Return to flip book view

Tales and Lives of Early America By Tim Ogburn 2020 0

Table of Contents 1 A Man of His Times 2 The First American 3 Stories 4 A Wedding in Jamestown 5 Welcome Englishmen 6 Bad Blood 7 Radical Roger Williams 8 Rebellion in Virginia 9 George Washington Stumbles Onto History s Stage 10 Our Unruly Ancestors 11 Tea Time 12 The Shot Heard Round the World 13 Mr Useful 14 Coming to America 15 Forging an Army 16 The World Turned Upside Down 17 A Great Partnership 18 Thomas Jefferson on Trial 19 The Interview at Weehawken 20 Agent 13 21 America s St Francis 22 The Battle of Baltimore 23 The Era of Not So Good Feelings 24 Mill Girls 25 The Death of Jed Smith 26 Mythic America 27 The Other Lewis and Clark 28 Disaster in the Mountains 29 This is the Place 30 From the Halls of Montezuma 31 California Dreaming 32 Express Interests 33 A Self Made Man 34 General Tubman 35 Bleeding Kansas 36 Scenic Harpers Ferry 37 Forever Free 38 The High Water Mark of the Confederacy 39 The Angel of the Battlefield 40 A Remarkable Peace 31 Sic Semper Tyrannus 42 Done Acknowledgements Bibliography 2 4 6 8 10 12 13 15 16 19 20 22 25 27 29 31 34 38 40 42 45 47 49 51 54 56 58 61 63 65 67 69 70 72 74 76 77 79 82 83 85 86 89 89 1

Chapter I A Man of His Times Ambition is a funny thing Without it we wouldn t make progress If it weren t for people of vision and energy we d lack the machines medicines and entertainments that enrich our lives But when a person becomes too ambitious like Macbeth people get hurt The great Greek philosopher Aristotle taught Moderation in all things This is especially true about ambition The Europe of the 1400s was a time of magnificent ambitions Henry V of England tried and almost succeeded in uniting England and France under his crown Another Henry prince of Portugal championed new exploration of the ocean and coasts of Africa As a result in 1488 a Portuguese captain Bartolomeu Dias became the first to sail around the southern tip of Africa opening up a new way from Europe to Asia In Germany a blacksmith named Gutenberg created the world s first printing press Artists like Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci of Italy and Jan van Eyck of the Netherlands helped spark one of the greatest cultural movements in history the Renaissance The Italian Christopher Columbus was a supreme man of his age Though raised a weaver he dreamed to be a sailor At nineteen he went to sea and through hard work he became an expert in the craft His education as a child was meagre but as an adult he mastered mathematics and astronomy He read books by explorers like Marco Polo and these fueled his imagination Through his marriage to a Portuguese noble he moved up from the middle class to the upper class At a time when kings and queens were thought to be God s representatives on earth Columbus boldly asked four of them to sponsor his voyage west to Asia That he would think of sailing west to Asia and not around Africa like the Portuguese proved his ambitiousness Educated people of the day agreed that it was possible they thought that Asia was just too far away for any ship to get there This was one reason that the kings and queens of Europe declined Columbus request their court scientists believed that the earth was far larger than he claimed They thought the Italian had a screw loose Columbus besides being ambitious was also persistent He had heard stories that the Vikings had sailed west and found a fruitful country they had named Vinland However since that was hundreds of years before no one was alive who could talk about it firsthand To Europeans of Columbus day the other side of the Atlantic was as unknown as the other side of life itself Rejected four times by four different monarchs he continued to make plans for a voyage west And he waited His patience eventually paid off After eight years Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain changed their minds They would supply him with ships and give him a big slice of the profits They awarded him the title Admiral of the Ocean and the right to be governor of all lands he conquered in the name of Spain Columbus gathered three ships the Nina Pinta and Santa Maria and he raised a crew of ninety men to sail them Not all were excited to go a few were convicted criminals who were given a choice between prison and the voyage It s likely that a few of the others were also desperate They were sailing into uncharted waters and for all they knew there could be sea monsters and other dangers out there Without any shoreline or landmarks they could easily get lost They had to trust Columbus who in spite of his clear skill and experience as a navigator seemed a bit well batty Columbus was not the first or last person in history in whom genius and oddness were joined They set sail on August 3 of 1492 At sea Columbus was in his element He understood ships and he understood the winds that propelled them so his tiny fleet made swift progress He also knew how to manage crews Even when then trip had gone much longer than anyone expected he kept the crew active and the ships moving forward at a steady pace Columbus was wrong very wrong about the distance to Asia He had predicted it would take three weeks but nine weeks later when October rolled around they still had not seen any land 2

A couple sightings created hope but the land turned out to be only clouds They thought they were close when they saw land birds in the sky and large mats of seaweed in the water but this turned out to be a part of the Atlantic called the Sargasso Sea It is nowhere near land Many among the crew grew fearful and decided it was time to return to Spain if Columbus wouldn t turn around they were determined to force him to Then land This time their eyes did not deceive them there were trees a beach and surf Overjoyed they put on their best clothes and rowed to shore Once ashore they gave thanks to God kissed the ground and claimed it for Spain Columbus was jubilant and perhaps more than a little relieved that his predictions were now confirmed And the land was beautiful It was covered in lush plants trees and flowers Parrots hummingbirds and other birds painted the air and gave it music Colorful tropical fish swarmed through the crystal clear waters The forest exuded a fruitful spicy scent We don t know for certain the exact place he landed but it was an island somewhere southeast of Florida among the islands of the Bahamas It certainly wasn t Asia It wasn t long before the land s inhabitants the Indians as Columbus thought greeted them Of course neither group knew the other s language They communicated through sign language and trade Columbus and his men offered red caps blue beads and other small colorful items The Indians gave them parrots spears and cotton They invited Columbus and his crew to a feast that included the exotic dish of fried iguana similar to chicken in taste according to Columbus Columbus thought them to be a gentle friendly people who would make excellent servants and Christians for his masters the king and queen of Spain This was all very good but Columbus had something else on his mind and it was more important to him than either slaves or converts It may have been even more important to him than discovering the way to Asia In their noses and on their wrists the Indians wore a few small pieces of gold jewelry It wasn t a lot but there must be Columbus reasoned more where that came from The Indians who called themselves the Taino informed him that they did not make it but they could point him in the right direction So began the frenzied New World quest for gold Columbus and his men sailed around the Caribbean Sea exploring its many islands madly looking for it This included Cuba which based on its shape they figured to be Japan They found a little gold here and there trading for what they could gather but they found no huge sources or markets Almost everywhere he went Columbus found the people welcoming and friendly On Christmas Day while they were celebrating the holiday the Santa Maria crashed onto a coral reef and began to sink There was no hope they had to abandon the ship and move all the supplies to land or the other ships The Indians pitched in and helped Columbus used the wood from the Santa Maria to build a fort on the island Hispaniola modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic Thirty men stayed behind in the fort while Columbus and the others returned to Spain With them they took several Indians and many samples of the islands riches including gold and parrots It was a difficult passage home Twice they encountered violent storms and they thought they were going to sink Columbus kept them on course however and both ships survived Once again he proved himself an outstanding captain They made it back to Europe but they were forced to land in Portugal Spain s rival The king of Portugal was chagrined to say the least it looked like Columbus had found a way to Asia With horror he realized that he had missed his chance to support Columbus and claim the new lands for himself He considered keeping Columbus prisoner Some advised that he kill Columbus In the end though he thought it best to let him go and Columbus returned to Spain a 3

hero The nation gave him and his crew a parade The gold the parrots and the Indians dazzled everyone It wasn t long before a second expedition was organized and launched This time the Spanish felt more assured of the outcome Ferdinand and Isabella sent seventeen ships and over one thousand volunteers eagerly signed on Columbus commanded more than a small ragged party this time he commanded a great fleet It would be over twenty years before Europe fully grasped what Columbus had achieved Everyone including Columbus thought he had reached Asia but what he had actually discovered were two giant continents previously unknown to Europe North America and South America For the time being this distinction mattered very little For ambitious men living in ambitious times it was the place to be Chapter 2 The First American In the thirty years after Columbus s first return from America Spanish explorers and conquistadors conquerors achieved many great discoveries and victories Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed Panama to discover at least from a European point of view the Pacific Ocean Ferdinand Magellan sailed south around South America and across the Pacific He was killed in the Philippines but his crew sailed on returning to Spain and completing the first trip around the globe Hernando Cortes conquered the mighty Aztecs of Mexico and laid his hands on their silver and gold Francisco Pizarro defeated the great Inca of Peru and also struck it rich Fame and fortune seemingly awaited any Spaniard bold enough to venture west So in 1528 when he set out to explore Florida Panfilo de Narvaez thought that fame and fortune awaited Unlike most of the others though he was a poor leader To begin with he divided his crew into two groups One explored the land while the other sailed along the coast Unhappily they were too far apart to see one another making communication impossible The group on land spent a miserable summer slogging through Florida s buggy swamps and thick forests Not knowing where the other group was though they couldn t ask for help When they ran out of food they had to eat their horses Finally they decided to build rafts and try their luck at sea For two months they floated west across the Gulf of Mexico towards Texas Food began to run low When they ran out of fresh water they drank salt water which caused them to get very sick Then Narvaez apparently stretched to the limits of his patience and ability announced Every man for himself and he and his raft of men left the others behind Narvaez was never seen again When the others reached the mouth of the Mississippi River not far from modern New Orleans a storm whipped through and scattered the rafts A group of 80 washed ashore on Galveston Island off the coast of Texas One of these survivors Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca would later name this island the Isle of Doom The Spaniards were weak and dispirited after weeks at sea The natives of the island could have easily killed them but they treated them well giving the Spaniards food for their hunger and sympathy for their sufferings But this island wasn t big enough for all of them When winter arrived food grew scarce Worse a stomach virus hit both groups Indian and Spanish The Indians blamed it on the Spanish and they decided that the time had come to kill the fifteen who remained alive Then for some reason they changed their minds and offered the Spaniards a deal The Indians promised to let the Spanish live if they would heal them of the virus The Spaniards worn thin in body and hope agreed They had no medicine so they relied on a mixture of 4

Indian and Catholic religious beliefs Following Indian custom they blew on the Indians in the place where it hurt their stomachs Following Catholic custom they made the sign of the Cross and said prayers over them Amazingly miraculously it worked They all got better Much happier with the Spaniards now the Indians allowed them to live After that the two groups dwelt and worked together in harmony until the following spring They all survived but only just Life on the Isle of Doom was as the name suggests grim One day Cabeza de Vaca decided that he had had enough and going it alone he escaped to the mainland where he settled with another Indian tribe Equipped with language and survival skills he began to make a living trading food and minerals among the Indians He was a traveling salesman you might say Cabeza de Vaca lived this way for four years As he traveled around trading his wares he became acquainted with land and the people He began to dress more like them He learned their customs and stories He came to respect and like them Then Cabeza de Vaca decided that it was time to return to his people and he set out west towards Mexico Somehow while wandering in that vast wilderness he ran into three other survivors of the original Narvaez expedition One of these was a black slave named Estevanico These three men were enslaved to a tribe of Indians and Cabeza de Vaca preferring companionship to freedom joined them Unfortunately life here was more wretched than on the Isle of Doom this tribe was so poor that they resorted to eating spiders worms and even dirt And if that wasn t bad enough mosquitoes attacked all the time Nevertheless Cabeza de Vaca found them a happy people After a year the four Spaniards got restless again and escaped Their reputation as healers went before them Each time they arrived at a new village or tribe the Indians asked them to perform their rituals and the Spaniards healed many of them Cabeza de Vaca even pulled off a successful surgery Estevanico who was skilled with languages became the chief spokesperson and scout for the group Many Indians believing that the Spaniards were holy men journeyed along with them They would run ahead of the Spaniards to warn villages that great shamans were coming their way After their visit from the doctors the Indians would loot the village taking whatever food and valuable objects they could Those Indians who were looted would often just shrug their shoulders and join in the procession After awhile the group resembled an army numbering in the thousands You could see the dust they kicked up from miles away It was now 1536 eight years after the ill fated Narvaez expedition had begun One day Indian scouts returned to Cabeza de Vaca s camp and reported that they had met Men with beards up ahead of them These men turned out to be Spanish slave traders It was an uneasy meeting Cabeza de Vaca feared that his countrymen might try to make slaves of the Indians Meanwhile to the slave traders Cabeza de Vaca and his companions appearance was shocking they were sunburned black practically naked and adorned in Indian trinkets and jewelry It appeared as if they must have either gone native or gone crazy Cabeza de Vaca tried to convince his countrymen otherwise He explained that in order to survive they had merely adapted He also tried to persuade them to let the Indians go free They pretended to acquiesce but once Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were well on their way to Mexico City they returned to seize as many of the Indians as they could There s not a lot more known about Cabeza de Vaca s life He eventually returned to Spain where he wrote an account of his travels After that he got a job as governor of a colony in South America but this did not work out Cabeza de Vaca tried to be just and fair with the Indians but this 5

annoyed the Spanish colonists Eventually they had him dismissed After that he disappears from the historical record and we don t even know where and when he died The Narvaez expedition was a disaster but at least one member of his crew accomplished something quite remarkable Unlike other Europeans of the time Cabeza de Vaca changed his ways to fit America rather than trying to change America to fit him He was you might say the first American It is possible that no conquistador achieved anything greater Chapter 3 Stories Stories can be powerful things Some stories entertain and that is one kind of power Some stories teach us lessons and that is another kind Some stories claiming to be true offer promise of riches of a better life somewhere else These may be the most powerful stories of all because when people believe them they may leave everything else behind to find out if they are actually true Cabeza de Vaca told many stories about his long difficult odyssey in the North American southwest One of these stories was about large beautiful cities to the north of Mexico People there raised corn ate well and wore rich jewelry and fine clothes The Indians reported that cities of even greater wealth lay beyond them farther north These stories fell on very eager ears Even though the Narvaez expedition had found no gold in Florida explorers elsewhere had struck it rich so ambitious Spaniards remained hopeful To them the conquests of Columbus Cortez and Pizarro proved that the New World must ooze with gold By 1539 Cabeza de Vaca had returned to Spain but a companion of his Estevanico still lived as a slave in New Spain Mexico He now belonged to the viceroy governor who was quite interested in his travels with Cabeza de Vaca The viceroy soon decided to send a small expedition north He appointed a priest Fray Marcos de Niza as leader Estevanico went along as a translator and guide His experience on the journey with Cabeza de Vaca would be quite useful the viceroy thought Their journey led them through beautiful but harsh lands hilly and arid Today these would be in northern Mexico and southern Arizona and New Mexico of the United States The farther they journeyed the more they heard from Native Americans about Seven Cities of Cibola These sounded a lot like the cities of Cabeza de Vaca s story the cities had tall buildings arranged along wide streets They must be rich When they arrived in Cibola in modern Arizona things went badly Either because Estevanico got greedy or because he offended the Cibolans they killed him Fray Marcos following timidly behind kept his distance and did not get a close look From what he d seen he judged the city great and wealthy and the land rich and fertile Forgetting about poor Estevanico he hurried back to Mexico to tell the viceroy the good news His report caused a sensation The viceroy raised a large army of over three hundred Spaniards and more than one thousand Indians He named the young wealthy Francisco Vasquez de Coronado the army s leader Fray Marcos would go with them as a guide In the winter of 1540 they set out to conquer Cibola At first it looked like the land might conquer them Even in winter this part of North America is hot and dry and there is little except prickly pear to eat And they had many mouths to feed Horses began to die then the men If they got a chance Indian slaves escaped Coronado grew angry with Fray Marcos Where was the rich fertile land he had described Three months after they had set out they finally reached Cibola They were a much smaller army by then and much thinner What they found hardly made them feel much better Cibola was no 6

magnificent Aztec city it was a small cluster of mud buildings No gold jewelry or fancy clothes were in sight If they had been stronger they might have done something to make Fray Marcos feel very uncomfortable but they needed food too badly The Indians refused to give them any so Coronado prepared for an attack on the town Before Coronado could muster and attack the Indians avoided a violent confrontation by gathering their things and leaving When Coronado and his men entered the town they found food but little else After they ate their fill they ordered Fray Marcos back to Mexico City He had proven to be more harm than good for the expedition Coronado was not sure what to do next so he sent out a couple parties of men to explore the region One went off to the northwest They returned a few weeks later with news that they had discovered and partly descended into a canyon that was ten miles across It was the Grand Canyon and in discovering it they had also discovered the mighty Colorado River Another group went east They returned with hides from a strange cow These were from the American bison often called buffalo They also returned with an Indian slave they called the Turk The Turk had a story to tell In spite of being burned before by exaggerated tales Coronado was eager to listen Some people don t learn He told them that he was from a place to the northeast called Quivira It was wealthy prosperous and full of gold He would be happy to take the Spaniards there if they would return him to his people Coronado and his men agreed They forgot their disappointment and renewed their quest Traveling east across New Mexico things again began to go badly They ran low on food When Indians wouldn t share their food who could blame them Coronado took it by force When the Indians fought back his response was brutal One time he had over one hundred burned alive Coronado s men were upset by this and began to question his ability to lead Still they continued east They entered the flat glassy lands of the Great Plains were there are no landmarks like mountains or hills or big rocks and it is a challenge to avoid getting lost The prairie grasses can grow as high as six feet tall Hunting parties sometimes got lost and were never seen again It s been called the Great American Desert but in some ways it is more like an ocean At least they had food for a change The strange cows the buffalo swarmed the plains in vast herds numbering into the tens of thousands All the way to Quivira they ate buffalo meat Along the way they got lost They wandered for hundreds of miles before they got on track and reached Quivira In today s terms they were in central west Kansas Finally arriving there hardly made them feel better however Quivira like Cibola was no city of gold The people lived in small huts They ate well on corn buffalo and wild fruit They seemed like a happy people but they had no gold Perhaps there is a connection there Some of Coronado s men thought this was fine The soil they observed was rich and the game plentiful A farmer could be happy here Coronado would have none of that he wanted gold not farms To mark his progress he planted a cross in the ground Then he announced that it was time to go home Two storytellers Fray Marcos and the Turk had duped him that was enough Under pressure the Turk confessed that he had deliberately misled the Spanish he had only wanted to go home to his people Later that night in the dark the Turk was strangled where he slept Back in Mexico City Coronado received little sympathy He had allowed himself to be led duped not once but twice As a consequence he had been led on a wild goose chase in which many of his men had died or abandoned him The government was also angry with him for his poor treatment of the Indians Neither had he brought back anything of value nor had he made any lasting positive impact on the places he traveled For Coronado there was no gold and no glory 7

It would be a long time before Spanish explorers would venture into these regions again and from now on they wouldn t be so hasty to listen to stories Chapter 4 A Wedding in Jamestown Today the United States is a large powerful and wealthy nation so it may seem surprising that at its start it was small weak and poor Only through the efforts of a few determined resourceful and lucky people did the first colonies survive In the case of Jamestown the first permanent English settlement a marriage was also necessary In 1607 104 English settlers arrived in Virginia seeking their fortunes They selected an unpromising site near a muggy mosquito invested swamp Because they were near the coast where the freshwater of the James River mingled with the saltwater of the Chesapeake Bay their drinking water was awful They made things worse by polluting the water with their own garbage and excrement Not surprisingly many fell ill and many died Meanwhile because the men were mainly concerned with finding gold they neglected the hard jobs necessary for survival These included planting crops repairing tools and building strong homes Food quickly became scarce starvation and more death followed It didn t help that they had a hard time getting along A little over half of the men were gentlemen members of England s upper class These men thought they were superior to the others commoners from the middle and lower classes Also the group lacked a strong leader who could unite them and as a result fights often broke out among them even though the penalty for fighting was death The new colony s survival appeared in doubt Then when they most needed it they received a little help from the Indians At first the Indians had been hostile forcing the colonists to put their depleted energies into self defense But then for some reason perhaps because they felt sorry for the suffering English the Indians experienced a change of heart They began to bring them corn venison fish and other food In exchange the colonists gave the Indians metal objects like axes and copper kettles Things were improving Then John Smith stepped in A commoner and braggart the upper class men despised him However Smith possessed experience as a soldier and adventurer and the value of this experience soon showed Weakened as they were the others were obliged to trust themselves to Smith Smith was a good leader First of all he told everyone that if they wanted to eat they must work Some of the gentlemen accustomed to a soft life grumbled In order to discover what methods of farming worked best in Virginia Smith asked the Indians for ideas Finding Virginia an excellent place for crops he argued that the men should stop looking for gold and focus on raising crops for sale in England He explored the rivers and land around Jamestown and in the process established positive relations with the Indians He traded with them and learned their language From the knowledge he gained on his travels Smith created an excellent map and introduced words like moccasin and tomahawk into the English language Smith led Jamestown for over a year and during that time only a few men died The famous story of Pocahontas and Smith comes from this period When Smith was on a trading expedition the great chief of the area Powhatan took him captive and planned to execute him Smith was bound and led to the block Just as an Indian was about to lop off Smith s head Pocahontas a girl of ten or eleven at the time leaped between him and his executioner begging for Powhatan s pardon Powhatan honoring his daughter s wish set Smith free 8

