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SKETCHES 
 
 OF 
 
 AMERICA 
 
 AND 
 
 AMERICANS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE I. HAIGHT 
 
 1920 
 
 HANSON ROACH FOWLER CO. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
• H 14 
 
 Copyright 1920 
 Hanson Roach Fowler Co. 
 
 JAN -7 1921 
 g)CI,A604881 
 
 -\^v^ I 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
Preface 
 
 THERE is no country whose story is more inter- 
 esting than that of our own United States. To 
 the student of history, America offers a most fertile 
 field. Our annals ought to appeal deeply to all of 
 our citizens. From a wider popular acquaintance 
 with our past will come a better understanding of 
 our institutions, a clearer idea of the rights and 
 privileges of Americans and their foundation, a 
 wider appreciation of the cost of the citizenship we 
 enjoy, and a deeper conception of our duties in cher- 
 ishing and preserving our inheritance. 
 
 In the American narratives, thousands of men 
 and women appear who were leaders in great ac- 
 complishments. Some were partly or wholly ap- 
 preciated by their contemporaries ; many were not 
 generally known or understood. Among all of these 
 are multitudes of heroes. In a country's heroes 
 can be found the measure of that country's ideals. 
 More than this, by a knowledge of heroes ideals can 
 be created and stimulated. 
 
 To arouse, though only in small measure, an in- 
 terest in the heroic and vital of America, these 
 short essays are written. Their fields are very 
 small. None is complete, either as biography or 
 history. All relate to subjects and events that are 
 widely known. If they command attention suffi- 
 cient to induce further particular study by those 
 to whom any element of novelty is presented, or by 
 
PREFACE 
 
 those to whom they serve only as small reminders 
 of the greater fields from which they are drawn, 
 they will have succeeded to the full limit of the 
 author's purpose. 
 
 G. I. H. 
 
The story of the Alamo is of men 
 who, rather than yield to a tyrant, 
 fought valiantly under terrific odds 
 and died in defense of their natural 
 rights. 
 
The Alamo 
 
 "Then came Santa Anna; a crescent of flame! 
 
 Then the red escalade; then the fight hand to hand; 
 Such an unequal fight as never had name 
 
 Since the Persian hordes butchered that doomed Spar- 
 tan band. 
 All day, — all day and all night; and the morning? so slow. 
 
 Through the battle smoke mantling the Alamo. 
 
 "Now silence! Such silence! Two thousand lay dead 
 In a crescent outside! And within? Not a breath 
 
 Save the gasp of a woman, with gory gashed head, 
 All alone, all alone there, waiting for death; 
 
 And she but a nurse. Yet when shall we know 
 Another like this of the Alamo?" 
 
 — Joaquin Miller. 
 
 IN the heart of the city of San Antonio, Texas, 
 an old mission lifts its scarified walls. "The 
 Cottonwood" is the English translation of its pres- 
 ent name. To the Spanish monks who built it two 
 centuries ago it was known as the Mission of San 
 de Valero. It was afterwards called, and is now 
 known to every American, as "The Alamo." 
 
 It is approached along a busy street, where a 
 part of the old enclosure wall is still standing. One 
 passes through the door of the church as reverently 
 as if called there by a profound religious appeal. 
 Within is silence. The few casual visitors move 
 noiselessly over the dirt and gravel floor. The 
 sounds of clanging cars and the busy bustle of the 
 street are unheard. 
 
THE ALAMO 
 
 Down the length of the building is the spot where 
 once the chancel stood. How little need that it 
 should be there now, for every stone is an altar in 
 this great American shrine. To the left of the 
 entrance stood the old doors, rudely carved of na- 
 tive oak. They yielded to the early zealots; the 
 hands of Indians have piously touched them; they 
 show the battering marks of Santa Anna's soldiers. 
 Behind these stout old doors once a little band of 
 stouter hearts had gloriously fought and died. 
 
 One enters the little room where in the early 
 spring of 1836 James Bowie lay sick. The white 
 walls that once had enclosed him arch over in proud 
 silence. In the opposite room, he breathed out his 
 soul with his deadly knife clutched in his hands and 
 dead enemies piled about him. Here it was that 
 Davy Crockett fell, his rifle, "Old Betsy," a gift 
 from admirers in Philadelphia, with him. How 
 many times had it in that immortal siege sent its 
 hurtling death when gently pressed by the steady 
 finger of its master! 
 
 Crossing the church again, there is found another 
 thick-walled room, the old burial place of the priests. 
 Many of their skeletons have been removed, but 
 underneath the earthen floor is much of their dust, 
 now trampled over by the curious multitude. An 
 old font is cut here in one of the walls, but no holy 
 water is now in it. The empty chalice remains as 
 a memorial of the fingers that have touched its 
 edge — fingers once held aloft when "dust to dust" 
 
THE ALAMO 
 
 was said, and now mingled with the soil beneath the 
 visitors' feet. 
 
 The adjacent room has been, in turn, sacristy and 
 munition magazine. Now it holds no cowl or sur- 
 plice, no shot or powder. 
 
 In the body of the church the walls are hung 
 with pictures and mementos. A letter of Davy 
 Crockett, a picture of Bowie, and one of Sam Hous- 
 ton are there. An old cannon, pistol and rifles are 
 among the trophies, but nowhere is to be found the 
 silver mounted "Old Betsy." As far as is known, 
 no hand ever pointed it again, no keen eye again 
 looked along its barrel when Crockett's nerveless 
 arm loosed its hold. 
 
 Near the front of the church the visitor is shown 
 where Colonel Travis drew his dead line. 
 
 What a scene this pile once witnessed! What a 
 story its bullet-spattered and cannon-scarred walls 
 tell! "Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat. 
 The Alamo had none." Nevertheless, the story of 
 its siege as it was gathered from mute memorials 
 and from the lips of it« defenders' enemies cannot 
 be dimmed in the annals of heroic defenses. 
 
 The war of Texan independence was a success- 
 ful struggle for the maintenance of those rights 
 with which men are endowed by birth. At the in- 
 vitation of Mexico, Americans had settled on the 
 prairies of the province of Texas. These pioneers 
 had come there on the understanding that they 
 would enjoy all the rights guaranteed those within 
 
THE ALAMO 
 
 the confines of Mexico by the Constitution of 1824. 
 Santa Anna, the usurper, had denied those rights. 
 The men from the North were unhesitatingly ready 
 to fight for their liberty. In the war that followed 
 many heroic deeds were done, deeds that thrill us 
 now in the recounting. The massacre at Goliad 
 will never be forgotten. Men will always remem- 
 ber the Texan charge at San Jacinto. The battle, 
 however, where every man fought to the last, the 
 siege from which no American survived, has per- 
 haps taken the greatest hold on the imagination of 
 succeeding generations. Thus the name "Alamo" 
 is now one for the conjuring of patriots and heroes. 
 It brings to mind one of the richest memories of 
 the American people. 
 
 The war commenced in a small battle at Gon- 
 zales, in October, 1835. Other minor engagements 
 followed. In December Colonel Neill took the 
 Alamo and the town. On February 11, 1836, 
 Colonel Travis assumed command of the regulars. 
 The volunteers elected James Bowie as their 
 Colonel. The Mexican army gathered on the Rio 
 Grande for the invasion of Texas. On February 
 24th Santa Anna's trained troops were advancing 
 on the Alamo. Colonel Travis' appeals for help to 
 the yet unorganized government of Texas had not 
 been answered. A force, of about one hundred and 
 eighty Texans prepared to resist, to the last man, 
 the threatened assault. Colonel Travis gave to 
 those who desired to leave the opportunity while 
 
THE ALAMO 
 
 yet there was time, but, save one, all remained. 
 As they stepped across the dead line drawn on the 
 floor of the church, each man knew that he was 
 consigning himself to the last sacrifice. What a 
 picture for a painter ! He who would draw it must 
 depict no armor and waving plumes. No boasting 
 knights must be shown. Upon the canvas will 
 appear a little band of modest men, cool and un- 
 afraid ; their hunting shirts of buckskin ; their hands 
 hardened with toil ; their faces bronzed by the wind 
 and sun ; their weapons, rifles which they had borne 
 from early youth. In their faces must appear the 
 quiet light that reveals the steady, inner fire of 
 American manhood. 
 
 The Mexican force has been variously estimated 
 from fifteen hundred to six thousand. Santa Anna 
 called upon Colonel Travis to surrender. His reply 
 came from the cannon's mouth. The assault began. 
 For many days it lasted. From every side were the 
 enemy repulsed; the Mexican soldiers who looked 
 over the outer wall saw briefly and then closed their 
 eyes forever. 
 
 On the morning of Sunday, March 6, Santa Anna 
 stormed the place. There were thousands against 
 a handful. Hundreds of enemies paid final toll to 
 the Texan marksmanship. Hundreds of others lay 
 down with their wounds. Finally the doors gave 
 way. The remaining defenders fought with sword 
 and dagger. How the lightning played as steel met 
 steel! How the two-edged knife of Bowie drank, 
 
THE ALAMO 
 
 and drank again, of the crimson flood! The mas- 
 sacre was completed. The price of freedom was 
 paid. The Mexican General received it to the last 
 vital drop. The Alamo's defense passed into his- 
 tory. 
 
 The following morning Houston, hurrying to the 
 relief of Travis' command, dismounted as the sun 
 was rising. He listened — as only a plainsman can 
 listen — for the Alamo's signal gun. All was silence. 
 Across the prairie came a message, borne by the 
 spirits of heroes. It was remembered at San Jacinto. 
 It will be remembered as long as America endures. 
 True, the Alamo had no messenger of defeat. There 
 was no defeat, but victory — the victory of men who 
 knew how to die. 
 
 I stepped out into the May sunshine. In the yard 
 of the old convent, in a star-shaped bed, the pansies 
 were blooming, some with the blue of the sky, some 
 white, and others of deep red, drunk from hallowed 
 soil. Across the street, above the Federal building 
 a flag floated. Its colors were those of the pansies. 
 Its corner was sprinkled with stars. 
 
One of the very many useful ob- 
 servations that may he made upon the 
 career of George Washington is that 
 by a careful and thorough education 
 he was prepared to successfully meet 
 the great emergencies of his versatile 
 life. 
 
George Washington 
 
 "Where may the wearied eye repose 
 
 When gazing on the Great; 
 Where neither guilty glory glows. 
 
 Nor despicable state? 
 Yes — one — the first — the last — the best— 
 
 The Cincinnatus of the West, 
 
 Whom envy dared not hate, 
 Bequeath the name of Washington, 
 To make men blush there was but one!" 
 
 — Lord Byron. 
 
 AT the foot of a slope leading down from the old 
 Washington mansion at Mt. Vernon, Vir- 
 ginia, stands a simple vault of brick and stone. 
 Within it is the marble-enclosed dust of the first 
 Great American. About it are forest trees. Below 
 it the great Potomac takes its seaward way. Before 
 it, year after year, come multitudes to do reverence 
 at this shrine, one of the most sacred in America. 
 
 In Westmoreland County, Virginia, George 
 Washington was born, February 22nd, 1732. His 
 father was Augustine Washington, a farmer. His 
 mother was Mary Ball, Augustine Washington's 
 second wife. By the first wife four children were 
 born, one of them being Lawrence. By Mary Ball 
 six were born, of whom George was the eldest. 
 
 The four-room house, the home of his earliest 
 childhood, was the usual small and humble birth- 
 place of greatness. 
 
 A few years after the coming of George, the fam- 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ily moved to the banks of the Rappahannock, oppo- 
 site Fredericksburg, where in 1743 Washington's 
 father died. 
 
 Until the autumn of his fifteenth year, George 
 attended "backwoods" schools. He studied dili- 
 gently and played hard. He was proficient in 
 mathematics, and he learned surveying. At thir- 
 teen years of age he prepared a code of one hundred 
 ten precepts which guided him throughout life. 
 Some are as follows: 
 
 "Associate yourself with men of good quality if 
 you esteem your own reputation, for it is better 
 to be alone than in bad company." 
 
 "Undertake not what you cannot perform, but 
 be careful to keep your promise." 
 
 "Let your recreations be manful, not sinful." 
 
 "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little 
 spark of celestial fire called conscience." 
 
 On leaving school, he went to live with his half- 
 brother Lawrence. Lawrence was fourteen years 
 his senior; he was well educated and had, in the 
 war against Spain, served with the English under 
 Admiral Vernon. From his father Lawrence had 
 inherited a tract of land on the Potomac, which, in 
 honor of his admiral, he named Mount Vernon. Not 
 far distant was the home of William Fairfax, whose 
 daughter Lawrence married. A relation of Wil- 
 liam, Lord Fairfax, arrived from England about 
 the time George Washington came to live with his 
 half-brother. Lord Fairfax was a well educated 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 man, a graduate of Oxford. George saw much of 
 the Fairfax family, both at their home and at Mt. 
 Vernon. At Mt. Vernon there resided, too. Ad- 
 jutant Muse, a military tactician of skill, who had 
 served with Lawrence in England's West India 
 campaign. Also, there came to Mt. Vernon another 
 companion in arms of Lawrence, one Jacob Van 
 Braam. He was a great swordsman. 
 
 During the few years that George resided with 
 his half-brother, he surveyed for Lord Fairfax in 
 the Alleghanies. At fifteen schooling in the back- 
 woods was finished, but at Mt. Vernon George 
 Washington entered and attended one of the great- 
 est universities that has ever been set upon Amer- 
 ican soil. He was the only student. The faculty 
 numbered five, — the two Fairfaxes, Lawrence, Muse 
 and Van Braam. From the literary Lord Fairfax, 
 who in England had written for The Spectator, and 
 now past middle life, the student must have gained 
 much. By the well educated, widely experienced 
 Lawrence, were large contributions to George's 
 training made. Van Braam taught thoroughly the 
 swordsman's art. With books, drills and oral in- 
 struction. Muse laid deep the foundation of military 
 genius. 
 
 Washington was fond of sports. He was an ex- 
 cellent wrestler and a fine horseman, and to these 
 gifts he added his training in the Alleghany forests, 
 where woodcraft was learned and a wide acquaint- 
 ance with the Indians gained. In all his study. 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 training and exercise, Washington was diligent and 
 earnest, and, too, he highly trained his powers of 
 observation. 
 
 In the fall of 1751 Lawrence visited the Barba- 
 does in quest of health. George accompanied him. 
 The trip was unavailing, as Lawrence died the fol- 
 lowing spring, shortly after his return to Mt. Ver- 
 non. Upon this trip Washington's diary shows his 
 power as an observer and his interest in everything 
 he saw — the soil, the crops, the people and the im- 
 ports and exports. While in the Barbadoes, Wash- 
 ington was ill with smallpox. This the diary re- 
 cords. 
 
 George Washington was not an accident. He 
 was highly trained for the great work that came 
 to him. His versatility and his sureness were the 
 products of educating toil. To Lawrence Wash- 
 ington, as well as to George, are we indebted, for 
 through Lawrence George gained the opportunity 
 for an education, an opportunity which now is so 
 easily open to all. 
 
 Of no man in history have we more accurate 
 knowledge than of our first President. Nearly 
 everything he wrote, from his precepts when thir- 
 teen years of age, to his will, which he himself 
 penned, has been preserved. A study of his life 
 shows always that the s,teady unfolding of his pow- 
 ers came through no magic formula. His growth 
 was inspired by diligence. 
 
 It is no wonder that on the mission to the French, 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 above the Ohio River, Governor Dinwiddie sent 
 George Washington, Virginia's best equipped repre- 
 sentative for such an undertaking. 
 
 Trained as he was, it is not surprising that at the 
 battle of Great Meadows, Washington was in com- 
 mand. At the battle of the Monongahela, no one 
 less prepared than he could have used the Virginia 
 troops to save the remnants of Braddock's army, 
 shattered under the fierce Indian ambush attack. 
 
 He was fitted for membership in the Virginia 
 House of Burgesses and was sent there to serve. 
 When the Revolution came, to him, because he 
 was best prepared, the Continental Congress turned 
 for its military commander. The stupendous dif- 
 ficulties of his undertaking are now beyond com- 
 plete appreciation. One of lesser early preparation 
 than he could neither have endured or solved them. 
 His troubles, his defeats, his triumphs are suggested 
 by the names Long Island, Harlem Heights, White 
 Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, German- 
 town, Valley Forge, Arnold and Yorktown. Did 
 not Muse's instruction bear fruit in the masterly 
 retreat through New Jersey in 1776, and the rapid 
 movement that hemmed in Cornwallis in 1781? 
 These two accomplishments alone place Washing- 
 ton among the greatest generals of history. 
 
 At the close of the war he devoted himself to 
 farming. With great foresight he carefully planned 
 the linking of the East and West by joining the 
 headwaters of the Potomac and the Ohio rivers. 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 In farming he had been trained in his childhood; 
 of the possibiHties for internal navigation he had 
 learned as a youthful surveyor. 
 
 He was made a delegate to the Constitutional 
 Convention, and became its President. His early 
 studies had sufficiently begun his preparation for 
 this duty. He was able to reconcile the views of 
 Hamilton and those of the Jeffersonian school. The 
 contributions of the great thinkers of that Conven- 
 tion, who had gleaned much from experience and 
 from history were, by Washington's careful judg- 
 ment, stripped of their dross and from the remain- 
 ing pure gold was the Constitution fashioned. 
 Soldier, student, farmer, patriot, statesman — he was 
 ready for the great office of President of the United 
 States. How faithfully and well he served, all 
 know. At the close of his second term he gave to 
 his country the immortal Farewell Address. Of 
 its many expressions of wisdom we quote but that 
 one which points out the necessity for education 
 in a government such as ours: "Promote then, as 
 an object of primary importance, institutions for 
 the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion 
 as the structure of government gives force to public 
 opinion, it is essential that public opinion should 
 be enlightened." 
 
 This truth as to governments is also applicable 
 to individuals. No American life illustrates better 
 than does George Washington's the value of a gen- 
 eral education. To the great contributions made by 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 his parents and by his early schoolmasters, Mr. 
 Hobby and Mr. Williams, to George Washington, 
 the child, were added the vast ones of Lawrence 
 Washington, the Fairfaxes, Muse and Van Braam, 
 to George Washington, the youth. Through his 
 training he became a well rounded, versatile, use- 
 ful man, one ever ready to serve when the call for 
 service should come. It is not surprising that he 
 became the "Father of his Country." It is not 
 strange that his life is known to, and studied by, 
 all the earth's peoples. It is natural that ever pil- 
 grimages shall be made to his tomb, there to learn 
 at this appropriately simple shrine, that the mother 
 of genius is toil. 
 
niirTII[lllMII[lll[3lltlll[3liriljMJUlllNg 
 
For principle the Pilgrims dared, 
 with courage they came, by faith they 
 endured and through toil they won. 
 
Plymouth Rock 
 
 "The Pilgrim Spirit has not fled; 
 It walks in noon's broad light; 
 And it watches the bed of the glorious dead^ 
 With the holy stars by night. 
 It watches the bed of the brave who have bled. 
 And still guard this ice-bound shore, 
 'Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay. 
 Shall foam and freeze no more." 
 
 — John Pierpont. 
 
 ON September i6, 1620, a small schooner, in 
 command of a pirate captain, set sail from 
 England. Her Pilgrim passengers thought they 
 were bound for the vicinity of the mouth of the 
 Hudson River, America. Captain Jones, in con- 
 spiracy with certain British nobles, intended, how- 
 ever, to land them in New England. How fortunate 
 were the circumstances that led to the Mayflower's 
 voyage ! How happy the conspiracy that took them 
 to where Cape Cod reaches like a giant arm into 
 the Atlantic, waiting to receive within its curve the 
 little bark that was to infuse life and strength into 
 the whole continental body. 
 
