The Story of Our Country Part 15

There had been fighting in Kansas, one of the territories that was to be made into a state, and among the fighters was an old man named John Brown, who thought that G.o.d had called him to do all he could for the freedom of the slaves.

Some people think that John Brown was not quite right in his brain. What he did was to gather a body of men and to take possession of Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac River, where there was a government army. He thought that the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid in mult.i.tudes and that he could start a slave war that would run all through the South.

It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But some troops came under Colonel Robert E. Lee, and Brown and his party were forced to surrender.

Some of them were killed and wounded and the others taken prisoners.

John Brown and six others were tried and hanged. But the half-insane old man had done his work. That fight at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to bring on the war.

I said there were two things. The other was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President.

For a long time, as I have told you, the Abolitionists, or people opposed to slavery, were few in number. When they grew more numerous they formed a political party, known as the Anti-slavery Party. In 1856 a new party, called the Republican Party, was formed and took in all the Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election of that year eleven states voted for its candidate, John C. Fremont, the man who had taken California from Mexico.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator of whom I shall soon tell you more, was the candidate of the Republican Party, and in the election of that year this new party was successful and Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT

I SHOULD like to tell you all about one of the greatest and n.o.blest men who ever lived in our country, and give you his story from the time he was born until the time he died. But that would be biography, and this is a book of history. Biography is the story of a man; history is the story of a nation. So I cannot give you the whole life of Abraham Lincoln, but only that part of it which has to do with the history of our country.

Nations, you should know, are divided into monarchies and republics. In a monarchy the ruler is called a king, or some other name which means the same thing. And when a king dies his son takes his place as king.

The king may be n.o.ble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; he may be a genius, or he may be an idiot, without any sense at all; he may be kind and just, or he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he is king. There may be some good points in letting a man be born king, but you can see that there are many bad ones. The history of the nations has often shown this, as you may have seen in what we have said of some of the English kings who had to do with America.

In a republic the ruler--who is called president instead of king--is not born to his office, but is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule the nation all his life, but only for a few years. In that way the best and wisest man in the nation may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always get the best man in the United States; but that is the fault of the people, it is not the fault of the plan. There is one thing sure, we never get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.

There are times when we do choose our best and wisest man, and everybody thinks we did so when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As I have told you, as soon as he was made President a great war began between the two halves of our people. It is not so easy to rule in war as in peace, and I must say that poor Lincoln had a very hard time of it. But he did the best he could, and people say now that no man in our nation could have done better. Abraham Lincoln stands next to George Washington among the great and n.o.ble men of America.

There is one more thing it is well to know. It is not only the rich and proud that we choose to be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life as poor boys, and none of them began poorer than "honest Abe Lincoln,"

as the people he lived among called him. He well deserved this name, for he was always good and honest.

No doubt there are many poor boys among my readers, but I do not believe that any of you are as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as hard a life. So you see that while a king must have a king or great n.o.ble for father, a President may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any one of my young readers, if he can bring himself strongly to the notice of the people, may become President, and I should not wonder at all if some one among you should do so in future times.

I told you that I would not speak about Abraham Lincoln's early life, but I see that I shall have to do so. He was born in a mean little log-cabin in the back woods a hundred years ago, in the year 1809. His father could not read and did not like to work, and the poor little fellow had hardly enough to eat.

His mother loved him, but she could do little for him, and she died when he was only eight years old. Then his father married a second wife. She was a good woman, and she did all she could for the poor, forlorn little boy. But it did not look much then as if this ragged and hungry little chap would become President of the United States.

There was one good thing about little Abe, he had a great love for books. He went to school only long enough to learn to read and write, but he borrowed and read all the books he could get. When he found he could not go to school he studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen fire, working out the problems on the back of a wooden fire shovel. When this was full he would sc.r.a.pe it off smooth and begin again. In this way the boy got to be the best scholar in all the country around him. How many of you would have worked as hard as he did to get an education? Yet it was this kind of work that made him President.

Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning. He was always a good talker, and he grew to be one of the best public speakers of his times.

He became so well known and so well respected that at length he was sent to Congress. Lincoln did not believe that slavery was a good thing for the country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in itself. So he joined the Republican Party, which had just been formed.

There was another fine speaker in Illinois named Douglas, who had different ideas about slavery from Lincoln and was a member of the Democratic Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about Illinois making speeches to the people, and great crowds came to hear them, for they were two of the best speakers in the country. Everywhere people were talking about Lincoln and Douglas and saying what able men they were.

In 1860 came the time when a new President was to be chosen, and out of all the political leaders of the country these two men from far-west Illinois were selected--Douglas by those who were in favor of slavery and Lincoln by those who opposed slavery. When election day came round and the votes were counted, Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, was found to be elected President of the United States.

