Part 21

This so-called “Jeffersonian simplicity” seemed strange then, because he was a man of wealth and lived in a beautiful mansion. Many people did not like his simple ways. They thought the President of the United States should show more dignity. The minister from Great Britain was offended because, when he came to present his respects and those of the king of England, President Jefferson received him in a dressing-gown and slippers and heavy yarn socks. But the sensible people thought so much of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence that they did not mind what kind of stockings Thomas Jefferson wore.

While he was President, Jefferson saw that the country’s interests would be hampered while New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, belonged to France. It was like having another nation own and control the south door of the United States. So Jefferson sent men to purchase from the French government New Orleans and the right of way out of the Mississippi. Napoleon was then in power, and as he needed money to carry on his war with England, he offered to sell to the United States, for fifteen million dollars, not only New Orleans, but all the western country which France had claimed since the days of La Salle and other explorers. This was a great bargain and the men whom President Jefferson had sent bought the land without waiting to hear from home. This was called the Louisiana Purchase, and the people were more than glad to approve what the President had done.

The expedition of Lewis and Clark was sent out by Jefferson to explore and make maps of the Louisiana Purchase.

So Thomas Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but he was the means of doubling the size and wealth of the country, making it extend from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

ANDREW JACKSON, AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR HERO

About ten years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two Irish linen weavers, Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson, came across the Atlantic to a backwoods settlement in North Carolina. There the young settlers built a cabin, but before they had lived long in their rude little home, Andrew Jackson died, leaving his wife with two small sons, Hugh and Robert. The young widow went to live with a sick sister a few miles away, and when the third baby boy was born to her here, she named him Andrew for his dead father. The house in which little Andrew Jackson was born was so near the boundary line between North and South Carolina that years afterwards both states claimed him as their son.

Elizabeth Jackson had to keep house for her sister to support herself and her three little boys. Andrew was in his tenth year when the War for Independence broke out in the north. Three years later the British came to fight near the Jacksons’ home in the south. Hugh, the oldest, now a lad of seventeen, fought in the battle of Stono, and died, soon after, of heat and exhaustion.

Then the British troops came nearer, and Widow Jackson, with Robert and Andrew, was driven from her poor home. These terrible experiences developed in the tall, red-haired, freckled, thirteen-year-old Scotch-Irish lad a deep hatred of the “red-coats,” as the British soldiers were called.

As if Andrew had not already reasons enough for hating his enemies, a squad of dragoons surprised him with his brother Robert and a cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, at the home of the Crawfords, where they had brought Tom, wounded and ill, for his mother’s care. After capturing the young American “soldiers three,” the British cavalrymen broke the Crawfords’ dishes, tore their clothing, ripped open feather beds, insulted the frightened mother and abused the little children. Then, as if for a crowning insult, the British officer ordered Andy to clean his boots. The young Irish soldier drew himself up and said proudly,

“Sir, I am not a servant, but a prisoner of war, and I claim to be treated as such.”

The angry dragoon struck at the youth’s head with his saber. Andy threw up his hand and saved his own life by breaking the force of the stroke, but received deep cuts on his forehead and hand. He wore the two scars to his dying day.

Andrew’s brother Robert was commanded to perform the same low service and refused with the same proud spirit; he also received a sword-cut on his head which nearly killed him. The two Jackson youths were then taken away to a prison pen at Camden, South Carolina, where American soldiers were treated like beasts and where many were already dying of smallpox.

While the Jackson brothers were in this prison, a battle was fought near by. Young Andrew whittled a hole through a board with an old razor, so that he could watch the battle that was raging around them.

When the poor mother heard that her wounded sons were confined in a filthy prison where they were exposed to smallpox, she walked forty miles to Camden and managed to have them exchanged for some British soldiers the Americans had captured. Begging the use of two horses, she placed Robert on one of them, as he was very ill with smallpox. She rode the other horse to hold her son in his saddle; and young Andrew, “weak and wounded, sick and sore,” staggered along behind them on foot. Robert died two days after reaching home, but Andrew recovered after a long and severe illness.

After nursing her only remaining son back to health, that brave, unselfish mother heard that many American soldiers were sick and dying in the British prison ship in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. She walked more than one hundred and fifty miles to nurse and help them as she had nursed her own sons. She took the ship fever and died, giving her devoted life for freedom and for country.

