FAR away back in old English history there was a famous archer named Robin Hood, who lived in the deep woods with a bold band of outlaws like himself. He and his band were foes of the nobles and friends of the poor, and his name will never be forgotten by the people of England.
No doubt you have read about the gallant archer. No man of his time could send an arrow so straight and sure as he. But we need not go back for hundreds of years to find our Robin Hood. We have had a man like him in our own country, who fought for us in the Revolution. His name was Francis Marion, and he was known as the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived in the swamps of South Carolina as Robin Hood did in the forests of England, and he was the stinging foe of the oppressors of the people.
I have already told you about the war in the North, and of how the British, after doing all they could to overthrow Washington and conquer the country, found themselves shut up in the cityof New York, with Washington like a watch-dog outside.
When the British generals found that the North was too hard a nut to crack, they thought they would try what they could do in the South. So they sent a fleet and an army down the coast, and before long they had taken the cities of Savannah and Charleston, and had their soldiers marching all over Georgia and South Carolina. General Gates, the man to whom Burgoyne surrendered, came down with a force of militia to fight them, but he was beaten so badly that he had to run away without a soldier to follow him. You can imagine that the British were proud of their success. They thought themselves masters of the South, and fancied they had only to march north and become masters there, too.
But you must not think that they were quite masters. Back in the woods and the swamps were men with arms in their hands and with love of country in their hearts. They were like wasps or hornets, who kept darting out from their nests, stinging the British troops, and then darting back out of sight. These gallant bands were led by Marion, Sumter, Pickens, and other brave men; but Marion's band was the most famous of them all, so I shall tell you about the Swamp Fox and what he did.
I fancy all of my young friends would havelaughed if they had seen Marion's band when it joined General Gates' army. Such scarecrows of soldiers they were! There were only about twenty of them in all, some of them white and some black, some men and some boys, dressed in rags that fluttered in the wind, and on horses that looked as if they had been fed on corncobs instead of corn.
Gates and his men did laugh at them, though they took care not to laugh when Marion was at hand. He was a small man, with a thin face, and dressed not much better than his men. But there was a look in his eye that told the soldiers he was not a safe man to laugh at.
Marion and his men were soon off again on a scout, and after Gates and his army had been beaten and scattered to the winds, they went back to their hiding places in the swamps to play the hornet once more.
Along the Pedee River these swamps extended for miles. There were islands of dry land far within, but they could only be reached by narrow paths which the British were not able to find. Only men who had spent their lives in that country could make their way safely through this broad stretch of water plants and water-soaked ground.
Marion's force kept changing. Now it went down to twenty men, now up to a hundred or more. It was never large, for there was not food or shelterfor many men. But there were enough of them to give the British plenty of trouble. They had their sentries on the outlook, and when a party of British or Tories went carelessly past out would spring Marion's men, send their foes flying like deer, and then back they would go before a strong body of the enemy could reach them.
These brave fellows had many hiding places in the swamps and many paths out of them. To-day they might strike the British in one place and to-morrow in another many miles away. Small as their force was they gave the enemy far more trouble than Gates had done with all his army. Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known as Snow's Island, where a creek ran into the Pedee. It was high and dry, was covered with trees and thickets, and was full of game. And all around it spread the soaking swamp, with paths known only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding places, this was their chosen home.
You may be sure that the British did their best to capture a man who gave them so much trouble as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down. Marion was then far from his hiding place and Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox was hard to catch. He lead the British a lively chase, and when they gave it up in despair he followed them back. He came upon a large body ofTories and struck them so suddenly that hardly a man of them escaped, while he lost only one man. Tories, you should know, were Americans who fought on the British side.
The next man who tried to capture Marion was Colonel Tarleton, a hard rider and a good soldier, but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in the South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the North. There is a good story told about how he was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as he and his men were riding furiously along they came up to an old farmer, who was hoeing in his field beside the road.
"Can you tell me what became of the man who galloped by here just ahead of us?" asked one of them. "I will give you fifty pounds if you put me on his track."
