Chapter 10

172. Fights with the Indians; how the settlers held their town; Indian Rock; the "Miami[7] Slaughter House."--But the people of Marietta had hardly begun to feel at home in their little settlement before a terrible Indian war broke out. The village of Marietta had a high palisade[8] built round it, and if a man ventured outside that palisade he went at the risk of his life; for the Indians were always hiding in the woods, ready to kill any white man they saw. When the settlers worked in the cornfield, they had to carry their guns as well as their hoes, and one man always stood on top of a high stump in the middle of the field, to keep a bright lookout.

There is a lofty rock on the Ohio River below Marietta, which is still called Indian Rock. It got its name because the Indians used to climb up to the top and watch for emigrants coming down the river in boats. When they saw a boat, they would fire a shower of bullets at it, and perhaps leave it full of dead and wounded men to drift down the river. In the western part of Ohio, on the Miami River, the Indians killed so many people that the settlers called that part of the country by the terrible name of the "Miami Slaughter House."

[Footnote 7: Miami (Mi-am'i).]

[Footnote 8: See picture of a palisade in paragraph 70.]

173. What General Wayne did.--But President Washington sent a man to Ohio who made the Indians beg for peace. This man was General Wayne; he had fought in the Revolution, and fought so furiously that he was called "Mad Anthony Wayne." The Indians said that he never slept, and named him "Black Snake," because that is the quickest and boldest snake there is in the woods, and in a fight with any other creature of his kind he is pretty sure to win the day. General Wayne won, and the Indians agreed to move off and give up a very large part of Ohio to the white settlers. After that there was not much trouble, and emigrants poured in by thousands.

174. Summary.--In 1788 General Rufus Putnam, with a company of emigrants, settled Marietta, Ohio. The town was named in honor of Queen Mary of France, who had helped us during the Revolution. It was the first town built in what is now the state of Ohio. After General Wayne conquered the Indians that part of the country rapidly increased in population.

What did General Rufus Putnam do for Washington? Where did General Putnam go in 1788? What is said of Ohio at that time? Where did the _Mayflower_ stop? What is said of Queen Mary of France? What did the settlers name their town? What did Washington say about the settlers? What did these people do? What is said about the Indians? What about Indian Rock? What was the country on the Miami River called? What is said about General Wayne? What did the Indians call him? Why did they give him that name? What did the Indians agree to do? What happened after that?

ELI WHITNEY (1765-1825).

175. The name cut on a door.--Near Westboro', Massachusetts,[1] there is an old farm-house which was built before the war of the Revolution. Close to the house is a small wooden building; on the door you can read a boy's name, just as he cut it with his pocket-knife more than a hundred years ago.[2] Here is the door with the name. If the boy had added the date of his birth, he would have cut the figures 1765; but perhaps, just as he got to that point, his father appeared and said rather sharply: Eli, don't be cutting that door. No, sir, said Eli, with a start; and shutting his knife up with a snap, he hurried off to get the cows or to do his chores.[3]

[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 135.]

[Footnote 2: The house is no longer standing, and the door has disappeared.]

[Footnote 3: Chores: getting in wood, feeding cattle, etc.]

176. What Eli Whitney used to do in his father's little workshop; the fiddle.--Eli Whitney's father used that little wooden building as a kind of workshop, where he mended chairs and did many other small jobs. Eli liked to go to that workshop and make little things for himself, such as water-wheels and windmills; for it was as natural for him to use tools as it was to whistle.

Once when Eli's father was gone from home for several days, the boy was very busy all the while in the little shop. When Mr. Whitney came back he asked his housekeeper, "What has Eli been doing?" "Oh," she replied, "he has been making a fiddle." His father shook his head, and said that he was afraid Eli would never get on much in the world. But Eli's fiddle, though it was rough-looking, was well made. It had music in it, and the neighbors liked to hear it: somehow it seemed to say through all the tunes played on it, "_Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well._"

177. Eli Whitney begins making nails; he goes to college.--When Eli was fifteen, he began making nails. We have machines to-day which will make more than a hundred nails a minute; but Eli made his, one by one, by pounding them out of a long, slender bar of red-hot iron. Whitney's hand-made nails were not handsome, but they were strong and tough, and as the Revolutionary War was then going on, he could sell all he could make.

After the war was over the demand for nails was not so good. Then Whitney threw down his hammer, and said, "I am going to college." He had no money; but he worked his way through Yale College, partly by teaching and partly by doing little jobs with his tools. A carpenter who saw him at work one day, noticed how neatly and skilfully he used his tools, and said, "There was one good mechanic spoiled when you went to college."

