Chapter 13

[Footnote 11: When the button at Chicago is pressed down, the electricity passing over the wire to Denver presses the point there down on the paper, and so makes a dot or dash which stands for a letter on the roll of paper as it passes under it. In this way words and messages are spelled out. The message on the strip of paper above is the question, _How is trade?_]

228. Summary.--Professor Morse invented the Electric Telegraph. He received much help from Mr. Alfred Vail. In 1844 Professor Morse and Mr. Vail built the first line of telegraph in the United States, or in the world. It extended from Washington to Baltimore. The telegraph makes it possible for us to send a written message thousands of miles in a moment; by the telephone, which was invented after Professor Morse's death, we can talk with people who are several hundreds of miles away and hear what they say in reply.

Tell how they sent the news of the completion of the Erie Canal. What did Samuel Morse say to himself? Tell about Morse as a painter. What did he want to find? What was he talking about on his voyage back to America? What is a telegraph? How can you make a small wire telegraph? What did Professor Morse make? How did he live? What did he do in 1839? How did he get help about his telegraph? What did he ask Congress to do? What did some men in Congress say? What news did Miss Annie Ellsworth bring him? What was the first message sent by telegraph in 1844? How many miles of telegraph are there now in the United States? Is there a telegraph line under the sea? What is said about the telephone?

GENERAL SAM HOUSTON (1793-1863)

229. Sam Houston and the Indians; Houston goes to live with the Indians.--When General Jackson whipped the Indians in Alabama,[1] a young man named Sam Houston[2] fought under Jackson and was terribly wounded. It was thought that the brave fellow would certainly die, but his strong will carried him through, and he lived to make himself a great name in the southwest.

Although Houston fought the Indians, yet, when a boy, he was very fond of them, and spent much of his time with them in the woods of Tennessee.

Long after he became a man, this love of the wild life led by the red men in the forest came back to him. While Houston was governor of Tennessee (1829) he suddenly made up his mind to leave his home and his friends, go across the Mississippi River, and take up his abode with an Indian tribe in that part of the country. The chief, who had known him as a boy, gave him a hearty welcome. "Rest with us," he said; "my wigwam is yours." Houston stayed with the tribe three years.

[Footnote 1: See paragraph 216.]

[Footnote 2: Sam Houston (Hew'ston): he always wrote his name Sam Houston; he was born near Lexington in Rockbridge County, Virginia.]

230. Houston goes to Texas; what he said he would do; the murders at Alamo[3]; the flag with one star; what Houston did; Texas added to the United States; our war with Mexico.--At the end of that time he said to a friend, "I am going to Texas, and in that new country I will make a man of myself." Texas then belonged to Mexico; and President Andrew Jackson had tried in vain to buy it as Jefferson bought Louisiana. Houston said, "I will make it part of the United States." About twenty thousand Americans had already moved into Texas, and they felt as he did.

War broke out between Texas and Mexico, and General Sam Houston led the Texan soldiers in their fight for independence. He had many noted American pioneers[4] and hunters in his little army: one of them was the brave Colonel Travis[5] of Alabama; another was Colonel Bowie[6] of Louisiana, the inventor of the "bowie knife"; still another was Colonel David Crockett of Tennessee, whose motto is a good one for every young American--"Be sure you're right, then--_go ahead_." These men were all taken prisoners by the Mexicans at Fort Alamo--an old Spanish church in San Antonio--and were cruelly murdered.

Not long after that General Houston fought a great battle near the city which is now called by his name.[7] The Mexicans had more than two men to every one of Houston's; but the Americans and Texans went into battle shouting the terrible cry "_Remember the Alamo!_" and the Mexicans fled before them like frightened sheep. Texas then became an independent state, and elected General Houston its president. The people of Texas raised a flag having on it a single star. For this reason it was sometimes called, as it still is, the "Lone Star State."

Texas was not contented to stand alone; she begged the United States to add her to its great and growing family of states. This was done[8] in 1845. But, as we shall presently see, a war soon broke out (1846) between the United States and Mexico, and when that war was ended we obtained a great deal more land at the west.

[Footnote 3: Alamo (Al'a-mo).]

[Footnote 4: Pioneers: those who go before to prepare the way for others; the first settlers in a country are its pioneers.]

[Footnote 5: Travis (Tra'vis).]

[Footnote 6: Bowie (Bow'e).]

[Footnote 7: See map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 8: See map in this paragraph.]

