.--Andrew set to work to learn the
saddler's trade, but gave it up and began to study law. After he
became a lawyer he went across the mountains to Nashville, Tennessee.
There he was made a judge. There were plenty of rough men in that
part of the country who meant to have their own way in all things;
but they soon found that they must respect and obey Judge Jackson.
They could frighten other judges, but it was no use to try to frighten
him. Seeing what sort of stuff Jackson was made of, they thought that
they should like to have such a man to lead them in battle. And so
Judge Andrew Jackson became General Andrew Jackson. When trouble
came with the Indians, Jackson proved to be the very man they needed.
215. Tecumseh and the Indians of Alabama; Tecumseh threatens to stamp
his foot on the ground; the earthquake; war begins.--We have already
seen how the Indian chief Tecumseh[10] went south to stir up the red
men to make war on the white settlers in the west. In Alabama he told
the Indians that if they fought they would gain a great victory. I
see, said Tecumseh to them, that you don't believe what I say, and
that you don't mean to fight. Well, I am now going north to Detroit.
When I get there I shall stamp my foot on the ground, and shake down
every wigwam you have. It so happened that, shortly after Tecumseh
had gone north, a sharp shock of earthquake was felt in Alabama, and
the wigwams were actually shaken down by it. When the terrified
Indians felt their houses falling to pieces, they ran out of them,
shouting, "Tecumseh has got to Detroit!"
These Indians now believed all that Tecumseh had said; they began
to attack the white people, and they killed a great number of them.
[Footnote 10: Tecumseh: see paragraph 203.]
216. Jackson conquers the Indians; the "Holy Ground"; Weathersford
and Jackson; feeding the starving.--General Jackson marched against
the Indians and beat them in battle. The Indians that escaped fled
to a place they called the "Holy Ground.", They believed that if a
white man dared to set his foot on that ground he would be struck
dead as if by a flash of lightning. General Jackson and his men
marched on to the "Holy Ground," and the Indians found that unless
they made peace they would be the ones who would be struck dead by
his bullets.
[Illustration: GENERAL JACKSON AND THE INDIAN CHIEF.]
Not long after this, a noted leader of the Indians, named
Weathersford, rode boldly up to Jackson's tent. "Kill him! kill him!"
cried Jackson's men; but the general asked Weathersford into his tent.
"You can kill me if you want to," said he to Jackson, "but I came
to tell you that the Indian women and children are starving in the
woods, and to ask you to help them, for they never did you any harm."
General Jackson sent away Weathersford in safety, and ordered that
corn should be given to feed the starving women and children. That
act showed that he was as merciful as he was brave.
217. The British send war-ships to take New Orleans; the great battle
and the great victory.--These things happened during our second war
with England, or the War of 1812. About a year after Jackson's victory
over the Indians the British sent an army in ships to take New
Orleans.
General Jackson now went to New Orleans, to prevent the enemy from
getting possession of the city.
About four miles below the city, which stands on the Mississippi
River,[11] there was a broad, deep ditch, running from the river into
a swamp. Jackson saw that the British would have to cross that ditch
when they marched against the city. For that reason he built a high
bank on the upper side of the ditch, and placed cannon along the top
of the bank.
Early on Sunday morning, January 8th, 1815, the British sent a rocket
whizzing up into the sky; a few minutes afterward they sent up a
second one. It was the signal that they were about to march to attack
us.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.]
Just before the fight began General Jackson walked along among his
men, who were getting ready to defend the ditch. He said to them,
"Stand to your guns; see that every shot tells: give it to them,
boys!" The "boys" did give it to them. The British soldiers were brave
men; they had been in many terrible battles, and they were not afraid
to die. They fought desperately; they tried again and again to cross
that ditch and climb the bank, but they could not do it. The fire
of our guns cut them down just as a mower cuts down the tall grain
with his scythe.[12] In less than half an hour the great battle was
over; Jackson had won the victory and saved New Orleans. We lost only
eight killed; the enemy lost over two thousand.[13] We have never
had a battle since with England; it is to be hoped that we never shall
have another, for two great nations[14] like England and America,
that speak the same language, ought to be firm and true friends.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS.]
[Footnote 11: See map in paragraph 218.]
[Footnote 12: Scythe (sithe).]
[Footnote 13: Killed and wounded.]
[Footnote 14: Nations: a nation is a people born in the same country
and living under the same government; as the American nation, the
French nation, the English nation.]
218. We buy Florida; General Jackson made President of the United
States; the first railroad.--After the battle of New Orleans General
Jackson conquered the Indians in Florida, and in 1819 we bought that
country of Spain, and so made the United States much larger on the
south.[15] This was our second great land purchase.[16]
[Illustration: The light parts of this map show the extent of the
United States in 1819, after we had bought and added Florida. The
black and white bars in the northwest show that the ownership of the
Oregon country was still in dispute between the United States and
Great Britain.]
Ten years after we got Florida General Jackson became President of
the United States. He had fought his way up. Here are the four steps:
first the boy, "Andy Jackson"; then "Judge Jackson"; then "General
Jackson"; last of all, "President Jackson."