 Under a canopy of stone, beyond the reach of the 
 waves that once heat against it, lays Plymouth 
 Rock. It is about six feet long, three feet wide and 
 three feet high. On its face are cut the figures 
 1620. Daily, year after year, visitors look upon it. 
 Here, one chill December's day, came a little band 
 of Pilgrims. On the slope of the hill behind it. 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 they built their rude houses. In the two decades 
 that followed the planting of their colony, about 
 twenty thousand English men and women made 
 their perilous way across the Atlantic to this and 
 other settlements in the wilderness of New Eng- 
 land. Then for a long time immigration almost 
 ceased. To-day, descendants from this original 
 stock are found in all the forty-eight states of the 
 Union. They have wielded, and still wield, a vast 
 influence in American life. It is, therefore, not sur- 
 prising that of these first settlers much inquiry has 
 been made, whole libraries written, many relics 
 preserved, and that the place of their landing has, 
 through three centuries, been a shrine for their 
 beneficiaries. 
 
 Advantageous changes in the history of the world 
 have sometimes come from doctrinal religious dis- 
 putes. No sooner had the Church of England been 
 established, than controversies arose within it as 
 to the powers of Church dignitaries and the cere- 
 monials of Christian worship. One faction believed 
 in lodging great power in the prelates and in elab- 
 orate services, the other in a curbing of that power 
 and in simple worship. 
 
 A congregation of the latter faction was formed 
 at Scrooby. To them came maltreatment, perse- 
 cution and lodgment in prison cells. With much 
 difficulty, a group of them escaped to Amsterdam, 
 Holland. There they found much religious alterca- 
 tion. From this they fled to Leyden. Following 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 about twelve years' residence there, they determined 
 to seek out a spot free from the arguments of dogma. 
 They, with the rest of Europe, had heard much of 
 America. Thence they determined to go, to enjoy 
 civil liberty and to worship God according to the 
 dictates of their own consciences. 
 
 To this end, two of their number, Robert Cush- 
 man and John Carver, went to England to arrange 
 with the Virginia Company for a grant of land. 
 This they finally secured, but the Pilgrims never 
 reached it; chance and fate had destined for them 
 a bleaker home. A group of English adventurers 
 financed the undertaking, upon an agreement to 
 divide with the Pilgrims the profits it was thought 
 would be secured through "trade, traffic, trucking, 
 working and fishing" in the New World. These 
 arrangements completed, a small sailing craft, the 
 Speedwell, was provided to take the colonists 
 from Delft-Haven, the port of Leyden, to England, 
 whence it, together with a larger ship, the May- 
 flower, was to convey them and some of the Pil- 
 grims resident in England to "North Virginia." 
 
 From Southampton the two vessels put to sea. 
 Twice were they driven back by storms. The cap- 
 tain of the Speedwell then refused again to ven- 
 ture because of the alleged unseaworthiness of his 
 ship. Many of its passengers v/ere transferred to 
 the already crowded Mayflower. This historic ves- 
 sel was probably about ninety feet long, with about 
 a twenty-four foot beam. Her stem and stern were 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 high. It is likely she had three masts and was 
 rigged like other ships of her day. She carried at 
 least two boats— one a shallop, about thirty feet 
 long, which was cut in two for stowing, and a skiff. 
 How brave were they who ventured in such a tiny 
 craft! The Sparrow-Hawk, which, after its cross- 
 ing in 1626, was wrecked on Cape Cod, was barely 
 forty feet in length. Its skeleton may now be seen 
 in the Pilgrims' Hall at Plymouth, Massachusetts. 
 The passengers numbered one hundred and two, 
 the crew probably twenty or twenty-five. Who 
 were these intrepid souls who left the habitations 
 of their kind to find civil and religious freedom in 
 toil and struggle upon the rocky coast of the vast 
 continental wilderness? For such an undertaking 
 should we expect doughty knights with burnished 
 arms, or men of courtly graces who would do and 
 dare, far from the plaudits of the multitude? Should 
 we hope for men who measure rank in velvets and 
 plumes, and in the habiliments of ease? These we 
 neither expect nor find. Rather we find John Car- 
 ver, a merchant of sixty years, his wife and six 
 helpers ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-seven 
 years ; Elder Brewster, a printer, his wife, two chil- 
 dren and two bound boys; Edward Winslow, a 
 printer, his wife and three young servants ; William 
 Bradford, a silk worker, and his wife; Doctor Sam- 
 uel Fuller, a physician, and William Butten, his 
 assistant ; Isaac Allerton, a tailor, his wife, three 
 children and a servant; Captain Miles Standish, a 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 soldier, and his wife; Christopher Martin, a trades- 
 man, his wife and two servants; William White, a 
 wool carder, his wife, one child and two servants; 
 William Mullins, his wife, two children and one 
 servant; Richard Warren, a farmer; Stephen Hop- 
 kins, occupation unknown, his wife, three children 
 and two servants; John Crackstone and his son; 
 Edward Tilley, a silk worker, his wife and two 
 infant cousins; John Tilley, a silk worker, his wife 
 and daughter ; Francis Cooke, a wool carder and his 
 son ; James Chilton, his wife and daughter ; Thomas 
 Rogers, a merchant, and his son; Degory Priest, a 
 hatter; John Rigdale and wife; Edward Fuller, his 
 wife and son; Thomas Tinker, a wood sawyer, his 
 wife and son; John Turner, a merchant, and two 
 sons; Francis Eaton, a carpenter, his wife and son; 
 Gilbert Winslow, a carpenter; John Alden, a 
 cooper ; Peter Browne, a mechanic ; John Billington, 
 his wife and two sons; Moses Fletcher, a black- 
 smith; Thomas Williams; John Goodman, a linen 
 weaver ; Edward Margeson ; Richard Britteredge ; 
 Richard Clarke; Richard Gardiner; John Alderton; 
 Thomas English ; William Trevore ; and Ely — first 
 name unknown — the last four being seamen. Some 
 of the married men who were unaccompanied by 
 their wives and families were joined by them in 
 America later. Oceanus Hopkins was born on the 
 voyage and Peregrine White was born in Province- 
 town harbor. Counting these two, the total pas- 
 senger list is one hundred and four. 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 How throughout history and in our own day the 
 great advances are made by those who toil! The 
 contributions of the sluggard are few, except in the 
 example to be avoided by those who would succeed. 
 From common folk, from merchants, mechanics, 
 farmers, carpenters and other workers springs the 
 strength of great nations. To these outwardly or- 
 dinary people was given the mission of founding 
 Democracy in America. None of them could have 
 dreamed that centuries later a huge graven figure, 
 symbolic of their courageous faith, would surmount 
 Plymouth Hill and that upon its pedestal a grate- 
 ful posterity would reverently read the passenger 
 list of the Mayflower. 
 
 For over two months the straining ship buffeted 
 the surly sea. What misery this crowded argosy 
 held! Nineteen women, ten young girls and many 
 other children, together with the men, suffered the 
 difficulties of the narrow quarters in a small "wet 
 ship." Little opportunity for cooking was had, and 
 their food was generally eaten cold and raw. The 
 pains of their sicknesses were multiplied by the 
 inconveniences of their close confinement. During 
 the voyage a deck beam broke. Fortunately one 
 of the passengers had brought a lifting jack ; by 
 means of this the beam was repaired. 
 
 They carried a considerable cargo, which included 
 hogs, poultry, goats and dogs. Of only two dogs 
 are we certain — one a mastiff, the other a spaniel. 
 Their lack of space prevented the shipping of cows 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 or of horses. They brought some furniture and a 
 considerable quantity of clothing; also they pos- 
 sessed a few books, several of which were doubtless 
 Bibles. The furniture included a few chairs, small 
 tables, beds, cradles, chests, spinning wheels, looms 
 and household utensils ; also they brought me- 
 chanics' tools and hand agricultural implements. 
 Among the former were carpenter and blacksmith 
 kits, and the latter included hoes, spades, sickles, 
 scythes, shovels and pitchforks. The tools were 
 generally without handles, to save space. On ar- 
 rival in America, one of the first undertakings was 
 the making of tool handles. The cargo included, 
 too, nets, fish hooks, muskets, fowling pieces, pow- 
 der, shot, armor, swords, cutlasses and daggers ; also 
 they were provided with cannon — at least six pieces. 
 Two were ten feet long and of about three and 
 one-half inch bore, and weighed nearly a ton each; 
 the others were somewhat smaller. They carried 
 as well a "stock of trading goods" for barter with 
 the Indians. Among these were knives, beads, mir- 
 rors, cotton cloth, blankets, fish hooks, "strong 
 waters," hatchets and articles for personal adorn- 
 ment. Doubtless they were prepared both with the 
 materials and the determination to carry out their 
 agreement with the adventurers. 
 
 In the latter part of November they came in sight 
 of Cape Cod. Then they took a southerly course, 
 hoping to sail along the coast to the Hudson River 
 region. Captain Jones, though he probably pos- 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 sessed charts, made by the many explorers of this 
 region, did not keep to the deep water course but 
 took the ship among the shoals off Monomoy. After 
 some difficulty, he put back for Cape Cod Bay. 
 
 The season was late, and apparently there was 
 no practical alternative to landing upon the New 
 England coast. Some of the passengers were dis- 
 satisfied with the abandonment of the plan to pro- 
 ceed. With this as the immediately inducing cause, 
 the famous Compact was made which is now known 
 as one of the great charters of human liberty. How 
 often it is that through dissatisfaction is advance- 
 ment made, and how, too, the complaints of a few, 
 whether just or unjust, are helpful to the many! 
 
 What a scene was presented by this meeting of 
 the adult male passengers in the cabin of the May- 
 flower! Here they covenanted "to combine our- 
 selves together into a civill body politick for our 
 better ordering and preservation," and also agreed 
 "to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and 
 equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions and 
 offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most 
 meete and convenient for ye generall good of ye 
 Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission 
 and obedience." Here were not scholars or stu- 
 dents of institutions; here was no delving into the 
 ruins of the past to find the materials upon which 
 to found solid governments. This was the concep- 
 tion of artisans and workmen — of a few farmers, 
 weavers, coopers, merchants, carpenters, black- 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 smiths and others who worked with their hands. 
 From the caverns of their brains came that most 
 sound and natural thought that among themselves 
 would they frame and enact justly the laws of the 
 society which they constituted. To the laws thus 
 made they promised obedience. The compact 
 signed, they elected John Carver their Governor for 
 one year, and, shortly after, came to anchor in what 
 is now known as Provincetown harbor, Cape Cod. 
 A party then went ashore for wood. On the follow- 
 ing day, Sunday, services were held aboard ship. 
 
 On Monday, the shallop was hauled ashore and 
 repairs on it were begun. Many on this day went 
 ashore. Two days later an exploring party, under 
 the leadership of Captain Miles Standish, the only 
 professional soldier of their number, landed. They 
 proceeded southward upon the Cape as far as Pamet 
 River. They saw some Indians. After two days' 
 absence, the explorers returned with a supply of 
 Indian corn, which they had taken from a cache. 
 
 On December 7, the shallop being ready, thirty- 
 four of the party, including Captain Jones and some 
 of the crew, went forth to explore. Upon their trip 
 they visited the cache of corn and took about ten 
 bushels — all that remained — and some beans for 
 use as seed the following spring. About six months 
 later they repaid to the Indians this enforced loan. 
 On the sixteenth of the month, eighteen of the men, 
 six of whom were of the officers or crew of the ship, 
 proceeded in the shallop upon an extended explora- 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 tion for a site for settlement. Two days later they 
 were attacked by thirty or forty Indians, but no 
 casualties ensued. On Monday, December 21, this 
 exploring party at Plymouth "sounded the harbor 
 and found it fit for shipping." They went ashore. 
 This is the specific event that is celebrated as the 
 "Landing of the Pilgrims." They found old Indian 
 cornfields and springs — this determined the spot as 
 suitable. They returned across Cape Cod bay to 
 the ship, which was sailed into Plymouth Harbor 
 on Saturday, December 26. On Monday, the 28th, 
 they made a further examination of the neighbor- 
 ing land, and, following a few stormy days, com- 
 menced, on January 2, 1621, to cut timber for their 
 houses. From then until spring they were engaged 
 in making their homes, most of the company living, 
 meanwhile, on shipboard. Under exposure to the 
 New England winter, and because of the scurvy, 
 many died. Bradford, in his history, says: "Of the 
 hundred and odd persons, scarce fifty remained, and 
 of these, in the time of most distress, there were but 
 six or seven sound persons, who spared no pains, 
 night nor day, but with abundance of toil and 
 hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, 
 made them fires, dressed their meat, made their 
 beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and 
 unclothed them — in a word, did all the homely and 
 necessary offices for them which dainty and quesie 
 stomachs cannot endure to hear named ; and all this 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 willingly and cheerfully without any grudging in 
 the least." 
 
 Under such difficulties as these, in the dead of 
 winter, on a bleak coast, did the sturdy little band 
 of men, women and children plant the colony which 
 was to spread and grow until generations of their 
 own kind had made their way over three thousand 
 miles of mountains and plains to the shores of the 
 Pacific. 
 
 On March 26, down the single street of the little 
 village stalked a lone Indian. To the astonishment 
 of the settlers, and in the English tongue, he uttered 
 the word "Welcome." He told them his name — 
 Samoset. From him much information was gained 
 concerning the Indian tribes. From him they 
 learned, too, that four years previous all the Indians 
 at Plymouth — or Patuxet, as the redmen knew it — 
 had died of a plague. His knowledge of English 
 had been gathered from the crew of English vessels 
 fishing along the coast of Maine. 
 
 On April i, Samoset came again, accompanied by 
 Squanto, an Indian who had lived for a time in 
 England at the home of John Slany, a merchant. 
 Squanto was more proficient in English than was 
 Samoset, and became the interpreter for the Colony. 
 Through him the Pilgrims became acquainted with 
 Massasoit, the Sagamore of the Wampanoags. With 
 him a treaty was made. It provided principally 
 that he and his should do no injury, but if injury 
 was done, the offender should be turned over for 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 punishment; that anything taken by either party 
 from the other should be restored; that if either 
 party was unjustly warred upon, the other should 
 give aid. For over half a century this treaty was 
 strictly kept by both sides. It was broken in 1675 
 by Massasoit's successor, Philip. 
 
 Squanto was of great service to the Pilgrims. He 
 taught them to fertilize their cornfields by putting a 
 few herring in each hill. 
 
 Bradford's History relates, in reference to Squan- 
 to : "He directed them how to set their corn, where 
 to take fish, and to procure other commodities, and 
 was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places 
 for their profit, and never left them till he died." 
 
 Welcomed by the red men, aided by them and 
 living in peace with them for over fifty years 
 augured well for the security of the New England 
 settlers. The time was to come, however, when, 
 instead of the voice of friendly greeting would be 
 heard the piercing, savage war cry; when, instead 
 of helpful instruction, would be seen, in the lurid 
 glare of the burning cabin, the fatal gleam of the 
 tomahawk and the vengeful flash of the scalping 
 knife ; when, in place of the white belt of the peace 
 treaty, there should be yielded to the white man 
 the red wampum which signified terrible war. 
 
 On April 15, the Mayflower departed for Eng- 
 land. As she sailed away, uncomfortable though 
 she had been, and perilous the outward journey, 
 doubtless it was with a feeling of regret that the 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 watchers on shore saw her masts fade below the 
 horizon. She never came again, but other ships did. 
 The first of many vessels to follow the Mayflower's 
 voyage was the Fortune. This tiny craft anchored 
 in Plymouth Bay November 19, 1621. Her pas- 
 sengers numbered thirty-five. A letter written by 
 Edward Winslow was sent back by her, in which 
 h"e said: "In this little time that a few of us have 
 been here, we have built seven dwelling houses and 
 four for the use of the plantation, and have made 
 preparation for divers others. We set the last 
 spring some twenty acres of Indian corn and sowed 
 some six acres of barley and peas. Our corn did 
 prove well, and, God be praised, we had a good 
 increase of Indian corn." 
 
 When the harvest was gathered in the fall of 
 1 62 1, the first Thanksgiving was held. A great feast 
 was provided. Venison, wild turkey, wild duck and 
 wild fowl of several other kinds were in great plen- 
 titude. Many Indians attended. A very interest- 
 ing painting of the scene hangs in Pilgrim Hall. 
 
 The Rock at Plymouth, the old burying-ground, 
 the bay, Clark's Island, the monument and the col- 
 lection at Pilgrim Hall bring to mind incident after 
 incident in the story of this first New England set- 
 tlement. Who can look upon the sword of Miles 
 Standish, Persian made, of meteoric iron, without 
 feeling a closer acquaintance with him whose hand 
 once so confidently grasped it? The fragment of 
 a Pilgrim's hoe tells its story, one oft repeated by 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 the American pioneers in their westward march, 
 of the struggle to plant and grow crops without 
 plows, or harrows, or similar implements, or the 
 animals to draw them. Here the story of Priscilla 
 Mullins, of John Alden and "The Courtship of 
 Miles Standish" comes more appealingly to the 
 memory than ever before. Figure after figure in the 
 great drama played by the little company that once 
 came from overseas, here to lead useful lives, pass 
 in review. We see their honest faces — earnest, but 
 not austere or cold. We hear them talk of their 
 God — not as a distant mystery freighted with awful 
 possibilities for them, but as an ever-present force, 
 friendly and kind. We see them at their work im- 
 proving their shelter, weaving the materials for their 
 clothing and tilling the grudging soil for the crops. 
 We go with them to sea and watch them haul in 
 their catch. With light fowling pieces we tramp 
 with them to marshes or venture upon the bays 
 where wild fowl are plentiful and unscared. Upon 
 the hills we find the great wild turkeys, their 
 bronzed plumage brilliant in the autumn sun. In 
 the copses the red deer run. We see them far re- 
 moved from authority except their own, recogniz- 
 ing that wherever a group of humans is gathered 
 rules of conduct must be established and observed. 
 How simply and naturally the democratic idea takes 
 hold ! How logically they provide the machinery of 
 government! We see institutions in their begin- 
 nings and realize that from this simple but effec- 
 
PLYMOUTH ROCK 
 
 tive inception came at last the Constitution of the 
 United States. They were just plain folks, folks 
 that suffered, loved, struggled, enjoyed, thought and 
 toiled. Centuries have passed since their animated 
 bodies became dust, and monuments to them have 
 value only for the living. None can be so sufficient, 
 or so suggestive, of the Mayflower Pilgrims as the 
 simple stone, which to all the earth is known as 
 "Plymouth Rock." 
 
UK NATHAN HALK STATUK, KRKCTKl) WV IIIK SOCIKTV 
 OF THE SONS OF THK RFAOLUTION. Cl\\ IIAI.I. 
 PARK, NKW YORK. NO\FMI!FR _'5. IS93 
 
The story of Nathan Hale is one of 
 unmurmuring devotion to duty. 
 
Nathan Hale 
 
 "But his last words, his message-words. 
 They burn, lest friendly eye 
 Should read how proud and calm 
 
 A patriot could die, 
 With his last words, his dying words, 
 A soldier's battle-cry," 
 
 — Francis Miles Finch. 
 
 ONE of the great virtues that Americans have 
 ever displayed is courage. Each epoch in the 
 history of the continent has its heroes. How daunt- 
 less was Leif Ericson in buffeting his way to Vin- 
 land! What intrepidity Columbus showed in his 
 westward sailing! How adventurous were all the 
 explorers ! The bravery of the men and women who 
 made the early settlements was supreme. The 
 threadings of the American wilds could have been 
 made only by those whom fear could not weaken 
 or overcome. In peace and in strife Americans have 
 never been daunted by inherent timidity. Our his- 
 tory is replete with names whose mention suggests 
 that high heroism that through all the ages has been 
 admired. 
 
 Every school-boy is thrilled by the story of De- 
 catur at Tripoli, by the tale of Boone's perilous 
 wanderings in the Kentucky woodlands, by the re- 
 counting of Kenton's escapes from the savage 
 gauntlets and the stake, by the story of Crockett 
 at the Alamo, and of Carson, Fremont, Lewis, 
 
NATHAN HALE 
 
 Clark and Cody on the plains and in the mountains 
 of the West. How much courageous character is 
 suggested by the names of Washington, Stark, 
 Green, Allen, Morgan, Lee, Jackson, Grant, Custer 
 and thousands of others who have lived as true 
 Americans. 
 
