Other holidays were given the slaves on the Fourth of July and at Christmas time. One negro tells us about the barbecue which his master gave to him and the other slaves. "Yes, honey, dat he did gib us Fourth of July—a plenty o' holiday—a beef kilt, a mutton, hogs, salt, pepper, an' eberyting. He hab a gre't trench dug, and a whole load of wood put in it an' burned down to coals. Den dey put wooden spits across, an' dey had spoons an' basted de meat. An' we 'vite all de culled people aroun', an' dey come, an' we had fine times."

The life of the slaves was sometimes hard and bitter, especially when they were in charge of a cruel overseer on a large plantation. But it was not always so. For it is pleasant to think that when they had good masters, there were many things to cheer and brighten their lives. We know that household slaves often lived in the most friendly relations with their owners.

* * * * *

We must pass over many of the events which took place while Washington was President, but you will very likely take them up in your later study. After serving with marked success for two terms, he again returned (1797) to private life at Mount Vernon. Here, on December 14, 1799, he died at the age of sixty-seven, loved and honored by the American people.

Let us always remember with grateful hearts the noble life of the great man who has rightly been called the "Father of his Country."

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

1. How did the people express their feeling for Washington when he was on his way to New York to be inaugurated as President?

2. Describe one of his public receptions.

3. Who were the men Washington chose to help him in his new task as President?

4. What effects did the invention of the cotton-gin have upon slavery?

5. In imagination visit some old plantations and tell what you can about slave life there.

6. Why has Washington been called the "Father of his Country"?



CHAPTER XII

INCREASING THE SIZE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC

As with reverent thought we turn from the closing days of George Washington's life, our interest is drawn to the career of another national hero, with whom we associate the most remarkable expansion in the area of our country.



Already through the achievements of early pioneers and settlers, such as Daniel Boone in Kentucky, John Sevier and James Robertson in Tennessee, and George Rogers Clark in the region of the Great Lakes, the country lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River had come to be a part of the United States.

But now in a very different and much easier way the territory lying beyond the Mississippi and stretching westward to the Rocky Mountains was added to the national domain. This we obtained, not by exploration or settlement, but by purchase; and the man who had most to do with our getting it was Thomas Jefferson.

The story of the purchase is most interesting, but hardly more so than the story of Thomas Jefferson himself.

He was born in 1743 near Charlottesville, Virginia, on a plantation of nearly two thousand acres. As a boy he lived an out-of-door life, hunting, fishing, swimming, or paddling his boat in the river near his home, and sometimes riding his father's horses. He was a skilful and daring rider, and remained to the end of his long life fond of a fine horse.



He was a most promising lad. At five he entered school, and even at that early age began his lifelong habit of careful reading and studying. While still but a boy he was known among his playmates for his industry and the thorough way in which he did his work.

At seventeen he entered William and Mary College at Williamsburg, Virginia. Here he worked hard, sometimes studying fifteen hours a day. But for his sound body and strong health he must have broken down under such a severe strain.

Yet this hard-working student was no mere bookworm. He was cheerful and full of life, and was very much liked by his fellow students. Among other friends made during his college days was the fun-loving Patrick Henry, who with his jokes and stories kept every one about him in good humor. In time their friendship became so intimate that when Patrick Henry came to Williamsburg as a member of the House of Burgesses, he shared Jefferson's rooms. Both were fond of music, and spent many a pleasant hour playing their violins together.

We have a description of Jefferson as he appeared at this time. He was over six feet tall, slender in body, but with large hands and feet. His freckled face was topped by a mass of sandy hair, from beneath which looked out keen, friendly gray eyes. He stood erect, straight as an arrow, a fine picture of health and strong young manhood.

Thus we may imagine him as he stood one day while a law student at Williamsburg, in the doorway of the courthouse, earnestly listening to his friend Patrick Henry as he delivered his famous speech against the Stamp Act. The fiery words of the eloquent speaker made a deep impression upon young Jefferson's quick, warm nature.

Both young men were earnest patriots, but they served their country in different ways. To Patrick Henry it was given to speak with the silver tongue of the orator; while Jefferson, who was a poor speaker, wrote with such grace and strength that he has rightly been called "The Pen of the Revolution."

Before taking up his public life, it will be of interest to us to see how he helped his countrymen in other ways. Two valuable and lasting improvements have come down from him. The first of these was the system of decimal currency, which replaced the clumsy system of pounds, shillings, and pence used in colonial days. When you are called upon to work out examples in English currency, be grateful to Thomas Jefferson that we have instead the much simpler system of dollars and cents.

The second improvement—which was for the benefit of agriculture, in which Jefferson always felt a deep interest—had, perhaps, even greater importance, for it was not merely a convenience but a means of increasing wealth. It was a new form of plough, which, sinking deeper into the soil, vastly increased its productive power, and has been of untold value to the people not only of our country but of the whole world.

Jefferson showed his interest in the work of the farm in another way. While he was in France as American minister to the King he found that, although the French ate a great deal of rice, especially during Lent, very little of it came from the United States, because rice raised here was thought to be of an inferior quality. The best rice came from Italy.



Wishing to help American rice-growers, Jefferson, therefore, went to Italy to study the Italian method of growing it. He found that in both countries the hulling and cleaning machine was the same. "Then," thought he, "the seed of the Italian rice must be better."

So, doing up some small packages of the best seed rice he could find, he sent them to Charleston. The seeds were carefully distributed among the planters, who made good use of them, and from those seeds as a beginning some of the finest rice in the world is now produced in our own States.

JEFFERSON'S GREATEST WORK AS A STATESMAN

But valuable as these services were to his countrymen, Jefferson's great work in the world was that of a statesman. He first came into prominence in the Second Continental Congress, when, you recall, the brave men representing the several colonies decided that the time had come for the American people to declare themselves free and independent of England. Here Jefferson's ability as a writer did good service; for of the committee of five appointed to draw up the Declaration of Independence Jefferson was a member, and it fell to him to write the first draft of that great state paper.

Congress spent a few days in going over this draft and making some slight changes in it. In the main, however, it stands as Jefferson wrote it.

After filling many of the high offices in the country, in 1801 Jefferson became the third President of the United States. In this lofty position history gives us another striking picture of the man. It shows that he was simple in his tastes, and that he liked best those plain ways of living which are most familiar to the common people.

On the day of his inauguration he went on foot to the Capitol, dressed in his every-day clothes and attended only by a few friends. It became his custom later, when going up to the Capitol on official business, to go on horseback, tying his horse with his own hands to a near-by fence before entering the building. He declined to hold weekly receptions, as had been the custom when Washington and Adams were Presidents, but instead he opened his house to all on the Fourth of July, and on New Year's Day. In these ways he was acting out his belief that the President should be simple in dress and manner.

Many things which Jefferson did proved that he was an able statesman, but the one act which stands out above all others as the greatest and wisest of his administration, was the "Louisiana Purchase."

Let us see how this purchase came to be made. Before Jefferson became President many pioneers, we know, had already settled west of the Alleghany Mountains. Most of them lived along the Ohio and the streams flowing into it from the north and the south. In the upland valleys of the Kentucky and Tennessee Rivers settlers were especially numerous.

These lands were so fertile that the people living there became very prosperous. As their harvests were abundant, they needed a market in which to sell what they could not use.

We have seen how in the autumn it was their custom to load the furs on pack-horses, and driving the cattle before them along the forest trail, to make the long journey over the mountains to cities and towns along the Atlantic coast.



But to send their bulky products by this route was too expensive. Water transportation cost much less. Such produce as corn-meal, flour, pork, and lumber had to go on rafts or flatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Here the cargo and the boat were sold, or the cargo sold and loaded on ocean vessels, which in time reached the eastern market by a cheaper though longer route than that by land. Thus the Mississippi River, being the only outlet for this heavy produce, was very necessary to the prosperity of the west.

But Spain at this time owned New Orleans and all the land about the mouth of the Mississippi River; and as the river became more and more used for traffic Spanish officers at New Orleans began to make trouble. They even went so far as to threaten to prevent the sending of produce to that port.

This threat greatly troubled and angered the western farmers. They proposed wild plans to force an outlet for their trade. But before anything was done, news came that Napoleon, who was then at the head of affairs in France, had compelled Spain to give up Louisiana to France.

Then the westerners grew still more alarmed about their trade. It was bad enough to have a weak country like Spain in control of Louisiana. But it might be far worse to have France, the greatest military power in the world at that time, own it. All this was very plain to Jefferson, and he knew that Napoleon was planning to establish garrisons and colonies in Louisiana.

