A School History of the United States Part 1

A School History of the United States.

by John Bach McMaster.

PREFACE

It has long been the custom to begin the history of our country with the discovery of the New World by Columbus. To some extent this is both wise and necessary; but in following it in this instance the attempt has been made to treat the colonial period as the childhood of the United States; to have it bear the same relation to our later career that the account of the youth of a great man should bear to that of his maturer years, and to confine it to the narration of such events as are really necessary to a correct understanding of what has happened since 1776.

The story, therefore, has been restricted to the discoveries, explorations, and settlements within the United States by the English, French, Spaniards, and Dutch; to the expulsion of the French by the English; to the planting of the thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard; to the origin and progress of the quarrel which ended with the rise of thirteen sovereign free and independent states, and to the growth of such political inst.i.tutions as began in colonial times. This period once pa.s.sed, the long struggle for a government followed till our present Const.i.tution--one of the most remarkable political instruments ever framed by man--was adopted, and a nation founded.

Scarcely was this accomplished when the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon involved us in a struggle, first for our neutral rights, and then for our commercial independence, and finally in a second war with Great Britain. During this period of nearly five and twenty years, commerce and agriculture flourished exceedingly, but our internal resources were little developed. With the peace of 1815, however, the era of industrial development commences, and this has been treated with great--though it is believed not too great--fullness of detail; for, beyond all question, _the_ event of the world's history during the nineteenth century is the growth of the United States. Nothing like it has ever before taken place.

To have loaded down the book with extended bibliographies would have been an easy matter, but quite unnecessary. The teacher will find in Channing and Hart's _Guide to the Study of American History_ the best digested and arranged bibliography of the subject yet published, and cannot afford to be without it. If the student has time and disposition to read one half of the reference books cited in the footnotes of this history, he is most fortunate.

JOHN BACH McMASTER.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

CHAPTER I

EUROPE FINDS AMERICA

%1. Nations that have owned our Soil.%--Before the United States became a nation, six European powers owned, or claimed to own, various portions of the territory now contained within its boundary. England claimed the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. Spain once held Florida, Texas, California, and all the territory south and west of Colorado. France in days gone by ruled the Mississippi valley. Holland once owned New Jersey, Delaware, and the valley of the Hudson in New York, and claimed as far eastward as the Connecticut river. The Swedes had settlements on the Delaware. Alaska was a Russian possession.

Before attempting to narrate the history of our country, it is necessary, therefore, to tell

1. How European nations came into possession of parts of it.

2. How these parts pa.s.sed from them to us.

3. What effect the ownership of parts of our country by Europeans had on our history and inst.i.tutions before 1776.

%2. European Trade with the East; the Old Routes.%--For two hundred years before North and South America were known to exist, a splendid trade had been going on between Europe and the East Indies. Ships loaded with metals, woods, and pitch went from European seaports to Alexandria and Constantinople, and brought back silks and cashmeres, muslins, dyewoods, spices, perfumes, ivory, precious stones, and pearls. This trade in course of time had come to be controlled by the two Italian cities of Venice and Genoa. The merchants of Genoa sent their ships to Constantinople and the ports of the Black Sea, where they took on board the rich fabrics and spices which by boats and by caravans had come up the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. The men of Venice, on the other hand, sent their vessels to Alexandria, and carried on their trade with the East through the Red Sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Routes to India]

%3. New Routes wanted.%--Splendid as this trade was, however, it was doomed to destruction. Slowly, but surely, the Turks thrust themselves across the caravan routes, cutting off one by one the great feeders of the Oriental trade, till, with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, they destroyed the commercial career of Genoa. As their power was spreading rapidly over Syria and toward Egypt, the prosperity of Venice, in turn, was threatened. The day seemed near when all trade between the Indies and Europe would be ended, and men began to ask if it were not possible to find an ocean route to Asia.

Now, it happened that just at this time the Portuguese were hard at work on the discovery of such a route, and were slowly pushing their way down the western coast of Africa. But as league after league of that coast was discovered, it was thought that the route to India by way of Africa was too long for the purposes of commerce.[1] Then came the question, Is there not a shorter route? and this Columbus tried to answer.

[Footnote 1: Read the account of Portuguese exploration in search of a way to India, in Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I., pp. 274-334.]