178. Whitney goes to Georgia; he stops with Mrs. General Greene; the embroidery frame.--When the young man had completed his course of study he went to Georgia to teach in a gentleman's family. On the way to Savannah he became acquainted with Mrs. Greene, the widow of the famous General Greene[4] of Rhode Island. General Greene had done such excellent fighting in the south during the Revolution that, after the war was over, the state of Georgia gave him a large piece of land near Savannah.

Mrs. Greene invited young Whitney to her house; as he had been disappointed in getting the place to teach, he was very glad to accept her kind invitation. While he was there he made her an embroidery frame. It was much better than the old one that she had been using, and she thought the maker of it was wonderfully skilful.

[Footnote 4: General Greene: see paragraph 140.]

179. A talk about raising cotton, and about cotton seeds.--Not long after this, a number of cotton-planters were at Mrs. Greene's house. In speaking about raising cotton they said that the man who could invent a machine for stripping off the cotton seeds from the plant would make his fortune.

For what is called raw cotton or cotton wool, as it grows in the field, has a great number of little green seeds clinging to it. Before the cotton wool can be spun into thread and woven into cloth, those seeds must be pulled off.

At that time the planters set the negroes to do this. When they had finished their day's labor of gathering the cotton in the cotton field, the men, women, and children would sit down and pick off the seeds, which stick so tight that getting them off is no easy task.

After the planters had talked awhile about this work, Mrs. Greene said, "If you want a machine to do it, you should apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." "But," said Mr. Whitney, "I have never seen a cotton plant or a cotton seed in my life"; for it was not the time of year then to see it growing in the fields.

180. Whitney gets some cotton wool; he invents the cotton-gin; what that machine did.--After the planters had gone, Eli Whitney went to Savannah and hunted about until he found, in some store or warehouse, a little cotton wool with the seeds left on it. He took this back with him and set to work to make a machine which would strip off the seeds.

He said to himself, If I fasten some upright pieces of wire in a board, and have the wires set very close together, like the teeth of a comb, and then pull the cotton wool through the wires with my fingers, the seeds, being too large to come through, will be torn off and left behind. He tried it, and found that the cotton wool came through without any seeds on it. Now, said he, if I should make a wheel, and cover it with short steel teeth, shaped like hooks, those teeth would pull the cotton wool through the wires better than my fingers do, and very much faster.

He made such a wheel; it was turned by a crank; it did the work perfectly; so, in the year 1793, he had invented the machine the planters wanted.

Before that time it used to take one negro all day to clean a single pound of cotton of its seeds by picking them off one by one; now, Eli Whitney's cotton-gin,[5] as he called his machine, would clean a thousand pounds in a day.

[Footnote 5: Gin: a shortened form of the word _engine_, meaning any kind of a machine.]

181. Price of common cotton cloth to-day; what makes it so cheap; "King Cotton."--To-day nothing is much cheaper than common cotton cloth. You can buy it for ten or twelve cents a yard, but before Whitney invented his cotton-gin it sold for a dollar and a half a yard. A hundred years ago the planters at the south raised very little cotton, for few people could afford to wear it; but after this wonderful machine was made, the planters kept making their fields bigger and bigger. At last they raised so much more of this plant than of anything else, that they said, "Cotton is king." It was Eli Whitney who built the throne for that king; and although he did not make a fortune by his machine, yet he received a good deal of money for the use of it in some of the southern states.

Later, Mr. Whitney built a gun-factory near New Haven, Connecticut, at a place now called Whitneyville; at that factory he made thousands of the muskets which we used in our second war with England in 1812.

[Footnote 6: In the war of 1812 the British war-ships attacked Fort McHenry, one of the defences of Baltimore. Francis Scott Key, a native of Maryland, who was then detained on board a British man-of-war, anxiously watched the battle during the night; before dawn the firing ceased. Key had no means of telling whether the British had taken the fort until the sun rose; then, to his joy, he saw the American flag still floating triumphantly above the fort--that meant that the British had failed in their attack, and Key, in his delight, hastily wrote the song of the _Star Spangled Banner_ on the back of a letter which he had in his pocket. The song was at once printed, and in a few weeks it was known and sung from one end of the United States to the other.]

182. Summary.--About a hundred years ago (1793), Eli Whitney of Westboro', Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin, a machine for pulling off the green seeds from cotton wool, so that it may be easily woven into cloth. That machine made thousands of cotton-planters and cotton manufacturers rich, and by it cotton cloth became so cheap that everybody could afford to use it.

