The People's Standard History of the United States from the landing of the Norsemen to the present time. By E. S. Ellis ... Assisted by, with introduction, annotations, lists of authorities, etc, G. M. Adam

Part I. One Shilling The People's

Standard History Ot I'Hh UNITED STATES FROM THE LANDING OF THE NORSEMEN TO THE PRESENT TIME By EDWARD S. ELLIS, M.A. LONDON WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LTD. NEW YORK THE WOOLFALL COMPANY 1 14 Fifth Avenue J STEEPLE DAVIS "T '39i BY THC WOOLFALl COMPANY THE PEOPLES STANDARD H15TORY Of THE. UNITED STATES the: supr em e moment, On me Evening or Ootobfr 1HS 149 2. THE PEOPLE'S STANDARD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THE LANDING OF THE NORSEMEN TO THE PRESENT TIME BY EDWARD S. ELLIS, M.A. AUTHOR OF THE ECLECTIC PRIMARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, A DICTIONARY OF MYTHOLOGY," "a CLASSICAL DICTIONARY," " I'I.UTARCh's LIVES," ETC. ASSISTED BY (with introduction, annotations, lists OF AUTHOKII IKS, etc.) G. MERCER ADAM AUTHOR OF tlA PRECIS OF ENGLISH HISTORY," "ENGLISH WORD-BOOK," " SCENIC AMERICA,'' " OUTLINE HISTORY OF CANADIAN LITERATURE," " ILLUSTRATED QUEBEC," ETC, ETC.

ILLUSTRATORS W. H. Lippincott, H. A. Ogden, A. B. Doggett De Cost Smith. W. P. Snyder, C. Kendrick, C M. Relyea, J. Steeple Davis, Joseph Gleeson W. H. Drake, Warren Sheppard. W. C. Fiti.kr AND OTHER ARTISTS VOLUME I. LONDON WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Ltd. NEW YORK THE WOOLFALL COMPANY 114 FIFTH AVENUE A11, Rights Reserved PREFATORY NOTE " '' pleasure that we offer to the public "The People's Standard History of the United States." '" ;"lin'liv "' stateiin-lit, clearness of expression, originality of treatment, and fulness of illustration it will, it is believed, commend itself to all. Ed- A Graphic Record, from the Era of the Norse Visits ward S. Ellis, M.A., the accomplished author, so highly esteemed in America and Europe for his instructive and elevating works, has been engaged for years in the preparation of this History, which is a graphic and complete record of every event worthy of note, from the earliest visits of the Norse men to the present time.

The American people can hardly be im pressed too strongly with the fact that their country is the home of the loftiest civilization, and of the highest development of art, literature, science, invention, education, and true progress, and offers un limited possibilities that are unknown elsewhere. He who is entering upon life to-day and, it may be, is felling trees in the backwoods, toiling on a canal, or plodding barefoot along the highway, may at some period of the twentieth century sit in the President's chair. The avenues to wealth, honor, distinction, fame, and the greatest happiness, are, in an especial degree, open to every one in the land. Our people should learn of the hardships and sufferings of their forefathers, who crossed the stormy Atlantic to found a home in the then dismal solitudes of the New World, who carried their muskets PREFATORY NOTE 2 to church, who were often aroused from their slumber by the war whoop and gleaming tomahawk of the dusky savage, and who hewed the path of civilization through the wilderness, across prairies, and over mountains to the Pacific.

Those brave people sowed the seed, of which, in these later days, we are gathering the fruitage. The sons and daughters shared, with equal self-sacrifice, the perils and dangers of their parents. They grew into sturdy patriots, and the men left their bloody footprints on the battlefields of the Revolution. They won imperishable glory on the ocean against the mightiest naval power of the globe, and surpassed the most heroic deeds of antiquity in the terrific struggle for the Union. Vicissitudes of the First Settlers The growth of the United States from a fringe of sparsely popu lated settlements, strung along the Atlantic coast, into a domain stretching from ocean to ocean, with a population of seventy mil lions, is a history with a grandeur of achievement which no dreamer of the past would have dared to prophesy.