"Do you mean the man on a black horse with a white star in its forehead?" asked the farmer.
"Yes, that's the fellow."
"He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of Marion's men, but he went past so fast that I could not be sure."
"Never mind who he was. What we want to know is where to find him."
"Bless your heart! he was going at such a pace that he couldn't well stop under four or five miles. I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty pounds."
On rode the troop, and back into the woodswent the farmer. He had not gone far before he came to a black horse with a white star in its forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The farmer was Jack Davis himself.
That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal with, and you may be sure that he did not catch any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no game.
While Marion was keeping the war alive in South Carolina, an army was gathering under General Greene, who was, next to Washington, the best of the American generals. With him were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of riflemen, William Washington, a cousin of the commander-in-chief, and Henry Lee, or "Light-horse Harry," father of the famous General Lee of the Civil War.
General Greene got together about two thousand men, half armed and half supplied and knowing nothing about war, so that he had a poor chance of defeating the trained British soldiers. But he was a Marion on a larger scale, and knew when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell you what he did.
In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the bold Colonel Tarleton and gave him a sound flogging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the South. Cornwallis thought he would catch Morgan napping, but thelively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He hurried back with the prisoners he had taken from Tarleton, and crossed the Catawba River just as the British came up. That night it rained hard, and the river rose so that it could not be crossed for three days.
General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat continued to the Yadkin River. This, too, was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain again came up and swelled the river before the British could follow. When the British got across there was a race for the Dan River on the borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, crossed the stream, and held the fords or crossing-place against the foe. Cornwallis by this time had enough of it. Provisions were growing scarce, and he turned back. But he soon had Greene on his track, and he did not find his march a very comfortable one.
Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote about General Greene. Once, during his campaign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy rain. Steele, the landlord, knew him and looked at him in surprise.
"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.
"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone, very tired, hungry, and penniless."
Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot mealbefore the hungry traveler. Then, while he was eating, she drew from under her apron two bags of silver and laid them on the table before him.
"Take these, general," she said. "You need them and I can do without them."
You may see that the women as well as the men of America did all they could for liberty, for there were many others like Mrs. Steele.
I have told you that General Greene was one of the ablest of the American leaders, and you have seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in the retreat. Several times afterwards he fought with the British. He was always defeated. His country soldiers could not face the British veterans. But each time he managed to get as much good from the fight as if he had won a victory, and by the end of the year the British were shut up in Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free again.
Where was Cornwallis during this time? Greene had led him so far north that he concluded to march on into Virginia and get the troops he would find there, and then come back. There was fighting going on in Virginia at this time. General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting against his own people. Against him was General Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had come to the help of the Americans.
I suppose some of you have read stories of howa wolf or some other wild animal walked into a trap, from which it could not get out again. Lord Cornwallis was not a wild animal, but he walked into just such a trap after he got to Virginia. When he reached there he took command of Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet strong enough to face Lafayette, so he marched to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River, where he expected to get help by sea from New York. Yorktown was the trap he walked into, as you will see.
France had sent a fleet and an army to help the Americans, and just then this fleet came up from the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake, shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same time Washington, who had been closely watching what was going on, broke camp before New York and marched southward as fast as his men could go. Before Cornwallis could guess what was about to happen the trap was closed on him. In the bay near Yorktown was the strong French fleet; before Yorktown was the army of American and French soldiers.
There was no escape. The army and the fleet bombarded the town. A week of this was enough for Lord Cornwallis. He surrendered his army, seven thousand strong, on October 19, 1781, and the war was at an end. America was free.
HAVE any of my young readers ever been to Europe? Likely enough some of you may have been, for even young folks cross the ocean now-a-days. It has come to be an easy journey, with our great and swift steamers. But in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in which the ship was often tossed by terrible storms, and sometimes was broken to pieces on the rocks or went to the bottom with all on board.
