A school history of the United States

Front matter

X

Class __£_[U!.

Book.

Part One: The Establishment Of A Free Country

FIRST DIVISION. HOW EUROPEANS CAME TO AMERICA

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Three Great Migrations 3

II. The Beginning of the Struggle over the New World 20

SECOND DIVISION. HOW THE ENGLISH FOUNDED A NATION

III. The Thirteen Colonies 28

IV. Old Times in the Colonies 94

V. New France 109

VI. The Wars for Existence 118

VII. American Development to 1763 134

THIRD DIVISION. HOW THE BRITISH EMPIRE BROKE

IN TWO

VIII. Troubles inside the Empire 152

IX. The Revolutionary War 176

FOURTH DIVISION. HOW THE NEW REPUBLIC BECAME A PROSPEROUS COUNTRY

X. Forming a New Government 206

XI. The First President of the United States . . . 219

XII. Our Country in Washington's Day 227

XIII. Federalists and Republicans 239

XIV. A New Question makes a New Party 265

XV, The Triumph of Democracy ix America 275

vii viii SCHOOJ. HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Part Two: The Building Of A Great Power

FIFTH DIVISION. HOW THE UNION VERY NEARLY BROKE IN TWO

CHAPTER PAGE

XVI. Texas, Oregon, California . 291

XVII. Social and Industrial Changes 308

XVIII. The Slavery Issue 320

XIX. North and South at War 332

XX. The Reconstruction of the Union 373

SIXTH DIVISION. HOW THE AMERICANS BECAME A UNITED NATION

XXI. The Dev^elopment of the West 382

XXII. Industrial Problems and Money Problems . . . 392

XXIII. The United States as a World Power .... 410

SEVENTH DIVISION. HOW OUR COUNTRY BECAME THE CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY

XXIV. The World War 428

XXV. Our Fight for Democracy 450

XXVI. The Progress of the American Nation .... 480

XXVII. Problems of Today 525

Appendix

The Declaration of Independence i

The Constitution of the United States v

Chronological Summary xxii

Table of Presidents and Vice Presidents xxiii

Table of States xxiv

INDEX XXV

LIST OF LARGER ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

On the Way to the Front in "76 (in colors) ,...;. Frontispiece

Columbus appealing to Isabella 2

Queen Elizabeth knighting Sir Walter Raleigh ....... 24

Homes of the Washington Family 46

Peter Minuit buying Manhattan from the Indians 68

Weighing a Bride in Colonial Money 100

Washington at Fort Le Boeuf 1 26

Eliza Lucas on her Plantation 136

" Give me Liberty or give me Death " 163

" Signing the Declaration of Independence," by Trumbull . . . . 172

The Development of the Flag 185

Fight between the Serapis and the BoiilwuDiie Richard . . . . i go

Daniel Boone on the Wilderness Trail . •. . 208

Washington's Inaugural Procession 220

Looms, Old and New 232

Opening the Erie Canal 260

Webster's Reply to Hayne 270

First Coeducational Commencement, Oberlin College (1 84 1) . . . 280

The Capitol, Washington, D. C 285

American Troops advancing in the Marne Valley in 191 8 (in colors) 291

Settlers in Texas fleeing before Santa Anna 292

Development of Shipbuilding 311

Confederate Flags 333

Lincoln with McClellan and his Generals 352

Lee and Jackson 358

Making Camp for the Night 384

Indians skirmishing in the Fight against Custer 386

Blowing up the Bridge at Chateau-Thierry 466

The Stars and Stripes over the Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein . . . 475

Progress of Highway Transportation 489

Mills, Old and New 499

Lincoln, by Saint Gaudens 507

The City of Washington, D. C 513

Steps in Transcontinental Transportation 519

LIST OF MAPS IN COLORS

PAGE

The United States in i 783 206

The United States in 1792 224

United States in 18 10 248

The Acquisition of the Far West (1845-1850) 296

The Confederate States in 1861 336

Successive Stages of the Settlement of the Mississippi Valley and

the Southwest Plain 388

The United States Today 426

Physiographic Divisions and Principal Products of the United States 494

LIST OF THE LARGER MAPS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE

Map showing Routes of Eight Important Voyages 17

Indian Families and Tribes 31

English Possessions and the French Explorations and Settlements . 115

Map of the French and Indian Wars 125

Eastern North America just previous to the Revolution . . . . 155

General Map of the Revolutionary War i 78

Territorial Growth of the United States 485

Indian and Western Trails 490

The Greater Railroads 491

A SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Part One: The Establishment Of A Free Country -."'4'