So Andrew Jackson, now a tall, thin youth of fourteen with a “shock of sandy hair,” was without father, mother, brothers, money, or near friends--but with a bitter grudge against Britain as the cause of all his troubles and sorrows. His life was made better by his deep love of his brave, noble mother’s memory. When he grew up and became the most popular man in the United States, Andrew Jackson often said with a smile of pride:

“_That_ I learned from my good old mother!”

Andrew Jackson had but few chances to go to school, and then only a few weeks at a time. He learned the saddler’s trade and studied when he could take the time from hard work. Little as he learned from books, he knew more than most of his neighbors. He taught school sometimes to add to what he earned at his trade, so that he could study law. Even North Carolina, wild as that new country was, became too “civilized” for Andrew Jackson, and he crossed the mountains into Tennessee and settled at Nashville, where he began to practise law. In that rough country he soon became a leader. In the midst of the wild life in which the chief “sports” were horse-racing, Indian shooting, fighting duels, and the like, young “Judge” Jackson was “hail-fellow, well met!” He soon was elected to Congress, but he found life at the capital entirely too “genteel” for him. When the southern Indians went on the warpath and massacred white settlers, General Jackson and his troops from Tennessee drove them from place to place and killed nearly all the savage murderers. He was called the Hero of the War of 1812, because he won the Battle of New Orleans, the greatest land victory in that war.

The people loved General Jackson because he was a bluff, warm-hearted man, and because, whether he fought with the Indians or the British, “he thrashed ’em every time!” He was named “Old Hickory” because he was about as tough in fiber and as rough on the outside as the hickory tree. He was probably the most popular hero that ever lived in America, for more boys were named Andrew Jackson than even George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. January eighth, the date of Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, is still celebrated as Jackson Day. Jackson was called “the Man of the People,” including the “rough and ready” people of the great, new west; Jefferson represented the more educated classes; while Washington was the man of the upper class of people. Still, Jackson stood for the white people only. It was Abraham Lincoln who came thirty years later and stood for all the people, black and white.

General Jackson was elected and carried to the White House by a great wave of popularity. The people were so pleased to have him for their President that they crowded into the White House and stood on the new satin covered furniture in their muddy boots. They broke the china and glassware and spilled punch on the velvet carpets. In their

frantic efforts to shake hands with their hero-president they nearly crushed him to death.

President Jackson treated his political enemies as he did the Indians and the English. He turned thousands of men out of office and appointed his friends in their places. “To the victors belong the spoils,” he said, but most people to-day believe the warlike President had the wrong idea in treating public service as “spoils of war.” After serving his country as President, Andrew Jackson lived at the Hermitage, a beautiful mansion he had built near Nashville, Tennessee.

When the aged ex-President knew he was dying, he called his friends and slaves around his bed and told them he wanted them all to meet him in heaven. When the simple but grand old hero died, they found his dead wife’s miniature close to his heart where he had worn it for many years.

Then they remembered that, rough and violent as he often had been with men, he had never spoken a cross or cruel word to his wife or any of his own household.

“The bravest are the tenderest.”

WEBSTER, CLAY, CALHOUN, THREE GREAT CHAMPIONS IN CONGRESS

“There were giants in those days,” a hundred years ago in the United States of America; not giants in body, but in mind and heart. Besides the Presidents and the generals in the War of 1812 and the Indian wars, the greatest men in America were Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who were in Congress together. Daniel Webster was the man of New England, Henry Clay of the west, and John C. Calhoun of the south.

Daniel Webster was born among the hills of New Hampshire, the ninth of the ten children of his father. He had a huge head, a high forehead, and great, deep, inquiring eyes. Webster once said that he did not remember when he could not read the Bible. He learned chapter after chapter of it by heart and remembered them all his life.

Daniel’s father lived on a rocky farm in New Hampshire and had a hard time to educate his growing family. He was called Captain Webster because he had been an officer in the War for Independence. His children used to delight in hearing about General Washington. After Daniel grew to be a great man he was proud to tell how the Father of his Country had trusted his father. Once he said,

“I should rather have it said upon my father’s tombstone that he had guarded the person of George Washington and was worthy of such a trust, than to have carved upon it the greatest title that the world could give.”

Captain Webster said to his son one day after a gentleman who was riding by had stopped to speak to him:

“Dan, that man beat me by a few votes when I ran against him for Congress, and all because he had a better education. For that reason I intend you shall have a good education, and I hope to see you work your way up to Congress.”