In view of the possible dangers, he sent James Monroe to France to aid our minister there in securing New Orleans and a definite stretch of territory in Louisiana lying on the east side of the Mississippi River. If he could get that territory, the Americans would then own the entire east bank of the river and could control their own trade.

When Monroe reached France, he found that Napoleon not only was willing to sell what Jefferson wanted, but wished him to buy much more. For as Napoleon was about to engage in war with England, he had great need of money. Besides, he was afraid that the English might even invade and capture Louisiana, and in that case he would get nothing for it. He was satisfied, therefore, to sell the whole of the Louisiana territory for fifteen million dollars.

This purchase was a big event in American history, for you must remember that what was then called Louisiana was a very large stretch of country. It included all the region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from Canada down to what is now Texas. Look at your map and you will see that it was larger than all the rest of the territory which up to that time had been called the United States.



NEW ORLEANS IN 1803

The people of that day did not realize the importance of their purchase. For the most part the territory was a wild region, uninhabited except for scattered Indian tribes, and almost unexplored. The place most alive was New Orleans, which would have interested you keenly had you been a pioneer boy or girl. New Orleans has been called a Franco-Spanish-American city, for it has belonged to all three nations in turn and been under French control twice. You remember that the French settled it. Let us imagine ourselves pioneers of 1803, and that we have just brought a cargo down the river.



We find New Orleans to be one of the chief seaports of America. We see shipping of all sorts about the town—barges and flatboats along the river bank, merchant vessels in the harbor, and farther down some war-ships.

There are buildings still standing which are unchanged parts of the earlier French town—for instance, the government house, the barracks, the hospital, and the convent of the Ursulines. We notice that the walls and fortifications, built partly by the French and partly by the Spaniards, are but a mere ring of grass-grown ruins about the city.



But the city is very picturesque with its tropical vegetation, always green, and its quaint houses, many of them raised several feet above the ground on pillars. The more pretentious mansions are surrounded by broad verandas and fine gardens, and scattered here and there among the houses of the better class are those of the poor people.

The streets are straight and fairly wide, but dirty and ill-kept. The sidewalks are of wood, and at night we need to take our steps carefully, for only a few dim lights break the darkness. Beyond the walls of the city we see suburbs already springing up.

Three-fourths of the inhabitants are creoles—that is, natives of French and Spanish descent, who speak in the French tongue. We do not understand them any more than if we were in a really foreign city. They seem a handsome, well-knit race. But they are idle and lacking in ambition, and for that reason are being crowded out of business by the active, thrifty American merchants, to whom, we observe, they are not quite friendly.

Such was the New Orleans of 1803, a human oasis in a waste of forest, which made up the greater part of the new territory. There were, to be sure, in this trackless wilderness a few French villages near the mouth of the Missouri River. Traders from the British camps in the north had found their way as far south as these villages, but the great prairies had not been explored, and the Rocky Mountains were yet unknown.

LEWIS AND CLARK'S EXPEDITION

Before the purchase was made Jefferson had planned an expedition to explore this region, and Congress had voted money to carry out his plan. Two officers of the United States army, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, were put in command of the expedition.

They were to ascend the Missouri River to its head and then find the nearest waterway to the Pacific coast. They were directed also to draw maps of the region and to report on the nature of the country and the people, plants, animals, and other matters of interest in the new lands.



In May, 1804, the little company of forty-five men left St. Louis and started up the Missouri River, passing the scattered settlements of French creoles. After eleven days they reached the home of Daniel Boone, the last settlement they passed on the Missouri. Leaving that, they found no more white settlers and very few Indians. But the woods were alive with game, so there was no lack of food.



Late in October they arrived at a village of Mandan Indians situated at the great bend of the Missouri River, in what is now known as North Dakota. Deciding to winter here, they built huts and a stockade, calling the camp Fort Mandan. The Mandans were used to white men, as the village had been visited often by traders from both north and south.

Although the Indians gave them no trouble, the explorers suffered greatly from cold and hunger, game being scarce and poor in the winter season.

When spring came the party, now numbering thirty-two, again took up the westward journey. All before them was new country. They met few Indians and found themselves in one of the finest hunting-grounds in the world. Sage-fowl and prairie-fowl, ducks of all sorts, swans, and wild cranes were plentiful, while huge, flapping geese nested in the tops of the cottonwood-trees.



Big game, such as buffalo, elk, antelope, whitetail and blacktail deer, and big-horned sheep, was also abundant. It happened more than once that the party was detained for an hour or more while a great herd of buffalo ploughed their way down the bank of a river in a huge column.

Many of the animals in this region were very tame, for they had not learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which beset them in great swarms.

The second autumn was almost upon them when they arrived at the headwaters of the Missouri, and their hardest task was yet to be accomplished. Before them rose the mountains. These, they knew, must be crossed before they could hope to find any waterway to the coast. The boats in which they had come thus far, now being useless, were left behind, and horses were procured from a band of wandering Indians.

Then they set out again on their journey, which presently became most difficult. For nearly a month they painfully made their way through dense forests, over steep mountains, and across raging torrents, whose icy water chilled both man and beast. Sometimes storms of sleet and snow beat pitilessly down upon them, and again they were almost overcome by oppressive heat.

Game was so scarce that the men often went hungry, and were even driven to kill some of their horses for food.

But brighter days were bound to come, and at last they reached a river which flowed toward the west. They called it Lewis, and it proved to be a branch of the Columbia, which led to the sea. With fresh courage they built five canoes, in which the ragged, travel-worn but now triumphant men made their way down-stream. The Indians whom they met were for the most part friendly, welcoming them and providing them with food, though a few tribes were troublesome.

Before the cold of the second winter had set in they had reached the forests on the Pacific coast, and here they stayed until spring, enduring much hunger and cold, but learning many things about the habits of the Indians.



The next March, as soon as travel was safe, they gladly turned their faces homeward, and after a fatiguing journey of about three months, reached the Great Plains.

Then the party separated for a time into two companies, Clark following the course of the Yellowstone River, and Lewis the Missouri, planning to meet where the two rivers united.

This they succeeded in doing, though both parties were troubled somewhat by Indians. The Crow Indians stole horses from Clark's party, and eight Blackfoot warriors attacked Lewis and three of his men. But Lewis got the better of them and captured four of their horses.

The explorers suffered no further injury, and in September, 1806, about two years and four months after starting out, they were back in St. Louis, with their precious maps and notes. They had successfully carried out a magnificent undertaking, and you may be sure they received a joyful welcome from their friends. I wonder if any of you can tell which of our world's fairs commemorated the leaders of this expedition.

Through the efforts of these explorers the highway across the continent became an established fact. When you think of the great trunk lines of railroad, over which fast trains carry hundreds of passengers daily, stop a moment and remember that it was little more than a hundred years ago that we first began to know much about this region!

ANDREW JACKSON

The next addition made to our expanding nation was in the extreme southeast, and with it we associate the name of another of our Presidents, Andrew Jackson. The story of how Florida came to be a part of the United States will be more interesting if we know something of the career of the picturesque hero who brought about its purchase.

Andrew Jackson was born in Union County, North Carolina, in 1767, of poor Scotch-Irish parents, who about two years before had come from Ireland. In a little clearing in the woods they had built a rude log hut and settled down to hard work.

But Andrew's father soon died, and his mother went with her children to live in her brother's home, where she spun flax to earn money. She was very fond of little Andrew and hoped some day to make a minister of him.



With this in view, she sent him to school, where he learned reading, writing, and a little ciphering. But the little fellow loved nature better than books and did not make great progress with lessons. You must remember, however, that he was far from idle and that he did many hard and brave tasks, worth being put into books for other boys to read.

"Mischievous Andy," as he was called, was a barefooted, freckle-faced lad, slender in body, with bright blue eyes and reddish hair, and was full of life and fun. Although not robust, he was wiry and energetic, and excelled in running, jumping, and all rough-and-tumble sports. If, when wrestling, a stronger boy threw him to the ground, he was so agile that he always managed to regain his feet.

While he was yet a lad the Revolution broke out, and there was severe fighting between the Americans and the British near his home. He was only thirteen when he was made a prisoner of war.

One day, soon after his capture, a British officer gave him a pair of muddy boots to clean. The fiery youth flashed back: "Sir, I am not your slave. I am your prisoner, and as such I refuse to do the work of a slave." Angered by this reply, the brutal officer struck the boy a cruel blow with his sword, inflicting two severe wounds.