%4. Columbus seeks the East and finds America.%[2]--Columbus was a native of Genoa, in Italy. He began a seafaring life at fourteen, and in the intervals between his voyages made maps and globes. As Portugal was then the center of nautical enterprise, he wandered there about 1470, and probably went on one or two voyages down the coast of Africa. In 1473 he married a Portuguese woman. Her father had been one of the King of Portugal's famous navigators, and had left behind him at his death a quant.i.ty of charts and notes; and it was while Columbus was studying them that the idea of seeking the Indies by sailing due westward seems to have first started in his mind. But many a year went by, and many a hardship had to be borne, and many an insult patiently endured in poverty and distress, before the Friday morning in August, 1492, when his three caravels, the _Santa Maria_ (sahn'-tah mah-ree'-ah), the _Pinta_ (peen'-tah), and the _Nina_ (neen'-yah), sailed from the port of Palos (pah'-los), in Spain.

[Footnote 2: There is reason to believe that about the year 1000 A.D.

the northeast coast of America was discovered by a Norse voyager named Leif Ericsson. The records are very meager; but the discovery of our country by such a people is possible and not improbable. For an account of the pre-Columbian discoveries see Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I., pp. 148-255.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Santa Maria]

His course led first to the Canary Islands, where he turned and went directly westward. The earth was not then generally believed to be round. Men supposed it to be flat, and the only parts of it known to Europeans were Iceland, the British Isles, the continent of Europe, a small part of Asia, and a strip along the coast of the northern part of Africa. The ocean on which Columbus was now embarked, and which in our time is crossed in less than a week, was then utterly unknown, and was well named "The Sea of Darkness." Little wonder, then, that as the sh.o.r.es of the last of the Canaries sank out of sight on the 9th of September, many of the sailors wept, wailed, and loudly bemoaned their cruel fate. After sailing for what seemed a very long time, they saw signs of land. But when no land appeared, their hopes gave way to fear, and they rose against Columbus in order to force him to return.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nina]

But he calmed their fears, explained the sights they could not understand, hid from them the true distance sailed, and kept steadily on westward till October 7, when a flock of land birds were seen flying to the southwest. Pinzon (peen-thon'), who commanded one of the vessels, begged Columbus to follow the birds, as they seemed to be going toward land. Had the little fleet kept on its way, it would have brought up on the coast of Florida. But Columbus yielded to Pinzon. The ships were headed southwestward, and about ten o'clock on the night of October 11, Columbus saw a light moving in the distance. It was made by the inhabitants going from hut to hut on a neighboring coast. At dawn the sh.o.r.e itself was seen by a sailor, and Columbus, followed by many of his men, hastened to the beach, where, October 12, 1492, he raised a huge cross, and took possession of the country in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, who had supplied him with caravels and men.[1] He had landed on one of a group of islands which we call the Bahamas.[2]

[Footnote 1: Columbus called the new land San Salvador (sahn sahl-vah-dor', Holy Savior), because October 12, the day on which it was discovered, was so named in the Spanish calendar.]

[Footnote 2: Three islands of this group, Cat, Turks, and Watlings, have rival claims as the landing place of Columbus. At present, Watlings Island is believed to be the one on which he first set foot. Read an account of the voyage in Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I., pp.

408-442; Irving's _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, Vol. I., Book III.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coat of arms of Columbus]

During ten days he sailed among these islands. Then, turning southward, he coasted along Cuba to the eastern end, and so to Haiti, which he named Hispaniola, or Little Spain. There the _Santa Maria_ was wrecked.

The _Pinta_ had by this time deserted him, and, as the _Nina_ could not carry all the men, forty were left at Hispaniola, to found the first colony of Europeans in the New World. Giving the men food enough to last a year, Columbus set sail for Spain on the 3d of January, 1493, and on March 15 was safe at Palos.

Of the greatness of his discovery, Columbus had not the faintest idea.

That he had found a new world; that a continent was blocking his way to the East, never entered his mind. He supposed he had landed on some islands off the east coast of Asia, and as that coast was called the Indies, and as the islands were reached by sailing westward, they came to be called the West Indies, and their inhabitants Indians; and the native races of the New World have ever since been called Indians.