231. General Sam Houston in the great war between the North and the South; what he said.--We have seen the part which General Sam Houston took in getting new country to add to the United States. He lived in Texas for many years after that. When, in 1861, the great war broke out between the North and the South, General Houston was governor of the state. He withdrew from office and went home to his log cabin in Huntsville. He refused to take any part in the war, for he loved the Union,--that is, the whole country, North and South together,--and he said to his wife, "My heart is broken." Before the war ended he was laid in his grave.[9]

[Footnote 9: General Houston was buried at Huntsville, about eighty miles northwest of the city of Houston, Texas.]

232. Summary.--General Sam Houston of Tennessee led the people of Texas in their war against Mexico. The Texans gained the victory, and made their country an independent state with General Houston as its president. After a time Texas was added to the United States. We then had a war with Mexico, and added a great deal more land at the west. General Houston died during the war between the North and the South.

Tell about Sam Houston and the Indians. Where did Houston go after he became governor of Tennessee? Where did Houston go next? What did he say he would do about Texas? What was David Crockett's motto? What is said about Fort Alamo? What about the battle with the Mexicans? What did Texas become? To what office was Houston elected? What is said of the Texas flag? When was Texas added to the United States? What war then broke out? What did we get by that war? What is said of General Houston in the great war between the North and the South?

CAPTAIN ROBERT GRAY (1755-1806).

233. Captain Gray goes to the Pacific coast to buy furs; he first carries the Stars and Stripes round the globe.--Not long after the war of the Revolution had come to an end some merchants of Boston sent out two vessels to Vancouver[1] Island, on the northwest coast of America. The names of the vessels were the _Columbia_ and the _Lady Washington_, and they sailed round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Captain Robert Gray went out as commander of one of these vessels.[2] He was born in Rhode Island[3] and he had fought in one of our war-ships in the Revolution.

Captain Gray was sent out by the Boston merchants to buy furs from the Indians on the Pacific coast. He had no difficulty in getting all he wanted, for the savages were glad to sell them for very little. In one case a chief let the captain have two hundred sea-otter skins such as are used for ladies' sacks, and which were worth about eight thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel. After getting a valuable cargo of furs, Captain Gray sailed in the _Columbia_ for China, where he bought a quantity of tea. He then went to the south, round the Cape of Good Hope, and keeping on toward the west he reached Boston in the summer of 1790. He had been gone about three years, and he was the first man who carried the American flag clear round the globe.

[Footnote 1: Vancouver (Van-koo'ver): part of it is seen north of Portland, Or., paragraph 234.]

[Footnote 2: He commanded the _Lady Washington_ at first, and afterward the _Columbia_.]

[Footnote 3: Tiverton, Rhode Island.]

234. Captain Gray's second voyage to the Pacific coast; he enters a great river and names it the Columbia; the United States claims the Oregon country; we get Oregon in 1846.--Captain Gray did not stay long at Boston, for he sailed again that autumn in the _Columbia_ for the Pacific coast, to buy more furs. He stayed on that coast a long time. In the spring of 1792 he entered a great river and sailed up it a distance of nearly thirty miles. He seems to have been the first white man who had ever actually entered it. He named the vast stream the Columbia River, from the name of his vessel. It is the largest American river which empties into the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska.[4]

Captain Gray returned to Boston and gave an account of his voyage of exploration; this led Congress to claim the country through which the Columbia flows[5] as part of the United States.

After Captain Gray had been dead for forty years we came into possession, in 1846, of the immense territory then called the Oregon Country. It was through what he had done that we got our first claim to that country which now forms the states of Oregon and Washington.

[Footnote 4: The Yukon River in Alaska is larger than the Columbia.]

[Footnote 5: The discovery and exploration of a river usually gives the right to a claim to the country watered by that river, on the part of the nation to which the discoverer or explorer belongs.]

235. Summary.--A little over a hundred years ago (1790) Captain Robert Gray of Rhode Island first carried the American flag round the world. In 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River. Because he did that the United States claimed the country--called the Oregon Country--through which that river runs. In 1846 we added the Oregon Country to our possessions; it now forms the two states of Oregon and Washington.

Tell about Captain Gray's voyage to the Pacific coast. What did he buy there? What did he first carry round the globe? Tell about his second voyage. What did he do in 1792? What happened after Captain Gray returned to Boston? What happened in 1846? What two states were made out of the Oregon Country?

CAPTAIN SUTTER[1] (1803-1880).

236. Captain Sutter and his fort; how the captain lived.--At the time when Professor Morse sent his first message by telegraph from Washington to Baltimore (1844), Captain J. A. Sutter, an emigrant from Switzerland, was living near the Sacramento River in California. California then belonged to Mexico. The governor of that part of the country had given Captain Sutter an immense piece of land; and the captain had built a fort at a point where a stream which he named the American River joins the Sacramento River.[2] People then called the place Sutter's Fort, but to-day it is Sacramento City, the capital of the great and rich state of California.