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AN ANCIENT MIGRATION

FIRST DIVISION. HOW EUROPEANS CAME TO AMERICA

Chapter I

1. The Strange Thing in American History. In two respects the history of our country is unlike the history of many other countries : first, every white person now living in the United States is descended from Europeans ; second, we know when and how the Europeans crossed the Atlantic and settled America.

Our knowledge of their coming does not rest on tradition ; their coming took place since we began to keep accurate record of what people do. In some countries the ancestors of the present inhabitants have occupied the land during thousands of years — so long that all record of whence they came originally has been lost. The famous Chinese nation was living in China before the earliest book was written, on the same land where the Chinese live today. You can understand the history of China without looking outside its own boundaries. It is different with the United States. When our forefathers came across the sea and founded a new nation they brought with them habits and ideas which had

belonged to them and their fathers for a great length of time. Many of these habits and ideas are as strong in us today as in our remote ancestors who lived in far-off countries long, long ago. Therefore, in order to understand our history we should know of many things that occurred before this republic was dreamed of. We should even look back into the far past and see where and how lived our earliest ancestors of whom we have definite knowledge.

2. Where American History Began. The place where our forefathers lived was the grassy plain of western Asia north of the Caspian Sea. During the time when their home was in Asia they were mainly herdsmen. They had no cities, and very few of them had begun to dig and sow and raise crops. They got their food chiefly from their flocks and herds. Four or five thousand years ago they had become so numerous that the pasture land of their old Asiatic home could not feed all their cattle and supply them all with food. Thereupon some of these Aryan, or Indo-European, people — they are

STATUE OF ATHENA, THE PROTECTING GODDESS OF ANCIENT ATHENS called by both names — left their earliest home and wandered away in search of new homes. A great number went to the southeast and in time reached northern India, where their descendants still live; others went southward and became ancestors of the great nation of the Persians. Both the Hindus of India and the Persians are our distant kinsmen — but very distant. Much nearer relatives of ours are all those people whose ancestors formed part of a third body of early Aryan wanderers. This third body turned toward the west, made their way into Europe, and became known as Europeans.

3. How our Forefathers became Civilized. When the wanderers came into Europe they broke up into several groups and continued their wanderings in various directions. All of them were barbarians. None knew how to read or write. Some who settled among the great forests of northern Europe remained barbarians for centuries afterwards ; others, more fortunate, took a southerly course, across the Danube River to the Mediterranean. There they found cities and wealthy people, with beautiful houses, stately temples, and ships upon the sea. By these people in the cities along the Mediterranean the southerly wanderers were civilized. When this took place what we know as the first great migration of the Aryans had reached its end.

4. The Greatness and the Fall of the Ancient World. The first group of European Aryans that became great and

STATUE REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN REPUB- LIC, BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH, AFTER HE HAD STUDIED THE FAMOUS STATUES OF GREECE powerful were called Greeks. Around the ^gean Sea the> became so powerful that those older peoples who had taughl them to live in cities submitted to their rule and in time were glad to learn their language, to accept their customs, anc to be known by their name. The ideas of these famous Greeks and the scientific discoveries which they made, together with the arts anc crafts which began amon^ the older peoples who were their teachers, formed the beginning of what we cal' our ''civilization"; that is all those ideas and customs which we have developed since the time when w( ceased to be barbarians.

For a long time the Greeks were the greatest people in the world. Ther their power declined anc another group of Aryans became the leaders of the nations. These were the Romans, whose ancestors speaking the Latin language had long inhabited central Italy. The Romans gradually conquered and made into one great empire all the countries surrounding the Mediterranean and also the northwest of Europe — what is now Switzerland, France, and Belgium, togethei with the greater part of the island of Great Britain. The northern boundary of their empire ran along the two greal rivers, the Rhine and the Danube. The Greeks, who were included in this vast dominion, were the school-teachers, sc to speak, of all the other peoples, while the Romans were the rulers.