Shortly after he became the chief ruler of the nation the first steam
railroad in the United States was built (1830). From that time such
roads kept creeping further and further west. The Indians had
frightened the white settlers with their terrible war-whoop. Now it
was their turn to be frightened, for the locomotive whistle[17] could
beat their wildest yell. They saw that the white man was coming as
fast as steam could carry him, and that he was determined to get
possession of the whole land. The greater part of the Indians moved
across the Mississippi; but the white man kept following them and
following the buffalo further and further across the country, toward
the Pacific Ocean; and the railroad followed in the white man's
track.
[Illustration: THE GREAT STEEL RAILROAD BRIDGE ACROSS THE
MISSISSIPPI RIVER AT ST. LOUIS. (Built by Captain Eads, and completed
in 1874.)]
[Illustration: NIAGARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
[Footnote 15: See map in this paragraph.]
[Footnote 16: For our first land purchase see paragraph 188.]
[Footnote 17: The first steam railroad built in the United States
extended from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, Maryland, a distance
of twelve miles. It was opened in 1830. It forms a part of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.]
219. Summary.--Andrew Jackson of North Carolina gained a great
victory over the Indians in Alabama and also in Florida. In 1815,
in our second war with England, General Jackson whipped the British
at New Orleans, and so prevented their getting possession of that
city. A few years later we bought Florida of Spain.
After General Jackson became President of the United States the first
steam-railroad was built in this country. Railroads helped to settle
the west and build up states beyond the Mississippi.
Who fought the greatest battle of the War of 1812? Tell about Andrew
Jackson's boyhood. Tell the story of the gun. Tell about Tarleton.
What did Mrs. Jackson do? What did Andrew do? What did Andrew use
to do at the blacksmith shop?
Tell about Tarleton's men and the bees. What did bands of armed men
use to do in the country where Andrew lived? Tell about playing at
battle. What did Tarleton say? Tell about Andrew and the boots. Tell
how he saw a battle through a knot-hole. Tell how Andrew's mother
died. What did he say about her? Tell about Andrew Jackson as a judge.
Why was he made a general? Tell about Tecumseh and the Alabama Indians.
After General Jackson had beaten the Indians, where did they go? What
is said about the "Holy Ground." What about Jackson and Weathersford?
Tell about the great battle of New Orleans. Who gained the victory?
When did we buy Florida? What were the four steps in Andrew Jackson's
life? What is said about railroads?
PROFESSOR MORSE
(1791-1872).
220. How they sent the news of the completion of the Erie Canal to
New York City; Franklin and Morse.--The Erie Canal, in the state of
New York, connects the Hudson River at Albany with Lake Erie at
Buffalo. It is the greatest work of the kind in America, and was
completed many years ago. When the water was let into the canal from
the lake, the news was flashed from Buffalo to New York City by a
row of cannon, about five miles apart, which were fired as rapidly
as possible one after the other. The first cannon was fired at Buffalo
at ten o'clock in the morning; the last was fired at New York at
half-past eleven. In an hour and a half the sound had travelled over
five hundred miles. Everybody said that was wonderfully quick work;
but to-day we could send the news in less than a minute. The man who
found out how to do this was Samuel F. B. Morse.
[Illustration: HOW THEY FLASHED THE NEWS OF THE COMPLETION OF THE
ERIE CANAL IN 1825.]
We have seen how Benjamin Franklin[1] discovered, by means of his
kite, that lightning and electricity are the same. Samuel Morse was
born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, about a mile from Franklin's
birthplace, the year after that great man died. He began his work
where Franklin left off. He said to himself, Dr. Franklin found out
what lightning is; I will find out how to harness it and make it carry
news and deliver messages.[2]
[Footnote 1: See paragraph 119.]
[Footnote 2: Messages: a message is any word sent by one person to
another.]
221. Morse becomes a painter; what he thought might be done about
sending messages.--When Samuel Morse was a little boy, he was fond
of drawing pictures, particularly faces; if he could not get a pencil,
he would scratch them with a pin on the furniture at school: the only
pay he got for making such pictures was some smart raps from the
teacher. After he became a man he learned to paint. At one time he
lived in France with several other American artists. One day they
were talking of how long it took to get letters from America, and
they were wishing the time could be shortened. Somebody spoke of how
cannon had been used at the time of the opening of the Erie Canal.
Morse was familiar with all that; he had been educated at Yale College,
and he knew that the sound of a gun will travel a mile while you are
counting five; but quick as that is, he wanted to find something
better and quicker still. He said, Why not try lightning or
electricity? That will beat sound, for that will go more than a
thousand miles while you are counting _one_.
222. What a telegraph[3] is; a wire telegraph; Professor Morse
invents the electric telegraph.--Some time after that, Mr. Morse set
sail for America. On the way across the Atlantic he was constantly
talking about electricity and how a telegraph--that is, a machine
which would write at a distance--might be invented. He thought about
this so much that he could not sleep nights. At last he believed that
he saw how he could make such a machine.
[Illustration: ONE KIND OF TELEGRAPH.]
Suppose you take a straight and stiff piece of wire as long as your
desk and fasten it in the middle so that the ends will swing easily.
Next tie a pencil tight to each end; then put a sheet of paper under
the point of each pencil. Now, if you make a mark with the pencil
nearest to you, you will find that the pencil at the other end of
the wire will make the same kind of mark. Such a wire would be a kind
of telegraph, because it would make marks or signs at a distance.
Mr. Morse said: I will have a wire a mile long with a pencil, or
something sharp-pointed like a pencil, fastened to the further end;
the wire itself shall not move at all, but the pencil shall, for I
will make electricity run along the wire and move it. Mr. Morse was
then a professor or teacher in the University of the City of New York.