What I wish to say is, that those who come from Europe to this country leave countries that are governed by kings, and come to a country that is governed by the people. In some of the countries of Europe the people might almost as well be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to speak for them, and the man who rules them is born to power. Even in England, which is the freest of them all, there is a king and queen and a House of Lords who are born to power. The people can vote, but only for members of the House of Commons. They have nothing to do with the monarch or the lords.
Of course you all know that this is not the case in our country. Here every man in power is put there by the votes of the people. As President Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We did not have such a government before the 4th of July, 1776. Our country was then governed by a king, and, what was worse, this king was on the other side of the ocean, and cared nothing for the people of America except as money bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of July we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord and master; and we have got along very well without one.
Now you can see what the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution meant. With the Declaration we cut loose from England. Our ship of state set out on its long voyage to liberty. The Declaration cut the chain that fastened this great ship to England's shores. The Revolution was like the stormy passage across the ocean waves. At times it looked as if our ship of state would be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back to the shores from which it set sail; but then the clouds would break and the sun shine, and onward our good ship would speed. At length it reached the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away from the land of kings.
This is a sort of parable. I think every oneof you will know what it means. The people of this country had enough of kings and their ways, and of being taxed without their consent. They made up their minds to be free to tax and govern themselves. It was for this they fought in the Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood.
And now, before we go on with the history of our country, it will be wise to stop and ask what kind of government the Americans gave themselves. They had thrown overboard the old government of kings. They had to make a new government of the people. I hope you do not think this was an easy task. If an architect or builder is shown a house and told to build another like that, he finds it very easy to do. But if he is shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and told to build out of them a good strong house unlike any he has ever seen, he will find his task a very hard one, and may spoil the house in his building.
That was what our people had to do. They could have built a king's government easily enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow for that. But they had no pattern for a people's government, and, like the architect and his house, they might spoil it in the making. The fact is, this is just what they did. Their first government was spoiled in the making, and they had to take it down and build it over again.
This was done by what we call a Convention, made up of men called "delegates" sent by the several states. The Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 for the purpose of forming a Constitution; that is, a plan of government under which the people should live and which the states and their citizens should have to obey.
This Convention was a wonderful body of statesmen. Its like has not often been seen. The wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent to it. They included all the great men—some we know already, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams and many others of fine ability. For four months these men worked in secret. It was a severe task they had to perform, for some wanted one thing and some another, and many times it looked as if they would never agree; but at length all disputes were settled and their long labors were at an end.
General Washington was president of the Convention, and back of the chair on which he sat the figure of the sun was painted on the wall. When it was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this painting and said to those who stood near him:
"Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes and fears, I have looked towards that figure, and asked myself if it was a rising or a setting sun. Now I know that it is the rising sun."
The rising sun indeed it was, for when the Conventionhad finished its work it had formed the noble Constitution under which we now live, the greatest state paper which man has ever formed.
But I fancy you want to know more about the noble framework of government built by the wise men of the Convention of 1787.
After the Union was formed there were thirteen states still, but each of these had lost some of its old powers. The powers taken from the states were given to the general government. Every state had still the right to manage its own affairs, but such things as concerned the whole people were managed by the general government.
What were these things? Let us see. There was the power to coin money, to lay taxes, to control the post-office, and to make laws for the good of the whole nation. And there was the power to form an army and navy, to make treaties with other countries, and to declare war if we could not get on in peace.
Under the Confederation which was formed during the Revolutionary War, the states could do these things for themselves; under the Constitution they could do none of these things, but they could pass laws that affected only themselves, and could tax their own people for state purposes.
I have spoken several times of the general government. No doubt you wish to know what this government was like. Well, it was made up ofthree bodies, one of which made laws for the people, the second considered if these laws agreed with the Constitution, the third carried out these laws, or put them in force.
The body that made the laws was named the Congress of the United States. It consisted of two sections. One was called the Senate, and was made up of two members from each state. As we have now more than forty-five states the Senate at present has more than ninety members. The other section was called the House of Representatives, and its members were voted for directly by the people. The members of the Senate were voted for by the legislatures of the states, who had been elected by the people.
