XX. The Rise of Japan and the Decline of China…

XX. The Rise of Japan and the Decline of China

[=Asia the Original Seat of Civilization=]

Asia, the greatest of the continents and the seat of the earliest civilizations, yields us the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of mankind. In remote ages, while Europe lay plunged in the deepest barbarism, certain sections of Asia were marked by surprising activity in thought and progress. In three far-separated regions--China, India, and Babylonia--and in a fourth on the borders of Asia--Egypt--civilization rose and flourished for ages, while the savage and the barbarian roamed over all other regions of the earth. A still more extraordinary fact is, that during the more recent era, that of European civilization, Asia has rested in the most sluggish conservatism, sleeping while Europe and America were actively moving, content with its ancient knowledge while the people of the West were pursuing new knowledge into its most secret lurking places.

[=The Sluggishness of Modern Asia=]

And this conservatism is an almost immovable one. For a century England has been pouring new thought and new enterprise into India, yet the Hindoos cling stubbornly to their remotely ancient beliefs and customs. For half a century Europe has been hammering upon the gates of China, but the sleeping nation shows little signs of waking up to the fact that the world is moving around it. As regards the other early civilizations--Babylonia and Egypt--they have been utterly swamped under the tide of Turkish barbarism and exist only in their ruins. Persia, once a great and flourishing empire, has likewise sunk under the flood of Arabian and Turkish invasion, and to-day, under its ruling Shah, is one of the most inert of nations, steeped in the self-satisfied barbarism that has succeeded its old civilization. Such was the Asia upon which the nineteenth century dawned, and such it remains to-day except in one remote section of its area, in which alone modern civilization has gained a firm foothold.

[=The Seclusion of China and Japan=]

The section referred to is the island empire of Japan, a nation the people of which are closely allied in race to those of China, yet which has displayed a progressiveness and a readiness to avail itself of the resources of modern civilization strikingly diverse from the obstinate conservatism of its densely settled neighbor. The development of Japan has taken place within the past half century. Previous to that time it was as resistant to western influences as China. They were both closed nations, prohibiting the entrance of modern ideas and peoples, proud of their own form of civilization and their own institutions, and sternly resolved to keep out the disturbing influences of the restless west. As a result, they remained locked against the new civilization until after the nineteenth century was well advanced, and China's disposition to avail itself of the results of modern invention was not manifested until the century was near its end.

[=The Opening of China=]

China, with its estimated population of nearly 400,000,000, attained to a considerable measure of civilization at a very remote period, but has made almost no progress during the Christian era, being content to retain its old ideas, methods and institutions, which its people look upon as far superior to those of the western nations. Great Britain gained a foothold in China as early as the seventeenth century, but the persistent attempt to flood the country with the opium of India, in disregard of the laws of the land, so annoyed the emperor that he had the opium of the British stores at Canton, worth $20,000,000, seized and destroyed. This led to the "opium war" of 1840, in which China was defeated and was forced to accept a much greater degree of intercourse with the world, five ports being made free to the world's commerce and Hong Kong ceded to Great Britain. In 1856 an arbitrary act of the Chinese authorities at Canton, in forcibly boarding a British vessel in the Canton River, led to a new war, in which the French joined the British and the allies gained fresh concessions from China. In 1859 the war was renewed, and Peking was occupied by the British and French forces in 1860, the emperor's summer palace being destroyed.

These wars had their effect in largely breaking down the Chinese wall of seclusion and opening the empire more fully to foreign trade and intercourse, and also in compelling the emperor to receive foreign ambassadors at his court in Peking. In this the United States was among the most successful of the nations, from the fact that it had always maintained friendly relations with China. In 1876 a short railroad was laid, and in 1877 a telegraph line was established. During the remainder of the century the telegraph service was widely extended, but the building of railroads was strongly opposed, and not until the century had reached its end did the Chinese awaken to the importance of this method of transportation. They did, however, admit steam traffic to their rivers, and purchased some powerful ironclad naval vessels in Europe.

[=How Japan Was Opened to Commerce=]

The isolation of Japan was maintained longer than that of China, trade with that country being of less importance, and foreign nations knowing and caring less about it. The United States has the credit of breaking down its long and stubborn seclusion and setting in train the remarkably rapid development of the Japanese island empire. In 1854 Commodore Perry appeared with an American fleet in the bay of Yeddo, and, by a show of force and a determination not to be rebuffed, he forced the authorities to make a treaty of commercial intercourse with the United States. Other nations quickly demanded similar privileges, and Japan's obstinate resistance to foreign intercourse was at an end.

The result of this was revolutionary in Japan. For centuries the Shogun, or Tycoon, the principal military noble, had been dominant in the empire, and the Mikado, the true emperor, relegated to a position of obscurity. The entrance of foreigners disturbed conditions so greatly--by developing parties for and against seclusion--that the Mikado was enabled to regain his long-lost power, and in 1868 the ancient form of government was restored.

[=Great Development of Japan=]

Meanwhile the Japanese began to show a striking activity in the acceptance of the results of western civilization, both in regard to objects of commerce, inventions, and industries, and to political organization. The latter advanced so rapidly that in 1889 the old despotic government was, by the voluntary act of the emperor, set aside and a limited monarchy established, the country being given a constitution and a legislature, with universal suffrage for all men over twenty-five. This act is of remarkable interest, it being doubtful if history records any similar instance of a monarch decreasing his authority without appeal or pressure from his people. It indicates a liberal spirit that could hardly have been looked for in a nation so recently emerging from semi-barbarism. To-day, Japan differs little from the nations of Europe and America in its institutions and industries, and from being among the most backward, has taken its place among the most advanced nations of the world.

The Japanese army has been organized upon the European system, and armed with the most modern style of weapons, the German method of drill and organization being adopted. Its navy consists of over fifty war vessels, principally built in the dock-yards of Europe and America, and of the most advanced modern type, while a number of still more powerful ships are in process of building. Railroads have been widely extended; telegraphs run everywhere; education is in an advancing stage of development, embracing an imperial university at Tokio, and institutions in which foreign languages and science are taught; and in a hundred ways Japan is progressing at a rate which is one of the greatest marvels of the nineteenth century. This is particularly notable in view of the obstinate adherence of the neighboring empire of China to its old customs, and the slowness with which it is yielding to the influx of new ideas.

[=A Remarkable Event=]

As a result of this difference in progress between the two nations, we have to describe a remarkable event, one of the most striking evidences that could be given of the practical advantage of modern civilization. Near the end of the century war broke out between China and Japan, and there was shown to the world the singular circumstance of a nation of 40,000,000 people, armed with modern implements of war, attacking a nation of 400,000,000--equally brave, but with its army organized on an ancient system--and defeating it as quickly and completely as Germany defeated France in the Franco-German War. This war, which represents a completely new condition of events in the continent of Asia, is of sufficient interest and importance to speak of at some length.

Between China and Japan lies the kingdom of Corea, separated by rivers from the former and by a strait of the ocean from the latter, and claimed as a vassal state by both, yet preserving its independence as a state against the pair. Japan invaded this country at two different periods in the past, but failed to conquer it. China has often invaded it, with the same result. Thus it remained practically independent until near the end of the nineteenth century, when it became a cause of war between the two rival empires.

[=Corea Opened to Foreign Intercourse=]

Corea long pursued the same policy as China and Japan, locking its ports against foreigners so closely that it became known as the Hermit Nation and the Forbidden Land. But it was forced to give way, like its neighbors. The opening of Corea was due to Japan. In 1876 the Japanese did to this secluded kingdom what Commodore Perry had done to Japan twenty-two years before. They sent a fleet to Seoul, the Corean capital, and by threat of war forced the government to open to trade the port of Fusan. In 1880 Chemulpo was made an open port. Later on the United States sent a fleet there which obtained similar privileges. Soon afterwards most of the nations of Europe were admitted to trade, and the isolation of the Hermit Nation was at an end. Less than ten years had sufficed to break down an isolation which had lasted for centuries. In less than twenty years after--in the year 1899--an electric trolley railway was put in operation in the streets of Seoul--a remarkable evidence of the great change in Corean policy.

Corea was no sooner opened to foreign intercourse than China and Japan became rivals for influence in that country--a rivalry in which Japan showed itself the more active. The Coreans became divided into two factions, a progressive one that favored Japan, and a conservative one that favored China. Japanese and Chinese soldiers were sent to the country, and the Chinese aided their party, which was in the ascendant among the Coreans, to drive out the Japanese troops. War was threatened, but it was averted by a treaty in 1885 under which both nations agreed to withdraw their troops and to send no officers to drill the Corean soldiers.

[=Insurrection in Corea=]

The war, thus for the time averted, came nine years afterwards, in consequence of an insurrection in Corea. The people of that country were discontented. They were oppressed with taxes and by tyranny, and in 1894 the followers of a new religious sect broke out in open revolt. Their numbers rapidly increased until they were 20,000 strong, and they defeated the government troops, captured a provincial city, and put the capital itself in danger. The Min (or Chinese) faction was then at the head of affairs in the kingdom and called for aid from China, which responded by sending some two thousand troops and a number of war vessels to Corea. Japan, jealous of any such action on the part of China, responded by surrounding Seoul with soldiers, several thousands in number.

Disputes followed. China claimed to be suzerain of Corea and Japan denied it. Both parties refused to withdraw their troops, and the Japanese, finding that the party in power was acting against them, advanced on the capital, drove out the officials, and took possession of the palace and the king. A new government, made up of the party that favored Japan, was organized, and a revolution was accomplished in a day. The new authorities declared that the Chinese were intruders and requested the aid of the Japanese to expel them. War was close at hand.

[=Li Hung Chang and the Empress=]

China was at that time under the leadership of a statesman of marked ability, the famous Li Hung Chang, who, from being made viceroy of a province in 1870, had risen to be the prime minister of the empire. At the head of the empire was a woman, the Dowager Empress Tsu Tsi, who had usurped the power of the young emperor and ruled the state. It was to these two people in power that the war was due. The dowager empress, blindly ignorant of the power of the Japanese, decided that these "insolent pigmies" deserved to be chastised. Li, her right-hand man, was of the same opinion. At the last moment, indeed, doubts began to assail his mind, into which came a dim idea that the army and navy of China were not in shape to meet the forces of Japan. But the empress was resolute. Her sixtieth birthday was at hand and she proposed to celebrate it magnificently; and what better decorations could she display than the captured banners of these insolent islanders? So it was decided to present a bold front, and, instead of the troops of China being removed, reinforcements were sent to the force at Asan.

[=The Sinking of the Chinese Transport=]

There followed a startling event. On July 25th three Japanese men-of-war, cruising in the Yellow Sea, came in sight of a transport loaded with Chinese troops and convoyed by two ships of the Chinese navy. The Japanese admiral did not know of the seizure of Seoul by the land forces, but he took it to be his duty to prevent Chinese troops from reaching Corea, so he at once attacked the war ships of the enemy, with such effect that they were quickly put to flight. Then he sent orders to the transport that it should put about and follow his ships.

This the Chinese generals refused to do. They trusted to the fact that they were on a chartered British vessel and that the British flag flew over their heads. The daring Japanese admiral troubled his soul little about this foreign standard, but at once opened fire on the transport, and with such effect that in half an hour it went to the bottom, carrying with it one thousand men. Only about one hundred and seventy escaped.

[=Declaration of War=]

On the same day that this terrible act took place on the waters of the sea, the Japanese left Seoul en route for Asan. Reaching there, they attacked the Chinese in their works and drove them out. Three days afterwards, on August 1, 1894, both countries issued declarations of war.

[=The War on Land=]

Of the conflict that followed, the most interesting events were those that took place on the waters, the land campaigns being an unbroken series of successes for the well-organized and amply-armed Japanese troops over the mediæval army of China, which went to war fan and umbrella in hand, with antiquated weapons and obsolete organization. The principal battle was fought at Ping Yang on September 15th, the Chinese losing 16,000 killed, wounded and captured, while the Japanese loss was trifling. In November the powerful fortress of Port Arthur was attacked by army and fleet, and surrendered after a two days' siege. Then the armies advanced until they were in the vicinity of the Great Wall, with the soil and capital of China not far before them.

[=The Chinese and Japanese Fleets=]

With this brief review of the land operations, we must return to the performances of the fleets, which were of high interest as forming the second occasion in which a modern ironclad fleet had met in battle--the first being that already described in which the Austrians defeated the Italians at Lissa. Backward as the Chinese were on land, they were not so on the sea. Li Hung Chang, progressive as he was, had vainly attempted to introduce railroads into China, but he had been more successful in regard to ships, and had purchased a navy more powerful than that of Japan. The heaviest ships of Japan were cruisers, whose armor consisted of deck and interior lining of steel. The Chinese possessed two powerful battleships, with 14-inch iron armor and turrets defended with 12-inch armor, each carrying four 12-inch guns. Both navies had the advantage of European teaching in drill, tactics, and seamanship. The Ting Yuen, the Chinese flagship, had as virtual commander an experienced German officer named Van Hanneken; the Chen Yuen, the other big ironclad, was handled by Commander M'Giffen, formerly of the United States navy. Thus commanded, it was expected in Europe that the superior strength of the Chinese ships would ensure them an easy victory over those of Japan. The event showed that this was a decidedly mistaken view.

It was the superior speed and the large number of rapid-fire guns of the Japanese vessels that gave them the victory. The Chinese guns were mainly heavy Krupps and Armstrongs. They had also some machine guns, but only three quick-firers. The Japanese, on the contrary, had a few heavy armor-piercing guns, but were supplied with a large number of quick-firing cannon, capable of pouring out shells in an incessant stream. Admiral Ting and his European officers expected to come at once to close quarters and quickly destroy the thin armored Japanese craft. But the shrewd Admiral Ito, commander of the fleet of Japan, had no intention of being thus dealt with. The speed of his craft enabled him to keep his distance and to distract the aim of his foes, and he proposed to make the best use of this advantage. Thus equipped the two fleets came together in the month of September, and an epoch-making battle in the history of the ancient continent of Asia was fought.

[=The Fleets off the Yalu River=]

On the afternoon of Sunday, September 16th, Admiral Ting's fleet, consisting of 11 warships, 4 gunboats, and 6 torpedo boats, anchored off the mouth of the Yalu River. They were there as escorts to some transports, which went up the river to discharge their troops. Admiral Ito had been engaged in the same work farther down the coast, and early on Monday morning came steaming towards the Yalu in search of the enemy. Under him were in all twelve ships, none of them with heavy armor, one of them an armed transport. The swiftest ship in the fleet was the Yoshino, capable of making twenty-three knots, and armed with 44 quick-firing Armstrongs, which would discharge nearly 4,000 pounds weight of shells every minute. The heaviest guns were long 13-inch cannon, of which four ships possessed one each, protected by 12-inch shields of steel. Finally, they had an important advantage over the Chinese in being abundantly supplied with ammunition.

[=The Cruise of Admiral Ito's Fleet=]

With this formidable fleet Ito steamed slowly to the north-westward. Early on Monday morning he was off the island of Hai-yun-tao. At seven A.M. the fleet began steaming north-eastward. It was a fine autumn morning. The sun shone brightly, and there was only just enough of a breeze to ripple the surface of the water. The long line of warships cleaving their way through the blue waters, all bright with white paint, the chrysanthemum of Japan shining like a golden shield on every bow, and the same emblem flying in red and white from every masthead must have been a grand spectacle. Some miles away to port rose the rocky coast and the blue hills of Manchuria, dotted with many an island, and showing here and there a little bay with its fishing villages. On the other side, the waters of the wide Corean Gulf stretched to an unbroken horizon. Towards eleven o'clock the hills at the head of the gulf began to rise. Ito had in his leading ship, the Yoshino, a cruiser that would have made a splendid scout. In any European navy she would have been steaming some miles ahead of her colleagues with, perhaps, another quick ship between her and the fleet to pass on her signals. Ito however seems to have done no scouting, but to have kept his ships in single line ahead, with a small interval between the van and the main squadron. At half-past eleven smoke was seen far away on the starboard bow, the bearing being east-north-east. It appeared to come from a number of steamers in line, on the horizon. The course was altered and the speed increased. Ito believed that he had the Chinese fleet in front of him. He was right. The smoke was that of Ting's ironclads and cruisers anchored in line, with steam up, outside the mouth of the Yalu.

On Monday morning the Chinese crews had been exercised at their guns, and a little before noon, while the cooks were busy getting dinner ready, the lookout men at several of the mastheads began to call out that they saw the smoke of a large fleet away on the horizon to the south-west. Admiral Ting was as eager for the fight as his opponents. At once he signalled to his fleet to weigh anchor, and a few minutes later ran up the signal to clear for action.

[=The Chinese on the "Chen Yuen"=]

A similar signal was made by Admiral Ito half-an-hour later, as his ships came in sight of the Chinese line of battle. The actual moment was five minutes past noon, but it was not until three-quarters of an hour later that the fleets had closed sufficiently near for the fight to begin at long range. This three-quarters of an hour was a time of anxious, and eager expectation for both Chinese and Japanese. Commander McGiffen of the Chen Yuen has given a striking description of the scene when "the deadly space" between the two fleets was narrowing, and all were watching for the flash and smoke of the first gun:--"The twenty-two ships," he says, "trim and fresh-looking in their paint and their bright new bunting, and gay with fluttering signal-flags, presented such a holiday aspect that one found difficulty in realizing that they were not there simply for a friendly meeting. But, looking closer on the Chen Yuen, one could see beneath this gayety much that was sinister. Dark-skinned men, with queues tightly coiled round their heads, and with arms bared to the elbow, clustered along the decks in groups at the guns, waiting impatiently to kill or be killed. Sand was sprinkled along the decks, and more was kept handy against the time when they might become slippery. In the superstructures, and down out of sight in the bowels of the ship, were men at the shell whips and ammunition hoists and in the torpedo room. Here and there a man lay flat on the deck, with a charge of powder--fifty pounds or more--in his arms, waiting to spring up and pass it on when it should be wanted. The nerves of the men below deck were in extreme tension. On deck one could see the approaching enemy, but below nothing was known, save that any moment might begin the action, and bring in a shell through the side. Once the battle had begun they were all right; but at first the strain was intense. The fleets closed on each other rapidly. My crew was silent. The sub-lieutenant in the military foretop was taking sextant angles and announcing the range, and exhibiting an appropriate small signal-flag. As each range was called, the men at the guns would lower the sight-bars, each gun captain, lanyard in hand, keeping his gun trained on the enemy. Through the ventilators could be heard the beats of the steam pumps; for all the lines of hose were joined up and spouting water, so that, in case of fire, no time need be lost. Every man's nerves were in a state of tension, which was greatly relieved as a huge cloud of white smoke, belching from the Ting Yuen's starboard barbette, opened the ball."