This story may or may not be true Smith is the only source we have and he had a tendency of stretching the truth An interesting possibility is that it happened as Smith said but he misunderstood what was happening It was an Indian practice to test an enemy s courage by acting as if they were going to kill him and then at the last moment call it off This may have been the case with Smith and Pocahontas Afterwards in any case Powhatan befriended Smith and helped the colonists Then in the fall of 1609 Smith suffered an injury in an accident A suspicious explosion of gunpowder did someone want him dead and soon after he returned to England The gentlemen who had grown weary of this brash upstart ordering them around were glad to see the back of him They failed to see that the colony stood on its legs only due to Smith s leadership Virginia had changed some For one thing more ships had arrived bringing new groups of settlers These included women so Jamestown now had families and the population had increased to over 500 A triangular shaped fence over ten feet high with cannons at each corner protected them and their wood and plaster homes from Indian attack Even though they hadn t found gold or any profitable good for sale in England fields around the fort produced abundant corn Jamestown was a sturdy English village though a poor one The new leaders of Jamestown altered a few of Smith s policies The gentlemen stopped working They decided they would force the Indians to give them food When the Indians refused the colonists burned their villages and took captives whom they maimed or killed Not surprisingly Powhatan and his people fought back They killed many colonists in stealthy attacks and they slaughtered their herd of pigs a resource Smith had carefully built up Under attack and undersupplied the colonists were soon back to the pathetic state they were in before Smith took charge Except it was worse The winter of 1609 1610 would later be called the starving time After eating all their food the colonists ate anything they could find including horses cats rats and mice When they couldn t find these they ate shoe leather Many starved to death and many others died of sickness The healthy often worked themselves to death trying to help the sick or bury the dead When it was truly desperate a few ate the flesh of the dead By spring only 60 colonists clung to life At that time a ship of fresh colonists arrived from England and they found a hellish sight Graves surrounded the town The surviving residents were thin and weak and some had gone insane The fort had been torn to pieces for firewood Those who had been living in Jamestown could only think of getting out and the new colonists could see nothing worth staying for All of them boarded ship and headed back to England And then just as they set sail and launched into the bay a ship appeared on the horizon approaching Jamestown It brought 150 more settlers and food supplies for a year It also brought a new governor from England Jamestown would survive after all The new governor Lord De La Warr created strict laws and enforced them with harsh punishments Thieves were put to death Church attendance was required and people who skipped it were whipped When the Indians didn t give him food or other things he wanted he took their women and children captive If that didn t work he killed the captives For the next three years warfare with the Indians was almost continuous Meanwhile they still hadn t found any way to make money Jamestown was surviving under Lord De La Warr but it was a dreary existence and the future was again uncertain Then in the year 1613 two discoveries saved the colony and one man was responsible for both The man s name was John Rolfe and he had a keen interest in plants He discovered that tobacco seeds from the Caribbean thrived in Virginia s soil Here Rolfe argued was Virginia s gold Tobacco was the latest rage in England so it made money Everyone seemed to be smoking it even 9

though King James himself thought it so hateful to the nose that he wrote one of history s first antismoking articles Finally Jamestown was stable Rolfe s second discovery was that he was in love His beloved was none other than Pocahontas daughter of Powhatan and alleged savior of John Smith Now a teenager she had been De La Warr s captive for a year De La Warr was demanding that Powhatan pay a ransom but for some reason Powhatan didn t pay and Pocahontas remained on an English ship During this time she and Rolfe became acquainted Pocahontas started wearing English clothes converted to Christianity changed her name to Rebecca and married Rolfe Their union brought peace For ten years there was no fighting between the Indians and Jamestown and Jamestown grew prosperous and strong Pocahontas may or may not have saved John Smith but by marrying Rolfe Pocahontas really did save lives both English and Indian She also may have saved the colony A few years later on a trip to England with Rolfe Pocahontas became ill and died However her influence in Virginia continued Thomas her son returned to America with his father and became a leading Virginia citizen He lived like a typical Englishman but the blood of his mother s people also ran through his veins Chapter 5 Welcome Englishmen About 500 miles up the coast from Jamestown there is a thin stretch of land resembling a flexing arm that reaches out into the Atlantic Ocean In 1602 English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold landed there and due to the abundance of cod he found there he named it Cape Cod Gosnold was neither the first European to explore the region nor was he the first to profit from its resources Basque fishermen French and Dutch fur traders and English slave traders had all been there None had established a permanent settlement but they had stayed long enough to spread their diseases among the Indians The diseases did far worse damage than any war or slave raid could have done Until Europeans arrived smallpox bubonic plague influenza and other viruses and bacteria did not exist among the Native Americans and their bodies had built up no resistance In some New England villages disease from European contact killed 80 90 of the population So when in November of 1620 a group of 100 English settlers arrived in Cape Cod in their tiny ship the Mayflower they found a region largely vacant and cleared for farming The lakes teemed with ducks and the ocean with lobster and fish A pious people they fell on their knees and thanked God for preparing such a bountiful home for them They named their new home Plymouth These people are known to us as the Pilgrims They had left England in order to worship God in their fashion They had tried living in the Netherlands but they feared that their children were becoming too Dutch They decided to try building their own community in America It s not quite accurate to say this of all the colonists about a third of the Mayflower s passengers were not Pilgrims These folks were just trying to find a better life Everyone knew that in order to survive they would have to work together An ocean separated them from their king and his rule so their first major act of cooperation was writing and signing an agreement that said they would form and follow laws together It was not exactly democracy where everyone gets an equal say in the law but it was a step towards it This agreement became known as the Mayflower Compact Arriving as they had at the beginning of the harsh Cape Cod winter made for a tough start By mid January several people had died and most of the others were too sick to work Only six or 10

seven remained healthy and they had to devote most of their energy to tending the sick Mostly this involved preparing all the food making fires and washing clothes Little progress was made on the homes so shelter remained poor More people died some from grief for a lost loved one During this time the Pilgrims had had little contact with the Indians or Naturals as they called them Then in March a solitary Indian emerged from the forest To the Pilgrims he was quite striking in appearance taller than any of them he wore his black hair long down his back and in spite of the cold he was almost naked Boldly he approached and said Welcome Englishmen The Indian named Samoset took great delight in the Pilgrims astonishment Years before he had picked up English from fishermen He informed the Pilgrims that they lived in a region called Patuxet A chief named Massasoit ruled it and an Indian named Squanto who lived with him knew even more English than Samoset Squanto could help the Pilgrims form a relationship with Massasoit Through Samoset they arranged a meeting With Squanto translating they made a treaty with Massasoit The Indians and Pilgrims agreed to not attack each other or steal from one another They also made an alliance agreeing to help each other if one was attacked To seal the friendship they made a trade English dried peas for Indian eels Both groups were delighted with the food they got The Pilgrims also gained an important insight into life in America The Naturals were not one unified group of people There were many tribes each with its own chief and these chiefs often went to war with one another Massasoit was hoping that the Pilgrims would help him fight his enemies Suddenly the Pilgrims were enmeshed in a political game as complex and intertwined as anything they would have faced in Europe But the Pilgrims had little choice because they needed all the help they could get By spring half of them were dead The seeds they had brought from England proved poorly suited to the soil and the harvest promised to be insufficient The Mayflower had returned to England so there was no going back Once again Squanto came to the rescue He introduced the Pilgrims to corn beans and squash which thrived around Cape Cod He also showed them how the Indians planted and fertilized their crops If nothing else the Pilgrims knew the meaning of hard work and they applied Squanto s lessons industriously As summer warmed the land their hopes increased Other events also contributed to an upbeat mood The community had its first wedding Both the bride and groom had lost their first spouse over the winter only months before They built sturdier homes that were more suited to keeping them warm in winter The Pilgrims were looking forward not backward It was a glorious summer and fall and the harvest was good For hundreds of years Europeans had followed the custom of having a big celebration at harvest time so in September the Pilgrims fixed a huge feast In addition to the corn squash and beans that they had grown with the Indians help they ate wild duck geese turkey and fish Massasoit and his people showed up as surprise guests carrying fresh venison The Pilgrims welcomed their allies and guests and they all sat down on the ground outside to feast Since then this event has been remembered as the first Thanksgiving The Pilgrims certainly had much for which to be thankful They had survived a difficult year Compared to the colony in Jamestown they had achieved their stability quickly This is not to say that there wasn t a lot of hard work still ahead They had established an alliance with Massasoit s people but other tribes were jealous of the friendship Would the Pilgrims be able to keep the peace with all of them Also when other people in England heard of the Pilgrims success in America they would want to try their own luck at Cape Cod Would the newcomers be as happy to work alongside and not against the Indians as the Pilgrims 11

Chapter 6 Bad Blood After rocky starts the colonists in both Jamestown and Plymouth settled into mostly friendly relations with the Indians In both places the two groups natives and newcomers helped each other in numerous ways Both colonies as a consequence thrived This in turn drew more English to America These people naturally needed land of their own and their needs as you might expect often clashed with Indian needs In both Jamestown and Plymouth friendships were soon put to the test North of Plymouth another group of English colonists had established a settlement on the Charles River They called it Boston These colonists like the Pilgrims had come to America for freedom of religion They were called Puritans because they wanted to purify the Church of all the things that in their opinion got in the way of true worship of God fancy church buildings pictures showy ceremonies special holidays and priests with special rights They believed everyone should read the Bible on his or her own and they liked long meaty sermons In order that everyone could read and understand the Bible they stressed the importance of education They believed people should demonstrate their faith through good deeds and hard work They chose an excellent location for Boston Besides having a river to supply fresh water the bay at the river s mouth is large deep and calm enough to contain many large ships for trade They built the main part of the town on a peninsula that jutted out into the bay giving many people access to the water and the port This was the Massachusetts Bay Colony During the 1630s thousands of Puritans settled there It soon outgrew Plymouth The peninsula filled up and little towns sprouted all around it Overall relations between the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were good though they sometimes disagreed on religious matters The Indians with good reason grew concerned One little village of a few hundred people like Plymouth is fine it was a large bountiful land But if a man can t go out hunting without colliding with an Englishman there s a problem In Massachusetts Bay in fact there were too many colonists for the amount of available land Some complained about the way colonial leaders divvied up land they claimed that the leaders friends got the best slices A disgruntled group of Puritans decided to pack up and move to the southwest into the Connecticut River Valley where there was open land Mostly open that is As you probably guessed there were Indians in the area already One group the Pequots welcomed the settlers They hoped that the English would help them against their enemies in the same way that Plymouth s Pilgrims had helped Massasoit and his people In particular the fur trade created competition among the different tribes of the region and this competition often led to conflict The Pequots and the settlers agreed to work together It looked like peace would prevail If things were only that simple perhaps it would have The Dutch also traded with the Indians for furs In the same way that the Indians of different nations often looked all the same to Europeans Europeans often looked all the same to Native Americans This led to misunderstandings and in this case one of these misunderstandings led to war In 1634 Dutch traders in the midst of a trade dispute murdered an Indian His tribe took revenge by murdering a white man The man they killed was an English trader named Stone Stone had a bad reputation and was very unpopular in Boston so he wasn t much missed But when two years later Indians murdered a second English trader Boston leaders decided that something must be done They sent an armed force under John Endicott to Connecticut He blamed the Pequots for the murders and set fire to their villages He also killed several Pequots The Pequots denied 12

responsibility claiming that another tribe was guilty Endicott lacked the patience or skill to sort it all out His job done he wiped his hands of the matter and returned to Boston Rather than settling the matter Endicott had only succeeded in making the Pequots angry Understandably they felt betrayed and with Endicott and his henchmen gone they unleashed their wrath on the settlers of Connecticut attacking or capturing farmers as they went out to their fields in the morning Soon the settlers were afraid to leave the safety of the village walls Great Britain was far away and Boston s meddling had only made matters worse The colonists knew that if something were going to be done they would have to do it themselves Furthermore they were persuaded that in order to prevent other Indian attacks they must act ruthlessly On May 26 1637 a hundred colonists along with a few Indians from rival tribes surrounded the Pequot town of Mystic and put it to the torch As Pequots fled their burning homes the attackers shot them or hacked them to death with swords Since the Pequot men were away on a raid of their own most of the victims were women children and the elderly In the end over 400 Pequots lay dead and only a handful escaped Warfare escalated and continued for the following year Many on both sides were killed English and Pequot But the attack at Mystic had foreshadowed the outcome and demonstrated the simple decisive factor of the war the English had guns and the Pequots did not When their Indian allies were added to them they also had the greater numbers When the last surviving Pequot chief ran to a neighboring tribe the Mohawks for safety the Mohawks hoping to make the English happy killed him and brought them his scalp Even after total victory was assured the English remained embittered about the Pequots treachery they wanted the Pequots not just beaten but eradicated For this reason surviving tribe members were sold into slavery many to the Caribbean far from their homeland Connecticut went so far as to make it illegal to even use the word Pequot After all this bloodshed the region was free of warfare for forty years The English colonists and Native Americans continued to live side by side and they cooperated again in many ways but history now instructed caution On both sides people passed on to their children a story of betrayal and war There was peace but it was an uneasy restless sort of peace Chapter 7 Radical Roger Williams Europe of the 1500s was a place of many big changes Columbus had changed everyone s understanding of the globe and many religious thinkers and kings were in a similar way changing views on religion Because its leaders believed they were reforming the Christian church this movement has been called the Reformation The most obvious result was that within the space of 100 years from the time of Columbus to the time of Jamestown Europe s Christians went from having one church the Catholic Church to having many churches The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were one of these Originally they were a small group within the Church of England but then they began to think that the Church of England too closely resembled the Catholic Church that it was not quite reformed enough America offered them a place to worship as they pleased King Charles considered the Puritans a nuisance so he gave them permission to go In 1630 under the leadership of a lawyer named John Winthrop one thousand Puritans in seventeen ships sailed to Massachusetts Bay to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony Over the next ten years another 13 000 people would join them making Massachusetts Bay much larger than both Jamestown and Plymouth 13

There were other differences between the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and the settlers in the other two colonies Most of the Puritans were educated and middle class They were relatively prosperous and some even brought servants to America Unlike the original group at Jamestown most came with their families Therefore they started off less desperate and needy than Jamestown and Plymouth In the words of Winthrop they wanted to create a City on a Hill a model society that others would imitate This model would be entirely Puritan Among the Puritans there were different ideas of what this model society would look like A young talented preacher named Roger Williams held many ideas that clashed with those of Winthrop and the other colonial leaders For one thing he thought that the Puritans should buy any land they settled from the Indians King Charles had no God given right as he claimed to possess the land therefore the Puritans in settling the land were misusing God s name To the Puritans this was a serious sin Williams also criticized laws that required people to attend church and that allowed only church members to vote Williams was arguing basically that there should be a separation of church and state For the time this was both radical politics and radical religion Williams wanted a truly purified church one consisting of those who genuinely believed and who truly wanted to be there The Reformation had given birth to many creeds and everyone he argued should join the church that he or she agreed with Williams was an eloquent and popular preacher so Puritan leaders could not just ignore him They considered shipping him back to England Instead they decided to banish him Winthrop who secretly admired Williams helped him and his family move south to begin a new town Many of Williams admirers followed Because they saw God s hand in these events they called their new town Providence In his new home Williams practiced what he preached All landowning men regardless of church membership were allowed to vote All Christian churches were legal This included the Quakers who were outlawed in most places People were not required by law to attend church and he established friendly relations with the Indians Williams s ideas had influence outside his colony too after spending some time preaching in Plymouth they too began paying the Indians for any land deals they made As you might expect Providence attracted a motley mixture of people many of whom like Williams were unwelcome in other colonies Among these was Anne Hutchinson who had been exiled from Boston Like Williams she wanted the church to be pure She believed that God spoke directly to individuals including women Both of these claims were quite controversial and they were the causes for her banishment but the people of Providence welcomed her and her family with open arms Providence eventually grew into a larger colony called Rhode Island True to its beginnings after Williams s death Rhode Island developed a reputation for independence of mind and action Freedom of religion was extended not only to all Christian groups but also to Jews Rhode Island was the first colony to ban the import of slaves and later on it was the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain It attracted all sorts of people who like Anne Hutchinson were not wanted elsewhere Even in Williams day it was referred to as the sewer of New England Some people sneeringly referred to it as Rogues Island This didn t perturb Rhode Islanders in the least they were proud of their notoriety Back in Boston the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony eventually realized that forcing everyone to attend church and adhere to the same religious beliefs could not work No society could be both pure and free In 1691 they passed an Act of Toleration that allowed freedom of worship to all Christians except Catholics Not perfect by our standards but it was a start Most people in New 14

England were still Puritans but now people of other churches and eventually other faiths were free to worship in their own way Roger Williams had been the pioneer Though watered down Puritanism s influence remained strong in New England Many leaders of the American Revolution including Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin grew up in Puritan homes As adults they demonstrated a Puritan love for freedom Also like those who came to America in the 1630s they believed that a better life was possible and they were willing to make sacrifices in order to gain it Chapter 8 Rebellion in Virginia In 1676 most Virginians were not feeling too upbeat about their future Most of the colony s good land was bought up Tobacco prices the colony s main source of revenue had recently dropped Floods and hail storms had destroyed many of their crops Some colonists would have liked to trap furs but the governor had given the Indians exclusive rights to this trade Fear and resentment intensified towards Indians even more when news arrived from Massachusetts that warfare after forty years of relative peace i e since the Pequot War was raging between Indians and the colonists Fear and resentment were strongest among the poor men of the colony who had formerly been indentured servants Indentured servants were people who had agreed to work for landowners in exchange for passage to America and their own plot of land at the end of their term of service which ranged from four to seven years In 1676 perhaps three out of every four residents in Virginia had originally come to America as an indentured servant The land the indentured servants were given was often of poor quality and located out in the boonies of western Virginia This placed them shoulder to shoulder with the Indians and tensions and conflicts often arose between the two groups All the recent bad news from the north heightened their fears Western Virginians only lacked a strong leader to unite them Nathaniel Bacon became that man Bacon was a well educated member of an important English family he was a relative of the philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon but he was something of a black sheep He had come to America two years before to get a fresh start and make something of himself Through his family connections he had obtained a better than average plot of land on the western Virginia frontier Like his neighbors he had occasional run ins with the Indians and when one day they killed the overseer on Bacon s farm Bacon decided that something must be done about it Farmers in Bacon s region had already organized a group to patrol their lands and if necessary use force Bacon joined them and soon due to his magnetic personality and forceful speaking style they made him their leader To gain support for his patrol he gave speeches in public places about the struggles and dangers poor farmers faced The more he gave speeches the more he spoke not just about farmers sufferings but also about ideas like freedom and liberty and the duty of government to protect them Bacon s message resonated with many Virginians and his following increased At this point Bacon s Patrol became Bacon s Rebellion And like a true rebellion talk led to action Bacon s men attacked any Indians they could find including friendly Indians who participated in the fur trade Governor Sir William Berkeley began to take notice He was after all appointed by the king to keep the peace and make Virginia prosperous If he didn t the king would replace him Not only that but like other governors Berkeley made a lot of money from the colony and a colony at peace pays better than a colony at war 15

At first Berkeley tried the friendly approach He promised elections for the colonial assembly and he agreed to meet with Bacon to discuss his grievances Claiming he was too busy fighting off the Native Americans Bacon skipped their appointment Then Bacon s men went too far and wiped out an entire village of friendly Indians For Berkeley this meant no more Mr Nice Guy He demanded Bacon s arrest However he had waited too long Bacon s army was more powerful than any force Berkeley could muster and Bacon remained at large Berkeley wrote frantically to England requesting troops In the mean time he was powerless Virginia was for Bacon Most of Virginia anyway Bacon began raiding the biggest plantations for the supplies that he said he needed for his war with the Indians What was even more alarming for the wealthy Bacon began promising freedom to indentured servants and slaves If the plantation owners had already suspected that Bacon was an enemy to their interests now they knew it When Bacon marched on the capital Jamestown and burned it to the ground it was beyond doubt Then shortly after this when it seemed that nothing could stop him Bacon got sick Very sick It s likely that he caught a virus while pursuing Indians through Virginia s swamps People noted that upon his return he was covered in lice Dysentery or perhaps malaria seized him and he died a short time later The rebellion fizzled With Bacon s death most of Bacon s followers threw down their weapons and declared loyalty to Berkeley Berkeley hunted down the rest executing twenty three of them So elated he was to see Bacon s death that Berkeley expressed his feelings in verse Bacon is dead I am sorry my heart That lice and the flux should take the hangman s part The king however was not amused griping that He hanged more than I did for the death of my father Berkeley was summoned to England for an explanation but he died before he met his king Though brief disorderly and anti climactic Bacon s Rebellion greatly altered Virginia s course War against the Indians continued and it wasn t long before they were driven out of Virginia entirely Former indentured servants on the other hand saw their lives improve They gained more opportunities to own land and with that the right to vote Indentured servitude was over though it was decided that it wasn t worth the trouble But Virginia planters still needed cheap labor to work their plantations Where would it come from With the arrival of twenty Africans on a Dutch ship slavery in Virginia had begun in 1619 Before Bacon s Rebellion though most people considered slaves too expensive The rebellion forced plantation owners to think differently about the nature of cost and they began buying more and more slaves from Africa In 1676 there were two thousand slaves in Virginia By 1750 there were over 100 000 Chapter 9 George Washington Stumbles Onto History s Stage George Washington the greatest and most towering figure among the Founding Fathers was not always so great or towering In fact there was a time when he was the laughing stock of Europe However even in his moment of shame he showed signs of the character that would make him the ideal leader for a new nation In the year 1754 Washington was twenty one years old A member of a leading Virginia tobacco planting family he had been raised a gentleman Athletic handsome and tall he looked the part Furthermore he relished gentlemanly diversions like dancing and fox hunting Although his formal education amounted to little he had learned how to survey land and how to run a farm He wanted more though he was an ambitious young man seeking renown 16