He put up such a wire in one of the rooms of the building, sent the
electricity through it, and found that it made the pencil make just
the marks he wanted it should; that meant that he had invented the
_electric telegraph_; for if he could do this over a mile of wire,
then what was to hinder his doing it over a hundred or even a thousand
miles?
[Illustration: PROFESSOR MORSE AT WORK MAKING HIS TELEGRAPH.]
[Footnote 3: Telegraph (tel'e-graf): this name is made up of two
Greek words, the first of which means _far off_, and the second _to
write_.]
223. How Professor Morse lived while he was making his
telegraph.--But all this was not done in a day, for this invention
cost years of patient labor. At first, Mr. Morse lived in a little
room by himself: there he worked and ate, when he could get anything
to eat; and slept, if he wasn't too tired to sleep. Later, he had
a room in the university. While he was there he painted pictures to
get money enough to buy food; there, too (1839), he took the first
photograph ever made in America. Yet with all his hard work there
were times when he had to go hungry, and once he told a young man
that if he did not get some money he should be dead in a week--dead
of starvation.
[Illustration: A COPY OF THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH MADE IN AMERICA. (The
tower of the Church of the Messiah, in New York. The church is no
longer standing.)]
224. Professor Morse gets help about his telegraph; what Alfred Vail
did.--But better times were coming. A young man named Alfred Vail[4]
happened to see Professor Morse's telegraph. He believed it would
be successful. He persuaded his father, Judge Vail, to lend him two
thousand dollars, and he became Professor Morse's partner in the work.
Mr. Vail was an excellent mechanic, and he made many improvements
in the telegraph. He then made a model[5] of it at his own expense,
and took it to Washington and got a patent[6] for it in Professor
Morse's name. The invention was now safe in one way, for no one else
had the right to make a telegraph like his. Yet, though he had this
help, Professor Morse did not get on very fast, for a few years later
he said, "I have not a cent in the world; I am crushed for want of
means."
[Footnote 4: Alfred Vail: he was the son of Stephen Vail (commonly
known as Judge Vail), owner of the Speedwell iron-works, near
Morristown, New Jersey. Judge Vail built the engines of the
_Savannah_, the first steamship which crossed the Atlantic.]
[Footnote 5: Model: a small copy or representation of something.
Professor Morse made a small telegraph and sent it to Washington,
to show what his large telegraph would be like.]
[Footnote 6: Patent: a written or printed right given by the
government at Washington to an inventor to make something; as, for
instance, a telegraph or a sewing-machine. The patent forbids any
one except the inventor, or holder of the patent, from making such
a machine, and so he gets whatever money comes from his work. In order
to get a patent, a man must send a model of his invention to be placed
in the Patent Office at Washington.]
225. Professor Morse asks Congress to help him build a telegraph
line; what Congress thought.--Professor Morse now asked Congress to
let him have thirty thousand dollars to construct a telegraph line
from Washington to Baltimore. He felt sure that business men would
be glad to send messages by telegraph, and to pay him for his work.
But many members of Congress laughed at it, and said they might as
well give Professor Morse the money to build "a railroad to the moon."
Week after week went by, and the last day that Congress would sit
was reached, but still no money had been granted. Then came the last
night of the last day (March 3d, 1843). Professor Morse stayed in
the Senate Chamber[7] of Congress until after ten o'clock; then,
tired and disappointed he went back to his hotel, thinking that he
must give up trying to build his telegraph line.
[Footnote 7: Senate Chamber: Congress (or the body of persons chosen
to make the laws of the United States) is divided into two
classes,--Representatives and Senators; they meet in different
rooms or chambers in the Capitol at Washington.]
226. Miss Annie Ellsworth brings good news.--The next morning Miss
Annie G. Ellsworth met him as he was coming down to breakfast. She
was the daughter of his friend who had charge of the Patent Office
in Washington. She came forward with a smile, grasped his hand, and
said that she had good news for him, that Congress had decided to
let him have the money. Surely you must be mistaken, said the
professor, for I waited last night until nearly midnight, and came
away because nothing had been done. But, said the young lady, my
father stayed until it was quite midnight, and a few minutes before
the clock struck twelve Congress voted[8] the money; it was the very
last thing that was done.
Professor Morse was then a gray-haired man over fifty. He had worked
hard for years and got nothing for his labor. This was his first great
success. He doesn't say whether he laughed or cried--perhaps he felt
a little like doing both.
[Footnote 8: Voted: here this word means given or granted.]
227. The first telegraph line built; the first message sent; the
telegraph and the telephone[9] now.--When, at length, Professor
Morse did speak, he said to Miss Ellsworth, "Now, Annie, when my line
is built from Washington to Baltimore, you shall send the first
message over it." In the spring of 1844 the line was completed, and
Miss Ellsworth sent these words over it (they are words taken from
the Bible): "_What hath God wrought!_"[10]
[Illustration: WHAT THE BIRDS THINK TELEGRAPH WIRES WERE PUT UP FOR.]
