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THE STORY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
_FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS_
BY
ALBERT F. BLAISDELL
AUTHOR OF "FIRST STEPS WITH AMERICAN AND BRITISH AUTHORS,"
"STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY," ETC.
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenaeum Press
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
ALBERT F. BLAISDELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE.
Some sort of a first book on American history is now quite generally
used in schools as a preparation for the more intelligent study of a
larger and more formal text-book in the higher grammar grades.
For beginners, a mere compilation of facts is dry and unsatisfactory.
Such books have now given place, for the most part, to those prepared on
a more attractive and judicious plan. The real aim in a first book
should be to interest boys and girls in the history of their country,
and to encourage them to cultivate a taste for further study and
reading.
This book is intended for use in the earlier grammar grades and to be
preliminary to the study of a more advanced work in the higher grades.
The author has also kept in mind the fact that the school life of many
children is brief, and that all their instruction in American history
must come from a text-book of this kind.
The author has not aimed to cover the whole range of our country's
history. Of many noted men and important affairs no mention is made.
Only the leading events of certain periods and the personal achievements
of a few representative "makers of our country" are treated in any
detail. The subject is approached through biographical sketches of a few
of the more illustrious actors in our nation's history. Some prominence
is given to exceptional deeds of valor, details of everyday living in
olden times, dramatic episodes, and personal incident.
The schoolroom test demonstrates the fact that such a treatment of the
subject is more attractive and profitable to children of the lower
grades than the mere recital of minor matters and petty details of
public events.
The author would acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. Homer B. Sprague of
New York City for editorial help in reading and revising the manuscript.
Thanks are also due to Dr. John E. Sanborn of Melrose, Mass., for
editorial assistance.
A. F. BLAISDELL.
NOVEMBER, 1900.
NOTE.--The attention of teachers and pupils is especially directed to
the practical usefulness of the subject of "Reference Books and
Supplementary Reading for Successive Periods in American History," as
treated on pages 424-435 in the Appendix.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AMERICA IN THE OLD DAYS 1
II. COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 10
III. SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 31
IV. THE STORY OF THE PILGRIMS 47
V. MORE ABOUT THE PILGRIMS 60
VI. THE INDIANS AND HOW THEY LIVED 73
VII. THE DUTCH IN NEW YORK; THE QUAKERS IN PENNSYLVANIA 88
VIII. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS 106
IX. EVERYDAY LIFE IN COLONIAL TIMES 126
X. THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 139
XI. LEXINGTON AND CONCORD 158
XII. THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL 170
XIII. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 184
XIV. THE BURGOYNE CAMPAIGN 198
XV. WASHINGTON AND THE REVOLUTION 222
XVI. THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH 250
XVII. THE STORY OF ARNOLD'S TREASON 271
XVIII. JOHN PAUL JONES: OUR FIRST GREAT NAVAL HERO 286
XIX. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: HIS HIGHLY USEFUL CAREER 296
XX. EVERYDAY LIFE ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 311
XXI. WHAT OUR NAVY DID IN THE WAR OF 1812 323
XXII. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PACIFIC COAST 339
XXIII. LINCOLN AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 353
XXIV. MORE ABOUT THE WAR FOR THE UNION 369
XXV. OUR NAVY IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION 387
XXVI. THE WAR WITH SPAIN IN 1898 406
APPENDIX. Books for Reference and Collateral Reading in
the Study of American History 424
INDEX 436
THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY
CHAPTER I.
AMERICA IN THE OLD DAYS.
=1. The Story of our Country.=--We are sure that every intelligent and
patriotic American youth must like to read the story of our country's
life. To a boy or girl of good sense no work of fiction can surpass it
in interest or power.
How delightful to let the imagination summon up the forms and the deeds
of the fearless Norse sailors who dared to cross the unknown seas in
their frail and tiny vessels without compass and without charts! How
interesting the oft-told but ever-fresh narrative of the intrepid
Columbus and his memorable first voyage into and across the "Sea of
Darkness"! What romance was ever more exciting than the stories of the
fierce struggles between the white men and the Indians for existence and
supremacy on this continent?
How deep the pathos of the simple tales that tell of the patient
sufferings, the severe toils, the ever-present dangers, and the heroic
self-denials of the early colonists in making for themselves homes in
the New World! How richly suggestive are those pages that record the
glorious events of our American Revolution--the splendid and immortal
deeds of Washington and his illustrious associates!
Then there is the thrilling account of the most tremendous civil war in
all history, with its four million soldiers, its two thousand battles,
and its preservation of the Union.
And to come down to a time within the memory of every schoolboy, the
echoes of the Spanish-American conflict have hardly yet died away. The
story of this short war in the summer of 1898 still rings in our
ears--with its astounding naval victories at Manila and Santiago, the
freedom of Cuba, and the destruction of the last vestige of the once
mighty Spanish supremacy on this western continent!
=2. Lessons of Wisdom and Inspiration to be learned.=--But beyond and
above all mere gratification and pleasure to be derived from the study
of our country's history, there are in it lessons of wisdom to be
learned, there is inspiration to noble living, there is an uplifting of
the soul to a higher plane of thought and sentiment, there is constant
aid in the development and upbuilding of manly and womanly character.
And when we think of the marvelous growth of less than three centuries
which, beginning with the infant colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth, has
made us a nation of more than seventy millions; when we think of the
wonderful record of trial and triumph and unceasing progress, and of the
great and good and wise men that have laid the foundations and reared
the superstructure of this mighty temple of liberty,--we must be blind
indeed and ungrateful beyond expression not to recognize with devout
thankfulness the guiding hand of a beneficent Providence.