[=The Opening of the Battle=]

The shot fell a little ahead of the Yoshino, throwing up a tall column of white water. Admiral Ito, in his official report, notes that this first shot was fired at ten minutes to one. The range, as noted on the Chen Yuen, was 5,200 yards, or a little over three and a half miles. The heavy barbette and bow guns of the Chen Yuen and other ships now joined in, but still the Japanese van squadron came on without replying. For five minutes the firing was all on the side of the Chinese. The space between the Japanese van and the hostile line had diminished to 3,000 yards--a little under two miles. The Yoshino, the leading ship, was heading for the centre of the Chinese line, but obliquely, so as to pass diagonally along the front of the Chinese right wing. At five minutes to one her powerful battery of quick-firers opened on the Chinese, sending out a storm of shells, most of which fell in the water just ahead of the Ting and Chen Yuen. Their first effect was to deluge the decks, barbettes and bridges of the two ironclads with the geysers of water flung up by their impact with the waves. In a few minutes every man on deck was soaked to the skin. One by one the other ships along the Japanese line opened fire, and then, as the range still diminished, the Chinese machine-guns, Hotchkisses and Nordenfelts added their sharp, growling reports to the deeper chorus of the heavier guns.

The armored barbettes and central citadels of the two Chinese battleships were especially the mark of the Japanese fire. Theoretically they ought to have been pierced again and again, but all the harm they received were some deep dents and grooves in the thick plates. But through the thin lined hulls of the cruisers the shells crashed like pebbles through glass, the only effect of the metal wall being to explode the shells and scatter their fragments far and wide.

[=Admiral Ito's Strategy=]

[=The Daring Act of the "Heijei"=]

The Chinese admiral had drawn up his ships in a single line, with the large ones in the centre and the weaker ones on the wings. Ito's ships came up in column, the Yoshino leading, his purpose being to take advantage of the superior speed of his ships and circle round his adversary. Past the Chinese right wing swept the swift Yoshino, pouring in the shells from her rapid-fire guns on the unprotected vessels there posted, one of which, the Yang Wei, was soon in flames. The ships that followed tore the woodwork of the Chao Yung with their shells, and she likewise burst into flames. The slower vessels of the Japanese fleet lagged behind their speedy leaders, particularly the little Heijei, which fell so far in the rear as to be exposed to the fire of the whole Chinese fleet. In this dilemma its captain displayed a daring spirit. Instead of following his consorts, he dashed straight for the line of the enemy, passing between two of their larger vessels at 500 yards distance. Two torpedoes were launched at him, but missed their mark. But he was made the target of a heavy fire, and came through with his craft in flames. At 2.23 the blazing Chao Yung went to the bottom with all on board.

[=The "Matsushima" and the "Ting Yuen"=]

As a result of the Japanese evolution, their ships finally closed in on the Chinese on both sides and the action reached its most furious phase. The two flag-ships, the Japanese Matsushima and the Chinese Ting Yuen, battered each other with their great guns, the wood-work of the latter being soon in flames, while a heap of ammunition on the Matsushima was exploded by a shell and killed or wounded eighty men. The Chinese flag-ship would probably have been destroyed by the flames but that her consort came to her assistance. By five o'clock the Chinese fleet was in the greatest disorder, several of its ships having been sunk or driven in flames ashore, while others were in flight. The Japanese fire was mainly concentrated on the two large ironclads, which continued the fight, their thick armor resisting the heaviest guns of the enemy.

[=McGiffen's Terrible Danger=]

Signals and signal halyards had been long since shot away, and all the signalmen killed or wounded; but the two ships conformed to each other's movements, and made a splendid fight of it. Admiral Ting had been insensible for some hours at the outset of the battle. He had stood too close to one of his own big guns on a platform above its muzzle, and had been stunned by the upward and backward concussion of the air; but he had recovered consciousness, and, though wounded by a burst shell, was bravely commanding his ship. Von Hanneken was also wounded in one of the barbettes. The ship was on fire forward, but the hose kept the flames under. The Chen Yuen was almost in the same plight. Her commander, McGiffen, had had several narrow escapes. When at last the lacquered woodwork on her forecastle caught fire, and the men declined to go forward and put it out unless an officer went with them, he led the party. He was stooping down to move something on the forecastle, when a shot passed between his arms and legs, wounding both his wrists. At the same time he was struck down by an explosion near him. When he recovered from the shock he found himself in a terrible position. He was lying wounded on the forecastle, and full in front of him he saw the muzzle of one of the heavy barbette guns come sweeping round, rise, and then sink a little, as the gunners trained it on a Japanese ship, never noticing that he lay just below the line of fire. It was in vain to try to attract their attention. In another minute he would have been caught in the fiery blast. With a great effort he rolled himself over the edge of the forecastle, dropping on to some rubbish on the main deck, and hearing the roar of the gun as he fell.

The battle now resolved itself into a close cannonade of the two ironclads by the main body of the Japanese fleet, while the rest of the ships kept up a desultory fight with the three other Chinese ships and the gunboats. The torpedo boats seem to have done nothing. Commander McGiffen says that their engines had been worn out, and their fittings shaken to pieces, by their being recklessly used as ordinary steam launches in the weeks before the battle. The torpedoes fired from the tubes of the battleships were few in number, and all missed their mark, one, at least, going harmlessly under a ship at which it was fired at a range of only fifty yards. The Japanese used no torpedoes. It is even said that, by a mistake, they had sailed without a supply of these weapons. Nor was the ram used anywhere. Once or twice a Chinese ship tried to run down a Japanese, but the swifter and handier vessels of Ito's squadron easily avoided all such attacks. The Yalu fight was from first to last an artillery battle.

[=The End of the Battle=]

And the end of it came somewhat unexpectedly. The Chen Yuen and the Ting Yuen were both running short of ammunition. The latter had been hit more than four hundred times without her armour being pierced, and the former at least as often. One of the Chen Yuen's heavy guns had its mountings damaged, but otherwise she was yet serviceable. Still, she had been severely battered, had lost a great part of her crew, and her slow fire must have told the Japanese that she was economizing her ammunition, which was now all solid shot. But about half-past five Ito signalled to his fleet to retire. The two Chinese ironclads followed them for a couple of miles, sending an occasional shot after them; then the Japanese main squadron suddenly circled round as if to renew the action, and, towards six o'clock, there was a brisk exchange of fire at long range. When Ito again ceased fire, the Chen Yuen had just three projectiles left for her heavy guns. If he had kept on for a few minutes longer the two Chinese ships would have been at his mercy.

[=Lessons from the Yalu Sea-Fight=]

Just why Ito retired has never been clearly explained. Probably exhaustion of his crew and the perils of a battle at night with such antagonists had much to do with it. The next morning the Chinese fleet had disappeared. It had lost four ships in the fight, two had taken to flight, and one ran ashore after the battle and was blown up. Two of the Japanese ships were badly damaged, but none were lost, while their losses in killed and wounded were much less than those of the Chinese. An important lesson from the battle was the danger of too much wood-work in ironclad ships, and another was the great value in naval warfare of rapid-firing guns. But the most remarkable characteristic of the battle of the Yalu was that it took place between two nations which, had the war broken out forty years earlier, would have done their fighting with fleets of junks and weapons a century old.

[=Capture of Wei Hai Wei=]

In January, 1895, the Japanese fleet advanced against the strongly fortified stronghold of Wei Hai Wei, on the northern coast of China. Here a force of 25,000 men was landed successfully, and attacked the fort in the rear, quickly capturing its landward defences. The stronghold was thereupon abandoned by its garrison and occupied by the Japanese. The Chinese fleet lay in the harbor, and surrendered to the Japanese after several ships had been sunk by torpedo boats.

[=The Treaty of Peace=]

China was now in a perilous position. Its fleet was lost, its coast strongholds of Port Arthur and Wei Hai Wei were held by the enemy, and its capital city was threatened from the latter place and by the army north of the Great Wall. A continuation of the war promised to bring about the complete conquest of the Chinese empire, and Li Hung Chang, who had been degraded from his official rank in consequence of the disasters to the army, was now restored to all his honors and sent to Japan to sue for peace. In the treaty obtained China was compelled to acknowledge the independence of Corea, to cede to Japan the island of Formosa and the Pescadores group, and that part of Manchuria occupied by the Japanese army, including Port Arthur, also to pay an indemnity of 300,000,000 taels and open seven new treaty ports. This treaty was not fully carried out. The Russian, British, and French ministers forced Japan, under threat of war, to give up her claim to the Liau Tung peninsula and Port Arthur.

[=The Impending Partition of China=]

The story of China during the few remaining years of the century may be briefly told. The evidence of its weakness yielded by the war with Japan was quickly taken advantage of by the great powers of Europe, and China was in danger of going to pieces under their attacks, which grew so decided and ominous that rumors of a partition between these powers of the most ancient and populous empire of the world filled the air.

In 1898 decided steps in this direction were taken. Russia obtained a lease for ninety-nine years of Port Arthur and Talien Wan, and is at present in practical possession of Manchuria, through which a railroad is to be built connecting with the Trans-Siberian road, while Port Arthur affords her an ice-free harbor for her Pacific fleet. Great Britain, jealous of this movement on the part of Russia, forced from the unwilling hands of China the port of Wei Hai Wei, and Germany demanded and obtained the cession of a port at Kiau Chun, farther down the coast. France, not to be outdone by her neighbors, gained concessions of territory in the south, adjoining her Indo-China possessions, and Italy, last of all, came into the Eastern market for a share of the nearly defunct empire.

[=A Palace Revolution=]

How far this will go it is not easy to say. The nations are settling on China like vultures on a carcass, and perhaps may tear the antique commonwealth to pieces between them. Within the empire itself revolutionary changes have taken place, the dowager empress having first deprived the emperor of all power and then enforced his abdication, while Japan, the late enemy of China, is now looked to for its defence, and Count Ito has been asked to become its premier.

[=Progress in China=]

Meanwhile one important result has come from the recent war. Li Hung Chang and the other progressive statesmen of the empire, who have long been convinced that the only hope of China lies in its being thrown open to Western science and art, have now become able to carry out their plans, the conservative opposition having seriously broken down. The result of this is seen in a dozen directions. Railroads, long almost completely forbidden, have now gained free "right of way," and before many years promise to traverse the country far and wide. Steamers plough their way for a thousand miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang; engineers are busy exploiting the coal and iron mines of the Flowery Kingdom; great factories, equipped with the best modern machinery, are springing up in the foreign settlements; foreign books are being translated and read; and the emperor and the dowager empress have even gone so far as to receive foreign ambassadors in public audience and on a footing of outward equality in the "forbidden city" of Peking, long the sacredly secluded centre of an empire locked against the outer world.

[=What the Future May Bring to China=]

All this is full of significance. The defeat of China in 1895 may prove its victory, if it starts it upon a career of acceptance of Western civilization which shall, before the twentieth century has far advanced, raise it to the level of Japan. It must be borne in mind that the extraordinary progress of the island empire has been made within about forty years. China is a larger body and in consequence less easy to move, but its people are innately practical and the pressure of circumstances is forcing them forward. Within the next half century this great empire, despite its thousands of years of unchanging conditions, may take a wonderful bound in advance, and come up to Japan in the race of political and industrial development. In such a case all talk of the partition of China must cease, and it will take its place among the greatest powers of the world.

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XXI. The Era of Colonies

Since civilization began nations have endeavored to extend their dominions, not alone by adding to their territory by the conquest of adjoining countries, but also by sending out their excess population to distant regions and founding colonies that served as aids to and feeders of the parent state. In the ancient world the active commercial nations, Phoenicia and Greece, were alert in this direction, some of their colonies,--Carthage, for instance,--becoming powerful enough to gain the status of independent states. In modern times the colonial era began with the discovery of America in 1492 and the circumnavigation of Africa immediately afterwards. Spain and Portugal, the leaders in enterprise at that period, were quick to take advantage of their discoveries, while France, Great Britain and Holland came into the field as founders of colonies at a later date.

[=Progress in Colonization=]

At the opening of the nineteenth century Spain and Portugal still held the great dominions they had won. They divided between them the continent of South America, while Spain held a large section of North America, embracing the whole continent south of Canada and west of the Mississippi River, together with the peninsula of Florida. Portugal held, in addition to Brazil, large territories in east and west Africa and minor possessions elsewhere. As regards the remaining active colonizing nations,--Great Britain, France, and Holland,--some striking transformations had taken place. Great Britain, while late to come into the field of colonization, had shown remarkable activity and aggressiveness in this direction, robbing Holland of her settlement on the Atlantic coast of America, and depriving France of her great colonial possessions in the east and the west.

[=French Activity in Founding Colonies=]

France had shown a remarkable activity in colonization. In the east she gained a strong foothold in India, which promised to expand to imperial dimensions. In the west she had settled Canada, had planted military posts along the great Mississippi River and claimed the vast territory beyond, and was extending into the Ohio Valley, while the British still confined themselves to a narrow strip along the Atlantic coast. The war which broke out between the English and French colonists in 1754 put an end to this grand promise. When it ended France had lost all her possessions in America and India, Great Britain becoming heir to the whole of them with the exception of the territory west of the Mississippi, which was transferred to Spain. As regards Holland, she had become the successor of Portugal in the east, holding immensely valuable islands in the Malayan archipelago.

The colonial dominion of Great Britain, however, suffered one great loss before the end of the eighteenth century. It failed to recognize the spirit of Anglo-Saxon colonists, and by its tyranny in America gave rise to an insurrection which ended in the freedom of its American colonies. It still held Canada and many of the West India Islands, but the United States was free, and by the opening of the nineteenth century had fairly begun its remarkable development.

Such was the condition of colonial affairs at the beginning of the century with which we are concerned. Spain and Portugal still held the greatest colonial dominions upon the earth, France had lost nearly the whole of her colonies, Holland possessed the rich spice islands of the eastern seas, and Great Britain was just entering upon that activity in colonization which forms one of the striking features of nineteenth century progress.

[=Spain's Colonial Decline=]

At the close of the century a remarkable difference appears. Spain had lost practically the whole of her vast colonial empire. She had learned no lesson from England's experience with her American colonies, but maintained a policy of tyranny and oppression until these far-extended colonial provinces rose in arms and won their independence by courage and endurance. Her great domain west of the Mississippi, transferred by treaty to France, was purchased by the United States. Florida was sold by her to the same country, and by the end of the first quarter of the century she did not own a foot of land on the American continent. She still held the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico in the West Indies, but her oppressive policy yielded the same result there as on the continent. The islanders broke into rebellion, the United States came to their aid, and she lost these islands and the Philippine Islands in the East. At the end of the century all she held were the Canary Islands and some small possessions elsewhere.

Portugal had also suffered a heavy loss in her colonial dominions, but in a very different manner. The invasion of the home state by Napoleon's armies had caused the king and his court to set sail for Brazil, where they established an independent empire, while a new scion of the family of Braganza took Portugal for his own. Thus, with the exception of Canada, Guiana, and the smaller islands of the West Indies, no colonies existed in America at the end of the century, all the former colonies having become independent republics.

[=The Colonial Development of Great Britain=]

The active powers in colonization within the nineteenth century were the great rivals of the preceding period, Great Britain and France, though the former gained decidedly the start, and its colonial empire to-day surpasses that of any other nation of mankind. It is so enormous, in fact, as to dwarf the parent kingdom, which is related to its colonial dominion, so far as comparative size is concerned, as the small brain of the elephant is related to its great body.

[=Other Colonizing Powers=]

Other powers, not heard of as colonizers in the past, have recently come into this field, though too late to obtain any of the great prizes. These are Germany and Italy, the latter to a small extent. But there is a great power still to name, which in its way stands as a rival to Great Britain, the empire of Russia, whose acquisitions in Asia have grown enormous in extent. These are not colonies in the ordinary sense, but rather results of the expansion of an empire through warlike aggression, but they are colonial in the sense of absorbing the excess population of European Russia. The great territory of Siberia was gained by Russia before the nineteenth century, but within recent years its dominion in Asia has greatly increased, and it is not easy to tell just when and where it will end.

[=Growth of the British Colonies=]

With this preliminary review we may proceed to consider the history of colonization within the century. And first we must take up the results of the colonial enterprise of Great Britain, as much the most important of the whole. Of this story we have already described some of the leading features. A chapter has been given to the story of the Indian empire of Great Britain, far the largest of her colonial possessions, and another to that of South Africa. In addition to Hindustan, in which the dominion of Great Britain now extends to Afghanistan and Thibet in the north, the British colony now includes Burmah and the west-coast region of Indo-China, with the Straits Settlements in the Malay peninsula, and the island of Ceylon, acquired in 1802 from Holland.

[=Australia and New Zealand=]

In the eastern seas Great Britain possesses another colony of vast dimensions, the continental island of Australia, which, with its area of nearly 3,000,000 square miles, is three-fourths the size of Europe. The first British settlement was made here in 1788, at Port Jackson, the site of the present thriving city of Sydney, and the island was long maintained as a penal settlement, convicts being sent there as late as 1868. It was the discovery of gold in 1851 to which Australia owed its great progress. The incitement of the yellow metal drew the enterprising thither by thousands, until the population of the colony is now more than 3,000,000, and is growing at a rapid rate, it having developed other valuable resources besides that of gold. Of its cities, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, has more than 300,000 population; Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, probably 250,000, while there are other cities of rapid growth. Australia is the one important British colony obtained without a war. In its human beings, as in its animals generally, it stood at a low level of development, and it was taken possession of without a protest from the savage inhabitants.

The same cannot be said of the inhabitants of New Zealand, an important group of islands lying east of Australia, which was acquired by Great Britain as a colony in 1840. The Maoris, as the people of these islands call themselves, are of the bold and sturdy Polynesian race, a brave, generous, and warlike people, who have given their new lords and masters no little trouble. A series of wars with the natives began in 1843 and continued until 1869, since which time the colony has enjoyed peace. It can have no more trouble with the Maoris, since there are said to be no more Maoris. They have vanished before the "white man's face." At present this colony is one of the most advanced politically of any region on the face of the earth, so far as attention to the interests of the masses of the people is concerned, and its laws and regulations offer a useful object lesson to the remainder of the world.