 Of all the stories of the heroic in American life, 
 none is more touching than that of Nathan Hale. 
 A statue of him is erected on the campus of his alma 
 mater, its bronze silence speaking eloquently to 
 the generations of Yale students who have paused 
 before it. In City Hall Park, New York, is another 
 statue of him, standing as he stood in his last mo- 
 ments. The garb is that of a school-master; his 
 arms and ankles are bound; his neck is bared for 
 the noose which the inhuman Cunningham has pre- 
 pared. It was here on this island of Manahatta 
 that Nathan Hale, by means that generally are for 
 the ignominious, gloriously died. 
 
 He was a spy, but a spy in a great cause. He was 
 a soldier, the soldier of a worthy country. He was 
 obeying the instructions of his General, George 
 Washington, of the Continental Army. 
 
 Nathan Hale was born in Connecticut in 1755. 
 Of his youth little is known except that he was a 
 handsome, winning boy of considerable athletic 
 prowess. He entered Yale College. Upon gradua- 
 tion he taught school at New London, preparatory 
 to entering the ministry. Then came the news of 
 the "embattled farmers" at Concord and Lexington. 
 
NATHAN HALE 
 
 At once he enlisted. He was a lieutenant at the 
 siege of Boston, and soon afterwards was promoted 
 to a captaincy. 
 
 After the British evacuation of Boston he went 
 with Washington's army to New York. Then came 
 the defeat at Long Island, the narrow escape of the 
 American forces and the withdrawal to Harlem 
 Heights. General Washington, with his army de- 
 pleted to less than fifteen hundred men, and almost 
 overwhelmed by disasters, was facing Lord Howe's 
 highly-trained force, numbering about twenty-five 
 thousand. The American commander felt it impera- 
 tive to know the stations of the enemy troops, their 
 numbers, their equipment and their plans. Though 
 a desperate adventure, to send a spy through the 
 British lines offered the only chance. Those who 
 were thought to possess sufficient courage were 
 sought. All declined until request was made of 
 Captain Hale. 
 
 Proofs of his daring were not wanting. Once he 
 had led a few companions in an enterprise of great 
 risk. In a rov%7boat under cover of night they had 
 made way to a British vessel, boarded it, imprisoned 
 the crew and under the guns of an enemy man-of- 
 war had brought it to wharf. 
 
 Washington personally gave Hale the instruc- 
 tions for his dangerous mission. From Harlem 
 Heights he journeyed to Norwalk, where he ex- 
 changed his uniform for the habiliments of a school- 
 master. One night a vessel took him across Long 
 
NATHAN HALE 
 
 Island Sound to Huntington Bay, where he entered 
 the lines of the enemy. For two weeks he carefully 
 gathered information in the British camps in and 
 about Brooklyn and in New York. When done, he 
 made his way back to Huntington. Here his char- 
 acter was discovered and his capture effected. The 
 manner of his undoing is not known with certainty. 
 It is thought that a relation of Tory affiliations made 
 disclosure to a British naval officer. The spy 
 walked to the water's edge, hoping to find a friendly 
 boat. One approached, but when near up rose sev- 
 eral enemy marines. Covered by their guns, he em- 
 barked. The officer in command took him to the 
 man-of-war Halifax, where he was searched. Con- 
 victing sketches, plans and memoranda were dis- 
 covered in his shoes. He was conveyed to New 
 York City and taken before Lord Howe. 
 
 The American captain admitted his identity and 
 his mission. The only regret expressed by him was 
 his failure to report to his General. 
 
 Lord Howe sentenced the prisoner to be hanged 
 the next morning, September 22, 1776. His jailer 
 and executioner was William Cunningham, the 
 Provost-Marshal of the British army in New York. 
 Hale asked for pen, paper and a Bible. These were 
 refused; later in the night, however, an officer of 
 the guard procured them. Two letters were written, 
 one to his mother and one to his betrothed. Their 
 contents no one knows. From such a man, doubt- 
 less they were final messages of consolation, cour- 
 
NATHAN HALE 
 
 age and love. As day came, Cunningham entered 
 the prison cell. The condemned man handed him 
 the two letters for delivery, but the brutal officer 
 tore them to bits. The William Cunningham who 
 did this, who refused to unloose the bound arms of 
 his prisoner, who caused the unnecessary agonies of 
 the captured colonists who came to his keeping and 
 the horrors of the Sugar House prison, himself was 
 later — unwept and dishonored — hung for his crimes. 
 
 As Nathan Hale stood that September morning 
 unhesitatingly ready to pay the price which the 
 rules of war demanded, the scoffing Cunningham, 
 in placing the rope, asked him to make his dying 
 confession. Then this young patriot uttered those 
 words that all Americans ever since have known: 
 "My only regret is that I have but one life to give 
 for my country." 
 
 He was buried in New York City — where, no one 
 knows. His dust has long since mingled with the 
 native soil. His spirit still lives wherever pulses 
 the heroic blood of America. 
 
STAl'll-; Ol' KKI) JACKKI' Al ItL'F 1"AL(), X. V. 
 
The advance of American pioneers 
 was made against the craftiest and 
 ablest savages the world has ever 
 known. 
 
Red Jacket 
 
 "Oh, chequered train of years, farewell! 
 
 With all thy strifes and hopes and fears! 
 Yet with us let thy memories dwell. 
 
 To warn and teach the coming years. 
 
 "And thou, the new-beginning age. 
 Warned by the past, and not in vain. 
 
 Write on a fsiirer, whiter page, 
 The record of thy happier reign." 
 
 —William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 ONE July morning in 1609, a band of sixty Al- 
 gonquin and Huron Indians landed from their 
 canoes where the promontory of Ticonderoga, or 
 "meeting of waters," reaches into "Lake Iroquois" 
 (as Lake Champlain was then called). After a 
 night of hideous taunts and savage threats, they 
 hurried to the attack of nearly two himdred Mo- 
 hawk warriors. The weapons were the arrows and 
 spears of the Stone Age. Appalled by the numbers 
 of their opponents, the assailants called for help. 
 From beneath the furs that covered them as they 
 lay in canoes along the shore, three white men arose. 
 Astonished by the presence of seemingly super- 
 natural beings, the Mohawks paused. As they 
 poised their arrows to shoot, two of the white men 
 lifted their strange weapons. When the bell-shaped 
 mouths belched forth their terrifying thunder, two 
 Mohawk chiefs fell dead and a third was wounded. 
 Little did Champlain, the romantic French ex- 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 plorer, know that his rashness would profoundly 
 affect the history of the American continent. 
 
 The Mohawks were the most easterly tribe of the 
 Iroquois Confederacy. Before the coming of white 
 men the Iroquois had lived north of the St. Law- 
 rence. Hochelega, the site of Montreal, was once 
 one of their towns. By the fierce Adirondacks, a 
 tribe of the Algonquin peoples, they had been driven 
 southward to what is now the State of New York. 
 Here they finally divided into five tribes, named 
 the Senecas, the Cayugas, the Onondagas, the 
 Oneidas and the Mohawks. The confederacy that 
 they then formed is one of the most remarkable 
 political organizations in the story of red men. 
 They sought to induce their kin, the Hurons, some 
 of the Eries and others of Iroquoian stock to join. 
 None did, except the Tuscaroras; the rest, as well 
 as the much more numerous Algonquins, composed 
 of scores of great tribes, the Iroquois ever held in 
 enmity. 
 
 It is supposed that the migration from Canada to 
 New York occurred about 1350, that about a cen- 
 tury later the confederacy was established, and that 
 the Five Nations were joined by the Tuscaroras 
 about 1712. The country that they inhabited 
 stretched from the eastern end of Lake Erie to the 
 valley of the Hudson. This territory was spoken 
 of as the "Long House." The Onondagas were 
 called the "Fathers of the Confederacy." At their 
 principal village, not far from where Syracuse, New 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 York, now is, the great council house was main- 
 tained, and in it the council fire was ever burning. 
 The Mohawks were known as the "Eldest Brother," 
 and the guardians of the eastern gate of the "Long 
 House." The Oneidas were the "Heads" ; the Cayu- 
 gas, the "Youngest Brother" ; and the Senecas, the 
 "Watchmen of the Western Gate." The traditions 
 of the origin of the "United People," as the Iroquois 
 translated their confederate name, and the form and 
 workings of their government are worthy of de- 
 tailed study. It is here remarkable that, greatly 
 outnumbered as they were by their Indian enemies, 
 never were they overcome by other red men. 
 
 Champlain's killing of the two Mohawk chiefs 
 gained for the French the deep enmity of the con- 
 federacy. While the Iroquois nation did not, on 
 the coming of the white men, exceed twelve thou- 
 sand souls, for a century and a half they held the 
 arms of the French at bay. Because of their con- 
 trol of Lake Erie, the French missionaries, soldiers, 
 traders and voyageurs on their westward journey 
 were obliged to travel up the Ottawa River, and 
 by the various water routes and portages make way 
 to Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. By the Iro- 
 quois, more southerly routes and posts were denied 
 the French. The Dutch and the English, as their 
 successors, who gained the friendship of this most 
 powerful association of Indians on the continent, 
 ultimately achieved supremacy in the westward 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 march along the southern shores of the Great Lakes 
 and in the valley of the Ohio. 
 
 A people who could so vitally affect a continent's 
 story must have had able leaders. Most of their 
 principal men were great warriors. One of them, 
 not famous as a warrior, never having won the right 
 to wear the Eagle's feather, gained the sachemship 
 of his people thru the power of his eloquence. Even 
 among savages is the art of persuasion useful. 
 Especially was this true of the Seneca Sagoyewatha, 
 or, as he is better known. Red Jacket. 
 
 The American Indians produced many great ora- 
 tors. The imagery of men who live close to nature 
 always appeals. But words and imagery are not 
 the principal stuff of which orations are made. The 
 orator must have a theme — one that is fed from his 
 very soul, if he would speak with authority. This 
 Red Jacket had. It was his implacable opposition 
 to the civilization, the religion and the westward 
 advance of white men. For his and future genera- 
 tions of red men he pleaded. The preservation of 
 the Indian's home and his hunting grounds, as the 
 Great Spirit had given them, was the theme that 
 called up his greatest powers. Once he said: "We 
 stand a small island in the bosom of the Great 
 Waters. We are encircled. We are encompassed. 
 The evil spirit rides upon the blast, and the waters 
 are disturbed. They rise, they press upon us, and, 
 the waves once settled over us, we disappear for- 
 ever. Who then lives to mourn us? No one. What 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 marks our extermination? Nothing. We are min- 
 gled with the common elements." 
 
 Sagoyewatha probably is the only great Indian 
 leader who owed his sachemship entirely to his ora- 
 torical abilities. He was born on Seneca Lake, New 
 York, in 1751, and named O-te-ti-ani, or "Always 
 Ready." On coming to the sachemship, he was 
 christened Sagoyewatha, which means, "He keeps 
 them awake." In his youth he learned to track and 
 to hunt. He was taught to observe and to reason. 
 The bruise on a leaf, the bending of a twig, a dis- 
 turbance in the moss or dust, and the thousands of 
 things that to the untrained go unobserved, or are 
 meaningless, to him, as to all Indians, told how, 
 what, when, who, where and why. That white men 
 could likewise develop their powers of observation 
 in the wilderness is shown by Boone, who for years 
 lived in "the dark and bloody ground" woodlands, 
 depending for life upon his alertness and skill. 
 Simon Kenton, whose life was one of the most ro- 
 mantic of the western pioneers, avoided or met 
 successfully thousands of dangers through the use 
 of the craft which was the Indian's educational cur- 
 riculum. Then there were the Seviers, Robertsons, 
 Steiners, Wetzels, Manskers and many other In- 
 dian fighters who lived where every bush had its 
 threat of death, every tree lifted a possible shield for 
 a savage enemy, and the pleasant sounds of the 
 woodland might be the deceptive calls of skulking 
 foes. 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 In the veins of Sagoyewatha ran no chieftain's 
 blood. His birth was lowly, even among the In- 
 dians. Fortunately, the red men recognized no roy- 
 alty except that of performance; birth bestowed 
 no honors except that greatest of all honors, an 
 equal opportunity to succeed through effort. 
 
 As a young man he was fleet of foot. Among 
 his people he was often employed as a runner to 
 carry intelligence, which perhaps at times took him 
 to the Great Council House in the land of the Onon- 
 dagas. In the war of the American Revolution he 
 served on the border as runner for British officers. 
 By one of these he was given a scarlet jacket. He 
 wore this, and a succession of others similar, 
 throughout his life. From this circumstance he 
 acquired the name by which he was most commonly 
 known, "Red Jacket." 
 
 Though early taught the Indian's art of warfare, 
 the first record of his appearance as a warrior is 
 connected with the successful American invasion, 
 under General Sullivan, of the Cayuga and Seneca 
 country in 1779. Brant, the great Mohawk chief, 
 charged Red Jacket with counselling the warriors 
 to sue for an unfavorable peace. When the Seneca 
 warrior Cornplanter determined to meet and fight 
 General Sullivan's troops on the banks of Canan- 
 daigua Lake, some of the Indians, including Red 
 Jacket, commenced a retreat. Cornplanter tried to 
 prevent this withdrawal. His efforts to induce Red 
 Jacket to fight were fruitless, and he charged the 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 latter with cowardice. It is probable that the 
 charge was true. Like the Roman orator Cicero, 
 Red Jacket could persuade others to fight, but could 
 not himself overcome the temptation to flee. 
 
 We next see Red Jacket at what is now Rome, 
 New York, where the Indian treaty of Fort Stamoix 
 was signed in 1784. Following the peace treaty of 
 1783 between Great Britain and the United States, 
 the white settlers in New York, who had suffered 
 much from Indian cruelties, demanded the expul- 
 sion of the Iroquois. Generals Washington and 
 Schuyler opposed this extremity and advised that 
 the friendship of these Indians, who had been mis- 
 led by the British officers, should be won back by 
 liberal treatment. To this end a council of the 
 Chiefs of the Iroquois confederacy was held at Fort 
 Stanwix. The principal representatives of the Six 
 Nations were Cornplanter and Red Jacket. The 
 United States was represented by three Commis- 
 sioners. By this treaty the Indians surrendered 
 much of the territory they had occupied in New 
 York, retaining for themselves considerable strips 
 of forest. The story of the further surrender of 
 Indian land within a few years following is inter- 
 esting in this, that opponent though he was of the 
 white advance, on each purchase made of Seneca 
 ground the name of Sagoyewatha appears upon the 
 deed. 
 
 Red Jacket was an unusual Indian, in that he 
 lacked in physical bravery. He became a sachem 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 through his oratorical abilities. All Indians loved 
 eloquence, and the Iroquois more than others. Be- 
 cause of this and his high intellectual powers his 
 cowardice seems to have been overlooked. He has 
 been called a demagogue; it is likely he was. He 
 has been charged with treachery; perhaps the 
 charge was true. Being overwhelmed by a superior 
 race, he finally yielded in the sale of Indian lands. 
 It is certain that in his inmost heart he felt that 
 the white man's ways were not for the Indian ; that 
 the white man's religion should not supplant the 
 Indian's, and that the forests and valleys teeming 
 with game were intended by the Great Spirit for 
 the Indian's possession, unchanged, forever. He 
 saw his dreams fading, and with each season's dim- 
 ming there crept into his soul a despair from which 
 an eloquence can spring, as appealing as the elo- 
 quence of strife. The story of his life, of his many 
 speeches, his negotiations with United States Com- 
 missioners, his trips to Philadelphia and to Wash- 
 ington, his service to the United States in the war 
 of 1812, his meeting with LaFayette, his constant 
 proud wearing of the silver medal given him by 
 George Washington, his vanities, his personal 
 charm, his drunkenness in later years, his removal 
 from his chieftainship, his restoration, his despair 
 and his death in 1830, is filled with interest. To 
 recount these is not the purpose of this essay. 
 
 All who ever listened to him called him one of the 
 greatest of orators. His speeches were made in his 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 native tongue; such as have been preserved have 
 come to us through interpreters, and in translation 
 perhaps they have lost some of their original power. 
 Certainly they have lost the commanding presence, 
 the proud bearing, the flashing eye and the expres- 
 sive face and body of the orator. Thus handicapped, 
 read these sentences: 
 
 "There was a time when our forefathers owned 
 this great island. Their seats extended from the 
 rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had 
 made it for the use of Indians. He had created the 
 buffalo, the deer and other animals for food. He 
 had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins 
 served us for clothing. He had scattered them over 
 the country and taught us how to take them. He 
 had caused the earth to produce com for bread. 
 All this he had done for his red children, because 
 he loved them. If we had some disputes about our 
 hunting ground, they were generally settled with- 
 out the shedding of much blood. But an evil day 
 came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great 
 water and landed on this island. Their numbers 
 were small. They found friends, and not enemies. 
 They told us they had fled from their own country 
 for fear of wicked men and had come here to enjoy 
 their religion. They asked for a small seat. We 
 took pity on them, granted their request, and they 
 sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and 
 meat. They gave us poison in return. 
 
 "The white people. Brother, had now found our 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 country. Tidings were carried back, and more came 
 amongst us. Yet we did not fear them. We took 
 them to be friends. They called us brothers. We 
 believed them and gave them a larger seat. At 
 length their numbers had greatly increased. They 
 wanted more land. They wanted our country. Our 
 eyes were opened and our minds became uneasy. 
 Wars took place. Indians were hired to fight 
 against Indians, and many of our people were 
 destroyed. They also brought strong liquor 
 amongst us. It was strong and powerful, and has 
 slain thousands. 
 
 "Our seats were once large, and yours were small. 
 You have now become a great people, and we have 
 scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You 
 have got our country, but are not satisfied ; you want 
 to force your religion upon us. 
 
 "Brother, continue to listen. You say you are 
 sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit 
 agreeably to his mind ; and, if we do not take hold 
 of the religion which you white people teach we 
 shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are 
 right and we are lost. How do we know this to be 
 true? We understand that your religion is written 
 in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, 
 why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not 
 only to us, but why did he not give to our fore- 
 fathers, the knowledge of that book, with the means 
 of understanding it rightly? We only know what 
 you tell us about it. How shall we know when to 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 believe, being so often deceived by the white peo- 
 ple? 
 
 "You say there is but one way to worship and 
 serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, 
 why do you white people differ so much about it? 
 Why not all agree as you can all read the book? 
 
 "Brother, we do not understand these things. We 
 are told that your religion was given to your fore- 
 fathers and has been handed down from father to 
 son. We also have a religion which was given to 
 our forefathers and has been handed down to us, 
 their children. We worship in that way. It teaches 
 us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to 
 love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel 
 about religion. 
 
 "The Great Spirit has made us all, but he has 
 made a great difference between his white and red 
 children. He has given us different complexions 
 and different customs. To you he has given the 
 arts. To these he has not opened our eyes. We 
 know these things to be true. Since he has made 
 so great a difference between us in other things, 
 why may we not conclude that he has given us a 
 different religion according to our understanding? 
 The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is 
 best for his children. We are satisfied. 
 
 "Brother, we do not wish to destroy your reli- 
 gion, or take it from you. We only want to enjoy 
 our own. 
 
 "We are told that you have been preaching to the 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 white people in this place. These people are our 
 neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will 
 wait a little while and see what effect your preach- 
 ing has upon them. If we find it does them good, 
 makes them honest and less disposed to cheat In- 
 dians, we will then consider again of what you have 
 said." 
 
 These able and eloquent observations were made 
 by Red Jacket at Buffalo Creek in 1805, in response 
 to a missionary who was planning a station among 
 the Senecas. The questions of the Indian should 
 have been answered. The missionary did not try. 
 
 On another similar occasion Red Jacket said: 
 "We do not worship the Great Spirit as the white 
 men do, but we believe that forms of worship are 
 indifferent to the Great Spirit; it is the offering of 
 a sincere heart that pleases him, and we worship 
 him in this manner." 
 