Daniel’s next older brother’s name was Ezekiel. He was larger and stronger than Daniel who, because of his poor health, was not expected to do hard work on the farm. This gave Daniel time to read and improve his mind. Yet he was not allowed to be idle; he was expected to do “chores” and other light work about the place. One day Captain Webster went away, after giving both boys a certain task to do while he was gone. The lads, boy-like, spent the day having a good time, so that when their father came home he found the work not done.

“Zeke,” he said sternly, “what have you been doing all day?”

“Nothing,” said Zeke sheepishly.

“And what have _you_ been doing, Dan?” asked Captain Webster.

“Helping Zeke!” said the younger boy with a grin.

After that when any one was idle, it was said that he was “helping Zeke.”

When the time came for Father Webster to send Daniel away to school, as he had promised, the younger boy said he would not go unless Zeke could have the same chance. So Captain Webster mortgaged the farm to raise the money to educate both boys. Even then the sons had to stay out of school at times to earn money to help themselves through the academy and college.

In mental work Daniel proved stronger and better able to earn money than his older brother. A good story is told of Daniel’s coming, after teaching a term of school, to see Ezekiel at college and giving his brother one hundred dollars--nearly all he had earned, keeping only three dollars for himself until he could earn more. That was Daniel Webster’s best way of “helping Zeke.”

Daniel was the more brilliant of the two, so that he was through college as soon as his brother, though he had not spent so much time there. Their father explained one difference between the two sons:

“Ezekiel could not tell half he knew; but Daniel could tell more than he knew.”

By the time Daniel was out of college his father had become a county judge, and was able to offer his youngest son a position as clerk of the court at fifteen hundred dollars a year, which was a large salary for that time and place. But Daniel refused the place, saying: “I intend to be a lawyer myself and not to spend my life jotting down other men’s doings.”

“‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’” said Judge Webster, reminding his son that there were already too many lawyers for them all to make a good living.

“There’s always room at the top,” said young Daniel Webster.

He went to Boston to study law, and his fame as attorney and orator spread far and wide. The two sons soon paid their father’s debts, and proud old Judge Webster soon saw his son Daniel not only in Congress, but acknowledged to be the greatest man in the Senate.

Ezekiel Webster did not have so brilliant a career as his younger brother, but Daniel always yielded to “Zeke’s” better judgment, even in the greatest public affairs. Ezekiel did not live to see Daniel’s highest success, and it was said that a new look of sadness came into the great Webster’s face, and never left it, after hearing of “Zeke’s” sudden death.

Although Daniel Webster was not six feet tall, his high, full, square brow and dignified bearing made him seem a giant. Carlyle, the great Scottish philosopher, met him in London and said: “Webster is a walking cathedral!”

When Daniel Webster was still a small boy on his father’s “rock-ribb’d” farm in New Hampshire, a thin, homely youth of fifteen came into the Court of Chancery in Richmond, Virginia. He was so awkward and bashful and dressed so queerly that the clerks winked at one another and snickered behind his back. That youth, whose name was Henry Clay, had come to Richmond from a low, swampy region called “the Slashes,” where he lived with his widowed mother. Because he used to ride a poor old horse to a mill near his home to get a little corn ground, Henry Clay was afterward called “the Mill Boy of the Slashes.”

Henry’s mother married again and moved out to Kentucky when it was still a western wilderness. Young Clay stayed in Virginia to study law and was soon admired because of his brightness. He improved his time, as well as his appearance, so that when he was eighteen, he was a popular orator and “the bright, particular star” of the Richmond Debating Society.

Then, instead of finding “room higher up” in his home state, Henry went west to be near his mother, and to “grow up with the country.” The twenty-one-year-old attorney hung out his sign in the new and growing town of Lexington, Kentucky. He was good-natured and thoughtful. He understood law very well for so young a man. As he was an eloquent speaker, he became a successful attorney. He married and settled down on a 600-acre estate which he named “Ashland.” This estate is still known all over the world as “the home of Henry Clay.”

The year before the War of 1812 began, Henry Clay was sent to Congress from Kentucky and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He raised his eloquent voice against England and bore a strong part in supporting President Madison in carrying on the war. He was so earnest in this that he was known as a leader of “the War Hawks.” When the war was over, Henry Clay was one of five men sent to Europe by the United States to arrange the terms of peace with Great Britain--a peace which has not been broken for more than a hundred years.