These impressive lessons should be studied and embedded in the mind of every patriotic Amer ican throughout this broad and favored land. The Publishers. THE WORLD IN THE 15TH CENTURY

Introduction

' ' : '''■''' how great and well-nigh silent The tne vista! (inward from his day, how chequered from the and thick-sown the history! Yet each had its Daounr of beginnings, the later annals in the New World, History the earlier annals in the Old. In probing the lat ter, our backward glance has necessarily to be taken through the mists of legend and tradition that for centuries hung like a pall over the New World. But beyond the mists there is the clear sunshine of origin, and the conditions that begat enterprise and adventure in the social life and civilization of the older hemisphere. The earnest reader who enters upon the study of American history, beginning, as he ought, with the dawn, must first place himself in an intelligent relation to the contemporarv annals of Europe. In the active life of the Old World he will best understand the conditions that gave rise to the European life, with its labors and activities, in the New World.

Not everything, of course, is made clear, not every doubt is dispelled, by even an inti- A t mate knowledge of what went before. Much is still problematical q"*"*11 with regard to many things concerning the men, the nations engaged, lems and the routes followed, in the discovery and colonization of the Western World. And if there is mystery without, there is mystery also within the continent — mystery as to the precise origin of its ab original inhabitants ; mystery that still enshrouds the origin of lakes, rivers, canons, elevations, and depressions, and the thousand and one

INTRODUCTION.

4 natural curiosities to be met with, here and there, over the face of this vast and mighty Republic. The five great lakes, as a writer re minds us, which make the St. Lawrence and the sublime spectacle of Niagara a geographical wonder, are themselves a marvel, which even the advanced stage of geological science does not to-day explain. Nor are the glacial theory, and the action of interior fires, more than an audacious guess in accounting for such awesome sights as the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, and the yawning rents, chasms, and gorges of ancient watercourses, such as the Grand River, the Gunni son, and the Arkansas. Science and research are, however, every day making great strides and adding to the sum of the world's knowledge ; and what we do not yet know may happily be known, and usefully known, by those who are to come after us.

Neverthe less, there is much to-day within our ken, which it is the duty of each of us to be acquainted with ; and there can hardly be a more profitable, as well as patriotic, study than that which makes luminous the present, and lights up for us the past, in the varied and, on the whole, beneficent annals of our beloved country. Physio graphy of the New World Columbus, it is well to remember, did not stumble unawares upon San Salvador, that auspicious equatorial outpost of the Ameri can continent. A long train of Old World events preceded, as they inspired and impelled, his coming. Before the time of the sturdy Norse rovers, Phœnician sailors and Carthaginian mariners had an inkling that the Mediterranean did not enclose the treasures, as it did not enclose the waters, of the known world.

Even Plato, long before the maritime activities of the Levant, divined an Atlantis in the hoary main beyond the Pillars of Hercules. A thousand years of the Christian era were well-nigh to elapse, however, before history supplies anything like safe data respecting the voyages of the Norse mariners to our shores. Timid, at first, were these Northern ap proaches to our coasts, by a semi-arctic feeling of the way ; much, we may imagine, as the first aborigines of the continent probed then unknown course, across Behring Straits, from the older seats of the race in the far East. Not without pathetic interest do we now re- Plato's Atlantis

INTRODUCTION.

5 call the picturesque barques of the roving Norsemen, without chart The Adven or sextant, speeding their way over the waste of chilly waters ; first turous Norse to Iceland, then to Greenland, and finally — in the hope of prize yet men unattained — to the grim coasts of Helluland (Newfoundland) and Markland (Nova Scotia) and the more attractive shores of our own Vinland (Massachusetts and Rhode Island). To ask what impelled the coming of these stout-hearted Norse seamen, would be to ask what impels a youth to leave the ancestral home, or inspires the active spirits of the race to seek treasure or adventure abroad. To the young and daring mind there is a fascination about foreign lands hard to resist, and an eager aspiration to draw aside the curtain from the unknown, which no amount of toil or privation, or many perils in the path, can daunt.