In Colonial America the frontier was a good place for a young man like Washington The colonies were growing rapidly so the need for land also kept growing The only place to go was west into Ohio Territory Of course it wasn t quite as easy as just moving west Indians lived there And in 1754 the French did too In the 1600s the French had started out colonizing farther north in Canada They had settled a few towns mostly along the Saint Lawrence River and their priests preached Catholicism to the Indians Their fur traders called voyageurs had fanned out as far west as the Mississippi River and as far south as the Ohio River With both the French and the English pushing into Ohio territory it was inevitable that the two empires would soon collide there That s not quite true Three empires were about to collide The third was the Iroquois nation a confederacy of five Indian tribes Dwelling in the thick forests of western New York and Pennsylvania their native lands the Iroquois were concerned about both the encroachments Europeans and enemy Indians tribes They were playing their own political games working with both the French and English to fight these rival tribes England needed a man to travel to Ohio and secure Virginia s claim to it Young and ambitious George Washington eagerly volunteered though his qualifications were slim For one thing he knew no French For another he had a feeble grasp of diplomatic law Lastly he had little direct experience with Indians of any nation However in a young colony you had to rely on young men On the other hand it s fair to say that there was no one better qualified Washington s experience as a surveyor gave him a good eye for land During the previous winter he had led a small expedition west to explore the region and inform French forts that England claimed Ohio The French hadn t moved but Washington had displayed grit Virginia s leaders agreed that Washington was the man for the job In mid April of 1754 Washington and around 150 men set out to Ohio territory Their job was to construct a fort and the road to get there Washington well dressed in his uniform stood out from his ragged poor soldiers Virginia s government had offered a trifling wage so only desperate men volunteered One day as they were working on the road French soldiers were spotted approaching a few miles off With forty of his men Washington marched through the dense forest to confront them Due to rain progress was slow and messy On the way they met up with an Indian they knew as the Half King The Half King was a representative of the Iroquois nation and he sought Washington s help in fighting the French and the Indian tribes allied with them He placed himself and his dozen warriors at Washington s service Washington and his men arrived at the French camp early in the morning just as they were making their breakfast and coffee It s not clear who fired the first shot later the French blamed Washington and Washington blamed the French Soon though guns were blazing After fifteen minutes of warm action the French commander cried for a cease fire After the smoke cleared thirteen of the French and one of Washington s men were counted dead Several more on both sides were injured With the Half King at his side Washington swaggered into camp The French commander a man named Jumonville began protesting explaining that he was on a diplomatic trip like Washington s That meant that he was representing the French king himself and that Washington was in the wrong with his attack Washington was listening closely to his translator when the Half King stepped up to Jumonville and said You are not yet dead my father The Half King understood what Washington did not that Jumonville spoke for King Louis of France And the Half King saw no point in talking 17

with one swift motion he plunged his hatchet into Jumonville s skull His men then began killing and scalping the French wounded It took Washington a few moments before he could master his shock and horror When he did he ordered a stop to the butchery He recovered sufficiently in order to command the surviving French marched back to Virginia as prisoners This was his second mistake European nations agreed that members of a diplomatic mission could not be made prisoners In his letter to Virginia s officials Washington tried to cover it up by insisting that the men were spies In that same letter he glossed over Jumonville s death and bragged about the excitement of the action I fortunately escaped without any wound I heard the bullets whistle and believe me there is something charming in the sound Washington was at least astute enough to realize that the French would soon strike back so he made plans for defense He and his men retreated down the road to a place called Great Meadows Here over five days he built a crude circular fort Aptly called Fort Necessity it was a meager effort The Half King was unimpressed and referred to it as that little thing upon the meadow Having learned that other Indians were now taking the French side the Half King and his men vanished into the forest Over the next few weeks more soldiers arrived at Fort Necessity bringing with them food and a few small cannons Washington now commanded around 400 men Settled and more secure they returned to building their road It was early July over month after the massacre when word reached Washington that an army of 600 French and 100 Indians was heading their way Washington immediately ordered his men to pack up their tools and hurry back to the fort Fort Necessity could hold only about seventy men so most of them would have to fight from outside the walls For protection they dug trenches This digging and the hasty marching before it left them exhausted Many of the men were also sick from the poor conditions of camp life Washington s men were hardly in peak form for battle The French arrived around eleven in the morning commanded by none other than Jumonville s brother Because Washington had already provoked war there was no need for formalities The French rapidly spread out in the forest and began shooting One can imagine Washington muttering to himself This is a fine mess At least it s not raining Then it began to rain While the thick forest canopy sheltered the French Washington s men exposed to the sky in the clearing were soon drenched Even worse their gunpowder got wet and became useless They were sitting ducks The murderous fire continued for the next few hours Inside Fort Necessity a rumor spread among Washington s men that hundreds more Indians were on the way and a few desperate men broke into the fort s rum supply If they were about to die they thought it would be better to die drunk Around sunset the French called off the firing Jumonville s brother approached Washington and offered terms of surrender and Washington had little choice but to agree He was forced to give up the fort and once his men evacuated it the French set it on fire The French seized their cannons but Washington and his men were allowed to return to Virginia with their other weapons Washington also had to sign an official document of surrender Jumonville was remarkably generous to the man who had stood by and watched his brother s murder Perhaps that was because he knew better than Washington what mattered most The surrender document included a sentence stating that Washington took responsibility for his brother s death Killing a diplomat was an act of war Now if there was a larger war France could place the blame on Britain 18

When the story reached Europe the word about the young Virginian s colossal blunder in the American wilderness quickly spread French citizens called for war on England To build support further some writers published poems about the villain Washington War between England and France followed two years later and it lasted for seven years eventually expanding into a world war with fighting in North America Europe Africa and India In spite of its embarrassing start under Washington England won the war and gained claim to Ohio The Iroquois and other Indians on the other hand were left much weaker Historians call it the Seven Years War or in America the French and Indian War Washington continued to serve as a soldier in the war and he got better with practice The lessons of his early mistakes were not wasted on him and when the American Revolution erupted in the 1770s the United States seriously considered only one man George Washington to lead its army As a young man he may have bungled and proved that he didn t always tell the truth but he also had shown courage and a cool head under fire The older man would rise on the shoulders of his younger self Chapter 10 Our Unruly Ancestors Probably no time period in our history is more rehearsed and more romanticized than the American Revolution The Founding Fathers are some our best known and most honored heroes But much of what they did amounts to vandalism or what may even be called terrorism Consider the Stamp Act Crisis Between 1607 and 1732 thirteen British colonies took root on the Atlantic coast of North America As colonies they relied upon Britain for protection and trade France Spain and the Netherlands also had colonies in the New World so there was competition Conflicts with the Indians arose from time to time and mere survival could be challenging in a place that was by the colonists standards uncivilized and undeveloped Without Britain s help the colonies would not have lasted long Britain certainly benefitted too The tobacco lumber grains furs and other natural resources produced in the colonies were a great boon to the nation s economy and the Englishman s lifestyle Meanwhile the colonies also provided Britain with a market for its many manufactured goods like furniture textiles and guns It was a good deal for all parties concerned Then with the end of the French and Indian War things began to change Britain had won the war and the rights to the lands but even the wars you win cost money and Britain was in debt Where would this money come from Governments have a time honored answer to that question taxes Since the American colonists would benefit from the additional lands and protection it made sense that they should help pay for them That s what Britain s Parliament was thinking in 1765 when it passed the Stamp Act What made sense to Britain s government leaders did not make sense to many colonists As Virginian Patrick Henry would argue from the floor of the Virginia assembly an Englishman cannot be taxed without having a say through an elected representative to Parliament Since the colonists unlike people in Britain were prevented from voting for members of Parliament it followed that Parliament had no right to tax them The catchier phrase was No taxation without representation The tax Henry spoke of was a trifle really but that was beside the point It was called the Stamp Tax because it required a stamp on all official printed materials you paid for the stamp so that is the tax This included marriage certificates college diplomas magazines and newspapers People in Britain already had to pay a stamp tax However Henry and other Americans argued that 19

the Stamp Act was an act of tyranny The amount of the tax was unimportant it was the principle of the thing Many colonists were content with voicing their complaints other though were not In Boston a group hung the tax official in effigy that is they made a life sized dummy of him and put a noose around its neck and then forced him to publically resign his post A couple weeks later colonists broke into Governor Thomas Hutchinson s house reducing it to splinters though not before they emptied the wine cellar In New York merchants refused to sell English goods until the tax was repealed In a few colonies a group called the Sons of Liberty formed and led protests that included hangings of stamp officials forced resignations and various acts of vandalism and harassment Many colonial leaders decided that something more organized and official was called for They did not want the King deceived into thinking that it was only the poor or the usual troublemaker types who were angry In October of 1765 representatives of nine colonies met together in New York to discuss the situation This Stamp Act Congress as it was called demanded repeal of the tax and that Parliament give up its right to tax the colonies Parliament surprised and shocked by the Americans violent and angry response partially gave in They voted for a repeal and the Stamp Act was cancelled This happened before even a single stamp was used or a single shilling of tax collected However in the Declaratory Act that followed on the heels of the repeal Parliament reasserted its right to tax the colonists Colonists celebrated the victory but Parliament still had a war to pay for more taxes were inevitable An important step had been taken though The colonists had shown through the Stamp Act Congress and the Sons of Liberty that they could respond to Britain s tyranny with more than mere hooliganism Before this they had functioned as thirteen mostly independent and rowdy colonies When other taxes came along they would be prepared for a more unified and composed response Chapter 11 Tea Time It all started with cheaper tea You may ask Who would complain over paying less for tea It may not make sense but that s exactly what happened when in 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act Tea was already a sore subject for many colonists Since 1767 the British government had placed an import duty on tea In fact even when Parliament had cancelled taxes on other items like glass and lead the tax on tea had remained in place just to show the colonists who was in charge Colonists reacted in various ways Merchants sometimes smuggled tea into harbors or bribed customs officials so that they would look the other way when the ships were unloaded Some people refused to drink British tea at all Instead they brewed tea made from dried raspberry leaves and other native plants Most people however just shrugged and paid the tax For that reason the tax was mostly successful and it remained in place Then in 1773 news arrived in the colonies announcing that tea would now be cheaper The British East India Company was a mighty business in Britain but it had fallen on hard times They had many friends in Parliament though and these friends were willing to help them out One way they could help was to remove the taxes paid on tea in England This would lower the overall cost for tea in the colonies However the Act said nothing about the removal of the import tax that the colonists paid Therefore even though tea would be cheaper it still carried a tax Here was the real sticking point since the time of the Stamp Act in 1765 the colonists had argued that because they were not 20

represented in Parliament Parliament lacked the right to tax them Even if it meant paying less for tea colonists did not think they should pay a tax Again colonists raised the cry of No taxation without representation As in the past the most radical responses arose in the city of Boston Massachusetts Patriot leaders like Samuel Adams and John Hancock organized meetings to condemn the Act They demanded that three ships in Boston harbor be refused the right to unload their tea they allowed them to unload all other cargo Not a pound of it shall be landed they said and twenty men were posted at the wharf to make certain of it Meanwhile governor Thomas Hutchinson in compliance with British policy refused to allow the ships to leave He asked the British navy posted nearby to back him up A tense standoff followed while the tea ships sat in the harbor with their cargo On the night of December 16 thousands of patriots organized by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty met at the Old South Meeting House to make a decision John Hancock helped lead the meeting Their first action was to send the owner of the three ships to Hutchinson to see if he would change his mind Hutchinson however having considered his last word final had left town When this news got back to the assembly just as the sun was setting Adams gravely announced This meeting can do no more to save the country At that moment from the back of the church a curiously dressed group of men began whooping and yelling out crying out Boston harbor a teapot tonight and Let every man do his duty They had snuck in towards the end of the meeting Some accounts say there were a couple dozen and others as many as fifty These men had blackened their faces and donned tattered clothes and blankets in order to resemble Indians Some may have worn a couple feathers in their hair but nothing fancy They carried Indian like hatchets in their hands As the meeting ended they processed towards Griffin s wharf where the tea ships awaited Though these Indians made a boisterous exit they worked quietly and efficiently After dividing into three groups one for each ship they boarded and headed below decks for the crates of tea There were over one hundred on each ship Seeing that the men were armed and that a large crowd had followed along to watch the ships crews offered no resistance Meanwhile using their hatchets the Indians smashed the crates ripped open the packets of tea and flung the contents into the water It amounted to several thousand pounds of tea As the Indians had predicted Boston harbor was made a teapot though a salty one The men worked tirelessly for the next few hours until every last package of tea was thrown into the water One or two people from the crowd perhaps pained at the sight of so much delicious tea being wasted snuck on board and tried to make off with a few packets tucked into the lining of their coats The Indians caught them and promptly shook them down Some accounts say that one man received a coat of tar and wood shavings for his temerity By ten o clock the work was done Besides the tea no cargo had been touched In fact the only thing the men broke was a lock to the hold where the tea was kept Stories say that the men later sent a replacement lock to the captain of the ship After the tea party the men casually emptied back into the streets of Boston removing their costumes and face paint Many left town in order to be certain that they were not discovered and reported to the authorities They had made a vow to not publically acknowledge their role until after independence from Britain was secured Every one of them kept his word As you probably can guess when they heard about the events in Boston the British government was furious Without delay Parliament passed a set of Coercive Acts intended to punish Boston Britain closed the harbor to all trade until the tea was repaid They started appointing all Massachusetts government officials and the colonists right to have town meetings was limited to one per year British officials accused of crimes were allowed to have their trials moved outside of Massachusetts or even to Great Britain thereby dodging anti British juries All of this made 21

Bostonians and many other colonists irate and they bitterly referred to the measures as the Intolerable Acts One suspects that Samuel Adams John Hancock and the Sons of Liberty were secretly smiling Up until this point the Patriot faction was relatively small if noisy even in the rebel hotbed of Boston Thanks to Britain s bullying response to the Boston Tea Party their numbers began to grow By 1775 the colonial movement for independence was strong Like a good cup of tea Chapter 12 The Shot Heard Round the World Under the Coercive Acts by 1775 the city of Boston was basically a police state All roads out of town were heavily guarded and the British warship Somerset watched the mouth of the Charles River Soldiers were everywhere they trained daily on Boston Common and many were quartered in the homes of Bostonians To avoid capture most Patriot leaders had left Boston However some remained behind to conduct the secret activities on which the revolution would depend One of those was the silversmith Paul Revere A member of the Sons of Liberty he may or may not have been among that group of Indians who had thrown the tea party in Boston harbor a year and a half before Like the others though he had made a pledge not to tell The evening of Tuesday April 18 was another busy one for Revere His connections in town had kept their ears to the ground and several of them had reported that this evening the British regulars under General Thomas Gage s orders were moving out of Boston They had two objectives They aimed to capture rebel leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were lodging in Lexington about twelve miles west of town and they planned to seek out and destroy a cache of rebel arms and ammunition kept in the nearby town of Concord Fairly routine work on one hand but to be absolutely certain that no one interfered Gage was deploying a total of 1800 troops to do the job Revere was way ahead of Gage Two days before he had ridden to Concord to warn the Patriots to hide the arms and ammunition and they were mostly done by now Secondly Revere was the key person in a warning system and before any troops left Boston its wheels were already in motion Another key player was a young man named Billy Dawes Dawes s job was to sneak past British troops guarding the only road into Boston and then ride on to Lexington alerting the countryside that The British regulars are out Dawes was just the man for the job An outgoing funloving type he was an excellent actor The British guards both knew him well and considered him harmless That made sneaking past them fairly easy for Dawes By ten o clock he was riding his horse across the countryside shouting out his urgent message Meanwhile Revere was hard at work The first thing to do was to send a signal to Charlestown across the river from Boston communicating that the British would be coming by boats across the river not by land across Boston neck They had agreed that the signal would be two lanterns hung from the Christ s Church steeple it would have been one lantern if they had chosen to come by land so Revere roused young Robert Newman who as the church s sexton held the keys to the church They had to be careful British soldiers were quartered at Newman s house so Newman first had to pretend that he was going to bed early Also so as not to alert the soldiers Revere s signal had to be quiet and Newman s leaving stealthy Then after they had entered the church and climbed the 22

steeple they had to keep the signal brief the beams would be visible to the crew stationed on the Somerset and Revere would shortly be rowing across the river right by her hulk After the signal was made Revere headed for the river where two comrades waited with a boat Revere had been in such haste that he had forgotten two small but very important things his spurs and a cloth to cover the oars so that they wouldn t squeak as they plied the waters of the river Revere sent his dog with a note attached to his collar to retrieve the spurs from home The patriotic dog did his part perfectly As for the cloth one of the men stationed at the rowboat made a quick call on his girlfriend who lived close by She supplied one of her petticoats still warm when it came into Revere s hands The men ripped the petticoat in two wrapped the oars and pushed out onto the water The trip across the river under the watchful eye of the Somerset was uneventful Revere was soon mounted on a splendid horse provided by his friends in Charlestown riding along the road to Lexington Like Dawes he announced to every house and tavern that The British regulars are out It was a tense ride British patrols were posted along the road to Lexington and Revere and Dawes only narrowly avoided them Once in fact several miles from his goal Revere ran smack into a couple officers and only the legs of his superior horse saved him By midnight Revere was in Lexington stirring the town into action and he located Hancock and Adams The fiery Hancock wanted to stay and fight he started polishing up his pistol but the saner heads around him prevailed convincing him that he should skedaddle Revere also alerted the members of the Lexington militia who were in the tavern awaiting his message and fortifying themselves with food and drink It was now around one A M At about this time the British regulars almost 2000 strong were finishing their landing on the west side of the Charles River making preparations to march up the road to Lexington These troops were probably a bit cranky about all these middle of the night operations On the other hand they were looking forward to teaching the rebels a lesson should any of them dare show their faces The sounds of church bells ringing off in the distance hinted that yes they would Some rebels were assembling on the Lexington Green Led by Captain John Parker the militia finished their ale and ambled out to await the British troops By the time the sun was beginning to rise and British drums could be heard in Lexington there were around seventy present At the same time Revere and his alarm team now including a young doctor named Samuel Prescott had run into trouble On their way to Concord about a mile out of Lexington they came face to face with another British patrol Revere was easily captured Dawes however turned and escaped their grasp but he lost control of his horse and soon found himself sprawled on the ground watching his horse run away from him Prescott did better managing to wheel his horse around spur it into a gallop leap it over a stone wall and ride on to Concord Meanwhile back in Lexington the tension had grown Minute Men were scattered on the town green muskets in hand Marching their way in their straight disciplined lines were the British redcoats They were not yet visible but they could be heard They were singing Yankee Doodle having added in some very pointed lyrics As for their king John Hancock And Adams if they re taken Their heads for signs shall hang up high Upon that hill called Beacon Adams and Hancock had removed a little distance from the town but Hancock realized that in his haste he had forgotten a trunk containing papers critical to the Patriot cause His secretary located Revere who had ambled back to town after being released and together they retrieved the 23

trunk They were lugging it across town walking right through the Lexington militia as the British arrived Captain Parker instructed his men Don t fire unless fired on but if they mean to have a war let it begin here Many in the militia were starting to walk away Others stood their ground and loaded their weapons It was far from an orderly unified force The British arrived and lined up in their ranks to face the Lexington militia standing opposite them on the green The British commander Major Pitcairn ordered the colonists to lay down their arms and go home A few did Then the sound of a musket shot cracked the air Who fired it no one knows British soldiers later claimed it came from a window or from behind a nearby wall In any case the British immediately replied with a volley of bullets A few colonists fired back Then the British charged bayonets fixed and most Lexingtonians took to their heels When the smoke cleared among the colonists there were eight dead and ten wounded For the British the casualties were only one injured soldier and one injured horse Major Pitcairn s Against the orders of their officers the adrenaline fueled redcoats began to loot the town The officers eventually brought the soldiers under control and back into formation The main objective destroying the arms in Concord still lay before them Not finding Hancock and Adams they moved on satisfied that they had taught the rebels their lesson In Concord they met no resistance The Concord militia had marched up the road to meet them but apparently intimidated by the size of the British force they had turned on their heels and retreated to Concord where they took position on a nearby hillside As they watch the British inspect the town more men trickled in from the surrounding area to join them and their numbers swelled to several hundred While their troops sought out the cache of weapons the British officers sat down to breakfast at Concord s taverns Legend has it that Major Pitcairn ordered a brandy and water and stirring the drink with his finger commented that he hoped to be stirring Yankee blood before the day was over From the hillside the colonials watched the town Smoke rising from the town made them think that the British were beginning to burn houses they weren t it was just a few weapons and the Concord Liberty Tree They also noticed that it was only a small group of soldiers who had been left to guard the North Bridge into town Finally their anger and courage grew too big They stood and descended the hillside though cautiously As the colonists approached the British officer left to guard the bridge into town seeing that he was outnumbered called for a retreat to the far side Then after taking position and loading the Redcoats fired That did it The colonial side finally roused out of their timidity fired back Three redcoats fell dead four wounded The rest faced with an army of hundreds of angry and armed farmers swarming down the hill fell back to the center of town Colonel Smith who commanded the British troops was forced to make a decision fight or flee Even though they were not professionals the colonial army was steadily getting bigger and soon they would have him surrounded Better to live to fight another day he reasoned Around noon he commanded his men to form into lines and march back towards Boston On the way he knew they would encounter reinforcements For the first half hour things remained relatively quiet but if the British had looked away from the road as they marched they would certainly have observed the clusters of colonists shadowing them One can imagine that the colonists were lobbing taunts and insults at them as they marched About a mile away from Concord the colonists began lobbing more than words They fired their guns They fired from behind walls trees houses or whatever else they could This was not the way battles were supposed to be fought in the eighteenth century you were expected to face the 24

enemy in organized lines in an open battlefield Angered and confused at first the British found it difficult to respond They resisted some but mostly they continued their march back to Boston stranding their dead and wounded along the road Meanwhile the colonial army continued to grow It was now a force of several thousand men from the surrounding countryside and towns A little after passing through Lexington the British met up with the reinforcements and then they began to fight back giving as good as they got and often more though continuing the retreat to Boston Along the way they destroyed property and executed men who were suspected of helping the enemy Eventually the shaken army arrived back in Boston At the end of the day the British counted seventy three dead and one hundred and seventy four injured For the Americans there were forty nine dead and thirty nine wounded It may have been a relatively small conflict but the significance of Lexington and Concord was huge Not only had the Americans chased the British back to Boston but also they had prevented them from achieving their objectives Hancock and Adams had escaped and thanks to Paul Revere s earlier warnings there was little in the way of arms and ammunition in Concord that could be destroyed And ominously for Britain the colonial army teeming around Boston amounted now to almost 15 000 men This was no protest this was revolution Chapter 13 Mr Useful Until the American Revolution made George Washington known around the world the most famous American of the 1700s was undoubtedly Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia Pennsylvania He first gained fame first as a writer then as a scientist and finally as a politician This fame was not limited to America the French so admired him that they wrote poems in his honor and celebrated him like a rock star Franklin s beginnings were fairly ordinary Born in 1706 in Boston the fifteenth of seventeen children as a young man he apprenticed as a printer in his brother s shop At seventeen he moved to Philadelphia where he found another printing job After spending a brief time in London he returned to Philadelphia where he settled down and started his own printing business All of this travel may have been the result of his interest in human nature and the way the world worked or it may have been the cause of it Franklin s business in Philadelphia boomed There was a growing demand for printed materials in colonial America and his presses cranked out newspapers books pamphlets stationery and official documents He earned enough respect that Pennsylvania asked him to print their money His wife Deborah was also his business partner and together they became wealthy As the owner of the business Franklin could decide to publish pieces of his own Frequently he contributed articles or cartoons to the newspapers he ran and he also wrote pamphlets on politics religion and philosophy Every year he published his popular Poor Richard s Almanac Almanacs provided Colonial America with weather predictions quite beneficial to farmers and household tips They often included puzzles and bits of wisdom something for which Franklin was especially known Writing as Poor Richard he emphasized the importance of self improvement and hard work Two famous sayings of his are Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise and God helps those who help themselves Often he showed a wry sense of humor Fish and visitors stink after three days He that lives upon hope will die fasting Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead 25