Andrew was kept in a prison pen about the Camden jail. As he was without shelter and almost without food, the wounds refused to heal, and in his weak and half-starved condition he fell a victim to smallpox. His mother, hearing of her boy's wretched plight, secured his release and took him home. He was ill for months, and before he entirely recovered his mother died, leaving him quite alone in the world.

In time, however, these early hardships passed, and some years later we see Andrew, a young man of twenty-one, now become a lawyer. He is over six feet tall, slender, straight, and graceful, with a long, slim face, and thick hair falling over his forehead and shading his piercing blue eyes. He has crossed the mountains with an emigrant party into the backwoods region of Tennessee.

The party arrived at Nashville, where their life was very much like that of Daniel Boone in Kentucky.

Young Jackson passed through many dangers without harm, and by his industry and business ability became a successful lawyer and in time a wealthy landowner.

After his marriage he built, on a plantation of one thousand one hundred acres, about ten miles from Nashville, a house which he called "The Hermitage." Here he and his wife kept open house for visitors, treating rich and poor with like hospitality. His warm heart and generous nature were especially shown in his own household, where he was kind to all, including his slaves.



To the end of his life he had a childlike simplicity of nature. But we must not think of him as a faultless man, for he was often rough in manner and speech, and his violent temper got him into serious troubles. Among them were some foolish duels.



Yet, with all his faults, he was brave and patriotic and did splendid service as a fighter in Indian wars. After one of his duels, with a ball in his shoulder and his left arm in a sling, he went to lead an army of two thousand five hundred men in an attack on the Creek Indians, who had risen against the whites in Alabama. Although weak from a long illness, Jackson marched with vigor against the Creeks, and after a campaign of much hardship, badly defeated them at Horseshoe Bend, in eastern Alabama. He thus broke for all time the power of the Indians south of the Ohio River.

Some three years later (1817) General Jackson, as he was now called, was sent with a body of troops down to southern Georgia, to protect the people there from the Seminole Indians, who lived in Florida. At this time Florida belonged to Spain. Its vast swamps and dense forests made a place of refuge from which outlaws, runaway negroes, and Indians all made a practice of sallying forth in bands across the border into southern Georgia. There they would drive off cattle, burn houses, and murder men, women, and children without mercy.



When Jackson pursued these thieves and murderers, they retreated to their hiding-places beyond the boundaries of Florida. But it was more than Jackson could endure to see his enemy escape him so easily. And, although he was exceeding his orders, he followed them across the border, burned some of their villages, and hanged some of the Indian chiefs. He did not stop until he had all of Florida under his control.

This was a high-handed proceeding, for that territory belonged to Spain. However, serious trouble was avoided by our buying Florida (1819). This purchase added territory of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and sixty-eight square miles to the United States. It was only six thousand square miles less than the whole area of New England.

By studying your map you can easily see how much the area of the United States was extended by the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida. The adding of these two large territories made America one of the great nations of the world in landed estate.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

1. Tell all you can about Jefferson's boyhood. What kind of student was he in college?

2. How did he help his countrymen before taking up his public life?

3. Why did the Westerners wish the Mississippi to be open to their trade?

4. Why was Napoleon willing to sell us the whole of Louisiana? Use your map in making clear to yourself just what the Louisiana Purchase included.

5. Why did Jefferson send Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition? What were the results of this expedition?

6. What kind of boy was Andrew Jackson? What kind of man?

7. What part did he take in the events leading up to the purchase of Florida?



CHAPTER XIII

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

After the purchase of Louisiana and the explorations of Lewis and Clark, the number of settlers who went from the eastern part of the country to find new homes in the West kept on increasing as it had been doing since Boone, Robertson, and Sevier had pushed their way across the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee, twenty-five or thirty years earlier.

These pioneers, if they went westward by land, had to load their goods on pack-horses and follow the Indian trail. Later the trail was widened into a roadway, and wagons could be used. But travel by land was slow and, hard under any conditions.

Going by water, while cheaper, was inconvenient, for the travellers must use the flatboat, which was clumsy and slow and, worst of all, of little use except when going down stream.

The great need both for travel and for trade, then, was a boat which would not be dependent upon wind or current, but could be propelled by steam. Many men had tried to work out such an invention. Among them was John Rumsey, of Maryland, who built a steamboat in 1774, and John Fitch, of Connecticut, who completed his first model of a steamboat in 1785.

In the next four years Fitch built three steamboats, the last of which made regular trips on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and Burlington, during the summer of 1786. It was used as a passenger boat, and it made a speed of eight miles an hour; but Fitch was not able to secure enough aid from men of capital and influence to make his boats permanently successful.

The first man to construct a steamboat which continued to give successful service was Robert Fulton. Robert Fulton was born of poor parents in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765, the year of the famous Stamp Act. When the boy was only three years old his father died, and so Robert was brought up by his mother. She taught him at home until he was eight, and then sent him to school. Here he showed an unusual liking for drawing.



Outside of school hours his special delight was to visit the shops of mechanics, who humored the boy and let him work out his clever ideas with his own hands.

A story is told of how Robert came into school late one morning and gave as his excuse that he had been at a shop beating a piece of lead into a pencil. At the same time he took the pencil from his pocket, and showing it to his teacher, said: "It is the best one I have ever used." Upon carefully looking at the pencil, the schoolmaster was so well pleased that he praised Robert's efforts, and in a short time nearly all the pupils were using that kind of pencil.



Another example of Robert's inventive gift belongs to his boyhood days. He and one of his playmates from time to time went fishing in a flatboat, which they propelled with long poles. It was hard work and slow, and presently Robert thought out an easier way. He made two crude paddle-wheels, attached one to each side of the boat, and connected them with a sort of double crank. By turning this, the boys made the wheels revolve, and these carried the boat through the water easily. We may be sure that Robert's boat became very popular, and that turning the crank was a privilege in which each boy eagerly took his turn.

While still young, Robert began to paint pictures also. By the time he was seventeen he had become skilful in the use of his brush and went to Philadelphia to devote his time to painting portraits and miniatures. Being a tireless worker, he earned enough here to support himself and send something to his mother.

At the age of twenty-one his interest in art led him to go to London, where he studied for several years under Benjamin West. This famous master took young Fulton into his household and was very friendly to him.

After leaving West's studio Fulton still remained in England, and although continuing to paint he gave much thought also to the development of canal systems. His love for invention was getting the better of his love for art and was leading him on to the work which made him famous. He was about thirty when he finally gave up painting altogether and turned his whole attention to inventing.

He went from England to Paris, where he lived in the family of Joel Barlow, an American poet and public man. Here he made successful experiments with a diving boat which he had designed to carry cases of gunpowder under water. This was one of the stages in the development of our modern torpedo-boat.

Although this invention alone would give Fulton a place in history, it was not one which would affect so many people as the later one, the steamboat, with which his name is more often associated.

Even before he had begun to experiment with the torpedo-boat Fulton had been deeply interested in steam navigation, and while in Paris he constructed a steamboat. In this undertaking he was greatly aided by Robert R. Livingston, American minister at the French court, who had himself done some experimenting in that line. Livingston, therefore, was glad to furnish the money which Fulton needed in order to build the boat.

It was finished by the spring of 1803. But just as they were getting ready for a trial trip, early one morning the boat broke in two parts and sank to the bottom of the River Seine. The frame had been too weak to support the weight of the heavy machinery.

Having discovered just what was wrong in this first attempt, Fulton built another steamboat soon after his return to America, in 1806. This boat was one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, with mast and sail, and had on each side a wheel fifteen feet across.

On the morning of the day in August, 1807, set for the trial of the Clermont—as Fulton called his boat—an expectant throng of curious onlookers gathered on the banks of the North, or Hudson, River, at New York. Everybody was looking for failure. For though Fitch's boats had made trips in the Delaware only some twenty years earlier, the fact did not seem to be generally known. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a half-crazy dreamer and had called his boat "Fulton's Folly." "Of course, the thing will not move," said one scoffer. "That any man with common sense well knows," another replied. And yet they all stood watching for Fulton's signal to start the boat.



The signal is given. A slight tremor of motion and the boat is still. "There! What did I say?" cried one. "I told you so!" exclaimed another. "I knew the boat would not go," said yet another. But they spoke too soon, for after a little delay the wheels of the Clermont began to revolve, slowly and hesitatingly at first, but soon with more speed, and the boat steamed proudly off up the Hudson.