Nor, when the way was once shown, was it difficult to restrain others from following in the traversed path. Dis covery, moreover, has at times owed something to accident. Gales and the stress of seas have frequently driven ships out of their course and far from land, with profit, now and then, to their wondering com manders and crews. Nor have racial jealousy and national rivalry been without their influence as incitements to maritime adventure. These motives can be abundantly traced in the annals of Oki- World exploration in every zone and clime, and especially in every section of our own coasts. It was the cry of Francis I., of France : " Shall Spain, Portugal, and England divide all America among them and give me no share? I would like to see," added the impatient and jealous monarch, " the clause in Father Adam's will that be queaths to them that vast inheritance!"

Of this spirit, and the vac illations that came of it, Columbus had bitter experience, when he sought aid, alternately, in the rival courts of Southern Europe. But national rivalry has, as it had in Columbus's day, its nobler as Inter- ...„.,, national well as its sinister aspect. We see a better phase ot it in emgland s Maritime commission, in the time of Henry VII., to John Cabot, the Venetian lva ** merchant of Bristol, to prosecute discovery in the New World and open new fields for commerce and civilization. An equally happy phase is also seen of it, when Probisher, Gilbert, and Hudson led off

INTRODUCTION.

6 in that perilous track of exploration in the icy regions of the North, that has since lured many a votary of science to untold misery and an unknown grave. Nor are the great names of the Elizabethan and subsequent eras less illustrious in the field of exploration than in that of literature, or in any other of the honorable and beneficent walks of life. Various other motives were, of course, at work, both in Columbus's day and since, in inciting to geographical discovery and the extension of the world's inhabited area. Of these, the exten sion of commerce was undoubtedly the chief; and though this was at times accompanied by a spirit not always heavenly, it has not been without its beneficent results. Much, too, has been accomplished, directly and indirectly, by religion ; as the Jesuit missions in New France, in Champlain's day, bear at once the happy and the unhappy witness.

Exile for conscience' sake, in the religious persecutions in Europe, has also been no small factor in the founding of young com monwealths, and the opening up, here and elsewhere, of new homes for the race. Good has thus been the unconscious goal of ill ; while communities everywhere have gained by the extension of the mis sionary spirit and the diffused leaven of religion. Commercial character of the New But, as we have said, it was material interest rather than spiritual that awoke the Western nations of Europe, in and subsequent to Co lumbus's day, to extend the boundaries of the known world. Since the era of the Crusades, the lust of conquest in the Old World had given place to the lust of gain ; and while the Crusades, and the in tellectual movements connected with the Renaissance, had brought the West into close contact with the East, the new era and its inter ests were dominantly neither religious nor scholastic, but commer cial.

The transition is that which separates mediæval from modern history, and it brought with it, from out the fettered darkness and now fast-decaying superstitions of the old Catholic world, a higher and happier stage of civilization. In the development of the time, trade was to pass also into new and Christian hands, especially the trade with the fabled and barbaric East, which had heretofore been a Mo hammedan monopoly in the hands of the Moors. The two peninsu- Era TRACK-CHART OF 15th AND 16th CENTURY EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY

INTRODUCTION.

8 lar nations of Western Europe were now to control that trade, and steer the prows of commerce to the rich marts of an Old and a New World ; to give place, in turn, to the enterprise and more modern commercial policy of the British and the Dutch. Then, as now, the coveted region of wealth and wonder was the far East, which hitherto had been reached by way of Syria, Bagdad, and the Persian Gulf. Now, however, thanks first to Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese, and afterwards to the enterprising merchants of the Hanseatic League, the Orient was to be approached, and its trade secured, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. The latter route, in Columbus's mind, was deemed both a perilous and a tedious one; yet it was the hope of reaching the Indies by a speedier way that brought him, at least on his first expedition, across the Atlantic.

Traffic with the East Results of Co lumbus's Enterprise How immediate and electrical were the results of Columbus's daring emprise on the adventurous minds of Europe is manifest in the number of expeditions successively launched by the other maritime powers. In the East, England quickly set herself the task, not only of ousting the Portuguese and Dutch, but of contesting with France the prize of empire in India; as she, a century later, joined mortal issue with her for dominion in New France. In these enterprises she had the advantage of her rivals in possessing a truer and more rational idea of colonial settlement, with, at the same time, a plentiful crop of adventurous spirits, whose maritime skill and daring soon led to great results. Nor was France slow in emulating the achievements of the other powers, though she proved herself unable to give prosperity to, or even to retain possession of, her colonial dominions.

