The Story of American History for Elementary Schools

The Story of American History for Elementary Schools
Albert Blaisdell

The Story of American History for Elementary Schools

PREFACE

Some sort of a first book on American history is now quite generally used in schools as a preparation for the more intelligent study of a larger and more formal text-book in the higher grammar grades.

For beginners, a mere compilation of facts is dry and unsatisfactory. Such books have now given place, for the most part, to those prepared on a more attractive and judicious plan. The real aim in a first book should be to interest boys and girls in the history of their country, and to encourage them to cultivate a taste for further study and reading.

This book is intended for use in the earlier grammar grades and to be preliminary to the study of a more advanced work in the higher grades. The author has also kept in mind the fact that the school life of many children is brief, and that all their instruction in American history must come from a text-book of this kind.

The author has not aimed to cover the whole range of our country's history. Of many noted men and important affairs no mention is made. Only the leading events of certain periods and the personal achievements of a few representative "makers of our country" are treated in any detail. The subject is approached through biographical sketches of a few of the more illustrious actors in our nation's history. Some prominence is given to exceptional deeds of valor, details of everyday living in olden times, dramatic episodes, and personal incident.

The schoolroom test demonstrates the fact that such a treatment of the subject is more attractive and profitable to children of the lower grades than the mere recital of minor matters and petty details of public events.

The author would acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. Homer B. Sprague of New York City for editorial help in reading and revising the manuscript. Thanks are also due to Dr. John E. Sanborn of Melrose, Mass., for editorial assistance.

    A. F. BLAISDELL.

November, 1900.

Note. – The attention of teachers and pupils is especially directed to the practical usefulness of the subject of "Reference Books and Supplementary Reading for Successive Periods in American History," as treated on pages 424-435 in the Appendix (#litres_trial_promo).

CHAPTER I.

AMERICA IN THE OLD DAYS

1. The Story of our Country.– We are sure that every intelligent and patriotic American youth must like to read the story of our country's life. To a boy or girl of good sense no work of fiction can surpass it in interest or power.

How delightful to let the imagination summon up the forms and the deeds of the fearless Norse sailors who dared to cross the unknown seas in their frail and tiny vessels without compass and without charts! How interesting the oft-told but ever-fresh narrative of the intrepid Columbus and his memorable first voyage into and across the "Sea of Darkness"! What romance was ever more exciting than the stories of the fierce struggles between the white men and the Indians for existence and supremacy on this continent?

How deep the pathos of the simple tales that tell of the patient sufferings, the severe toils, the ever-present dangers, and the heroic self-denials of the early colonists in making for themselves homes in the New World! How richly suggestive are those pages that record the glorious events of our American Revolution – the splendid and immortal deeds of Washington and his illustrious associates!

Then there is the thrilling account of the most tremendous civil war in all history, with its four million soldiers, its two thousand battles, and its preservation of the Union.

And to come down to a time within the memory of every schoolboy, the echoes of the Spanish-American conflict have hardly yet died away. The story of this short war in the summer of 1898 still rings in our ears – with its astounding naval victories at Manila and Santiago, the freedom of Cuba, and the destruction of the last vestige of the once mighty Spanish supremacy on this western continent!

2. Lessons of Wisdom and Inspiration to be learned.– But beyond and above all mere gratification and pleasure to be derived from the study of our country's history, there are in it lessons of wisdom to be learned, there is inspiration to noble living, there is an uplifting of the soul to a higher plane of thought and sentiment, there is constant aid in the development and upbuilding of manly and womanly character.

And when we think of the marvelous growth of less than three centuries which, beginning with the infant colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth, has made us a nation of more than seventy millions; when we think of the wonderful record of trial and triumph and unceasing progress, and of the great and good and wise men that have laid the foundations and reared the superstructure of this mighty temple of liberty, – we must be blind indeed and ungrateful beyond expression not to recognize with devout thankfulness the guiding hand of a beneficent Providence.

America, under God, stood at Plymouth for religious freedom; in the Revolution, for independence; in our civil war, for the preservation of the Union. She now stands for humanity, civilization, and the uplifting of the whole race.

3. The People of Ancient America.– Wise men who have made a special study of the subject tell us that this country has been continuously inhabited by generations of men for many thousands of years. Rude tools, and human skulls, intermingled with bones of animals of species long extinct, have been found in caves or dug out of deep layers of earth; and they indicate that in the Mississippi valley and on the Atlantic and Pacific slopes there lived, perhaps hundreds of ages ago, men of a low grade of culture.

In the great museums – as the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, the Peabody Museums at Cambridge and New Haven, and the natural history rooms at New York and elsewhere – may be seen thousands of the relics of vanished races of men and animals that once inhabited this continent.

4. The Red Men or Indians.– The Indians constitute a race by themselves. Whether they are descended from some of those prehistoric inhabitants of whom we have just spoken no one can say; but they make up an American type with marks as clearly recognized as those that distinguish the Mongolians and the Malays. For long ages the red men had spread themselves over the two continents, from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn. With few or no exceptions, all had the same copperish or cinnamon color, deep-set and intensely black eyes, high cheek-bones, straight black hair, with little or no beard; but the long lapse of time, the great varieties of environment, and perhaps other causes, brought about striking differences of appearance, of manners, customs, dialects, and the like.

5. Three Principal Divisions of the Indians.– The eminent historian, Dr. John Fiske, groups the Indians in three leading divisions, – as savage, barbarous, and half-civilized.