All the laws were to be made by Congress, but not one of them could become a law until it was approved by the President. If he did not approve of a law, he vetoed it, that is, he returned it without being signed with his name, and then it could not be enforced as a law until voted for by two-thirds of the members of Congress.
It was the duty of the President to execute or carry out the laws. He took the place of the king in other countries. But he was not born to his position like a king, but had to be voted for by the people, and could stay in office for four years only. Then he, or some one else, had to be voted for again.
Next to the President was the Vice-President, who was to take his place if he should die or resign. While the President was in office the Vice-President had nothing to do except to act as presiding officer of the Senate. What we call the Cabinet are persons chosen by the President to help him in his work. You must understand that it takes a number of leading men and a great many men under these to do all the work needed to carry on our government.
The third body of our government was called the Supreme Court. This was made up of some of the ablest lawyers and judges of the country. They were not to be voted for, but to be chosen by the President and then approved by the Senate. The duty of the Supreme Court is to consider any law brought to its notice and decide if it agrees with the Constitution. If the Court decides that a law is not constitutional, it ceases to be of any effect.
This is not so very hard to understand, is it? The President and Congress elected by the people; the Supreme Court and Cabinet selected by the President; the Constitution the foundation of our government; and the laws passed by Congress the building erected on the foundation.
Its great feature is that it is a republic—a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Ours is not the first republic. Therehave been others. But it is the greatest. It is the only one that covers half a continent, and is made up of states many of which are larger than some of the kingdoms of Europe. For more than a hundred years the Constitution made in 1787 has held good. Then it covered thirteen states and less than four million people; now it covers more than forty-five states and eighty million people. Then it was very poor, and had a hard struggle before it; now it is very rich and prosperous. It has grown to be the richest country in the world and one of the greatest.
EVERY four years a great question arises in this country, and all the states and their people are disturbed until this question is settled. Even business nearly stops still, for many persons can think of nothing but the answer to this question.
Who shall be President? That is the question which at the end of every four years troubles the minds of our people. This question was asked for the first time in 1789, after the Constitution had been made and accepted by the states, but this time the people found it a very easy question to answer.
There were several men who had taken a great part in the making of our country, and who might have been named for President. One of these was Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Another of them was Benjamin Franklin, who got France to come to our aid, and did many other noble things for his country. But none of them stood so high in the respect and admiration of the people as George Washington,who had led our armies through the great war, and to whom, more than to any other man, we owed our liberty.
This time, then, there was no real question as towhomshould be President. Washington was the man. All men, all parties, settled upon Washington. No one opposed him; there was no man in the country like him. He was unanimously elected the first President of the United States.
In olden times, when a victorious general came back to Rome with the splendid spoils brought from distant countries, the people gave him a triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and to gaze upon the splendor of the show. Washington had no splendid spoils to display. But he had the love of the people, which was far better than gold and silver won in war; and all the way from his home at Mount Vernon to New York, where he was to take the office of President, the people honored him with a triumph.
Along the whole journey, men, women and children crowded the roadside, and waited for hours to see him pass. That was before the day of railroads, and he had to go slowly in his carriage, so that everybody had a fine chance to see and greet him as he went by. Guns were fired as he passed through the towns; arches of triumph were erected for his carriage to go under; flowers were strewn in the streets for its wheels to roll over;cheers and cries of greeting filled the air; all that the people could do to honor their great hero was done.
On the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took the oath of office as the first President of our country and people. He stood on the balcony of a building in front of Federal Hall, in which Congress met, and in the street before him was a vast multitude, full of joy and hope. When he had taken the oath cannon roared out, bells were rung in all the neighboring steeples, and a mighty shout burst from the assembled multitude:
"Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"
This, I have said, was in New York. But Philadelphia was soon chosen as the seat of government, and the President and Congress moved to that city the next year. There they stayed for ten years. In the year 1800 a new city, named Washington, on the banks of the Potomac, was made the capital of our country, and in that city Congress has met ever since.