The latter fact, thanks to Bourbon despotism, has had no slight in fluence, as we all know, in shaping the destinies of our country, and in giving character to her institutions and life to her hopes. Early Physical Aspects of the Conti- Four centuries have now passed since the era of productive dis covery in the Western World. Marvellous have been the gains of the varied communities that have since planted themselves — first, on a mere fringe of the coast, and then overspread the continent. No less marvellous is the change that has come over the face of Nature nent

INTRODUCTION.

9 in the interval. In Columbus's day, and, indeed, for over a century afterwards, the physical aspects of America were not unlike those of Britain when Cæsar landed on her shores. It was covered by dense forests, in whose recesses roamed wild animals and equally wild and savage tnbes. Even since the founding of the Republic, how great and humanizing has been the constructive work undertaken by the hand of toil over the vast stretches of these United States, out of which the Old World could carve a score of kingdoms. What has been accomplished in this respect, and how all but incredible have been the strides of the nation, in every path of endeavor and achievement, since it assumed the dignity of standing on its feet, the fol lowing pages will seek, graphically and entertainingly, to show. The growth of the country and people, especially in the last four or five decades, has been phenomenal; and it is our common pride to think that such development within the period has been paralleled in the history of no other kingdom, commonwealth, or state.

At the cost of what toil and suffering the transformation has been brought about, even the most detailed of the local records of settlement can but par tially reveal. Only in the most general way can history prick out the path of progress in its many divergent lines on the map of the con tinent, and cite, as the main factors in the nation's evolution, the tireless energy and irrepressible public spirit of the people. Great Strides of the Nation In the New World, though we have made history comparatively recently, extensive already are the annals and glorious the achievements of the people. In the pages that follow, the history has been set forth in all its essential details, fully and graphically. In its perusal, if the narrative incites, as it ought, to a more intelligent interest in the nation's annals, and to quickening the throb of the patriot heart, the object of both writers and publishers will have been attained.

Before proceeding to the stud) of the national history, it is, of course, taken for granted that every American is, to a certain extent at least, familiar, first of all, with the history of the motherlands

INTRODUCTION.

10 Physical across the sea, whence have come the various peoples that have found Geography homes for themselves over the continent, and who either took part of the Contiin founding, or have since become incorporated with, our great and theStudy prosperous Republic.-' Secondly, that he has some general knowl- History edge of the chief physical features, topography, and racial characteristics of the country, with its peculiarities of configuration, surface, and climate, that distinguish it from the geography and other physical and racial conditions of other lands. Acquaintance with these elementary facts, which is happily the birthright of every American, will better prepare the thoughtful reader for the intelligent understanding of the annals of his country, and enable him to appreciate the play and movement of the forces that have been at work in its origin and in every stage of its later development.

With this foundation laid, easy will be the successive steps of acquisition, in taking up and making a patriotic and intelligent study of the native history, by the aid, first of all, of a narrative such as the present, and, subsequently, by such ampler and supplementary reading as the student shall find time and inclination for in the more comprehensive works. Suggestions for this later and more detailed reading have been prefixed to each of the chapters in the present work, partly with the view of meeting the after-needs of the reader, and partly with the design of citing a few of the fuller and approved historical authorities. G. M. A. * " What is now the territory of the United States has been derived from six European nations. Resting on the discovery by Columbus, and the Bulls (edicts) of the Popes, Spain claimed the whole continent, but has been in actual possession only of the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas, and of the interior from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