A ROMAN THEATER

During many generations the civilization of the Roman Empire was undisturbed, but at last a change came. Those wanderers who had settled in the North — distant kinsmen of the ones who had turned southward — were still uncivilized. They were living in the Northern forests much as their ancestors had lived in Asia. They had become numerous. The forests were filled with fierce, hardy barbarians, and the old problem of finding food for them all had

THE FORUM, OR PUBLIC SQUARE, OF ANCIENT ROME again to be met. And then what happened long before in Asia was repeated — some of the barbarians began to move away from their forests, seeking new homes elsewhere.^

The barbarians had heard many tales of the wealth and splendor of the Roman Empire. Shouting their war songs

1 These were Teutonic peoples. Those Teutons who made their way into the empire mixed with their southerly and westerly kinsmen, who civilized them. There is more or less Teutonic blood in the people of Italy, France, Spain, and the British Isles. To the Teutons who stayed at home in the Netherlands and Germany civilization was carried by traders and missionaries when peace returned to Europe after the second migration (section 5), they poured out of the forests and sought to fight their way across the Rhine and the Danube. Many times they were beaten back, but they returned, and returned again, and yet again, each time more furiously than before. A time came when the imperial armies could hold them back no longer. They burst through the fortifications that protected the Roman boundary. It was like the bursting of a gigantic dam. Into the civilized world they poured^ — a torrent of pitiless warriors, spreading death and destruction wherever they went.

5. The Second Migration. This overflow of the northern barbarians spread from one end of the Roman world to the other. The invaders settled in the regions they had desolated, — where the cities had been burned, where many of the people had been killed, — and thus new nations were formed. Fortunately the barbarians were not able to destroy everything, nor numerous enough to kill everybody, in the ancient world. Probably they repeated very nearly the experience of those earlier wanderers who had come into southern Europe so many centuries before ; that is, when the fury of the fighting was gone by they began to take lessons from the educated and refined people they had conquered. They quickly saw that these people knew thousands of things of which they were ignorant. Soon the invaders were taking lessons of their beaten enemies. Before long the ideas, the customs, the religion, the arts and crafts, of the ruined old world were being learned by the newcomers, and civilization took a fresh start.

6. The Third Migration. Again centuries went by while Europe lived a fairly settled life without any great shifting of the European peoples ; and then a third great movement began. In this third migration European peoples crossed the Atlantic and planted a group of new nations on its western shores. They transplanted to new soil the civilization of Europe. The third migration resembled the first and second, because, like them, it was the attempt of people dissatisfied with their way of living to find new homes in which they would be happier than in their old homes. It differed from both the others in two respects : first, it was a movement of people who were already civilized and who, therefore, took with them habits and ideas which were not likely to change; second, it was a movement into wild countries where there was no civilized population with habits and ideas superior to those of the invaders.

The third migration did not occur all at once. The earliest attempt of a European people to cross the Atlantic took place nearly a thousand years ago (section 7), and though it led to the first discovery of America no permanent colony was established on the western continent. The migration can hardly be said to have started until long afterwards, when America was discovered a second time by Christopher Columbus at the close of the fifteenth century. The next two centuries witnessed the greater part of the third migration. European nations colonized the New World. By the middle of the eighteenth century European civilization was well established all along the American shores of the Atlantic.

7. The Earliest American Exploration. The very beginning of the movement across the Atlantic grew out of a civil war in Norway. The Norwegians — also called the Norsemen— were descendants of Aryans who had settled in the Far North and had not shared in the second migration. They were among the freest people in the world. When their king, Harold the Fair-haired, attempted to curtail their freedom many of the boldest of them rebelled. These bold men, whom we call the Vikings, went aboard their ships and sailed away to Iceland. There, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, they founded a famous little nation, a new Norway, which exists at this day. A hundred years later a daring Icelander, Eric the Red, led his countrymen still farther across the unknown sea and founded a settlement in Greenland. Eric's son, Leif the Lucky, determined to know where the ocean ended. He sailed to the southwest and was the first European who saw the coast of North America. About the year looo Leif and his sailors made a landing

LEIF THE LUCKY NEARING LAND

on the shore of a great bay, probably where now stands the city of Boston. They found so many wild grapes that they named the new country Mnland, or Vineland.