The people of the South were in a terrible state of mind when they found that a Republican, a man opposed to slavery, was elected President. They could not tell what would take place. The Abolitionists who were against slavery were in power and might pa.s.s laws that would rob them of all their slaves. For years they had been fighting the North in Congress--fighting by words, I mean. Now they determined to leave the Union, and to fight with swords and guns if the North would not let them go in peace. One by one the Southern States pa.s.sed resolutions to go out of the Union. And on all sides they collected powder and b.a.l.l.s and other implements of war, for their leaders felt sure they would have to fight.

But Lincoln hoped the states would not quarrel. He begged them not to.

But if they did it was his duty to do what the people had put him there for. He had been elected President of the United States, and he must do all he could to keep these states united.

It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abraham Lincoln became President.

By the middle of April the North and South were at war. Both sides had their soldiers in the field and fighting had begun. The South wanted to take Washington, and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce battle was fought at a place called Bull Run, a few miles south of Washington.

The Southern States formed a Union of their own, which was called the Southern Confederacy. They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jefferson Davis for their President. Davis had fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Congress, where he showed himself an able lawmaker. So the South chose him as their best man for President.

The war was half over before President Lincoln did anything about slavery. He was there to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But the time came when he found that freeing the slaves would help him in saving the Union. When this time came--it was on the 1st of January, 1863--he declared that all the slaves should be free. It was a great thing for this country, for it was clear that there could be no peace while slavery remained.

But the war went on more fiercely than ever, and it was not until April, 1865, that it came to an end. The South was not able to fight any longer and had to give up, and the Union was saved. It was saved without slavery, which was a very good thing for both North and South, as we have since found out.

But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not live to learn what the country gained by the war, for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked and foolish man, who thought he would avenge the South by shooting the President.

It was a terrible deed. The whole country mourned for its n.o.blest man, slain in the hour of victory. The South as well as the North suffered by his death, for he was too just a man to oppress those who had been beaten in war, and in him all the people, North and South, lost their best and ablest friend.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GREAT CIVIL WAR

I HAVE no doubt that some of the young folks who read this book will want to hear the story of the great war that was spoken of in the last chapter. Some of the boys will, at any rate. The girls do not care so much about war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world would be much better off if there were no wars.

Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys something about it. The girls can skip it, if they wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil War would take a book five times as large as this, so all I can do is to draw a sort of outline map of it. A civil war, you should know, means a war within a nation, where part of a people fight against the other part. A war between two nations is called a foreign war.

When our Civil War broke out we had thirty-three states--we have more than forty-five to-day. Eleven of these states tried to leave the Union and twenty-two remained, so that the Union states were two to one against the non-Union. But the Union states had more than twice the people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as you may see, the war was a one-sided affair. It was nearly all fought in the South, whose people suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the Union. Many of them lost all they had and became very poor.

There were three fields or regions in which this war took place. One of these was a narrow region, lying between Washington and Richmond, the two capital cities. But small as it was, here the greatest battles were fought. Both sides were fighting fiercely to save their capitals.

The second region of the war was in the West. This was a vast region, extending from Kentucky and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here there were many long, weary marches and much hard fighting and great loss of life. The third region was on the ocean and rivers, where iron-clad ships first met in battle, and where some famous combats took place.

Over these three regions a million and more of men struggled for years, fighting with rifle and cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and wounding one another and causing no end of misery in all parts of the land. For the people at home suffered as much as the men on the battle-field, and many mothers and sisters were heartbroken when word came to them that their dear sons or brothers had been shot down on the field of blood. War is the most terrible thing upon the earth, though men try to make it look like a pleasant show with their banners and trumpets and drums.

As soon as the news of the war came there was a great coming and going of soldiers, and beating of drums, and fluttering of banners, and making of speeches, and thousands marched away, some to Washington and some to Richmond, and many more to the strongholds of the West. Mothers wept as they bade good-by to their sons, whom they might never see again. And many of the soldier-boys had sad hearts under their brave faces. Soon hundreds of these poor fellows were falling dead and wounded on fields of battle, and then their people at home had good reason to weep and mourn.

I have told you about the battle of Bull Run, south of Washington, the first great battle of the war. Here the Southern army gained the victory, and the people of the South were full of joy. But Congress now called for half a million of men and voted half a billion of dollars.

Both sides saw that they had a great war before them.

Bull Run was the only severe battle in 1861, but in 1862 both the North and the South had large armies, and there was much hard fighting in the East and the West.

I must tell you first of the fighting in Virginia. General George B.

McClellan was in command of the Union army there. He led it down close to Richmond, which he hoped to capture. There was a sharp fight at a place called Fair Oaks, where General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate general, was wounded. General Robert E. Lee took his place. They could not have picked out a better man, for he proved himself to be one of the greatest soldiers of modern times.

The Confederates had another fine general named Thomas J. Jackson. He was called "Stonewall" Jackson, because, in the battle of Bull Run, some one had said:

"Look at Jackson! There he stands like a stone wall!"