For nearly a year after that the telegraph was free to all who wished
to use it; then a small charge was made, a very short message costing
only one cent. On the first of April, 1845, a man came into the office
and bought a cent's worth of telegraphing. That was all the money
which was taken that day for the use of forty miles of wire. Now there
are about two hundred thousand miles of telegraph line in the United
States, or more than enough to reach eight times round the earth,
and the messages sent bring in over seventy thousand dollars every
day; and we can telegraph not only clear across America, but clear
across the Atlantic Ocean by a line laid under the sea. Professor
Morse's invention made it possible for people to write by
electricity; but now, by means of the telephone, a man in New York
can talk with his friend in Philadelphia, Boston, and many other
large cities, and his friend listening at the other end of the wire
can hear every word he says. Professor Morse did not live long enough
to see this wonderful invention, which, in some ways, is an
improvement even on his telegraph.
[Illustration: HOW A MESSAGE BY TELEGRAPH IS SENT.[11]]
[Footnote 9: Telephone (tel'e-fone): this name is made up of two
Greek words, the first of which means _far off_, and the second, _a
voice or sound_. The telephone was invented by Professor Alexander
G. Bell of Boston; he completed it in 1876. Professor Bell now lives
in Washington.]
[Footnote 10: See Num. xxiii. 23.]
[Footnote 11: When the button at Chicago is pressed down, the
electricity passing over the wire to Denver presses the point there
down on the paper, and so makes a dot or dash which stands for a letter
on the roll of paper as it passes under it. In this way words and
messages are spelled out. The message on the strip of paper above
is the question, _How is trade?_]
228. Summary.--Professor Morse invented the Electric Telegraph. He
received much help from Mr. Alfred Vail. In 1844 Professor Morse and
Mr. Vail built the first line of telegraph in the United States, or
in the world. It extended from Washington to Baltimore. The telegraph
makes it possible for us to send a written message thousands of miles
in a moment; by the telephone, which was invented after Professor
Morse's death, we can talk with people who are several hundreds of
miles away and hear what they say in reply.
Tell how they sent the news of the completion of the Erie Canal. What
did Samuel Morse say to himself? Tell about Morse as a painter. What
did he want to find? What was he talking about on his voyage back
to America? What is a telegraph? How can you make a small wire
telegraph? What did Professor Morse make? How did he live? What did
he do in 1839? How did he get help about his telegraph? What did he
ask Congress to do? What did some men in Congress say? What news did
Miss Annie Ellsworth bring him? What was the first message sent by
telegraph in 1844? How many miles of telegraph are there now in the
United States? Is there a telegraph line under the sea? What is said
about the telephone?
GENERAL SAM HOUSTON
(1793-1863)
229. Sam Houston and the Indians; Houston goes to live with the
Indians.--When General Jackson whipped the Indians in Alabama,[1]
a young man named Sam Houston[2] fought under Jackson and was
terribly wounded. It was thought that the brave fellow would
certainly die, but his strong will carried him through, and he lived
to make himself a great name in the southwest.
Although Houston fought the Indians, yet, when a boy, he was very
fond of them, and spent much of his time with them in the woods of
Tennessee.
Long after he became a man, this love of the wild life led by the
red men in the forest came back to him. While Houston was governor
of Tennessee (1829) he suddenly made up his mind to leave his home
and his friends, go across the Mississippi River, and take up his
abode with an Indian tribe in that part of the country. The chief,
who had known him as a boy, gave him a hearty welcome. "Rest with
us," he said; "my wigwam is yours." Houston stayed with the tribe
three years.
[Illustration: SAM HOUSTON.]
[Footnote 1: See paragraph 216.]
[Footnote 2: Sam Houston (Hew'ston): he always wrote his name Sam
Houston; he was born near Lexington in Rockbridge County, Virginia.]
230. Houston goes to Texas; what he said he would do; the murders
at Alamo[3]; the flag with one star; what Houston did; Texas added
to the United States; our war with Mexico.--At the end of that time
he said to a friend, "I am going to Texas, and in that new country
I will make a man of myself." Texas then belonged to Mexico; and
President Andrew Jackson had tried in vain to buy it as Jefferson
bought Louisiana. Houston said, "I will make it part of the United
States." About twenty thousand Americans had already moved into
Texas, and they felt as he did.
War broke out between Texas and Mexico, and General Sam Houston led
the Texan soldiers in their fight for independence. He had many noted
American pioneers[4] and hunters in his little army: one of them was
the brave Colonel Travis[5] of Alabama; another was Colonel Bowie[6]
of Louisiana, the inventor of the "bowie knife"; still another was
Colonel David Crockett of Tennessee, whose motto is a good one for
every young American--"Be sure you're right, then--_go ahead_."
These men were all taken prisoners by the Mexicans at Fort Alamo--an
old Spanish church in San Antonio--and were cruelly murdered.
Not long after that General Houston fought a great battle near the
city which is now called by his name.[7] The Mexicans had more than
two men to every one of Houston's; but the Americans and Texans went
into battle shouting the terrible cry "_Remember the Alamo!_" and
the Mexicans fled before them like frightened sheep. Texas then
became an independent state, and elected General Houston its
president. The people of Texas raised a flag having on it a single
star. For this reason it was sometimes called, as it still is, the
"Lone Star State."
[Illustration: THE "LONE STAR" FLAG.]
Texas was not contented to stand alone; she begged the United States
to add her to its great and growing family of states. This was done[8]
in 1845. But, as we shall presently see, a war soon broke out (1846)
between the United States and Mexico, and when that war was ended
we obtained a great deal more land at the west.