As she moved forward, all along the river people who had come from far and near stood watching the strange sight. When boatmen and sailors on the Hudson heard the harsh clanking of machinery and saw the huge sparks and dense black smoke rising out of her funnel, they thought that the Clermont was a sea-monster. In fact, they were so frightened that some of them went ashore, some jumped into the river to get away, and some fell on their knees in fear, believing that their last day had come. It is said that one old Dutchman exclaimed to his wife: "I have seen the devil coming up the river on a raft!"

The men who were working the boat had no such foolish fears. They set themselves to their task and made the trip from New York to Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, in thirty-two hours. Success had at last come to the quiet, modest, persevering Fulton. After this trial trip the Clermont was used as a regular passenger boat between New York and Albany.

The steamboat was Fulton's great gift to the world and his last work of public interest. He died in 1815.

But the Clermont was only the beginning of steam-driven craft on the rivers and lakes of our country. Four years afterward (1811), the first steamboat west of the Alleghany Mountains began its route from Pittsburg down the Ohio, and a few years later similar craft were in use on the Great Lakes.

THE NATIONAL ROAD AND THE ERIE CANAL

But while steamboats made the rivers and lakes easy routes for travel and traffic, something was needed to make journeys by land less difficult. To meet this need, new highways had to be supplied, and this great work of building public roads was taken up by the United States Government. Many roads were built, but the most important was the one known as the National Road.



It ran from Cumberland, on the Potomac, through Maryland and Pennsylvania to Wheeling, West Virginia, on the Ohio River. From there it was extended to Indiana and Illinois, ending at Vandalia, which at that time was the capital of Illinois. It was seven hundred miles long, and cost seven million dollars.

This smooth and solid roadway was eighty feet wide; it was paved with stone and covered with gravel. Transportation became not only much easier but also much cheaper. The road filled a long-felt need and a flood of travel and traffic immediately swept over it.



Another kind of highway which proved to be of untold value to both the East and the West, was the canal, or artificial waterway connecting two bodies of water.

The most important was the Erie Canal, connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie, begun in 1817. This new idea received the same scornful attention from the unthinking as "Fulton's Folly." By many it was called "Clinton's Ditch," after Governor DeWitt Clinton, to whose foresight we are indebted for the building of this much-used waterway. The scoffers shook their heads and said: "Clinton will bankrupt the State"; "The canal is a great extravagance"; and so on.

But he did not stop because of criticism, and in 1825 the canal was finished. The undertaking had been pushed through in eight years. It was a great triumph for Clinton and a proud day for the State.

When the work was completed the news was signalled from Buffalo to New York in a novel way. As you know, there was neither telephone nor telegraph then. But at intervals of five miles all along the route cannon were stationed. When the report from the first cannon was heard, the second was fired, and thus the news went booming eastward till, in an hour and a half, it reached New York.

Clinton himself journeyed to New York in the canal-boat Seneca Chief. This was drawn by four gray horses, which went along the tow-path beside the canal. As the boat passed quietly along, people thronged the banks to do honor to the occasion.

When the Seneca Chief reached New York City, Governor Clinton, standing on deck, lifted a gilded keg filled with water from Lake Erie and poured it into the harbor. As he did so, he prayed that "the God of the heaven and the earth" would smile upon the work just completed and make it useful to the human race. Thus was dedicated this great waterway, whose usefulness has more than fulfilled the hope of its chief promoter.



Trade between the East and the West began to grow rapidly. Vast quantities of manufactured goods were moved easily from the East to the West, and supplies of food were shipped in the opposite direction. Prices began to fall because the cost of carrying goods was so much less. It cost ten dollars before the canal was dug to carry a barrel of flour from Buffalo to Albany; now it costs thirty cents.

The region through which the canal ran was at that time mostly wilderness, and for some years packets carrying passengers as well as freight were drawn through the canal by horses travelling the tow-path along the bank.

When travelling was so easy and safe, the number of people moving westward to this region grew larger rapidly. Land was in demand and became more valuable. Farm products sold at higher prices. Villages sprang up, factories were built, and the older towns grew rapidly in size. The great cities of New York State—and this is especially true of New York City—owe much of their growth to the Erie Canal.

THE RAILROAD

The steamboat, the national highways, and the canals were all great aids to men in travel and in carrying goods. The next great improvement was the use of steam-power to transport people and goods overland. It was brought about by the railroad and the locomotive.



In this country, the first laying of rails to make a level surface for wheels to roll upon was at Quincy, Massachusetts. This railroad was three miles long, extending from the quarry to the seacoast. The cars were drawn by horses.

Our first passenger railroad was begun in 1828. It was called the Baltimore and Ohio and was the beginning of the railroad as we know it to-day. But those early roads would seem very strange now. The rails were of wood, covered with a thin strip of iron to protect the wood from wear. Even as late as the Civil War rails of this kind were in use in some places. The first cross-ties were of stone instead of wood, and the locomotives and cars of early days were very crude.



In 1833, people who were coming from the West to attend President Jackson's second inauguration travelled part of the way by railroad. They came over the National Road as far as Frederick, Maryland, and there left it to enter a train of six cars, each accommodating sixteen persons. The train was drawn by horses. In this manner they continued their journey to Baltimore.

In the autumn of that year a railroad was opened between New York and Philadelphia. At first horses were used to draw the train, but by the end of the year locomotives, which ran at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, were introduced. This was a tremendous stride in the progress of railroad traffic.



To be sure, the locomotives were small, but two or more started off together, each drawing its own little train of cars. Behind the locomotive was a car which was a mere platform with a row of benches, seating perhaps forty passengers, inside of an open railing. Then followed four or five cars looking very much like stage-coaches, each having three compartments, with doors on each side. The last car was a high, open-railed van, in which the baggage of the whole train was heaped up and covered with oilcloth. How strange a train of this sort would look beside one of our modern express-trains, with its huge engine, and its sleeping, dining, and parlor cars!

You will be surprised that any objection was raised to the railroad. Its earliest use had been in England, and when there was talk of introducing it in this country some people said: "If those who now travel by stage take the railroad coaches, then stage-drivers will be thrown out of work!" Little could they foresee what a huge army of men would find work on the modern railroad.

In spite of all obstacles and objections, the railroads, once begun, grew rapidly in favor. In 1833 there were scarcely three hundred and eighty miles of railroad in the United States; now there are more than two hundred and forty thousand miles.

MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH

The next stride which Progress made seemed even more wonderful. Having contrived an easier and a quicker way to move men and their belongings from one place to another, what should she do but whisper in the ear of a thinking man: "You can make thought travel many times faster." The man whose inventive genius made it possible for men to flash their thoughts thousands of miles in a few seconds of time was Samuel Finley Breese Morse.

He was born in 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. His father was a learned minister, who "was always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting"; and his mother was a woman of noble character, who inspired her son with lofty purpose.

When he was seven he went to Andover, Massachusetts, to school, and still later entered Phillips Academy in the same town. At fourteen he entered Yale College, where from the first he was a good, faithful student.



As his father was poor, Finley had to help himself along, and was able to do it by painting, on ivory, likenesses of his classmates and professors, for which he received from one dollar to five dollars each. In this way he made considerable money.

At the end of his college course he made painting his chosen profession and went to London, where he studied four years under Benjamin West. Though for some years he divided his time and effort between painting and invention, he at last decided to devote himself wholly to invention. This change in his life-work was the outcome of an incident which took place on a second voyage home from Europe, where he had been spending another period in study.

On the ocean steamer the conversation at dinner one day was about some experiments with electricity. One of the men present said that so far as had been learned from experiment electricity passes through any length of wire in a second of time.

"Then," said Morse, "thought can be transmitted hundreds of miles in a moment by means of electricity; for, if electricity will go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go around the globe."



When once he began to think about this great possibility, the thought held him in its grip. In fact, it shut out all others. Through busy days and sleepless nights he turned it over and over. And often, while engaged in other duties, he would snatch his notebook from his pocket in order to outline the new instrument he had in mind and jot down the signs he would use in sending messages.

It was not long before he had worked out on paper the whole scheme of transmitting thought over long distances by means of electricity.

And now began twelve toilsome years of struggle to plan and work out machinery for his invention. All these years he had to earn money for the support of his three motherless children. So he gave up to painting much time that he would otherwise have spent upon his invention. His progress, therefore, was slow and painful, but he pressed forward. He was not the kind of man to give up.