 A student of Red Jacket's life is struck with the 
 thought that even a savage bereft of most of the 
 qualities that make a savage great was able, through 
 the keenness of his desire to become an orator, to 
 so succeed that his abilities in the line of his choice 
 placed him at the head of the greatest Indian gov- 
 ernment this Continent has known. An American 
 may appropriately ask himself if the principal sub- 
 ject of Red Jacket's eloquence — opposition to the 
 Westward advance of the whites — was morally well 
 grounded. Whatever his answer may be, it must 
 be accompanied by pity for the aborigines of this 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 Continent. That natural pity will not, however, 
 wipe from the imagination of one who knows his 
 country's history the scenes of horror that often 
 steeled the American pioneer against those who 
 opposed his Westward way. In page after page of 
 American annals, we see painted warriors skulking 
 near the edge of the clearing waiting to glut their 
 savage vengeance upon the lone settler and his fam- 
 ily. When night falls, the tomahawk gleams in the 
 light of the cabin's flame. The morning reveals the 
 charred ruins of a home and the scalpless corpses 
 of its occupants. 
 
 In the broad forests every glory of nature sug- 
 gests a hidden foe waiting to deal his sudden death 
 to the struggling traveler. We see the quick raids 
 on the small settlement, the stout defense, and 
 sometimes its breaking before the fierce horde. 
 Then comes the swift slaying, the gory scalping 
 knife and the taking of women to worse than death. 
 
 Again we can see captives on their weary marches 
 to the Indian villages, the merciless running of the 
 gauntlet, the tortures indescribable, and the burn- 
 ing at the stake amid the horrid dance of demons 
 and fiendish laughter. Cruelty unspeakable! Suf- 
 fering — how terrible! 
 
 In the darkest annals of mankind — among the 
 most cunning tortures of the Inquisition — where 
 can one look for a story of outrages that exceeds, 
 in its ingenuity for inflicting pain, that of the as- 
 saults made by Indians in the forests of the East 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 and on the plains of the West upon our American 
 progenitors? Where in the record of a people can 
 one find a history more heroic than that of those 
 men and women who, undaunted by the fiercest and 
 ablest savage fighters the world has ever known, 
 made the settlers' march across this great continent? 
 
 Were the whites always kind and charitable to 
 the red men? No, indeed! Sometimes they were 
 grossly unjust, sometimes terrible in their punish- 
 ment. Could human nature be expected to be calm 
 and always fair when in the memory was seared 
 forever a picture of the savage murder of parents 
 or of a sweetheart or wife in the clutches of a dirty 
 chieftain, or of children impaled, or of one or many 
 of the thousand wrongs that white men suffered at 
 the Indians' hands? 
 
 The noble qualities that Indians sometimes dis- 
 played should be remembered. The wonderful 
 friendships that American annals here and there 
 reveal between a red man and a white should not 
 be forgotten. The acts of charity sprinkled in the 
 story of this barbaric people should be preserved 
 in our history. The wonderful myths of the red 
 men, simple but eloquent, with their love of nature 
 and their profound belief in the Great Spirit should 
 be kept in memory. The passing of their earthly 
 hunting grounds and the leaving only of the Happy 
 one of their hereafter should not be overlooked. 
 Mindful of all this we also should not forget that the 
 Americans who toiled on toward the West fought 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 the greatest fight against aboriginal inhabitants that 
 the history of new settlements knows. 
 
 Would anyone now wish they might have lost? 
 Could anyone argue that Columbus should not have 
 sailed, that Jamestown should never have been, and 
 that the Pilgrims should never have landed, and 
 that the whole train of consequences that have fol- 
 lowed should not have followed? 
 
 Sentimentalists may say that the Indians were 
 here first, and that the continent was theirs. But 
 they exercised no ownership, in the white man's 
 sense of ownership. The portions of North America 
 in their actual possession were small. Because they 
 came here at some time long before the advent of 
 white men, should the rest of the earth's population 
 have forever held aloof and should the whole con- 
 tinent have remained a vast wilderness? Should the 
 Mississippi Valley, often asserted to be capable of 
 producing enough foodstuffs to feed the entire 
 earth's population, have remained a feeding ground 
 for the buffalo and the exclusive habitat — save for 
 its wild animals — of the few Indian tribes who 
 migrated within it? 
 
 Should the Indian have permitted the fields al- 
 ways to remain fallow and the minerals of the earth 
 ever to be unused? Many will say "no"; but, how- 
 ever we answer, it is certain that every foot of 
 American soil that any Indians ever claimed to own, 
 whether they possessed it or not, whether they had 
 the grant of any right to possess it or not, was 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 bought, not as conquerors buy, but by purchasing 
 Americans who paid therefor in full. Into the In- 
 dian lands have been put generations of toil by mil- 
 lions of men and women. Where the huts or 
 wigwams of the Indians once stood are great cities 
 teeming with useful human life. On the lakes where 
 once danced his bark canoe, great vessels ply. 
 Where once was heard the piercing war cry now 
 rises the hum of industry and there flourish the use- 
 ful arts. The Indians are scattered. Wars with 
 them have long since ceased. Many of them are 
 civilized. Men of Indian blood sit in the Senate 
 of the United States. Even the Indians, as are 
 all others, are richer, happier and better that 
 through suffering and struggle the wilderness and 
 deserts of America have come to blossom and yield 
 vastly. 
 
 The Indian Sagoyewatha, tutored only by the 
 wilderness, who hoped that his dust would never 
 be enclosed in a white man's burial place, now 
 sleeps in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New 
 York, among thousands of his enemies. The im- 
 placable opponent of the white man's onward march 
 now rests within a great city built by hands he would 
 have stayed. Beside him is the dust of other great 
 Indian leaders — Tall Peter, Little Billy, Captain 
 Pollard, The Young King, Destroy Town and Deer- 
 foot. Strange it is that beside him who thought 
 that no red man could learn the ways of white men, 
 are the ashes of the full blooded Seneca, General 
 
RED JACKET 
 
 Ely S. Parker, who, in the Civil War served on 
 the staff of General Grant. Above the dust of these 
 aboriginal Americans stands a heroic bronze statue 
 of Red Jacket. Its attitude is that of the orator, 
 confident in himself and confident in his cause. On 
 the pedestal beneath are engraven these words, 
 once by him uttered: 
 
 "When I am gone and my warnings are no 
 longer heeded, the craft and avarice of the white 
 man will prevail. * * * ^y heart feiils me 
 when I think of my people so soon to be scattered 
 and forgotten." 
 
 Red Jacket's dreams of an everlasting wilderness 
 are buried with him. The white man has prevailed, 
 not through "craft and avarice," but through the 
 cultivation of those virtues which are now the basis 
 of our national life. 
 
CEOKCE ROCKKS CLARK 
 (From the stutiic by Clunlcx J. Midligan. at (Jniiuy. Illinois) 
 
A little less than a century and a 
 half ago a small band of armed fron- 
 tiersmen, led by George Rogers Clark, 
 took and held a territory in which is 
 now the center of the population of 
 the United States, How rapid was the 
 westward movement when once be- 
 gun! 
 
George Rogers Clark 
 
 "What cordial welcomes greet the guest 
 By thy lone rivers of the West; 
 How faith is kept, and truth revered. 
 And man is loved, and God is feared, 
 
 In woodland homes, 
 And where the ocean border foams." 
 
 — William CuUen Bryant. 
 
 THE old Northwest Territory, from which was 
 carved the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
 Michigan and Wisconsin, has a most interesting 
 history. About it clusters a group of names whose 
 mention suggests intrepidity of soul and self sacri- 
 fice. Among the earliest of these are those of Jean 
 Nicollet, LaSalle, Hennepin, Radisson, Du Luth, 
 Marquette, Joliet, Tonty and other missionaries and 
 explorers, who, in zeal for their Church or their 
 King adventured far by land and water into the 
 trackless wildernesses of the continental interior. Of 
 each of them many heroic tales are preserved. From 
 the time of Jean Nicollet's coming to Green Bay, on 
 his quest for China, until the French and Indian 
 War, such ownership as white men exercised in this 
 vast area was French. Upon the conclusion of that 
 war, for twelve years it was English territory, a part 
 of the province of Quebec. The change to American 
 ownership came suddenly, in a dramatic episode, 
 the chief actor in which is entitled to the profound 
 thanks of the generations that have followed. 
 On the evening of July 4th, 1778, the British gar- 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 rison of the fort at Kaskaskia gave a ball. The 
 French Creoles of this little Illinois river settle- 
 ment attended. The scene which the flaming 
 torches revealed was one of backwoods gayety. In 
 the midst of the revels a tall, blue-eyed stranger 
 stepped quietly within the hall, and for a time 
 leaned against the wall, unnoticed by the dancers. 
 Calmly he stood, undisturbing and undisturbed. 
 Suddenly an Indian yell rent the air. It came from 
 a sharp-eyed savage who had been intently study- 
 ing the bronzed face of the stranger. That single 
 whoop of recognition marked the end of British 
 power from the western limits of the struggling 
 colonies to the Mississippi river. The stranger was 
 George Rogers Clark, the bold leader of a little army 
 that was then posted about the place. 
 
 He stepped forward and bade the dance go on, 
 saying that now and henceforth they danced under 
 the American and not under the British flag. 
 
 This account is published in Denny's "Memoir of 
 Major Ebenezer Denny." An artist's representa- 
 tion of it is found in Lodge's "Story of the Revolu- 
 tion." In Clark's letter to George Mason of Vir- 
 ginia, written November 19, 1779, he makes no men- 
 tion of the incident of the ball, but writes of the 
 taking of Kaskaskia as follows: "I immediately 
 divided my little army into two Divisions, ordered 
 one to secure the Town, with the other I broke into 
 the Fort, secured the Governour Mr. Rockblave, in 
 15 minutes had every Street secured, sent Runners 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 through the Town ordering the People on the pane 
 of Death to keep close to their Houses, which they 
 observed and before daylight had the whole dis- 
 armed." He made a similar statement in his 
 memoirs — probably written in 1791. 
 
 Whatever the details, certain it is that the English 
 Commandant was made a prisoner; no resistance 
 was offered ; no blood was shed. Clark's work was 
 well begun. His force of one hundred and fifty men 
 invested the town. The terror of the French popu- 
 lation turned to joy when the American leader of- 
 fered to treat them as citizens of the United States. 
 
 The consequences of this drama were tremendous. 
 Before considering them, let us look for a moment 
 at its chief actor. 
 
 In the year 1752, in a little farm house situated 
 about a mile from Monticello, Virginia, the home 
 of Thomas Jefferson, George Rogers Clark was born. 
 It is probable that in his youth for some months he 
 and James Madison together attended the school 
 of one Donald Robertson. Like many of the ambi- 
 tious young men of his time, Clark became a sur- 
 veyor. When nineteen years old, he journeyed 
 westward on an expedition to the upper Ohio Val- 
 ley. He finally built his cabin about twenty-five 
 miles below Wheeling, near where Fish Creek en- 
 ters the Ohio. There he grew a crop of corn, hunted, 
 fished, and, as he wrote his brother Jonathan in 
 1773, received "a good deal of cash by surveying 
 on this river." In 1774 the conflicts between the 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 Indians and the few settlers who had ventured into 
 the hunting grounds of Kentucky culminated in 
 Lord Dunmore's War. In this Clark served under 
 the famous Indian fighter and pioneer, Col. Cresap. 
 In 1776 he went to Kentucky. A meeting of set- 
 tlers hefd at Harrodsburg in June of that year chose 
 Clark and one John Gabriel Jones to represent them 
 in the Virginia legislature then in session at Wil- 
 liamsburg. The two delegates made their way 
 through Cumberland Gap over Boone's Wilderness 
 Road to Williamsburg, arriving after the legisla- 
 ture's adjournment. Through Governor Patrick 
 Henry, Clark secured from the Executive Council 
 of Virginia, for the Kentucky inhabitants, five hun- 
 dred pounds of powder, which was delivered at 
 Pittsburg. Thence it was taken down the Ohio 
 River probably to a point near Manchester, Ohio, 
 and hidden to await the gathering of a sufficient 
 force to carry it to interior Kentucky points. While 
 Clark was pushing on to Harrodsburg for this pur- 
 pose, a Col. Todd arrived and provided Jones an 
 escort. On their way from Licking Creek to the 
 powder caches they were attacked and routed by 
 Indians, Jones and two others being killed and 
 several taken prisoners. From Harrodsburg, thirty 
 men, among them Simon Kenton, started for the 
 powder on January 2, 1777. They successfully ob- 
 tained it. Small as this supply now seems, its im- 
 portance was tremendous. Without this ammuni- 
 tion, it is probable that in the Indian border war- 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 fare the Kentucky pioneers could not have survived. 
 In the French villages north of the Ohio, and 
 then under British domination, the red men were 
 frequently incited to gather their war parties for 
 forays against the sparse Kentucky settlements. 
 Clark determined to march against these principal 
 posts. With such slight help as Patrick Henry, 
 Virginia's Governor, could give Clark was enabled 
 to equip a small army of pioneer riflemen for the 
 audacious project. Under severe difficulties this 
 band proceeded down the Ohio to its falls. Here 
 Clark, with huts of logs, made the small beginnings 
 of what afterward became Louisville, Kentucky. 
 From Louisville, so named in honor of the French 
 king with whom the American alliance had just 
 been made, they marched first through forests and 
 then over prairies, where buffalo still roamed. They 
 traveled by night and hid by day, for the Indian 
 allies of the British were abroad. Here no bands 
 played — no fifes shrilled — no drums beat — no proud 
 chargers pranced — no artillery rattled. There were 
 none of the usual accompaniments of an invading 
 army. At the head of the dauntless invaders the 
 leader walked silently — a handsome youth was he, 
 blue-eyed and with red-tinged hair. He was six feet 
 tall, of powerful frame and fit in body and in mind 
 to lead his rough unlettered followers. Most of them 
 wore the usual seam-fringed buckskin leggins ; their 
 feet were moccasined. From shoulder to knee hung 
 the long rudely ornamented and belted hunting shirt 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 of deerskin. Their accouterments were a pouch for 
 food and ammunition, a powder horn, a tomahawk, 
 a scalping knife and a long barreled, small-bored 
 flint-lock rifle. As the Kaskaskia garrison outnum- 
 bered the Americans, surprise tactics were required. 
 On the afternoon of the second anniversary of the 
 Declaration of Independence they waited in the 
 woods beyond the outskirts of the village. Under 
 cover of darkness they surrounded it. Then came 
 the bloodless victory. The officers were captured, 
 the garrison and townspeople disarmed, and by 
 nightfall of July 5 the inhabitants had taken the oath 
 of allegiance to the new Republic. 
 
 A Catholic priest, Pierre Gibault, asked if the 
 church could be opened. Clark made reply that he 
 had nothing to do with any church, save to defend 
 it from insult. 
 
 A part of Clark's force then marched on Cahokia. 
 The news of the events at Kaskaskia had preceded 
 them. At Cahokia the French Creoles became 
 friendly to the Americans. The Indians, however, 
 could not understand this sudden change of senti- 
 ment. In an effort to understand it, they came 
 from far off. Representatives of all the tribes be- 
 tween the Mississippi and the Great Lakes gathered 
 in great numbers at Cahokia. 
 
 There were many pow-wows. Some of the 
 warriors tried to capture Clark. He acted prompt- 
 ly and decisively, and made the small group of of- 
 fending redmen prisoners. Then calling a council 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 meeting in true Indian form, he released his prison- 
 ers. At the sullen gathering he offered a war belt 
 to the savages. By his defiance and his eloquence, 
 and through his intimate understanding of Indian 
 character, the meeting closed in the acceptance by 
 the warriors of a white belt and the making of a 
 treaty of peace. 
 
 Hamilton, the British commandant at Detroit, 
 had taken Vincennes, Indiana. Thence, in Febru- 
 ary, 1778, at the head of 170 men, many of them 
 French Creoles, drilled by the invading pioneers at 
 Kaskaskia, went the redoubtable Clark. Through 
 wet river bottoms and over prairies they struggled. 
 They lived well on buffalo meat, bear, venison and 
 turkey until they neared Vincennes. Then food be- 
 came scarce and the way hard. The garrison at 
 Vincennes — British, Indians and French — outnum- 
 bered Clark's command four to one. To the Creole 
 citizens of Vincennes he addressed the following 
 letter : 
 
 "Gentlemen: Being now within two miles of 
 your village with my army, determined to take 
 your Fort this night, and not being willing to sur- 
 prize you, I take this method to request such of 
 you as are true citizens, and willing to enjoy the 
 liberty I bring you, to remain still in your houses. 
 And those, if any there be, that are friends to 
 the King, will instantly repair to the fort, and 
 join the HAIR-BUYER GENERAL, and fight 
 like men. And if any such, as do not go to the 
 Fort shall be discovered afterwards, they may 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 depend on severe punishment. On the contrary, 
 those that are true friends to liberty, may de- 
 pend on being well treated. And I once more 
 request them to keep out of the streets; for 
 every one I find in arms on my arrival, I shall 
 treat as an enemy." 
 
 It was read in the public square. As the sun was 
 setting, the invading force marched up the street to 
 the cheers of the mercurial inhabitants. When night 
 fell, Clark attacked the fort. Until morning the 
 siege lasted. Then came a pause while the Ameri- 
 cans demanded of the "Hair Buyer," as they called 
 the Indian incitor, Col. Hamilton, the unconditional 
 surrender of his force. This was refused. The at- 
 tack was continued. Soon the expertness of the 
 American riflemen made the cannoneers leave their 
 port holes. In the afternoon the English capitulated 
 and the following morning the American flag was 
 flying over Vincennes. Without artillery, against 
 trained soldiers protected by a stockade fort and 
 provided with cannon, the backwoodsmen with their 
 long-barreled small-bore rifles had conquered. With 
 American garrisons in Vincennes, Kaskaskia and 
 Cahokia, the West was in actual occupation by the 
 little Revolutionary army. For his sacrifices Clark's 
 only timely reward was a sword presented by the 
 legislature of Virginia. The consequence of his 
 daring was that the vast country between the Alle- 
 ghanies and the Mississippi was made American. 
 In the treaty of peace which closed the Revolution, 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 the British recognized the American title, a title 
 gained by the conquering force of George Rogers 
 Clark. 
 
 Clark contemplated an expedition against Detroit 
 and made various efforts to launch it. He was un- 
 able to procure the necessary means and it was 
 never undertaken. 
 
 In May, 1780, Clark arrived at the junction of the 
 Ohio and the Mississippi to establish a post "for the 
 conveniency of trade and other purposes." Five 
 miles below the Ohio's mouth at the "Iron Banks" 
 a fort was built and in honor of Clark's old neigh- 
 bor and friend named "Fort Jefferson." 
 
 The Indian raids upon the frontier continued. 
 The backwoodsmen met upon the Licking River to 
 carry the war into the Indian country. Here they 
 were joined by Clark under whose leadership over 
 nine hundred riflemen marched to Chillicothe, the 
 principal town of the Shawnees. The Indians had 
 deserted the place. The invaders burned the town. 
 Thence they proceeded to Piqua on the Little 
 Miami, where, after some desultory fighting, the 
 Indians, cowed and disheartened, retreated. During 
 the remainder of the year, the red men did little 
 damage. While the border warfare was to a degree 
 renewed in 1781, conditions were more tolerable for 
 the men of the West. 
 
 Clark's great work was finished at the conclusion 
 of the Revolution. For many years and until his 
 death in 1818 he lived in poverty near Louisville, 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
 
 Kentucky. He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery 
 at Louisville. But for him and his little army, 
 Franklin and Jay could not have succeeded in gain- 
 ing at the peace table Great Britain's recognition 
 of our country's right to the Northwest Territory. 
 Among the many heroes whom the story of our 
 country reveals, we never should forget the majestic 
 figure of this man who through difficulties of great 
 magnitude, and without personal reward, won 
 against heavy odds the vast empire, from which has 
 since been carved five of the great states of the 
 American Union. 
 