8. Christopher Columbus ; Exploration in the Fifteenth Century. But Leif, unlike his father, did not found a colony. Eric's own colony in Greenland did not prosper, and after a while it was broken up. Nearly five hundred years went by before another and much more famous explorer crossed the Atlantic. This later discoverer of America was born in the old city republic of Genoa about the year 1450 and was named Christopher Columbus.

During the lifetime of Columbus great changes were taking place all over Europe. It was a time when old ideas

II were passing away and new ideas were forming. Especially was it a time when great changes occurred in commerce. Nothing was more valuable in those days than the trade between Europe and eastern Asia, especially India. It was controlled chiefly by the republics of Genoa and Venice, whose ships carried European products to the eastern Mediterranean ports — to Alexandria and to Constantinople. There the Venetians and the Genoese exchanged their goods for silks and spices that had been brought from China and India either by way of the Red Sea and Egypt or overland on camels, in long slow-moving caravans. These four Mediterranean seaports — Venice, Genoa, Alexandria, Constantinople — formed the four corners, so to speak, of the business world in those days. The Mediterranean traders dominated the commerce of Europe. They took oriental products to the Far North ; they were so rich that they lent money as a business and thus were the beginners of modern banking.

In the fifteenth century the Mediterranean cities lost their control of European business, which passed into the hands of countries bordering on the Atlantic. No more momentous change has taken place in European history. It opened early in the century, when the energetic little Portuguese nation began exploring the Atlantic Ocean. A son of the king of Portugal, Prince Henry the Navigator, established the first school of scientific seamanship and persuaded many sailors to undertake perilous voyages upon unknown waters. It

A VENETIAN GALLEY was not easy to overcome their fears. Strange tales were believed about the Atlantic. Toward the south it was supposed to be boiling hot. Many a sailor was firm in the notion that at times monsters arose out of its depths and destroyed ships in the twinkle of an eye. Nevertheless Prince Henry persevered. The Azores and the Canary Islands were

SOUTHERN. ROUTE MIDDLE ROUTE + NORTHERN ROUTE.

ROUTES OF TRADE BETWEEN INDIA AND CITIES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE discovered. The Tropic of Cancer was passed (1434), and the story of a boiling tropical sea was disproved. At last Bartholomew Diaz sailed past the Cape of Good Hope (1487) and thus opened a new route for trade between Europe and Asia. Another great sailor, Vasco da Gama, carried the Portuguese flag to India (1498). From that day the Atlantic nations, trading by sea with India and China, had a great advantage over the Mediterranean nations. The latter gradually declined in wealth and importance. The Atlantic nations took their places as the chief commercial powers.^

' Until very recently it was thought that the overland trade between Europe and Asia was broken up by the Turkish conquest of Constantinople (1453) and that the Portuguese aimed to recover the lost trade. If this

While these great events were taking place Christopher Columbus was growing up. His father was poor, and when still a little boy Columbus went to sea to become a sailor.

THE KNOWN WORLD IN 1490

At that time, though ignorant people still believed that the earth was flat, educated people were beginning to think that

were true there would have been a period between 1453 and 1498 when new Indian products would not have reached Europe and those on hand would have risen in price; but such was not the case. Furthermore, the Turks, instead of closing the Eastern trade routes, made a commercial treaty with Venice. The ruin of Venetian and Genoese trade was not the cause but the result of the Portuguese discovery of the sea routes to India. Portugal agreed to divide all the new commerce and all the new countries with Spain. Acting under the direction of Pope Alexander VI the two countries fixed upon a line on the map three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (1494). Portugal was to have everything to the east of that line, Spain everything to the west. The line of demarcation ran through Brazil (see map, p. 17).

it was round. An astronomer of Florence, Toscanelli, made a tolerably correct calculation of the earth's size. Columbus, when he had become an experienced sailor, accepted Toscanelli's views and concluded that the most sensible way to reach India by sea was to sail west. Of course he had no suspicion that an unknown country lay upon the far side of the Atlantic midway between Europe and Asia. He made up his mind he would sail westward until he came to India.