Henry Clay was three times a candidate for the presidency. He had done so much for the country that he had made enemies of many whom he had to oppose at different times. So each time he was defeated by a man not nearly so great or powerful, but for whom more people were willing to vote.

While Webster and Clay were leaders in Congress there was great excitement because that body passed a tariff law which the southern people did not like. Many of the southern leaders, especially those of South Carolina, said that Congress had no right to pass such a law and that each state might declare the objectionable law null and void or of no effect within its borders. Such action by a state was called “nullification.” There was talk that some of the states would withdraw from the Union if the President tried to enforce the hated law. Such withdrawal on the part of a state was called “secession.”

About the time these mutterings of disunion were in the air, Robert Y. Hayne, a great orator from South Carolina, made a strong speech in the Senate of the United States, maintaining the right of his state to “nullify” and withdraw from the Union. Daniel Webster, the champion of the Union, delivered one of the greatest appeals ever made by any orator, in his famous reply to Hayne. It closed with these now familiar words:

“Let my last feeble and lingering glance behold the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable question as, ‘What is all this worth?’ or those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--_Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable_.”

The greatest leader in the south and champion of the right of his state, South Carolina, was John C. Calhoun. He also was an eloquent speaker. He declared in the Senate of the United States, in speaking of the tariff law meant to tax goods which people needed, “We look upon it as a dead law, null and void, and will not obey it.” South Carolina nullified the tariff law and threatened to secede from the Union.

General Andrew Jackson, the bluff old Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, was then President. He declared, “The Union must and shall be preserved!” John C. Calhoun and all others acquainted with “Old Hickory,” as the President was nicknamed, knew that he meant just what he said. It seemed that civil war was about to begin when Henry Clay, who loved the Union, averted the danger by proposing a plan of compromise which both sides could accept.

THE KIND HEART OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Little Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River into Indiana, and lived all winter in an open shed called a “half-faced camp,” before his father built a better cabin, with bare earth for its floor. Tom Lincoln, Abe’s father, was “a mighty hunter.” He liked to shoot game better than the hard work of clearing land and farming. He thought Abe was timid because he did not like to kill harmless animals or see them suffer.

During the fourteen years Abe lived in southern Indiana, he went to school a few weeks at a time--less than a year in all. A girl who went to school when he did, used to tell, after she became an old woman, that Abe’s first “composition” was against cruelty to animals. She always remembered how he read this sentence in it: “An ant’s life is as sweet to it as ours is to us.”

One day Abe caught several lads laughing at a turtle as it moved slowly about, showing, as well as a dumb animal could, the misery it was in. For there were burning coals on its back, and the biggest boy stood by with a smoking shingle in his hand. This showed Abe how the hot coals came upon the terrapin’s back. Snatching the shingle from the big bully’s hand, he brushed them off and began

to paddle the cruel boy with it, calling him a cowardly fellow for hurting a helpless turtle.

Just before Abe was twenty-one, Father Lincoln moved to newer country in Illinois. Abe’s step-sisters were now married, so there was a big family going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. One of the step-sisters took with her a pet dog. It was in the midst of winter, and some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice. One day the little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the Lincoln party had forded a shallow stream. After crossing, Abe, who was then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and whining, afraid of being left behind. It was growing dark and they had to make their camp for the night. All the others were for leaving the “troublesome cur” to its fate. Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving to Illinois, said of this:

“But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm. His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog’s gratitude amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone.”

Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness of heart. When he was a country lawyer he had to ride from one county seat to another, attending court. The judge and several attorneys rode from place to place where court was to be held. Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny stories.

The Illinois roads were then nearly always very dusty or very muddy. One day their party saw a hog stuck in a deep mudhole, squealing loudly. The party rode by and laughed at the pig’s plight, but no one took the trouble to help it out. But those despairing squeals touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln.

He soon fell behind and galloped back to rescue the animal. Taking several rails from the roadside fence, he used one to pry over, and another to lift the pig out. By taking care and plenty of time, he managed to place the end of a rail under the hog without hurting it. The animal was now so weak that this took a long time, and Lawyer Lincoln’s clothes were badly smeared with mud.

At last, when the pig realized that it was free, it started off toward the farmhouse where it belonged, flopping its big ears and grunting gratefully. Mr. Lincoln did not catch up with his friends until they had arrived at the tavern in the next town.