The savage Indians ranged to the west of Hudson Bay, and southward between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, to the northern part of Mexico. They lived by catching fish or game. They knew little or nothing of tilling the soil. They did not dwell in permanent villages, but roamed from place to place like Bedouin Arabs.

The barbarous Indians inhabited the country east of the Rocky Mountains. They did not depend wholly upon hunting or fishing, but knew how to upturn the soil slightly with rude tools, and raise squashes, beans, tomatoes, and, most important of all, Indian corn. They lived in villages, and made houses that would last several years. They had dogs of an inferior breed, but no other domestic animals. Some tribes were able to weave coarse cloth and make weapons of polished stones. They had strange social customs and singular religious beliefs. Fighting was their principal occupation.

The half-civilized Indians once lived in New Mexico and the adjoining region. They have had almost nothing to do with the history of the United States. They are the Pueblo Indians, so called from the pueblos or strongholds, dwellings which they built of stones or of sun-dried brick. Some of these strongholds, story above story, would accommodate at least three thousand inhabitants! They were built oftentimes in situations almost inaccessible, like eagles' nests on cliffs, apparently that they might be defended more easily against the attack of an enemy.

6. The Northmen and their Discoveries.– The real contact between the eastern and western halves of the world practically began in 1492, the year of the first great voyage of Columbus. Occasional visitors may have sailed before that date directly across the "Sea of Darkness" from the Old World to the New. The subject is shrouded for the most part in the mists of vague stories and obscure traditions.

It seems quite certain, however, that in the year 986 a daring Scandinavian navigator, Eric the Red, founded on the southwestern coast of Greenland a colony that lasted four or five hundred years. In the same year, as the Iceland Sagas (heroic legends) tell us, another Norse sailor, voyaging from Iceland to Greenland, was driven by storms far out towards the southwest, and was perhaps the first white man to behold the American coast.

Many interesting ruins of stone-built houses and of a church are still to be seen on that desolate Greenland shore. In those ages the Northmen, or Norsemen, as the people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were called, were the most skillful sailors in the world. Eric the Red had several sons, bold sailors like their father. The oldest of these (whose statue stands on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston), Leif the Lucky, with thirty-five hardy men, sailed south from Greenland in the year 1000, to explore these lands that had been discovered fourteen years before. He landed at several points along the coast. In a place which he called "Vinland the Good" (land of vines), he found an abundance of luscious wild grapes. Just where this sturdy Norse sailor feasted on the grapes is, of course, uncertain, but good authorities are inclined to think it may have been not far from Plymouth, on the coast of Massachusetts Bay. He returned home in the spring. Two years later Leif's brother, Thorwald, came on a voyage of discovery, but was killed by the natives in the summer of 1004.

In the spring of the year 1007 an Icelandic chief, accompanied by his wife and a crew of one hundred and sixty men, in three vessels, came to this Vinland. He remained here three years, and had many dealings with the Indians.

The Norsemen went home and gave vivid and accurate descriptions of the land they visited. They described the Indians, the fish, the animals, and the plants, all of which are given in the Icelandic chronicles. No real relic, however, of these people has yet been found upon our own coast.

Columbus, who visited Iceland in the year 1477, may have had access to the Icelandic archives, and have learned of the discoveries of these rovers of the deep. But we have no evidence on that point. After the eleventh century America remained as much unknown as if the bold Northmen had never steered their dragon-prowed ships along our shores. The waves that incessantly rolled upon its sands or dashed against its rocks brought no vessel from the far-away lands of the East. Nearly five hundred years were to come and go before, in the fullness of time, the hour struck for the real and fruitful discovery of the New World. It was left for Columbus, the great Genoese navigator, to open wide its gates!

CHAPTER II.

COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But like that of many learned men of his day, his estimate of the distance is widely wrong. He supposes it to be only a few thousand miles, requiring but a few weeks' sail. Little does he imagine that directly in his westward path lies a vast continent, and beyond this rolls an ocean far wider than the Atlantic!

10. Curious Things from the Unknown West.– To reflecting minds many facts gave hints of lands in the distant west. Curiously carved wood had been washed ashore by westerly gales; far out on the sunset sea an old pilot had picked up a quaintly wrought paddle; cane stalks of tropic growth, and huge pines that could not have come from the east, had drifted to the Azores. It was believed that these articles, strange to European eyes, had floated across the broad ocean from the eastern coast of Asia.

Meditating much upon all these and kindred facts, and upon the teachings of science, Columbus conceives himself to be divinely commissioned to open up this new route to India, incidentally discovering unknown lands and showing that the earth was round. But this stupendous project calls for ships, men, and vast sums of money. He is poor, and he has no rich patrons.

11. Columbus seeks Aid from Foreign Governments.– For ten years Columbus tried to persuade some European government to send him on this voyage across the Atlantic. First he sought help from his own people, the republic of Genoa; then from Venice, and afterwards from Portugal. For seven years he had patiently and persistently endeavored to interest Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Spain, in his scheme of a shorter route to India than that which their rivals, the Portuguese, were hoping to find by sailing down the western coast of the dark continent. After years of waiting and seeking, the long-sought help at last came. Isabella had faith in Columbus, and proved herself a firm friend. She listened patiently to his plans; and she finally decided to fit out an expedition at the expense of her own kingdom of Castile.

By the terms of the agreement, Columbus was to be admiral of all the oceans he sailed and viceroy of all the lands he discovered, and to have one-eighth of all the profits of the expedition – the pearls, diamonds, gold, silver, and spices.