But where was Columbus to find the men and the ships for such a voyage ? Sailors were still afraid to venture forth straight west in order to find the far side of the ''shoreless" sea. Only the sovereigns of Europe had the power to compel sailors to risk the voyage ; only sovereigns had the money to provide the ships. And for a long while the sovereigns would not listen to Columbus. The king of Portugal was satisfied with what his own men were doing; others were too busy with great wars. But at length the queen of Spain, Isabella of Castile, consented to provide Columbus with three small ships, the Nina, the Pmta, and the Santa Maria. With these he sailed from Palos in Spain, August 3, 1492.

9. The Voyage of Columbus. Columbus headed for the Canary- Islands. Thus far the ocean was familiar to his sailors, but when Columbus passed the Canaries and steered straight into the sunset, when the islands faded below the eastern horizon, the fears of the sailors began to master them. Their tiny ships seemed to be mere specks in a vast circle of unknown sea. A great east wind caught them and drove them furiously over thundering waves. The fear in their hearts gave place to rage, and they plotted to seize Columbus and throw him into the sea. Suddenly, overhead, they saw a flock of birds ; then, floating in the water, a branch with berries on it ; then a piece of wood that looked as if it had been carved with a knife. What could this mean but that there was land ahead ? The ocean was not shoreless after all. Like the lifting of a cloud their fears vanished.

IS

That night they thought they saw a Hght moving on the horizon. Early the next morning (October 12, 1492), as the day brightened across the sea, they saw a low green shore only a few miles to the west. It was one of the islands which we know today as the Bahamas. Columbus landed on it, set up the flag of Spain, and named the island San Salvador. Thinking his long voyage had brought him near the coast of India he called the natives of the island Indians.

Columtus sailed Aug- 3d, ti-"?

MAP OF COLUMBUS S ROUTE ON HIS FIRST VOYAGE

10. Later Life of Columbus. Columbus returned to Spain, was given more ships and men, and made three other voyages across the Atlantic. On one of these he discovered the mainland of South America. Each time he came home people were eager to know whether he had reached the wealthy cities of India. Each time he had to admit that he had seen only wild land inhabited by naked savages. The Spaniards were bitterly disappointed by his reports of the New World. They kept asking, ^^ Where are the silks, the gold, the precious stones, he was to bring back ? " He became unpopular, and in his last years was cruelly neglected. He died lonely and almost forgotten (1506).

11. How America got its Name. In the days when the fame of Columbus was under a cloud the New World was given a name. It was not formed, as one might have supposed, from the name of Columbus, but from that of a much less important man — Americus Vespucius of Florence. This man crossed the Atlantic not long after Columbus and wrote a book on his experiences. The book is very entertaining, for Vespucius was a clever writer. He belittled Columbus and made much of himself. It is thought today that he gave wrong dates for his voyage in order to appear to have seen the mainland of America before Columbus did. He tells thrilling stories of adventures with cannibals, one of whom boasted he had eaten three hundred human bodies, and he writes charming descriptions of the tropical forests, — the birds, brilliant as flying rainbows, the wonderful flowers, the magnificent trees.

This book made a great impression on a learned man, Martin Waldseemiiller, who lived in St. Die, which is now a part of France. He made the suggestion that the new world be called America, in honor of Americus (1507). The suggestion was taken up by the map-makers. Before long a map was published on which the name '^ America" was used. Gradually the new word was accepted by everyone.

12. America found to be separate from Asia ; Balboa ; Magellan. But still Europeans had a mistaken idea of what had been discovered. When the name ''America" was invented, the land to which it was given was supposed to be a great island close to Asia. The first step toward clearing up this mistake was made by a Spanish explorer, Balboa. He crossed the Isthmus of Panama and looked out upon the Pacific Ocean (1513). Soon afterwards a very great sailor, Magellan, set out (1519) on a voyage that is almost as famous as the voyage of Columbus and which gave to the world its first correct idea of the globe. Magellan rounded South America and crossed the Pacific to the Philippine Islands. There the great sailor was killed in a fight with the natives, but some of his men continued the voyage and at length got back to Spain — the first men who ever sailed clear round the world.