When it came to hard work Franklin practiced what he preached By age 42 he was wealthy enough to retire freeing him to use his time as he pleased As a printer he had developed a habit and a delight for tinkering Naturally observant and curious he was always raising questions about nature s mysteries All of this suited him perfectly to be a scientist As a scientist Franklin addressed practical common sense questions He asked How can one make a stove that produces more heat and less smoke Franklin tinkered around and produced an improvement on the stoves used at the time Another question If you have poor eyesight how can you make eyeglasses that allow you both to see clearly for reading and for recognizing a face across the room Franklin tinkered some more and came up with bifocals He made important observations about storm patterns and he showed long before it was accepted that lead was poisonous I would rather have it said he told his mother He lived usefully than He died rich Franklin s scientific achievements demonstrated a deep dedication to being useful Franklin s most famous experiments were with electricity In his day people were just beginning to understand it but no one had yet made practical use of the knowledge Franklin observed that electricity and lightning shared many of the same qualities Were they the same Franklin wondered Let the experiment be made Franklin had noticed that electricity was attracted to the tips of sharp metal rods and that those rods could carry a charge to a connected object Incidentally Franklin was the first to use the terms positive charge and negative charge Franklin decided to test lightning s ability to do this in a novel somewhat whimsical way he would fly a kite during a storm The kite had a wire fixed to the top and on the string Franklin hung a metal key If as he believed that lightning was the same substance as electricity the charge in the storm clouds should carry from the kite down the string and through the key Then he should be able to touch the key with a wire and see a spark On a stormy fall day Franklin took his kite materials and his son William along to a nearby plot of farmland Once they got the kite aloft they retreated to the cover of a barn handling the kite from there Franklin may have been dedicated to science but he was not without pride he didn t want his neighbors to think he was out of his mind At first nothing much happened The kite hovered peacefully in the grey Pennsylvania sky Scientific progress usually takes patience and Franklin had to exercise all of his So he and William waited Then just when it looked like he would have to wait for another storm the string tightened Impatiently Franklin forgot about the wire and touched the key He felt a jolt Fortunately the shock was too small to do him harm as others had done in lab experiments Using a special metal coated jar he captured some of the lightning s energy and carried it back to his lab When he tested the sample it acted like electricity in every way Franklin s hypothesis proved correct lightning was electricity And an interesting thing it was too but for Franklin being interesting was not enough After all he was a practical man How could this knowledge be put to good use He had an idea Up to this point in history humans had no defense against lightning If you were outdoors during a storm it could strike and kill you Even indoors you were not entirely safe because it could hit the building and cause collapse or fire People recognized that tall buildings were the ones most often hit The tallest buildings back then were churches and the highest point on a church was always the bell tower which as an added inducement to lightning strikes included a metal bell As you can guess bell ringers had a risky job Based on his kite experiment Franklin developed an ingenious simple solution to the problem He placed a metal rod vertically on top of a tall building attaching it to wire that ran down the building to another rod planted in the ground The first rod drew the lightning charge to itself and channeled the charge harmlessly into the ground Behold the lightning rod Soon lightning rods 26

were erected on buildings all over America and Europe Since then lightning rods have saved countless lives and buildings Franklin s inventions could have earned him another fortune but he didn t want pay for his scientific achievements He believed that science should serve humanity not make profits so he allowed other people to patent and make money off of his inventions A s we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others we should be glad of a Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours and this we should do freely and generously Were he not already a wealthy man who knows whether he would have felt the same way Nevertheless the attitude is consistent with his stated preference to be useful rather than rich Franklin s usefulness was hardly limited to science As a Philadelphian he served as a councilman and helped found the city s first fire department As a Pennsylvanian he served in the colonial assembly Among his most noteworthy achievements there was improving the postal service He also helped start the University of Pennsylvania and the colony s first hospital As a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress he was a crafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence During the American Revolution he was United States ambassador to France working successfully to persuade the French to support the country against Great Britain When the Revolution triumphed Franklin spoke for the United States as the peace treaty was hammered out On every level city colony state or nation Franklin was an active important and useful citizen It s difficult to believe that one man did all this Franklin was lucky to be born at the right time and in the right place the growing American colonies and after that the newly founded United States offered a hardworking man many opportunities for business exploration and public service On the other hand few of Franklin s contemporaries accomplished so much Benjamin Franklin believed that we should live our lives for the benefit of others throughout his long life that s exactly what he did Chapter 14 Coming to America You are an American You are also a slave Like all who come to America you blend the ways of your homeland and the ways of your new home unlike everyone else you had no choice in coming here You about slavery was because your family in Africa owned slaves One was a playmate You liked to race each other until her legs suddenly shot up and she could beat you every time She was like a sister to you Then a rival village made war on your village They caught everyone by surprise the men of your village hadn t even time to grab their weapons and it is all a blur to you now people were running terrified there was fire there was blood You though only ten were seized and hitched together with a boy from another village You saw friends cousins and an uncle among the others in the long procession of slaves You cried mostly because you were confused The forest seemed unusually silent and dark as you were led away It was a terrible long march Your captors harassed poked and bullied you They provided little food or water Many captives got sick Many died Two young men tried to escape but they were shot and left for the vultures You prayed and prayed to your god After weeks of trudging through a strange country you arrived at the ocean It was like the river by your home village but it had no banks and the sound was far louder like thunder Its waves came in crashed and receded again and again like the breathing of a monstrous beast 27

Other lines of slaves stretched across the beaches like necklaces People sat cross legged in the sand Strange white men with long stringy hair and wearing ridiculous heavy clothes were talking to your captors The white men gave them alcohol tobacco and guns These you realized in horror were the price paid for you and your fellow slaves Next they took you to the ships and the sailors clamped chains around your ankles Their weighty sharpness was painful like nothing you had ever felt having had little experience with hard metals The sailors herded you beneath the deck out of the sun The darkness beneath decks was unlike any darkness you had known darker than the forest The ship rocked on the waves and you got sick You felt ashamed because there was nowhere to vomit but on your chest There was nowhere to relieve yourself but right where you lay Hundreds of others were crammed into the ship s hold lying face up side to side on hard smooth boards There was no room to move and it was hot and stuffy The smell of sweat excrement and vomit made your head dizzy Without knowing when the sun arose or when it sank you lost track of days Later after you arrived in America a preacher would teach you about Hell But you already knew about Hell The only relief came when the men on the ship forced you up on deck so they could wash out the hold But after days on your back with no room to even wiggle the walking and the sunlight were painful You remember one fellow captive with a wild look on his face breaking free and throwing himself over the rail into the water He vanished under the waves without a sound Others died less quickly and more painfully under the decks A friend of yours lay chained to a dead old lady for three days before the sailors noticed and took her away All of you felt a grim gladness when someone died though it meant that there was more space for the living Under the deck there was no sun no moon no stars There was no singing of birds You could not run to the comforting arms of your mother or father and you wondered if they were alive and safe So you and your fellow captives sang And you told stories Words and the memories they conveyed kept you human and alive Words were all you had You would wonder where are we going Would the journey end What would the white men do with us Will they eat us What was their country like Was it like the giant desert to the north of your home Was it like the thick beast filled jungles You were destined for a place called Virginia When you arrived they herded you out of the ship into the bright piercing light and onto the land You huddled close with the others White men came down from the town to meet you They eyed you and smiled but not in a friendly way Among them were a few Africans dressed in white men s clothes and speaking their language They looked at you with what seemed a mixture of pity and contempt They cleaned you violently scrubbing your body with hard brushes it was painful though it felt good to be rid of the filth from so many weeks on the ship However no amount of water could wash away the smell in your nostrils it would stay with you like the ghosts of those who died on board Next they put uncomfortable thick clothes on you Men looked you up and down examining you as if you were an animal They talked to each other in their strange harsh language laughing with one another Before you knew it you were sold and led away Two others from your ship came with you but you didn t know them Other men bought your friends and you have not seen them since Now you work in the fields of this tobacco plantation helping with the planting tending and harvesting After that there is the drying rolling and packing All of it is hard hard work Other slaves work in the master s house or help him with business matters The master is a tall thin quiet man His wife is often sick and mostly stays indoors All of their children have died young The overseer a 28

muscular red headed man with a broad rimmed hat whips you when you don t work hard enough for him In the evenings when you come home from the fields there is more work to be done Clothes need mending food needs cooking and tools need repairing The other slaves have taught you English and Christianity These you have blended with your African language and religion With stories and songs you ve done the same thing Many of these you sing or tell just as they were in Africa many have taken on the sounds music and landscape of your new home America Words still help to keep you alive and human It is 1776 Lately you have heard white folks using words like freedom liberty and equality But this doesn t seem to have anything to do with you Chapter 15 Forging an Army It is possible that the most important battle of the American Revolution was not a battle at all Over the winter of 1777 1778 the American army camped at Valley Forge Pennsylvania Here they prepared for battle but the battle never came While they waited for the British enduring great hardship a fractured amateurish and dispirited bunch transformed itself into a unified skilled and confident fighting force During the fall George Washington s men had tried to prevent Britain s army under General Howe from reaching the United States capital of Philadelphia They failed The battles they fought were small but Washington had made critical errors that had allowed Howe to slip behind him and march into Philadelphia With winter coming on Washington had no time to either lick his wounds or plan another strike He needed a campground that could accommodate his 12 000 men and it needed be close enough to Philadelphia that Washington could keep an eye on the British In case of British attack it needed to be easily defensible One of his generals Mad Anthony Wayne recommended a location eighteen miles west of Philadelphia among scenic rolling hills Bordered by a river on one side two high mountains on another and a high ridge facing east Washington agreed that this triangular slice of farmland and forest was just right People called the area Valley Forge Shortly before they moved there good news arrived from New York American general Horatio Gates s army had defeated and captured a large British force at Saratoga It was a muchneeded victory for the Americans and it would prove to be the major turning point of the war The news was not entirely good for Washington Gates s success contrasted sharply with Washington s recent failures Many people within the American government and military began to talk of replacing him with Gates Even one of Washington s own generals secretly discussed the possibility with Gates When Washington heard about it he seriously considered quitting He kept doing his job though and all the talk eventually settled down In spite of Washington s many shortcomings as a soldier as a leader and as a man of integrity he was unmatched his army and his nation maintained their confidence in him Survival at Valley Forge was a challenge In December when the tired army first arrived they had little food No meat No meat the men chanted in protest Mutiny seemed likely Slowly Washington s staff procured cattle and other provisions from nearby farmers but throughout the army s seven months there the staple food was something the men called firecake This was basically cooked glue flour mixed with water baked on hot stones or molded around sticks and held 29

over a fire Animals at Valley Forge didn t fare much better Most of the army s horses would die that winter and the smell would fill the camp The men also lacked adequate clothing Few men had a complete uniform and many went shoeless Washington reported that trails of blood dotted the snow wherever the men had walked Many had no coats blankets or even decent shirts One soldier dressed in a cut up rug Lastly the living conditions were awful There were no existing structures for the soldiers Washington and the other commanding officers bunked in local farmhouses so one of their first duties was to build log cabins These cabins were snug housing ten to twelve soldiers each but they could get cold and smoky Thanks in part to a poor understanding of hygiene disease and sickness were common When they were done eating the soldiers would their throw bones and other food scraps into the corners of their cabins They relieved themselves wherever they pleased As a result at any time about twenty percent of the men were considered unfit for duty Given these conditions it is not surprising that over two thousand died that winter Building projects provided the men a chance to demonstrate their strength and skills and helped keep everyone s spirits up Washington offered monetary prizes for the regiments who completed their cabins fastest For the man who could design the best roof he offered 100 To make the camp more defensible they constructed trenches and earthen forts called redoubts along the ridge facing east to Philadelphia Progress on theses projects created a sense of satisfaction and safety They needed both Besides soldiers the camp included as many as five hundred women and children Over six months the population ranged from 12 000 to 20 000 To put it in perspective while it existed Valley Forge was the fourth largest city in the United States Once the camp was built they could devote themselves to training Before coming to Valley Forge Washington s army was in a sense several armies The thirteen states were responsible for forming regiments and each state had trained its soldiers in its own way In a battle where regiments from many states were trying to coordinate their actions this could create a good deal of confusion For help Washington turned to one of the Revolution s more colorful characters His name was Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuban and he claimed to be a general of the Prussian Army and a baron Both claims were false It was true that he was a veteran Prussian soldier but he had only risen to captain His father had added the von part to their family name something that only nobles could do but it is doubtful that he had the right to do this Benjamin Franklin who introduced Steuban to Washington thought the Prussian would make more of an impression if it were believed that he was an officer of the highest rank and class Notwithstanding the fact that he was a fraud Steuban was good at his job and he was popular with the men In 18th century warfare an army was expected to function with the smoothness and unity of a machine Steuban standardized marching battle formations and procedures for firing weapons He made original improvements on some of these motions allowing for greater simplicity and quickness In all of these actions Steuban drilled the soldiers day after day In contrast to the English style he believed that officers should treat the men with kindness and respect The men responded with devotion Still the independent minded Americans often ignored Steuban s orders and did as they pleased When this occurred it made Steuban furious and speaking no English he would explode with a mixture of German and French profanities The men would just laugh at this so Steuban would turn to his translator and say Come swear for me All of this eventually endeared Steuban to the men and they worked hard for him Besides cleaning up the army s maneuvers Steuban also helped clean up the camp When he arrived he was appalled at the poor sanitation he found He made sure that kitchens and latrines 30

were re built at opposite ends of the camp and that men actually used them and not any convenient spot He made sure that cabins were inspected regularly for cleanliness Washington was all too happy to give the orders and he followed whatever advice Steuban gave For his part Washington s quality as a leader often shined brightest in the little things All soldiers in his army wore a stiffened round ribbon on their hats called a cockade The cockade s color told the rank of the soldier the highest officers words pink or red captains wore yellow green for junior officers black for everyone else In order to demonstrate his commitment to these rank and file soldiers Washington began wearing the black cockade The other generals soon followed his example In a war for independence from a society like England where social class standing was clearly defined and strictly observed this little gesture of Washington s was highly significant to the men and they loved him for it Good news came to Valley Forge in May Through the diplomatic skill of Benjamin Franklin France had agreed to an alliance with the young United States Many French were inspired by the United States vision of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and many others simply recognized a golden opportunity to tweak Britain s nose They sent the United States money and weapons and they promised the support of their army and navy Upon hearing the news Washington and his men celebrated with a prayer service followed by the firing of musket volleys and cannons Long live the King of France Huzzah they shouted That night every soldier was issued an extra serving of rum Shortly after the King of Britain re called General Howe to Britain While Washington and his men had spent their long winter in Valley Forge Howe had spent his time attending parties chasing women and living off the best Philadelphia had to offer His commitment to the cause against the American rebels had been half hearted from the start when he demonstrated that he would rather dance than fight he was relieved of command By June when winter had melted away and the American army marched out of Valley Forge their prospects were improving Not long after they demonstrated that they had learned Steuban s lessons by fighting an indecisive but confidence building battle at Monmouth The war took three more years to win and without the trying experience of Valley Forge the American soldiers may not have been able to persist in their cause for so long The winter at Valley Forge had knit the army closer together and made them more resolute in their cause Sometimes good does come out of suffering particularly when it is shared Chapter 16 The World Turned Upside Down In the summer of 1781 the American colonists were in their seventh year of fighting for independence from Britain Even though they had been at it for so long it wasn t clear yet clear who would win The situation was messy For example if you were able look at the action from high above or maybe look at the armies spread out on a map little would appear orderly Most of the recent fighting had been in the deep south of the Carolinas but now the British under General Lord Cornwallis were farther north looting and burning their way across Virginia Meanwhile General George Washington s American soldiers were camped in New York contemplating an attack on New York City where the largest of the British armies under General Henry Clinton awaited orders The French who had joined the war effort on the American side in 1778 had an army stationed in Rhode Island and their navy was in the Bahamas With all these scattered forces where could any decisive action take place And who would lead it 31

There was no agreement among the war s leaders Washington was convinced that he should attack Clinton in New York City Rochambeau the French general in Rhode Island was equally certain that they should all march south to Virginia where the French navy would meet them The United States Congress was weak and fractured and they couldn t provide Washington with adequate troops supplies or money On the British side jealousy and rivalry between Clinton and Cornwallis prevented any coordinated effort each one was avoiding a big action in hopes that the other would make the first mistake Washington s carelessness hadn t helped the American cause The British intercepted a letter in which he had written about his plans to attack New York City Washington hadn t even bothered to disguise his message in a code Clinton therefore had all the more reason to stay put and not help Cornwallis The British navy in consequence also remained near New York As it turned out this helped the American army Some people like Washington have all the luck This is how it happened Rochambeau eventually persuaded the stubborn Washington that Virginia was the better place to attack Washington finally gave in and rather than sulk he made the most of his mistake So that Clinton would expect an attack on New York City he allowed British spies to get glimpses of battle plans and he set up a decoy camp in nearby New Jersey This time he kept his true plans to himself Even Washington s own men didn t know what he was up to they made bets with each other on where they were headed New York or Virginia Things seemed so confused that a few were muttering that the old man had finally lost his marbles Washington was delighted If we do not deceive our own men he told those closest to him we will never deceive the enemy Cornwallis meanwhile had moved his army to Yorktown Virginia Here he camped next to the deep waters of the York River and Chesapeake Bay This way British ships could easily sail in and then transport them up the coast to New York to join Clinton As he awaited orders he commanded his men to built earthworks and trenches for defense in case any Americans showed up The earthworks consisted of walls twenty feet thick at the base and nine feet high To construct them dirt was packed in and around cylinder like stick bundles These were stacked and covered in packed soil The wall shaped like a large U protected Cornwallis camp on three sides and the York River at his back protected the fourth Several small earthen forts called redoubts were constructed outside the walls in order to provide better protection and advance notice if the Americans were coming Meanwhile miles from the coast at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay the enemy navies neared engagement The French under Admiral De Grasse had arrived ahead of the British who were under Admiral Graves s command Graves like Clinton considered the activity in Virginia of little significance and he had taken his own sweet time The French gave him more than he bargained for The battle that followed was a major sea conflict bloody and prolonged Few Americans are aware of this battle but it played a big part in securing their independence The French were victorious sending Graves and his battered British ships back to New York in shame Consequently Cornwallis was cut off from his navy s aid Suddenly and improbably an American victory appeared possible Cornwallis wasn t yet aware of his navy s debacle For the time being the situation right in front of his face was grim enough The men constructing the earthworks African American slaves captured from local farms were dropping dead from the heat and exhaustion His soldiers were living off of rotten meat and worm infested biscuits Perhaps as much as fifty percent were sick with malaria Some soldiers had been at war with the Americans since 1773 and they were weary of what seemed like an unwinnable and thankless war By the end of September Cornwallis killed all his horses in order to save food for the men This was not without its own cost the smell of the dead horses added to their miseries 32

Then American and French troops under the French Marquis de Lafayette arrived to set up camp outside Yorktown In late September Washington and Rochambeau arrived in nearby Williamsburg to add their armies to the siege bringing the total force to almost twenty thousand men They were camped only a few miles from where 174 years before the English had established Jamestown Bucked up by all that history and smelling victory in the air Washington ordered his men to shave and powder their hair for the march to Yorktown The French spread out on the left of Cornwallis s earthworks the Americans on the right They constructed earthworks of their own and moved cannons into place They also moved into outer defenses that the British had abandoned Luckily rain held off until the cannons were in place any delay at this point might have allowed Cornwallis to slip away or give reinforcements time to arrive On October 9 Washington himself fired the ceremonial first shot and the siege officially began According to legend the cannon ball sailed far over the British walls and into the middle of their camp where it came crashing down into an officer s dinner After this the cannon fire was continuous The French and Americans used three main types of artillery One kind hurtled balls of eighteen or twenty four pounds into the earthworks attempting to make them collapse Mortars fired explosives high into the air where they burst above the British camp and scattered sharp metal shrapnel all over The third type of cannon fired shells that exploded on impact The smoke became thick and black over the plain and the thunderous noise was almost constant For all those encamped in Yorktown it was hell The ground shook so much that Cornwallis men compared the feeling to that of being in an earthquake Within two days Cornwallis had lost seventy men and the bombing had not let up American and French forces dug trenches and moved the cannons even closer They now had cannons within 100 yards the length of a football field Only two redoubts of British soldiers remained outside the main walls These were next to the river the extreme right of the American French lines Possession of them would almost assure victory since cannons could then be fired on the British camp at very close range from three angles It would also eliminate the best position the British had for firing on the Americans and French If these redoubts were taken Cornwallis would have few options left Washington and Rochambeau selected a moonless night for the action A combined force of French and American soldiers unloaded their muskets and fixed bayonets to the ends They expected hand to hand fighting They split into two groups one for each redoubt Lafayette commanded one group and future Secretary of the Treasury Colonel Alexander Hamilton led the other While the cannons kept up their fire the soldiers ran across no man s land towards the redoubts Rush on boys yelled Hamilton as they approached the high log walls The men swarmed in overwhelming British gunfire grenades and bayonets In a moment of comedy amid all the violence Hamilton a short man had to request help from another soldier in order to get over the wall Nevertheless he succeeded in capturing the redoubt Lafayette and his men were also victorious In spite of this setback Cornwallis did not give up The following night he increased his cannon fire and sent out 350 men to attack the American lines One group disguised as Americans succeeded in sneaking behind the earthworks They inflicted over a dozen casualties and disabled several cannons before they were recognized and driven back For the Redcoats though it was their final moment of glory The following day Cornwallis decided that he was through with Yorktown He began ferrying his men across the York River to Gloucester Point about a mile away Around a thousand had crossed when the winds started picking up It soon grew so stormy that they couldn t complete the evacuation the British would have to stay put in Yorktown It seemed that even Mother Nature was against Cornwallis 33

Whether or not that troubling thought crossed Cornwallis s mind the factor was decisive The next morning a drummer boy appeared atop the British earthworks accompanied by an officer raising a white flag The drummer beat the signal for a conference Cornwallis was ready to discuss terms of surrender After the officers completed all the necessary paperwork American and French troops lined up to witness the British evacuate Yorktown As commanding officer Cornwallis should have been the one to offer his sword to the victors but claiming illness he remained in his tent For this unhappy duty he sent another officer who offered his sword in a final insult to Rochambeau instead of Washington Rochambeau however declined and insisted that the sword go to Washington s hand Then the British marched out singing The World Turned Upside Down a popular tune at the time The words were perfectly suited to the British point of view If ponies rode men and if grass ate cows And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse If summer were spring and the other way round Then all the world would be upside down Chapter 17 A Great Partnership In 1803 the United States was still a young nation but it was growing fast Searching for farmland thousands of people were moving west over the Appalachian Mountains into the immense forested wilderness that lay beyond In that year Thomas Jefferson s government purchased Louisiana Territory from France more than doubling the size of this wilderness Now the United States stretched westward from the Atlantic Ocean past the Mississippi River over the Great Plains to the feet of the Rocky Mountains Many Americans wanted to keep going all the way to the Pacific Ocean even though no one had a clear idea of what lay out there Their greatest hope was that a water route a Northwest Passage could be found that led all the way across the continent If it existed the lucrative trade with China would be easier So Jefferson needed someone to explore the new lands and those beyond all the way to the Pacific To lead the expedition he appointed his personal secretary and friend Meriwether Lewis Lewis was a former soldier with frontier experience He was also a skilled naturalist who could provide detailed precise information and observations about any new plants or animals he discovered Lewis asked his former army commander William Clark to share the leadership Clark s military experience and mapping skills would be great assets In contrast to Lewis who was quiet and serious Clark was outgoing and affable Together they made a good team Clark recruited a group of thirty two toughened veteran frontiersmen to go with them Since this was a military expedition they were enlisted as soldiers They also recruited several boatmen to help propel them the river George Drouillard a French trapper who had spent many years in Louisiana Territory joined the expedition to trap hunt guide and interpret Clark also brought his slave York Jefferson named them the Corps of Discovery After acquiring boats trade items and supplies they set out west While the journey Missouri offered challenges of its own the real adventure began in May of 1804 when they set off from St Louis Missouri into the wilderness beyond 34