In a room on the fifth floor of a building in New York City he toiled at his experiments day and night, with little food, and that of the simplest kind. Indeed so meagre was his fare, mainly crackers and tea, that he bought provisions at night in order to keep his friends from finding out how great his need was.



During this time of hardship all that kept starvation from his door was lessons in painting to a few pupils. On a certain occasion Morse said to one of them, who owed him for a few months' teaching: "Well, Strothers, my boy, how are we off for money?"

"Professor," said the young fellow, "I am sorry to say I have been disappointed, but I expect the money next week."

"Next week!" cried his needy teacher; "I shall be dead by next week."

"Dead, sir?" was the shocked response of Strothers.

"Yes, dead by starvation!" was the emphatic answer.

"Would ten dollars be of any service?" asked the pupil, now seeing that the situation was serious.

"Ten dollars would save my life," was the reply of the poor man, who had been without food for twenty-four hours. You may be sure that Strothers promptly handed him the money.

But in spite of heavy trials and many discouragements, he had by 1837 finished a machine which he exhibited in New York, although he did not secure a patent until 1840.



Then followed a tedious effort to induce the government at Washington to vote money for his great enterprise. Finally, after much delay, the House of Representatives passed a bill "appropriating thirty thousand dollars for a trial of the telegraph."

As you may know, a bill cannot become a law unless the Senate also passes it. But the Senate did not seem friendly to this one. Many believed that the whole idea of the telegraph was rank folly. They thought of Morse and the telegraph very much as people had thought of Fulton and the steamboat, and made fun of him as a crazy-brained fellow.

Up to the evening of the last day of the session the bill had not been taken up by the Senate. Morse sat anxiously waiting in the Senate Chamber until nearly midnight, when, believing there was no longer any hope, he left the room and went home with a heavy heart.

Imagine his surprise the next morning, when a young woman, Miss Ellsworth, congratulated him at breakfast upon the passage of his bill. At first he could scarcely believe the good news, but when he found that she was telling him the truth his joy was unbounded, and he promised her that she should choose the first message.

By the next year (1844) a telegraph-line, extending from Baltimore to Washington, was ready for use. On the day appointed for trial Morse met a party of friends in the chambers of the Supreme Court at the Washington end of the line and, sitting at the instrument which he had himself placed for trial, the happy inventor sent the message selected by Miss Ellsworth: "What hath God wrought!"

The telegraph was a great and brilliant achievement, and brought to its inventor well-earned fame. Now that success had come, honors were showered upon him by many countries. At the suggestion of the French Emperor, representatives from many countries in Europe met in Paris to decide upon some suitable testimonial to Morse as one who had done so much for the world. These delegates voted him a sum amounting to eighty thousand dollars as a token of appreciation for his great invention.

In 1872 this noble inventor, at the ripe age of eighty-one, breathed his last. The grief of the people all over the land was strong proof of the place he held in the hearts of his countrymen.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

1. Tell all you can about John Fitch's steamboats.

2. Give examples which indicate young Fulton's inventive gifts. Imagine yourself on the banks of the North River on the day set for the trial of the Clermont, and tell what happened.

3. What and where was the National Road?

4. In what ways was the Erie Canal useful to the people?

5. Describe the first railroads and the first trains.

6. Tell what you can about Morse's twelve toilsome years of struggle while he was working out his great invention. How is the telegraph useful to men?

7. What do you admire about Morse?

8. Are you making frequent use of your map?



CHAPTER XIV

THE REPUBLIC GROWS LARGER

SAM HOUSTON

In a preceding chapter you learned how the great territories of Louisiana and Florida came to belong to America. We are now to learn of still other additions, namely, the great regions of Texas and California.

The most prominent man in the events connected with our getting Texas was Sam Houston.



He was born, of Irish descent, in 1793, in a farmhouse in Virginia. When he was thirteen years old the family removed to a place in Tennessee, near the home of the Cherokee Indians. The boy received but little schooling out in that new country. In fact, he cared far less about school than he did for the active, free life of his Indian neighbors.

So when his family decided to have him learn a trade he ran away from home and joined the Cherokees. There he made friends, and one of the chiefs adopted him as a son. We may think of him as enjoying the sports and games, the hunting and fishing, which took up so much of the time of the Indian boys.

On returning to his home, at the age of eighteen, he went to school for a term at Marysville Academy. In the War of 1812 he became a soldier and served under Andrew Jackson in the campaign against the Creek Indians. In the battle of Horseshoe Bend he fought with reckless bravery. During that fearful struggle he received a wound in the thigh. His commander, Jackson, then ordered him to stop fighting, but Houston refused to obey and was leading a desperate charge against the enemy when his right arm was shattered. It was a long time before he was well and strong again, but he had made a firm friend in Andrew Jackson.

Later Houston studied law and began a successful practice. He became so popular in Tennessee that the people elected him to many positions of honor and trust, the last of which was that of governor. About that time he was married, but a few weeks later he and his wife separated. Then, suddenly and without giving any reason for his strange conduct, he left his home and his State and went far up the Arkansas River to the home of his early friends the Cherokee Indians. The Cherokees had been removed to that distant country, beyond the Mississippi, by the United States Government.

About a year later Houston, wearing the garb of his adopted tribe, went in company with some of them to Washington. His stated purpose was to secure a contract for furnishing rations to the Cherokees.

But another purpose was in his mind. He had set his heart on winning Texas for the United States. Perhaps he talked over the scheme with his friend, President Jackson. However that may be, we know that some three years afterward Houston again left his Cherokee friends and went to Texas to live. His desire to secure this region for his country was as strong as ever.



At that time Texas was a part of Mexico. Already before Houston went down to that far-away land many people from the United States had begun to settle there. At first they were welcomed. But when the Mexicans saw the Americans rapidly growing in numbers they began to oppress them. The Mexican Government went so far as to require them to give up their private arms, which would leave them defenseless against the Indians as well as bad men. Then it passed a law which said, in effect, that no more settlers should come to Texas from the United States, so that the few thousand Americans could not be strengthened in numbers.



Of course, the Texans were indignant, and they rebelled against Mexico, declaring Texas to be an independent republic. At the same time they elected Houston commander-in-chief of all the Texan troops. This began a bitter war. The Mexican dictator, Santa Anna, with an army four or five thousand strong, marched into Texas to force the people to submit to the government.

The first important event of this struggle was the capture of the Alamo, an old Texan fortress at San Antonio. Although the garrison numbered only one hundred and forty, they were men of reckless daring, without fear, and they determined to fight to the last.

DAVID CROCKETT

Among these hardy fighters was David Crockett, a pioneer and adventurer who had led a wild, roving life. He was a famous hunter and marksman and, like some of our other frontiersmen, was never happier than when he was alone in the deep, dark forests.

Born in eastern Tennessee, in 1786, he received no schooling, but he was a man of good understanding. His amusing stories and his skill with the rifle had made him many friends, who chose him to represent their district in the Tennessee Legislature and later in Congress.



Like Sam Houston, he had served under Andrew Jackson in the war with the Creek Indians, and when the struggle with Mexico broke out he was one of the many brave backwoodsmen who left their homes and went down to help the Texans.

After a long journey from Tennessee, in which more than once he came near being killed by the Indians or wild beasts, he at last reached the fortress of the Alamo. He knew he was taking great risks in joining the small garrison there, but that did not hold him back. In fact, he liked danger.

The Mexican army, upon reaching San Antonio, began firing upon the Alamo. Their cannon riddled the fort, making wide breaches in the weak outer walls through which from every side thousands of Mexicans thronged into it. The Americans emptied their muskets and then fought with knives and revolvers. They fought with desperate bravery until only five of the soldiers were left.



One of these was David Crockett. He had turned his musket about and was using it as a club in his desperate struggle with the scores of men who sought his life. There he stood, his back against the wall, with the bodies of the Mexicans he had slain lying in a semicircle about him. His foes dared not rush upon him, but some of them held him at bay with their lances, while others, having loaded their muskets, riddled his body with bullets. Thus fell brave David Crockett, a martyr to his country's cause.

* * * * *

A few weeks after the tragedy of the Alamo, Santa Anna's army massacred a force of five hundred Texans at Goliad. The outlook for the Texan cause was now dark enough. But Sam Houston, who commanded something like seven hundred Texans, would not give up. He retreated eastward for some two hundred and fifty miles. But when he learned that Santa Anna had broken up his army into three divisions and was approaching with only about one thousand six hundred men Houston halted his troops and waited for them to come up. On their approach he stood ready for attack in a well-chosen spot near the San Jacinto River, where he defeated Santa Anna and took him prisoner.