[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States after we
added Texas in 1845. The black and white bars show that the ownership
of the Oregon country was still in dispute between the United States
and Great Britain.]
[Footnote 3: Alamo (Al'a-mo).]
[Footnote 4: Pioneers: those who go before to prepare the way for
others; the first settlers in a country are its pioneers.]
[Footnote 5: Travis (Tra'vis).]
[Footnote 6: Bowie (Bow'e).]
[Footnote 7: See map in this paragraph.]
[Footnote 8: See map in this paragraph.]
231. General Sam Houston in the great war between the North and the
South; what he said.--We have seen the part which General Sam Houston
took in getting new country to add to the United States. He lived
in Texas for many years after that. When, in 1861, the great war broke
out between the North and the South, General Houston was governor
of the state. He withdrew from office and went home to his log cabin
in Huntsville. He refused to take any part in the war, for he loved
the Union,--that is, the whole country, North and South
together,--and he said to his wife, "My heart is broken." Before the
war ended he was laid in his grave.[9]
[Footnote 9: General Houston was buried at Huntsville, about eighty
miles northwest of the city of Houston, Texas.]
232. Summary.--General Sam Houston of Tennessee led the people of
Texas in their war against Mexico. The Texans gained the victory,
and made their country an independent state with General Houston as
its president. After a time Texas was added to the United States.
We then had a war with Mexico, and added a great deal more land at
the west. General Houston died during the war between the North and
the South.
Tell about Sam Houston and the Indians. Where did Houston go after
he became governor of Tennessee? Where did Houston go next? What did
he say he would do about Texas? What was David Crockett's motto? What
is said about Fort Alamo? What about the battle with the Mexicans?
What did Texas become? To what office was Houston elected? What is
said of the Texas flag? When was Texas added to the United States?
What war then broke out? What did we get by that war? What is said
of General Houston in the great war between the North and the South?
CAPTAIN ROBERT GRAY
(1755-1806).
233. Captain Gray goes to the Pacific coast to buy furs; he first
carries the Stars and Stripes round the globe.--Not long after the
war of the Revolution had come to an end some merchants of Boston
sent out two vessels to Vancouver[1] Island, on the northwest coast
of America. The names of the vessels were the _Columbia_ and the _Lady
Washington_, and they sailed round Cape Horn into the Pacific.
Captain Robert Gray went out as commander of one of these vessels.[2]
He was born in Rhode Island[3] and he had fought in one of our
war-ships in the Revolution.
Captain Gray was sent out by the Boston merchants to buy furs from
the Indians on the Pacific coast. He had no difficulty in getting
all he wanted, for the savages were glad to sell them for very little.
In one case a chief let the captain have two hundred sea-otter skins
such as are used for ladies' sacks, and which were worth about eight
thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel. After getting a valuable
cargo of furs, Captain Gray sailed in the _Columbia_ for China, where
he bought a quantity of tea. He then went to the south, round the
Cape of Good Hope, and keeping on toward the west he reached Boston
in the summer of 1790. He had been gone about three years, and he
was the first man who carried the American flag clear round the globe.
[Illustration: A SEA-OTTER.]
[Footnote 1: Vancouver (Van-koo'ver): part of it is seen north of
Portland, Or., paragraph 234.]
[Footnote 2: He commanded the _Lady Washington_ at first, and
afterward the _Columbia_.]
[Footnote 3: Tiverton, Rhode Island.]
234. Captain Gray's second voyage to the Pacific coast; he enters
a great river and names it the Columbia; the United States claims
the Oregon country; we get Oregon in 1846.--Captain Gray did not stay
long at Boston, for he sailed again that autumn in the _Columbia_
for the Pacific coast, to buy more furs. He stayed on that coast a
long time. In the spring of 1792 he entered a great river and sailed
up it a distance of nearly thirty miles. He seems to have been the
first white man who had ever actually entered it. He named the vast
stream the Columbia River, from the name of his vessel. It is the
largest American river which empties into the Pacific Ocean south
of Alaska.[4]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN GRAY EXPLORING THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON.]
Captain Gray returned to Boston and gave an account of his voyage
of exploration; this led Congress to claim the country through which
the Columbia flows[5] as part of the United States.
[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD, OREGON.]
After Captain Gray had been dead for forty years we came into
possession, in 1846, of the immense territory then called the Oregon
Country. It was through what he had done that we got our first claim
to that country which now forms the states of Oregon and Washington.
[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States after we
added the Oregon Country in 1846.]
[Illustration: EMIGRANTS ON THEIR WAY TO OREGON FIFTY YEARS AGO.]
[Footnote 4: The Yukon River in Alaska is larger than the Columbia.]
[Footnote 5: The discovery and exploration of a river usually gives
the right to a claim to the country watered by that river, on the
part of the nation to which the discoverer or explorer belongs.]
235. Summary.--A little over a hundred years ago (1790) Captain
Robert Gray of Rhode Island first carried the American flag round
the world. In 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River. Because
he did that the United States claimed the country--called the Oregon
Country--through which that river runs. In 1846 we added the Oregon
Country to our possessions; it now forms the two states of Oregon
and Washington.
Tell about Captain Gray's voyage to the Pacific coast. What did he
buy there? What did he first carry round the globe? Tell about his
second voyage. What did he do in 1792? What happened after Captain
Gray returned to Boston? What happened in 1846? What two states were
made out of the Oregon Country?