American history begins with the experiences of our remote barbarian ancestors in southwestern Asia. From their original home these Aryans, or Indo-Europeans, moved away in three great migrations. In the first migration a portion of them took possession of the continent of Europe. Those who settled along the Mediterranean were quickly civilized and in course of time were all united in the vast Roman Empire. Meanwhile their northerly kinsmen remained barbarians. In the second migration these northern barbarians overran and destroyed the Roman Empire. Centuries afterward, when the northern barbarians in turn had been civilized, the European peoples again became restless. Then followed the third migration, in which our ancestors crossed the Atlantic, discovered a new country, and took possession of it. The name of the new country does not commemorate its discoverer, Christopher Columbus, but the first man who wrote about it, Americus Vespucius. At first it was supposed to be part of Asia. Not until Balboa discovered the Pacific, and the sailors of INIagellan had sailed round the globe, was it understood that a new world had been discovered.

Note. Books especially recommended are starred.

For the Teacher: *Breasted, Ancient Times \ Robinson, Medieval and Modern Times; ^WLYiiom, Beginnings of Modern Europe; Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes; *Fiske, The Discovery of America, chaps, ii-vii, x; Major, Select Letters of Cfllnmbus \ *Riciiman, 77/1? Spanish Conquerors (Chronicles of America) ; Bassett, History of the United States, 23-34.

For the Pupil : Andrews, Ten Boys who lived 071 the Road frotn Long Ago to Now, chaps, i-vii ; Atkinson, An Introduction to American History, chaps, i-xvi ; Kingslev, The Heroes; Tappan, The Story of the Creek People; Arnold, Stories of Ancient Peoples; Hall, Men of Old Greece and Viking Tales; Harding, The City of the Seven Hills and The Story of the Middle Ages; Lanier, The Boys' E'roissart; Lansing, Mediaeval Builders of the Modem World; Atherton, The Adventures of Marco Polo; HiGGlNSON, Young Eolk's Book of American Explorers', McMuRRV, Pioneers of Land and Sea; Ober, Heroes of American

History (volumes on Columbus, Balboa, Magellan) ; Lawler, The Story of Columbus and Magellafi ; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Modern Times.

Note. The topics that require special preparation are bracketed. When answers to questions necessitate the combination of several sections of the text, the section numbers are given. In all map drawings both teacher and pupil will be greatly assisted by *Atwood, Allen, and Robinson's Practical Map Exercises in Geography and History : Western Hemisphere.

I. Where did our forefathers Hve originally? [2. Describe their mode of life. (See Breasted, Ancient Times, 171-175; Andrews, Ten Boys, 1-2 1.)] 3. Over what parts of the world, so far as you know, have the Aryans, or Indo-Europeans, spread (sections 2, 3, 5, 6)? 4. When we say that our civilization began in Greece, what do we mean ? What do we owe to the Greeks and Romans? [5. Describe the Hfe of an ancient Greek and compare it with your own. (See Breasted, 221- 250; Andrews, 45-78; Kingsley, The Heroes.)^

[6. Describe the life of a citizen of the Roman Empire and compare it with your own. (See Breasted, 652-658; Andrews, 70-114.)] 7. In what way does the second migration resemble the first ? 8. What was accomplished by the third migration ? 9. In what respect did it differ from the other two ?

[10. Make plain this difference by showing how an immigrant in the United States today is changed by his new surroundings as our forefathers were in the first and second migrations, but not in the third. (The teacher should indicate some of the simpler ways in which the society the immigrant enters at once begins to work a transformation.)] II. How did Europe trade with Asia at the opening of the fifteenth century ?

[12. Describe a commercial journey to China or India long ago. (See Fiske, The Discovery of America (chap, iii), Archer, Stories of Exploration and Discovery (chap, iii), or Atherton, The Adventures of Marco Polo.)] 13. What great changes in trade relations took place in the fifteenth century? 14. How was it made possible for Columbus to cross the Atlantic ?

[15. Give an account (a)" of the early Hfe of Columbus, or (6) of what he knew when he sailed, or (c) of his ships. (See Fiske, The Discovery of America (chaps, v-vi), Channing, Ujtited States (chap, ii), Lawler, Columbtis, or Ober, Columbus.)] 16. How was America named ? 17. How was it proved that America was not a part of Asia?