Although Columbus in after years made three more voyages to the New World, he never found out his mistake, and died firm in the belief that he had discovered a direct route to Asia.[1]

[Footnote 1: Columbus began his second voyage in September, 1493, and discovered Jamaica, Porto Rico (por'-to ree'-co), and the islands of the Caribbean Sea. On his third voyage, in 1498, he discovered the island of Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela, and saw South America at the mouth of the Orinoco River. During his fourth and last voyage, 1502-1504, he explored the sh.o.r.es of Honduras and the Isthmus of Panama in search of a strait leading to the Indian Ocean. Of course he did not find it, and, going back to Spain, he died poor and broken-hearted on May 20, 1506.]

%5. The Atlantic Coast explored.%--And now that Columbus had shown the way, others were quick to follow. In 1497 and 1498 came John and Sebastian Cabot (cab'-ot), sailing under the flag of England, and exploring our coast from Labrador to Cape Cod; and Pinzon and Solis, with Vespucius[2] for pilot, sailing under the flag of Spain along the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico, around the peninsula of Florida, and northward to Chesapeake Bay. Between 1500 and 1502 two Portuguese navigators named Cortereal (cor-ta-ra-ahl') went over much the same ground as the Cabots. For the time being, however, these voyages were fruitless. It was not a new world, but China and j.a.pan, the Indian Ocean, and the spice islands, that Europe was seeking. When, therefore, in 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon, pa.s.sed around the end of Africa, reached India, and came back to Portugal in 1499 with his ship laden with the silks and spices of the East, all explorers turned southward, and for eleven years after the visit of the Cortereals no voyages were made to North America.

[Footnote 2: As this man was an Italian, his name was really Amerigo Vespucci (ah-ma'-ree-go ves-poot'-chee), but it is usually given in its Latinized form, Americus Vespucius (a-mer'-i-cus ves-pu'-she-us).]

%6. Why the Continent was called America.%--But some great voyages meantime were made to South America. In 1500 a Portuguese fleet of thirteen vessels, commanded by Cabral, started from Portugal for the East. In place of following the usual route and hugging the west coast of Africa, Cabral went off so far to the westward that one day in April, 1500, he was amazed to see land. It proved to be what is now Brazil, and after sailing along a little way he sent one of his vessels home to Portugal with the news.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %DISCOVERY% ON THE EAST COAST OF %AMERICA%]

He did this because six years before, in June, 1494, Spain and Portugal made a treaty and agreed that a meridian should be drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and be known as "The Line of Demarcation"

All heathen lands discovered, no matter by whom, to the east of this line, were to belong to Portugal; all to the west of it were to be the property of Spain. Now, as the strange coast seemed to be east of the line of demarcation, and therefore the property of Portugal, Cabral sent word to the King that he might explore it.

Accordingly, in May, 1501, the King sent out three ships in charge of Americus Vespucius. Vespucius sighted the coast somewhere about Cape St.

Roque, and, finding that it was east of the line of demarcation, explored it southward as far as the mouth of the river La Plata. As he was then west of the line, and off a coast which belonged to Spain, he turned and sailed southeastward till he struck the island of South Georgia, where the Antarctic cold and the fields of floating ice stopped him and sent him back to Lisbon.

The results of this great voyage were many. In the first place, it secured Brazil for Portugal. In the second place, it changed the geographical ideas of the time. The great length of coast line explored proved that the land was not a mere island, but that Vespucius had found a new continent in the southern hemisphere,--off the coast of Asia, as was then supposed. This for a time was called the "Fourth Part" of the world,--the other three parts being Europe, Asia, and Africa. But in 1507 a German professor published a little book on geography, in which he suggested that the new part of the world discovered by Americus, the part which we call Brazil, should be called America.

As Columbus was not supposed to have discovered a new world, but merely a new route to Asia, this suggestion seemed very proper, and soon the word "America" began to appear on maps as the name of Brazil. After a while it was applied to all South America, and finally to North America also.

%7. The Pacific discovered; the Mexican Gulf Coast explored.%--A few years after the publication of the little book which gave the New World the name of America, a Spaniard named Balboa landed on the Isthmus of Panama, crossed it (1513), and from the mountains looked down on an endless expanse of blue water, which he called the South Sea, because when he first saw it he was looking south.

Meantime another Spaniard, named Ponce de Leon (pon'tha da la-on'), sailed with three ships from Porto Rico, in March, 1513, and on the 27th of that month came in sight of the mainland. As the day was Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call Pascua (pas'-coo-ah) Florida, he called the country Florida.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of 1515][1]

[Footnote 1: Showing what was then supposed to be the shape and position of the newly discovered lands.]