CAPTAIN SUTTER[1]
(1803-1880).
236. Captain Sutter and his fort; how the captain lived.--At the time
when Professor Morse sent his first message by telegraph from
Washington to Baltimore (1844), Captain J. A. Sutter, an emigrant
from Switzerland, was living near the Sacramento River in California.
California then belonged to Mexico. The governor of that part of the
country had given Captain Sutter an immense piece of land; and the
captain had built a fort at a point where a stream which he named
the American River joins the Sacramento River.[2] People then called
the place Sutter's Fort, but to-day it is Sacramento City, the
capital of the great and rich state of California.
In his fort Captain Sutter lived like a king. He owned land enough
to make a thousand fair-sized farms; he had twelve thousand head of
cattle, more than ten thousand sheep, and over two thousand horses
and mules. Hundreds of laborers worked for him in his wheat-fields,
and fifty well-armed soldiers guarded his fort. Quite a number of
Americans had built houses near the fort. They thought that the time
was coming when all that country would become part of the United
States.
[Illustration: Map of Sutter's Fort area.]
[Footnote 1: Sutter (Soo'ter).]
[Footnote 2: See map in this paragraph.]
237. Captain Sutter builds a saw-mill at Coloma;[3] a man finds some
sparkling dust.--About forty miles up the American River was a place
which the Mexicans called Coloma, or the beautiful valley. There was
a good fall of water there and plenty of big trees to saw into boards,
so Captain Sutter sent a man named Marshall to build a saw-mill at
that place. The captain needed such a mill very much, for he wanted
lumber to build with and to fence his fields.
Marshall set to work, and before the end of January, 1848, he had
built a dam across the river and got the saw-mill half done. One day
as he was walking along the bank of a ditch, which had been dug back
of the mill to carry off the water, he saw some bright yellow specks
shining in the dirt. He gathered a little of the sparkling dust,
washed it clean, and carried it to the house. That evening after the
men had come in from their work on the mill, Marshall said to them,
"Boys, I believe I've found a gold mine." They laughed, and one of
them said, "I reckon not; no such luck."
[Illustration: CAPTAIN SUTTER'S SAW-MILL AT COLOMA, WHERE GOLD WAS
FIRST FOUND.]
[Footnote 3: Coloma (Ko-lo'ma): see map in paragraph 236.]
238. Marshall takes the shining dust to Captain Sutter; what he did
with it, and how he felt about the discovery.--A few days after that
Marshall went down to the fort to see Captain Sutter. Are you alone?
he asked when he saw the captain. Yes, he answered. Well, won't you
oblige me by locking the door; I've something I want to show you.
The captain locked the door, and Marshall taking a little parcel out
of his pocket, opened it and poured some glittering dust on a paper
he had spread out. "See here," said he, "I believe this is gold, but
the people at the mill laugh at me and call me crazy."
Captain Sutter examined it carefully. He weighed it; he pounded it
flat; he poured some strong acid on it. There are three very
interesting things about gold. In the first place, it is very heavy,
heavier even than lead. Next, it is very tough. If you hammer a piece
of iron long enough, it will break to pieces, but you can hammer a
piece of gold until it is thinner than the thinnest tissue paper,
so that if you hold it up you can see the light shining through it.
Last of all, if you pour strong acids on gold, such acids as will
eat into other metals and change their color, they will have no more
effect on gold than an acid like vinegar has on a piece of glass.
For these and other reasons most people think that gold is a very
handsome metal, and the more they see of it, especially if it is their
own, the better they are pleased with it.
Well, the shining dust stood all these tests.[4] It was very heavy,
it was very tough, and the sharp acid did not hurt it. Captain Sutter
and Marshall both felt sure that it was _gold_.
But, strange to say, the captain was not pleased. He wished to build
up an American settlement and have it called by his name. He did not
care for a gold mine--why should he? for he had everything he wanted
without it. He was afraid, too, that if gold should be discovered
in any quantity, thousands of people would rush in; they would dig
up his land, and quite likely take it all away from him. We shall
see presently whether he was right or not.
[Footnote 4: Tests: here experiments or trials made to find out what
a thing is.]
239. War with Mexico; Mexico lets us have California and New Mexico;
"gold! gold! gold!" what happened at Coloma; how California was
settled; what happened to Captain Sutter and to Marshall.--While
these things were happening we had been at war with Mexico for two
years (1846-1848), because Texas and Mexico could not agree about
the western boundary line[5] of the new state. Texas wanted to push
that line as far west as possible so as to have more land; Mexico
wanted to push it as far east as possible so as to give as little
land as she could. This dispute soon brought on a war between the
United States and Mexico. Soon after gold was discovered at Coloma,
the war ended (1848); and we got not only all the land the people
of Texas had asked for, but an immense deal more; for we obtained
the great territory of California and New Mexico, out of which a
number of states and territories have since been made.[6]
[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States in 1848,
after Mexico let us have California and New Mexico.]
In May, 1848, a man came to San Francisco holding up a bottle full
of gold-dust in one hand and swinging his hat with the other. As he
walked through the streets he shouted with all his might, "Gold!
gold! gold! from the American River."
Then the rush for Coloma began. Every man had a spade and a pick-axe.
In a little while the beautiful valley was dug so full of holes that
it looked like an empty honeycomb. The next year a hundred thousand
people poured into California from all parts of the United States;
so the discovery of gold filled up that part of the country with
emigrants years before they would have gone if no gold had been found
there.