I must say something here about another of the great men of Revolutionary times, Alexander Hamilton. He was great in financial or money matters, and this was very important at that time, for the money-affairs of the country were in a sad state.
In the Revolution our people had very littlemoney, and that was one reason why they had so much suffering. Congress soon ran out of gold and silver, so it issued paper money. This did very well for a time, and in the end a great deal of paper money was set afloat, but people soon began to get afraid of it. There was too much money of this kind for so poor a country. The value of the Continental currency, as it was called, began to go down, and the price of everything else to go up. In time the paper money lost almost all its value.
Such was the money the people had at the end of the Revolution. It was not good for much, was it? But it was the only kind of money Congress had to pay the soldiers with or to pay the other debts of the government. The country owed much more money than it could pay, so that it was what we call bankrupt. Nobody would trust it or take its paper in payment. What Alexander Hamilton did was to help the country to pay its debts and to bring back its lost credit, and in doing that he won great honor.
Hamilton came to this country from the West Indies during the Revolution. He was then only a boy, but he soon showed himself a good soldier, and Washington made him an officer on his staff and one of his friends. He often asked young Hamilton for advice, and took it, too.
Hamilton was one of the men who made theConstitution, and when Washington became President he chose him as his Secretary of the Treasury. That is, he gave him the money affairs of the government to look after. Hamilton was not afraid of the load of debt, and he soon took off its weight. He asked Congress to pay not only its own debt, but that of the states as well, and also to make good all the paper money. Congress did not like to do this, but Hamilton talked to the members till he persuaded them to do so.
Then he set himself to pay it. He laid a tax on whiskey and brandy and on all goods that came into the country. He had a mint, which is a building where money is coined from metal, and a national bank built in Philadelphia. He made the debt a government fund or loan, on which he agreed to pay interest, and to pay off the principal as fast as possible. It was not long before all the fund was taken up by those who had money, and the country got back its lost credit, for the taxes began to bring in much money.
Washington was President for eight years. That made two terms of four years each. Many wished to make him President for a third term, but he refused to run again. Since then no one has been made President for more than two terms.
George Washington had done enough for his country. He loved his home, but he had little time to live there. When he was only a boy hewas called away to take part in the French and Indian War. Then, after spending some happy years at home, he was called away again to lead the army in the Revolutionary War. Finally, he served his country eight years as President.
He was now growing old and wanted rest, and he went back with joy to his beloved home at Mount Vernon, hoping to spend there the remainder of his days. But trouble arose with France, and it looked as if there would be a new war, and Washington was asked to take command of the army again. He consented, though he had had enough of fighting; but fortunately the war did not come, so he was not obliged to abandon his home.
He died in December, 1799, near the end of the century of which he was one of the greatest men. The news of his death filled all American hearts with grief. Not while the United States exists will the name of Washington be forgotten or left without honor. His home and tomb at Mt. Vernon are visited each year by thousands of patriotic Americans. As was said of him long ago by General Henry Lee, he was and is, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
I THINK you must now have learned a great deal about the history of your country from the time Columbus crossed the ocean till the year 1800, the beginning of the Nineteenth century. You have been told about discovery, and settlement, and wars, and modes of life, and government, and other things, but you must bear in mind that these are not the whole of history. The story of our country is broad and deep enough to hold many other things beside these. For instance, there is the story of our great inventors, to whom we owe so much. I propose in this chapter to tell you about some of those who lived near the year 1800.
First, I must ask you to go back with me to a kitchen in Scotland many years ago. On the open hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes fixed on the tea-kettle which was boiling away over the fire, while its lid kept lifting to let the steam escape. His mother, who was bustling about, no doubt thought him idle, and may havescolded him a little. But he was far from idle; he was busy at work—not with his hands, but with his brain. The brain, you know, may be hard at work while the body is doing nothing.