What name did a boy cut on a door? What did Eli make in that workshop? What did he make while his father was away? What did his father say? What did Eli's fiddle seem to say? What did Eli make next? How did he make his nails? Where did he go after he gave up making nails? When he left college where did he go? What lady did he become acquainted with? What did he make for her? What did the cotton-planters say? What must be done to raw cotton before it can be made into cloth? Who did this work? What did Mrs. Greene say to the planters? What did Mr. Whitney say? What did he do? Tell how he made his machine. What did he call it? How many pounds of cotton would his cotton-gin clean in a day? How much could one negro clean? What is said about the price of cotton cloth? What did the planters say about cotton? Who built the throne for King Cotton? What did Mr. Whitney build at Whitneyville? What did he make there?

THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

183. How much cotton New Orleans sends to Europe; Eli Whitney's work; who it was that bought New Orleans and Louisiana for us.--To-day the city of New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, sends more cotton to England and Europe than any other city in America.

If you should visit that city and go down to the riverside, you would see thousands of cotton bales[1] piled up, and hundreds of negroes loading them on ocean steamers. It would be a sight you would never forget.

Before Eli Whitney[2] invented his machine, we sent hardly a bale of cotton abroad. Now we send so much in one year that the bales can be counted by millions. If they were laid end to end, in a straight line, they would reach clear across the American continent from San Francisco to New York, and then clear across the ocean from New York to Liverpool, England. It was Eli Whitney, more than any other man, who helped to build up this great trade. But at the time when he invented his cotton-gin, we did not own New Orleans, or, for that matter, any part of Louisiana or of the country west of the Mississippi River. The man who bought New Orleans and Louisiana for us was Thomas Jefferson.

[Footnote 1: A bale or bundle of cotton is usually somewhat more than five feet long, and it generally weighs from 400 to 550 pounds. The cotton crop of this country in 1891 amounted to more than 8,650,000 bales; laid end to end, in a straight line, these bales would extend more than 8000 miles.]

[Footnote 2: 2 See paragraph 180.]

184. Who Thomas Jefferson was; Monticello;[3] how Jefferson's slaves met him when he came home from Europe.--Thomas Jefferson was the son of a rich planter who lived near Charlottesville in Virginia.[4] When his father died, he came into possession of a plantation of nearly two thousand acres of land, with forty or fifty negro slaves on it.

There was a high hill on the plantation, which Jefferson called Monticello, or the little mountain. Here he built a fine house. From it he could see the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge for an immense distance. No man in America had a more beautiful home, or enjoyed it more, than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's slaves thought that no one could be better than their master. He was always kind to them, and they were ready to do anything for him. Once when he came back from France, where he had been staying for a long time, the negroes went to meet his carriage. They walked several miles down the road; when they caught sight of the carriage, they shouted and sang with delight. They would gladly have taken out the horses and drawn it up the steep hill. When Jefferson reached Monticello and got out, the negroes took him in their arms, and, laughing and crying for joy, they carried him into the house. Perhaps no king ever got such a welcome as that; for that welcome was not bought with money: it came from the heart. Yet Jefferson hoped and prayed that the time would come when every slave in the country might be set free.

[Footnote 3: Monticello (Mon-ti-cel'lo).]

[Footnote 4: See map in paragraph 140.]

185. Thomas Jefferson hears Patrick Henry speak at Richmond.--Jefferson was educated to be a lawyer; he was not a good public speaker, but he liked to hear men who were. Just before the beginning of the Revolutionary War (1775), the people of Virginia sent men to the city of Richmond to hold a meeting in old St. John's Church. They met to see what should be done about defending those rights which the king of England had refused to grant the Americans.

One of the speakers at that meeting was a famous Virginian named Patrick Henry. When he got up to speak he looked very pale, but his eyes shone like coals of fire. He made a great speech. He said, "We must fight! I repeat it, sir,--we must _fight!_" The other Virginians agreed with Patrick Henry, and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, with other noted men who were present at the meeting, began at once to make ready to fight.

186. Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence; how it was sent through the country.--Shortly after this the great war began. In a little over a year from the time when the first battle was fought, Congress asked Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and some others to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson really wrote almost every word of it. He was called the "Pen of the Revolution"; for he could write quite as well as Patrick Henry could speak.

The Declaration was printed and carried by men mounted on fast horses all over the United States. When men heard it, they rang the church bells and sent up cheer after cheer. General Washington had the Declaration read to all the soldiers in his army, and if powder had not been so scarce, they would have fired off every gun for joy.