[Illustration: WASHING DIRT TO GET OUT THE GOLD-DUST.]
Captain Sutter lost all his property. He would have died poor if the
people of California had not given him money to live on.
Marshall was still more to be pitied. He got nothing by his discovery.
Years after he had found the shining dust, some one wrote to him and
asked him for his photograph. He refused to send it. He said, "My
likeness ... is, in fact, all I have that I can call my own; and I
feel like any other poor wretch:[7] I want _something_ for self."
[Illustration: MIRROR LAKE, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA.]
[Footnote 5: Western boundary line: the people of Texas held that
their state extended west as far as the Rio Grande River, but Mexico
insisted that the boundary line was at the Nueces River, which is
much further east.]
[Footnote 6: Namely: California, Nevada, Utah, and part of Wyoming,
Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.]
[Footnote 7: Wretch: here a very unhappy and miserable person.]
240. How we bought more land; our growth since the Revolution.--Long
before Captain Sutter died, the United States bought from Mexico
another great piece of land (1853), marked on the map by the name
of the Gadsden Purchase.[8] A number of years later (1867) we bought
the territory of Alaska[9] from Russia.
[Illustration: This map shows the extent of the United States in 1853
after we had added the land called the Gadsden Purchase, bought from
Mexico; the land is marked on the map, 1853.]
The Revolution ended something over a hundred years ago; if you look
on the map in paragraph 187, and compare it with the maps which follow,
you will see how we have grown during that time. Then we had just
thirteen states[10] which stretched along the Atlantic, and, with
the country west of them, extended as far as the Mississippi River.
Next (1803) we bought the great territory of Louisiana (see map in
paragraph 188), which has since been divided into many states; then
(1819) we bought Florida (see map in paragraph 218); then (1845) we
added Texas (see map in paragraph 230); the next year (1846) we added
Oregon territory, since cut up into two great states (see map in
paragraph 234); then (1848) we obtained California and New Mexico
(see map in paragraph 239). Five years after that (1853) we bought
the land then known as the Gadsden Purchase (see first map in this
paragraph); last of all (1867) we bought Alaska (see second map in
this paragraph).
[Illustration: This map shows the territorial growth of the United
States from the time of the Revolution to the present day.]
[Illustration: SCENE ON THE COAST OF ALASKA.]
[Footnote 8: See maps in this paragraph. It was called the Gadsden
Purchase, because General James Gadsden of South Carolina bought it
from Mexico for the United States, in 1853. It included what is now
part of Southern Arizona and N. Mexico.]
[Footnote 9: Alaska: see second map in this paragraph.]
[Footnote 10: Thirteen states: see footnote 4 in paragraph 102.]
241. "Brother Jonathan's"[11] seven steps.--If you count up these
additions, you will see that, beginning with Louisiana in 1803, and
ending with Alaska in 1867, they make just seven in all. There is
a story of a giant who was so tall that at one long step he could
go more than twenty miles; but "Brother Jonathan" can beat that, for
in the seven steps he has taken since the Revolution he has gone over
three thousand miles. He stands now with one foot on the coast of
the Atlantic and with the other on that of the Pacific.
[Footnote 11: "Brother Jonathan": a name given in fun to the people
of the United States, just as "John Bull" is to the people of England.
One explanation of the origin of the name is this: General Washington
had a very high opinion of the good sense and sound judgment of
Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut. At the beginning of the
Revolutionary War, when no one seemed to know where to get a supply
of powder, General Washington said to his officers, "We must consult
Brother Jonathan on this subject." Afterwards when any serious
difficulty arose it became a common saying in the army that "We must
consult Brother Jonathan," and in time the name came to stand for
the American people.]
242. Summary.--In January, 1848, gold was discovered at Captain
Sutter's saw-mill at Coloma, California. Soon after that, Mexico let
us have California and New Mexico, and they were added to the United
States. Thousands of people, from all parts of the country, hurried
to California to dig gold, and so that state grew more rapidly in
population than any other new part of the United States ever had in
the same length of time. Before Captain Sutter died we added the
Gadsden Purchase and Alaska.
Who was Captain Sutter? Where did he live? Tell how he lived. What
did he begin to build at Coloma? Tell what Marshall found there, and
what was said about it. Tell how Marshall took the shining dust to
Captain Sutter, and what the captain did. What made them both certain
that the dust was gold? Was the captain pleased with the discovery?
What did he think would happen? What is said about our war with
Mexico? What did we fight about? What did we get at the end of the
war? What happened in May, 1848? Then what happened? How many people
went to California? What happened to Captain Sutter? What is said
about Marshall? What land did we buy in 1853? What in 1867?
How long ago did the Revolution end? How many states did we have then?
[Can any one in the class tell how many we have now?] What land did
we buy in 1803? In 1819? What did we add in 1845? In 1846? In 1848?
What did we buy in 1853? In 1867? How many such additions have we
made in all? What could the giant do? What has "Brother Jonathan"
done? Where is one foot? Where is the other?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(1809-1865).
243. The tall man from Illinois making his first speech in Congress;
how he wrote his name; what the people called him.--Not many days
before gold was found at Sutter's saw-mill in California (1848), a
tall, awkward-looking man from Illinois was making his first speech
in Congress. At that time he generally wrote his name
[Illustration: A. Lincoln.]
but after he had become President of the United States, he often wrote
it out in full,--
[Illustration: Abraham Lincoln.]