STAKK MO.XUMKNT ON Till". 11 \1 'II.l'.l'l Kl.l > 
 Ol" MKNNIXCVroX 
 
How often have a few determined 
 men changed the history of the world? 
 
The Battle of Bennington 
 
 "For a cycle was closed and rounded, 
 A continent lost and won, 
 When Stark and his men went over 
 The earthworks at Bennington." 
 
 — W. H. Babcock. 
 
 THOUGH the most vital pages of history relate 
 to peaceful accomplishments, in the entire 
 record of man probably at least half of each century 
 has been reddened by war. If the importance of 
 mankind's battles were measured by the numbers 
 engaged, Bennington would be small; but it is 
 not numbers that determine a battle's rank. The 
 fame of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans 
 will survive forever. It is the results accomplished 
 and the issues involved that determine the im- 
 portance of conflicts. Thus judged, Bennington was 
 one of the great battles of the world. 
 
 For many years Englishmen had struggled for 
 their rights against the usurping British Crown. 
 That governmental philosophy of oppression and • 
 folly — the divine right of kings — was asserted by 
 George III. The King and the majority of the 
 English Parliament overrode the protests of free- 
 men. In America came revolt. In England, 
 William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Charles Fox and 
 other able men gave the Revolutionists staunch 
 support in the House of Commons' debates. 
 
 In the colonies, beginning in April, 1775, war had 
 
THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON 
 
 been raging. At Concord was fired "the shot heard 
 'round the world." Then came the American re- 
 pulse at Bunker Hill, the successful siege of Boston 
 and the driving back of Putnam at Long Island. 
 The succession of American defeats that followed 
 and Washington's historic retreat through New 
 Jersey were alleviated only by the later American 
 victories at Princeton and Trenton. 
 
 The summer of 1777 was one of the darkest in the 
 Revolutionary era. Then was prepared by the 
 British government what it thought would be a final 
 blow. Burgoyne, one of the ablest of the English 
 Generals, was placed in command of a force of 
 seven thousand men. These were to march from 
 Canada down Lake Champlain to Albany, where 
 an English force from New York would meet them. 
 Thus New England was to be separated from the 
 rest of the colonies and the cause of independence 
 defeated. Among Burgoyne's troops were several 
 thousand hired Hessians; he was accompanied, too, 
 by many Indian warriors. The Indians had been 
 enlisted principally through the influence of the 
 famous Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, who in London 
 had been presented to the King. Brant promised 
 George III the support of the redmen, and the 
 entire Iroquois Confederacy had joined the British 
 cause. While Burgoyne was marching down Lake 
 Champlain, another British General, St. Leger, was 
 leading his troops through western New York to 
 crush the Amerian settlements of the then Far 
 
THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON 
 
 West. The heroic work of the American General 
 Herkimer and of General Benedict Arnold brought 
 St. Leger's invasion to defeat and disaster. Bur- 
 goyne proceeded onward. The American continent 
 had never before seen such a brilliant military array. 
 The plumed British host seemed invincible. Along 
 the eastern shore of Lake Champlain came the 
 Hessian infantry and the German dragoons. Down 
 the Western bank marched the British grenadiers. 
 Between the glittering helmets on the one shore and 
 the scarlet uniforms on the other the lake bore the 
 British transports. Here, too, plied protecting gun- 
 boats. Hundreds of canoes carried the horde of 
 redmen. Artillery, infantry, cavalry and Indians 
 were steadily advancing on a mission dreadful to 
 the colonists. Across the lake rang bugle calls. 
 The mountains echoed the saluting artillery. Ever 
 southward came the pulsing drums, the tramp of 
 feet and the enshivering Indian war cries. Oppo- 
 sition was futile. Crown Point was quickly taken, 
 then Ticonderoga — two years before conquered by 
 Ethan Allen and his men — with many cannon, fell 
 into the British hands. Seemingly, the onward 
 march of this thoroughly-equipped army of highly- 
 trained professional soldiers could not be stayed. 
 It was the American hope to give battle before the 
 invaders should reach Albany. General Schuyler 
 sought — at first unsuccessfully — to gather sufficient 
 troops to engage Burgoyne. 
 
 As the English army reached the southern end 
 
THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON 
 
 of Lake Champlain it was discovered that the 
 Americans had a quantity of military stores and 
 supplies at Bennington, Vermont. To seize them 
 Burgoyne dispatched Colonel Baum and six hun- 
 dred Hessians. The news of this expedition swept 
 li"ke wildfire through the frontier settlements. John 
 Stark, of the Hampshire Grants, then forty-nine 
 years old, had fought with Major Roger's Rangers 
 in the French and Indian War. As a colonel he had 
 Ipd colonial troops in the Battle of Bunker Hill. At 
 Princeton and Trenton, Stark, then a General, had 
 most ably supported Washington. To the "Green 
 Mountain Boys" he now appealed. Several hundred 
 gathered to repel the threatened danger. About 
 four miles northwest of Bennington, on August 16, 
 1777, Stark gave battle. The British were en- 
 trenched upon a hill that rises from the Walloom- 
 scoick River. On three sides Stark stationed his 
 troops. Before the charge was sounded, he ob- 
 served, "We*ll beat them to-day or Molly Stark's a 
 widow." 
 
 The story of the United States contains accounts 
 of many desperate battles. Among these are the 
 heroic Texan charge at San Jacinto ; the sharpshoot- 
 ing of the Tennessee riflemen under Jackson at New 
 Orleans; the valorous onset of Pickett and his men 
 at Gettysburg; and the mad sweep of the Holston 
 and Watauga settlers up King's Mountain. Per- 
 haps in none of these was the disparity in equip- 
 ment between the Americans and their foes so great 
 
THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON 
 
 as at Bennington. The New Englanders were with- 
 out bayonets; most of them had only their fowHng 
 pieces and many fought with the implements of the 
 farm. Artillery they had none. The desperate 
 Americans swarmed over the Hessian breastworks. 
 Hand to hand they struggled. Many, including 
 Colonel Baum, were killed, and many were wounded. 
 All the British survivors were taken prisoners. 
 Prior to the onslaught Baum had sent a messenger 
 to Burgoyne seeking re-enforcements, and eight 
 hundred regulars marched promptly to the support 
 of the Hessian army. Colonel Seth Warner met 
 and defeated them in a series of engagements. 
 Burgoyne, with his long line of communications to 
 Canada, needed the supplies, but he failed to get 
 them. His loss in troops killed, wounded or cap- 
 tured at Bennington seriously impaired the strength 
 of his force. The valor with which the New Eng- 
 land farmers fought discouraged the Iroquois, so 
 in large numbers they deserted. The victory of the 
 Americans gave heart to all the colonists, and 
 recruits quickly joined Schuyler's army. The de- 
 lay which the battle of Bennington occasioned 
 Burgoyne permitted the Americans to gather for 
 the fight at Bemis Heights, more generally known 
 as the Battle of Saratoga. Morgan and his riflemen, 
 the able Schuyler, the inefficient Gates and the 
 dashing, though later recreant, Arnold might not 
 have succeeded at Saratoga had Bennington not 
 been successfully fought. Because of this, Benning- 
 
THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON 
 
 ton was a great turning point of the Revolution. 
 Burgoyne said that had he succeeded at Benning- 
 ton he would not have failed at Saratoga. 
 
 Following the defeat of Burgoyne's expedition 
 came the recognition of the colonists by the French 
 and their aid in troops and ships of war. The 
 Americans were much heartened. In Bennington 
 was the earnest of ultimate triumph. At Bemis 
 Heights a great monument is reared. In one niche 
 is a statue of Morgan, in another one of Gates, in 
 another one of Schuyler. The fourth is empty. 
 Here, but for his later perfidy, would have stood 
 the figure of Benedict Arnold. At the village of 
 Bennington, where once the old storehouse stood, a 
 gray granite shaft lifts its point into the sky. 
 On the field where John Stark led his men to vic- 
 tory, the men of Vermont, New Hampshire and 
 Massachusetts wrote with blood their guarantee of 
 American independence. The leveling plow and a 
 shielding nature have concealed the hill top entrench- 
 ments. The Walloomscoick River flows on, uncon- 
 scious that over a century ago survivors of Benning- 
 ton cleansed their wounds in its waters. Save for a 
 small monument to Stark, unmarked are the slopes 
 where the New England farmers charged under the 
 burning August sun, but what was here done has 
 not perished from the recollection of men. In a 
 nation's heart endures a memory more secure than 
 legends inscribed on chiseled granite or molded 
 bronze. 
 
slJ■:l•:^^" iioi.i.ow ciirKcii. rAKinrowx. x. v. 
 
Wherever one goes in America 
 there can always he found a shrine. 
 
A Trip to Tarrytown 
 
 "Not far from this village, perhaps about three 
 miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land 
 among high hills, which is one of the quietest 
 places in the whole world. A small brook glides 
 through it, with just murmur enough to lull one 
 to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail 
 or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only 
 sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tran- 
 quillity." — Washington Irving. 
 
 ON a misty, loury morning in the latter part 
 of August, we left New York City en route 
 for Tarrytown — there to visit Washington Irving's 
 home and some of the scenes made famous 
 by his pen. As we left the train, we were at once 
 assailed by a chorus of Jehus, whose call conjured 
 up nothing of the greatness of the place where they 
 plied their trade, — "Taxi, taxi," sounds "all salary 
 and hire." Finding none of the equine friends of 
 Gunpowder, or their descendants, we were of neces- 
 sity required to bargain for one of the modern 
 peace-disturbing air-enfouling vehicles at the mod- 
 erate price of three dollars per hour. In a fine driz- 
 zling rain we wound up an old Tarr3^own street 
 to the New York-Albany post road. We listened 
 in vain for a rumbling coach and rattling harness. 
 No post horn warned us of the coming of fiery 
 steeds and hallooing travellers. Instead, along the 
 brick-paved street ran gas propelled vehicles of all 
 descriptions; some purred; others rattled; some 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 squeaked; some pounded and puffed; all were out 
 of place. As we travelled along toward Sleepy Hol- 
 low, we shut them all from sight, hearing and smell. 
 
 We saw the foliage as Irving must many times 
 have seen it — glistening in the morning rain. We 
 were travelling over the road that once on an au- 
 tumn's night was traversed by the disconsolate 
 school master, Ichabod Crane. We could almost 
 see in the mist his bullet-head and small peaked 
 hat, — his thin figure mounted on the ambling scare- 
 crow of a horse, his flapping coat-tails and his de- 
 jected air, now that his dream of happy opulence 
 had been shattered by the calculatingly flirtatious 
 Katrina. We passed the place where he had imag- 
 ined the ghostly presence in Major Andre's tree. 
 A tree is there now — but surely 'tis not over 
 seventy-five years old! The tree that marked the 
 place of the capture of the British spy has doubt- 
 less long since gone the way of him whom it com- 
 memorated. A monument now stands beside the 
 road telling briefly of Arnold's treason, Andre's 
 capture and its discovery. There is also recorded 
 the names of the captors and a testimonial from 
 George Washington of the worth of their work. 
 
 We rode on. Soon we came to where Brom 
 Bones, masquerading as the headless horseman, was 
 silhouetted against the sky, striking terror into the 
 fugitive pedagogue. We descended to the creek. 
 On the hill beyond, still stands — ^where it has stood 
 since 1697 — the same church that gave Ichabod 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 (in his reliance on the Dutch housevrouw's tale) 
 the hope that was so quickly and rudely shattered 
 by a pumpkin. The old bridge over which the flee- 
 ing steeds hurried is no more. In its stead a trim 
 concrete structure greets the traveller, and a bronze 
 plate, countersunk in one of its sides, tells of its 
 early progenitor. In front of the church we halted. 
 The building was closed but through a half open 
 shutter the wooden pews were visible. It was here 
 that Katrina had so often, unconsciously, succeeded 
 in centering the covert attention of so many swains 
 during prayer. These walls had once been vibrant 
 with the nasal quaver of the odd hero of Irving's 
 "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In the surrounding 
 yard many tombstones tell their brief story of the 
 dust beneath them — names, dates of birth and of 
 death. To the stranger, these tell only that here is 
 now common clay. Below the cemetery the stream 
 winds around in a deep steep-sided valley. It must 
 have been here that in his imagination Washington 
 Irving saw old Rip and his dog trudging away on 
 the fateful hunting trip which was born of the 
 shrewishness of Dame VanWinkle. Somewhere in 
 the hills above he met the strange Half Moon crew 
 and partook of the wicked flagon. 
 
 We drove farther up the road and into the great 
 cemetery that crowns the hill. A winding drive 
 took us to the great author's tomb. A low iron 
 fence encloses many small white marble tomb- 
 stones. The largest is a simple oval topped slab 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 about three feet in height. Its inscription is all 
 sufficient for this and other generations of readers: 
 
 "Washington Irving 
 Born 1781— Died 1853." 
 
 This suggests to the pilgrim the Alhambra, the 
 Moorish tales, the preeminent Life of George Wash- 
 ington, Mahomet, the Life of Columbus, Astoria, 
 the many tales of the Sketch Book and of hours 
 of humor, learning, philosophy and happiness that 
 have been given to millions on this and other con- 
 tinents by him vhose mortal part is here enclosed. 
 
 Many gravestones for his family and kin of his 
 and later generations are found here, as if the 
 love borne his memory might be further increased 
 by this collection of earth and ashes. 
 
 After surveying the assemblage of monuments, 
 and thinking of the career of the greatest American 
 author — not sadly but with a feeling of friendly joy 
 that he had lived, thought and written — we turned 
 to survey the scene spread out before us. Below 
 ran monuments, Walls, shrubs and trees to the val- 
 ley of the brook; beyond on the gentle rise some 
 of the roofs of Tarrytown were visible. Further 
 off flowed the majestic Hudson, the confining 
 Palisades showing hugely through the mist. A 
 sloop was making its way down stream tacking now 
 and then that its sails might get the pull of a light 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 South Southwest breeze. What spot could be more 
 appropriate than this to hold the mortal part of 
 Washington Irving ! The visitor has enforced upon 
 him scenes that, on first beholding, seem long fa- 
 miliar. A drive to the crest of the hill led us to 
 less simple monuments. In a beautiful slope of 
 green, surrounded by shrubbery and trees, Andrew 
 Carnegie had, a few days before, been buried. 
 Among the foliage, a soldiers' tent was visible. He 
 was guarding the earth-enclosed body of the Iron 
 King that ghouls might not plunder. Doubtless 
 this alert watcher will soon be replaced by a grim- 
 mer protection — one of granite and steel. 
 
 Not far distant our driver pointed out the Rocke- 
 feller burial lot. Not many years hence this will 
 doubtless hold the Oil King's remains. 
 
 How the march of existence goes on! The mas- 
 ter iron-monger of the world, the founder of hun- 
 dreds of libraries, the great giver of many benefac- 
 tions — has passed on. Soon an inscribed stone will 
 tell his brief story. His dust, now guarded by a 
 rifleman, will ere long be forgotten. His mighty 
 work will live on. 
 
 Absorbed in thoughts of the brevity of life and 
 how some great souls, unappalled by the shortness 
 of its span, use it earnestly and efficiently — sanely 
 mindful of the duties of the eternal now — we drove 
 back through Tarrytown toward Irving's old home. 
 A path called "Sunshine Lane," winding among 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 the trees, led us from the New York-Albany Post 
 Road to a large closed gate. Through the foliage 
 we caught a faint glimpse suggestive of a house. 
 Nearer approach was barred by the gate and also 
 by a sign bearing the name of one of the great 
 author's descendants — DuPont Irving — and warn- 
 ing us not to enter. We could quite agree with 
 the owner's desire not to be disturbed by curious 
 visitors; however, we regretted that we could not 
 stand for a few moments beneath the roof that had 
 sheltered the greatest literary genius of America. 
 Somewhat disappointed, we made our way by a 
 deliberately circuitous route back to an old Tarry- 
 town tavern to partake of a chicken dinner. This 
 done, we walked slowly down the hill to the rail- 
 road station to board the next train for New York 
 City. 
 
 How delightful a little trip had been ours! As 
 we rode along the Hudson to Manhattan Island, a 
 long procession of characters came to our imagina- 
 tion — Diedrich Knickerbocker, Wouter VanTwiller, 
 Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones, Peter Stuyvesant and 
 whole troops of men and women with whom Wash- 
 ington Irving has made us laugh, grieve or philoso- 
 phise, as he swayed us to the mood. 
 
 We tried to recall the paragraph with which 
 Irving closed his history of New York. Our mem- 
 ory rewarded us only with its last sentence. With 
 it we end this brief account of a visit which you. 
 
A TRIP TO TARRYTOWN 
 
 my friend, should also make to this American shrine 
 on the banks of the Hudson: 
 
 "Haply this frail compound of dust, which, while 
 alive, may have given birth to nought but un- 
 profitable weeds, may form an humble sod of the 
 valley, from whence may spring many a sweet 
 wild flower to adorn my beloved island of 
 Mannahata." 
 
JOHN PAUL TONES 
 
Though trained for many things, 
 for at least one thing must one be 
 trained well. 
 
John Paul Jones 
 
 "But thou, brave Jones, no blame shalt bear, 
 The rights of man demand your care: 
 
 For these you dare the greedy waves. 
 No tyrant, on destruction bent, 
 Has plann'd thy conquest — thou art sent 
 To humble tyrants and their slaves." 
 
 — Philip Freneau. 
 
 WITHIN the United States Naval Academy at 
 Annapolis, Maryland, is interred the ashes 
 of John Paul Jones. For one hundred thirteen years, 
 from his death until 1910, they rested in a Paris cem- 
 etery. The spirit of this man, the first great Ameri- 
 can naval officer, has been with us always. His 
 cry, "I have not yet begun to fight," is unforgotten. 
 It will go ringing on through the centuries like a 
 clarion call to battle. Its thrill is found in the 
 triumphant message from Perry, "We have met the 
 enemy and they are ours;" its indomitable power 
 was felt in the words of the dying Lawrence, 
 "Don't give up the ship ;" its unconquerable force 
 was in Stephen Decatur when in the Tripolitan 
 harbor he sank the pirate craft. In the turret of the 
 Monitor it pulsed through the sturdy Ericson; its 
 throb was in Dewey's men in far-off Manilla Bay, 
 following the calmly-spoken words, "When you 
 are ready, Gridley, fire." It fixed forever the high 
 standard of courage of our navy — a navy that in 
 all the wars from the days of Jones to those of 
 Simms has never failed to conquer. 
 
JOHN PAUL JONES 
 
 Who was this man whose spirit now stands on 
 the bridge of every American ship, is within every 
 boiler room, behind every gun and aloft on every 
 fighting top that carries the Stars and Stripes? He 
 was born in County Kircudbright, Scotland, in 1747, 
 his lineage obscure, his outward opportunities few. 
 But there was that within him that made oppor- 
 tunities. His name was John Paul. In later life he 
 took that of John Paul Jones. Unaided even by a 
 christening, he made that name, common though 
 it was, a synonym for indomitable will and unyield- 
 ing pluck. 
 
 At twelve he was a sailor, at nineteen a chief 
 mate, and at twenty-one a captain. When twenty- 
 six years old, he left the sea and settled in Vir- 
 ginia. In 1775, he was commissioned as a lieutenant 
 in the Continental navy. On the little ship "Alfred" 
 he pulled the halyards that hoisted to the breeze 
 our first naval flag. It was the "Rattlesnake flag," 
 bearing those warning words, "Don't tread on me." 
 He knew one trade well; he was a skillful sailor 
 and navigator. He had diligently improved his 
 boyhood years before the mast. 
 
 In 1775 he was placed in command of the brig 
 "Providence," with a crew of seventy and arma- 
 ment of twelve four-pounders. In four months he 
 had captured sixteen 6nemy ships. Later, with 
 other commands he burned enemy transports and 
 captured munitions, gaining supplies for Americans 
 and destroying them for the British. 
 