The Texans now organized a separate government, and in the following autumn elected Houston as the first President of the Republic of Texas. He did all he could to bring about the annexation of Texas to the United States and at last succeeded, for Texas entered our Union in 1845. It was to be expected that the people of Mexico would not like this. They were very angry, and the outcome was the Mexican War which lasted nearly two years.

In 1846 Texas sent Houston to the United States Senate, where he served his State for fourteen years. When the Civil War broke out he was governor of Texas and, although his State seceded, Houston remained firm for the Union. On his refusal to resign, he was forced to give up his office. He died in 1863.

JOHN C. FREMONT THE PATHFINDER

Still another man who acted as agent in this transfer of land from Mexico was John C. Fremont. He helped in securing California.

He was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1813. His father died when he was a young child, and his mother went to Charleston, South Carolina, to live, and there gave her son a good education. After graduating from Charleston College he was employed by the government as assistant engineer in making surveys for a railroad between Charleston and Cincinnati, and also in exploring the mountain passes between North Carolina and Tennessee.



He enjoyed this work so much that he was eager to explore the regions of the far western part of our country, which were still largely unknown. Accordingly, he made several expeditions beyond the Rocky Mountains, three of which are of special importance in our story.

His first expedition was made in 1842, when he was sent out by the War Department to explore the Rocky Mountains, especially the South Pass, which is in the State of Wyoming. He made his way up the Kansas River, crossed over to the Platte, which he ascended, and then pushed on to the South Pass. Four months after starting he had explored this pass and, with four of his men, had gone up to the top of Fremont's Peak, where he unfurled to the breeze the beautiful stars and stripes.

The excellent report he made of the expedition was examined with much interest by men of science in our own country and in foreign lands.

In this and also in his second expedition Fremont received much help from a follower, Kit Carson. Kit Carson was one of the famous scouts and hunters of the West, who felt smothered by the civilization of a town or city, and loved the free, roaming life of the woodsman.



Before joining Fremont, Kit Carson had travelled over nearly all of the Rocky Mountain country. Up to 1834 he was a trapper, and had wandered back and forth among the mountains until they had become very familiar to him. During the next eight years, in which he served as hunter for Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas River, he learned to know the great plains. He was, therefore, very useful to Fremont as a guide.

He was also well acquainted with many Indian tribes. He knew their customs, he understood their methods of warfare, and was well liked by the Indians themselves. He spoke their chief languages as well as he did his mother tongue.

After returning from his first expedition, Fremont made up his mind to explore the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. He succeeded in getting orders from the government to do this, and set out on his second expedition in May, 1843, with thirty-nine men, Kit Carson again acting as guide.



The party left the little town of Kansas City in May and, in September, after travelling for one thousand seven hundred miles, they reached a vast expanse of water which excited great interest. It was much larger than the whole State of Delaware, and its waters were salt. It was, therefore, given the name of Great Salt Lake.

Passing on, Fremont reached the upper branch of the Columbia River. Then pushing forward down the valley of this river, he went as far as Fort Vancouver, near its mouth. Having reached the coast, he remained only a few days and then set out on his return (November 10).

His plan was to make his way around the Great Basin, a vast, deep valley lying east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But it was not long before heavy snow on the mountains forced him to go down into this basin. He soon found that he was in a wild desert region in the depths of winter, facing death from cold and starvation. The situation was desperate.

Fremont judged that they were about as far south as San Francisco Bay. If this was true, he knew that the distance to that place was only about seventy miles. But to reach San Francisco Bay it was necessary to cross the mountains, and the Indians refused to act as guides, telling him that men could not possibly cross the steep, rugged heights in winter. This did not stop Fremont. He said: "We'll go, guides or no guides!" And go they did.

It was a terrible journey. Sometimes they came to places where the snow was one hundred feet deep or more. But they pushed forward for nearly six weeks. Finally, after suffering from intense cold and from lack of food, they made their way down the western side of the mountains, men and horses alike being in such a starved condition that they were almost walking skeletons.

At last they reached Sutter's Fort, now the city of Sacramento, where they enjoyed the hospitality of Captain Sutter. After remaining there for a short time, Fremont recrossed the mountains, five hundred miles farther south, and continued to Utah Lake, which is twenty-eight miles south of Great Salt Lake. He had travelled entirely around the Great Basin.

From Utah Lake he hastened across the country to Washington, with the account of his journey and of the discoveries he had made.

In 1845 Captain Fremont—for he had now been promoted to the rank of captain by the government—started out on his third expedition, with the purpose of exploring the Great Basin and then proceeding to the coast of what is now California and upward to Oregon.



Having explored the basin, he was on his way to Oregon, when he learned that the Mexicans were plotting to kill all the Americans in the valley of the Sacramento River. He therefore turned back to northern California, and with a force made up in part of American settlers gathered from the country round about, he took possession of that region, marched as fast as possible to Monterey, and captured that place also. Within about two months he had conquered practically all of California for the United States.

Fremont then made his home in California. On the 4th of the following July he was elected governor of the territory by the settlers then living there. Eleven years later the Republican party of the United States nominated him for President, but failed to elect him. He died in 1890. He has well been called "the Pathfinder."

Fremont's conquest of California was, in effect, a part of the Mexican War, which began in 1846. After nearly two years of fighting a treaty of peace was signed, by which Mexico ceded to the United States not only California but also much of the vast region now included in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

This region, which is called the Mexican Cession, contained five hundred and forty-five thousand seven hundred and eighty-three square miles, while Texas included five hundred and seventy-six thousand one hundred and thirty-three square miles. These two areas together were, like Louisiana, much larger than the whole of the United States at the end of the Revolution. With the addition of Louisiana in 1803, of Florida in 1819, of Texas in 1845, and of this region in 1848, the United States had enormously increased her territory.

THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD

On the same day on which the treaty of peace was signed with Mexico (February 2, 1848), gold was discovered in California.

Captain Sutter, a Swiss pioneer living near the site of the present city of Sacramento—at Sutter's Fort, where Fremont stopped on his second expedition—was having a water-power sawmill built up the river at some distance from his home. One day one of the workmen, while walking along the mill-race, discovered some bright yellow particles, the largest of which were about the size of grains of wheat. On testing them, Captain Sutter found that they were gold.



He tried to keep the discovery a secret, but it was impossible to prevent the news from spreading. "Gold! Gold! Gold!" seemed to ring through the air. From all the neighboring country men started in a mad rush for the gold-fields. Houses were left half built, fields half ploughed. "To the diggings!" was the watchword. From the mountains to the coast, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, settlements were abandoned. Even vessels that came into the harbor of San Francisco were deserted by their crews, sailors and captains alike being wild in their desire to dig for gold.

Within four months of the first discovery four thousand men were living in the neighborhood of Sacramento. The sudden coming together of so many people made it difficult to get supplies, and they rose in value. Tools of many kinds sold for large prices. Pickaxes, crowbars, and spades cost from ten dollars to fifty dollars apiece. Bowls, trays, dishes, and even warming-pans were eagerly sought, because they could be used in washing gold.

It was late in the year before people in the East learned of the discovery, for news still travelled slowly. But when it arrived, men of every class—farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, and even ministers—started West.

The journey might be made in three ways. One was by sailing-vessels around Cape Horn. This route took from five to seven months. Another way was to sail from some Eastern port to the Isthmus of Panama, and crossing this, to take ship to San Francisco. The third route was overland, from what is now St. Joseph, Missouri, and required three or four months. This could not be taken until spring, and some who were unwilling to wait started at once by the water-routes.

Men were so eager to go that often several joined together to buy an outfit of oxen, mules, wagons, and provisions. They made the journey in covered wagons called "prairie-schooners," while their goods followed in peddlers' carts. It often happened that out on the plains they missed their way, for there was no travelled road, and a compass was as necessary as if they had been on the ocean.



Journeying thus by day, and camping by night, they suffered many hardships while on the way. Disease laid hold of them. Four thousand died from cholera during the first year, and many more for lack of suitable food. In some cases they had to kill and eat their mules, and at times they lived on rattlesnakes. The scattered bones of men and beasts marked the trail; for in the frantic desire to reach the diggings the wayfarers would not always stop to bury their dead.

When the gold region was reached, tents, wigwams, bark huts, and brush arbors served as shelter. The men did their own cooking, washing, and mending, and food soared to famine prices. A woman or a child was a rare sight in all that eager throng, for men in their haste had left their families behind.

