American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States History

From very early times there existed overland routes of trade between Europe and Asia. During the Middle Ages traffic over these routes greatly increased, so that by the fifteent...

After the discovery of the New World by Columbus, the Spaniards, who had no other thought than that he had found a new way to India, dreamed eagerly of its marvellous wealth, an...

Only five years after Columbus made his discoveries in the West India Islands, John Cabot sailed from England in search of a short northwest passage to Asia. Directing his cours...

About twenty years after the failure of Raleigh's attempt to plant a settlement in America, another effort was made by a body of merchants and wealthy men called the London Comp...

When Smith returned to England he left the colony without a leader. At once the Indians, who had been held in check by fear of Smith, began to rob and plunder the settlement, an...

Only thirteen years after Jamestown was settled, a colony of Englishmen, very different in character from the gold hunters of Virginia, landed on the Massachusetts coast. These...

For years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth (1620) their number grew so slowly that by 1630 the population was only three hundred. After that year they began to incr...

The Pilgrims and Puritans were not the only people who had to suffer persecution in England because they did not believe in the doctrines and forms of worship of the Established...

The same year in which William Penn laid out Philadelphia and there made a treaty with the Indians, a noted Frenchman sailed down the Mississippi River, exploring it in the inte...

As a pioneer in leading the way along the Ohio and the Mississippi, La Salle did much for France. He hoped to do far more. His cherished dream was to build up in this vast and f...

We have just seen how the English and the French struggled to get control of the Ohio Valley. But the fighting in the Last French War was not confined to this region. Many of th...

With the fall of Quebec, France lost her hold of nearly all the territory in North America that she had acquired through the energy and heroism of her explorers. England profite...

We have just seen how the people of Virginia, under the leadership of Patrick Henry, arose against King George's pet measure, the Stamp Act. But the Virginians were not alone in...

After the "Boston Tea Party," affairs became more serious than ever in Massachusetts. As a punishment to the rebellious colonists for daring to oppose their royal master, the En...

American independence, the beginnings of which we have just been considering, was accomplished after a long struggle. Many brave men fought on the battle-field, and many who nev...

We left George Washington at Mount Vernon, his extensive plantation on the Virginia bank of the Potomac River. After his marriage with Mrs. Custis, who had large property of her...

We have rapidly glanced at the course of the Revolution so far as Washington was concerned in it. But we should fail to understand the connection of events were we to pass over...

You will recall that at the beginning of the Last French War in 1756 the English colonies lived almost entirely between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Such cont...

Through the achievements of early pioneers and settlers, of whom Daniel Boone is the type, the region lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River came into t...

After the purchase of Louisiana thousands of settlers joined the ever-swelling tide of westward migration which had been set in motion by the early pioneers. These frontiersmen...

Only four years after the Clermont made its successful trip up the Hudson, the first steamboat on the Ohio was launched at Pittsburg. This boat was the forerunner of numerous st...

Andrew Jackson's stern rebuke of the nullification movement was a timely one, for there existed in the South a widespread feeling that the Union was not supreme over the States....

Great as was the power of the steamboat and the railroad in quickening the social life of mankind, of still greater influence in binding together remote communities was the inve...

While Morse had been patiently struggling toward the completion of his invention, the nation had been growing more and more tense in its contest over slavery and State rights. A...

In tracing the leading events in the remarkable career of the martyr-President, we have had occasion to refer briefly to the causes and results of the Civil War. It was a strugg...

Thus far we have directed our attention to the prominent events in American history centring about certain leaders and heroes. In so doing we have in every chapter given emphasi...