JOHN PAUL JONES 
 
 In June, 1777, he was given the "Ranger," a 
 vessel of three hundred tons, armed with eighteen 
 six-pound guns. On July 4th he ran to her mast- 
 head the first flag of Stars and Stripes that was 
 ever flown in the American navy. From then until 
 1779 he was in European waters, fighting and 
 harrying enemy shipping. 
 
 In the latter year he converted a rotten, con- 
 demned merchantman in a French harbor to an 
 American man-of-war. In honor of Benjamin 
 Franklin he named it the "Bonhomme Richard." 
 With this as his flagship, he cruised about England 
 and Scotland, striking terror wherever he appeared 
 along shore or upon the seas. With two vessels of 
 his squadron accompanying the "Good Richard," 
 he fell in with the British Baltic convoy led by the 
 staunch new frigate "Serapis." Then ensued what 
 was perhaps the most desperate naval battle ever 
 fought in the history of the world. With his ship 
 riddled, his prisoners at the pumps, his magnificent 
 crew suffering and many dead and dying, he fought 
 his stronger foe. For hours the battle lasted. When 
 in desperate straits Jones was asked if he sur- 
 rendered. He made his memorable reply. At the 
 close of the contest, though the American ship sank, 
 the victors were possessed of the British man-of- 
 war, and in it made their way to France. 
 
 The story of his life and of his death in Paris in 
 1792 are well known. The one great event in his 
 career that stands supreme is the battle on the 
 
JOHN PAUL JONES 
 
 North Sea. He believed in initiative, and expressed 
 that beHef thus: "I do not wish to have command 
 of any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to 
 go in harm's way." 
 
 Though born in Scotland, and his youthful days 
 spent at sea, he was a real American. His patriotism 
 v/as proved by his deeds. He worded it in the say- 
 ings, "I can never renounce the glorious title of a 
 citizen of the United States," and *'I have ever 
 looked out for the honor of the American flag." 
 Never in all his fights did he have a good ship, 
 never did he have a full crew. His weaknesses in 
 equipment and men were always overbalanced by 
 his skill and bravery. 
 
 Whether he dreamed in his youth that some day 
 his name would stand among the first of the world's 
 naval heroes, we do not know. That history would 
 call him the "Father of the American Navy," he 
 probably never dreamed. To wish for immortality 
 in the memories of men may be vanity; it is not 
 vanity, hov/ever, to wish to serve so well that the 
 service shall be enduring. 
 
 In a few short hours one September day John 
 Paul Jones wrote his name forever in the earthly 
 records of great deeds. It was no sudden burst of 
 genius that gave him the power so to do. In his 
 early youth, though he then did not know when or 
 where, he was preparing for those four hours of 
 glory. In the night on a yard-arm of a reeling ship 
 how often had he stored up materials of physical 
 
JOHN PAUL JONES 
 
 and moral strength for the sudden heavy draft made 
 that autumn evening in 1779. In strange harbors, 
 under distant skies, in currents, in calms and in 
 storms, he had learned his art. Under the stars 
 he had heard the blocks creaking with the straining 
 rigging as he watched the weather and read his 
 chart. From stem to stern, from keel to top-truck, 
 he knew ships. He knew the whims of wind and 
 tide! He knew the tricks of sails, of sheets and 
 wheel. He taught himself how to use best and 
 to its uttermost degree every resource, however 
 meagre it might be. He learned what every sailor- 
 man must learn, that his skill must be ever available, 
 ever ready, and that to know too late is not to 
 know at all. Thus he prepared day by day and 
 year by year. When his great hour struck, he was 
 ready. At thirty-two, unaided by chance or fortune, 
 there was suddenly opened a page of history on 
 which he should write his name imperishably — a 
 page whose reading would ever inspire men to dar- 
 ing with unbreaking will. 
 
SAMTKI. llorSTON 
 
The men who made the westward 
 march were cast in heroic mold. 
 
Sam Houston 
 
 "Flag of the free heart's hope and home, 
 
 By angel hands to valor given; 
 The stars have lit the welkin dome, 
 
 And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
 Forever float that standard sheet! 
 
 Where breathes the foe but falls before us. 
 With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, 
 
 And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?" 
 
 — Joseph Rodman Drake. 
 
 THE most heroic figure in history is the Amer- 
 ican pioneer. All the virtues and vices of the 
 frontier were his. All the suffering and privation 
 of the uncultivated wilderness were by him endured. 
 All the dangers of lurking savages were braved and 
 overcome. All that initiative, patience and courage 
 could accomplish was by him performed. He was a 
 man of imagination and foresight. As he stood, 
 over a century ago, beyond the pale of settlement 
 on the western slope of the Alleghanies, he gazed 
 afar over forests and rivers, over beauteous valleys 
 and mountains, and, with the beat of the distant 
 Pacific in his straining ears, caught a vision of a 
 continental destiny for the colonies of the Atlantic 
 seaboard — a vision of peace and prosperity, of rang- 
 ing herds and waving fields, of harnessed rivers and 
 plying commerce, of delving for nature's store of 
 treasure to be wrought into usefulness for man- 
 kind — a vision that through him has been realized, 
 for wherever the forest rang with his axe there he 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 has uplifted the schoolhouse and the temple; wher- 
 ever his home was planted there has flowered into 
 beauty and blossomed into perfume the true ideals 
 of American life. 
 
 In 1793, the year that saw the death of Louis XVI 
 of France, two children were born in Virginia. Both 
 were to become leaders in the western advance; 
 both were to become apostles to spread the liberty- 
 giving American institutions. One was destined to 
 be the colonizer and founder of the Republic of 
 Texas; the other was selected for the mission of 
 wresting her independence from the overlords of 
 Mexico. One was Stephen Austin, the colonizer; 
 the other, that great child and man of romance, 
 Samuel Houston. 
 
 Houston was of Scotch-Irish stock; his father, a 
 sturdy frontiersman who fought in the Revolution- 
 ary War, Of his mother we know that she was a 
 woman of courage, and that, as in all great men, her 
 most famous son inherited his mother's qualities. 
 Her Spartan spirit is shown by an incident of Sam's 
 enlistment in the War of 1812. Standing in her 
 cabin door, she gave her son his musket, saying, 
 "Take this musket, and never disgrace it, for, remem- 
 ber, I had rather all my sons should fill one honor- 
 able grave than that one of them should turn his 
 back to save his life. Go, and remember, too, that 
 while the door of my cottage is open to brave men, 
 it is eternally shut against cowards." 
 
 Houston's father died when Sam was thirteen 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 years of age. His mother took the large family over 
 the mountains, to a rough home they made in the 
 Tennessee forests. The Tennessee River, seven 
 miles distant, marked the boundary line between the 
 settlers and the Cherokee Indians. Of Sam's earliest 
 years little is recorded except that he attended a 
 backwoods' school for a few months, and also read 
 and reread Pope's translation of the "Iliad." What 
 hopes, what dreams were stirred by these Homeric 
 tales of warrior heroes, we can surmise from his 
 later life. We find him when fourteen years of age 
 leaving his mother's home to join the Cherokee tribe, 
 with whom he then lived for four years. He was 
 adopted as a son by the Cherokee chief "Oolootee- 
 kah," and was christened "Colonneh," or "The 
 Rover." 
 
 During these four years he played the alert 
 games of his dusky playmates. He was taught the 
 habits of the game of the primeval forest; he knew 
 the cunning of the wild fox and the intelligence of 
 the wolf ; he learned to imitate the calls of the wild ; 
 he heard the Indian tales of prowess and of daring ; 
 he knew the secrets of stream and of woodland. He 
 listened to the myths of the redmen; he heard the 
 poetry of Indian oratory in the council wigwams ; 
 he became acquainted with their religion, with its 
 rewards of all the beautiful in nature in the Happy 
 Hunting Ground. With them he heard the voices of 
 departed ancestors in the sighing of the trees. He 
 wore the Indian dress with all its barbarous finery. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 He learned the lessons of those wild children of the 
 forest, who, with all their cruelty and all their 
 savagery, have never been excelled by any race in 
 their worship of the wonderful and beautiful of the 
 earth. He received that training which is only for 
 the observant, in a school whose dome is the blue 
 sky, whose curriculum is unbounded by dogma or 
 superstition, whose teachers are ever present com- 
 panions, and whose laboratories are in hills and 
 running brooks, in the glades where deer run, and 
 in twig, stone and flower — that university of nature 
 which gives the secret of the usefulness of life to 
 all who sincerely inquire. 
 
 In Houston's adventurous career we find many 
 evidences of Indian characteristics in his nature. 
 His fiery temper, his love of the wild, his vanity, his 
 commanding presence, his lofty eloquence, his valor 
 — even in his youth — were strangely apparent. 
 
 Until he was eighteen years of age, Houston 
 remained with the Cherokees. Being in debt for 
 ammunition, he returned to his white friends to earn 
 sufficient money by teaching school to discharge his 
 financial obligations. He received a tuition of eight 
 dollars per annum from each pupil. This salary was 
 paid one-third in cotton goods, one-third in corn at 
 33 1-3C per bushel, and one-third in cash. 
 
 Here he reigned as master in that humble but 
 mighty American institution, the district school. 
 Here the young mind of the pupil is trained to 
 respect the authority of government and to revere 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 the memories of our nation's heroes. Here he 
 buffets with the Norsemen on the voyage to Vin- 
 land, and feels the hope and the despair of the un- 
 charted sailings with the Genoese. Here he dreams 
 with Ponce de Leon, and wanders with LaSalle and 
 Frontenac. He stands with Balboa at Darien as the 
 mighty Pacific meets his gaze, and charges with 
 Pizarro among the fastnesses of the Incas. He 
 steps with the heroic Pilgrims upon the rock at 
 Plymouth, and suffers with the adventurous Cav- 
 aliers at Jamestown. With Magellan he rounds the 
 Horn, and with Frobisher and Drake pursues the 
 galleons on the Spanish Main. He fights with the 
 pioneers on the Atlantic coast and in the Piedmont, 
 and braves the dangers beyond the pass of Cumber- 
 land. He rides through the night with Paul 
 Revere, and fights side by side with the Minute- 
 men. He charges with John Stark at Bennington, 
 and suffers the pain and misery of the winter at 
 Valley Forge. He receives with Washington the 
 surrender at Yorktown, and sits with Madison and 
 Hamilton in the Constitutional Convention. He 
 goes forth with Boone to conquer a continent, and 
 trades with the Indians at the mouth of the Colum- 
 bia. He joins the mad charge of Pickett at Gettys- 
 burg, and rides on the wings of the wind with Sheri- 
 dan at Winchester. He lives the lives of all who 
 dared ; he suffers in the reeking battlefield ; he meets 
 the able savage with heart undaunted. He toils in 
 the wilderness of mountain and plain, and catches 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 the spirit of those who ever build higher and higher 
 on the foundations laio so deep by the men who 
 have gone before. He feels the beat of public 
 progress, and becomes that crowning achievement 
 of the world's civilization — an American citizen. 
 
 After a period of teaching, Houston, for a session, 
 attended an academy at Maryville. This brief ex- 
 perience and his early few months' training in the 
 backwoods' school constituted the only schooling 
 that Houston ever had. His education was ob- 
 tained through association with nature and with 
 men. Throughout his life he read a few books. He 
 studied deeply Caesar's "Commentaries," and learned 
 their simple wisdom on the art of war. Homer 
 and Shakespeare were frequently read by him, and 
 in his later life he devoted much study to the Bible. 
 His preserved speeches are tinged with the language 
 of Holy Writ, intermixed with the rich imagery of 
 the eloquence of the red man. 
 
 George Rogers Clark, who was chiefly instru- 
 mental in holding for the colonies the territory be- 
 tv/een the Alleghanies and the Mississippi during 
 the Revolution; Lewis and Clark, who broke the 
 trail to Oregon; Fremont, who made the path 
 through Colorado ; Boone, who led the way into 
 Tennessee and Kentucky; Kenton, the scout of the 
 Kanawha; Davy Crockett and Bowie, who died at 
 the Alamo; and the other intrepid men who led the 
 American advance over mountain steeps, through 
 tangled forests, across sandy plains — these men who 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 defied the hardships of toil, thirst and hunger, alert 
 pioneers who met undaunted and alone the lurking 
 dangers of the fastnesses of the wilderness, may 
 have had dreams less vast than the later results of 
 their work warranted, but, like all men who com- 
 bine imagination with accomplishment, they were 
 willing to, and did, perform the immediate tasks that 
 were sternly given them. Of such as these was he 
 whose crowning achievements were in the conquest 
 and preservation of that vast expanse of tropical 
 fertility which we now know as the State of Texas. 
 
 As it is worth while to trace the great river to 
 its sources, or to know the tremendous forces that 
 wrought out the soil of this continent, so will it be 
 profitable to learn in what school and how was 
 trained in his early manhood he who led the great 
 march of Americans to the banks of the Rio 
 Grande. 
 
 In 1813, while the war between Great Britain 
 and the United States was in progress, Houston 
 enlisted in the army under his lifelong friend. Gen- 
 eral Andrew Jackson. In March of that year he 
 took a glorious part in the campaign against the 
 Creek Indians and fought at the battle of the Horse 
 Shoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River. As an ensign, 
 he commanded a platoon of Tennessee riflemen, 
 and at their head he charged through the leaden 
 hail that came from the Creek entrenchments. 
 While scaling the Indian breastworks, a barbed 
 arrow entered his thigh. General Jackson ordered 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 him to the rear, but, under his threatening sword, 
 Houston forced one of his lieutenants to withdraw 
 the arrow. After the wound was bandaged he pro- 
 ceeded with his men. One thousand savages and 
 one thousand Tennesseeans fought with rifle, arrow, 
 spear, sword, tomahawk and dagger. The Indians' 
 prophets had promised them victory. A dark cloud 
 was to be the token of the Great Spirit. After the 
 first fierce carnage, the victorious Americans called 
 upon the enemy's survivors to surrender. A light 
 rain then fell. The Indians took the cloud from 
 which it came as the promised signal, and their 
 prophets stood firm. They had withdrawn to a port- 
 holed log fortification in a deep ravine, and here they 
 defied the further onslaughts of the whites. Gen- 
 eral Jackson called for volunteers to make the 
 assault, but no officer offered to lead so desperate a 
 charge. Houston seized a rifle, and, calling upon 
 his platoon to follow, led them against the savage 
 fire. He received two bullets in his shoulder in the 
 last event of that fateful day that destroyed the 
 power of Creeks forever. Houston, who was then 
 only twenty years of age, was not expected to re- 
 cover. After enduring much suffering, he arrived 
 two months later at his mother's home in Blount 
 County, Tennessee, where for months he lay in 
 agony. Finally he was taken to Marysville for 
 medical assistance, but the wounds never healed. 
 From then until his death, fifty years " later, he 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 carried a running sore as a memento of his first 
 baptism of fire. 
 
 After sufficiently recovering to undertake the 
 journey, Houston traveled down the Cumberland, 
 the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans to join 
 his command. In the little bark he took to the 
 West a copy of the "Iliad," a volume of Shake- 
 speare and the Bible. It was a strange coincidence 
 that on this first trip of Houston to the Father of 
 Waters he carried the greatest epic ever written, 
 the book of the world's greatest religion, and the 
 works of the most illustrious genius who ever 
 wrought the fancies of his brain into an enduring 
 literary fabric for all the ages. On the Mississippi, 
 as if to greet him who was to do so much to ex- 
 tend the commerce of a nation toward the West, 
 was met the first steamboat that ever disturbed the 
 Father of Waters. The following winter he sailed 
 around Florida, which in a few years was to be 
 ceded by Spain, and thence to New York for further 
 medical treatment. He returned overland to Ten- 
 nessee, where he was made a sub-agent among the 
 Cherokees. In the spring of 1818 he conducted a 
 delegation of Indians to Washington, where he was 
 reprimanded for appearing in his wild Indian dress 
 before Secretary of State Calhoun, and later was 
 strangely charged with having prevented African 
 negroes from being smuggled into the Western 
 states from Florida. Smarting under the unjust 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 criticisms, he resigned from the army, and, at the 
 age of twenty-five, undertook the study of law. 
 
 In the march of the American pioneers toward 
 the Pacific, the first were those of the hunting rifle, 
 like Boone, each generation of whom moved further 
 westward until they reached the great sea. These 
 were followed by those of the axe, who girdled 
 the trees and cleared small patches of ground, en- 
 gaged in shiftless farming, and on the coming of 
 more permanent farmers deserted their log cabins 
 to move farther West. With the coming of the 
 third class, the permanent farmers, land titles be- 
 came of more importance. In a pioneer community, 
 where hardship was usual, living rough and de- 
 fense of life often dependent on the effort of the 
 individual, it was natural that personal quarrels 
 were frequent and violence common. These and 
 litigation over land titles gave occasion for the 
 frontier lawyer. Court sessions were days of great 
 social gatherings. For miles about a county-seat 
 over the rough trails would come the population to 
 listen to the trials in which all were interested, in 
 which all took sides, and in which anybody's busi- 
 ness was everybody's business. Court proceedings 
 furnished the play, and the court-room the stage 
 for the backwoods' lawyers and judges to display 
 their qualities. Every -case gave an opportunity for 
 the lawyer to advance his political plans and to 
 interfere with those of his opponents. At the 
 taverns, between court sessions, the members of 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 the bar could discourse to their admirers and berate 
 their enemies. The stump speech here developed 
 into a national institution. 
 
 Lured by the attractions of this field, Houston 
 decided to study law. He entered the office of James 
 Trimble, at Nashville. The usual period of study 
 in those days was eighteen months. Houston, how- 
 ever, studied six months, devoting himself to acquir- 
 ing a few general principles of the science. His 
 sense of justice was not dulled by commencing his 
 endeavors in an attempt to digest a mass of reported 
 cases. In his twenty-fifth year, he was admitted to 
 the bar and commenced practice at the little town 
 of Lebanon, Tennessee. Here his office rent was 
 one dollar per month, and the local postmaster, a 
 Mr. Goldsworthy, advanced him this as well as his 
 postage, which was then twenty-five cents per 
 letter. His law library of a few books that he 
 could carry in his saddle-bags he also purchased on 
 credit. After three months' practice, he was elected 
 district-attorney and removed from Lebanon to 
 Nashville to assume the duties of that office. 
 
 As public prosecutor he had to contend with some 
 of the ablest minds of the frontier bar. Though 
 he was not a scholarly lawyer, his native ability, his 
 ready wit and the possession, through his early 
 training, of a sound and quick judgment, made him 
 a dangerous antagonist in the forums in which he 
 appeared. His rough eloquence, his fervid imagina- 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 tion and his vigor won for him a large following 
 among the people of Tennessee. 
 
 His popularity was such that by acclamation he 
 was elected Major-General of the state troops. 
 
 In 1823, Houston was elected to Congress from 
 the Ninth District of Tennessee. The House of 
 Representatives then numbered among its members 
 such patriots as Webster, Clay and Randolph. 
 Houston profited much from his association with 
 these brightest minds of his time. He belonged 
 to the Jackson wing of the Democratic party, and 
 was one of those men who had within him the 
 strong growing spirit of nationalism in the West. 
 It was this spirit which in 1828 made Jackson 
 President. 
 
 Jackson was Houston's great ideal. While the 
 former was in the Senate, Houston served on the 
 same committees in the House. On one occasion 
 during his second term in Congress, Houston emu- 
 lated his patron by engaging in a duel, the only one 
 of his long life. The cause was trivial. His an- 
 tagonist was General White, who was seriously 
 wounded, while Houston escaped unharmed. Many 
 times after, because of his hot temper, Houston was 
 challenged — once by Mirabeau Lamar, the President 
 of Texas from 1838 to 1841, and once by Albert Sid- 
 ney Johnston. One day he received a belligerent 
 message demanding an engagement on the field of 
 honor. Houston handed the challenge to his secre- 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 tary, instructing him to mark it number fourteen 
 and place it on file. 
 