They took the Missouri River which winds west northwest It is the main tributary of the Mississippi from the west and Lewis and Clark hoped that it would lead them to the Northwest Passage Traveling by water with so many men and supplies even when going against the flow was far easier than traveling by land It was also harder to get lost Nevertheless this was no stroll in the park The Missouri was an unpredictable river where sandbars floating logs and rapids were frequent hazards While a combination of oars and sails usually sufficed the conditions sometimes demanded that the men get out of the boats to either push with poles or to pull the boat with ropes It was exhausting work The surrounding environment didn t make it any easier Mosquitoes ticks and other insects pestered them almost constantly and rattlesnakes were always lurking somewhere Since it was summer it was blazing hot and the farther west they went on the plains the fewer trees there were to provide shade Relief sometimes arrived in the form of rainstorms but these could also bring lightning and hail At least food wasn t yet a problem The grassy prairie was thick with elk deer beaver buffalo and other game Because these animals rarely saw humans they were relatively tame and easy to shoot Buffalo tongue and beaver tail were their favorites Besides their exploration duties Lewis and Clark were charged with informing all the Indian nations they encountered that they were United States citizens now and had a new Great Father that is President Jefferson Jefferson wanted this to be done in a spirit of friendship displays of force were to be avoided For this reason Lewis and Clark brought along trade items like tobacco blue beads clothing mirrors knives needles and peace medals these had Jefferson s face on one side and a picture of two hands one Indian and one American shaking on the other They were not supposed to trade guns which the Indians wanted but they could promise them for later delivery The political landscape of the Great Plains was as challenging to negotiate as the physical landscape There were many Indian tribes and each had its own language and customs Not only that but the tribes were often enemies with each other Making friends with one tribe might offend another Though Lewis and Clark had interpreters misunderstandings frequently arose Their first hard lesson in diplomacy came in September when they entered the territory of the Teton Sioux In modern terms they were now in South Dakota The Corps of Discovery paddled the boats to the bank of the river and the Tetons came down to greet them Lewis and Clark gave them pork and the Tetons offered buffalo meat in return So far so good Lewis and Clark then offered peace medals and some other items but not all the Sioux chiefs liked them Two became demanding and threatening Then some Teton warriors grabbed onto one of the boats Clark started to pull his sword Lewis loaded their cannon and commanded his men to load their guns The Indians reached for their quivers At that moment an older Teton chief stepped in and called for peace He told his men to let go of the boat Weapons were lowered all around It went more smoothly after that but the tension never fully relaxed while they remained with the Tetons Lewis and Clark breathed sighs of relief when a few days later they pushed their boats back into the river and moved on Bloodshed had been avoided but only narrowly The next two tribes they encountered the Arikara and the Mandan were much friendlier and welcoming The Corps of Discovery even decided to build their winter camp with the Mandan and they named their quarters Fort Mandan This is in central North Dakota The Mandan and the Corps of Discovery coexisted well The Mandan helped the Corps of Discovery build their fort and together they went on buffalo hunts Lewis and Clark s men set up a forge and repaired Mandan tools and weapons This was more like what Jefferson had hoped for The only disappointment was that Lewis and Clark could not convince the Mandan to make peace with their neighbors during their stay the Mandan exchanged raids with the Arikara and Teton Sioux 35

Lewis and Clark learned a lot about Mandan ways that winter They also made notes in their journal about the discoveries they had made so far Lewis sent a group of men back to St Louis carrying plants animal skins and bones Native American artifacts and a live prairie dog for Jefferson Among the Mandan they also found a guide for the next stage of their journey Her name was Sacajawea She was a Shoshone Indian who had married to a French trapper named Charbonneau Taken prisoner as a teenager Sacajawea had not seen her people since Lewis and Clark knew they would meet the Shoshone in the mountains to the west and their knowledge of the land and horses were resources Lewis and Clark badly needed Sacajawea wanted to see her people again so she was willing to go though it meant carrying her newborn son Jean Baptiste along with her Jean Baptiste whom the men called Pompey would ride all the way to the Pacific on Sacajawea s back In spring after the ice broke up on the river the Corps of Discovery returned to their journey Lewis feeling the need for exercise walked along the shore as the boats made their way up the river Few white men had traveled into these open treeless lands and Lewis marveled at them The high thick grasses he knew meant that the soil was fertile these would be good lands for farmers and ranchers Game was plentiful and the Corps of Discovery ate well Here they encountered their first grizzly bears The men thought they would be like other bears they met and at first they approached them casually The Indians may fear them they reasoned but that was because they only had bows and arrows But they didn t know grizzlies They can weigh 600 pounds and stand as tall as seven feet on their hind legs Unlike black bears which flee when threatened grizzlies tend to charge and come at you with all they ve got One swat from a grizzly paw can kill and their massive jaws can clamp over a man s head Even after it had been shot in the lungs several times one grizzly kept running at a group of Lewis and Clark s men It took five more shots to bring it down After that they were much more careful around grizzlies From the Mandan Lewis and Clark learned that they would eventually come to a great waterfall on the Missouri By mid June of 1805 they had reached it The descriptions however did not do it justice Lewis and Clark discovered that it was actually five waterfalls spread out over sixteen miles Today the town of Great Falls Montana located nearby takes its name from these falls To get past them they had to pull the boats out of the water and port them around each waterfall It took the men eleven days of backbreaking labor walking on ground covered in sharp rocks and prickly pears Meanwhile the mosquitoes constantly whined and bit As they continued west the ground rose higher and higher Mountains became visible as they expected and like the falls they turned out to be much bigger than they thought they would be These were the Bitteroot Mountains a portion of the Rocky Mountains The Missouri River begins at their feet as Lewis and Clark discovered To their great disappointment neither the Columbia nor any other navigable river west began anywhere close by So much for the Northwest Passage They kept going but now that they were in the mountains traveling by land they needed those horses more than ever In August they finally located the Shoshone Indians Sacajawea s people They made signs of peace and arranged a meeting with their chief Cameahwait At the meeting Sacajawea approached him and suddenly began weeping Then the two embraced with great emotion As it turned out the chief was Sacajawea s brother She had not seen him since she had been kidnaped many years before and she was overwhelmed with joy Probably because of Sacajawea s influence Cameahwait agreed to help Lewis and Clark He provided information about the routes through the mountains and he traded them horses A Shoshone guide who went by Old Toby joined the expedition to put them on the right path The trip through the mountains proved difficult It was steep and thick with trees and bushes On the third day after leaving the Shoshone it began to snow Game was scarce and they 36

ended up having to kill and eat their horses After another week of hard going they staggered into a Nez Perce village on the other side of the mountains Having crossed the mountains on horseback Lewis and Clark now sought a water route to the Pacific The Nez Perce offered to help them construct canoes in their style This involved burning a large log and then hollowing it out Within a couple weeks they were on the way Now that they were in water again and now that they could float with the current instead of paddle and pull against it they made quicker progress They also had abundant salmon to eat so much that they eventually got sick of it Whenever they had the chance they traded with Indians in order to get something that they regarded as tastier dog Lewis preferred it even to venison Within a couple weeks they were paddling on the mighty Columbia River It was now October and it was beginning to get colder Because of the great heights from which they were descending Lewis anticipated that they would encounter some rapids He was right There was a stretch of rough water fifty five miles long At one place called the Dalles the Corps of Discovery encountered two particularly violent rapids Complicating matters the high rocks around made it hard to port the boats around them So after removing all weapons gunpowder scientific instruments and their journals they pointed the canoes down river Today these would be Class Five rapids the highest level that one can possibly pass through only experts should try them Making it even more difficult Lewis and Clark lacked today s more flexible nimble boats The Indians thought they were crazy and hundreds of them lined the banks to watch the white men die Somehow though in their long wooden boats the Corps of Discovery shot through without capsizing Who says that exploration can t be fun By the beginning of November they neared the Pacific Ocean The water began to taste salty One day the fog cleared and in the distance they could see it Ocian in view O the joy Clark wrote in his journal both he and Lewis were poor spellers The men raced their canoes to the coast It was cold and raining when they arrived so they didn t feel like throwing a party nevertheless they felt a deep sense of satisfaction Winter was coming on so there was no thought of returning just yet They would have to set up a camp so near the mouth of the Columbia they built a fort Fort Clatsop and tried to make the most of their wintering Clark worked on a map that would become the first detailed map of the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean Lewis worked at his journal describing and illustrating all he had learned about plants animals geology and Indian culture The other men kept busy with hunting fishing making salt from ocean water and maintaining their clothes boats and tools It was cold rainy and foggy making it difficult to keep food and clothes from rotting They got fleas All this dampened their spirits a bit By March it was warm enough to return The journey back had plenty of adventures of its own These included a scuffle with the Blackfeet that left two Indians dead It was Lewis and Clark s biggest failure of the journey the incident poisoned future relations with the Blackfeet Another setback occurred when while hunting one of the men accidentally shot Lewis in the thigh Lewis recovered but he was in pain for several weeks In September of 1806 the Corps of Discovery floated back into St Louis The town greeted them as heroes and soon the nation knew about their triumphant return The United States Congress was so overjoyed that they awarded each member of the Corps of Discovery twice their promised pay and a big tract of land Lewis and Clark received even bigger land grants and Lewis was appointed governor of Louisiana Territory Jefferson was delighted with the rich scientific cultural and geographic knowledge the expedition brought back Lewis and Clark s journey took over two years and covered almost 8000 miles They accomplished this mostly without maps and of course they lacked modern tools like telephones radios and global positioning technology Better than most other American explorers they 37

succeeded in making friends with the Indians Their contribution to science was enormous Only one member of the Corps of Discovery died from appendicitis Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all was that Lewis and Clark shared the responsibility of leadership equally theirs was one of the most successful partnerships in American history Chapter 18 Thomas Jefferson on Trial Most people today would agree that slavery is wrong We even call it evil Those who enslave others must therefore be bad people and those who go one step further and argue that slavery is a good thing must be the wickedest of all One of these wicked people once wrote We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness How is it possible that an owner of slaves said this The man was Thomas Jefferson and the words come from the Declaration of Independence the document by which thirteen American colonies told Great Britain that they were now a free independent nation calling itself the United States of America Because Britain had denied them these unalienable rights the colonists believed that they had every right to cut ties with Britain s government and form a government of their own It took a war of six years to make independence a reality but the ideas of the Declaration of Independence expressed in Jefferson s memorable phrases kept the American army going until the job was done The words have been an inspiration to Americans and many others ever since So who was this man who could both own slaves and declare that all men were equal Thomas Jefferson was born into a wealthy slave owning family of Virginia in 1743 From an early age his intelligence and talent were clear He trained to be a lawyer which partially explains how he came to be good with words and ideas but he also mastered architecture and was a skilled violinist Like Benjamin Franklin he was a scientist who loved tinkering with things He experimented with plants on his farms and invented many gadgets including a clock that kept track of the days of the week and a copying machine that would allow him to produce an exact copy of a letter as he wrote He amassed one of the best libraries in America at the time and kept up with the latest ideas in religion and philosophy As a young man of Virginia s upper class society expected him to participate in politics as well At age 26 he was already serving as his county s representatives to the Virginia House of Burgesses At 36 he was elected governor From there he went on to national offices serving as Minister to France Secretary of State Vice President and then from 1801 1809 as the third President of the United States Clearly the people of his times were not so bothered by his owning slaves that they did not trust him with important jobs But it bothers us We love Jefferson s words but not him He owned many slaves over his lifetime and he gave very few of them their freedom While he may have been a more benevolent owner than many his slaves were still forced to work hard and they were punished when they did not He benefitted from their labor as well as from the money they made for him when he sold them His writings make it clear that he regarded blacks to be inferior to whites If he were put on trial today for what we call crimes against humanity Jefferson would likely be found guilty And not only that but for actions we would consider ordinary crime With one of his slaves Sally Hemings he had a sexual relationship of many years that produced at least two children Many slaveholders had these 38

relationships but when one considers that a slave could hardly refuse her master s advances it is hard today to not regard them as sexual assault Imagining Jefferson on trial we might even imagine what he would say in his own defense He was a lawyer after all so he might actually welcome the opportunity What would he say Standing tall and erect at well over six feet with his piercing eyes red hair and soft voice Jefferson might argue that he supported the ending of slavery but he just thought it should happen gradually He might point out that when he was in Congress he wrote the Land Ordinance of 1784 which forbade slavery after 1800 in newly settled U S territories In other words while slavery existed for the moment he wanted the America of the future to be without it In a letter to a friend he said that this abomination must have an end He wrote profusely about how awful slavery was on both the slaves and their owners As early as 1782 he said The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise in the most boisterous passions the most unremitting despotism on the on the one part and degrading submissions on the other He blamed Britain for starting slavery in its colonies and leaving them with a system that they could not easily end He freed a few slaves at his death including Sally Another idea about how Jefferson might defend himself If you stroll the grounds of Monticello Jefferson s home you will eventually find Jefferson s gravestone It is an obelisk of about 10 feet tall On it reads this inscription Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom Father of the University of Virginia Perhaps these his final words you could say would be his defense It would seem that of all his accomplishments including being President these are the ones for which he wanted to be remembered and the ones he thought most important Why these Father of the University of Virginia Jefferson believed that a healthy democracy depended on a well educated population He also believed that their education be free of religious affiliations For this reason he founded the University of Virginia in nearby Charlottesville He even designed its main quadrangle and main buildings From his hilltop home he could observe the building progress and make regular visits Without Jefferson s vision in this area American education would have not developed in the way that it did Author of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom Jefferson never belonged to a church which caused critics to charge him with being an atheist What Jefferson believed most certainly was that people should have the freedom to follow their conscience in matters of religion not be told by the state or nation what to believe or what church to follow In this he followed in the tradition of Roger Williams It would be hard to argue that Jefferson was anti religious as President he supported sending Christian missionaries west to preach to the Native Americans however more than in any god he believed in the right for people to believe and worship as they pleased Author of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson was proud of his nation and he was pleased with the role he had played in helping it gain its freedom That this freedom did not include at least at first life and liberty for millions of slaves is wrong Nevertheless four score and seven years later Abraham Lincoln would suggest in his Gettysburg Address delivered during the middle of the Civil War that the phrase all men are created equal found in the Declaration referred not just to whites but to all people As Martin Luther King Jr put it in his I Have a Dream speech When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir 39

Jefferson may argue that the words of the Declaration made freedom possible in the United States Without my ideas and words he might say we wouldn t even be having this conversation One phrase in the Declaration that many have found peculiar is the inalienable right to the Pursuit of Happiness Most of the Declarations ideas were formed by a committee but this phrase seems to have been an original and treasured idea of Jefferson s We might conclude then that the right to the pursuit of happiness was one of special importance to Jefferson For this phrase alone he may have wanted his authorship of the Declaration engraved on his tombstone And in his own life one notices a commitment to happiness both for himself and others Monticello was the place where he pursued his greatest happiness designing the house and pursuing his other interests In contrast to most parents of girls in his time he gave his own girls a first class education because he was convinced that their happiness depended up on it As President he purchased Louisiana Territory from France so that more people had the opportunity to start their own farms and build their own happiness He firmly believed that the ideals of the Revolution were essential to human happiness and for that reason he supported American imperial ambitions including the invasion of Canada during the War of 1812 and the idea of invading Cuba which happened long after he died in the Spanish American War of 1898 for the purpose of spreading democracy and freedom to those places Even his reluctance to free his slaves can be viewed in this light Jefferson was concerned that given the racism and injustices of his country at that time a life of freedom would be less happy for them than the life he could offer them on his plantation To free his slaves he reasoned was to free them into a very difficult hard existence In his opinion they were not ready for freedom T o abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children To conclude he might therefore argue that I gave American s their opportunity for happiness At this point in the trial some vociferous objections in the courtroom may break out perhaps even some violent expressions of exasperation But then the judge restores order and the prosecuting attorney speaks Jefferson you declare in your most lawyerly manner How can you argue this way You are asserting that freedom would not make your slaves happy However you denied them their very freedom to choose Who are you to say what makes other people happy Furthermore you built and sustained your own happiness upon the backs of slaves And the judge asks Ladies and gentlemen of the jury have you reached a decision Chapter 19 An Interview at Weehawken The town of Weehawken New Jersey sits across the Hudson River from New York City Close to the town near the river bank down from the cliffs about twenty feet above the water the land levels out in a narrow strip From this spot one can see the buildings of New York City but the river the cliffs and the surrounding trees hide it from view and make access difficult In 1804 when both Weehawken and New York s buildings were much smaller than they are today this made it a popular place for duels Dueling had been around since the Middle Ages the age of chivalry and knights With swords or after they were invented pistols affronted gentlemen of Europe and America defended their honor By 1804 though the practice was mostly fading in America Benjamin Franklin and George Washington condemned it and most states had outlawed it Nevertheless some people clung to the old ways Two such men were Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Hamilton had served as the nation s first Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington and he had helped draft the United 40

States Constitution A leader among the Federalists at that time one of the nation s two political parties he played a key role in determining who was elected or not on the national level and within his home state of New York Before all of this he had served in the army during the American Revolution rising to the rank of general Burr was also a veteran of the Revolution having earned the rank of colonel and played a key role in many important battles He had been with Washington at Valley Forge After the war he entered New York politics and within a few years he was elected to the United States Senate defeating Hamilton s father in law In 1804 he was the nation s Vice President serving under Thomas Jefferson and he had recently run for governor of New York Hamilton and Burr had been political enemies for a long time Over the years Hamilton had made many disparaging remarks about Burr publically and privately So no one was surprised when Hamilton opposed Burr s election Burr was trounced and after he got wind that Hamilton had called him a despicable person he decided to vent his frustration on his nemesis To Burr a line had been crossed Hamilton had not merely his political views but he had insulted his character He demanded satisfaction from Hamilton In other words he challenged him to a duel At this point no blood need have been shed In most challenges it was not As was customary Burr and Hamilton exchanged a series of letters in which they tried to iron out the problem and reach an apology For Hamilton however to apologize would equal hypocrisy he truly believed Burr to be a dangerous person and he could not honestly regret or deny any of the critical remarks he had made about him Since Hamilton wouldn t apologize Burr had to follow through on his challenge or appear a coward As a politician whose career was sinking fast he could not afford such a stain upon his honor A duel was unavoidable So on the morning of July 11 1804 the two men were rowed separately across the Hudson from New York City for their interview at Weehawken duelists avoided using the word duel in correspondence In this same spot Hamilton s son had been killed in a duel a few years before The pistols Hamilton brought which belonged to his brother in law were the same that had been used that day Each man was accompanied by a second a friend who helped supervise and make sure that the rules were followed properly A doctor was also present but he remained down at the river with the boats and boatmen so that if necessary he could deny knowledge of the duel Once both Hamilton and Burr were present the duel followed the accepted forms The duelists inspected and loaded the pistols They measured off ten paces about twenty feet Hamilton s second a man named Pendleton gave the command Present Hamilton and Burr turned their bodies sideways one foot in front of the other in order to aim better and in order to offer the least possible amount of body to the other Also for that reason they sucked in their stomachs They raised their pistols and took aim Despite all the ceremony and despite the closeness of the duelists most duels ended without anyone dying The rules allowed men to shoot and miss on purpose Also pistols could misfire and the kind used in duels were so heavy and powerful that they were difficult to control Men often aimed to just graze their rival in a previous duel Burr had had a vest button shot off They also could choose to shoot at a non vital area like the legs Much more often than not the duel resulted in one of these anti climactic outcomes and no one was seriously hurt what mattered was that honor had been defended The action was over quickly and perhaps this is why the accounts that Burr Hamilton and their seconds gave differ in many respects Here is what seems to have happened Hamilton fired first but intending to miss his shot flew over Burr s head and lopped off a tree branch Either from the bang of the pistol or the crash of the branch Burr flinched stumbling a bit After he regained his footing he took aim and fired hoping it seems to graze Hamilton s hip That s where the bullet got 41

him a little higher than Burr intended and it ricocheted up through Hamilton s vitals and into his spine Hamilton slumped to the ground and the doctor rushed up from the river bank to help Hamilton had seen many wounds in war and he knew right away that this one would make him a dead man This is a mortal wound Doctor he murmured before fainting Burr apparently remorseful tried to approach Hamilton to speak to him but his second prevented it He was ushered back to his boat under the cover of a large black umbrella it was critical to shield his identity from any witnesses Hamilton was rowed across the river to New York City His wife was notified and with their seven children she hurried to his side But nothing could be done Hamilton died the following day Burr meanwhile fled the city and went into hiding with relatives in Georgia When the duel became known both New York and New Jersey charged Burr with murder Public opinion on the duel was divided The nation mostly sympathized with the victim Hamilton But many also admired Burr for having defended his honor He acted like a gentleman so why should he be condemned When he cautiously returned to Washington to take up his duties as Vice President some people threw parties for him President Thomas Jefferson even though he disapproved of duels did nothing to have Burr arrested though he did avoid his company The duel had dashed any hopes of his holding elected office again but Burr continued to serve as Vice President until his term expired the following March After the duel many newspapers clergymen and politicians called for stricter laws and law enforcement against dueling But it continued mostly in the South where the ideal of personal honor remained strong and in the West where custom and law held a looser hold on society Before he became President Andrew Jackson participated in several duels once killing a man Sam Houston Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton who all served in the United Sates Senate fought duels Even Abraham Lincoln when he was a young man once accepted a challenge to a duel though he and his opponent were able to work out their differences before shots were exchanged Although there were many duels after 1804 values were changing and by the end of the nineteenth century the duel was dead Why There are probably many reasons The code of chivalry which demanded that a gentleman defend his honor was quite literally from the Dark Ages Somehow duels made no sense in a time when the people and the Constitution ruled not gentlemen and kings Chapter 20 Agent 13 In the late summer of 1806 only a few weeks before Lewis and Clark returned from their trip west another expedition led by Zebulon Pike set out west from St Louis Like Lewis and Clark Pike and his band of twenty men were charged with exploring part of the Louisiana Territory recently purchased from France They were assigned the southwest boundaries the region due west from St Louis where the Arkansas and Red Rivers flowed Like Lewis and Clark Pike was to make peace with the Indians and inform them that they were now under the protection of the United States government Unlike Lewis and Clark Pike was being sent not by President Thomas Jefferson but by General James Wilkinson Governor of Louisiana Territory As you ll see this was an important difference The Indians of Louisiana had been ruled by Spain only recently had France taken charge France then turned around and sold it the United States which angered the Spanish who suddenly found themselves close neighbors to that noisy pushy nation to the East They feared that having 42

obtained Louisiana the Americans might hunger for even more of North America Their hunch was right though they may not have suspected the ways in which some Americans aimed to obtain it Pike and his men worked their way southwestward across the prairie to the Arkansas River Once they found it they started following it west Pike gave a bleak assessment of the region Much of it was covered in sandy hills that he compared to the Sahara Desert Incapable of cultivation he judged However he also reported that thick grasses covered much of it These were sufficient he thought to support many buffalo and therefore many Indians When twenty years later American officials were looking for a place to relocate Indians from east of the Mississippi River Pike s report came to mind Pike and his men stuck to the Arkansas all the way up into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains today they would be in central Colorado One mountain resembling a small blue cloud stood out head and shoulders above the rest Pike along with three other men decided it must be climbed It appeared to be close within a couple days journey It was November and snow already blanketed the mountains Pike s band attained a point they judged to be just a few miles from the summit They stashed their food and gear among some trees and kept climbing But before they reached the top darkness fell They had to spend an uncomfortable night of sleep on the rocky ground In the morning they were covered in a thick fresh coat of snow Still they plunged on ahead the snow reaching up to their waists They reached the top of a small peak now called Cheyenne Mountain Their view produced both great happiness and great disappointment The surrounding area prairies to the east and mountains to the west was stunning it was beautiful country and they felt proud that it now belonged to their nation However they could see that they were still miles from the blue cloud mountain summit somehow it had appeared much closer To keep climbing would be suicidal Dejectedly they returned to their base camp When they found it they discovered that wild animals had raided their food This was the closest Pike ever came to reaching Pike s Peak the mountain that bears his name Nevertheless forty years later another explorer John C Fremont named the mountain in his honor Once they reunited with the others they tromped off in search of the Red River The mountains and valleys of Colorado proved to be a challenging test of their navigational abilities They got lost and wandered in circles Making matters worse it was the heart of winter and they hadn t prepared for the severe conditions of the Rocky Mountains Their clothes were too thin and their food supplies were inadequate A couple men became so crippled from frost bitten fingers and toes that Pike had to leave them behind Finally they reached a river that they believed to be the Red River For protection and greater comfort they built a small fort One of the members of the party Dr John Robinson volunteered to seek help in Santa Fe which he thought to be a few days journey south Within three weeks of Robinson s departure a unit of Spanish soldiers arrived at Pike s fort These men informed Pike that they were camped by the Rio Grande not the Red River In other words they were in Spanish land They insisted that Pike and his men accompany them to Santa Fe Pike retrieved the men he had left behind and then they all went along In Santa Fe Spanish officials grilled Pike with questions They pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the Red River which Pike claimed to seek was located hundreds of miles from where the soldiers found them Were they not spies If not why were they in Spanish land Perhaps he was beginning to sweat a little but Pike denied all suggestions of wrongdoing However in doing so it made him look like an incompetent explorer After all how could he get so lost and be so unprepared 43