The Swedes once had settlements on the Delaware. The Dutch, following up the voyage of Hudson to the river bearing his name, claimed and held the country from the Delaware to the Connecticut. The French discovered the St. Lawrence, and explored and held military possession of the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio and the Great Lakes. The English, by virtue of the voyages of the Cabots, claimed the Atlantic coast, and there sounded the colonies which grew into the thirteen United States. (Alaska was purchased from Russia.) In the course of the struggle, sometimes peaceful, often bloodv, by which the rule of these nations has been thrown off, the Dutch conquered the Swedes '; the Eno-_ lish conquered the Dutch and the French ; the United States expelled the English (save in that portion of the continent now designated the Dominion of Canada), and in time by purchase or conquest, drove out the Spaniards and the Mexicans."— Prof John Bach McMaster, from " A Short History of American Politics," in Baedekers United States THE PEOPLE'S STANDARD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES PERIOD I — DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION

Chapter I The Earliest Discoverers Of America

[Authorities: The evidence in support of the visits of Europeans to the New World before Columbus's day is, as will be seen from the text, so meagre and indefinite that no conclusive authorities can be well cited. The reader can be referred only to tradition or conjecture, as embodied in such works as Prof. John Fiske's " The Discovery of America;" Payne's " History of the New World, called America;" and to the initial chapters in the standard histories of Bancroft, Hildreth, Lossing, and Henry. For the supposed proofs of the Norse voyages to the continent, and the temporary sojourn of Scandinavian mariners on the New England coasts, Horsford's " Discover)- by North men," with its elaborate photographs, may be consulted ; and for early maps, as well as for the narrative account of the first explorations in the New World, see Justin Winsor's monumental work, " Narrative and Critical History of America."] HRISTOPHKR COLUMBUS, though he was by The first no means the first white man to set foot on the t0 t(,e shores of the New World, was, nevertheless, the ,^evs.

World, true discoverer of America, and the glory of the A.D.iooo grand achievement, through all the ages to come, will be his alone. More than four hundred years before he was born, the daring Norsemen, leaving their homes in Norway and Denmark, sailed out on the great Atlan tic and made voyages that extended hundreds of miles and kept them beyond sight of land for days and weeks at a time. Some of these venturesome navigators made their way to Iceland, to Green land, and to the American continent. This was at the beginning of the eleventh century. Though period i some have expressed doubts as to the discoveries of the Norsemen,* Discovery the proofs of such discoveries have been clearly established. In the AND Exr ploration £rst piace tjie ancient records of Iceland contain no less than seveniooo r . teen distinct references to the visits ot the Norsemen to this coun- — try.

These statements relate facts concerning the New World which could never have been obtained except by an actual visit to our shores. Thus they tell about the vine, self-sown corn, the maple, different kinds of game, eider clucks, salmon, the cod, and other fish. What can be more convincing than what is said about the wild vine, of which New England has several native species that do not exist in the less bountiful country of the Norsemen ? Again, Adam of Bremen, + writing in the eleventh century, refers to Iceland as a matter of certain knowledge from Danish sources, and tells about the voyage of the Frieslanders ( Holland mariners) to that country in the preceding century. The knowledge of that island was vague, and the guesses at what lay beyond were misty and wide of the truth ; but it cannot be denied that much even of this scant information was, in the main, based upon fact.

A shadowy knowledge of the New World reached beyond the Norse nations. When their Atlantic voyages ceased, a general belief existed throughout Western Europe, that a large island lay in the North Atlantic to the west of Ireland. This belief must have rested on the traditions of the Norse discovery of America. In what is The . known as the Pizigani (pits' i-gan'cc) maps of 1367, this great island Maps, is called Brazil, and under that name it was searched for by the ' ,I3 7 sailors of Bristol a good many years before the Cabots saw it. * Norsemen, or Northmen — inhabitants of Northern Europe (Scandinavia), inured to the sea, and actuated by a valorous spirit of war and maritime adventure. Living in the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Northern Germany, the Norse were known at different times by different names.

Historically, they are known as Angles or English, when in the fifth century they made their descent on Britain, and as Danes in the ninth century when they once more invaded and partly conquered that country. In the follow ing century, after they had won what is now Normandy from France, and had become a mixed Norman-French race, they again pounced upon England, and under William I. conquered it, giving to the people of the motherland the Norman strain in their veins. f Adam Bremensis, born in Upper Saxony, an early ecclesiastical historian, and author of a work written in Latin about the year 1075, dealing with the "Propagation of the Christian Faith in North Germany and Scandinavia." An appendix to the work, which is now perhaps best known in a Danish translation, supplies considerable information on the geography of the countries of northern Europe, and of Iceland and Greenland.

