A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER
ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR
COUNTRY
IF any of the readers of this book should have the chance to take a railroad ride over the vast region of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonderful display of cities and towns, of factories and farms, and a great multitude of men and women actively at work. They would behold, spread out on every side, one of the busiest and happiest lands the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the miles on miles of farms, they might see a forest, here and there a wild beast, here and there a red-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land; but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.
If our young traveler knew nothing of history he might fancy that it had been always this way, or that it had taken thousands of years for all those cities to be built and these great fields to be cleared and cultivated. Yet if he had been here only three hundred years ago he would have seen a very different sight. He could not then have gone over the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts; instead of white and black men, only red-skinned savages.
Just think of it! All that we see around us is the work of less than three hundred years! No doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of wonderful things done by the Genii of the East, of palaces built in a night, of cities moved miles away from their sites. But here is a thing as wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel wrought by men instead of magical beings. These great forests have fallen, these great fields have been cleared and planted, these great cities have risen, these myriads of white men have taken the place of the red men of the wild woods, and all within a period not longer than three times the life of the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most marvelous fairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how this was done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let us forget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, and the magic of their work is as great as that we read of in the fables of the "Arabian Nights."
The story of this great work is called the "History of the United States." This story you have before you in the book you now hold. You do not need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of building our noble nation was done, for you can read it all here in language simple enough for the youngest of you to understand. Here you are told how white men came over the seas and found beyond the waves a land none of them had ever seen before. You are told how they settled on these shores, cut down the trees and built villages and towns, fought with the red men and drove them back, and made themselves homes in the midst of fertile fields. You are told how others came, how they spread wider and wider over the land, how log houses grew into mansions, and villages into cities, and how at length they fought for and gained their liberty.
Read on and you will learn of more wonderful things still. The history of the past hundred years is a story of magic for our land. In it you will learn of how the steamboat was first made and in time came to be seen on all our rivers and lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and railroads were built, until they are now long enough in our country to go eight times round the earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and telephone—the talking wire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a thousand factories and work away like living things, and of a multitude of marvels which I cannot begin to speak of here.
And you will learn how men kept on coming, and wars were fought, and new land was gained, and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and our people increased and spread until we came to be one of the greatest nations on the earth, and our cities grew until one of them was the largest in the world except the vast city of London. All this and more you may learn from the pages of this book. It is written for the boys and girls of our land, but many of their fathers and mothers may find it pleasant and useful to read.
There are hundreds who do not have time to read large histories, which try to tell all that has taken place. For those this little history will be of great service, in showing them how, from a few half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this great nation has grown up. How men and women have come to it over the seas as to a new Promised Land. How they have ploughed its fields, and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold, and built thousands of workshops, and fed the nations with the food they did not need for themselves. Year by year it has grown in wealth, until now it is the richest country in the world. Great it is, and greater it will be. But I need say no more. The book has its own story to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handy stepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may cross the brook and wander on through the broad land which lies before you.
THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they will remember a wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy palaces, and filled with the finest of goods of all kinds, which millions of people came to see.
Do you know what this meant? It was what is called a World's Fair, and was in honor of a wonderful event that took place four hundred years before.
Some of you may think that white men have always lived in this country. I hope you do not all think so, for this is not the case. A little more than four hundred years ago no white man had ever seen this country, and none knew that there was such a country on the face of the earth.
It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, named Christopher Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new and wonderful land. Since then men have come here by the millions, and the mighty nation of the United States has grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities. In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, the grand Columbian World's Fair was held, in honor of the finding of America by the great navigator four hundred years before.
This is what I have set out to tell you about. I am sure you will all be glad to know how this broad and noble land, once the home of the wild red men, was found and made a home for the white people of Europe.
Some of you may have been told that America was really discovered more than four hundred years before Columbus was born. So it was. At that time some of the bold sailors of the northern countries of Europe, who made the stormy ocean their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship from Iceland had been driven by the winds to a land in the far west which no man had ever seen before. Was this not America?
Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen, named Leif Ericson, also known as Leif the Lucky,