There were other questions as well Why had the Spanish found Pike and his men hiding out in a fort From whom were they protecting themselves Also why did they have a Spanish interpreter with them Did they expect to meet up with the Spanish Why had their expedition not been approved by President Jefferson Finally what of the mysterious Dr Robinson He claimed that he needed to go to Santa Fe on his own to collect a debt for a friend back in Missouri Unknown to Pike he had professed loyalty to Spain and had offered himself as a guide to their military The Spanish smelled a rat In fact there were two rats though Pike wasn t one of them One rat was General James Wilkinson governor of the Louisiana Territory and head of the United States army the man who had sent Pike on his mission The Spanish already knew a great deal about Wilkinson for many years Wilkinson had been Agent 13 a spy on Spain s payroll who informed them on American activities in the West For example Wilkinson told the Spanish about the Lewis and Clark expedition recommending that the Spanish go north to arrest them What the Spanish didn t know was that Wilkinson was a double agent who also supplied the American government with information on Spain This is why Wilkinson had sent Pike so dangerously close to Spanish territory The other rat was none other than Aaron Burr the former Vice President and the man who shot Alexander Hamilton in their duel After the duel with Hamilton Burr s political career had reached a dead end But then he met Wilkinson and they fell into cahoots Together they cooked up a scheme that would make them rulers of an independent nation that included Florida Mexico and all of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains By accomplishing this audacious plan he would regain power and avenge his tarnished reputation For his part Wilkinson saw a chance to get rich At first they gained some backing for their plan at least for the part about stealing Mexico from Spain when speaking to Americans they conveniently left out the part about also stealing western states from the U S Many prominent politicians businessmen and soldiers including future President Andrew Jackson were interested in gaining land and liberating Mexico just as Spain considered America a threat to its interests Westerners considered Spain a threat to theirs However when it became clear to these people that Burr and Wilkinson s plan amounted to treason they dropped their support This caused Wilkinson to get cold feet Betraying Burr he alerted President Jefferson to the plan conveniently not mentioning his part in the plot Good spy that he was he also informed Spain Burr tried to disguise himself and flee the country but he was caught and put on trial for treason The scoundrel Wilkinson who couldn t resist stabbing someone in the back in order to save his own skin was the star witness for the prosecution Unfortunately for him that meant admitting his involvement In the end though there wasn t enough evidence to convince the court that Burr was a traitor and he was acquitted But America was a little too hot for him Now twice disgraced he decided to move to England Many years later he returned to America under a different name and lived out his life quietly as a lawyer Wilkinson incredible as it sounds continued to serve in the military No one trusted him anymore but America was growing quickly and it needed all the experienced military leaders it could get His history of skullduggery was overlooked Meanwhile Pike was still under arrest in Mexico The Spanish were sure that he was a spy but they had no solid proof They treated him well nonetheless inviting him and his men to dances and dinners Pike became good friends with Spanish officials and he seems to have passed his captivity in fairly decent comfort It was far better than freezing his toes off in the Rockies Eventually the Spanish realized that they weren t going to get much out of Pike so they escorted him across Texas back to the United States Along the way they forbid him from taking any notes about the land But Pike did so secretly writing down notes on scraps of paper and cloth either at night in the privacy of his tent or when nature called and he could sneak off into the bushes He 44

rolled the scraps up and hid them in gun barrels Upon his return to America he used these scraps to write a book about his journey The book helped Pike regain his credibility Like the Spanish Americans believed that Pike was mixed up in the Burr Wilkinson scheme and they had ostracized him Pike s report drew attention to the potential for trade in Santa Fe and the potential for raising cattle in northeast Mexico i e Texas Pike can therefore be given credit for helping begin trade along the Santa Fe Trail and for helping begin American settlement in Texas Pike s expedition in contrast to Lewis and Clark s was a bumbling and sloppy piece of work He got lost he failed to reach the top of the mountain later named for him his most useful discoveries were made while being held as a prisoner and the connection with Burr and Wilkinson was a major embarrassment In spite of all this Pike may have done as much as Lewis and Clark to draw Americans to the West Who knows Maybe he was a spy Chapter 21 America s St Francis Life in the Ohio frontier of the early 1800s was hard The ancient forest around you was thick and tangled and in order to grow crops you d first have to clear away a lot of it with your axe Mountain lions bears and wild hogs lurked in the woods The tall grassy areas meanwhile were populated with rattlesnakes that grew up to eight feet in length The Indians were not always friendly largely because you pioneers hadn t always been friendly to them If someone got sick or injured you had little in the way of medicine and there was no doctor within many miles of you You ate a simple basic diet of corn mush and anything you could hunt or trap It was a tough life and it attracted a lot of odd characters One of these was named John Chapman A small man his muscles were sinewy and his skin browned and thick from living outdoors and on the move His clothes varied depending on what was handy but a typical outfit was a large coffee sack for a shirt some torn pants and a brimmed hat made from pieces of pasteboard Usually he didn t have any shoes at all One time someone gave him a pair shoes but shortly thereafter John gave them away to a pioneer who seemed to need them more Chapman was constantly roaming the frontier so he knew most of the pioneers He didn t really have a home you might say he was a hobo Unlike a typical hobo Chapman s rambling had a purpose Everywhere he walked he carried apple seeds Whenever he got beyond the reach of settlements he planted the seeds and tended their shoots until they could survive on their own He was also quite willing in exchange for a meal or article of clothing to sell you some seeds to grow your own orchard This is why people began to call him Johnny Appleseed The pioneers were grateful for his efforts Fresh apples helped make the frontier diet tastier and healthier Furthermore apples store well in a cellar for later eating Dried they keep even longer But that s not all Apple cider applesauce apple butter vinegar and apple jack a fermented alcoholic drink can all be made from apples It is perhaps fair to say that apples were as important on the American frontier as the olive has been around the Mediterranean region Were you to invite Johnny Appleseed into your home for dinner you would find yourself hosting a fascinating guest He always had a few good stories to tell told in colorful style He often had curiosities or ribbons for children He liked to talk and it wouldn t be long before he was talking about the other subject besides apples that was dearest to him Johnny was a follower of a popular but unconventional 45

religious thinker named Swedenborg Swedenborg taught that the physical and spiritual worlds were so tightly knit together that it was possible to converse with angels and spirits Johnny claimed that the reason he never married was that two women spirits had promised him that if he didn t marry in this life they would be his wives in the next When he wanted to turn the conversation to religious matters he would typically begin Here s some news fresh from heaven Swedenborg taught that all living things were worthy of our respect and that they shouldn t be harmed Johnny was a faithful disciple He was a strict vegetarian and at a time when people tended to treat animals indifferently or even harshly he was always gentle with them Pioneers often abandoned horses when they became lame or couldn t work Johnny gathered these animals and nursed them back to health Once they were fit again he would find a farmer who would take them in Johnny was probably America s first rescue animal operation His respect towards creatures extended beyond the mammals As a young man he had killed a rattlesnake after it bit him but he felt sorry about it afterwards and never killed a snake again When a hornet got inside his shirt he didn t slap at it rather he gently guided it out to freedom Once when he noticed that his campfire was killing the mosquitoes attracted to it he doused the flames and spent the rest of the night cold God forbid he said that I should build a fire for my comfort which should be the means of destroying any of His creatures His ability to withstand pain made him a wonder to all He would push pins and needles into his skin to demonstrate how tough he was Many times people witnessed him walking over an icy road or river in bare feet If a thorn or rock wounded his feet he would sear it with a hot poker and then treat the burn For these reasons Indians regarded him as a great shaman During the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain the pioneers in Ohio and Pennsylvania were under constant threat of attack from the British and their Indians allies As a pacifist Johnny refused to fight but he volunteered to be a messenger warning folks if an attack was coming As he approached their homes he would cry out in his Biblical style The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and he hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness and sound an alarm in the forest for behold the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors and a devouring flame followeth after them Even though he helped American pioneers in this way it was his opinion that for the most part the pioneers were more to blame than the Indians for the conflicts between them A common sight on the frontier of those days was the tent meeting A traveling preacher would set up a tent and lead energetic services featuring fiery sermons and emotional worship They were quite popular In one of the services where Johnny was in attendance the preacher was coming down hard on his audience scolding them for their shallow religion and self indulgent lifestyle At one point he cried out Where now is there a man who like the primitive Christians is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment Johnny with his leathery skin and ragtag clothing quietly rose from the log on which he d been sitting and hollered Here s your primitive Christian The preacher at a loss for words brought the meeting to an abrupt end and left town Some say Johnny Appleseed was a holy man the American St Francis Others say he was a bum who was a little cracked in the head Another view is that he was a great American explorer like Daniel Boone Lewis and Clark or Kit Carson Like these men he helped settle the frontier Also like them he felt most comfortable living where it was still wild just a step ahead of civilization s march 46

Chapter 22 The Battle of Baltimore The War of 1812 fought between the United States and Britain is hardly remembered today To Britain it was a minor affair compared to the larger war they were fighting against Napoleon of France In the United States few people remember why it was fought or what was the outcome Perhaps this is because the greatest moment in the war from the American perspective has to do with what didn t happen not what did After America won independence from Britain in 1783 the peace between the two nations was far from perfect During its off and on wars with France Britain meddled with American trade and seized sailors from American ships who were thought to be British deserters Eventually the United States decided that enough was enough and in 1812 declared war At first the British dominated The United States tried to invade Canada thinking that it would be easy and that the colonists of Canada would welcome them Neither prediction came true the British army outclassed the Americans in most battles and the Canadians defiantly defended their land against the invading Yankees There was one notable American success early in the war Under the leadership of General Zebulon Pike the U S burned and looted the regional capital the Town of York present day Toronto Canada including all its government buildings Pike was killed when a supply of gunpowder exploded but America could still claim victory The British claimed that it was a flagrant and uncalled for act of vandalism and they vowed revenge So in the summer of 1814 they zeroed in on the Chesapeake Bay region the location of the United States capital Washington D C and Baltimore the United States third largest city Washington was the first target In August just outside the city near the small town of Bladensburg the two armies clashed Although the Americans had more men they were inexperienced and poorly organized The British were in contrast seasoned and commanded by an excellent officer General Robert Ross After a chaotic attempt at resistance the Americans turned and beat a hasty retreat Many soldiers literally ran for it and the British would later mockingly refer to the battle as the Bladensburg Races Unopposed the British marched into Washington where they found that the government including President James Madison had very recently cleared out First Lady Dolley Madison had had the foresight to have a painting of George Washington taken down before she left but Ross and his officers found the White House otherwise just as she had left it This included a dinner set for forty which the British obligingly consumed With satisfied bellies then they commenced burning the White House Capitol and other government buildings York was avenged and America suffered perhaps the greatest single humiliation in its history On to Baltimore The British could have chosen to march northeast forty miles to get there but they wanted to bring the full power of their navy and army against the well defended city Therefore they chose instead to approach by way of the Patapsco River which flows by the city into the Chesapeake Bay Within two weeks of the burning of Washington British troops landed at North Point fifteen miles southeast from Baltimore Meanwhile the British fleet sailed northwest up the river roughly parallel to the army s path General Ross had boasted that he would make Baltimore his winter quarters As was his custom he boldly rode out in front of his troops as they marched American marksmen followed their progress They had not been at it long when an American sniper shot Ross in the chest and he fell from his horse mortally wounded These Americans are not to be trifled with commented a shaken British officer 47

General Ross s death was a blow to British morale but they didn t turn back Five miles outside of Baltimore they found the American army lined up for battle The British may have been counting on another Bladensburg but the Americans fought much better this time The British eventually drove the Americans from the field but it was not before suffering heavy casualties Back in the Patapsco River the British navy neared Fort McHenry a star shaped brick fort that guarded Baltimore s harbor Because the Americans had sunk over twenty ships around the fort to create an underwater barrier the British could not sail their large heavy ships as close at they would have liked Nevertheless they were in range and they began firing on the fort with redflaming rockets and exploding mortar shells Observing the attack from the deck of one of the British ships was a young Baltimore lawyer named Francis Scott Key Originally opposed to the war for religious reasons Key had decided to join the militia when it became a matter of defending his home He was on board for the purpose of trying to negotiate the release of a man accused of being a British traitor As it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity Key would eventually succeed For the time being however the British held him on the ship Key knew too much by now about British strategy numbers of soldiers and their plans for burning Baltimore So he watched anxiously as the bombing went on He described it this way E ntire broadsides made an explosion so terrific that it seemed as though mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone As the bombing continued Key s fear for the fort and his beloved Baltimore grew increasingly mixed with admiration for the fort s stubborn defense When three British ships tried to sail in closer they withstood only thirty minutes of the fort s cannons before sailing back out of range When in the middle of the night the British tried a flanking maneuver with smaller boats the fort s soldiers efficiently repelled them Meanwhile on the other side of Baltimore the British army approached Upon arrival they discovered an unsettling sight Over ten thousand men mostly militia and one hundred cannons stood resolute behind over three miles of earthen walls It was clear that the bombs from the ships had done no significant damage Recognizing that attack was foolish the British turned on their heels and marched back the way they had come When morning broke the British stopped bombing a little more than twenty four hours after they had begun Key expectantly watching from the ship saw the sun rise and the smoke clear Flying defiantly over Fort McHenry was a giant American flag thirty feet by forty two feet made by Mary Pickersgill s flag shop Key caught up in the great moment composed a poem You may have heard it It begins O say can you see by the dawn s early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight s last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight O er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming Inside Fort McHenry the soldiers were overjoyed too In spite of all the shelling over 1500 bombs and over 700 rockets their defenses had held firm and only four men had been killed As the ships sailed away a rooster mounted the flagpole and crowed The soldiers to reward the rooster s patriotism fed him some poundcake Unfortunately the rooster soon got sick and died The soldiers gave the rooster a formal funeral No one knows what happened to the poundcake A few days after the battle a Baltimore newspaper published Keys s poem Not long after someone decided to put it to the music of a popular drinking song It caught on and it was soon 48

popular throughout the nation One hundred years later the government made The Star Spangled Banner our official national anthem The Battle of Baltimore appears on the surface to be a very small battle the casualty lists for both sides were relatively short But America s stubborn defense prevented a larger conflict with more bloodshed and it helped convince Britain that the cost of a decisive victory would be too high A few months later the two nations came to terms with a peace treaty In America it began a peaceful period that came to be called The Era of Good Feelings And why shouldn t Americans feel good They lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave Chapter 23 The Era of Not So Good Feelings The late 1810 s through the early 1820 s was known as the Era of Good Feelings There were many reasons for this the United States had just fought respectably if not decisively in a war with Great Britain the country was expanding in both geographic size and population the bitter and divisive partisan politics of previous years had vanished and in fact there was only one viable political party the Democratic Republicans Therefore when the Presidential election of 1824 rolled around all four of the contenders to replace the retiring President James Monroe were members of the same party As you can guess though when a prize like the White House is up for grabs some of the good feelings begin to sour First there was Henry Clay of Kentucky Speaker of the House of Representatives Clay was a master negotiator and statesman When in 1820 it looked like the country might split over slavery Clay had helped fashion the Missouri Compromise and kept it together He was also the leading visionary for the American System a plan for unifying and strengthening the nation through the building of roads and canals and high taxes on imported goods His supporters came mostly from the western states Kentucky Tennessee Ohio etc While Clay was liked for his jocularity and gregariousness his enemies could exploit his history as a gambler and a duelist William Crawford of Georgia was a big likeable man who had served in government for a long time Currently he was the Secretary of the Treasury Slave owners and people who preferred a limited federal government liked Crawford To them a vote for Crawford was a vote for the way things used to be back in the days before the government got so busy with roads canals taxes and all of that Even today American politics is mostly a good old boys network but it was especially true in the 1820s and of all the candidates Crawford was the goodest of the old boys John Quincy Adams was New England s favorite candidate The son of former President John Adams he had been in government since he was a teenager having assisted his father on diplomatic missions in Europe Currently he was Secretary of State and his achievements even after two hundred years rank him as one of the most effective people ever to have held that position Under his leadership the United States had earned a respected position in world affairs Brilliant and learned he was skilled in six languages few presidential candidates before or since have possessed a mind like his On the downside he could be somewhat frosty and aloof and his carelessness about personal appearance was off putting to people who expected more decorousness from a statesman Finally there was Andrew Jackson of Tennessee Compared to the other three Jackson was a political outsider He certainly tried to present himself that way even if he had served in the Senate Jackson was best known for his military exploits in the wars against Britain the Creeks and Seminoles He was also admired as a self made man having risen from a childhood as a poor orphan to the owner of one of Tennessee s finest homes and plantations Magnetic and confident he inspired trust in those who followed him Short tempered and bellicose he had fought several duels 49

one in which he killed his opponent and two other that had left him with bullets lodged inside his body The political elite of the country feared that Jackson if elected would be a tyrant but poor farmers especially in the West admired Jackson Jackson claimed to speak for them promising to bring down the powerful bankers and merchants who in his view were keeping them poor Good old boy Crawford was the clear favorite in Congress and among party leaders When as was the custom the leaders called a caucus to select the party s nominee the supporters of the other three candidates didn t even show up They argued that the party s leaders didn t reflect the opinions of the nation they were in effect saying that they were out of touch Crawford not surprisingly won the vote but with only about one fourth of Congress present it was a hollow victory Not until the general election would the nation s feelings be known Or at least some of the nation As is still the case today the members of the Electoral College officially selected the President The number of each state s electors is equal to the number of members it has in Congress Today each state has a popular vote for President and except for Maine and Nebraska automatically awards all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote In 1824 things were a little different In some states there was no popular vote at all and the state legislature appointed the electors More and more states were allowing the people to choose electors directly and cast votes for the presidency However even in states where these more democratic measures were in place only free white men could vote and in some states on top of all that the white man had to be a landowner With four popular figures in the race and with regional loyalties affecting so heavily the way people voted the outcome was hard to predict When the votes were counted Jackson had both the highest number of electoral votes 99 and popular votes 153 544 After that it was Adams 84 108 740 Crawford 41 46 618 and Clay 37 47 136 Unfortunately for Jackson he fell short of the fifty percent vote in the Electoral College that the Constitution required for victory After such a result the Constitution also stipulates that the House of Representatives select the President from among the top three candidates This was the worst of news for Henry Clay Had he nudged out Crawford he might have been President as a popular Speaker of the House of Representatives he would certainly have been the favorite among his colleagues As it was he had to console himself by playing the role of kingmaker The man he supported would likely be the next President And who would that be Crawford tragically had suffered a stroke recently and he did not appear fit for office Besides he was probably the candidate whose philosophy was farthest from Clay s That left Jackson and Adams Even though Jackson was a fellow westerner Clay didn t trust him Adams though an easterner and different in many ways was a supporter of Clay s American System In a private meeting at Adams s home in January of 1825 Clay seems to have promised his support shortly after the House elected Adams to the White House As it soon became clear Clay expected something in return and after Adams s election that something was revealed when Adams named Clay his Secretary of State Since three of the four previous Secretaries of State had later risen to President if Clay could not be President now he now had a good shot at being the next one Jackson and his supporters were furious They called the Adams Clay deal a corrupt bargain never mind that they had made the same offer to Clay themselves Jackson publically denounced Clay as The Judas of the West and immediately he began campaigning for the 1828 election For the next four years Jackson s supporters made life hard for Adams while building up their base of voters In Congress they did whatever they could to fight Adams policies In the states they worked for the expansion of voting rights so that more common men could vote Also a new 50