The plain country people of Illinois, who knew all about him, liked
best to call him by the title they had first given him,--"_Honest
Abe Lincoln_," or, for short, "_Honest Abe_." Let us see how he got
that name.
244. The Lincoln family move to Indiana; "Abe" helps his father build
a new home; what it was like.--Abraham Lincoln was born on February
12th, 1809, in a log shanty on a lonely little farm in Kentucky.[1]
When "Abe," as he was called, was seven years old, his father, Thomas
Lincoln, moved, with his family, to Indiana;[2] there the boy and
his mother worked in the woods and helped him build a new home. That
new home was not so good or so comfortable as some of our cow-sheds
are. It was simply a hut made of rough logs and limbs of trees. It
had no door and no windows. One side of it was left entirely open;
and if a roving Indian or a bear wanted to walk in to dinner, there
was nothing whatever to stop him. In winter "Abe's" mother used to
hang up some buffalo skins before this wide entrance, to keep out
the cold, but in summer the skins were taken down, so that living
in such a cabin was the next thing to living out-of-doors.
[Footnote 1: Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln was born on the banks of the
Big South Fork (or branch) of Nolin Creek in Hardin (now La Rue)
County, Kentucky.]
[Footnote 2: Indiana: the Lincoln family moved to a farm on Little
Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville, in what is now Spencer County,
Indiana.]
245. The new log cabin with four sides to it; how the furniture was
made; "Abe's" bed in the loft.--The Lincoln family stayed in that
shed for about a year; then they moved into a new log cabin which
had four sides to it. They seem to have made a new set of furniture
for the new house. "Abe's" father got a large log, split it in two,
smoothed off the flat side, bored holes in the under side and drove
in four stout sticks for legs: that made the table. They had no
chairs,--it would have been too much trouble to make the backs,--but
they had three-legged stools, which Thomas Lincoln made with an axe,
just as he did the table; perhaps "Abe" helped him drive in the legs.
[Illustration: HOME-MADE FURNITURE.]
In one corner of the loft of this cabin the boy had a big bag of dry
leaves for his bed. Whenever he felt like having a new bed, all that
he had to do was to go out in the woods and gather more leaves.
He worked about the place during the day, helping his father and
mother. For his supper he had a piece of cornbread. After he had eaten
it, he climbed up to his loft in the dark, by a kind of ladder of
wooden pins driven into the logs. Five minutes after that he was fast
asleep on his bed of sweet-smelling leaves, and was dreaming of
hunting coons, or of building big bonfires out of brush.[3]
[Footnote 3: Brush: bushes and limbs of trees.]
246. Death of "Abe's" mother; the lonely grave in the woods; what
Abraham Lincoln said of his mother after he had grown to be a man;
what "Abe's" new mother said of him.--"Abe's" mother was not strong,
and before they had been in their new log cabin a year she fell sick
and died. She was buried on the farm. "Abe" used to go out and sit
by her lonely grave in the forest and cry. It was the first great
sorrow that had ever touched the boy's heart. After he had grown to
be a man, he said with eyes full of tears to a friend with whom he
was talking: "God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be
I owe to her."
[Illustration: "ABE" LEARNING TO USE HIS AXE.]
At the end of a year Thomas Lincoln married again. The new wife that
he brought home was a kind-hearted and excellent woman. She did all
she could to make the poor, ragged, barefooted boy happy. After he
had grown up and become famous, she said: "Abe never gave me a cross
word or look, and never refused to do anything I asked him: Abe was
the best boy I ever saw."
247. The school in the woods; the new teacher; reading by the open
fire; how "Abe" used the fire-shovel.--There was a log schoolhouse
in the woods quite a distance off, and there "Abe" went for a short
time. At the school he learned to read and write a little, but after
a while he found a new teacher, that was--himself. When the rest of
the family had gone to bed, he would sit up and read his favorite
books by the light of the great blazing logs heaped up on the open
fire. He had not more than half a dozen books in all. They were
"Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," AEsop's[4] Fables, the
Bible, a Life of Washington, and a small History of the United States.
The boy read these books over and over till he knew a great deal of
them by heart and could repeat whole pages from them.
[Illustration: WRITING BY THE FIRE.]
Part of his evenings he spent in writing and ciphering. Thomas
Lincoln was so poor that he could seldom afford to buy paper and pens
for his son, so the boy had to get on without them. He used to take
the back of the broad wooden fire-shovel to write on and a piece of
charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or
with sums in arithmetic, he would shave it off clean and begin over
again. If "Abe's" father complained that the shovel was getting thin,
the boy would go out into the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new
one; for as long as the woods lasted, fire-shovels and furniture were
cheap.
[Footnote 4: AEsop (E'sop): the name of a noted writer of fables.
Here is one of AEsop's fables: An old frog thought that he could blow
himself up to be as big as an ox. So he drew in his breath and puffed
himself out prodigiously. "Am I big enough now?" he asked his son.
"No," said his son; "you don't begin to be as big as an ox yet." Then
he tried again, and swelled himself out still more. "How's that?"
he asked. "Oh, it's no use trying," said his son, "you can't do it."
"But I will," said the old frog. With that he drew in his breath with
all his might and puffed himself up to such an enormous size that
he suddenly burst.