 In 1827, Houston was elected Governor of Tennes- 
 see by a majority of twelve thousand. For two 
 years of his term he served with credit to himself 
 and with honor to the electorate of his state. He 
 then married Eliza Allen, the daughter of one of 
 his ardent admirers and a staunch political sup- 
 porter. The couple lived together for three 
 months, when suddenly his wife departed for her 
 father's home. In a storm of slander, scandal and 
 abuse, Houston remained silent as to the cause of 
 this separation. Neither from Mrs. Houston nor 
 from him did explanation ever come. The lies of 
 a villifying press, the conjectures of little minds, 
 v/ho, in an effort to satiate their unwarranted 
 curiosity disregard one's right of privacy, the 
 slanders of the suspicious, never served to draw 
 from either a word as to the cause of their separa- 
 tion. Many explanations have been given, but for 
 us it is sufficient to know that neither would ever 
 suffer derogatory mention of the other. A few 
 years later Mrs. Houston obtained a divorce on a 
 charge of desertion, and later she married again. 
 Houston, suffering much in spirit, decided to aban- 
 don his brilliant career and seek again the com- 
 panionship of the redmen. He resigned the Gover- 
 norship of Tennessee, embarked upon the Cumber- 
 land and made his way to the home of his adopted 
 father, Oolooteekah. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 The Cherokee Indians had by this time removed 
 from Tennessee to what is now Eastern Oklahoma 
 and Western Arkansas. At the confluence of the 
 Arkansas and Illinois rivers lived the Cherokee chief 
 in barbaric opulence. His acres were broad, and 
 his log dwelling was large. He possessed twelve 
 slaves and five hundred cattle. This simple 
 aborigine welcomed the successful lawyer and 
 politician, the tried warrior and general, from the 
 advancing civilization in the East to the Indian 
 country beyond the farthest outpost. Here Hous- 
 ton lived for four years — perhaps the darkest of his 
 life. He indulged in many excesses, seeking for a 
 time to drown his disappointment and sorrow in 
 strong drink. These were not, however, years of 
 inactivity. He took some part in the Indian coun- 
 cils, and sought to alleviate the wrongs done the 
 Indians by venal government agents. On the occa- 
 sion of a visit to Washington to intercede with the 
 Federal authorities in behalf of the Cherokees, he 
 was upon the floor of the House of Representatives 
 assailed in debate by Congressman Salisbury of 
 Ohio. He was charged with attempting to defraud 
 the Indians. At this Houston took umbrage. On 
 accidentally meeting the offending Congressman one 
 evening, Houston vented his wrath upon him in a 
 physical assault. The, worsted Congressman under- 
 took the prosecution of Houston, and in the courts 
 of the District of Columbia he was fined five hundred 
 dollars. This fine was remitted, however, by 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 President Jackson. Salisbury also unsuccessfully 
 attempted to bar Houston from the privilege of an 
 ex-Congressman to appear on the floor of the House 
 of Representatives. Upon this Houston was tried. 
 His counsel was a Washington lawyer whose name 
 is now known in every American household. In 
 that dramatic proceeding against the friend of Jack- 
 son, that much-maligned exponent of Western 
 thought, the counsel for the defense was the author 
 of "The Star Spangled Banner" — Francis Scott Key. 
 
 The vast territory stretching from the Sabine to 
 the Rio Grande, a larger expanse than Napoleon's 
 empire, and now called "Texas," was known to the 
 Spaniards before 1600. In 1685, the French ex- 
 plorer, LaSalle, who had three years before been 
 upon the shores of Texas, founded a settlement at 
 Matagorda Bay, which was soon abandoned for one 
 upon the LaVaca River. This soon passed away, 
 as had the earlier Spanish settlements. The first 
 permanent settlement in Texas was made by Spain 
 in 1 7 16 at LaBahia, or Goliad. In the same year mis- 
 sions were established at San Antonio DeBexar and 
 at Nacogdoches. For three-quarters of a century 
 Texas had no white settlers except the priests and 
 soldiers of a few missions. In 1800 Spain ceded 
 Louisiana to Napoleon, and three years later 
 Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States. 
 
 The Mississippi River was the highway to New 
 Orleans, which now became an American city. A 
 few Americans from this outpost pushed on into the 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 Spanish territory of Texas. In 1819 the United 
 States bought Florida from Spain ; whether Texas 
 was included in this purchase has been a subject 
 for debate. In 1821, Spain's three century domina- 
 tion of Mexico came to an end, that country estab- 
 lished her independence and in 1822 Augustin de 
 Iturbidi was crowned Emperor. In 1823 he was 
 deposed, and Antonio Lopeg de Santa Anna became 
 the great man of Mexico. 
 
 In 1820, Moses Austin, a native of Connecticut, 
 secured a grant of land in Texas. In 1821 he died, 
 and his son Stephen took up the colonization plan 
 of his father and secured a confirmation of the 
 grant made to the latter. He returned to New 
 Orleans, going back to San Antonio in March, 1822, 
 with a few colonists. He then learned of the Mexi- 
 can revolution and of the worthlessness of his Span- 
 ish grant. From Iturbide he obtained a new grant, 
 and on Iturbide's fall again obtained the same grant 
 from Mexico. His site was San Felipi de Austin, a 
 hundred miles up the Bragos River. 
 
 The story of the emigration of the Austin col- 
 onists to Texas has many parallels in our history. 
 Some came over a thousand miles with ox-teams. 
 They traversed unmarked forests and trackless 
 prairies, and crossed perilous streams, ofttimes on 
 rafts of logs bound with grapevines. For food they 
 depended much upon' their rifles, but sometimes on 
 the plains they ate grasshoppers caught by drives 
 into brush corrals. They were without physicians. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 In illness only the simplest remedies were available, 
 and they performed their own rough surgery. Oft- 
 times the dead were buried by the roadside, with no 
 memorials but heaps of stones to prevent the rav- 
 ages of wild animals. Sometimes the Indians at- 
 tacked, murdered, plundered and burned. Stark 
 corpses, reddened camp-fire ashes, the presence of 
 carrion birds and bleaching bones have frequently 
 offered their mute evidence. 
 
 In December, 1832, Houston left the Cherokees 
 and went to Texas. In a letter to Andrew Jackson, 
 written February 13, 1833, he said: "I am in pos- 
 session of some information which will doubtless be 
 interesting to you, and may be calculated to for- 
 ward your views, if you should entertain any, touch- 
 ing the acquisition of Texas by the United States 
 government. That such a measure is desired by 
 nineteen-twentieths of the population of the prov- 
 ince, I cannot doubt." The dissatisfaction of the 
 Texans was occasioned by these facts : In 1824 the 
 Mexicans had adopted a liberal constitution, in imi- 
 tation of that of the United States. In reliance on 
 this the American settlers had come. Santa Anna 
 sought to establish himself as dictator, and finally 
 succeeded. By 1830, there were in Texas about 
 twenty thousand American settlers, and these were 
 becoming Viuneasy under the growing disregard of 
 the security of their rights as the Mexican consti- 
 tution had granted them. In 1835, Santa Anna is- 
 sued a decree requiring the Texans to give up their 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 arms; to this the settlers would not submit. In 
 February, 1836, the Mexican dictator, to enforce 
 his decrees, led an army of six to eight thousand men 
 across the Rio Grande. A summary of the events 
 from 1824 to and including the massacres at the 
 Alamo and at Goliad is well made by Houston in a 
 letter written to Santa Anna, dated March 21, 1842. 
 It is as follows: 
 
 "The people of Texas were invited to migrate to 
 this country for the purpose of enjoying equal rights 
 and Constitutional liberty. They were promised 
 the shield of the Constitution of 1824, adopted by 
 Mexico. Confiding in the pledge, they removed to 
 the country to encounter all the privations of a 
 wilderness. Under the alluring promises of free 
 institutions, citizens of the United States fought 
 gallantly in the achievement of Mexican independ- 
 ence, and many of them survive, and to this day 
 occupy the soil which their privations and valor as- 
 sisted in achieving. They brought with them no 
 aspirations or projects but such as were loyal to the 
 Constitution of Mexico. They repelled the Indian 
 savages ; they encountered every discomfort ; 
 they subdued the wilderness and converted 
 into cultivated fields the idle waste of this now 
 prolific territory. Their courage and enterprise 
 achieved that which, your countrymen had either 
 neglected or left for centuries unaccomplished. The 
 Texans, enduring the annoyances and oppressions 
 inflicted upon them, remained faithful to the Con- 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 stitution of Mexico. In 1832, when an attempt was 
 made to destroy that Constitution, and when you, 
 sir, threw yourself forward as its avowed champion, 
 you were sustained with all the fidelity and valor 
 that freemen could contribute. 
 
 "You can well imagine the transition of feeling 
 which ensued on your accession to power. Your 
 subversion of the Constitution of 1824, your estab- 
 lishment of Centralism, your conquest of Zacatecas, 
 characterized by every act of violence, cruelty and 
 rapine, inflicted upon us the profoundest astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "In succession came your orders for the Texans 
 to surrender their private arms. Then was pre- 
 sented to Texans the alternative of tamely crouch- 
 ing to the tyrant*s lash or exalting themselves to 
 the attributes of freemen. They chose the latter. 
 To chastise them for their presumption induced your 
 advance upon Texas, with your boasted veteran 
 army, mustering a force nearly equal to the whole 
 population of this country at that time. You be- 
 sieged and took the Alamo; but under what cir- 
 cumstances? You assailed one hundred and fifty 
 men; its brave defenders, worn by vigilance and 
 duty beyond the power of human nature to sustain, 
 were at length overwhelmed by a force of nine 
 thousand men, and the place taken. This you have 
 been pleased to class in the succession of your vic- 
 tories, and I presume you would include the mas- 
 sacre of Goliad. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 "Your triumph there — if such you are pleased to 
 term it — was not the triumph of arms; it was the 
 success of perfidy. Fannin and his brave compan- 
 ions had beaten back and defied your veteran sol- 
 diers. Although outnumbered more than seven to 
 one, their valiant, hearty and indomitable courage, 
 with holy devotion to the cause of freedom, foiled 
 every effort directed by your general to insure his 
 success by arms. He had recourse to a flag of truce, 
 and when the surrender of the little patriot band 
 was secured by the most solemn treaty stipulations, 
 what were the tragic scenes that ensued to Mexican 
 perfidy? Instead of restoring them to liberty, ac- 
 cording to the capitulation, you ordered them to be 
 executed, contrary to every pledge given them, con- 
 trary to the rules of war and contrary to every prin- 
 ciple of humanity." 
 
 On March 2nd, 1836, a convention of citizens, 
 gathered at Washington on the Brazos, declared 
 Texas a free and independent nation. 
 
 Travis' troops had been massacred at the Alamo, 
 and Fannin's murdered at Goliad. Houston was 
 commander-in-chief of the remaining Texan forces. 
 Santa Anna, thinking that an easy conquest of 
 Houston's army awaited him, sought engagement. 
 Houston bided his time until the Mexican troops 
 encamped in a cul-de-sac between the Buffalo and 
 San Jacinto Rivers, with a marsh at their back. 
 Sunrise on April 21st, 1836, found Houston's army 
 of about seven hundred Texans in a bit of woods 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 in front of Santa Anna's troops. As the morning 
 broke, Houston sprang to his feet saying: "The 
 sun of Austerlitz has risen again." Half a mile dis- 
 tant were over two thousand trained enemy troops, 
 sheltered by entrenchments. Between was a stretch 
 of prairie, with no trees, brush or rocks for shelter. 
 Secretly Houston had ordered the destruction of the 
 bridge at Vinci. From the battlefield no retreat 
 could be made. 
 
 In the afternoon the charge was sounded. Down 
 the lines dashed a horseman, Deaf Smith. Swing- 
 ing an axe about his head, he shouted : "I have cut 
 down the bridge at Vinci. Fight for your lives," 
 With a wild shout, "Remember the Alamo!" the 
 entire column rushed forward. At their head rode 
 their courageous leader. When within a hundred 
 yards of the Mexican breastworks, the enemy fired. 
 Their shots were high. Houston's ankle was shat- 
 tered, and a few soldiers were killed. In a moment 
 the determined Texans were in the trenches. With 
 sword and dagger they fought. The Mexicans were 
 routed ; nearly seven hundred were killed, two hun- 
 dred and eight were wounded, nearly a thousand 
 prisoners were taken, and all with a loss to the 
 victors of six killed and twenty-five wounded. Santa 
 Anna fled. The following day he was found in 
 civilian clothing, crawling along the bushes near 
 the ruined bridge at Vinci. Texan independence 
 was won. The treaty of Velasco concluded the 
 war. Santa Anna in time was returned to Mexico. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 The battle of San Jacinto was a military miracle. 
 Two thousand trained veterans, the pick of an 
 invading army of six or seven thousand, entrenched, 
 protected on flanks by woodland, an open plain be- 
 fore them, commanded by a tried general, were al- 
 most annihilated, and their commander captured, 
 all with small loss to the attackers, and this by one- 
 third their number of plainsmen untaught in the 
 art of war. 
 
 In the fall of 1836 Houston was elected President 
 of the new Republic. In 1837 the independence of 
 Texas was recognized by the United States — the 
 last official act of President Andrew Jackson. In 
 1845 the Lone Star State gained admission to the 
 Federal Union. 
 
 Houston was one of the two first United States 
 Senators from Texas. He took his seat in March, 
 1846. Among his colleagues were Clay, Calhoun, 
 Webster, Cass, Benton and many others who left a 
 deep impress upon our national affairs. His ec- 
 centric clothing, his broad-brimmed white beaver 
 hat, the Indian blanket which he often wore, his 
 habit of whittling while listening to the Senate pro- 
 ceedings, together with his vastly interesting life, 
 attracted much attention to him. During the war 
 between the United States and Mexico he was often 
 consulted. In his Senatorial career he strongly op- 
 posed the secessionist doctrines. He vigorously ob- 
 jected to the Kansas-Nebraska bill repealing the 
 Missouri Compromise. 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 Frequently did he rise to defend or plead for the 
 American Indians. In one of his speeches he said, 
 "We have Indians on our Western border whose 
 civilization is not inferior to our own. They have 
 well organized societies ; they have villages and 
 towns; they have their state-houses and their cap- 
 itols ; they have females and men who would grace 
 the drawing-rooms or salons of Washii.gton; they 
 have a well organized judiciary, a trial by jury, and 
 the writ of habeas corpus." One who reads the 
 first Constitution of the Cherokee tribes cannot 
 avoid, as a possible belief, that it was written by 
 Houston himself. In recommending a policy to be 
 adopted in dealing with the Indians he said, in 1855, 
 after suggesting a modest military establishment in 
 their midst, "Cultivate intercourse with the Indians. 
 Show them that you have comforts to exchange for 
 their peltries ; bring them around you ; domesticate 
 them ; familiarize them with civilization ; let them 
 see that you are rational beings and they will be- 
 come rational in imitation of you. But take no 
 whiskey there at all, not even for the officers, for 
 fear their generosity would let it out. Do this and 
 you will have peace with the Indians. * * * 
 
 "The nature of an Indian can be changed. He 
 changes under favorable circumstances and rises to 
 the dignity of a civilized being. It takes a genera- 
 tion or two to regenerate his race, but it can be, 
 done." 
 
 In December, 1859, Houston became Governor 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 of Texas. He opposed the secession of his State 
 from the Union. When it did resolve upon seced- 
 ing, he yielded, apparently believing that while 
 Texas ought to stay within the Union, it should not 
 be made to do so by force. Early in July, 1863, 
 there came to him the news of the Confederates* 
 surrender at Vickburg and of Lee's defeat at Get- 
 tysburg. His heart was troubled. Three weeks 
 later he died, and he was buried at Huntsville, 
 Texas. 
 
 The career of Houston is worthy of study. He 
 was born east of the Alleghanies. Each new step 
 in his life took him farther west. He was essen- 
 tially a pioneer, ever moving on with the westward 
 advance of Americans. The son of a Revolutionary 
 soldier, the adopted son of an Indian chief, an In- 
 dian fighter, lawyer, public prosecutor. Congress- 
 man, Indian agent, military hero. Governor of two 
 states, President of a Republic and United States 
 Senator, are all titles that he honorably bore. The 
 story of his part in inducing the annexation of Texas 
 to the United States in interesting and worthy of 
 investigation. Incident after incident in his career 
 bespeaks the sturdiness of him and the whole race 
 of American pioneers. About his life of great use- 
 fulness is woven a web of true romance. 
 
 Much could be said of his patriotic and political 
 speeches and of the crude but powerful eloquence 
 with which he delivered them. A good example of 
 the Indian's style of address is found in the follow- 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 ing letter written by Houston upon the death of 
 Flaco, a Lipan chief: 
 
 "To the Memory of Gen. Flaco, Chief of Llpans: 
 
 "My Brother:— 
 
 "My heart is sad. A dark cloud rests upon your 
 nation. Grief has sounded in your camp. The 
 voice of Flaco is silent. His words are not heard 
 in council. The chief is no more. His life has 
 fled to the Great Spirit. His eyes are closed. His 
 heart no longer leaps at the sight of buffalo. The 
 voices of your camp are no longer heard to cry: 
 "Flaco has returned from the chase." Your chiefs 
 look down on the earth and groan in trouble. 
 Your warriors weep. The loud voices of grief are 
 from your women and children. The song of 
 birds is silent. The ears of your people hear no 
 pleasant sound. Sorrow whispers in the winds. 
 The noise of the tempest passes. It is not heard. 
 Your hearts are heavy. 
 
 "The name of Flaco brought joy to all hearts. 
 Joy was on every face. Your people were happy. 
 Flaco is no longer seen in the fight. His voice is 
 no longer heard in battle. The enemy no longer 
 made a path for his glory. His valor is no longer 
 a guard for your people. The right of your nation 
 is broken. Flaco was a friend to his white 
 brothers. They will not forget him^ They will 
 remember the red warrior. His father will not be 
 forgotten. We will be kind to the Lipans. Grass 
 shall not grow in the path between us. Let your 
 wise men give the counsel of peace. Let your 
 yoimg men walk in the white path. The gray- 
 headed men of your nation will teach wisdom. I 
 will hold my red brothers by the hand." 
 
SAM HOUSTON 
 
 The state of Texas, an expanse larger than any 
 European country except Russia, and the American 
 Federal Union, of which it is so important a part, 
 are richer and better because for them whole heart- 
 edly Sam Houston lived and broken-heartedly he 
 died. 
 
STATL'l-: Ol 
 
 AHKAIIAM LINCOLN AT SOl'lll i:.\ TU ANCM 
 TO LINCOLN PARK. CllKACiO 
 
The story which begins in a log 
 shack and ends at the White House is 
 wonderful because it is simple. In it 
 are no magic lamps or fairy wands. 
 It is of an humble American boy who 
 slowly and steadily educated himself 
 by using well the materials at hand. 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 "Too oft the muse has blush'd to speak of men — 
 
 No muse shall blush to speak her best of him. 
 And still to speak her best of him is dumb. 
 
 O lofty wisdom's low simplicity! 
 
 O awful tenderness of noted power! — 
 No man e'er held so much of power so meek. 
 
 He was the husband of the husbandless, 
 
 He was the father of the fatherless: 
 Within his heart he weigh'd the common woe. 
 
 His call was like a father's to his sons! 
 
 As to a father's voice, they, hearing, came — 
 Eager to oiler, strive, and bear, and die." 
 
 — John James Piatt. 
 
 PASSING up Tenth Street, in Washington, D. 
 C, to a point opposite the old Ford Theatre, 
 the attention is arrested by an American flag. It 
 hangs above the door of an old three-story brick 
 house — the house in which Abraham Lincoln died. 
 It is a homely building, for a brief tenancy shelter- 
 ing a homely man. Here it was that his great soul 
 took flight. 
 