political party formed around Jacksonian ideas They called themselves the Democratic Party Partisan politics was back The 1828 campaign was one of the ugliest in our history Both parties Adams National Republicans and Jackson s Democrats did a lot of mudslinging Jackson s party reminded the nation of the corrupt bargain from four years before and accused Adams of bringing gambling into the White House because he had purchased with his own money a billiards table For their part Adams people reminded the nation of Jackson s many duels and accused him of adultery So much for the Good Feelings When the votes were counted Jackson s popularity with the common man proved decisive It helped that by 1828 many more people had access to the vote and they identified more with the self made Jackson than the aristocratic Adams Jackson won handily Nevertheless the victory was bittersweet for Jackson Before the inauguration his wife Rachel died suddenly Jackson who loved his wife dearly blamed her death on the trauma she experienced from the mudslinging of the campaign Once in office Jackson worked hard for the small poor farmers supporting policies that helped them They in turn felt affection for Jackson calling him Old Hickory Jackson was in fact the first U S President known by his nickname it was as if the nation truly thought of him as one of us Or perhaps one should say nicknames Jackson s opponents referred to him as King Andrew In their opinion Jackson used dictatorial methods to advance democracy and he wasn t such a man of the people Though Henry Clay would continue to serve faithfully and effectively in government for almost thirty years more the Election of 1824 haunted him for the rest of his life Shortly after the election John Randolph a fellow member of Congress insulted Clay publically Clay lost his temper and challenged Randolph to a duel which resulted in no physical harm but which harmed Clay s reputation Twice more Clay ran for President but he lost both times John Quincy Adams s post White House life in contrast was surprisingly happy and productive For the next twenty years he continued to serve in government as a member of the House of Representatives Though many men have served in the House before being elected President only Adams served in the House after At a time when as a result of Jacksonian Democracy more and more rough and ready men from the frontier like Davy Crockett were entering government Adams stood out like a brick manor among log cabins His refined and scholarly way of speaking contrasted with the earthy and folksy ways of many of his colleagues For this reason people called him Old Man Eloquent Known by a nickname had even Adams become a man of the people Possibly It is also possible that another kind of change had occurred Americans not only wanted leaders who were like them but they also wanted leaders who represented what they dreamed to be Chapter 24 Mill Girls It was 1812 and American businessman Francis Cabot Lowell was boarding a ship in Great Britain to return to his home in Massachusetts For two years he and his family had been touring the country for both business and pleasure Like most tourists Lowell had taken his family to see Britain s castles and beautiful countryside but he also took them to see its cutting edge textile factories where something new was happening in the area of manufacturing Customs officials were not fooled they inspected Lowell s baggage twice to make sure that he wasn t packing any drawings 51

or plans the British intended to keep their technological secrets to themselves They found nothing but that didn t mean that Lowell wasn t smuggling The information was contained inside Lowell s head He possessed a remarkable memory and as he had visited the mills he had made careful observations about the looms These machines powered by river water or steam engines produced cloth made of cotton from the American South much faster and more cheaply than hand worked looms Here was a magnificent business opportunity if Lowell could only devise the technology When he returned to America he and his mechanic set to work constructing their own water powered loom They succeeded and in doing so they helped lead America into the industrial age Within two years Lowell and his business partners had raised enough money to build a mill The mill ran several looms at once and soon their profits soared Deciding that they could do even better on a larger river they moved to another location and built a bigger mill A town named Lowell grew up around it Unfortunately Lowell the man died before Lowell the town was founded But his company thrived and his ideas lived on not only in the name of the town One of these ideas was to employ single women to work the mills The reason was fairly simple women would work for about half as much as men While some worked to help support their families most were middle class farmers daughters who worked for themselves Mill work provided women a chance to make some money of their own before they married Once they married and most did they quit the factory to raise a family Machinery did the actual spinning and weaving but that didn t mean the jobs were easy The machines needed constant supervision Women worked twelve to thirteen hours a day six days a week Each day there were two thirty minute breaks for meals Sunday when they went to church was their one day off There were also three holidays a year Independence Day Thanksgiving and Fast Day The conditions could make these long days seem even longer Dust from the fabric fibers cotton and wool and smoke from the lamps in the rooms made the air unhealthy If you weren t careful you could catch your clothes or a hand in the fast moving parts of the looms Supervisors tended to discourage any conversation that didn t have anything to do with work so everyone stayed focused on their jobs Most women lived in boardinghouses that were provided by the mill owners and located near the factory buildings As many as six women shared a room so there was little privacy Accommodations were very basic It wasn t all bad Living and working together produced a strong sense of community among the women it was a good place to make friends There were also opportunities for learning In evening schools educated women among the workers often taught the others how to read and write Libraries and reading rooms provided them access to books magazines and newspapers The mill owners also brought in guest speakers for lectures Along with financial independence the chance to improve one s mind was a big reason women chose to work in the mills The mill owners were proud of their workers but they also found them troublesome The strong sense of community education and heritage that the women shared made them a formidable group After all they were daughters of Massachusetts the birthplace of the American Revolution and they were proud that their ancestors had overthrown the tyrant King of England If they thought that the mill owners were abusing their power they considered it their duty to speak their minds Twice in 1834 and 1836 Lowell women turned out i e went on strike to protest pay cuts The second time was more successful than the first but both demonstrated their ability to organize and gather public support for their cause They also proved that they could stand alongside male laborers in the new but growing workers rights movement 52

The chief goal for factory workers at the time was a ten hour day By the 1840 s it looked possible Philadelphia workers had earned a ten hour day after a large scale turn out in 1835 In 1840 President Martin Van Buren made the ten hour day standard for all federal government workers In the Lowell mills there were good arguments for a ten hour day In order to increase output and profits mills had been speeding up the looms They also increased the number of looms a women supervised from two to three and sometimes four Finally they began offering bonuses of up to 100 to the overseers who were all men whose teams produced the most cloth Company profits blossomed but wages for women hardly budged Although most women accepted the changes without complaint an increasing number did not One of these women was Sarah Bagley Raised in a New Hampshire farming family she had worked in the mills for many years By teaching evening school she had become a leader among the workers and Bagley helped organize the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association This organization joined with other labor associations to try to persuade the state assembly to pass a law that limited the work day to ten hours They held meetings wrote newspaper articles and signed petitions that they sent on to Boston where Massachusetts government met In all of this Bagley played a leading role In 1844 the assembly finally agreed to hear the workers complaints This was the first time in America s history that a government committee met with workers for this purpose Along with the male leaders of the other labor organizations Bagley was given an opportunity to speak to the committee Hearings began in February of 1845 under the leadership of state representative William Schoeler of Lowell Bagley and other women workers testified about the low pay poor air quality short breaks and long hours Many talked about how they frequently had to stay home due to illnesses caused by the poor conditions As for the supposed educational benefits they were often too tired at the end of the day to enjoy them The lectures that the mills offered usually took place during work hours and women weren t paid if they skipped work to attend The mill owners insisted that the women were in the best of health They pointed out that the women got three meals a day and a home If work hours were shortened they observed the women would make less money Schoeler s committee didn t know how to resolve these conflicting stories they decided therefore to visit the mills themselves Upon inspection they were impressed with the overall conditions which included grassy areas flowers and trees to beautify the town and make life healthier for the workers They also reasoned why would the owners want unhealthy workers Aren t healthy workers more productive and therefore better for business Surely they wouldn t want to harm their own workers right Schouler thought that the businessmen knew better than the government how to run their own businesses He decided therefore that the mill owners and workers could settle disagreements on their own The government would stay neutral Despite this decision he couldn t resist suggesting that it was Sarah Bagley s extra labor teaching evening school that had caused her poor health So after all that the work day remained unchanged It was some consolation that the public reacted angrily when the report came out and at the next opportunity they voted Schouler out of office For their part Bagley and the LFLRA didn t give up their motto was Try Again Progress was slow and gradual A few years later workers gained longer breaks but no reduction in hours A couple years after that they earned an eleven hour day It would be many more years before the ten hour day was achieved By that time Sarah Bagley had moved on to other things In 1846 she quit the mills and took a job as America s first female telegraph operator After that she returned to the mills for awhile 53

before marrying a doctor They moved to New York where they opened a practice in homeopathic medicine which was a new idea at the time Francis Cabot Lowell was a visionary Within twenty years of opening his first mill America was a world leader in the Industrial Revolution Throughout the next century America s wealth and power was increasingly based on factories and decreasingly based on farming Accompanying this change was the growth of cities like Lowell built to provide homes and communities for factory workers Did Lowell also foresee that in hiring women workers he was helping to create the conditions for an equally seismic shift in society It was during this period that the Women s Rights movement began Also during this time women led the way in the abolitionist movement which sought to end slavery and the temperance movement which sought to ban alcohol Quite understandable they also sought the right to vote All of this political activism had its origin at least in part among the Mill Girls of Lowell Chapter 25 The Death of Jed Smith Jedediah Smith was both typical and untypical of a fur trapper Tall lean strong and flinty he looked the part He was a good shot with either a rifle or a bow Unlike most Mountain Men though he was deeply religious Consequently unlike others he didn t drink gamble or take Indian girlfriends Also he trusted people more than was wise for a businessman and he sometimes got cheated Nevertheless he didn t do badly eventually becoming part owner of one of the nation s biggest fur companies During the 1820 s the search for furs took Smith all over the West He is credited with helping to discover South Pass in central Wyoming a pass through the Continental Divide that thousands of emigrants in their covered wagons would later use over the Oregon Trail Smith was also the first American to travel over land to California During his two visits he trapped his way north through the rivers and delta region of the Central Valley visited the Bay Area discovered a path through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and followed the coast up to Oregon becoming well acquainted with the towering redwood forests He was the first American to reach Oregon from this direction Smith was familiar with all the usual hardships of the fur trapper heat frost bugs hunger injuries loneliness and there were a few famous close shaves He was with William Ashley s men in 1823 when the Arikara Indians ambushed them along the banks of the Missouri River Thirteen men were killed but Smith survived While in California he survived a massacre at the hands of the Mojave and in Oregon another by the Umpqua Somehow Smith s luck was good Then there was the run in with a grizzly The bear stalked the unsuspecting Smith as if he were prey before pouncing Smith fought back furiously with his hands but the bear pushed him down crushing several ribs He then grabbed Smith s head with his massive jaws While Smith was still fighting back his fellow trappers waited for an opportunity to get a clear shot Then the bear unclamped Smith s head and ran off perhaps recognizing that it was surrounded Smith was a bloody mess The bear had ripped half his scalp off and his ear dangled on one side Smith kept his cool though He sat down on the ground and started giving his companions instructions on how to stitch the scalp back on Queasy but compliant they took up the sewing kit and did as he said This surgery took place out in the open air with no painkiller or disinfectant Smith hardly seemed to flinch even as they worked on his ear which had seemed too mangled to 54

save After a week of rest he was well enough to move on though his appearance was ghastly From then on to cover the scars the best he could Smith always wore his hair long In 1830 Smith and his partners sold their fur business and settled in St Louis Smith bought a house and hired servants After a decade of sleeping out under the stars and living off the land civilization must have seemed a bit strange to him It may have been due to simple restlessness then that within a few months he was devising plans to set out west again The Santa Fe Trail was a trade route that stretched almost nine hundred miles from Independence Missouri to Santa Fe Mexico at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains now in New Mexico of the U S William Becknell is given credit for starting trade along the trail in 1821 Americans transported hardware cloth and other manufactured goods west to exchange them for mules buffalo robes silver and various local items For the next forty years until the railroad replaced it the Santa Fe Trail was a thriving means of economic and cultural exchange Smith and his associates even if they did wear buckskin were businessmen at heart and the Santa Fe Trail looked like a golden opportunity They decided to try their luck In the spring of 1831 they loaded up twenty two wagons of merchandise and set out Two of Smith s brothers joined them in the venture Like fur trapping traveling the trail was risky The terrain was relatively smooth but water was scarce Blizzards and lightning storms could brew suddenly The heat in summer could be scorching This was the same vast trackless country where three hundred years before Coronado and his Spaniards wandered in circles looking for Quivira Finally as a trader you took the added risk of making yourself an inviting target For Indians raiding a wagon train could be quite profitable At the same time they could send a pointed message no pun intended to other would be pioneers Stay out of our lands For Smith s band the first part of the trip went well It wasn t until they were in western Kansas just south of the Arkansas River that they encountered trouble This area called the Cimarron Desert is particularly arid and it had been a particularly dry year so they found themselves badly in need of water While the wagons trundled on Smith and a partner rode out ahead to seek out a watering hole that Smith knew Unhappily the hole was dry so Smith left his partner behind to guide the train Alone he rode on That was the last time they saw him The wagon train followed Smith s path to water but they didn t find Smith He must have rode on they figured After taking on all the water they could they continued on to Santa Fe All the way to town they found no trace of Smith Once in town while surveying the local markets of Santa Fe one of Smith s brothers came across a gun dealer selling a rifle and set of pistols that looked very familiar The gun dealers could tell the story of the weapons They had acquired them from Comanche Indians who had taken them off the corpse of a white man The Comanche had encountered this man along the Santa Fe Trail where it crosses the Cimarron River There had been about twenty Comanche including a chief Though the white man made signs indicating that he was willing to trade the chief ordered an attack They fired their arrows and threw their spears One hit the man in the side Then they rushed him The white man though wounded fired his rifle killing the chief Next he reached for his pistols but before he could use them the other Comanche were on him Normally the Comanche would have slashed and mutilated the corpse but impressed by the man s courage and toughness they buried him next to their chief as if he was one of their own The man must have been Smith Certainly there were few besides him who could have gone down fighting in the same way In spite of the fate of a man like Jedediah Smith and that of many other travelers the Santa Fe Trail flourished The risks were great yes but so were the opportunities for profit and America has always been a land of opportunity 55

Chapter 26 Mythic America There is no bloodless myth will hold wrote the poet Geoffrey Hill In American history there is perhaps no event with greater mythic power than the Battle of the Alamo there is perhaps no more mythic figure than Davy Crockett who fought there Davy Crockett was born in 1786 on the frontier in Tennessee before it even had that name Like most pioneers he grew up poor making a living however he could but mainly through farming Early on Crockett displayed talent as a hunter He credited his skill to his father who allowed him as a boy to take only one bullet with him when he went into the woods to hunt While his prey was usually raccoons he often encountered panthers and bears Crockett quickly learned to make every shot count As an adult Crockett made a living this way Not only did he provide ample meat for his family but he also hunted on behalf of others He once killed 105 bears in a single year bear meat was prized over venison because it has more fat When Tennessee went to war against the Creek Indians Crockett supplied meat for the militia and served as a scout His marksmanship was also an asset in battle For a time he was under the command of Andrew Jackson a man with whom Crockett would cross paths again Besides hunting Crockett found that he was good at politics During the 1820 s Crockett served in a variety of government positions moving up steadily from local roles to the state legislature and then to the Unites States House of Representatives Like Andrew Jackson he presented himself as a representative of the common man unlike Jackson he truly was poor and didn t mind appearing common Indeed Crockett found that by playing up his ignorance and folksiness and by showing people that he could laugh at himself he won votes One time while giving a campaign speech Crockett noted his opponent s habit of smiling all the time Yes gentlemen Crockett said he may get some votes by grinning for he can outgrin me Crockett went on to tell a story about himself where when hunting for raccoons one moonless night he tried to get one out of a tree in the usual way by a grin He grinned and grinned for hours but the critter would not climb down Finally the exasperated Crockett went home to get his axe Returning to the tree he chopped it down Upon close inspection he discovered that the thing he had taken for a raccoon was only a knot on a branch He also discovered that he had grinned all the bark off and left the knot perfectly smooth Conceding to his audience that in spite of this noteworthy accomplishment his opponent was a superior grinner than even he Crockett concluded his speech with a warning Be wide awake look sharp and do not let him grin you out of your votes Crockett served two stints in Congress where he was more successful at inflating his legend than in legislating Well suited to the speechifying part of the job he consistently advocated for western farmers who wanted access to cheap land His outspokenness soon got him into trouble with President Andrew Jackson In 1830 Jackson was trying to pass the Indian Removal Act in order to move Indians mostly Cherokee out of Georgia and the states surrounding it The Act provided new lands west of the Mississippi River in the area that is now the state of Oklahoma Crockett thought the plan was unjust and cruel and he spoke his mind This sent Jackson into a rage and even though the Act passed and the Cherokee were forced to move he made certain the Crockett was not reelected Crockett feeling betrayed switched from Jackson s Democratic Party to the newly formed Whig Party and in the following election Tennesseans sent him back to Washington For two terms he fought Jackson s policies However Jackson was a mighty adversary and Crockett in time found himself voted out of office again In frustration Crockett announced to Washington You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas 56

Why Texas This was late 1835 and Texas was bubbling with talk of revolution Since the 1820 s in response to the Mexican government s invitation thousands of Americans had settled there These people were mostly poor farmers from the South who felt squeezed out by the big plantation owners Now these Texians were itching for independence from Mexico much as their American ancestors had desired independence from Great Britain Like the British before them the Mexican government wasn t going to let their citizens and land go without a fight Crockett sensed that opportunity and a worthy cause awaited him Upon his arrival in early February of 1836 accompanied by several of his Tennessee friends Crockett found that the revolution had momentum but little order Andrew Jackson s long shadow stretched all the way there and the movement s leaders were divided into pro Jackson and antiJackson camps Crockett naturally gravitated towards the anti Jackson leaders and particularly towards those defending an old mission called the Alamo located outside the town of San Antonio The Alamo was under the leadership of a young lawyer named William Travis and the famous frontiersman Jim Bowie inventor of a knife that bears his name Travis and Bowie had disobeyed the orders of their superior officer Sam Houston who had commanded them to blow up the Alamo and join up with his army They had decided instead to wait for the Mexican army right where they were With Crockett and his Tennesseans included they had around 150 men On February 23 General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dictator of Mexico arrived in San Antonio to surround the Alamo with the vanguard of his force From his camp he flew a red flag signaling to those inside the mission that he would take no prisoners Travis sent out messengers to request reinforcements but only a few responded Meanwhile more Mexican soldiers arrived bringing the size of the army to around 2000 For several days the two sides exchanged cannon fire Assembling all his men in the fort s courtyard on March 5 Travis explained the situation they were badly outnumbered and surrounded and to remain holed up in the Alamo meant certain death It was perfectly understandable if any man wanted to leave Pulling out his sword he drew a line in the sand If you want to stay and fight he said step across the line All but one of the Alamo s defenders crossed the line On the morning of March 6 Santa Anna s army began a full scale attack Bowie was in bed sick and Travis was killed within the battle s first moments leaving the defenders leaderless Nevertheless they fought bravely and desperately repulsing several charges and inflicting heavy losses But the Mexican army was too big and they soon scaled the walls and turned the Alamo s cannons on its defenders Within the walls of the mission the fighting continued but the Texians were eventually overwhelmed Not one defender of the Alamo lived to tell the tale Various stories from two women who were in the fort and from Mexican soldiers were told about Crockett s actions during the battle By one account he died early in the fighting by another he was one of the last to die surrounded by Mexican dead and using his spent musket as a club The stories agree that during both the siege and the battle Crockett energized the men around him with his encouraging words and brave example Knowing Crockett he probably cracked a few jokes and maybe even told a story or two Crockett and the other defenders did not die in vain A month later at the Battle of San Jacinto their example of self sacrifice inspired Sam Houston s Texian troops With shouts of Remember the Alamo they defeated the Mexican army in a lightning quick fight capturing Santa Anna alive With such a decisive victory Texas independence was won And two myths Crockett and the Alamo were born 57

Chapter 27 The Other Lewis and Clark In the 1840 s America s westward expansion was accelerating Seeking farmland or other economic opportunities thousands were moving that way pushing into the Indian territory and alarming the sparsely populated regions of northern Mexico Some Americans considered it the United States destiny to eventually overwhelm these peoples and lay hold of the Pacific Coast Manifest Destiny a journalist of the day called it Considering that a chance encounter between two men on a Missouri riverboat helped make it all happen destiny may not have been too strong a word One of the men was John C Fremont a handsome ambitious impetuous and charismatic young lieutenant in the army s corps of topographical engineers He had mapped thousands of miles of the United States between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River He was married to Jessie Hart Benton the daughter of powerful Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri And in the spring of 1842 through Senator Benton s help Fremont won the very desirable assignment of mapping the unsettled region between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains The other man was short gritty modest and plain Kit Carson a seasoned mountain man from New Mexico Like Jedediah Smith before him Carson had trapped traded and explored all over the west During his travels he had learned Spanish French and several Indian languages Now after having handled some business in St Louis he was returning to his home in New Mexico Fremont needed a man just like Carson to guide his expedition Carson was always up for an adventure and Fremont impressed him as a good man They hit it off and Carson signed on Thanks largely to the strengths of its leaders the twenty five man expedition went smoothly Using the latest technology rubber boats they ascended the Missouri River in the path of Lewis and Clark Also like Lewis and Clark they made scientific observations and collected specimens of plants and animals Fremont surveyed the terrain while Carson hunted trapped interpreted and guided Eventually they veered south of Lewis and Clark s path They wanted to map a route that was useful for emigrants in their heavy wagons Lewis and Clark had traveled through high mountains that were only passable on foot In modern Wyoming Fremont and Carson located a wide low and gently sloped pass that fur trappers and early emigrants had discovered It was called South Pass to distinguish it from Lewis and Clark s northern route and it was just what they were looking for The expedition returned east to report on their discoveries For all his abilities John Fremont was a mediocre writer but fortunately for him his wife Jessie Fremont could write very well While John dictated from his notes Jessie shaped his account into fine prose Their book became a bestseller and it made Fremont and Carson famous although Jessie unsurprisingly did not get much credit The following year Carson and Fremont reunited to explore and map the rest of the trail from South Pass to Oregon They also ventured south into California returning across modern Arizona and New Mexico this was all part of Mexico at that time Fremont published a second book which Jesse also wrote Some people read the books for escapist pleasure but many who read them decided that the rich soil and pleasant climate of Oregon and California was calling them they hitched up their wagons and moved west using Fremont s books as their inspiration and guide From the point of view of many of America s leaders like Senator Benton and President James Polk this was very good news indeed At this point in time Oregon Territory was up for grabs America Great Britain Russia and Mexico not to mention many Indian nations all made claims of one kind or another but no one had a firm hold If American farmers started moving in it would make it easier for the United States to justify its claim And there were similar designs on California Only a small number of Mexican officials ruled over a relatively small population in California Most of its Mexican population about 15 000 people called themselves Californios and 58

thought of themselves as distinct from Mexicans Separated from the capital in Mexico City by two thousand miles harsh deserts unfriendly ocean currents and high mountains their sense of independence is understandable One hundred thousand Indians and 800 Americans lived scattered among them In a region so large populated by so few a small military presence could have a big influence Polk certainly thought so but as violently as he desired California he knew that obtaining it would require finesse Therefore he called on Fremont to make an innocent looking expedition out there to feel the pulse Fremont took fifty men with him though he was the only army official His specific orders from Polk are unknown Carson joined up with the expedition in Colorado and helped guide them over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into California s Central Valley In the mean time unknown to Fremont s expedition the United States and Mexico had moved closer and closer to war When they arrived Fremont headed first to the provincial capital on the central coast in Monterey On the way they passed through the town of Yerba Buena now San Francisco where Fremont got sight of the magnificent opening that lay between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean He named it The Golden Gate Mexican officials in Monterey were understandably suspicious of any American army officer who was poking around in California After a period of indecision they ordered Fremont to leave At first Fremont refused He retreated to a nearby mountaintop where he built a small fort and quite rashly raised the American flag In response the Mexicans began organizing an army at the base of the mountain Before it came to an Alamo like battle Fremont came to his senses He broke camp and marched his men north to Oregon Not long after they arrived there a messenger from President Polk arrived in camp with orders for Fremont to return to California Again the specifics of Polk s orders are unknown But it is clear that Polk wanted Fremont on the spot in California in case war or rebellion broke out there Fremont started to work on a plan While Fremont and Carson s troupe was on its way back into California a small band of thirty Americans living in the small northern California town of Sonoma rose up against the local authorities and declared themselves independent from Mexico They called their nation the Bear Flag Republic and raised a flag made from women s underwear over the town Fremont s presence in the region had certainly encouraged them to act so when he showed up they put him in charge Fremont claimed California in the name of the United States By now other events had brought the United States and Mexico into war Fremont rode to again Monterey where he joined forces with Commodore Robert Stockton of the United States Navy Together they sailed for southern California where without opposition they seized control of the small towns of San Diego and Los Angeles Almost bloodlessly California had fallen to the United States Carson was given the honor of taking the happy news east to President Polk In the deserts of New Mexico Carson met U S General Stephen Kearny and his 150 dragoons who were headed for the war in California Polk unaware of the developments in California had sent Kearny over land to take command On one hand Kearny was happy to hear Carson s news on the other he was disappointed that a chance for battle glory was lost This as it turned out was a hasty conclusion Kearny ordered Carson to lead him on to California By the time they arrived the situation had changed entirely Since Carson s departure the Californios had organized their forces and reclaimed their lost towns The battle for California was far from over Kearny led his men through the hills towards San Diego Near the small town of San Pasqual they learned that Captain Andres Pico s band of Californios was nearby These men recruited from the region s cattle ranches were expert horsemen Though they had guns in battle they preferred to use long lances from atop their horses 59