[=Other British Colonies=]

In addition to those great island dominions in the Pacific, Great Britain possesses the Fiji Islands, the northern part of Borneo, and a large section of the extensive island of Papua or New Guinea, the remainder of which is held by Holland and Germany. In addition there are various coaling stations on the islands and coast of Asia. In the Mediterranean its possessions are Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, and in America the great colony of Canada, a considerable number of the islands of the West Indies, and the districts of British Honduras and British Guiana. Of these, far the most important is Canada, to which a chapter will be devoted farther on in our work.

[=The Interior of Africa and Asia=]

We have here to deal with the colonies in two of the continents, Asia and Africa, of which the history presents certain features of singularity. Though known from the most ancient times, while America was quite unknown until four centuries ago, the striking fact presents itself that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the continents of North and South America were fairly well known from coast to centre, while the interior of Asia and Africa remained in great part unknown. This fact in regard to Asia was due to the hostile attitude of its people, which rendered it very dangerous for any European traveler to attempt to penetrate its interior. In the case of Africa it was due to the inhospitality of nature, which had placed the most serious obstacles in the way of those who sought to penetrate beyond the coast regions. This state of affairs continued until the latter half of the century, within which period there has been a remarkable change in the aspect of affairs, both continents having been penetrated in all directions and their walls of isolation completely broken down.

[=Early Colonies in Africa=]

Africa is not only now well known, but the penetration of its interior has been followed by political changes of the most revolutionary character. It presented a virgin field for colonization, of which the land-hungry nations of Europe hastened to avail themselves, dividing up the continent between them, so that, by the end of the century, the partition of Africa was practically complete. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of the nineteenth century that a complete continent remained thus until late in the history of the world to serve as a new field for the outpouring of the nations. The occupation of Africa by Europeans, indeed, began earlier. The Arabs had held the section north of the Sahara for many centuries, Portugal claimed--but scarcely occupied--large sections east and west, and the Dutch had a thriving settlement in the south. But the exploration and division of the bulk of the continent waited for the nineteenth century, and the greater part of the work of partition took place within the final quarter of that century.

[=The Partition of Africa=]

In this work of colonization Great Britain was, as usual, most energetic and successful, and to-day the possessions and protectorates of this active kingdom in Africa embrace 2,587,755 square miles; or, if we add Egypt and the Egyptian Soudan--practically British territory--the area occupied or claimed amounts to 2,987,755 square miles. France comes next, with claims covering 1,232,454 square miles. Germany lays claim to 920,920; Italy, to 278,500; Portugal, to 735,304; Spain, to 243,877; the Congo Free State, to 900,000; and Turkey (if Egypt be included), to 798,738 square miles. The parts of Africa unoccupied or unclaimed by Europeans are a portion of the Desert of Sahara, which no one wants; Abyssinia, still independent though in danger of absorption; and Liberia, a state over which rests the shadow of protection of the United States.

[=British Colonies in Africa=]

Of the British colonial possessions in Africa we have already sufficiently described that in the south, extending now from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika, and forming an immense area, replete with natural resources, and capable of sustaining a very large future population. On the east coast is another large acquisition, British East Africa, extending north to Abyssinia and the Soudan and west to the Congo Free State, and including part of the great Victoria Nyanza. Further north a large slice has been carved out of Somaliland, facing on the Gulf of Aden. The remainder of this section of Africa is claimed--though very feebly held--by Italy, whose possessions include Somaliland and Eritrea, a coast district north of Abyssinia. Great Britain, in addition, lays claim to Sierra Leone and the Ashantee country on the west coast and an extensive region facing on the Gulf of Guinea, and extending far back into the Soudan.

[=African Colonies of France=]

Next to Great Britain in activity in the acquisition of African territory comes France, which within the recent period has enormously extended its claims to territory in this continent. Of these the most difficult in acquirement was Algeria, on the Mediterranean, which France first invaded in 1830, but did not obtain quiet possession of for many years and then only at the cost of long and sanguinary wars. At a later date the adjoining Moorish kingdom of Tunis was added, and since then the claims of France have been extended indefinitely southward, to include the greater part of the western half of the Sahara--the Atlantic coast district of the Sahara being claimed by Spain. Of this great desert region almost the whole is useless to any nation, and France holds it mainly as a connecting link between her possessions in Algeria and the Soudan.

French Soudan has had a phenomenal growth, the French displaying the same enterprise here as they did in America in the rapid extension of their Canadian province. Claiming, as their share in the partition of Africa, the Atlantic coast region of Senegal and an extensive district facing on the Gulf of Guinea and the South Atlantic, and known as French Congo, they have made an enormous spread, northward from the latter, westward from Senegal, and southward from Algeria, until now their claims cover nearly the whole of the Soudan--a vast belt of territory stretching from the Atlantic nearly across the continent and bordering on the Egyptian Soudan in the east. The French claim, indeed, extended as far as the Nile, being based on Major Marchand's journey to the river in 1898. But the English conquests in that region barred out the French claim, and it has been abandoned. In addition to the territories here named, France has taken possession of a portion of the coast region of Abyssinia, between the Italian and the British regions, and completely shutting out that ancient kingdom from the sea.

[=German and Italian Colonies=]

The latest of the nations to develop the colonizing spirit were Italy and Germany. We have described Italy's share in Africa. Germany's is far larger and more important. In East Africa it holds a large and valuable region of territory, on the Zanzibar coast, between British East Africa and Portuguese Mozambique, and extending westward to Lake Nyassa and Tanganyika and the Congo Free State, and northward to the Victoria Nyanza. It cuts off British territory from an extension throughout the whole length of Africa, and if Cecil Rhodes' Cairo to Cape Town Railway is ever completed, some hundreds of miles of it will have to run through German territory.

In South Africa Germany has seized upon abroad region left unclaimed by Great Britain, the Atlantic coast section of Damaraland and Great Namaqualand, and also an extensive section on the right of the Gulf of Guinea, stretching inward like a wedge between British and French possessions in this region. On the Gold Coast it has also a minor territory, lying between British Ashantee and French Dahomey.

[=The Congo Free State=]

The broad interior of the continent, the mighty plateau region watered by the great Congo River and its innumerable affluents, first traversed by the daring Stanley not many years in the past, has been erected into the extensive and promising Congo Free State, under the suzerainty of the king of Belgium. It is the most populous and agriculturally the richest section of Africa, while its remarkable extension of navigable waters give uninterrupted communication through its every part. It has probably before it a great future.

[=The French Conquest of Madagascar=]

Off the east coast of Africa lies the great island of Madagascar, now a French territory. France has had military posts on its coast for more than two hundred years, and in 1883 began the series of wars which resulted in the conquest of the island. The principal war of invasion began in 1895 and ended in a complete overthrow of the native government, Madagascar being declared a French colony in June, 1896.

Of these European possessions in Africa, all are held with a strong hand except those of Portugal, which unprogressive state may soon give up all claim to her territories of Angola and Mozambique. Great Britain and Germany have been negotiating with Portugal for the purchase of these territories--to be divided between them. As one part of the bargain, Great Britain will get the important Delagoa Bay, and definitely shut in the Boer Republic from the sea.

[=Wars in Africa=]

This division of Africa between the European nations, with the subsequent taking possession of the acquired territories, has not been accomplished without war and bloodshed; England, France, and Italy having had to fight hard to establish their claims. In only two sections, Abyssinia and the Egyptian Soudan, have the natives been able to drive out their invaders, and the wars in these regions call for some fuller notice.

[=Defeat of the Italians in Abyssinia=]

The first war in Abyssinia occurred in 1867, when England, irritated by an arbitrary action of the Emperor Theodore, declared war against him, and invaded his rocky and difficult country. The war ended in the conquest of Magdala and the death of Theodore. In 1889 Italy aided Menelek in gaining the throne, and was granted the large district of Eritrea on the Red Sea, with a nominal protectorate over the whole kingdom. Subsequently Menelek repudiated the treaty, and in 1894 the Italians invaded his kingdom. For a time they were successful, but in March, 1896, the Italian army met with a most disastrous defeat, and in the treaty that followed Italy was compelled to acknowledge the complete independence of Abyssinia. It was the one case in Africa in which the natives were able to hold their own against the ambitious nations of Europe.

[=The Expansion of Egypt=]

In Egypt they did so for a time, and a brief description of the recent history of this important kingdom seems of interest. Egypt broke loose in large measure from the rule of Turkey during the reign of the able and ambitious Mehemet Ali, who was made viceroy in 1840. In 1876 the independence of Egypt was much increased, and its rulers were given the title of khedive, or king. The powers of the khedives steadily increased, and in 1874-75 Ismail Pasha greatly extended the Egyptian territory, annexing the Soudan as far as Darfur, and finally to the shores of the lately discovered Victoria Nyanza. Egypt thus embraced the valley of the Nile practically to its source, presenting an aspect of immense length and great narrowness.

Soon after, the finances of the country became so involved that they were placed under European control, and the growth of English and French influence led to the revolt of Arabi Pasha in 1879. This was repressed by Great Britain, which bombarded Alexandria and defeated the Egyptians, France taking no part. As a result the controlling influence of France ended, and Great Britain became the practical ruler of Egypt, which position she still maintains.

[=The Rise of the Mahdi=]

[=The Massacre of Hicks Pasha and His Army=]

In 1880 began an important series of events. A Mohammedan prophet arose in the Soudan, claiming to be the Mahdi, a Messiah of the Mussulmans. A large body of devoted believers soon gathered around him, and he set up an independent sultanate in the desert, defeating four Egyptian expeditions sent against him, and capturing El Obeid, the chief city of Kordofan which he made his capital in 1883. Then against him Great Britain dispatched an army of British and Egyptian soldiers, under an English leader styled in Egypt Hicks Pasha. These advanced to El Obeid, where they fell into an ambush prepared by the Mahdists, and, after a desperate struggle, lasting three days, were almost completely annihilated, scarcely a man escaping to tell the disastrous tale. "General Hicks," said a newspaper correspondent, "charged at the head of staff. They galloped towards a sheikh, supposed by the Egyptians to be the Mahdi. Hicks rushed on him with his sword and cut his face and arm; this man had on a Darfur steel mail-shirt. Just then a club thrown struck General Hicks on the head and unhorsed him. The chargers of the staff were speared but the English officers fought on foot till all were killed. Hicks was the last to die."

Other expeditions of Egyptian troops sent against Osman Digma ("Osman the Ugly"), the lieutenant of the Mahdi in the Eastern Soudan, met with a similar fate, while the towns of Sinkat and Tokar were invested by the Mahdists. To relieve these towns Baker Pasha advanced with a force of 3,650 men. There was no more daring or accomplished officer in the British army than Valentine Baker, but his expedition met with the same fate as that of his predecessor. Advancing into the desert from Trinkitat, a town some distance south of Suakim, on the Red Sea, the force was met by a body of Mahdists, and the Egyptian soldiers at once broke into a panic of terror. The Mahdists were only some 1,200 strong, but they surrounded and butchered the unresisting Egyptians in a frightful slaughter.

[=The Battles Near Suakim=]

"Inside the square," said an eyewitness, "the state of affairs was almost indescribable. Cavalry, infantry, mules, camels, falling baggage and dying men were crushed into a struggling, surging mass. The Egyptians were shrieking madly, hardly attempting to run away, but trying to shelter themselves one behind another." "The conduct of the Egyptians was simply disgraceful," said another officer. "Armed with rifle and bayonet, they allowed themselves to be slaughtered, without an effort at self-defence, by savages inferior to them in numbers and armed only with spears and swords."

Baker and his staff officers, seeing that affairs were hopeless, charged the enemy and cut their way through to the shore, but of the total force two-thirds were left dead or wounded on the field. Such was the "massacre" of El Teb, which was followed four days afterwards by the capture of Sinkat and slaughter of its garrison. This butchery was soon after avenged. General Graham was sent from Cairo with reinforcements of British troops, which advanced on Osman's position, and, in two bloody engagements subjected him to disastrous defeat. The last victory was a crushing one, the total British loss being about 200, while, of the Arab loss, the killed alone numbered over 2,000.

[=Gordon Goes to Khartoum=]

In the same year in which these events took place (1884) General Charles Gordon--Chinese Gordon, as he was called, from his memorable exploits in the Flowery Kingdom--advanced by the Nile to Khartoum, the far-off capital of the Mohammedan Soudan, of which he had been governor-general in former years. His purpose was to relieve the Egyptian garrison of that city--in which design he failed. In fact, the Arabs of the Soudan flocked in such multitudes to the standard of the Mahdi that Khartoum was soon cut off from all communication with the country to the north, and Gordon and the garrison were left in a position of dire peril. It was determined to send an expedition to his relief, and this was organized under the leadership of Lord Wolseley, the victor in the Ashantee and Zulu wars.

[=To the Rescue of Gordon=]

[=The Desert Fights=]

The expedition was divided into two sections, a desert column which was to cross a sandy stretch of land with the aid of camels, from Korti to Metamneh, on the Nile, thus cutting off a wide loop in the stream; and a river column for whose transportation a flotilla of 800 whale boats was sent out from England. The desert column found its route strongly disputed. On the 7th of January, 1885, it was attacked by the Arabs in overwhelming force and fighting with the ferocity of tigers, some 5,000 of them attacking the 1,500 British drawn up in square, round which the fanatical Mahdists raged like storm-driven waves. The peril was imminent. Among those who fell on the British side was Colonel Burnaby, the famous traveler. The battle was a remarkably brief one, the impetuous rush of the Arabs being repulsed in about five minutes of heroic effort, during which there was imminent danger of their penetrating the square and making an end of the British troops. As it was the Arabs lost 1,100 in dead and a large number of wounded, the British less than 200 in all. A few days afterwards the Arabs attacked again, but as before were repulsed with heavy loss. On the 19th of January the river was reached, and the weary troops bivouacked on its banks.

Here they were met by four steamers which Gordon had sent down the Nile, after plating their hulls with iron as a protection against Arab bullets. Various circumstances now caused delay, and several days passed before General Wilson, in command of the expedition, felt it safe to advance on Khartoum. At length, on January 24th, two of the steamers, with a small force of troops, set out up the river, but met with so many obstacles that it was the 28th before they came within sight of the distant towers of Khartoum. From the bank came a shout to the effect that Khartoum had been taken and Gordon killed two days before. As they drew nearer there came evidence that the announcement was true. No British flag was seen flying; not a shot came from the shore in aid of the steamers. Masses of the enemy could be seen in all directions. A storm of musketry beat like hail on the iron sides of the boats. Wilson, believing the attempt hopeless, gave the order to turn and run at full speed down the river. They did so amid a rattle of bullets and bursting of shells from the artillery of the enemy.

[=Death of General Gordon=]

The news they brought was true. The gallant Gordon was indeed dead. The exact events that took place are not known. Some attributed the fall of the town to the act of a traitor, some to the storming of the gates. It does not matter now; it is enough to know that the famous Christian soldier had been killed with all his men--about 4,000 persons being slaughtered, in a massacre that continued for six hours. That was the end of it. The British soon after withdrew and left Khartoum and the Soudan in the undisputed possession of the Arabs. The Mahdi had been victorious, though he did not live long to enjoy his triumph, he dying some months later.

[=The Advance of the British and Recapture of the Soudan=]

And so matters were left for nearly twelve years, when the British government, having arranged affairs in Egypt to its liking, and put the country in a prosperous condition, decided to attempt the reconquest of the Soudan, and avenge the slaughtered Gordon. An expedition was sent out in 1896, which captured Dongola in September and defeated the dervish force in several engagements. The progress continued, slowly but surely, up the Nile. In 1897 other advantages were gained. But it was not until 1898 that the Anglo-Egyptian force, under Sir Herbert Kitchener, known under his Egyptian title of the Sirdar, reached the vicinity of Khartoum. The Egyptian soldiers under him were of other stuff than those commanded by Baker Pasha. From a mob with arms in hand they had been drilled into brave and steady soldiers, quite capable of giving a good account of themselves. At Omdurman, near Khartoum, the dervishes were met in force and a fierce and final battle was fought. The Arabs suffered a crushing defeat, losing more than 10,000 men, while the British loss was only about 200. This brilliant victory ended the war on the Nile. The fight was taken out of the Arabs. The Soudan was restored to Egypt by British arms, fourteen years after it had been lost to the Mahdi.

[=The Partition of Asia=]

Asia has been invaded by the nations of civilization almost as actively as Africa, and to-day, aside from the Chinese and Japanese Empires, far the greater part of that vast continent is under foreign control, the only important independent sections being Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and Afghanistan. As matters now look, all of these, China included, before the twentieth century is very old may be in European hands, and the partition of Asia become as complete as that of Africa. The nations active in this work have been Great Britain, Russia, and France, while Holland is in possession of Java, Sumatra, and others of the valuable spice islands of the eastern seas. Of the enterprise of Great Britain in extending her colonial dominion in Hindostan and Burmah we have already spoken. The enterprise of France here demands attention.

[=French and British Methods of Colonization=]

France has always been remarkably active in her colonizing enterprises. In America she surpassed Great Britain in the rapid extension of her dominion, though she fell far behind in the solidity of her settlements. It has been the same in Africa. France has spread out with extraordinary rapidity over the Soudan, while England has moved much more slowly but far more surely. The enterprises of the one are brilliant, those of the other are solid, and it is the firmness with which the Anglo-Saxon race takes hold that makes it to-day the dominant power on the earth. The French have the faculty of assimilating themselves with foreign peoples, accepting their manners and customs and becoming their friends and allies. The British, on the contrary, are too apt to treat their colonial subjects as inferior beings, but they combine their haughtiness with justice, and win respect at the same time as they inspire distrust and fear.

[=Operations of France in Indo-China=]

The colonizing enterprise of France in Asia, after the French had been ousted from India by Great Britain, directed itself to the peninsula of Indo-China. This was the only region of the Asiatic coast land which was at once safe to meddle with and worth the cost and trouble. In 1789 the emperor of Annam accepted French aid in the conquest of the adjoining states of Cochin China and Tonquin. The wedge of French influence, thus entered, was not removed. Missionaries sought those far-off realms, and in time found themselves cruelly treated by the natives. As usual in such cases, this formed a pretext for invasion and annexation, and in 1862 a portion of Cochin China was seized upon by France, the remainder being annexed in 1867. Meanwhile, in 1863, the "protection" of France was extended over the neighboring state of Cambodia.