In his fort Captain Sutter lived like a king. He owned land enough to make a thousand fair-sized farms; he had twelve thousand head of cattle, more than ten thousand sheep, and over two thousand horses and mules. Hundreds of laborers worked for him in his wheat-fields, and fifty well-armed soldiers guarded his fort. Quite a number of Americans had built houses near the fort. They thought that the time was coming when all that country would become part of the United States.

[Footnote 1: Sutter (Soo'ter).]

[Footnote 2: See map in this paragraph.]

237. Captain Sutter builds a saw-mill at Coloma;[3] a man finds some sparkling dust.--About forty miles up the American River was a place which the Mexicans called Coloma, or the beautiful valley. There was a good fall of water there and plenty of big trees to saw into boards, so Captain Sutter sent a man named Marshall to build a saw-mill at that place. The captain needed such a mill very much, for he wanted lumber to build with and to fence his fields.

Marshall set to work, and before the end of January, 1848, he had built a dam across the river and got the saw-mill half done. One day as he was walking along the bank of a ditch, which had been dug back of the mill to carry off the water, he saw some bright yellow specks shining in the dirt. He gathered a little of the sparkling dust, washed it clean, and carried it to the house. That evening after the men had come in from their work on the mill, Marshall said to them, "Boys, I believe I've found a gold mine." They laughed, and one of them said, "I reckon not; no such luck."

[Footnote 3: Coloma (Ko-lo'ma): see map in paragraph 236.]

238. Marshall takes the shining dust to Captain Sutter; what he did with it, and how he felt about the discovery.--A few days after that Marshall went down to the fort to see Captain Sutter. Are you alone? he asked when he saw the captain. Yes, he answered. Well, won't you oblige me by locking the door; I've something I want to show you. The captain locked the door, and Marshall taking a little parcel out of his pocket, opened it and poured some glittering dust on a paper he had spread out. "See here," said he, "I believe this is gold, but the people at the mill laugh at me and call me crazy."

Captain Sutter examined it carefully. He weighed it; he pounded it flat; he poured some strong acid on it. There are three very interesting things about gold. In the first place, it is very heavy, heavier even than lead. Next, it is very tough. If you hammer a piece of iron long enough, it will break to pieces, but you can hammer a piece of gold until it is thinner than the thinnest tissue paper, so that if you hold it up you can see the light shining through it. Last of all, if you pour strong acids on gold, such acids as will eat into other metals and change their color, they will have no more effect on gold than an acid like vinegar has on a piece of glass.

For these and other reasons most people think that gold is a very handsome metal, and the more they see of it, especially if it is their own, the better they are pleased with it.

Well, the shining dust stood all these tests.[4] It was very heavy, it was very tough, and the sharp acid did not hurt it. Captain Sutter and Marshall both felt sure that it was _gold_.

But, strange to say, the captain was not pleased. He wished to build up an American settlement and have it called by his name. He did not care for a gold mine--why should he? for he had everything he wanted without it. He was afraid, too, that if gold should be discovered in any quantity, thousands of people would rush in; they would dig up his land, and quite likely take it all away from him. We shall see presently whether he was right or not.

[Footnote 4: Tests: here experiments or trials made to find out what a thing is.]

239. War with Mexico; Mexico lets us have California and New Mexico; "gold! gold! gold!" what happened at Coloma; how California was settled; what happened to Captain Sutter and to Marshall.--While these things were happening we had been at war with Mexico for two years (1846-1848), because Texas and Mexico could not agree about the western boundary line[5] of the new state. Texas wanted to push that line as far west as possible so as to have more land; Mexico wanted to push it as far east as possible so as to give as little land as she could. This dispute soon brought on a war between the United States and Mexico. Soon after gold was discovered at Coloma, the war ended (1848); and we got not only all the land the people of Texas had asked for, but an immense deal more; for we obtained the great territory of California and New Mexico, out of which a number of states and territories have since been made.[6]

In May, 1848, a man came to San Francisco holding up a bottle full of gold-dust in one hand and swinging his hat with the other. As he walked through the streets he shouted with all his might, "Gold! gold! gold! from the American River."

Then the rush for Coloma began. Every man had a spade and a pick-axe. In a little while the beautiful valley was dug so full of holes that it looked like an empty honeycomb. The next year a hundred thousand people poured into California from all parts of the United States; so the discovery of gold filled up that part of the country with emigrants years before they would have gone if no gold had been found there.

Captain Sutter lost all his property. He would have died poor if the people of California had not given him money to live on.