America, under God, stood at Plymouth for religious freedom; in the
Revolution, for independence; in our civil war, for the preservation of
the Union. She now stands for humanity, civilization, and the uplifting
of the whole race.
=3. The People of Ancient America.=--Wise men who have made a special
study of the subject tell us that this country has been continuously
inhabited by generations of men for many thousands of years. Rude tools,
and human skulls, intermingled with bones of animals of species long
extinct, have been found in caves or dug out of deep layers of earth;
and they indicate that in the Mississippi valley and on the Atlantic
and Pacific slopes there lived, perhaps hundreds of ages ago, men of a
low grade of culture.
In the great museums--as the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, the
Peabody Museums at Cambridge and New Haven, and the natural history
rooms at New York and elsewhere--may be seen thousands of the relics of
vanished races of men and animals that once inhabited this continent.
=4. The Red Men or Indians.=--The Indians constitute a race by themselves.
Whether they are descended from some of those prehistoric inhabitants of
whom we have just spoken no one can say; but they make up an American
type with marks as clearly recognized as those that distinguish the
Mongolians and the Malays. For long ages the red men had spread
themselves over the two continents, from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn. With
few or no exceptions, all had the same copperish or cinnamon color,
deep-set and intensely black eyes, high cheek-bones, straight black
hair, with little or no beard; but the long lapse of time, the great
varieties of environment, and perhaps other causes, brought about
striking differences of appearance, of manners, customs, dialects, and
the like.
=5. Three Principal Divisions of the Indians.=--The eminent historian, Dr.
John Fiske, groups the Indians in three leading divisions,--as savage,
barbarous, and half-civilized.
The savage Indians ranged to the west of Hudson Bay, and southward
between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, to the northern part of
Mexico. They lived by catching fish or game. They knew little or nothing
of tilling the soil. They did not dwell in permanent villages, but
roamed from place to place like Bedouin Arabs.
[Illustration: ANCIENT CLIFF DWELLINGS.]
The barbarous Indians inhabited the country east of the Rocky Mountains.
They did not depend wholly upon hunting or fishing, but knew how to
upturn the soil slightly with rude tools, and raise squashes, beans,
tomatoes, and, most important of all, Indian corn. They lived in
villages, and made houses that would last several years. They had dogs
of an inferior breed, but no other domestic animals. Some tribes were
able to weave coarse cloth and make weapons of polished stones. They had
strange social customs and singular religious beliefs. Fighting was
their principal occupation.
The half-civilized Indians once lived in New Mexico and the adjoining
region. They have had almost nothing to do with the history of the
United States. They are the Pueblo Indians, so called from the _pueblos_
or strongholds, dwellings which they built of stones or of sun-dried
brick. Some of these strongholds, story above story, would accommodate
at least three thousand inhabitants! They were built oftentimes in
situations almost inaccessible, like eagles' nests on cliffs, apparently
that they might be defended more easily against the attack of an enemy.
=6. The Northmen and their Discoveries.=--The real contact between the
eastern and western halves of the world practically began in 1492, the
year of the first great voyage of Columbus. Occasional visitors may have
sailed before that date directly across the "Sea of Darkness" from the
Old World to the New. The subject is shrouded for the most part in the
mists of vague stories and obscure traditions.
It seems quite certain, however, that in the year 986 a daring
Scandinavian navigator, Eric the Red, founded on the southwestern coast
of Greenland a colony that lasted four or five hundred years. In the
same year, as the Iceland Sagas (heroic legends) tell us, another Norse
sailor, voyaging from Iceland to Greenland, was driven by storms far out
towards the southwest, and was perhaps the first white man to behold the
American coast.
[Illustration: NORSE RUINS IN GREENLAND.]
Many interesting ruins of stone-built houses and of a church are still
to be seen on that desolate Greenland shore. In those ages the Northmen,
or Norsemen, as the people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were called,
were the most skillful sailors in the world. Eric the Red had several
sons, bold sailors like their father. The oldest of these (whose statue
stands on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston), Leif the Lucky, with thirty-five
hardy men, sailed south from Greenland in the year 1000, to explore
these lands that had been discovered fourteen years before. He landed at
several points along the coast. In a place which he called "Vinland the
Good" (land of vines), he found an abundance of luscious wild grapes.
Just where this sturdy Norse sailor feasted on the grapes is, of course,
uncertain, but good authorities are inclined to think it may have been
not far from Plymouth, on the coast of Massachusetts Bay. He returned
home in the spring. Two years later Leif's brother, Thorwald, came on a
voyage of discovery, but was killed by the natives in the summer of
1004.
In the spring of the year 1007 an Icelandic chief, accompanied by his
wife and a crew of one hundred and sixty men, in three vessels, came to
this Vinland. He remained here three years, and had many dealings with
the Indians.
[Illustration: A NORSE SHIP.]
The Norsemen went home and gave vivid and accurate descriptions of the
land they visited. They described the Indians, the fish, the animals,
and the plants, all of which are given in the Icelandic chronicles. No
real relic, however, of these people has yet been found upon our own
coast.
Columbus, who visited Iceland in the year 1477, may have had access to
the Icelandic archives, and have learned of the discoveries of these
rovers of the deep. But we have no evidence on that point. After the
eleventh century America remained as much unknown as if the bold
Northmen had never steered their dragon-prowed ships along our shores.
The waves that incessantly rolled upon its sands or dashed against its
rocks brought no vessel from the far-away lands of the East. Nearly five
hundred years were to come and go before, in the fullness of time, the
hour struck for the real and fruitful discovery of the New World. It was
left for Columbus, the great Genoese navigator, to open wide its gates!
[Illustration: LANDING OF THE NORSEMEN.]