North of Cochin China lies Annam, and farther north, bordering on China, is the province of Tonquin, inhabited largely by Chinese. The four states mentioned constitute the eastern half of Indo-China. The western portion is formed by the kingdom of Burmah, now a British possession. Between these lies the contracted kingdom of Siam, the only portion of the peninsula that retains its independence.

[=The Black Flags=]

The attention of France was next directed to Tonquin, the northern province of the Annamite Empire, which was invaded in 1873, and its capital city, Hanoi, captured. Here the French found foeman worthy of their steel. After the suppression of the Taiping rebellion in China certain bands of the rebels took refuge in Tonquin, where they won themselves a new home by force of arms, and in 1868 held the valley of the Red River as far south as Hanoi. These, known as the "Black Flags," were bold, restless, daring desperadoes, who made the conquest of the country a difficult task for the French. By their aid the invading French were driven from Hanoi and forced back in defeat.

[=The Siege of Sontay=]

[=A Night Attack=]

The French resumed their work of conquest in 1882, again taking the city of Hanoi, and in December, 1883, a strong expedition advanced up the Red River against the stronghold of Sontay, which, with the neighboring Bac Ninh, was looked upon, in a military sense, as the key to Tonquin. The enterprise seemed a desperate one, the expeditionary force consisting of but 6,000 soldiers and 1,350 coolies, while behind the strong works of the place were 25,000 armed men, of whom 10,000 were composed of the valiant Black Flags. But cannon served the place of men. The river defences were battered down and preparations made to storm the citadel. During the succeeding night, however, the French ran imminent risk of a disastrous repulse. At one o'clock at night, when all but the sentries were locked in slumber, a sudden shower of rockets was poured on the thatched roofs of the huts in which the soldiers lay asleep, and with savage yells the Chinese rushed from their gates and into the heart of the camp, firing briskly as they came. The French troops, fatigued with the hard fighting of the preceding day, and demoralized by the suddenness of the attack and the pluck and persistent energy of the assailants, were thrown almost into panic, and were ready to give way when the Chinese trumpets sounded the recall and the enemy drew off. As it appeared afterwards this attack was made by only 300 men. It would undoubtedly have stampeded the invading forces but for the vigilance of the sentinels.

[=The Storming of the Citadel=]

On the next day, December 16th, the fort was stormed, and taken after a desperate resistance. There is but one incident of the assault that we need relate. As the French rushed across the bridge that spanned the wide ditch and approached the gate of the citadel, there was seen an instance of cool and devoted bravery hardly excelled by that which was displayed by the famous "captain of the gate" who held the Tiber bridge, against the Tuscan host. There, told off to guard the narrow passage between the stockade and the wall, stood a gallant Black Flag soldier. His Winchester repeating rifle was in his hand, its magazine filled with cartridges. Although half the French force were at the gate, he quailed not. Shot after shot he fired, deliberately and calmly, and each bullet found its billet. Down went brave Captain Méhl, leader of the Foreign Legion, with a ball through his heart, and other attackers were slain; and when the stormers rushed in at last the heroic Black Flag, true to his trust, died with his face to the foe, as a soldier should die. The French, quick to recognize bravery either in friend or enemy, buried him with military honors when the day's fight was over, at the gate which he defended so well.

The capture of this town, followed by that of Bac-Ninh, which was similarly taken by storm, completed the work of conquest and firmly established the French in their occupation of Tonquin.

[=France in Possession=]

They had, however, still the Chinese to deal with. China claimed a suzerainty over this region and protested against the French invasion, and in 1885 went to war for the expulsion of the foreign conquerors. During the previous year the Black Flags had engaged in murderous raids on the French mission stations, in which they massacred nearly 10,000 native Christians. In the war with China, they, with other Chinese troops, held the passes above Tuyen-Kivan for nearly a month against repeated assaults by the French, and were still in possession of their posts when peace was declared. China had yielded the country to France.

In 1895 France gained the right to extend a railway from Annam into China, a concession which was protested against by Great Britain, then in possession of the adjoining province. In 1896 a treaty was made between these two powers, which fixed the Mekong or Cambodia River as their dividing line. As a result those powers now hold all of Indo-China except the much diminished kingdom of Siam. France has permitted the form of the old government to continue, the Emperor of Annam still reigning--though he does not rule, since the real power is in the hands of the French governor-general at Hanoi.

[=The Advance of Russia in Asia=]

While Great Britain and France were thus establishing themselves in the south, Russia was engaged in the conquest of the north and centre of the continent. The immense province of Siberia, crossing the whole width of the continent in the north, was acquired by Russia in the seventeenth century, after which the progress of Russia in Asia ceased until the nineteenth century, within which the territory of the Muscovite empire in that continent has been very greatly extended. Two provinces were wrested from Persia in 1828, as the prize of a victorious war, and in 1859 the conquest of the region of the Caucasus was completed by the capture of the heroic Schamyl. In 1858 the left bank of the great Amur River was gained by treaty with China, after having been occupied by force.

Soon after this period, Russia began the work of conquest in the region of Turkestan, that long-mysterious section of Central Asia, inhabited in part by fierce desert nomades, who for centuries made Persia the spoil of their devastating raids, and in part by intolerant settled tribes, among whom no Christian dared venture except at risk of his life. It remained in great measure a terra incognita until the Russians forced their way into it arms in hand.

[=The Invasion of Turkestan=]

The southern border of Siberia was gradually extended downward over the great region of the Mongolian steppes until the northern limits of Turkestan were reached, and in 1864 Russia invaded this region subduing the oasis of Tashkend after a fierce war. In 1868 the march of invasion reached Bokhara, and in 1873 the oasis of Khiva was conquered and annexed. In 1875-76 Khokand was conquered after a fierce war, and annexed to Russia. This completed the acquisition of the fertile provinces of Turkestan, but the fierce nomades of the desert remained unsubdued, and the oasis of Merv and the country of the warlike Tekke Turcomans were still to conquer. This, which was accomplished in 1880-81, merits a fuller description.

A broad belt of desert lands stretches across the continent of Asia from Arabia, in the southwest, to the rainless highlands of Gobi, or Shamo, in the far east. This desert zone is here and there broken by a tract of steppe land that is covered with grass for a portion of the year, while more rarely a large oasis is formed where the rivers and streams, descending from a mountain range, supply water to a fertile region, before losing themselves in the sands of the desert beyond.

[=The Deserts of Central Asia=]

Eastward of the Caspian, and south of the Aral, much of the waste land is a salt desert, and the shells, mixed with the surface sand, afford further evidence that it was in times not very remote part of the bottom of a large inland sea, of which the landlocked waters of Western Asia are a survival.

Along the Caspian the steppe and desert sink gradually to the water-level, and the margins of the sea are so shallow that, except where extensive dredging works have been carried out, and long jetties constructed, ships have to discharge their cargoes into barges two or three miles from the shore.

This desert region marked for many years the southern limit of the Russian empire in Central Asia. A barren waste is a more formidable obstacle to an European army than the ocean itself; and the Turkoman tribes of the oases not only refused to acknowledge the dominion of the White Czar, but successfully raided up to the very gates of his border forts in the spring, when the grass of the steppe afforded forage for their horses. The first successful advance across the desert zone was made by Kaufmann, whose expeditions followed the belt of fertile land which breaks the desert where the Amu Daria (the Oxus of classical times) flows down from the central highlands of Asia to the great lake of the Aral Sea. But in 1878 the Russians began another series of conquests, starting not from their forts on the Oxus, but from their new ports on the southwestern shore of the Caspian.

[=The Country of the Tekke Turkomans=]

In this direction the most powerful of the Turkoman tribes were the Tekkes of the Akhal oasis. Between their strongholds and the Caspian there was a desert nearly 150 miles wide, and then the ridge of the Kopet Dagh Mountains. The desert, which stretches from the northern shore of the Atrek River, is partly sandy waste, partly a tract of barren clayey land, baked hard by the sun; broken by cracks and crevices in the dry season, and like a half-flooded brickfield when it rains. The water of the river is scanty, and not good to drink. It flows in a deep channel between steep banks, and so closely does the desert approach it that for miles one might ride within a hundred yards of its clay-banked cañon without suspecting that water was so near. Where the Sumber River runs into the Atrek the Russians had an advanced post--the earthwork fort of Tchad, with its eight-gun battery. Following the Sumber, one enters the arid valleys on the south of the Kopet Dagh range. On this side the slopes rise gradually; on the other side of the ridge there is a sharp descent, and sometimes the mountains form for miles a line of precipitous rocky walls. At the foot of this natural rampart lay the fortified villages of the Tekke Turkomans.

[=The Land of Akhal=]

[=The Herds and Villages of the Tekkes=]

[=The Akhal Warriors=]

Numerous streams descend from the Kopet Dagh, flowing to the north-eastward, and after a few miles losing themselves in the sands of the Kara Kum desert. Between the mountain wall and the desert the ground thus watered forms a long, narrow oasis--the land of Akhal--to which a local Mussulman tradition says that Adam betook himself when he was driven forth from Eden. No doubt much of the praise that has been given to the beauty and fertility of this three-hundred-mile strip of well-watered garden ground comes from the contrast between its green enclosures and the endless waste that closes in the horizon to the north-eastward. Corn and maize, cotton and wool, form part of the wealth of its people. They had the finest horses of all Turkestan, and great herds and flocks of cattle, sheep and camels. The streams turned numerous mills, and were led by a network of tunnels and conduits through the fields and garden. The villages were mud-walled quadrangles, with an inner enclosure for the cattle; the kibitkas, or tents, and the mud huts of the Tekkes filling the space between the inner and outer walls, and straggling outside in temporary camps that could be rapidly cleared away in war time. The people were over 100,000 strong--perhaps 140,000 in all--men, women and children. They were united in a loose confederacy, acknowledged the lordship of the Khan of Merv, who had come from one of their own villages. They raided the Russian and Persian borders successfully, these plundering expeditions filling up the part of the year when they were not busy with more peaceful occupations. Along their fertile strip of land ran the caravan track from Merv by Askabad to Kizil Arvat and the Caspian, and when they were not at war the Tekkes had thus an outlet for their surplus productions, among which were beautiful carpets, the handiwork of their women. In war they had proved themselves formidable to all their neighbors. United with the warriors of Merv, the men of Akhal had cut to pieces a Khivan army in 1855 and a host of Persians in 1861.

The conquest of Akhal had long been a subject of Russian ambition. It was not merely that they were anxious to put an end once for all to the raids of the Turkomans of the great oasis, but they regarded the possession of this region as a great step towards the consolidation of their power in Asia. From Baku, the terminus of their railways in the Caucasus, it was easy to ferry troops across the Caspian. What they wanted was a secure road from some port on its eastern shore to their provinces on the Upper Oxus, and anyone who knew the country must have felt that this road would eventually run through the Akhal and the Merv oases.

[=Repulse of Lomakine and the Russians=]

The first effort to subdue the Akhal warriors proved a complete failure. As soon as peace was concluded with Turkey, after the war of 1877-78, General Lomakine was sent with a strong force to the Caspian, whence he made his way by the caravan route over the desert to the strong nomade fortress of Geok Tepe ("blue hills"), at the foot of the mountain range mentioned. We shall say nothing more concerning this expedition than that the attempt to take the fort by storm proved a complete failure, and the Russians were forced to retreat in disorder.

[=Skobeleff and the Siege of Geok Tepe=]

To retrieve this disaster General Skobeleff, the most daring of the Russian generals, who had gained great glory in the siege of Plevna, was selected, and set out in 1880. On the 1st of January, 1881, he came in sight of the fort, with an army of 10,000 picked troops, and fifty-four cannon. Behind the clay ramparts lay awaiting him from 20,000 to 30,000 of valiant nomades, filled with the pride of their recent victory. The first batteries opened fire on the 8th, and the siege works were pushed so rapidly forward that the Russians had gained all the outworks by the 17th. This steady progress was depressing to the Turkomans, who were not used to such a method of fighting. The cannonade continued resistlessly, the wall being breached on the 23d and the assault fixed for the next day. Two mines had been driven under the rampart, one charged with gun-powder and one with dynamite, and all was ready for the desperate work of the storming parties.

Early the next day all the Russian guns opened upon the walls, and a false attack was made on the west side of the fort, the men firing incessantly to distract the attention of the Turkomans, while the actual column of attack was formed and held ready on the east. Another column, 2,000 strong, waited opposite the south angle, the soldiers ready and eager for the assault.

[=The Fort Carried by Storm=]

A little after eleven the mines were fired. The explosion caused momentary panic among the garrison, and in the midst of the confusion the two storming columns rushed for the breaches. But before they could climb the heaps of smoking debris the Tekkes were back at their posts, and it was through a sharp fire of rifles and muskets that the Russians pushed in through the first line of defence. The fight in and around the breaches was a close and desperate struggle; but as the stormers in front fell, others clambered up to replace them, and at the same time Haidaroff, converting his false attack into a real one, escaladed the southern wall.

[=A Frightful Massacre=]

"No quarter!" had been the shout of the Russian officers as they dashed forward at the head of the stormers. The Tekkes expected none. They fought in desperate knots, back to back, among the huts and tents of the town, but at last they were driven out by the east side. Skobeleff did not make Lomakine's mistake of blocking their way. He let them go; but once they were out on the plain the Cossack cavalry was launched in wild pursuit, and for ten long miles sword and spear drank deep of the blood of the fugitives. Women as well as men were cut down or speared as the horses overtook them. More than 8,000 Tekkes fell in the pursuit. Asked a year after if this was true, Skobeleff said that he had the slain counted, and that it was so. Six thousand five hundred bodies were buried inside the fortress; eight thousand more strewed the ten miles of the plain.

[=Submission of the Turkomans=]

Skobeleff looked on the massacre as a necessary element in the conquest of Geok Tepe. "I hold it as a principle," he said, "that in Asia the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict on the enemy. The harder you hit them the longer they will keep quiet after it." No women, he added, were killed by the troops under his immediate command, and he set at liberty 700 Persian women who were captives in Geok Tepe. After ten miles the pursuit was stopped. There was no further resistance. Not a shot was fired on either side after that terrible day. The chiefs came in and surrendered. The other towns in the eastern part of the oasis were occupied without fighting; nay, more, within a month of Geok Tepe Skobeleff was able to go without a guard into the midst of the very men who had fought against him. We in America cannot understand the calm submission with which the Asiatic accepts as the decree of fate the rule of the conqueror whose hand has been heavy upon him and his. The crumbling ramparts of Geok Tepe remain a memorial of the years of warfare which it cost the Russians; and the iron track on which the trains steam past the ruined fortress shows how complete has been the victory.

Skobeleff looked upon his triumph as only the first step to further conquests. But within eighteen months of the storming of Geok Tepe he died suddenly at Moscow. Others have built on the foundations which he laid; and, for good or ill, the advance which began with the subjugation of the Tekke Turkomans has now brought the Russian outposts in Central Asia in sight of the passes that lead across the mountain barriers of the Indian frontier.

[=Great Development of Russia in Asia=]

This conquest was quickly followed by the laying of a railroad across the desert, from the Caspian to the sacred Mohammedan city of Samarcand, the former capital of the terrible Timur the Tartar, and the iron horse now penetrates freely into the heart of that once unknown land, its shrill whistle perhaps disturbing Timur in his tomb. Across the broad stretch of Siberia another railroad is being rapidly laid, and extended downward through Manchuria to the borders of China, a stupendous enterprise, the road being thousands of miles in length. Manchuria, the native land of the Chinese emperors, is now held firmly by Russia, and the ancient empire of Persia, on the southern border of Turkestan, is threatened with absorption. When and where the advance of Russia in Asia will end no man can say, perhaps not until Hindustan is torn from British hands and the empire of the north has reached the southern sea. While Russia in Europe comprises about 2,000,000 square miles, Russia in Asia has attained an area of 6,564,778 square miles, and the total area of this colossal empire is nearly equal to that of the entire continent of North America.

The final step in colonization--if we may call it by this name--belongs to the United States, which at the end of the century laid its hand on two island groups of the Eastern Seas, acquiring Hawaii by peaceful annexation and the Philippine Islands by warlike invasion. What will be the result of this acquisition on the future of the United States it is impossible to say, but it brings the American border close to China, and when the destiny of that great empire is settled, the republic of the West may have something to say.

[=The Future of Colonizing Enterprise=]

At the end of the nineteenth century the work of the colonizing powers was fairly at an end. Nearly all the available territory of the earth had been entered upon and occupied. But the work, while in this sense completed, was in a fuller sense only begun. It was left for the twentieth century for those great tracts of the earth to be brought properly under the dominion of civilization, their abundant resources developed, peace and prosperity brought to their fertile soils, and their long turbulent population taught the arts of peaceful progress and civilized industry.

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XXII. How the United States Entered the Century

[=The Great Republic of the West=]

Hitherto our attention has been directed to the Eastern Hemisphere, and to the stirring events of nineteenth century history in that great section of the earth. But beyond the ocean, in North America, a greater event, one filled with more promise for mankind, one destined to loom larger on the horizon of time, was meanwhile taking place, the development of the noble commonwealth of the United States of America. To this far-extending Republic of the West, a nation almost solely an outgrowth of the nineteenth century, our attention needs now to be turned. Its history is one full of great steps of progress, illuminated by a hundred events of the highest promise and significance, and it stands to-day as a beacon light of national progress and human liberty to the world, "the land of the brave and the home of the free."

A hundred years ago the giant here described was but a babe, a newborn nation just beginning to feel the strength of its limbs. It is with this section of its history that we are here concerned, its days of origin and childhood. Two events of extraordinary significance in human history rise before us in the final quarter of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence and its results. The first of these revolutionary events we have dealt with; the second remains to be presented.

[=The Great Men who Founded our Nation=]

There is one circumstance that impresses us most strongly in this great event, the remarkable group of able men who laid the foundation of the American commonwealth. Among those whose hands gave the first impulse to the ship of state were men of such noble proportions as George Washington, the greatest man of the century not only in America but in the whole world; Benjamin Franklin, who came closely to the level of Washington in another field of human greatness; Patrick Henry, whose masterpieces of oratory still stir the soul like trumpet-blasts; Thomas Jefferson, to whose genius we owe the inimitable "Declaration of Independence;" Thomas Paine, whose pen had the point of a sword and the strength of an army; John Paul Jones, the hero of the most brilliant feat of daring in the whole era of naval warfare, and Alexander Hamilton, whose financial genius saved the infant state in one of the most critical moments of its career. These were not the whole of that surpassing coterie, but simply in their special fields the greatest, and it is doubtful if the earth ever saw an abler group of statesmen than those to whom we owe the Constitution of the United States.