It also contains a reference to America, or to Vinland, as it was then known, and speaks of it as being discovered by the Norsemen. FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING BY J. STEEPLE DAVIS COPYRIGHT 1895, BY THE WOOLFALL COMPANY LANDING OF THE NORSEMEN A more common name, however, for the island was the one given to the whole country beyond Greenland. This, in the Norse language, was Nyja (nec'ja) Land, or New Land, and this term was used from the thirteenth century onward. The French chroniclers say that the lands discovered by the Norsemen continued to be called Terra Neuve by the Norman and Breton sailors. A strong proof that the Cabots, father and son,* knew of all this, lies in the fact that when these Bristol merchants sailed westward, they not only took the route of the Norsemen, by way of Iceland and Greenland, but used the very name the Icelanders applied to America.

Period I Discovery and Exploration IOOO TO 1590 Nyja Land, or New Land From what has been said, it is clear that the Norsemen, a thousand years ago, were among the bravest and the most adventurous sailors in the world. Strong, alert, and skilful, many of them became pirates, who spread terror along the coasts of Europe. Not content with piracy, these marauders of the sea, known as Vikings, f headed their swift vessels, with their high decks, long, sweeping oars, square sails, and oddly-carved prows, out upon the rough Atlantic, leaving their country far beyond sight, while the other timid nations stayed close to their own homes. They sailed up the navigable rivers of the neighboring countries, pillaged and burnt the towns, and took hundreds of prisoners. When a numskull king, named Charles the Simple, ruled France, the Norsemen ascended the river Seine (sane) and besieged Paris.

The frightened king ceded to them a large district in the north of France, which was afterwards known as Normandy. This was in the year 912 a.d., about the time that the Norsemen began their dangerous voyages over the Atlantic. Settlement of Nor mandy by Norse men,A.D. 912 Eric the Red One of the most famous of these navigators was Eric the Red (so called because his hair and face were of a fiery color), who settled in Iceland, which had been visited before by a number of his country- * Cabots, The (John and Sebastian), Bristol merchants in the time of Henry VII. of England, who, in the year 1497, discovered Newfoundland and Labrador. The son, Sebastian, became a notable navigator, and founder of the Spanish colonies on the coast of Brazil. In the service of England he made an expedition to Hudson's Bay in search of a northwest passage to the Indies, the will-o'-the-wisp of the period, and also furthered commercial enterprise in the Baltic. \ Vikings — Norse pirates, who in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries were the terror of the coasts of Europe.

The name is derived from the vicks or inlets of Scandinavia, which harbored the rowing-galleys of these piratical crews, and from which they set out on missions of conquest and plunder. The term viking is not to be confounded, as it frequently is, with sea king, a person either of royal race or given the title as the valiant commander of a well-equipped galley. chap, i TPIE EARLIEST DISCOVICRERS OF AMERICA 15 men. On a voyage to the westward, Eric discovered Greenland, and in consequence of a quarrel with some of his people, he made his home in the country. It was Eric who gave it its name, and when he returned to Iceland, he told such glowing stories of the snowy solitude that he persuaded a number of his friends to go back with him. Period I DlSCO\ ERV AND Ex- PLORATION iooo TO I590 The oldest son of Eric was Leif the Lucky, who was as ambitious as his father to become a discoverer.

He bought a small ship, pro vided it with thirty lusty men, and sailed from Greenland in the year 1000, in search of new lands. These stalwart sailors ploughed their way through the icy waters until they descried land containing hills, streams, and forests. After skirting the shore for a while, they landed Leif the Lucky and looked around them. While there can be no certainty of the spot, it is believed to have been on the coast of Newfoundland. What they saw was not pleasing, and it is thought that they then sailed southward to Nova Scotia. Favor ing winds carried them farther still to the south, and there is lita tie doubt that they were the first white men to look upon New Eng land. It was summer time, and the soft cli mate, gentle breezes, TheFirst (Norse) Landing in New England IN VINLAND and rich vegetation elicited many expressions of delight.