It was a time of great excitement. Perhaps you have a grandparent who can tell you something of those stirring days. The gold craze of '49 is a never-to-be-forgotten event in our history. As the search for nuggets and gold-dust became less fruitful, many of the men turned homeward, some enriched and some—alas!—having lost all they possessed.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

1. What kind of boy was Houston? What kind of man? What did he do for Texas?

2. Tell about David Crockett's heroism at the Alamo.

3. When reading about Fremont's explorations look up on the map every one of them. What do you think of him?

4. Who was Kit Carson, and how did he help Fremont?

5. Locate on your map every acquisition of territory from the end of the Revolution to 1848.

6. Imagine yourself going to California across the plains and mountains in 1849, and give an account of your experiences.



CHAPTER XV

THREE GREAT STATESMEN

JOHN C. CALHOUN

The territory which we obtained from Mexico added much to the vastness of our country. But it led to a bitter dispute between the North and the South over slavery. For the North said: "All this territory shall be free." The South said: "It must all be open to slavery."



The trouble over slavery was no new thing. It had begun to be really serious and dangerous many years before the Mexican War. To understand why, a year or two after the close of this war, there should be such deep and violent feeling over the question of making the territory free or opening it to slavery, we must go back to some earlier events in the history of the Union.

In doing so, we shall find it simpler to follow the careers of three great statesmen, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, who took each a prominent part in the events.

John C. Calhoun, born in South Carolina in 1782, was the youngest but one of a family of five children. His father died when he was only thirteen, and until he was eighteen he remained on the farm, living a quiet, simple out-of-door life, ploughing, hunting, riding, and fishing.

Then his brother, who had observed John's quickness of mind, persuaded him to get an education. After studying two years and a quarter in an academy, he entered the junior class at Yale College. Graduating in 1804, he at once took a course in the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, and then returned home to complete his studies for the bar.



Calhoun's conduct in school was above reproach, and as a man he was always steady and serious-minded. During the early years of his public life he won much praise for his close attention to work, his stately speeches, and his courteous manners. His slender and erect form, his dignified bearing, and his piercing dark eyes made him an impressive figure; while, as a speaker, his powerful voice and winning manner were sure to command attention.

In 1808 he entered the South Carolina Legislature. This was the beginning of his long public career of more than forty years. During this time he served his country as a representative in Congress, Secretary of War, Vice-President of the United States, Secretary of State, and United States senator.

In all these many years he was a prominent leader, especially in those events which concerned the slave-holding Southern planter. This we shall see later, after we have made the acquaintance of the second of the powerful trio of great statesmen, Henry Clay.

HENRY CLAY

Henry Clay was born near Richmond, Virginia, in 1777, in a low, level region called "the Slashes." He was one of seven children. His father was a Baptist clergyman, of fine voice and pleasing manner of speaking. He died when little Henry was four years old, leaving but a small sum for his family to live upon.

Henry went, like the other boys of "the Slashes," to a tiny log school without windows or floor. The schoolmaster, who knew very little himself, taught the boys to read, write, and cipher. But that was all.

Outside of school hours Henry shared in the farm work. He helped with the ploughing and often rode the family pony to the mill, using a rope for a bridle and a bag of corn, wheat, meal, or flour for a saddle. For this reason he has been called "the Mill Boy of the Slashes."



When fourteen years old he was given a place as clerk in a Richmond drug store. But he was not to stay there long, for about this time his mother married again, and his stepfather became interested in him. Realizing that Henry was a boy of unusual ability, he secured for him a place as copying clerk in the office of the Court of Chancery at Richmond.



Henry was fifteen years old, tall, thin, and homely, when he entered this office. The other clerks were inclined to jeer at his awkwardness and his plain, home-made, ill-fitting clothes. But Henry's sharp retorts quickly silenced them, and they soon grew to respect and like him. He was an earnest student. He stayed indoors and read in the evenings, while the other young fellows were idling about the town. He was eager to do something in the world. His opportunity soon came in the ordinary course of his daily work. His fine handwriting attracted the notice of the chancellor, a very able lawyer. This man was wise and kindly and had a deep influence on his young friend.



Clay joined the Richmond Debating Society and soon became the star speaker. He improved his speaking by studying daily some passage in a book of history or science, and then going out into a quiet place and declaiming what he had learned.

The chancellor knew about this, and it pleased him. He advised Henry Clay to study law, and within a year after his studies began, when he was only twenty-one years old, he was admitted to the bar.

To begin his law practice, he went to Lexington, Kentucky, which was then a small place of not more than fifty houses; but Clay very soon built up a good practice. Although he had arrived with scarcely a penny, within a year and a half he had been so successful that he was able to marry the daughter of a leading family. He soon owned a beautiful estate near Lexington, which he called "Ashland," and with it several slaves.

He became a great favorite among the people of the State, largely because he was absolutely truthful and honest in all his dealings. He was also talented, good-natured, and friendly to all. It is said that no man has ever had such power to influence a Kentucky jury as Clay.

Twice he was sent to the United States Senate to fill seats left vacant by resignation, and here his power as a speaker was so marked that when it was known that he would address the Senate the galleries were always full.

Such was the beginning of his life as a statesman. It lasted some forty years, and during this long period he was a prominent leader in the great events having to do with the country's future.

He filled various national offices. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives for many years, was four years Secretary of State, and during much more than half of the time between 1831 and 1852 he was in the United States Senate. Three times he was a candidate for President, but each time he failed of election.

He would not swerve by a hair's breadth from what he considered his duty, even for party ends. "I would rather be right than be President," he said, and men knew that he was sincere.

Living in a Southern State, he would naturally have the interests of the South at heart. But he did not always take her part. While Calhoun was apt to see but one side of a question, Clay was inclined to see something of both sides and to present his views in such a way as to bring about a settlement. Therefore he was called "the Great Peacemaker."

His most important work as a peacemaker had to do with the Missouri Compromise (1820), the compromise tariff (1833), and the Compromise of 1850—all of which we look into a little farther on, after we come to know something about the last and perhaps the greatest of our three statesmen, Daniel Webster. For all three were interested in the same great movement.

DANIEL WEBSTER

Daniel Webster was born among the hills of New Hampshire, in 1782, the son of a poor farmer, and the ninth of ten children. As he was a frail child, not able to work much on the farm, his parents permitted him to spend much of his time fishing, hunting, and roaming at will over the hills. Thus he came into close touch with nature and absorbed a kind of knowledge which was very useful to him in later years.

He was always learning things, sometimes in most unusual ways, as is shown by an incident which took place when he was only eight years old. Having seen in a store near his home a small cotton handkerchief with the Constitution of the United States printed upon it, he gathered up his small earnings to the amount of twenty-five cents and eagerly secured the treasure. From this unusual copy he learned the Constitution, word for word, so that he could repeat it from beginning to end.



Of course, this was a most remarkable thing for an eight-year-old boy to do, but the boy was himself remarkable. He spent much of his time poring over books. They were few in number but of good quality, and he read them over and over again until they became a part of himself. It gave him keen pleasure to memorize fine poems and also noble selections from the Bible, for he learned easily and remembered well what he learned. In this way he stored his mind with the highest kind of truth.

When he was fourteen his father sent him to Phillips Exeter Academy. The boys he met there were mostly from homes of wealth and culture. Some of them were rude and laughed at Daniel's plain dress and country manners. Of course, the poor boy, whose health was not robust and who was by nature shy and independent, found such treatment hard to bear. But he studied well and soon commanded respect because of his good work.

After leaving this school he studied for six months under a private tutor, and at the age of fifteen he was prepared to enter Dartmouth College. Although he proved himself to be a youth of unusual mental power, he did not take high rank in scholarship. But he continued to read widely and thoughtfully and stored up much valuable knowledge, which later he used with clearness and force in conversation and debate.

After being graduated from college Daniel taught for a year and earned money enough to help pay his brother's college expenses. The following year he studied law and in due time was admitted to the bar. As a lawyer he was very successful, his income sometimes amounting to twenty thousand dollars in a single year. In those days that was a very large sum.

But he could not manage his money affairs well and, no matter how large his income, he was always in debt. This unfortunate state of affairs was owing to a reckless extravagance, which he displayed in many ways.

Indeed, Webster was a man of such large ideas that of necessity he did all things on a large scale. It was vastness that appealed to him. And this ruling force in his nature explains his eagerness to keep the Union whole and supreme over the States. This we shall soon clearly see.