It is not our purpose to tell the story of the American Revolution. That lies back of the borders of time within which this work is confined. But some brief statement of its results is in order, as an introduction to the nineteenth century record of the United States.

[=Weakness of the States After the Revolution=]

It was a country in almost an expiring state when it emerged from the fierce death struggle of the Revolution. It had been swept by fire and sword, its resources destroyed, its industries ruined, its government financially bankrupt, its organization in a state of tottering weakness, little left it but the courage of its people and the aspirations of its leaders. But in courage and aspiration safety and progress lie, and with those for its motive forces the future of the country was assured.

The weakness spoken of was not the only or the worst weakness with which the new community had to contend. Though named the United States, its chief danger lay in its lack of union. The thirteen recent colonies--now states--were combined only by the feeblest of bonds, one calculated to carry them through an emergency, not to hold them together under all the contingencies of human affairs. Practically they were thirteen distinct nations, not one close union; a group of communities with a few ties of common self-interest, but otherwise disunited and distinct.

[=The Articles of Confederation=]

"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" had been adopted in 1777 and ratified by the agreement of all the states in 1781. But the Confederation was not a union. Each state claimed to be a sovereign commonwealth, and little power was given to the central government. The weak point in the Articles of Confederation was that they gave Congress no power to lay taxes or to levy soldiers. It could merely ask the states for men and money, but must wait till they were ready to give them--if they chose to do so at all. It could make treaties, but could not enforce them; could borrow money, but could not repay it; could make war, but could not force a man to join its armies; could recommend, but had no power to act.

The states proposed to remain independent except in minor particulars. They were jealous of one another and of the general Congress. "We are," said Washington, "one nation to-day and thirteen to-morrow." That well expressed the state of the case; no true union existed; the states were free to join hands more closely or to drift more widely asunder.

[=False Ideas in Finance=]

The time from the revolt against the stamp duties in 1775 to the inauguration in 1789 of the National Government under which we live has been called the critical period of American history. It was a period which displayed all the inaptitude of the Americans for sound financiering. There is hardly an evil in finances that cannot be illustrated by some event in American affairs at that time. The Americans began the war without any preparation, they conducted it on credit, and at the end of fourteen years three millions of people were five hundred millions of dollars or more in debt. The exact amount will never be known. Congress and the State Legislatures issued paper currency in unlimited quantities and upon no security. The Americans were deceived themselves in believing that their products were essential to the welfare of Europe, and that all European nations would speedily make overtures to them for the control of American commerce. It may be said that the Americans wholly over-estimated their importance in the world at that time; they thought that to cut off England from American commerce would ruin England; they thought that the bestowal of their commerce upon France would enrich France so much that the French king, for so inestimable a privilege, could well afford to loan them, and even to give them, money.

The doctrine of the rights of man ran riot in America. Paper currency became the infatuation of the day. It was thought that paper currency would meet all the demands for money, would win American independence. Even so practical a man as Franklin, then in France, said: "This effect of paper currency is not understood on this side the water; and, indeed, the whole is a mystery even to the politicians, how we have been able to continue a war four years without money, and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency, as we manage it, is a wonderful machine: it performs its office when we issue it; it pays and clothes troops and provides victuals and ammunition, and when we are obliged to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself off by depreciation."

If the taxing power is the most august power in government, the abuse of the taxing power is the most serious sin government can commit. No one will deny that the Americans were guilty of committing most grievous financial offenses during the critical period of their history. They abused liberty by demanding and by exercising the rights of nationality, and at the same time by neglecting or refusing to burden themselves with the taxation necessary to support nationality.

[=Constitutions of Colonies and Confederated States=]

The inability of the Congress of the Confederation to legislate under the provisions of the Articles compelled their amendment; for while the exigencies of war had forced the colonies into closer union,--a "perpetual league of friendship,"--they had also learned additional lessons in the theory and administration of local government; for each of the colonies, with the exception of Connecticut and Rhode Island, had transformed colonial government into government under a constitution. The people had not looked to Congress as a central power; they considered it as a central committee of the States. The individualistic tendencies of the colonies strengthened when the colonies transformed themselves into commonwealths.

The struggle, which began between the thirteen colonies and the imperial Parliament, was now transformed into a struggle between two tendencies in America, the tendency toward sovereign commonwealths and the tendency toward nationality. The first commonwealth constitutions did not acknowledge the supreme authority of Congress; there was yet lacking that essential bond between the people and their general government, the power of the general government to address itself directly to individuals. Interstate relations in 1787 were scarcely more perfect than they had been fifteen years before. The understanding of American affairs was more common, but intimate political association between the commonwealths was still unknown. The liberty of nationality had not yet been won. A peculiar tendency in American affairs from their beginning is seen in the succession of written constitutions, instruments peculiar to America. The commonwealths of the old Confederation demonstrated the necessity for a clearer definition of their relations to each other and of the association of the American people in nationality.

[=The Constitutional Convention and its Work=]

A sense of the necessity for commercial integrity led to the calling of the Philadelphia Convention to amend the old Articles, but when the Convention assembled it was found that an adequate solution of the large problem of nationality could not be found in an amendment of the old "Articles of Confederation," but called for a new and more vigorous Constitution. This Convention combined the associated states into a strongly united nation, possessed of all the powers of nationality, civil, financial and military. It organized a tripartite government, consisting of Supreme Executive, Supreme Legislative, and Supreme Judicial departments, each with all the power "necessary to make it feared and respected." While the Upper House of Congress still represented the states as separate commonwealths, the Lower House represented the people as individuals; it standing, not for a group of distinct communities, but for a nation of people. And to this House was given the sole power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, and to pay the debt, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States."

With this Constitution the United States of America first came into existence; a strong, energetic and capable nation; its government possessed of all the powers necessary to the full control of the states, and full ability to make itself respected abroad; its people possessed of all the civil rights yet known or demanded.

[=Restrictions on the Right of Suffrage=]

Yet the people, in their political privileges, were still controlled by the constitutions of the states, and these fixed close restrictions on the right of suffrage, the electorate being confined to a small body whose ownership of real estate and whose religious opinions agreed with the ideas existing in colonial times. The property each voter was required to possess differed in different commonwealths. In New Jersey he must have property to the value of fifty pounds, in Maryland and the Carolinas an estate of fifty acres, in Delaware a freehold estate of known value, in Georgia an estate of ten dollars or follow a mechanic trade; in New York, if he would vote for a member of Assembly he must possess a freehold of twenty pounds, and if he would vote for State Senator, it must be a hundred. Massachusetts required an elector to own a freehold estate worth sixty pounds or to possess an annual income of three pounds. Connecticut was satisfied if his estate was of the yearly value of seven dollars, and Rhode Island required him to own the value of one hundred and thirty-four dollars in land. Pennsylvania required him to be a freeholder, but New Hampshire and Vermont were satisfied with the payment of a poll-tax.

[=Religious Qualifications of Voters=]

The number of electors was still further affected by the religious opinions required of them. In New Jersey, in New Hampshire, in Vermont, in Connecticut, and in South Carolina, no Roman Catholic could vote; Maryland and Massachusetts allowed "those of the Christian religion" to exercise the franchise, but the "Christian religion" in Massachusetts was of the Congregational Church. North Carolina required her electors to believe in the divine authority of the Scriptures; Delaware was satisfied with a belief in the Trinity and in the inspiration of the Bible; Pennsylvania allowed those, otherwise qualified, to vote who believed "in one God, in the reward of good, and the punishment of evil, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures." In New York, in Virginia, in Georgia, and in Rhode Island, the Protestant faith was predominant, but a Roman Catholic, if a male resident, of the age of twenty-one years or over, could vote in Rhode Island.

[=Property Qualifications of Officials=]

The property qualifications which limited the number of electors were higher for those who sought office. If a man wished to be governor of New Jersey or of South Carolina, his real and personal property must amount to ten thousand dollars; in North Carolina to one thousand pounds; in Georgia to two hundred and fifty pounds or two hundred and fifty acres of land; in New Hampshire to five hundred pounds; in Maryland to ten times as much, of which a thousand pounds must be of land; in Delaware he must own real estate; in New York he must be worth a hundred pounds; in Rhode Island, one hundred and thirty-four dollars; and in Massachusetts a thousand pounds. Connecticut required her candidate for governor to be qualified as an elector, as did New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In all the commonwealths the candidate for office must possess the religious qualifications required of electors.

[=Condition of the Country in 1787=]

From these statements it is evident that the suffrage in the United States was greatly limited when, after the winning of American independence, the Constitution of the United States was framed and the commonwealths had adopted their first constitutions of government. It may be said that in 1787 the country was bankrupt, and America was without credit, and that of a population of three million souls, who, by our present ratio, would represent six hundred thousand voters, less than one hundred and fifty thousand possessed the right to vote. African slavery and property qualifications excluded above four hundred thousand men from the exercise of the franchise. It is evident, then, that at the time when American liberty was won American liberty had only begun; the offices of the country were in the possession of the few, scarcely any provision existed for common education, the roads of the country may be described as impassable, the means for transportation, trade, and commerce as feeble. If the struggle for liberty in America was not to be in vain, the people of the United States must address themselves directly to the payment of their debts, to the enlargement of the franchise, to improvements in transportation, and to the creation, organization, and support of a national system of common taxation. It is these great changes which constitute the history of this country during the nineteenth century.

[=Payment of Debt and Extension of Suffrage=]

All these have been gained since the adoption of the Constitution. The remarkable financial operations of Alexander Hamilton--by which the crushing load of debt of the new nation was funded, for payment in after years a customs tariff established as a means of obtaining revenue, and provision made for paying the claims of the soldiers of the Revolution--saved the credit and secured the honor of the nation. As regards the franchise, it was greatly extended during the nineteenth century. By the time the Erie canal was excavated property qualifications for suffrage had disappeared in nearly all the states, and by the middle of the century such qualifications had been abandoned in them all. Those of a religious character had vanished thirty years earlier.

As yet, however, the right to vote was limited to "free, white, male citizens." Twenty years afterwards, on March 30, 1870, a further great extension of the right of suffrage was made, when, in accordance with the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it was proclaimed by Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, that the right of citizens of this country to vote could not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Universal suffrage, so far as male citizens were concerned, thus became the common condition of American political life in 1870. But the struggle for liberty in this direction was not yet ended. Female citizens, about the middle of the century, gave voice to their claim to the same right, and with such effort that they had gained the right to vote at all elections in four of the States--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho--by the end of the century, and partial rights of suffrage in a majority of the States. The outlook is that before many years universal suffrage in its fullest sense will be established in the United States.

[=Development in State Constitutions=]

With the westward movements of the millions of human beings who have occupied the North American continent have gone the institutions and constitutions of the east, modified in their journey westward by the varying conditions of the life of the people. The brief constitutions of 1776 have developed into extraordinary length by successive changes and additions made by the more than seventy Constitutional Conventions which have been held west of the original thirteen States. These later constitutions resemble elaborate legal codes rather than brief statements of the fundamental ideas of government. But these constitutions, of which those of the Dakotas and of Montana and Washington are a type, express very clearly the opinions of the American people in government at the present time. The earnest desire shown in them for an accurate definition of the theory and the administration of government proves how anxiously the people of this country at all times consider the interpretation of their liberties, and with what hesitation, it may be said, they delegate their powers in government to legislatures, to judges, and to governors.

[=Progress in the United States=]

The struggle for liberty will never cease, for with the progress of civilization new definitions of the wants of the people are constantly forming in the mind. The whole movement of the American people in government, from the simple beginnings of representative government in Virginia, when the little parliament was called, to the present time, when nationality is enthroned and mighty commonwealths are become the component parts of the "more perfect union," has been toward the slow but constant realization of the rights and liberties of the people. Education, for which no commonwealth made adequate provision a century ago, is now the first care of the State. Easy and rapid transportation, wholly unknown to our fathers, is now a necessary condition of daily life. Trade has so prospered that the accumulated wealth of the country is more than sixty billions of dollars. Newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets are now so numerous as to make it impossible to contain them all in hundreds of libraries, and the American people have become the largest class of readers in the world.

A century ago there were but six cities of more than eight thousand people in this country; the number is now more than five hundred. Three millions of people have become seventy-five millions. The area of the original United States has expanded from eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles to four times that area. With expansion and growth and the amelioration in the conditions of life, the earnest problems of government have been brought home to the people by the leaders in the State, by the clergy, by the teachers in schools and colleges, and by the press.

But though we may be proud of these conquests, we are compelled in the last analysis of our institutions, to return to a few fundamental notions of our government. We must continue the representative idea based upon the doctrine of the equality of rights and exercised by representative assemblies founded on popular elections; and after our most pleasing contemplation of the institutions of America, we must return to the people, the foundation of our government. Their wisdom and self-control, and these alone, will impart to our institutions that strength which insures their perpetuity.

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XXIII. Expansion of the United States from Dwarf to Giant

In 1775, when the British colonies in America struck the first blow for independence, they were of dwarfish stature as compared with the present superb dimensions of the United States. Though the war with France had given them possession of the great Ohio Valley, the settled portion of the country lay between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, and the thirteen confederated States were confined to a narrow strip along the ocean border of the continent.

But before and during the Revolutionary War pathfinders and pioneers were at work. Chief among them was the noted hunter Daniel Boone, the explorer and settler of the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of Kentucky. Before him daring men had crossed the mountains, and after him came others, so that by the end of the Revolution the hand of civilization was firmly laid on the broad forest land of Kentucky and Tennessee. The rich country north of the Ohio, where the British possessed a number of forts, was captured for the United States by another daring adventurer, George Rogers Clark, who led a body of men down the Ohio, took and held the British forts, and saved the northwest to the struggling States. The boundaries of the United States in 1800, as established by the treaty of peace with Great Britain, extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi, and from the Great Lakes on the north to Florida on the south. Florida, then held by Spain, included a strip of land extending to the Mississippi River, so that the new republic was cut off from the Gulf of Mexico by domain belonging to a foreign country. The area thus acquired by the new nation was over 827,000 square miles. It was inhabited in 1800 by a population of 5,300,000.

The vast and almost wholly unknown territory west of the Mississippi, claimed by France, in virtue of her discoveries and settlements on the great river, until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain, was held by that country in 1800. This cession gave Spain complete control of the lower course of the Mississippi, since her province of Florida extended to the east bank of the stream. And she held it in a manner that proved deeply annoying to the American settlers in the west, to whom free navigation of the Mississippi was of great and growing importance.

[=The Settlement of the West=]

These settlers were increasing in numbers with considerable rapidity. The daring enterprise of Daniel Boone and other fearless pioneers had opened up the fertile lands of Kentucky and Tennessee. The warlike boldness of Colonel Clark had gained the northwest territory for the new nation. Into this new country pioneer settlers poured, over the mountains and down the Ohio, and by the opening of the century villages and towns had been built in a hundred places, and farmers were widely felling the virgin woods and planting their grain in the fertile soil. Kentucky and Tennessee had already been organized as states, and their admission was quickly followed by that of Ohio, which entered the Union in 1803. In the same year an event of the highest importance took place, the acquisition of the great Louisiana territory by the United States.

[=Spain Closes the Mississippi to Traffic=]

It has been stated above that the action of Spain gave great annoyance to the settlers in the country west of the Alleghanies. To these the natural commercial outlet to the sea was the Mississippi River, and the free use of this stream was forbidden by Spain, through whose country ran its lower course. Spain was so determined to retain for herself the exclusive navigation of the great river that in 1786 the new American republic withdrew all claim upon it, agreeing to withhold any demand for navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five years.

This action proved to be hasty and unwise. The West filled up with unlooked-for rapidity, and the settlers upon the Mississippi soon began to insist on free use of its waters, their irritation growing so great that the United States vainly sought in 1793 to induce Spain to open the stream to American craft. This purpose was attained, however, in 1795, when a treaty was made which opened the Mississippi to the sea for a term of three years, with permission for Americans to use New Orleans as a free port of entry, and place goods there on deposit.

[=France Obtains Louisiana=]

Five years later (1800), by an article in a secret treaty between Spain and France, the vast province of Louisiana, extending from the source to the mouth of the Mississippi River, and westward to the Rocky Mountains, was ceded by Spain to France, from which country Spain had received it in 1763. Towards the end of 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte, then at the head of French affairs, sent out a fleet and army ostensibly to act against San Domingo, but really to take possession of New Orleans.

When the secret of this treaty leaked out, as it soon did, there was great excitement in the United States, the irritation being increased by a Spanish order which withdrew the right of deposit of American merchandise in New Orleans, granted by the treaty of 1795, and failed to substitute any other place for that city, in accordance with the terms of the treaty. So strong was the feeling that a Pennsylvania Senator introduced a resolution into Congress, authorizing President Jefferson to call out 50,000 militia and occupy New Orleans. But Congress wisely decided that it would be better and cheaper to buy it than to fight for it, and in January, 1803, made an appropriation of $2,000,000 for its purchase. The President thereupon sent James Monroe to Paris to co-operate with Robert R. Livingston, United States Minister to France, in the proposed purchase.

[=The Louisiana Purchase=]

Fortunately for the United States a new war between England and France was then imminent, in the event of which Napoleon felt that he could not long hold his American acquisition against the powerful British navy. Not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana, would probably be lost to him, and just then money for his wars was of more consequence than wild lands beyond the sea. Therefore, to the surprise of the American Minister, he was asked to make an offer for the entire territory. This was on April 11th. On the 12th Monroe reached Paris. The two commissioners earnestly debated on the offer. They had no authority to close with such a proposition, but by the time they could receive fresh instructions from Washington the golden opportunity might be lost, and Great Britain deprive us of the mighty West. An ocean telegraph cable would have been to them an invaluable boon. As it was, there was no time to hesitate, and they decided to close with the offer, fixing the purchase price at $10,000,000. Napoleon demanded more, and in the end the price fixed upon was $15,000,000, of which $3,750,000 was to be paid to American citizens who held claims against Spain. A treaty to this effect was signed April 30, 1803.