Marshall was still more to be pitied. He got nothing by his discovery. Years after he had found the shining dust, some one wrote to him and asked him for his photograph. He refused to send it. He said, "My likeness ... is, in fact, all I have that I can call my own; and I feel like any other poor wretch:[7] I want _something_ for self."

[Footnote 5: Western boundary line: the people of Texas held that their state extended west as far as the Rio Grande River, but Mexico insisted that the boundary line was at the Nueces River, which is much further east.]

[Footnote 6: Namely: California, Nevada, Utah, and part of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.]

[Footnote 7: Wretch: here a very unhappy and miserable person.]

240. How we bought more land; our growth since the Revolution.--Long before Captain Sutter died, the United States bought from Mexico another great piece of land (1853), marked on the map by the name of the Gadsden Purchase.[8] A number of years later (1867) we bought the territory of Alaska[9] from Russia.

The Revolution ended something over a hundred years ago; if you look on the map in paragraph 187, and compare it with the maps which follow, you will see how we have grown during that time. Then we had just thirteen states[10] which stretched along the Atlantic, and, with the country west of them, extended as far as the Mississippi River.

Next (1803) we bought the great territory of Louisiana (see map in paragraph 188), which has since been divided into many states; then (1819) we bought Florida (see map in paragraph 218); then (1845) we added Texas (see map in paragraph 230); the next year (1846) we added Oregon territory, since cut up into two great states (see map in paragraph 234); then (1848) we obtained California and New Mexico (see map in paragraph 239). Five years after that (1853) we bought the land then known as the Gadsden Purchase (see first map in this paragraph); last of all (1867) we bought Alaska (see second map in this paragraph).

[Footnote 8: See maps in this paragraph. It was called the Gadsden Purchase, because General James Gadsden of South Carolina bought it from Mexico for the United States, in 1853. It included what is now part of Southern Arizona and N. Mexico.]

[Footnote 9: Alaska: see second map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 10: Thirteen states: see footnote 4 in paragraph 102.]

241. "Brother Jonathan's"[11] seven steps.--If you count up these additions, you will see that, beginning with Louisiana in 1803, and ending with Alaska in 1867, they make just seven in all. There is a story of a giant who was so tall that at one long step he could go more than twenty miles; but "Brother Jonathan" can beat that, for in the seven steps he has taken since the Revolution he has gone over three thousand miles. He stands now with one foot on the coast of the Atlantic and with the other on that of the Pacific.

[Footnote 11: "Brother Jonathan": a name given in fun to the people of the United States, just as "John Bull" is to the people of England.

One explanation of the origin of the name is this: General Washington had a very high opinion of the good sense and sound judgment of Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when no one seemed to know where to get a supply of powder, General Washington said to his officers, "We must consult Brother Jonathan on this subject." Afterwards when any serious difficulty arose it became a common saying in the army that "We must consult Brother Jonathan," and in time the name came to stand for the American people.]

242. Summary.--In January, 1848, gold was discovered at Captain Sutter's saw-mill at Coloma, California. Soon after that, Mexico let us have California and New Mexico, and they were added to the United States. Thousands of people, from all parts of the country, hurried to California to dig gold, and so that state grew more rapidly in population than any other new part of the United States ever had in the same length of time. Before Captain Sutter died we added the Gadsden Purchase and Alaska.

Who was Captain Sutter? Where did he live? Tell how he lived. What did he begin to build at Coloma? Tell what Marshall found there, and what was said about it. Tell how Marshall took the shining dust to Captain Sutter, and what the captain did. What made them both certain that the dust was gold? Was the captain pleased with the discovery? What did he think would happen? What is said about our war with Mexico? What did we fight about? What did we get at the end of the war? What happened in May, 1848? Then what happened? How many people went to California? What happened to Captain Sutter? What is said about Marshall? What land did we buy in 1853? What in 1867?

How long ago did the Revolution end? How many states did we have then? [Can any one in the class tell how many we have now?] What land did we buy in 1803? In 1819? What did we add in 1845? In 1846? In 1848? What did we buy in 1853? In 1867? How many such additions have we made in all? What could the giant do? What has "Brother Jonathan" done? Where is one foot? Where is the other?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865).

243. The tall man from Illinois making his first speech in Congress; how he wrote his name; what the people called him.--Not many days before gold was found at Sutter's saw-mill in California (1848), a tall, awkward-looking man from Illinois was making his first speech in Congress. At that time he generally wrote his name

but after he had become President of the United States, he often wrote it out in full,--

The plain country people of Illinois, who knew all about him, liked best to call him by the title they had first given him,--"_Honest Abe Lincoln_," or, for short, "_Honest Abe_." Let us see how he got that name.