187. Jefferson is chosen President of the United States; what he said about New Orleans.--A number of years after the war was over Jefferson was chosen President of the United States; while he was President he did something for the country which will never be forgotten.

Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, with the lower part of the Mississippi River, then belonged to the French; for at that time the United States only reached west as far as the Mississippi River. Now as New Orleans stands near the mouth of that river, the French could say, if they chose, what vessels should go out to sea, and what should come in. So far, then, as that part of America was concerned, we were like a man who owns a house while another man owns one of the doors to it. The man who has the door could say to the owner of the house, I shall stand here on the steps, and you must pay me so many dollars every time you go out and every time you come in this way.

Jefferson saw that so long as the French held the door of New Orleans, we should not be free to send our cotton down the river and across the ocean to Europe. He said we must have that door, no matter how much it costs.

188. Jefferson buys New Orleans and Louisiana for the United States.--Mr. Robert R. Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was in France at that time, and Jefferson sent over to him to see if he could buy New Orleans for the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte[5] then ruled France. He said, I want money to purchase war-ships with, so that I can fight England; I will sell not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana besides, for fifteen millions of dollars. That was cheap enough, and so in 1803 President Jefferson bought it.

If you look on the map[6] you will see that Louisiana then was not simply a good-sized state, as it is now, but an immense country reaching clear back to the Rocky Mountains. It was really larger than the whole United States east of the Mississippi River. So, through President Jefferson's purchase, we added so much land that we now had more than twice as much as we had before, and we had got the whole Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, and what is now the great city of St. Louis besides.

[Footnote 5: Napoleon Bonaparte (Na-po'le-on Bo'na-part).]

[Footnote 6: See map in this paragraph, and compare map in paragraph 187.]

189. Death of Jefferson; the words cut on his gravestone.--Jefferson lived to be an old man. He died at Monticello on the Fourth of July, 1826, just fifty years, to a day, after he had signed the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, who had been President next before Jefferson, died a few hours later. So America lost two of her great men on the same day.

Jefferson was buried at Monticello. He asked to have these words, with some others, cut on his gravestone:--

Here Lies Buried THOMAS JEFFERSON, Author of the Declaration of American Independence.

190. Summary.--Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote the Declaration of Independence. After he became President of the United States, he bought Louisiana for us. The purchase of Louisiana, with New Orleans, gave us the right to send our ships to sea by way of the Mississippi River, which now belonged to us. Louisiana added so much land that it more than doubled the size of the United States.

Before Whitney invented his cotton-gin how much cotton did we send abroad? How much do we send from New Orleans now? Did we own New Orleans or Louisiana when Whitney invented his cotton-gin? Who bought them for us? Who was Thomas Jefferson? What is said about Monticello? Tell how Jefferson's slaves welcomed him home. For what profession was Jefferson educated? Tell about Patrick Henry. What did he say? What did Washington and Jefferson do? What did Jefferson write? What was he called? How was the Declaration sent to all parts of the country? What was Jefferson chosen to be? To whom did New Orleans and Louisiana then belong? How far did the United States then extend towards the west? What could the French say? What were we like? What did Jefferson say? Did we buy it? How much did we pay? How large was Louisiana then? How much land did we get? What else did we get? When did Jefferson die? What other great man died on the same day? What words did Jefferson have cut on his gravestone at Monticello?

ROBERT FULTON (1765-1815).

191. What Mr. Livingston said about Louisiana; a small family in a big house; settlements in the west; the country beyond the Mississippi River.--Even before we bought the great Louisiana country, we had more land than we then knew what to do with; after we had purchased it, it seemed to some people as though we should not want to use what we had bought for more than a hundred years. Such people thought that we were like a man with a small family who lives in a house much too large for him; but who, not contented with that, buys his neighbor's house, which is bigger still, and adds it to his own.

If a traveller in those days went across the Alleghany Mountains[1] to the west, he found some small settlements in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but hardly any outside of those. What are now the great states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were then a wilderness; and this was also true of what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi.

If the same traveller, pushing forward, on foot or on horseback,--for there were no steam cars,--crossed the Mississippi River, he could hardly find a white man outside what was then the little town of St. Louis. The country stretched away west for more than a thousand miles, with nothing in it but wild beasts and Indians. In much of it there were no trees, no houses, no human beings. If you shouted as hard as you could in that solitary land, the only reply you would hear would be the echo of your own voice; it was like shouting in an empty room--it made it seem lonelier than ever.

[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 140.]