[=How the Purchase Was Received=]

The news fell upon Spain like a thunderbolt. She filed a protest against the treaty--based, probably, on a secret condition of her cession of Louisiana to France, to the effect that it should not be parted with by that country. But Napoleon was not the man to pay any attention to a protest from a power so weak as Spain, and the matter was one with which the United States was not concerned. President Jefferson highly approved of the purchase, and called an extra session of the Senate for its consideration. It met with some vigorous opposition in that body, based upon almost absolute ignorance of the value of the territory involved; but it was ratified in October, 1803, and Louisiana became ours. The territory thus easily and cheaply acquired added about 920,000 square miles to the United States, more than doubling its area. It is now divided up into a large number of States, and includes much of the most productive agricultural land of the United States.

[=Ignorance of the Country=]

The members of the Senate who opposed the ratification of the treaty of purchase were in a measure justified in their doubt. Almost nothing was known of the country involved, and many idle legends were afloat concerning it. Hunters and trappers had penetrated its wilds, but the stories told by them had been transformed out of all semblance of truth. In order to dispel this ignorance and satisfy these doubts, the President determined to send an exploring expedition to the far West, with the purpose of crossing the Rocky Mountains, seeking the head-waters of the Columbia River, and following that stream to its mouth. The men chosen to lead this expedition were William Clark--brother of George Rogers Clark, of Revolutionary fame--and Merriwether Lewis. Both of these were army officers, and they were well adapted for the arduous enterprise which they were asked to undertake.

[=The Lewis and Clark Expedition=]

Lewis and Clark left St. Louis in the summer of 1803. They encamped for the winter on the bank of the Mississippi opposite the mouth of the Missouri River. The company included nine Kentuckians, who were used to Indian ways and frontier life, fourteen soldiers, two Canadian boatmen, an interpreter, a hunter and a negro boatman. Besides these, a corporal and guard with nine boatmen were engaged to accompany the expedition as far as the territory of the Mandans.

The party carried with it the usual goods for trading with the Indians--looking-glasses, beads, trinkets, hatchets, etc., and such provisions as were necessary for the sustenance of its members. While the greater part of the command embarked in a fleet of three large canoes, the hunters and pack-horses followed a parallel route along the shore. In this way, in the spring of 1804, the ascent of the Missouri was commenced. In June the country of the Osages was reached, then the lands occupied by the Ottawa tribes, and finally, in the fall, the hunting grounds of the Sioux. Here the leaders of the expedition ordered cabins to be constructed, and camped for the winter among the Mandans, in latitude 27 degrees 21 minutes north. They found in that country plenty of game, buffalo and deer being abundant; but the weather was intensely cold and the expedition was hardly prepared for the severity of the climate, so that its members suffered greatly.

In April a fresh start was made and the party continued to ascend the Missouri, reaching the great falls by June. Here they named the tributary waters and ascended the northernmost, which they called the Jefferson River, until further navigation was impossible; then Captain Lewis with three companions left the expedition in camp and started out on foot toward the mountains, in search of the friendly Shoshone Indians, from whom he expected assistance in his projected journey across the mountains.

[=The Head-Waters of the Columbia=]

On the 12th of August he discovered the source of the Jefferson River in a defile of the Rocky Mountains and crossed the dividing ridge, upon the other side of which his eyes were gladdened by the discovery of a small rivulet which flowed toward the west. Here was proof irrefutable "that the great backbone of earth" had been passed. The intrepid explorer saw with joy that this little stream danced out toward the setting sun--toward the Pacific Ocean. Meeting a force of Shoshones and persuading them to accompany him on his return to the main body of the expedition, Captain Lewis sought his companions once more. Captain Clark then went forward to determine their future course, and coming to the river which his companion had discovered, he named it the Lewis River.

[=Descending the Columbia=]

A number of Indian horses were procured from their red-skinned friends and the explorers pushed on to the broad plains of the western slope. The latter part of their progress in the mountains had been slow and painful, because of the early fall of snow, but the plains presented all the charm of early autumn. In October the Kaskaskia River was reached, and, leaving the horses and whatever baggage could be dispensed with in charge of the Indians, the command embarked in canoes and descended to the mouth of the Columbia River, upon the south bank of which, four hundred miles from their starting point upon this stream, they passed the second winter. Much of the return journey was a fight with hostile Indians, and the way proved to be much more difficult than it had been found while advancing toward the west. Lewis was wounded before reaching home, by the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of one of his force.

Finally, after an absence of two years, the expedition returned to its starting point, the leaders reaching Washington while Congress was in session. Grants of land were immediately made to them and to their subordinates. Captain Lewis was rewarded also with the governorship of Missouri. Clark was appointed brigadier-general for the territory of Upper Louisiana, and in 1813 was made governor of Missouri. When this Territory became a State he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs, which office he filled till his death.

[=Spain's Irritating Action=]

The second acquisition of territory by the United States embraced the peninsula of Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida was divided into two sections, known as Eastern and Western Florida, the latter extending from the Appalachicola River to the Mississippi River, and cutting off the Americans of Florida and Alabama from all access to the Gulf. Spain set up a customhouse at the mouth of the Alabama River, and levied heavy duties on goods to or from the country up that stream.

[=Western Florida Occupied=]

The United States was not willing to acknowledge the right of Spain to this country. It claimed that the Louisiana purchase included the region east of the Mississippi as far as the Perdido River,--the present western boundary of Florida--and in 1810 a force was sent into this country which took possession of it, with the exception of the city of Mobile. That city was occupied by General Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the army, in 1813, leaving to Spain only the country between the Perdido and the Atlantic Ocean and south of Georgia.

[=General Jackson Invades Eastern Florida=]

Throughout these years the purpose had grown in the southern states to gain this portion of the Spanish dominion, as well as Western Florida, for the United States. On January 15 and March 3, 1811, the United States Congress passed in secret--and its action was not made known until 1818--acts which authorized the President of the United States to take "temporary possession" of East Florida. The commissioners appointed under these acts, Matthews and Mitchell, both Georgians, stirred up insurrection in the coveted territory, and, when President Madison refused to sustain them, the state of Georgia formally pronounced Florida needful to its own peace and welfare, and practically declared war on its private account. But its expedition against Florida came to nothing. In 1814, General Andrew Jackson, then in command of United States forces at Mobile, made a raid into Pensacola, and drove out a British force which had been placed there. He afterwards restored the place to the Spanish authorities and retired. Four years after, during the Seminole war, Jackson, annoyed by Spanish assistance given to the Indians, again raided Eastern Florida, captured St. Marks and Pensacola, hung Arbuthnot and Ambruster, two Englishmen who were suspected of aiding the Seminoles, as "outlaws and pirates," and again demonstrated the fact that Florida was at the mercy of the United States.

[=The Purchase of Florida=]

The action of Jackson was unauthorized by the government, and his hanging the Englishmen without taking the trouble to make sure of their guilt caused a feeling of hostile irritation in England. But it had by this time grown quite evident to Spain, both that it could not hold Florida in peace and that this colony was of very little value to it. In consequence it agreed to sell the peninsula to the United States for the sum of $5,000,000, the treaty being signed February 22, 1819. By this treaty Spain also gave up all claim to the country west of the Louisiana purchase, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The purchase of Florida added 59,268 square miles to the United States, and the way was cleared for the subsequent acquisition of the Oregon country.

[=Texas Gains Freedom and is Annexed to the United States=]

The next accession of territory came in 1845, when Texas was added to the dominion of the United States. This country had, since 1821, been one of the states of the Mexican Republic. But American frontiersmen, of the kind calculated to foment trouble, soon made their way across the borders, increasing in numbers as the years passed on, until Texas had a considerable population of United States origin. Efforts were made to purchase this country from Mexico, $1,000,000 being offered in 1827 and $5,000,000 in 1829. These were declined, and in 1833 Texas adopted a constitution as a state of the Mexican republic. Two years later Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, was made dictator, and all state constitutions were abolished. Irritated by this, the American inhabitants declared the independence of Texas in 1836, and after a short war, marked by instances of savage cruelty on the part of the Mexicans, gained freedom for that country. Texas was organized as a republic, but its people soon applied for annexation to the United States. This was not granted until 1845. The territory added to this country by the admission of Texas amounted to 376,133 square miles.

[=The Oregon Country=]

In the following year another large section of territory was added to the rapidly growing United States. The Louisiana purchase ran indefinitely westward, but came to be considered as bounded on the west by the Rocky Mountains, Spain retaining a shadowy claim over the country west of that range. This exceedingly vague claim was abandoned in the Florida purchase treaty, and the broad Oregon country was left without an owner. The United States, indeed, might justly have claimed ownership on the same plea advanced for new regions elsewhere--namely, that of discovery and exploration. Captain Grey, in his ship, the Columbia, carried the starry flag to its coast in 1792, and was the first to enter and sail up its great river, which he named after his vessel. In 1805 the country was traversed and explored by Lewis and Clark. In 1811 John Jacob Astor founded the settlement of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, and sent hunters in search of furs through the back country. And in 1819 the vague right over the country held by Spain was transferred by treaty to the United States.

These various circumstances would have established a prescriptive right to the country concerned as against other countries, had any thought of claiming such a right been entertained. But no man, statesman or commoner, thought the country worth the value of even a paper claim, and it was left unconsidered and unthought of until the century was well advanced. Then, after the Hudson Bay Company had gained control of Astoria, and had begun to fill the country with fur hunters, a living sense of the value of this great region came to the mind of one man.

[=Whitman's Ride=]

[=Oregon Is Acquired=]

This was Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary physician among the Indians of the Columbia River region. He discovered that the Hudson Bay Company was making efforts to bring permanent settlers there, and that it proposed to claim the country for Great Britain. At once the energetic doctor set out for Washington, crossing the vast stretch of country from the Pacific to the Atlantic on horseback and traversing the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter. It was a long and terrible journey, full of perils and hardships, but he accomplished it in safety, and strongly urged the government at Washington to lay claim to the country. Even then it was hard to arouse an interest in the statesmen concerning this far-off territory, so the brave pioneer went among the people, told them of the beauty of the country and the fertility of its soil, and on his return, in 1843, took with him an emigrant train of nearly a thousand persons. This settled the question. The newcomers formed a government of their own. Others followed, and the question of ownership was practically settled. In 1845 there were some 7,000 Americans in Oregon and only a few British. By that time a stern determination had arisen in the people of this country to retain Oregon. A claim was made on the whole western region up to the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes, the southern boundary of Russian America, and the political war-cry of that year was "fifty-four forty or fight." In 1846 the question was settled by treaty with Great Britain, the disputed country being divided at the forty-ninth parallel. The northern portion became British Columbia, the southern Oregon. In this way it was that the United States spanned the continent and established its dominion from ocean to ocean. The tract acquired measured about 255,000 square miles. It now constitutes the States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

The United States grew with extraordinary rapidity in the decade with which we are now concerned, the acquisition of Texas and Florida being followed in 1848 by another great addition of territory, much larger than either. This came as the result of the annexation of Texas.

[=War With Mexico and Its Results=]

Mexico had never acknowledged the independence of the "Lone Star Republic," and was deeply dissatisfied at its acquisition by the United States, which it looked upon as an unwarranted interference in its private affairs. The strained relations between the two countries were made more stringent by a dispute as to the western boundary of Texas, both countries claiming the strip of land between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers. The result was a war, the description of which must be left for a later chapter. It will suffice here to say that the American troops marched steadily to victory, and at the end of the war held two large districts of northern Mexico, those of New Mexico and California. The occupation of these Mexican states gave this country a warrant to claim them as the prizes of victory.

[=California and New Mexico Purchased=]

But there was no disposition shown to despoil the defeated party without compensation. An agreement was made to pay Mexico $15,000,000 for New Mexico and California, and to assume debts owed by Mexico to United States citizens amounting to about $3,000,000. The territory thus acquired was 545,783 square miles in extent. Of its immense value we need scarce speak. It will suffice to say that it gave the United States the gold mines of California and the silver mines of Nevada, together with the still more valuable fertile fields of the California lowlands. Five years afterwards, to settle a border dispute, another tract of land, south of New Mexico, 45,535 square miles in extent, was purchased for the sum of $10,000,000. This is known as the Gadsden purchase, the treaty being negociated by James Gadsden. Thus in less than ten years the United States acquired more than 1,220,000 square miles of territory, increasing its domain by nearly three-fourths. These new acquisitions carried it across the continent in a broad band, giving it a coast line on the Pacific nearly equal to that on the Atlantic, and adding enormously to its mineral and agricultural wealth.

[=The Acquisition of Russian America=]

Still another extensive acquisition remained to be made. Long before, when the daring pioneers of Russia overran Siberia, parties of them crossed the narrow Bering Strait and took possession of the northwestern section of the American continent. This territory, long known as Russian America, embraced the broad peninsular extension west of the 141st degree of west longitude, and a narrow strip of land stretching down the coast as far south as the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes. It included also all the coast islands and the Aleutian Archipelago, with the exception of Copper and Bering Islands on the Siberian coast. This territory was of little value or advantage to Russia, and in 1867 that country offered to sell it to the United States for $7,200,000. The offer was accepted without hesitation, the result being an addition of 577,000 square miles to our territory.

[=The Wealth of Alaska=]

As regards the value of this acquisition something more remains to be said. The active Yankee prospectors have found Alaska--as the new territory was named--far richer than its original owners dreamed of. It was like the story of California repeated. First were the valuable fur seals, which haunted certain islands of Bering Sea. Then were the fur animals of the mainland. To these must be added the wealth of the rivers, which were found to swarm with salmon and other food fishes. Next may be named the forests, which cover the coast regions for hundreds of square miles. Finally, the country proved to be rich in mineral wealth, and especially in gold. The recently discovered gold deposits lie principally on the British side of the border, the Klondike diggings--developed in 1897--being in Canada. But gold has been mined in Alaska for years, and probably exists on most of the tributaries of the Yukon River, so that the country may yet prove to be a second California in its golden treasures.

[=Island Acquisitions=]

The final acquisition of territory by the United States came in 1899, as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898. The treaty of peace gave to this country a series of highly fertile tropical islands, consisting of Porto Rico in the West Indies, and the Philippine Archipelago in the Asiatic Seas. To these must be added a temporary protectorate over, and possibly the future ownership of, the broad and fertile West Indian Island of Cuba. In 1898 there came by peaceful means another accession of territory, the Hawaiian group of islands in the Central Pacific. These, with some islands of minor importance--including Guam, in the Ladrone group, also acquired from Spain--constitute the recent island accessions of the United States. Their areas are: Porto Rico, 3,530; Hawaii, 6,564; and the Philippines, 116,000 square miles; making a total of about 126,000 square miles. As a consequence of those various accessions of territory, the United States now has an area of, in round numbers, 3,732,000 square miles, more than four times its area in 1800. As a result of these several acquisitions this country has grown from one of the smaller nations to nearly the largest nation in area, on the earth, while its population has increased from 5,300,000 in 1800 to about 75,000,000 in 1900. Its few small cities at the beginning of the century have been replaced by a considerable number of large ones, three of them with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants each, while New York, the largest, is now the second city in population on the earth.

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Chapter XXIV

The Development of Democratic Institutions in America.

[=The Religious Origin of Modern Democracy=]

Modern democracy is often looked upon as something peculiarly secular, unreligious, or even irreligious in its origin. In truth, however, it has its origin in religious aspirations quite as much as modern art or architecture or literature. To the theology of Calvin, the founder of the Republic of Geneva, grafted upon the sturdy independence of English and Scotch middle classes, our American democracy owes its birth. James I. well appreciated that the principles of uncompromising Protestantism were as incompatible with monarchy as with the hierarchy which they swept aside. Each man by his theology was brought into direct personal responsibility to his God, without the intervention of priest, bishop, or pope, and without any allegiance to his king except so far as it agreed with his allegiance to the King of kings. Macaulay has struck this note of Puritan republicanism when he says that the Puritans regarded themselves as "Kings by the right of an earlier creation; priests by the interposition of an Almighty hand." As John Fiske says, James Stuart always treasured up in his memory the day when a Puritan preacher caught him by the sleeve and called him "God's silly vassal." "A Scotch Presbytery," cried the king, "agrees as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings!"

[=The Political Conceptions of the Puritans=]

But the democracy which was founded in New England as the logical outcome of the religious principles for which the Puritans left Old England was not democracy as we know it to-day. The Puritans, for the most part, believed as much in divinely appointed rulers as the monarchs against whom they rebelled; but these divinely appointed rulers were to be the "elect of God"--those who believed as they did, and joined with their organizations to establish His kingdom on earth. For this reason we find the Massachusetts Colony as early as 1631 deciding that, "no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." The government, in short, was simply a democratic theocracy, and, as the colony grew in numbers, the power came to be lodged in the hands of the minority. There were, however, among the clergy of Massachusetts men who believed in democracy as we understand it to-day. Alexander Johnson, in his history of Connecticut, says with truth that Thomas Hooker, who led from Massachusetts into Connecticut the colony which established itself at Hartford, laid down the principle upon which the American nation long generations after was to be established. When Governor Winthrop, in a letter to Hooker, defended the restriction of the suffrage on the ground that "the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser," the learned and generous-hearted pastor replied: "In matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all to transact business which concerns all, I conceive most suitable to rule, and most safe for the relief of the whole." The principles of our republicanism were never better stated until Lincoln in his oration at Gettysburg made his appeal that this nation might be consecrated anew in the fulfillment of its mission, and that government "from the people, for the people, by the people" might not perish from the earth. Both Hooker and Lincoln had a supreme belief in the wisdom of the plain people in the matters which affect their own lives. The rank and file of the people have the surest instinct as to what will benefit or injure the rank and file of the people, and when upon them is placed the responsibility of determining what their government shall be, they are educated for self-government. In the colony which Thomas Hooker founded upon these principles there was found at the time of the Revolution more political wisdom, more genius for self-government, and more devotion to the patriotic cause, than in any other of the thirteen colonies.

[=Democracy in the South=]

At the time of the Revolution, however, there was another democracy besides that of New England which enabled the colonies successfully to resist the Government of George III. This was the democracy of the planters of the South. The democracy of the Southern colonies was not, like that of New England, the democracy of collective self-government, but the democracy of individual self-government, or, rather, of individual self-assertion. In fact, it would hardly be too much to say that many of the Virginia planters who espoused so warmly and fought so bravely in the cause of liberty were not inspired by the spirit of democracy at all, but rather by the spirit of an aristocracy which could brook no control. These southern planters were the aristocrats of the American Revolution. In New York City, and even in Boston and Philadelphia, the wealthiest merchants were strongly Tory in their sympathies. In New York it was affirmed by General Greene that two-thirds of the land belonged to men in sympathy with the English and out of sympathy with their fellow countrymen. In these cities it was the plain people and the poorer classes who furnished most of the uncompromising patriots, but in the South men of fortune risked their fortunes in the cause of independence. These men were slave owners, and the habit of mastery made them fiercely rebellious when George III. attempted in any way to tyrannize over them. Many of them were the descendants of the English nobility, and as such they acknowledged no superiors. Naturally, then, in the struggle for liberty they furnished the leaders of the colonists, both North and South; and the agricultural classes, whether rich or poor, were naturally on the side of self-government, for their isolation had from the first compelled them to be self-governing.