How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle of boiling water keeping up its clatter as the steam lifts it and puffs out into the air? And what thought has this brought into your mind? Into the mind of little James Watt, the Scotch boy, it brought one great thought, that of power. As he looked at it, he said to himself that the steam which comes from boiling water must have a great deal of force, if a little of it could keep the kettle lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself if such a power could not be put to some good use.
Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that thought. Others had thought the same thing, and steam had been used to move a poor sort of engine. But what James Watt did when he grew up, was to invent a much better engine than had ever been made before. It was a great day for us all when that engine was invented. Before that time men had done most of the work of the world with their hands, and you may imagine that the work went on very slowly. Since that time most of the world's work has been done with the aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as much as many men could do in the past. You have seen the wheels rolling and heard the machinesrattling and the hammers clanging in our great factories and workshops. And I fancy most of you know that back of all these is the fire under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the mighty magician which sets all these wheels and machines at work and changes raw material into so many things of use and beauty.
Now let us come back to our American inventors. I have spoken about the steam engine because it was with this that most of them worked. They thought that if horses could drag a wagon over the ground and the wind could drive a vessel through the water, steam might do the same thing, and they set themselves to see in what way a carriage or a boat could be moved by a steam engine.
Very likely you have all heard about Robert Fulton and his steamboat, but you may not know that steamboats were running on American waters years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as long ago as 1768, before the Revolutionary War, Oliver Evans, one of our first inventors, had made a little boat which was moved by steam and paddle-wheels. Years afterwards he made a large engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put in the boat, but there came a dry season and low water, so that the boat could not be used, and the owners took the engine out and set it to work on a sawmill. It did so well there that it was neverput back in the boat; so that steamboat never had a chance.
Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steamboat, but there were others who thought they could move a boat by steam. Some of these were in Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia was an inventor named Rumsey who moved a boat at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat jets of water were pumped through the stern and forced the boat along. In Philadelphia was another man named John Fitch, who was the first man to make a successful steamboat. His boat was moved with paddles like an Indian canoe. It was put on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and Trenton in 1790, and ran for several months as a passenger boat, at the speed of seven or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He was unfortunate and in the end he killed himself.
I am glad to be able to tell you a different story of the next man who tried to make a steamboat. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the water, he and the other boys having an old flatboat which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton got tired of this way of getting along, and like a natural-born inventor set his wits to work. In the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung over the sides and could be moved in the water byturning a crank and so force the boat onward. The boys found this much easier than the pole, and likely enough young Fulton thought a large vessel might be moved in the same way.
He knew all about what others had done. He had heard how Rumsey moved his boat by pumping water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling it along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland moved by a stern paddle-wheel. I fancy he had not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a boy to go fishing with, for when he set out to invent his steamboat this is the plan he tried.
Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had bad luck there. Then he came to America and built a boat in New York. While he was at work on this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I have already told you, was building him an engine in England. He wanted the best engine that he could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor was the right man to make it.
While Fulton was working some of the smart New Yorkers were laughing. They called his boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move faster than the tide would carry it. But he let them laugh and worked on, and at last, one day in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont," was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial. Hundreds of curious people came to see it start. Some were ready to laugh again when they saw theboat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down in the water on both sides. They were not covered with wooden frames as were such wheels afterwards.
"That boat move? So will a log move if set adrift," said the people who thought themselves very wise. "It will move when the tide moves it, and not before." But none of them felt like laughing when they saw the wheels begin to turn and the boat to glide out into the stream, moving against the tide.
"She moves! she moves!" cried the crowd, and nobody said a word about "Fulton's Folly."
Move she did. Up the Hudson she went against wind and current, and reached Albany, one hundred and forty-two miles away, in thirty-two hours. This was at the rate of four and a half miles an hour. It was not many years before steamboats were running on all our rivers.
That is all I shall say here about the steamboat, for there is another story of invention I wish to tell you before I close. This is about the cotton fibre, which you know is the great product of the Southern States.