SLAVERY AND THE TARIFF

Having taken this glimpse of our three heroes, let us see how the great events of their time were largely moulded by their influence. All of these events, as we are soon to learn, had a direct bearing on slavery, and that was the great question of the day.

Up to the Revolution there was slavery in all the thirteen colonies. Some of them wished to get rid of it; but England, the mother country, would not allow them to do so, because she profited by the trade in slaves. After the Revolution, however, when the States were free to do as they pleased about slavery, some put an end to it on their own soil, and in time Pennsylvania and the States to the north and east of it became free States.

Many people then believed that slavery would by degrees die out of the land, and perhaps this would have happened if the growing of cotton had not been made profitable by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin.

After that invention came into use, instead of slavery's dying out, it took a much stronger hold upon the planters of the South than it had ever done before.

This fact became very evident when Missouri applied for admission into the Union. The South, of course, wished it to come into the Union as a slave State; the North, fearing the extension of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase, was equally set upon its coming in as a free State.

The struggle over the question was a long and bitter one, but finally both the North and the South agreed to give up a part of what they wanted; that is, they agreed upon a compromise. It was this: Missouri was to enter the Union as a slave State, but slavery was not to be allowed in any part of the Louisiana Purchase which lay north or west of Missouri. This was called the Missouri Compromise (1820).

It was brought about largely through the eloquence and power of Henry Clay, and because of his part in it he was called "the Great Peacemaker." But Calhoun was one of the men who did not think the Missouri Compromise was a good thing for the country. He therefore strongly opposed it.

The next clash between the free States and the slave States was caused by the question of the tariff, or tax upon goods brought from foreign countries. Not long after the Missouri Compromise was agreed upon, Northern manufacturers were urging Congress to pass a high-tariff law. They said that, inasmuch as factory labor in England was so much cheaper than in this country, goods made in England could be sold for less money here than our own factory-made goods, unless a law was passed requiring a tax, or duty, to be paid upon the goods brought over. Such a tax was called a protective tariff.

Calhoun, who voiced the feeling of the Southern planters, said: "This high tariff is unfair, for, while it protects the Northern man, it makes us of the South poorer, because we have to pay so high for the things we do not make."

You understand, there were no factories in the South, for the people were mostly planters. With the cheap slave labor, a Southern man could make more money by raising rice, cotton, sugar, or tobacco than he could by manufacturing. Also, it was thought that the soil and climate of the South made that section better fitted for agriculture than for anything else.

"So the South should be allowed," said Calhoun, "to buy the manufactured goods—such as cheap clothing for her slaves, and household tools and farming implements—where she can buy them at the lowest prices."



But in spite of this bitter opposition in the South, Congress passed the high-tariff law in 1828, and another in 1832.

The people of South Carolina were indignant. So, under the guidance of Calhoun, some of the leading men there met in convention and declared: "We here and now nullify the tariff laws." By these words they meant that the laws should not be carried out in South Carolina. Then they added: "If the United States Government tries to enforce these laws on our soil, South Carolina will go out of the Union and form a separate nation."

Andrew Jackson was at that time President of the United States. Although he himself did not favor a high tariff, he was firm in his purpose that whatever law Congress might pass should be enforced in every State in the Union. When the news came to him of what South Carolina had done, he was quietly smoking his corn-cob pipe. In a flash of anger he declared: "The Union! It must and shall be preserved! Send for General Scott!" General Scott was commander of the United States army, and "Old Hickory," as President Jackson was proudly called by many of his admirers, was ready to use the army and the navy, if necessary, to force any State to obey the law.

In this bitter controversy Daniel Webster, then senator from Massachusetts, had taken a bold stand for the Union. He said: "Congress passed the tariff law for the whole country. If the Supreme Court decides that Congress has the power, according to the Constitution, to pass such a law, that settles the matter. South Carolina and every other State must submit to this and every other law which Congress sees fit to make."

This shows clearly that Daniel Webster's belief was that the Union stood first and the State second. His deep love for the Union breathes all through his masterly speeches, the most famous of which is his "Reply to Hayne." Hayne, a senator from South Carolina, was on the side of the South and set forth its views in a public debate. He had declared that the State was first and the Union second, and so powerful seemed his arguments that many doubted whether even Daniel Webster could answer them.

But he did answer them. In a remarkable speech of four hours he held his listeners spellbound, while he argued, with wonderful eloquence and power, that the Union was supreme over the States.

Again the great peacemaker, Henry Clay, brought forward a plan of settling the trouble between the two sections. By this compromise the duties were to be gradually lowered. This plan was adopted by Congress (1833), and again there was peace for a time.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

The next dangerous outbreak between the North and the South came at the end of the Mexican War. Then arose the burning question: "Shall the territory we have acquired from Mexico be free or open to slavery?" Of course, the North wanted it to be free; the South wanted it to be open to slavery.

Henry Clay tried again, as he had tried twice before—in 1820 and in 1833—to pour oil upon the troubled waters. Although he was now an old man of seventy-two and in poor health, he spoke seventy times in his powerful, persuasive way, to bring about the Compromise of 1850, which he hoped would establish harmony between the North and the South and save the Union.

On one occasion when he was to speak he had to enter the Capitol leaning upon the arm of a friend, because he was too weak to climb the steps alone. After entering the Senate Chamber that day, the great speech he made was so long that his friends, fearing fatal results, urged him to stop. But he refused. Later he said that he did not dare to stop for fear he should never be able to begin again.



Calhoun was no less ready to do all he could. Early in March, 1850, the white-haired man, now in his sixty-eighth year and, like Clay, struggling with illness, went to the Senate Chamber, swathed in flannels, to make his last appeal in behalf of the slaveholders. The powerful speech he made, which was intended as a warning to the North, expressed the deep and sincere conviction of the aged statesman that the break-up of the Union was at hand. He made a strong plea that the agitation against slavery should stop, and that the South, which, he said, was the weaker section, should be treated fairly by her stronger antagonist, the North.

Having made this last supreme effort in defense of the section which he loved as he loved his own life, the pro-slavery veteran, supported by two of his friends, passed out of the Senate Chamber.

But in spite of Calhoun's opposition, the Compromise of 1850 passed. "Let California come in as a free State," it said. This pleased the North. "Let the people in all the rest of the territory which we got from Mexico decide for themselves whether they shall have slavery or freedom." This pleased the South. It also adopted the Fugitive Slave Law, which said: "When slaves run away from the South into the Northern States, they shall be returned to their masters; and when Northern people are called upon to help to capture them, they shall do so."

A month after his speech on this compromise Calhoun died. The last twenty years of his life had been largely devoted to trying to secure what he regarded as the rights of the slaveholders and of the whole South. He was honest in his views. He was also sincere in his convictions that the South was not receiving fair treatment from the North.

Henry Clay also died in 1852. Some of the qualities that gave him his rare power over men were his magical voice, which was so deep and melodious that many people of his time said it was the finest musical instrument they had ever heard; his cheerful nature, which made him keenly enjoy life and delight to see others enjoy it; and above all else his never-swerving sincerity and honesty, which commanded the respect and confidence of all who knew him. Men believed that Henry Clay was a true man. His popularity grew in strength as he grew in years. His many followers proudly called him "Gallant Harry of the West."

Webster's power as an orator was still more remarkable. His voice was wonderful, his style was forceful, and his language was simple and direct. But after all, it was his striking personal appearance which made the deepest impression upon the men and women who heard him speak. It is told that one day when he was walking through a street of Liverpool, a navvy said of him: "That must be a king!" On another occasion Sydney Smith exclaimed: "Good heavens, he is a small cathedral by himself!" He was nearly six feet tall. He had a massive head, a broad, deep brow, and great, coal-black eyes, which once seen could never be forgotten.

He, too, was faithful in his devotion to his country. To the day of his death he showed his deep affection for the flag, the emblem of that Union which had inspired his noblest efforts. During the last two weeks of his life he was troubled much with sleeplessness. While through his open window he gazed at the starlit sky, his eyes would sometimes fall upon a small boat belonging to him, which floated near the shore not far away. By his direction a ship lantern had been so placed that its light would fall upon the stars and stripes flying there. At six in the evening the flag was raised and was kept flying until six in the morning up to the day of Webster's death.

He died in September, 1852, only a few weeks after his great compeer, Henry Clay. His was a master spirit, and the sorrow of his passing was well expressed by the stranger who said, when he looked at the face of the dead: "Daniel Webster, the world without you will be lonesome."