[=What Was Thought of Democracy in the Federal Convention=]

The first half century of the political history of the United States consisted rather in the development of the political rights of the individual citizen than of the loyalty which all owed to the American nation. Nothing is so difficult as to keep in mind that the government of the colonies at the close of the Revolution was not what it is to-day, and that democracy as we know it was regarded as the dream of theorists. Some of the members of the Federal Convention deeply distrusted the common people. Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, declared that "The people do not want suffrage, but are the dupes of pretended patriots;" and those who were at all in sympathy with him prevented, as they imagined, the election of the President by the people themselves, and did prevent the election of the United States Senators by the people. Some of them were even opposed to the election of the House of Representatives directly by the people; but, fortunately, even Hamilton sided with Madison and Mason, when they urged that our House of Commons ought to have at heart the rights and interests of, and be bound, by the manner of their election, to be the representatives of every class of people. But by "every class of people" the framers of the Constitution from the more conservative of the States meant simply every class of freeholders.

[=Property Qualifications for Suffrage=]

[=Chancellor Kent's Views on Universal Suffrage=]

In Virginia none could vote except those who owned fifty acres of land. In New York, to vote for Governor or State Senator, a freehold worth $250 clear of mortgage was necessary, and to vote for Assemblymen a freehold of $50 or the payment of a yearly rent of $10 was necessary. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was the Democratic philosopher of the Revolutionary period, did not strenuously insist that the suffrage must be universal, and it was not for a half century that it became universal, even among white males. In the State of New York these restrictions existed until the adoption of the Constitution of 1821, and even this Constitution merely reduced the privileges of land owners. Old Chancellor Kent, the author of "Kent's Commentaries," declared in this convention that he would not "bow before the idol of universal suffrage," the theory which he said had "been regarded with terror by the wise men of every age," and whenever tried had brought "corruption, injustice, violence, and tyranny." "If universal suffrage were adopted," he declared, "prosperity would deplore in sackcloth and ashes the delusion of the day." The horrors of the French Revolution were always held up by conservatives to show that the people could not be trusted, and the learned author of the "Commentaries," which every lawyer has pored over, maintained that, if universal suffrage should be adopted, "The radicals of England, with the force of that mighty engine, would sweep away the property, the laws, and the people of that island like a deluge." Not until between 1840 and 1850 did universal suffrage among the whites come to be accepted in the older States.

During the first half century of our history it was the Democratic party, the party of Jefferson, which was on the side of these extensions of popular rights. The principle of this party was that each State ought to legislate for itself, with the least possible control from the central government; that each locality ought to have its freedom of local government extended; and that each individual should be self-governing, with the same rights and privileges for all. As regards foreign affairs, it was characterized by a "passion for peace," and an abiding hostility toward a costly army and navy. Jefferson believed that the way to avoid wars, and the way to be strong, should war become inevitable, was by the devotion of the people to productive industry, and not by burdening them to rival the powers of Europe in the strength of their armaments. In the year 1800, the party which rallied to his support--then called the Republican party, but generally spoken of as the Democratic party--triumphed over the Federalists.

[=Federalism and Democracy in New England=]

In New England alone did Federalism remain strong at the close of Jefferson's first administration. In that section the calvinistic clergy, who had done so much for the establishment of American democracy, fought fiercely against its extension. Jefferson's followers demanded the separation of Church and State and the abolition of the religious qualifications for office holding, which were then almost as general as property qualifications. He was known to be in sympathy with the French revolution, and was therefore denounced as a Jacobin, both in religion and in politics. We cannot wonder, therefore, that in the section in which the clergy were the real rulers, Jeffersonian democracy was regarded with hatred and contempt. Vermont alone, among the New England States, was from the first thoroughly democratic, and this was because in Vermont there was no established aristocracy, either of education or of wealth. In Connecticut, which under clerical leadership had once been the stronghold of advanced democracy, we find President Dwight expressing a sentiment common not only to the clergy but to the educated classes generally, when he declared that "the great object of Jacobinism, both in its political and moral revolution, is to destroy every race of civilization in the world." "In the triumph of Jeffersonianism," he said, "we have now reached a consummation of democratic blessings; we have a country governed by blockheads and knaves."

[=New Ideas in the New West=]

But the ideas which in New England were at first received only by the poor and the ignorant, were in the very air which Americans breathed. The new States which were organized at the West were aggressively democratic from the outset. In the Northwest Territory the inequalities against which Jeffersonian democracy protested never gained a foothold. Here, where the State of Ohio was organized during Jefferson's first administration, the union of Church and State was not thought of, and no religious qualifications whatever for the office of Governor were exacted. Property qualifications were almost as completely set aside. While in some of the older States the Governor had to possess £5,000, and even £10,000, Ohio's Governor was simply required to be a resident and an owner of land. As regards inheritances, the English law of primogeniture which remained unaltered in some of the older States, and in New England generally took the form of a double portion to the oldest son, was completely set aside, and all children of the same parents became entitled to the same rights. That Ohio thus led the way in the democratic advance was due to the fact that its constitution was framed when these ideas had already become ascendant in the hearts of the people, and the failure of the clergy of New England was due to their trying to keep alive institutions which were the offspring of another age, and could not long survive it.

[=The Decay and Disappearance of Federalism=]

For its distrust of the new democracy New England Federalism paid heavily in the isolation, defeat, and destruction which shortly awaited it. When the new democratic administration had fully reduced Federal taxation and shown its capacity for government, the more liberal-minded of the Federalists went over to the Democrats. Even Massachusetts gave a majority for Jefferson in 1804, and when the extreme Federalists became more extreme through the loss of their Liberal contingent, and called the Hartford Convention, in 1814, Federalism died of its own excesses. The policy of the democratic administration toward England may not have been wise, but the proposal of secession in order to resist it made Federalism almost synonymous with toryism and disloyalty.

[=A Period Without a Party=]

For a number of years after the close of the war of 1812 there was really only one political party in the United States. In 1824, when the contest was so close between Jackson, Adams and Clay, each of these contestants was a "Democratic Republican," and it would have been hard to tell what questions of policy divided their followers; though Jackson's followers, as a rule, cared most for the extension of the political rights of the poorer classes, and least for that policy of protection which the war had made an important issue, by cutting off commerce and thus calling into being extensive manufacturing interests. That the followers of Clay finally voted for Adams may have been due to sympathy upon this question of the tariff. In 1828 something akin to party lines were drawn upon the question of the national bank, and the victory of Jackson provoked the hostility of the masses toward that institution, which certainly enriched its stockholders to such an extent as to make them a favored class. The Tariff Act, passed in 1828, made the tariff question thenceforth the dividing question in our national politics until slavery took its place.

Most of the absolute free-traders were supporters of Jackson, but when South Carolina passed its Nullification Act as a protest against the "tariff of abominations," as it was called, President Jackson promptly declared that "the Union must and shall be preserved," and forced the recalcitrant State to renew its allegiance to the National Government. By the end of Jackson's administration there were again two distinct parties in the United States; the one advocating a high tariff and extensive national improvements by the Federal Government, and the other advocating a low tariff and the restriction of national expenditures to the lowest possible limit. The former party--the Whig--was, of course, in favor of a liberal construction of the Constitution and the extension of powers to the National Government, while the latter advocated "strict construction" and "State rights."

[=Rise of the Democratic and Whig Parties=]

Jackson belonged to the latter party, and in 1836 was able to transfer the succession to Van Buren. But in 1840 the Whigs swept the country, electing Harrison and Tyler, after the most picturesque Presidential campaign ever known in America. All the financial ills from which the country was suffering were for the time attributed to Van Buren's economic policy, and his alleged extravagance at the White House enabled the Whigs to arouse the enthusiasm of the poor for their candidate, who was claimed to live in a log cabin and drink hard cider. During the next four years, however, there was a reaction, and in 1844 Polk was elected upon the platform on which Van Buren had stood. It is true that in Pennsylvania the Democratic campaign cry was, "Polk, Dallas and the tariff of '42," which was a high tariff; but in most of the country Democracy meant "free trade and sailors' rights."

[=The Origin and Character of the Republican Party=]

From this time on, the Whig party grew weaker and the Democratic party stronger. It is true that the Whigs elected General Taylor in 1848. The revenue tariff law passed by the Democrats in 1846 was not changed until the still lower tariff of 1857 was enacted. By 1852 the Whig party had so declined that it was hardly stronger than the old Federalist party at the close of Jefferson's first term. But just as the Democratic party became able to boast of its strength, a new party came into being which adopted the principles of the free-soil wing of the old Democratic party, chose the name of "Republican Party," swept into its ranks the remnants of various political organizations of the past, and in its second national campaign elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. In this readjustment of parties the pro-slavery Whigs went over to the Democrats and the anti-slavery Democrats went over to the Republicans. The bolting Democrats claimed, with truth, to maintain the principles held by their party from the time of Jefferson down, but the party as a whole followed the interests of its most powerful element instead of the principles of its founder. In the States from Ohio west, where upon economic questions the Democratic party had swept everything by increasing majorities since 1840, the bolting element was so great that all of these States were landed in the Republican column. One great Church--the Methodist--which before had been, as a rule, Democratic in politics, now became solidly Republican.

[=The People's Party and Its Principles=]

From time to time, in the succeeding years, a variety of political organizations, of minor importance, rose and declined. But none of national significance were added to the two great parties until the Presidential campaigns of 1892 and 1896, when a new organization, known as the People's party, came into prominence. The principles distinguishing it from the old Democratic and Republican parties were its demand for a currency issued by the general Government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, and the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 16 to 1, regardless of foreign nations. It demanded further that the Government, in payment of its obligations, should use its option as to the kind of lawful money in which they were to be paid; should establish and collect a graduated income tax; and should own and operate the railroads and telegraph lines in the interests of the people. Its general tendency was to favor what is known as "Paternalism in government," the existing form in America of what is known as Socialism in Europe. This party found its chief strength among the farmers, who believed it possible and right for the Government to pass laws to suppress "trusts" and monopolies, and also to favor the agricultural and laboring classes.

The history of American politics up to the time of the introduction of the new economic questions by the labor unions in the East, and the farmer's unions in the West and South, has been the history of the gradual extension of political rights. The Federalist party gave us the Constitution; the old Democratic party gave us white manhood suffrage; the Republican party gave us universal suffrage. What the People's party may give us remains for the future to demonstrate. The glory of America's past is that she has been continually progressing; that she has proven to the world the capacity of the whole people for self-government.

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Chapter XXV

America's Answer to the British Claim of the Right of Search.

[=The Causes of the War of 1812=]

By their first war with Great Britain our forefathers asserted and maintained their right to independent national existence; by their second war with Great Britain, they claimed and obtained equal consideration in international affairs. The War of 1812 was not based on a single cause; it was undertaken from mixed motives,--partly political, partly commercial, partly patriotic. It was always unpopular with a great number of the American people; it was far from logical in some of its positions; it was perhaps precipitated by party clamor. But, despite all these facts, it remains true that this war established once for all the position of the United States as an equal power among the powers. Above all--clearing away the petty political and partisan aspects of the struggle--we find that in it the United States stood for a strong, sound, and universally beneficial principle, that of the rights of neutral nations in time of war. "Free ships make free goods" is a maxim of international law now universally recognized, but at the opening of the century it was a theory, supported, indeed, by good reasoning, but practically disregarded by the most powerful nations. It was almost solely to the stand taken by the United States in 1812 that the final settlement of this disputed principle was due.

[=British Impressment of American Seamen=]

The cause of the War of 1812, which appealed most strongly to the patriotic feelings of the common people, though, perhaps, not in itself so intrinsically important as that just referred to, was unquestionably the impressment by Great Britain of sailors from American ships. No doubt great numbers of English sailors did desert from their naval vessels and avail themselves of the easier service and better treatment of the American merchant ships. Great Britain, in the exigencies of her desperate contest with Napoleon, was straining every nerve to strengthen her already powerful navy, and the press-gang was constantly at work in English seaports. Once on board a British man-of-war, the impressed sailor was subject to overwork, bad rations, and the lash. That British sailors fought as gallantly as they did under this regime will always remain a wonder. But it is certain that they deserted in considerable numbers, and that they found in the rapidly-growing commercial prosperity of our carrying trade a tempting chance of employment.

[=Outrages Upon American Ships and Sailors=]

Great Britain, with a large contempt for the naval weakness of the United States, assumed, rather than claimed, the right to stop our merchant vessels on the high seas, to examine their crews, and to take as her own any British sailors among them. This was bad enough in itself, but the way in which the search was carried out was worse. Every form of insolence and overbearing was exhibited. The pretense of claiming British deserters covered what was sometimes barefaced and outrageous kidnapping of Americans. The British officers went so far as to lay the burden of proof of nationality in each case upon the sailor himself; if he were without papers proving his identity he was at once assumed to be a British subject. To such an extent was this insult to our flag carried, that our Government had the record of about forty-five hundred cases of impressment from our ships between the years of 1803 and 1810; and when the War of 1812 broke out the number of American sailors serving against their will in British war vessels was variously computed to be from six to fourteen thousand. It is even recorded that in some cases American ships were obliged to return home in the middle of their voyages because their crews had been so diminished in number by the seizures made by British officers that they were too short-handed to proceed. In not a few cases these depredations led to bloodshed.

[=The Affair of the "Chesapeake" and the "Leopard"=]

The greatest outrage of all, and one which stirred the blood of Americans to the fighting point, was the capture of an American war vessel, the Chesapeake, by the British man-of-war, the Leopard. The latter was by far the more powerful vessel, and the Chesapeake was quite unprepared for action; nevertheless, her commander refused to accede to a demand that his crew be overhauled in search for British deserters. Thereupon the Leopard poured broadside after broadside into her until her flag was struck. Three Americans were killed and eighteen wounded; four were taken away as alleged deserters; of these, three were afterwards returned, while in one case the charge was satisfactorily proved and the man was hanged. The whole affair was without the slightest justification under the law of nations and was in itself ample ground for war. Great Britain, however, in a quite ungracious and tardy way, apologized and offered reparation. This incident took place six years before the actual declaration of war. But the outrage rankled during all that time, and nothing did more to fan the anti-British feeling which was already so strong in the rank and file of Americans, especially in the Democratic (or, as it was then often called, the Republican) party. It was such deeds as this that led Henry Clay to exclaim, "Not content with seizing upon all our property which falls within her rapacious grasp, the personal rights of our countrymen--rights which must forever be sacred--are trampled on and violated by the impressment of our seamen. What are we to gain by war? What are we not to lose by peace? Commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor!"

[=The Era of Paper Blockades=]

The interference with American commerce was also a serious threat to the cause of peace. In the early years of the century Great Britain was at war not only with France, but with other European countries. Both Great Britain and France adopted in practice the most extreme theories of non-intercourse between neutral and hostile nations. It was the era of "paper blockades." In 1806 England, for instance, declared that eight hundred miles of the European coast were to be considered blockaded, whereupon Napoleon, not to be outdone, declared the entire Kingdom of Great Britain to be under blockade.

Up to a certain point the interruption of the neutral trade relations between the countries of Europe was to the commercial advantage of America. Our carrying trade grew and prospered wonderfully. Much of this trade consisted in taking goods from the colonies of European nations, bringing them to the United States, then trans-shipping them and conveying them to the parent nation. This was allowable under the international law of the time, although the direct carrying of goods by the neutral ship from the colony to the parent nation (the latter, of course, being at war) was forbidden. But by her famous "Orders in Council" Great Britain absolutely forbade this system of trans-shipment as to nations with whom she was at war. American vessels engaged in this form of trade were seized and condemned by English prize courts. Naturally, France followed Great Britain's example and even went further. Our merchants, who had actually been earning double freights under the old system, now found that their commerce was woefully restricted. At first it was thought that the unfair restriction might be punished by retaliatory measures, and a quite illogical analogy was drawn from the effect produced on Great Britain before the Revolution by the refusal of the colonies to receive goods on which a tax had been imposed. So President Jefferson's administration resorted to the most unwise measure that could be thought of--an absolute embargo on our own ships, which were prohibited from leaving port.

[=Jefferson and the Embargo=]

[=War Declared Against Great Britain=]

This measure was passed in 1807, and its immediate result was to reduce the exports of this country from nearly fifty million dollars' worth to nine million dollars' worth in a single year. This was evidently anything but profitable, and the act was changed so as to forbid only commercial intercourse with Great Britain and France and their colonies, with a proviso that the law should be abandoned as regards either of these countries which should repeal its objectionable decrees. The French government moved in the matter first, but only conditionally. Our non-intercourse act, however, was after 1810 in force only against Great Britain. That our claims of wrong were equally, or nearly so, as great against France in this matter cannot be doubted. But the popular feeling was stronger against Great Britain; a war with England was popular with the mass of the Democrats; and it was the refusal of England to accept our conditions which finally led to the declaration of war. By a curious chain of circumstances it happened, however, that between the time when Congress declared war (June 18, 1812) and the date when the news of this declaration was received in England, the latter country had already revoked her famous "Orders in Council." In point of fact, President Madison was very reluctant to declare war, though the Federalists always took great pleasure in speaking of this as "Mr. Madison's war." The Federalists throughout considered the war unnecessary and the result of partisan feeling and unreasonable prejudice.