The cotton plant when ripe has a white, fluffy head, and a great bunch of snow-white fibres, within which are the seeds. In old times these had to be taken out by hand, and it was a whole day's work for a negro to get the seeds out of apound of the cotton. This made cotton so dear that not much of it could be sold. In 1784 eight bags of it were sent to Liverpool, and the custom-house people there seized it for duties. They said it must have been smuggled from some other country, for the United States could not have produced such a "prodigious quantity."
A few years afterwards a young man named Eli Whitney went South to teach in a private family, but before he got there some one else had his situation, and he was left with nothing to do. Mrs. Greene, the widow of General Greene, who fought so well in the Revolution, took pity on him and gave him a home in her house. He paid her by fixing up things about her house. She found him so handy that she asked him if he could not invent a machine to take the seeds out of the cotton. Whitney said he would try, and he set himself to work. It was not long before he had a machine made which did the work wonderfully well. This machine is known as the "cotton-gin," or cotton engine, for gin is short for engine. On one side of it are wires so close together that the seeds cannot get through. Between them are circular saws which catch the cotton and draw it through, while the seeds pass on.
The machine was a simple one, but it acted like magic. A hundred negroes could not clean as much cotton in a day as one machine. The priceof cotton soon went down and a demand for it sprang up. In 1795, when the cotton gin was made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were produced in this country. By 1801 this had grown to 20,000,000 pounds. Now it has grown to more than 12,000,000 bales, of nearly 500 pounds each. This is sold to foreign countries and is worked in our own mills at home, being made into millions of yards of cloth of many kinds to clothe the people of the earth. All this comes from the work of Eli Whitney's machine. And the seed taken from the cotton is pressed for the oil it contains, so that from a year's crop we get nearly 150,000,000 gallons of useful oil.
FOR years before and after the year 1800 all Europe was filled with war and bloodshed. Most of my readers must have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest generals that ever lived, and one of the most cruel men. He was at the head of the armies of France, and was fighting all Europe. England was his greatest enemy and fought him on land and sea, and this fighting on the sea made trouble between England and the United States.
The English wanted men for their war-vessels and said they had a right to take Englishmen wherever they could find them. So they began to take sailors off of American merchant vessels. They said that these men were deserters from the British navy, but the fact is that many of them were true-born Americans; and our people grew very angry as this went on year after year.
What made it worse was the insolence of some of the British captains. One of them went so far as to stop an American war-vessel, the "Chesapeake,"and demand part of her crew, who, he said, were British deserters. When Captain Barron refused to give them up the British captain fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers of the American crew. The "Chesapeake" had no guns fit to fire back, so her flag had to be pulled down and the men to be given up.
You may well imagine that this insult made the American blood boil. There would have been war at that time if the British government had not owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for the injury. A few years afterwards the insult was paid for in a different way. Another proud British captain thought he could treat Americans in the same saucy fashion. The frigate "President" met the British sloop-of-war "Little Belt," and hailed it, the captain calling through his trumpet, "What ship is that?"
Instead of giving a civil reply the British captain answered with a cannon shot. Then the "President" fired a broadside which killed eleven and wounded twenty-one men on the "Little Belt." When the captain of the "President" hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply in a more civil fashion. He had been taught a useful lesson.
The United States was then a poor country, and not in condition to go to war. But no nation could submit to such insults as these. It is saidthat more than six thousand sailors had been taken from our merchant ships, and among these were two nephews of General Washington, who were seized while they were on their way home from Europe, and put to work as common seamen on a British war-vessel.
At length, on June 18, 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain. It had put up with insults and injuries as long as it could bear them. It did not take long to teach the haughty British captains that American sea-dogs were not to be played with. The little American fleet put to sea, and before the end of the year it had captured no less than five of the best ships in the British navy and had not lost a single ship in return. I fancy the people of England quit singing their proud song, "Britannia rules the waves."
Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I do not think it worth while, for there is much of it you would not care to hear. The war went on for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there were not many important battles, and the United States did not win much honor on land. But on the sea the sailors of our country covered themselves with glory.