 We climb the curving steps and through the door 
 enter a narrow hall. Here the walls are covered 
 with scores of pictures — all of him who, to his good 
 fortune, was born in a log cabin, and, to ours, lived 
 in the White House. What genius, what kindly 
 tolerance seems to look out from these sunlight 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 records of a face ! We see him as the keen Illinois 
 lawyer, patient and clear-thinking, but one whom 
 the whip of wrong could lash to fiery energy. We 
 see him as he looked in his debates with Douglas, 
 modestly and calmly pursuing his opponent with 
 relentless logic, and then, revealing in splendid 
 eloquence the golden heart of his theme. In an- 
 other picture he appears as he must have looked 
 when, for the last time, he stood in Springfield, 
 Illinois, and uttered his prophetic words of farewell. 
 
 There is one, perhaps the first taken after that 
 little girl in Buffalo, New York, asked him to grow a 
 beard. One pauses long, studying picture after 
 picture, each telling its story, each filled with mean- 
 ing for him who has learned something of the 
 career of our martyred President. 
 
 Is it not significant that in every civilized lan- 
 guage of the earth one can read of this Great Ameri- 
 can. Is it not suggestive of his place in history to 
 know that, though he died at the close of the Civil 
 War, of him more books have probably been written 
 than of any other man who ever trod this world — 
 save only the founder of Christianity. 
 
 The thoughts that come from the contemplation 
 of the portraiture in the dingy hall seem to prepare 
 the mind for entry to the room where the mortal 
 and the immortal parted forever. As one silently 
 crosses the threshold into the little chamber, he is 
 glad that in so simple a place — the room of a 
 Massachusetts soldier — the last drama of Lincoln's 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 life was played. There in the corner beside the 
 door was the couch where came the kindly final 
 summons — taps and then reveille. Within these 
 walls had Stanton said, "Now he belongs to the 
 ages." 
 
 On that April morning in 1865, the great were 
 gathered about the low walnut bed in this house of 
 the tailor, William Peterson. Where the photo- 
 graph of Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" hung, now 
 hangs a picture of the death-bed scene. In it are 
 shown Mrs. Lincoln; the Cabinet members, Welles 
 and Stanton ; Generals Halleck and Meigs ; Surgeon 
 General Barnes; William Dennison; Robert Lin- 
 coln ; Charles Sumner, and John Hay. Except for 
 this picture, the room is bare. At this shrine no 
 chancel or candelabra are needed. To worship here 
 the devotee needs only the barren floor. 
 
 Beyond this room is found another in which are 
 gathered many miscellaneous articles once used or 
 owned by Abraham Lincoln. Here, from his old 
 Springfield home, is a kitchen stove, for which he 
 often carried wood. His favorite chair stands empty. 
 In this, doubtless, he had often sat engrossed with 
 those thoughts whose utterance, translated into 
 action, changed the history of the world. 
 
 In other rooms are relics of his assassination. 
 These have only a gruesome interest. Lincoln never 
 would have chosen these to whet that morbid 
 curiosity for tokens of outrage and crime which is 
 possessed by some strange minds. His natural good 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 taste and his forgiving nature would have hidden 
 them from prying eyes. But they are there, like a 
 gunman's murderous weapon laid beside the tomb 
 of his victim. 
 
 Let us return to the room that has the greatest 
 appeal. It is nine by seventeen feet. In this con- 
 fined place he died. In a small cabin in Kentucky 
 he was born. Each was large enough for such great- 
 ness as was his. 
 
 Let us stand here for a time and think of the 
 child of the Kentucky backwoods who said, "A 
 house divided against itself cannot stand. I be- 
 lieve this government cannot endure permanently 
 half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union 
 to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, 
 but I do expect it will cease to be divided." 
 
 It was he who so grounded his thought that he 
 could sincerely appeal to a New York audience with 
 these words, "Let us have faith that right makes 
 might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do 
 our duty as we understand it." 
 
 How we can hear again those words of political 
 wisdom: "You can fool all of the people some of 
 the time and some of the people all the time, but 
 you cannot fool all the people all of the time." 
 
 To those who would break the law he speaks: 
 "Let every man remember that to violate the 
 law is to trample on the blood of his father and to 
 tear the charter of his own and his children's 
 liberty." Note where he stood on the question of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 toil : "I am always for the man who wishes to work." 
 What did he say to those who would gain for them- 
 selves by taking from others? He spoke thus: "Let 
 not him who is houseless pull down the house of 
 another, but let him work diligently and build one 
 for himself, thus by example assuring that his own 
 shall be safe from violence when built." 
 
 Can any thinker fail to say amen to this: "I am 
 not much of a judge of religion, but, in my opinion, 
 the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against 
 their government, because, as they think, that gov- 
 ernment does not sufficiently help some men to eat 
 their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not 
 the sort of religion upon which people can get to 
 heaven." 
 
 Once a man was asked the explanation for his 
 success in life. He answered, "I had a friend." 
 Listen to these words of Lincoln: "The better part 
 of one's life consists of his friendships; the loss 
 of enemies does not compensate for the loss of 
 friends." 
 
 What wisdom is in this: "It is better only some- 
 times to be right than at all times to be wrong." 
 
 Will statesmen profit by reading this sentence 
 from Lincoln? "Can aliens make treaties easier than 
 friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faith- 
 fully enforced between aliens than laws can among 
 friends?" 
 
 Here is a thought that all should ponder well: "It 
 is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 who choose to vote that constitute the political 
 power of the State." 
 
 What a fund of sound, homely sayings he has 
 left us! What a wealth of clearly expressed 
 thought! His life is an inspiration to every child 
 born or reared under the American fiag. In what 
 other country in this world could genius rise from 
 humble beginnings to such pre-eminence? He, with 
 all the brave souls who believed in and followed 
 him, left us a united country, forever indissoluble. 
 He left us that principle written in heroic blood in 
 our fundamental law that the rights of citizens are 
 not to be denied on account of race, color or creed. 
 These rich memories are revived in the humble 
 room of the Washington tailor's house ; from it one 
 can step into the rich sunshine and the free air, 
 both richer and freer because Abraham Lincoln 
 lived, toiled and died. 
 
 As the events of his full life run before us, we 
 see an angular child making his way from the land 
 of Boone to the little shack erected in the woodland 
 of Indiana. There, through the chinks in the wall, 
 the night wind's song came to the rude pallet where 
 lay a leader of men, to be. We see him in sorrow 
 when his mother died. With him we watch the com- 
 ing, with her wonderful furniture, of the stepmother, 
 whose work for all time should be an example for all 
 stepmothers. We see him poring over Weem's Life 
 of Washington, a book which profoundly helped 
 him. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 We watch him as he follows the ox-team to the 
 new home in Illinois. We go with him down the 
 Mississippi, and know his agony of soul as he stood 
 by the slave block in New Orleans. We hear the 
 lusty strokes as his axe rings in the Illinois clearing. 
 We see him enforce respect for himself at New 
 Salem. We grieve with him at the bier of Ann 
 Rutledge. We follow him, the chosen captain of 
 his fellows, in the Blackhawk War. We see him 
 in the New Salem store, and under the trees with 
 him we read Chitty and Blackstone, We carry the 
 chain with him as a surveyor. We learn of his 
 original mind, unprejudiced and unfettered by too 
 many books, as he serves as a lawyer in Springfield 
 and on circuit. We watch this tall, gaunt giant from 
 the West as he sits in Congress. We travel with 
 him through those memorable debates with Douglas 
 when a far-seeing fate kept him from the Senate 
 and saved him for the post of Chief Magistrate of 
 the nation. We sit with him during those anxious 
 days of the Chicago convention. We smile as we 
 watch his face light up when the news of his nom- 
 ination came from the Chicago "wigwam." We 
 await the result of the fierce election contest, with 
 the old political parties rent and torn with section- 
 alism. We see him stand serene above all that is 
 petty and sordid. We hear his first inaugural ad- 
 dress and understand his plea for Union. We are 
 by him in the terrible days and nights of the Civil 
 War. We glory in his gentle strength as he holds 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 himself high above the impetuosity of friends and 
 the rancor of foes. 
 
 We hear his immortal address at Gettysburg, and 
 think over those lines that every school boy should 
 know. We see him patient to the end of the strife. 
 "With malice toward none and charity for all," he 
 prepares to "bind up the nations wounds." Then 
 in the theatre across the street we hear the fatal shot. 
 'Tis a soldier's death that he shall die. It was here 
 they brought him. This is the very spot — a shrine 
 in which nothing is but hallowed memories. 
 
The final guardian of our basic 
 rights in this Federal Republic is the 
 Supreme Court. 
 
Our Supreme Court 
 
 "THE REPUBLIC." 
 
 From "The Building of the Ship.'* 
 
 "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 
 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
 
 Humanity with all its fears. 
 
 With all the hopes of future years. 
 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 
 
 We know what Master laid thy keel. 
 
 What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. 
 
 Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
 
 Fear not each sudden soimd and shock, 
 
 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail. 
 
 And not a rent made by the gale! 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 
 In spite of false lights on the shore. 
 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Are all with thee, — are all with thee!" 
 
 — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 IT is well for Americans to remember that ours 
 is by no means the first republic in the world's 
 history; we have existed under our Constitution 
 only since 1789. The Venetian Republic endured for 
 eleven hundred years; the Roman Republic for five 
 hundred years; the Athenian Republic, with a few 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 interruptions, for nine hundred years; and the 
 Carthaginian Republic for seven hundred years. 
 Other repubhcs, such as those of Genoa and Flor- 
 ence, lived long. All of these failed primarily on 
 account of the tendency of men granted great power, 
 even in republics, to arrogate unto themselves more 
 power. 
 
 To illustrate: You will remember that Caesar, 
 who undertook to gain for the Roman people their 
 rights against the Roman Senate, himself became 
 the master both of the Roman people and of the 
 Roman Senate. Cromwell, who espoused the cause 
 of popular rights in England, himself became the 
 dictator of England ; and Napoleon, who undertook 
 to spread the liberty won by the French Revolution, 
 himself became the Emperor of France and sought 
 to become the Emperor of all Europe. 
 
 As the Roman Republic fell before the ambitions 
 of one man, the Venetian democracy finally fell be- 
 fore the Doges; Carthage became a victim to the 
 ambitions of military men; the Republic of Genoa 
 fell before an autocracy; the Republic of Florence 
 succumbed to the ambitions of the Medici, and all 
 the republics of the dim past ultimately became des- 
 potisms or monarchies. 
 
 It is interesting for us to inquire what institutions 
 in our republican form- of government differ from the 
 institutions of other republican governments that 
 have existed, to determine, if we can, if there be any 
 that promise perpetuity for the government of the 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 United States. There are many such institutions, 
 but it is our purpose in this discussion to call atten- 
 tion only to one — our Supreme Court. 
 
 Before pointing out the unique position of that 
 court among institutions, we wish to analyze briefly 
 the meaning and origin of some of those human 
 rights that our Supreme Court is designed to pro- 
 tect. In the Magna Charta, which the barons 
 wrested from King John of England, appear three 
 Latin words, coined by whom we do not know, by 
 whom written we do not know — three words that 
 expressed for the first time a thought that was 
 pregnant with meaning for governments upon this 
 earth. Those words are per legem terrae (by the 
 law of the land) — not meaning the law established 
 by and getting its power from government, but that 
 law which runs with the land, meaning the source of 
 those rights that are the foundation, and not the 
 grant, of government; that law which recognizes 
 rights in the individual that are higher than govern- 
 ment and higher than any act of government; 
 natural rights, or rights that are possessed by men 
 from the very fact of birth; rights coming from a 
 far higher source than legislatures or courts. 
 
 That same conception of human rights is found 
 again in our Declaration of Independence, where it 
 is said that men are endowed by their Creator with 
 certain inalienable rights, that among these are the 
 right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and 
 further, that to secure — that is, to make safe — these 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 rights, governments are instituted among men, de- 
 riving their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed. The thought is that the right to hfe in- 
 cludes the right to the security of one's person, of 
 health, of the right to obtain a livelihood and of the 
 security to character. The right to liberty and to 
 the pursuit of happiness means the right to go, or 
 to stay, unmolested — the right to enjoy family rela- 
 tions, the right to work, the right to engage in 
 honest business, the right to innocent recreation, 
 the right to freedom of opinion, to freely speak and 
 write the truth, to freedom of worship, and to the 
 right of property. In short, liberty means the en- 
 joyment of these fundamental rights to their fullest 
 extent, and government does not give these rights, 
 and is not designed to grant them, but is merely an 
 instrument to secure and to protect them. This 
 thought is quite the opposite of the theory of the 
 divine right of kings. It is the theory of democracy, 
 where the highest law is not to be found in the grace 
 or will of a monarch or in the will of any man. 
 
 Any democratic form of government to ade- 
 quately secure these rights must necessarily be 
 somewhat complicated. The simplest form of gov- 
 ernment is an absolute despotism. In a democratic 
 government, simple forms will not suffice, for a 
 democratic government in order to endure should 
 provide some means for guarding the fundamental 
 rights of people against invasion, not only by in- 
 dividuals but against invasion by the government 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 itself. The primary complaint of our Revolutionary 
 forefathers against the mother country was a com- 
 plaint against the usurpation of rights by the British 
 Parliament. The Crown had granted to the colonies 
 charters, some of which recognized and some of 
 which created popular assemblies, and the Ameri- 
 cans denied the right of the English Parliament to 
 legislate for them or to invade any of their funda- 
 mental rights. So, in the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence no address was made to Parliament, but 
 address and complaints were made directly to the 
 Crown. 
 
 As we have just said, democratic government 
 must be more complicated than a despotism or an 
 absolute monarchy, and so in our form of govern- 
 ment, to protect against hasty action on the part of 
 our government agencies, even in those fields that 
 were given to governmental control, we introduced 
 a system of checks and balances. For instance, the 
 President, who is the head of the Executive De- 
 partment, is the commander in chief of the army 
 and navy, but in order that he may not arrogate 
 unto himself monarchical powers, the right to de- 
 clare war is vested in the Congress. In order that 
 he may not become a despot as commander in chief 
 of the army and navy, all power to raise revenue is 
 reposed in the Congress, and in that Congress such 
 measures must originate in the most popular branch 
 thereof — the House of Representatives. Neither 
 branch of Congress can pass a law without the con- 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 currence of the other and of the President, in whose 
 hands a veto power is placed ; but in order that the 
 veto power may not be abused, power is given the 
 Congress to pass a bill over the President's veto. 
 Next, there is our unique Judicial Department, 
 headed by the Supreme Court. It is the only court 
 in the world today, or in the world's history, that 
 is in fact "supreme" — the only court that has the 
 power to declare null and void an action of the 
 Executive Department or an act of the Legislative 
 Department; a power that it, itself, must exercise 
 in accordance with the fundamental law of the land, 
 as found in the Federal Constitution. 
 
 It is not our purpose to discuss the various powers 
 of the Supreme Court. We will not detail the 
 methods of enforcing the limitation of powers 
 placed upon political government or in settling the 
 conflicting claims of states. We will not discuss its 
 great appellate jurisdiction, nor will we enter into 
 an analysis of its very important original jurisdic- 
 tion. The point to which we wish to direct attention 
 is generally to its function as the defender and 
 expounder of the Constitution. Its position in this 
 regard, and in regulating the dual sovereignty over 
 the same territory of Federal and of State govern- 
 ments, are the two most unusual features in Ameri- 
 can political institutions. 
 
 Our Constitution fixes and limits the powers of 
 the Federal Government. Subservient to the limita- 
 tions of the Constitution in certain spheres the 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 Federal Government is supreme, and in other fields 
 the state governments are supreme. The Constitu- 
 tion provides for certain forms of government, but 
 in addition to this it guarantees to individuals their 
 fundamental rights and makes the Supreme Court 
 the arbiter and protector of those rights, whether 
 they are invaded by other individuals, by a class of 
 individuals, by a state government, by a federal con- 
 gfess, by the President of the United States, or by 
 anybody or any power. Those fundamental rights, 
 briefly expressed in our Declaration of Independence 
 as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness, form the bulwarks of our liberty, and if an 
 American should be asked to give one sound reason 
 why the boasted liberty of the United States is 
 superior to that claimed for any other government, 
 he can very confidently answer that it is because the 
 guarantee of fundamental individual rights is found 
 in a written instrument whose basis is popular 
 sovereignty — an instrument that secures those 
 rights against all violation, even against violation 
 by government itself, and that the power to guard 
 and interpret those rights is placed in a court that 
 is in fact supreme — a court that controls the con- 
 duct of all other branches of government and that 
 is designed forever zealously and impartially to 
 protect the security of those rights against any 
 aggression whatsoever. 
 
 Now, how does it come about that the Supreme 
 Court is the guardian of the fundamental rights of 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 individuals? Does the Constitution anywhere say 
 that the Supreme Court shall guard the rights of 
 individuals to life, to liberty, the right to the pur- 
 suit of happiness, and all that this means? It does 
 not; but the Constitution first guarantees certain 
 fundamental rights. For instance, it provides that 
 Congress shall make no law respecting the establish- 
 ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof. It guarantees freedom of speech. It guar- 
 antees the right of people peaceably to assemble ; the 
 right to petition the government for redress of griev- 
 ances, and the security of people in their persons 
 and in their houses, papers and effects against un- 
 reasonable search and seizure. It guarantees trial 
 by jury, also that no person shall in a criminal case 
 be compelled to be a witness against himself, that 
 no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or prop- 
 erty without due process of law, and that private 
 property shall not be taken for public use without 
 just compensation. It guarantees these and many 
 other rights specifically in the Bill of Rights, as the 
 first ten amendments are commonly called by 
 Americans, and by implication originally and now 
 it guarantees these and all of the fundamental rights. 
 By its Sixth Article, the Constitution is made the 
 supreme law of the land, and it is the law of the 
 land as far as inherent rights are concerned, in the 
 same sense in which that term was used in the 
 Magna Charta. By Article Three of the Constitu- 
 tion the judicial power of the United States is 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 vested in the Supreme Court and in such inferior 
 courts as Congress may establish; the Supreme 
 Court in administering the law must interpret it in 
 the light of the Constitution, which places the fun- 
 damental rights of individuals above the power of 
 the Legislative Department to take away, above the 
 power of the Executive Department to invade, and 
 above all power except that of the people them- 
 selves, who can limit or abandon their rights only 
 through amending the Constitution. 
 
 The thought found in these institutions goes far 
 beyond that embodied in any other government on 
 earth. The English government never went so far. 
 Under the English system of government the Par- 
 liament, or legislature, is supreme ; the Judicial De- 
 partment is only a subservient branch of govern- 
 ment, — having no power to declare any law un- 
 constitutional, no matter how seriously it may 
 invade the fundamental rights of individuals. Par- 
 liament is the supreme power. It can repeal any 
 law. It can repeal Magna Charta itself, or the Act 
 of Settlement, or any of the governmental acts de- 
 signed to secure to English citizens their funda- 
 mental rights. Under our government no such 
 power resides in the legislature or in the executives 
 or in the courts. We have rights above government, 
 rights that run with the land, rights that exist be- 
 cause people are born with them. 
 
 The experience of our Revolutionary forefathers 
 taught them that representative government as then 
 
OUR SUPREME COURT 
 
 existing in the world could not always be depended 
 upon to secure to human beings their fundamental 
 rights, so in founding our government they not only 
 devised a system of checks and balances to prevent 
 the lodgement of too great power in one man or in 
 any one group of men, but they placed our funda- 
 mental rights in theory and in fact above the power 
 of government to invade. To interpret and secure 
 those rights they established a court that is in fact 
 supreme. Having thus created for the first time in 
 the world's history a really popular government 
 where the source of rights is in the people them- 
 selves, and in them because they are born with 
 those rights, and are retained by them as against the 
 government which they established, we took an- 
 other step and protected ourselves against hasty or 
 ill-considered action by making it impossible to cur- 
 tail any of these fundamental rights even in exer- 
 cising our power as sovereigns over ourselves, ex- 
 cept it be done through the machinery that the 
 Constitution provides for amending the fundamental 
 law. So, of the unique and beneficial American in- 
 stitutions designed to give to men the full enjoy- 
 ment of those rights which are theirs by reason of 
 their birth, our Supreme Court stands as a powerful 
 instrument designed to protect them through its 
 function as the defender of the Constitution. 
 

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