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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 <DW72>s 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.]




CHAPTER II.

COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.


=7. Commercial Activity in the Fifteenth Century.=--In southern Europe,
the last half of the fifteenth century was a period of great commercial
activity. Then, for the first time, many voyages of exploration were
made in various directions, to find new riches, new markets, or new
routes of travel and transportation. Merchants were turning their
attention more and more to enterprises in far-off regions beyond the
seas.

Venice and Genoa became rivals for the vast and valuable trade of India.
With other Italian cities they grew rich and powerful. They kept great
fleets of merchant vessels plying back and forth across the
Mediterranean.

They sent out to India large quantities of copper, iron, pitch, wool,
hides, and the like, and brought back cargoes of drugs, spices, silks,
pearls, and other luxuries. But the path of this commerce between the
Mediterranean and India required both ships and caravans; and whether by
way of the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, or by Damascus and the
Persian Gulf, or by the Black Sea and the Caspian and thence across the
eastern plains, the journey was long, tedious, costly; always hazardous,
and often, by reason of the Turkish wars, positively dangerous.

And so it became important, especially for the merchants of Spain and
Portugal, the would-be rivals of Venice and Genoa, to find a shorter and
safer route. In many a country, people were asking, "Is there no easier
way to get to India?"

In the attempts to solve this problem Portugal took the lead. Her
sailors boldly ventured farther and farther down the coast of Africa
until, about twenty years before Columbus discovered America, they
crossed the equator. But it was not till five years after the memorable
exploit of Columbus, that Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese captain, rounded
the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the broad Indian Ocean to India. Two
years later he returned home with his vessels full of rich merchandise
from that country.

=8. The Shape of the Earth--Spherical or Flat?=--The learned men of that
age, for the most part, believed the earth to be round like a ball. But
the common people, and doubtless many of high rank, thought the land
surface to be flat, with a flat ocean flowing around it on every side.
Now if the earth were really a sphere, and no larger than was commonly
supposed, it would seem that the easiest way to get to India, unless
unforeseen obstacles intervened, would be to strike out to the west and
sail straight across the "Sea of Darkness," as the sailors called the
Atlantic. To embrace so startling a theory and deliberately to risk his
life in testing its truth, required a man of keen sagacity, of lofty
faith, of unbending resolution, and of the most heroic daring. Such a
man was Christopher Columbus.

=9. Columbus; his Early Life as a Sailor.=--He was born at Genoa, in or
about the year 1445. He was the son of a poor wool-comber, and while yet
very young he helped in his father's daily toil. We find him a studious
boy, early able to write a good hand and to draw maps and charts for
mariners visiting his home. He loves the sea, listens eagerly to old
sailors' "yarns," weaves their fancies and legends into his day-dreams,
and is fired with ambition to go in search of strange lands. How shall
he realize his visions? Who will believe in him?

At the age of fourteen he becomes a sailor. He sails south along the
African coast, and north as far as England, and even to Iceland. Always
observing, studying, planning, the ardent, thoughtful boy grows up an
earnest, thoughtful man. He is convinced that the earth is a globe, and
that, if he sails west far enough, he will reach India by a route
shorter than any to the east. Nothing can shake his faith in this
belief. It becomes the inspiration of his life.

But like that of many learned men of his day, his estimate of