[=The British and American Navies Compared=]

It is peculiarly grateful to American pride that this war, undertaken in defence of our maritime interests and to uphold the honor of our flag upon the high seas, resulted in a series of naval victories brilliant in the extreme. It was not, indeed, at first thought that this would be chiefly a naval war. President Madison was at one time strongly inclined to keep our war vessels in port; but, happily, other counsels prevailed. The disparity between the American and British navies was certainly disheartening. The United States had seven or eight frigates and a few sloops, brigs, and gunboats, while the sails of England's navy whitened every sea, and her ships certainly outnumbered ours by fifty to one. On the other hand, her hands were tied to a great extent by the stupendous European war in which she was involved. She had to defend her commerce from formidable enemies, and could spare but a small part of her naval strength for battle with the new foe. That this new foe was despised by the great power which claimed, not without reason, to be the mistress of the seas, was not unnatural. But soon we find a lament raised in Parliament about the reverses of its navy, which were such as "English officers and English sailors had not before been used to, particularly from such a contemptible navy as that of America had always been held to be." The fact is, that the restriction of American commerce had made it possible for our naval officers to take their pick of a remarkably fine body of native American seamen, naturally brave and intelligent, and thoroughly well trained in all seamanlike experiences. These men were in many instances filled with a spirit of resentment at British insolence, having either themselves been the victims of the aggressions which we have described, or having seen their friends compelled to submit to these insolent acts. The very smallness of our navy, too, was in a measure its strength; the competition for active service among those bearing commissions was great, and there was never any trouble in finding officers of proved sagacity and courage.

[=The War on the Canada Border=]

At the outset, however, the policy determined on by the administration was not one of naval aggression. It was decided to attack England from her Canadian colonies. This plan of campaign, however reasonable it might seem to a strategist, failed wretchedly in execution. The first year of the war, so far as regards the land campaigns, showed nothing but reverses and fiascoes. There was a long and thinly settled border country, in which our slender forces struggled to hold their own against the barbarous Indian onslaughts, making futile expeditions across the border into Canada, and resisting with some success the similar expeditions by the Canadian troops. One of the complaints which led to the war was that the Indian tribes had been incited against our settlers by the Canadian authorities and had been promised aid from Canada. It is certain that after war was declared British officers not only employed Indians as their allies, but, in some instances at least, paid bounties for the scalps of American settlers.

[=Hull and the Surrender of Detroit=]

The Indian war planned by Tecumseh had just been put down by General (afterward President) Harrison. No doubt Tecumseh was a man of more elevated ambition and more humane instincts than one often finds in an Indian chief. His hope to unite the tribes and to drive the whites out of his country has a certain nobility of purpose and breadth of view. But this scheme had failed, and the Indian warriors, still inflamed for war, were only too eager to assist the Canadian forces in a desultory but bloody border war. The strength of our campaign against Canada was dissipated in an attempt to hold Fort Wayne, Fort Harrison, and other garrisons against Indian attacks. Still more disappointing was the complete failure of the attempt, under the command of General Hull, to advance from Detroit into Canada. He was easily driven back to Detroit, and, while the nation was confidently waiting to hear of a bold defence of that place, it was startled by the news of Hull's surrender without firing a gun, and under circumstances which seemed to indicate either cowardice or treachery. Hull was, in fact, court-martialed and condemned to death, and was only pardoned on account of his services in the war of 1776.

[=The "Constitution" and the "Guerrière"=]

[=The Glorious Victory of the Frigate "Constitution"=]

The mortification that followed the land campaign of 1812 was forgotten in the joy at the splendid naval victories of that year. Pre-eminent among these was the famous sea-duel between the frigates Constitution and Guerrière. Every one knows of the glory of Old Ironsides, and this, though the greatest, was only one of many victories through which the name of the Constitution became the most famed and beloved of all that have been associated with American ships. She was a fine frigate, carrying forty-four guns, and though English journals had ridiculed her as "a bunch of pine boards under a bit of striped bunting," it was not long before they were busily engaged in trying to prove that she was too large a vessel to be properly called a frigate, and that she greatly out-classed her opponent in metal and men. It is true that the Constitution carried six more guns and a few more men than the Guerrière, but all allowances being made, her victory was a naval triumph of the first magnitude. Captain Isaac Hull, who commanded her, had just before the engagement proved his superior seamanship by escaping from a whole squadron of British vessels, out-sailing and out-manoeuvring them at every point. It was on August 19, 1812, that he descried the Guerrière. Both vessels at once cleared for action and came together with the greatest eagerness on both sides for the engagement. Though the battle lasted but half an hour, it was one of the hottest in naval annals. At one time the Constitution was on fire, and both ships were soon seriously crippled by injuries to their spars. Attempts to board each other were thwarted on both sides by the close fire of small arms. Here, as in later sea-fights of this war, the accuracy and skill of the American gunners were something marvelous. At the end of half an hour the Guerrière had lost both mainmast and foremast, and floated as a helpless hulk in the open sea. Her surrender was no discredit to her officers, as she was almost in a sinking condition. It was hopeless to attempt to tow her into port, and Captain Hull transferred his prisoners to his own vessel and set fire to his prize.

In this engagement the American frigate had only seven men killed and an equal number wounded, while the British vessel had as many as seventy-nine men killed or wounded. The conduct of the American seamen was throughout gallant in the highest degree. Captain Hull put it on record that "From the smallest boy in the ship to the oldest seaman not a look of fear was seen. They all went into action giving three cheers and requesting to be laid close alongside the enemy." The effect of this victory in both America and England was extraordinary. English papers long refused to believe in the possibility of the well-proved facts, while in America the whole country joined in a triumphal shout of joy, and loaded well-deserved honors on vessel, captain, officers, and men.

[=The "Wasp" Captures the "Frolic"=]

The chagrin of the English public at the unexpected result of this sea-battle was changed to amazement and vexation when, one after another, there followed no less than six combats of the same duel-like character, in all of which the American vessels were victorious. The first was between the American sloop Wasp and the English brig Frolic, which was convoying a fleet of merchantmen. The fight was one of the most desperate in the war; the two ships were brought so close together that their gunners could touch the sides of the opposing vessels with their rammers. Broadside after broadside was poured into the Frolic by the Wasp, which obtained the superior position; but her sailors, too excited to await the victory which was sure to come from the continued raking of the enemy's vessel, rushed upon her decks without orders and soon overpowered her. Again the British loss in killed and wounded was large; that of the Americans very small. It in no wise detracted from the glory of this victory that both victor and prize were soon captured by a British man-of-war of immensely superior strength.

[=The "United States" and the "Macedonian"=]

Following this action, Commodore Stephen Decatur, in the frigate United States, attacked the Macedonian, a British vessel of the same class, and easily defeated her, bringing her into New York harbor on New Year's Day, 1813, where he received an ovation equal to that offered Captain Hull. The same result followed the attack of the Constitution, now under the command of Commodore Bainbridge, upon the British Java. The latter had her captain and fifty men killed and about one hundred wounded, and was left such a wreck that it was decided to blow her up, while the Constitution suffered so little that she was in sport dubbed Old Ironsides, a name now ennobled by a poem which has been in every school-boy's mouth. Other naval combats resulted, in the great majority of cases, in the same way; in all unstinted praise was awarded by the nations of the world, even including England herself, to the admirable seamanship, the wonderful gunnery, and the personal intrepidity of our naval forces. When the second year of the war closed our little navy had captured twenty-six warships, armed with 560 guns, while it had lost only seven ships, carrying 119 guns.

[=American Privateers and Their Work=]

But, if the highest honors of the war were thus won by our navy, the most serious injury materially to Great Britain was in the devastation of her commerce by American privateers. No less than two hundred and fifty of these sea guerrillas were afloat, and in the first year of the war they captured over three hundred merchant vessels, sometimes even attacking and overcoming the smaller class of warships. The privateers were usually schooners armed with a few small guns, but carrying one long cannon mounted on a swivel so that it could be turned to any point of the horizon, and familiarly known as Long Tom. Of course, the crews were influenced by greed as well as by patriotism. Privateering is a somewhat doubtful mode of warfare at the best; but international law permits it, and, though it is hard to dissociate from it the aspect of legalized piracy, it is recognized to this day. In the most recent war, however, the Spanish-American, neither of the belligerent nations indulged in this relic of barbarism.

If privateering were ever justifiable it was in the war now under consideration. As Jefferson said, there were then tens of thousands of seamen cut off by the war from their natural means of support and useless to their country in any other way, while by "licensing private armed vessels, the whole naval force of the nation was truly brought to bear on the foe." The havoc wrought on British trade was widespread indeed; altogether between fifteen hundred and two thousand prizes were taken by the privateers. To compute the value of these prizes is impossible, but some idea may be gained from the single fact that one privateer, the Yankee, in a cruise of less than two months captured five brigs and four schooners, with cargoes valued at over half a million dollars. The men engaged in this form of warfare were bold to recklessness, and their exploits have furnished many a tale to American writers of romance.

[=The Fleets on the Lakes=]

[=Perry's Great Victory on Lake Erie=]

The naval combats thus far mentioned were almost always of single vessels. For battles of fleets we must turn from the salt water to the fresh, from the ocean to the great lakes. The control of the waters of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Champlain was obviously of vast importance, in view of the continued land-fighting in the West and of the attempted invasion of Canada and the threatened counter-invasions. The British had the great advantage of being able to reach the lakes by the St. Lawrence, while our lake navies had to be constructed after the war began. One such little navy had been built at Presque Isle, now Erie, on Lake Erie. It comprised two brigs of twenty guns and several schooners and gunboats. It must be remembered that everything but the lumber needed for the vessels had to be brought through the forests by land from the eastern seaports, and the mere problem of transportation was a serious one. When finished, the fleet was put in command of Oliver Hazard Perry. Watching his time (and, it is said, taking advantage of the carelessness of the British commander, who went on shore to dinner one Sunday, when he should have been watching Perry's movements), the American commander drew his fleet over the bar which had protected it while in harbor from the onslaughts of the British fleet. To get the brigs over this bar was a work of time and great difficulty; an attack at that hour by the British would certainly have ended in the total destruction of the fleet. This feat accomplished, Perry, in his flagship, the Lawrence, headed a fleet of ten vessels, fifty-five guns and four hundred men. Opposed to him was Captain Barclay with six ships, sixty-five guns, and also about four hundred men. The British for several weeks avoided the conflict, but in the end were cornered and forced to fight. It was at the beginning of this battle that Perry displayed the flag bearing Lawrence's famous dying words, "Don't give up the ship!" No less famous is his dispatch announcing the result in the words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." The victory was indeed a complete and decisive one; all six of the enemy's ships were captured, and their loss was nearly double that of Perry's forces. The complete control of Lake Erie was assured; that of Lake Ontario had already been gained by Commodore Chauncey.

[=The Battle of the Thames=]

Perry's memorable victory opened the way for important land operations by General Harrison, who now marched from Detroit with the design of invading Canada. He engaged with Proctor's mingled body of British troops and Indians, and by the battle of the Thames drove back the British from that part of Canada and restored matters to the position in which they stood before Hull's deplorable surrender of Detroit--and, indeed, of all Michigan--to the British. In this battle the Indian chief, Tecumseh, fell, and about three hundred of the British and Indians were killed on the field. The hold of our enemies on the Indian tribes was greatly broken by this defeat.

Previous to this the land campaigns had been marked by a succession of minor victories and defeats. In the West a force of Americans under General Winchester had been captured at the River Raisin, where there took place an atrocious massacre of prisoners by the Indians, who were quite beyond restraint from their white allies. On the other hand, the Americans had captured the city of York, now Toronto, though at the cost of their leader, General Pike, who, with two hundred of his men, was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine. Fort George had also been captured by the Americans and an attack on Sackett's Harbor had been gallantly repulsed. Following the battle of the Thames, extensive operations of an aggressive kind were planned, looking toward the capture of Montreal and the invasion of Canada by way of Lakes Ontario and Champlain. Unhappily, jealousy between the American Generals Wilkinson and Hampton resulted in a lack of concert in their military operations, and the expedition became a complete fiasco.

[=Lawrence's Famous Saying, "Don't Give Up the Ship."=]

One turns for consolation from the mortifying record of Wilkinson's expedition to the story of the continuous successes which accompanied the naval operations of 1813. Captain Lawrence, in the Hornet, won a complete victory over the English brig Peacock; our brig, the Enterprise, captured the Boxer, and other equally welcome victories were reported. One distinct defeat marred the record--that of our fine brig, the Chesapeake, commanded by Captain Lawrence, which was captured after one of the most hard-fought contests of the war by the British brig, the Shannon. Lawrence himself fell mortally wounded, exclaiming as he was carried away, "Tell the men not to give up the ship, but fight her till she sinks." It was a paraphrase of this exclamation which Perry used as a rallying signal in the battle on Lake Erie. Despite his one defeat, Captain Lawrence's fame as a gallant seaman and high-minded patriot was untarnished, and his death was more deplored throughout the country than was the loss of his ship.

[=Macdonough's Victory on Lake Champlain=]

In the latter part of the war England was enabled to send large reinforcements both to her army and navy engaged in the American campaigns. Events in Europe seemed in 1814 to insure peace for at least a time. Napoleon's power was broken; the Emperor himself was exiled at Elba; and Great Britain at last had her hands free. But before the reinforcements reached this country, our army had won greater credit and had shown more military skill by far than were evinced in its earlier operations. Along the line of the Niagara River active fighting had been going on. In the battle of Chippewa, the capture of Fort Erie, the engagement at Lundy's Lane, and the defence of Fort Erie the troops, under the command of Generals Winfield Scott and Brown, had more than held their own against superior forces, and had won from British officers the admission that they fought as well under fire as regular troops. More encouraging still was the total defeat of the plan of invasion from Canada undertaken by the now greatly strengthened British forces. These numbered twelve thousand men and were supported by a fleet on Lake Champlain. Their operations were directed against Plattsburg, and in the battle on the lake, usually called by the name of that town, the American flotilla, under the command of Commodore Macdonough, completely routed the British fleet. As a result the English army also beat a rapid and undignified retreat to Canada. This was the last important engagement to take place in the North.

[=The Burning of the American Capital=]

Meanwhile expeditions of considerable size were directed by the British against our principal Southern cities. One of these brought General Ross with five thousand men, chiefly the pick of the Duke of Wellington's army, into the Bay of Chesapeake. Nothing was more discreditable in the military strategy of our administration than the fact that at this time Washington was left unprotected, though in evident danger. General Ross marched straight upon the capital, easily defeated at Bladensburg an inferior force of raw militia--who fought, however, with much courage--seized the city, and carried out his intention of destroying the public buildings and a great part of the town. Most of the public archives had been removed. Ross's conduct in the burning of Washington, though of a character common enough in modern warfare, has been condemned as semi-barbarous by many writers. The achievement was greeted with enthusiasm by the English papers, but was really of much less importance than they supposed. Washington at that time was a straggling town of only eight thousand inhabitants; its public buildings were not at all adequate to the demands of the future; and an optimist might even consider the destruction of the old city as a public benefit, for it enabled Congress to adopt the plans which have since led to the making of the most beautiful city of the country, if not of the world.

A similar attempt upon Baltimore was less successful The people of that city made a brave defence and hastily threw up extensive fortifications. In the end the British fleet, after a severe bombardment of Fort McHenry, was driven off. The British admiral had boasted that Fort McHenry would yield in a few hours; and two days after, when its flag was still flying, Francis S. Key was inspired by its sight to compose our far-famed national ode, the "Star Spangled Banner."

[=Jackson and the Creek Indians=]

[=Jackson's Famous Great Victory at New Orleans=]

A still larger expedition of British troops soon after landed on the Louisiana coast and marched to the attack of New Orleans. Here General Andrew Jackson was in command. He had already distinguished himself during the war by putting down with a strong hand the hostile Creek Indians, who had been incited by English envoys to warfare against our southern settlers; and in April, 1814, William Weathersford, the half-breed chief, had surrendered in person to Jackson. General Packenham, who commanded the five thousand British soldiers sent against New Orleans, expected as easy a victory as that of General Ross at Washington. But Jackson had summoned to his aid the stalwart frontiersmen of Kentucky and Tennessee--men used from boyhood to the rifle, and who made up what was in effect a splendid force of sharp-shooters. Both armies threw up rough fortifications; General Jackson made great use for that purpose of cotton bales, Packenham employing the still less solid material of sugar barrels. As it proved neither of these were suitable for the purpose, and they had to be replaced by earthworks. Oddly enough, the final battle, and really the most important one of the war, took place after the treaty of peace between the two countries had been signed. The British were repulsed again and again in persistent and gallant attacks on our fortifications. General Packenham himself was killed, together with many of his officers and seven hundred of his men. One British officer pushed to the top of our earthworks and demanded their surrender, whereupon he was smilingly asked to look behind him, and turning saw, as he afterwards said, that the men he supposed to be supporting him "had vanished as if the earth had swallowed them up." Of the Americans only a few men were killed.

[=The Results of the War=]

The treaty of peace, signed at Ghent, December 24, 1814, has been ridiculed because it contained no positive agreement as to many of the questions in dispute. Not a word did it say about the impressment of American sailors or the rights of neutral ships. Its chief stipulations were the mutual restoration of territory and the appointing of a commission to determine our northern boundary line. The truth is that both nations were tired of the war; the circumstances that had led to England's aggressions no longer existed; both countries were suffering enormous commercial loss to no avail; and, above all, the United States had emphatically justified by its deeds its claim to an equal place in the council of nations. Politically and materially, further warfare was illogical. If the two nations had understood each other better in the first place; if Great Britain had treated our demands with courtesy and justice instead of with insolence; if, in short, international comity had taken the place of international ill-temper, the war might have been avoided altogether. Its undoubted benefits to us were incidental rather than direct. But though not formally recognized by treaty, the rights of American seamen and of American ships were in fact no longer infringed upon by Great Britain.

[=The Hartford Convention=]

One political outcome of the war must not be overlooked. The New England Federalists had opposed it from the beginning, had naturally fretted at their loss of commerce, and had bitterly upbraided the Democratic administration for currying popularity by a war carried on mainly at New England's expense. When, in the latter days of the war, New England ports were closed, Stonington was bombarded, Castine in Maine was seized, and serious depredations were threatened everywhere along the northeastern coast, the Federalists complained that the administration taxed them for the war but did not protect them. The outcome of all this discontent was the Hartford Convention. In point of fact it was a quite harmless conference which proposed some constitutional amendments, protested against too great centralization of dower, and urged the desirability of peace with honor. But the most absurd rumors were prevalent about its intentions; a regiment of troops was actually sent to Hartford to anticipate treasonable outbreaks; and for many years good Democrats religiously believed that there had been a plot to set up a monarchy in New England with the Duke of Kent as king. Harmless as it was, the Hartford Convention caused the death of the Federalist party. Its mild debates were distorted into secret conclaves plotting treason, and, though the news of peace followed close upon it, the Convention was long an object of opprobrium and a political bugbear.

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