Most of the land battles were along the borders of Canada. Here there was a good deal of fighting, but most of it was of no great account. At first the British had the best of it, and then theAmericans began to win battles, but it all came to an end about where it began. Neither side gained anything for the men that were killed.
There was one naval battle in the north that I must tell you about. On Lake Erie the British had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time they had everything their own way. Then Captain Oliver Perry, a young officer, was sent to the lake to build a fleet and fight the British.
When he got there the stuff for his ships was growing in the woods. He had to cut down trees and build ships from their timber. But he worked like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels built and afloat. He found some also on the lake, and in a wonderfully short time he had a fleet on the lake and was sailing out to find the British war-ships.
The fleets met on September 10, 1813. The Americans had the most vessels, but the British had the most guns, and soon they were fighting like sea-dragons. The "Lawrence," Captain Perry's flagship, fought two of the largest British ships till it was nearly ready to sink, and so many of its crew were killed and wounded that it had only eight men left fit for fighting. What do you think the brave Perry did then? He leaped into a small boat and was rowed away, with the American flag floating in his hand, though the British ships were firing hotly at him.
When he reached the "Niagara," another of his ships, he sprang on board and sailed right through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into their shattered vessels. The British soon had enough of this, and in fifteen minutes more they gave up the fight.
"We have met the enemy and they are ours," wrote Perry to General Harrison. He was a born hero of the waves.
Now I think we had better take a look out to sea and learn what was going on there. We did not have many ships, but they were like so many bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world looked on with surprise to see our little fleet of war-vessels making such havoc in the proud British navy which no country in Europe had ever been able to defeat.
In less than two months after war was declared the frigate "Essex" met the British sloop-of-war "Alert" and took it in eight minutes, without losing a man. The "Essex" was too strong for the "Alert," but six days afterwards the "Constitution" met the "Guerriere," and these vessels were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour the "Guerriere" was nearly shot to pieces and ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her men. The others were hastily taken off, and then down went the proud British frigate to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
All the island of Great Britain went into mourning when it learned how the Americans had served this good ship. There was soon more to mourn for. The American sloop "Wasp" captured the British sloop "Frolic." The frigate "United States" captured the frigate "Macedonian." The "Constitution" met the "Java" and served it the same way as it had done the "Guerriere." In two hours the "Java" was a wreck. Soon after the sloop "Hornet" met the ship "Peacock" and handled her so severely that she sank while her crew was being taken off.
Later on the British won two battles at sea, and that was all they gained during the whole war. On the water the honors stayed with the Americans.
There was one affair in which the British won great dishonor instead of honor. In July, 1814, a strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay, with an army of nearly five thousand men on board. These were landed and marched on the city of Washington, the capital of the young republic.
Their coming was a surprise. There were few trained soldiers to meet this army, and those were not the days of railroads, so that no troops could be brought in haste from afar. Those that gathered were nearly all raw militia, and they did not stand long before the British veterans who had fought in the wars with Napoleon. They weresoon put to flight, and the British army marched into our capital city.
There they behaved in a way that their country has ever since been ashamed of. They set fire to the public buildings and burned most of them to the ground. The Capitol, the President's house, and other buildings were burned, and the records of the government were destroyed. Then, having acted like so many savages, the British hurried away before the Americans could get at them for revenge. That was a victory, I fancy, which the British do not like to read about.
They had been so successful at Washington that they thought they would try the same thing with another city. This time they picked out New Orleans, which was so far away from the thickly settled part of the country that they fancied it would be an easy matter to capture it. In this they made a great mistake, as you will soon see.
There was a general in the South who was not used to being defeated. This was Andrew Jackson, one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won fame in a war with the Indians of Georgia. He was a man who was always ready to fight and this the English found when they marched on New Orleans. There were twelve thousand of them, and Jackson, who had been sent there to meet them, only had half that many. And the British were trained soldiers, while the Americanswere militia. But most of them were men of the backwoods, who knew how to shoot.