Kearny had hoped to surprise the Californios but his scouts bungled their early morning reconnaissance mission leaving a jacket marked U S near their camp Kearny decided that since the element of surprise was lost at least they could use darkness to cover their attack Unfortunately the mistakes continued Kearney s dragoons misunderstood his orders and they charged too soon Before they knew it the Californios had them surrounded Because of the damp air their gunpowder was damp and their guns rusty They were forced to rely on their sabers Making rapid charges on their horses and skillful thrusts with their lances the Californios made fools of Kearny s men Almost every one of them including Kearny himself received several wounds and almost twenty of his men were killed Carson was the only one who kept his cool After his rifle was broken when he was thrown from his horse he grabbed another from a dead dragoon took cover behind rocks and pestered the Californios with deadly shooting The Californios retreated at sunset giving Kearny s beleaguered men a break Still they kept a close eye on the Americans The following day Kearny s men worked their way to the top of a small hill and took position behind a ring of rocks They slaughtered their mules for food and prepared for a siege The hill was later named Mule Hill in memory of the event Meanwhile more and more Californios gathered in the valley below Kearny s only hope was for reinforcements from San Diego Carson and two other men were chosen to sneak past the enemy and make the thirty mile journey They left in the middle of the night They first had to crawl past the guards At one point they were only feet from a Californio s horse In order to stay quiet they took off their shoes in the dark they lost track of them Therefore once they got past the Californios they had to walk barefoot through rocky valleys and hills covered with prickly pear and cactus all the time having to avoid enemy patrols Physically and mentally it was a grueling task Somehow Carson and his exhausted companions managed to slip through to San Diego and contact Commodore Stockton who quickly dispatched a force of 200 men Just as Kearny and his men were loading their weapons and preparing for a last desperate charge Stockton s force arrived At the sight of them the Californios vanished It is not too much of a stretch to say that Carson and his fellow messengers through their courageous trek won the war in California Fremont and Carson were never worked together again but each continued to play an important role in the growth of the West Fremont won and lost a fortune in the California Gold Rush made an unsuccessful run as the first Republican Party candidate for President in 1856 His slogan was arguably the most piquant in American history Free Soil Free Men and Fremont and fought in the Civil War Carson also fought in the War and afterwards he led an effort to put down a Navajo uprising in Arizona Fremont and Carson left behind a mixed legacy During his lifetime Americans referred respectfully to Fremont as The Pathfinder but he also had many major lapses in judgment including one that led to his court martial Carson was so revered that much to his embarrassment authors wrote sensational novels featuring him as the main character he was something like a movie star In more recent times Carson has been criticized for the brutal ways he often treated Indians On their expeditions he and Fremont often killed Indians indiscriminately including a massacre of a band of Klamath in Oregon Perhaps then they should be remembered best for they way they worked together Like Lewis and Clark before them Fremont and Carson demonstrated the value of teamwork Americans like to pride themselves on their individualism but without collaborative efforts like those of Fremont and Carson the West would not have been won 60

Chapter 28 Disaster in the Mountains For the early pioneers who ventured the two thousand mile trek to Oregon or California in their covered wagons many things could go wrong and when they did the consequences could be disastrous For the eighty one members of the Donner Party who left Independence Missouri on May 10 1846 almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong The trip went wrong from the get go By leaving so late in May they were taking a great risk The trip required on average four and a half months If all else went well that would put them in California around the end of September By then summer grasses the fuel their cattle and horses depended upon would be thinning out and mountain passes could be deep in snow A few days into the trip things went wrong again Recent thunderstorms had raised the Big Blue River to impassible levels and the party had to wait five days for it to recede When it finally did they rafted the wagons across and continued rolling along the trail Across the prairies of Nebraska their luck improved The ten families and approximately twenty single members of the party made steady progress 15 20 miles a day Buffalo and elk were plentiful so they ate fresh meat rather than dried The grand beauty of the gently rolling land waving grasses big sky and colorful sunsets left them awestruck In western Nebraska they passed the picturesque landmarks of Courthouse Rock and Chimney Rock After a poor start they were enjoying their journey Twelve year old Virginia Reed called it the ideal pleasure trip Just after South Pass the pass discovered by Fremont and Carson the halfway point they made a fateful choice Instead of taking the usual blazed path to California which continued northwest into modern Idaho before dipping south into modern Nevada the Donner party elected to try an untested path that went south first into modern Utah before continuing west Lansford Hastings California lawyer who was promoting this path claimed it was a short cut However an experienced mountain man named James Clyman warned them against it James Reed whom the party looked to as its leader believed Hastings over Clyman and the Donner Party stuck to his path They should have listened to Clyman What the Donner Party didn t know was that Hastings unlike Clyman had never traveled the route They soon learned that Hastings also couldn t make appointments he failed to meet them at Fort Bridger as promised and they were left on their own without a guide Complicating matters the geography had grown more demanding Instead of the gentle ups and downs of a wide open prairie they grappled with a mountain range and narrow steep valleys instead of tall grasses they faced thick trees and brush instead of a large smooth river that they mostly followed alongside they dealt with a winding stream that demanded frequent crossings Not only was the land much more imposing but also they had to make their own way There were no wagon ruts laid down by other pioneers so they had to hack and chop a path through the forest Often the uneven rocky ground required that they lay down a road with the trees they had cut This took time and energy One particularly bad stretch of thirty five miles took them two weeks to travel When they finally emerged from the mountains into the valley of the Great Salt Lake August was nearing its end and they still had 600 miles to go Hastings had left a note for them but it was hardly encouraging He warned that they would soon pass through a vast desert void of fresh water They should expect crossing it to take two days and nights of heavy driving It took five This desert is a salt flat the remnant of an ancient sea While the Donner Party crossed it the days were blazing hot and the nights were bitter cold and there was not a twig of shelter The mules and oxen sank up to their knees in the salty mush A coat of fine gritty sediment soon covered everyone and everything Some pioneers got seriously dehydrated and began to hallucinate imagining pools of water in the distance Some cattle went mad and bolted off into the 61

horizon When they finally reached the desert s end and found fresh water an ominous sign tempered their sense of relief the mountains around them were coated in a thin layer of snow The situation was grim Winter was creeping in and they were short of supplies Two men volunteered to ride ahead to Sutter s Fort in California for help Meanwhile the others drove the wagons on through the arid mountains and valleys of Nevada The monotony of life on the move loss of cattle and provisions and anger at Lansford Hastings wore their tempers thin Then they snapped One day James Reed s oxen team became entangled with one of John Snyder s Reed angrily stepped up to Snyder blaming him for the snarl Snyder argued back which incensed Reed even more With the butt end of his whip Snyder struck Reed on the head drawing blood Some people later reported that Snyder also took a swing at Reed s wife Margaret Enraged Reed pulled his knife and plunged it into Snyder s chest Within minutes he died Some thought Reed should be hanged others thought that Reed had acted in self defense and in defense of his wife s honor Since they were outside of the United States and the jurisdiction of its laws they weren t sure whose laws they should follow They decided to banish Reed sending him on ahead to California alone His wife and four children would have to continue without him Over the next few weeks things continued to unravel Indians perhaps sensing the party s weakness began raiding their cattle One family had lost their wagon and now traveled on foot A German immigrant known to be wealthy mysteriously disappeared Did he die while out hunting or did a party member named Lewis Keseberg murder him as other members later charged Another man died when his gun misfired And just as they were entering the last stage the arduous journey through the Sierra Nevada Mountains George Donner s wagon snapped an axle Worse Donner severely injured his hand while chopping wood to make a replacement axle Some good news one of the men sent ahead returned from Sutter s Fort with two Indian guides and a train of mules carrying supplies It was almost the end of October and while they had less than one hundred miles to go they still had to cross the high Sierra Nevada Mountains which were already crested in snow When a lead group reached the top of the pass over they discovered that it was several feet deep Darkness and exhaustion overtook them and they decided to wait until morning before going on That night it snowed And it kept snowing They attempted to tromp through but it proved impassable and they had no choice but to descend the mountain to make a winter camp After six months and two thousand miles of travel the Donner Party had come up just one day short of making it over the mountains into California One can imagine their dismay and sense of impending doom Food was an immediate concern and the snow kept coming Many of their remaining cattle were buried in it People walked around poking the snow with long sticks hoping to find them Rarely were they successful As meat and other dried food ran out they cooked cowhides and ate whatever goop they could scrape from them People kept their dogs alive as along as they could but eventually they had to eat them In mid December a group of fifteen including the two Indian guides made snowshoes in order to try a mountain crossing They made it over the pass but there were still many mountainous miles to go Three days after leaving a heavy snow fell Walking became difficult and the mountains offered no clear or easy path out Within a week they had run out of food Three weeks later seven exhausted and scraggy members of this Forlorn Hope party stumbled out of the mountains into a small California settlement The residents welcomed sheltered and fed them When they had recovered they told their rescuers a horrific tale They related how after the party had run out food people began to die of cold and hunger They had no energy to go on and they had no idea where they were They sat together around their fire despondent The survivors couldn t do it at first But then in horror but overcome by their innate drive to live they cut up the dead roasted their flesh and ate 62

This energized and sustained them for a few days more and they continued on but then naturally they became hungry again With no corpses available this time they resorted to murder They tracked down the Indians who appalled by the cannibalism had earlier slipped away into the forest Finding them huddled in the snow the others killed and ate them Having now reached help these survivors pleaded on behalf of the pioneers still trapped on the other side of the mountains A rescue party soon got underway carrying food and within a few days they had crossed over the mountains and reached the Donner Party camp The pioneers were elated however they could not bring everyone back because their supplies were too limited Thinking of the future the Donner Party sent mostly children with the rescuers Whatever happened to James Reed you may be wondering After banishment Reed had successfully reached California where he heard news of the Donner Party s plight A few weeks after the first party set out Reed organized and supplied his own rescue party It was now mid February and the food from the earlier rescue party had run out When Reed arrived he found the ghastly sight of human bones scattered around the camp Cannibalism had become common by now The scraggy survivors could hardly speak or walk Reed took another group back with him but fourteen remained in camp These included George Donner whose infected wound still kept him sick and his wife Tamsen who refused to leave his side Reed s group found the way back difficult Another snowstorm with hurricane like winds clobbered them as they descended the western slope At one point the violent wind and snow left Reed temporarily blinded They ran out of food and only by meeting a third rescue party already on its way up the mountain were they saved from death That winter of 1845 1846 was the worst that California had seen or would see for a long while It was April before all the survivors had been rescued Of the 81 members of the party only 45 survived George Donner never made it nor did Tamsen Lewis Keseberg was the last man out Other members of the party would contend that he had actually enjoyed eating human flesh a charge that Keseberg denied Since the previous spring when the Donner Party had left Missouri the United States had won California from Mexico in war Having left with the goal of settling in Mexico they ended up back in U S territory Doing their best to put the nightmarish journey behind them the members of the Donner Party set out to make new lives in their promised land Chapter 29 This is the Place America has always been a religious nation but the first three decades of the 1800 s were a time of particular fervor and western New York was the epicenter Because of the great number of preachers in that region who delivered fire and brimstone sermons featuring frequent references to hell and damnation people called it the Burned Over District In the early 1820 s a young man from here began speaking about several visions he had been having recently Angels had shown him a spot where huge ancient tablets were buried in the ground inidentally treasure seeking was a popular hobby at the time The tablets contained writing in a language he called New Egyptian and with special glasses designed for the purpose he interpreted them into English Afterwards he re buried the tablets The young man s name was Joseph Smith The book he wrote based on the tablets he called the Book of Mormon It tells the story of a lost tribe of Israel that had found its way to America long ago well before Columbus arrived It was a new message from God Smith preached the first since Jesus walked the earth almost two thousand years before 63

Many believed Smith s stories Convinced he was a prophet they became his followers As the following grew they began living working and doing business together almost like a separate community The way they helped each other contrasted distinctly from the independent self reliant attitude of most Americans and that drew many more to the church Officially they called themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or as they became better known the Mormons To their neighbors the Mormons ways were curious and somewhat threatening Their strong commitment to each other to the exclusion of outsiders resembled that of other communal Utopian societies cropping up around the United States at that time More disturbing was that they seemed more like a new religion than another sect within Christianity Rumors circulated that Smith and other Mormon leaders had multiple wives something that traditional Christian teaching forbade For all of these reasons people didn t want them as neighbors and the Mormons had a difficult time finding a place to call home First they tried moving to eastern Ohio but tension arose with their neighbors and they moved to Missouri It wasn t long before things got even worse than they had been in Ohio In addition to the reasons already mentioned Missourians didn t like the fact that the Mormons were anti slavery Violence eventually erupted between the two groups and the governor himself intervened to eject the Mormons from the state They moved east across the Mississippi River into Illinois Smith named their new settlement Naovoo which in Hebrew means beautiful place For a time it lived up to the name and it looked like they had finally found a place to call home Now numbering over 10 000 people the Mormons transformed Nauvoo into the largest and most prosperous town in Illinois All Illinois was impressed with the Mormons discipline and work ethic Because they voted as a group Illinois politicians including a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln made journeys to Nauvoo to secure the Mormon vote When trouble arose the next time it began within the Mormon community not without Nauvoo and Smith with it had grown very powerful powerful enough that Smith began to contemplate a run for the United States Presidency At this time a few disgruntled Mormons began a newspaper and published articles that claimed Smith and the other Mormon leaders had many wives and worshipped many gods Both claims were in fact true but due to their controversial nature Smith tried not to publicize them In response Smith had the newspaper shut down and the press destroyed The citizens of Illinois could tolerate many things but restrictions on the freedom of the press was not one of them To them Smith s actions were the actions of a tyrant Smith and his brother were arrested and imprisoned For some citizens of Illinois though this was not enough On the night of June 27 1844 a mob stormed the prison broke into the cells and murdered the Smith brothers The murders were officially condemned but the governor made only a feeble effort to bring the guilty to justice and persecution of the Mormons intensified People began to set fire to Mormon homes It seemed that the Mormons had worn out their welcome yet again For the Mormons there was a silver lining to this bad turn of events Smith was now a martyr and as in other religions having a martyr helped give Mormonism a stronger sense of unity and purpose They would need both as they prepared for their next move That move would be west This was the decision of Brigham Young the man who stepped into Smith s leadership role after his death Young had seen enough of the trouble that brewed when Mormons lived shoulder to shoulder with non Mormons or as they called them Gentiles Thanks to the explorations of John Fremont and others vast regions to the west were opening up to pioneers Surely Young reasoned there must be a place on the frontier that the Mormons could call home Using Fremont s books to guide him Young began plans for a mass exodus 64

There were over 16 000 Mormons far too many for them to travel all at once Young therefore mapped out camps across Iowa and into Nebraska He broke the Mormons up into groups of 10 50 or 100 One group would move forward plant crops and then move on The next group to come along would tend and harvest the crops Their goal was a location near modern Omaha Nebraska where they camped over the winter of 1846 1847 It was a harsh winter the same one that two thousand miles away trapped the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada Mountains Many got sick or died Due to a lack of fruits and vegetables many developed scurvy One of Brigham Young s sons referred to that winter as the Valley Forge of Mormonism One piece of good news did come their way A Catholic priest traveling through gave a favorable report about the land around the Great Salt Lake Young had read about this area in Fremont s book so he had already been thinking about it as a potential home for the Mormons The priest s report helped him make up his mind In the spring of 1847 Young took a hand picked group of approximately 150 people to follow the Oregon Trail west and seek it out At Fort Bridger in modern Wyoming Young steered his people south along the same mountainous brushy path that the Donner Party had taken the year before In July of 1847 they entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake located in modern Utah It was an arid country but it had good rivers This is the place Young declared The Mormons wasted no time They got to work planting crops irrigating fields and grazing their livestock They laid out careful detailed plans for a city Meanwhile Young traveled back along the trail to guide the others to their new settlement Over the following year over 2000 emigrants would join the first group Over the following two decades the total grew to 70 000 The summer following their arrival just when they may have been about to breathe a sigh of relief a plague of huge black crickets as long as fingers arose from the plains and descended in swarms over the Mormons crops Efforts to fight them off were futile and it looked like all the crops would be lost At the point of despair help came from the heavens This help was in the form of seagulls which began flying in from the Great Salt Lake They swooped down and gorged themselves on the insects The crops and the Mormons were saved and their community would make it after all To this day it is against the law to kill a seagull in the state of Utah The Mormon story is much like that of the Puritans in the 1620s fleeing religious persecution through hard work and community spirit they built a prosperous society in a desolate wilderness Their story is like one you would hear in a book of legends Or perhaps Scripture Chapter 30 From the Halls of Montezuma James K Polk may be the most successful president in United States history yet he is one of the least known or remembered There is no Polk Memorial in Washington D C his face is not among those carved on Mount Rushmore there are no state capitals named for him he appears on none of our currency Why In 1844 Polk ran for President promising that if elected he would annex the Republic of Texas and add Oregon Territory and California to the Union The American people intoxicated with Manifest Destiny spirit liked these plans and they voted Polk into the White House Polk quickly set about working on his campaign promises An agreement with Texas was reached and it joined the United States within the year The following year negotiations with Great 65

Britain brought about a compromise that split the Oregon Territory in two the United States taking the southern portion the northern part going to British Canada Polk was off to a good start California would be trickier It belonged to Mexico and though it was a somewhat remote and sparsely populated region Mexico liked having it Furthermore many Americans had deep reservations about any wars of expansion especially if it meant expanding slavery which was exactly what slave holders wanted Polk persisted He first offered to buy California but Mexico refused to sell Then he got crafty He sent the army under the command of General Zachary Taylor on an expedition to the region in Texas just north of the Rio Grande River It was disputed territory a vast sparsely populated area that both the United States and Mexico claimed From the Mexican point of view this amounted to an invasion Polk understood this It was no surprise then when Mexican troops moved north and attacked Taylor s army delivering Polk a casus belli Congress overwhelmingly voted for war though a few representatives including former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and future President Abraham Lincoln of Illinois were outspoken in their opposition These men saw through Polk s designs and wanted no wars that benefitted slave owners Reservations over the war were hardly limited to Congress General Winfield Scott who would later fight with distinction in the war found Polk s methods distasteful The abolitionist writer Henry David Thoreau refused to pay any taxes that would support the war and as a consequence he was imprisoned briefly Later in the essay Resistance to Civil Government he asked Must the citizen ever for a moment or in the least degree resign his conscience to the legislator Why has every man a conscience then I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward His words inspired people then and later who opposed laws or government actions they believed unjust The protests had little effect Taylor s army now officially at war pushed south into Mexico Meanwhile marines under General Scott landed at Veracruz Mexico on the Caribbean coast besieging the town until it capitulated From there Scott s army marched westward in the path of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes who had conquered the Aztecs three hundred years before Undefeated in battle after battle the United States military led by Scott from the east and Taylor from the north clamped down like a vice on Mexico City The final decisive battle was at Chapultepec a fortress that overlooks the city from a hilltop For some reason General Santa Anna the president of Mexico had left the fortress lightly guarded Making it even easier for the Americans landmines planted around the castle like walls failed to discharge when Scott s marines charged the walls Using scaling ladders they swarmed up and over the walls Most of the small Mexican force which included cadets from a military school surrendered to the Americans overwhelming numbers In a dramatic act of defiance six of the teenage cadets stood together on the wall wrapped themselves in a Mexican flag and jumped to their deaths Mexico later built a memorial in their honor With Mexico City captured the war was over The peace treaty that followed made all Mexican lands west of Texas stretching to the Pacific Ocean property of the United States The United States paid Mexico over eighteen million dollars for the land a small price for a territory greater in size than the Louisiana Purchase From the Mexican point of view the land was stolen In addition to gaining so much land America s standing as a world power got a boost Ever since the shoddy and failed invasion of Canada in the War of 1812 America s military had been held in low regard by the nations of the world The Mexican War had changed that In particular the marines campaign under Scott s leadership from Vera Cruz to Mexico City stood out as a brilliant accomplishment The Marines Hymn which is today the official song of the United States Marines boasts of it 66

From the Halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli We fight our country s battles In the air on land and sea As with all wars the story was not as neat and tidy as a song Understandably the war left a bitter taste in Mexico s mouth There were the lost lands of course which cut the size of the nation in half Also although Scott kept tight discipline over his own troops other less scrupulous and disciplined American officers allowed their men to rape pillage and murder their way across the country Scott lamented that Americans had committed atrocities to make Heaven weep and every American of Christian morals blush for his country Not all American citizens were happy with the outcome either In spite of victory and the huge prize the new lands created as many problems as it solved You might say it was a case of Be careful what you wish for Texas entered the Union as a slave state and pro slavery people now hoped to expand slavery even farther west into the newly acquired New Mexico Territory Therefore the country s division over slavery only deepened The resulting strife may be why Polk in spite of his success didn t run for a second term and why a year after leaving office he died exhausted at age 53 Chapter 31 California Dreaming In the 1840 s a story told was about a man from California who was 250 years old It was said that the climate was so healthy and the land so fruitful that California s people just kept on living long past the normal life span The story went on to relate how the man was now ready to die but his body wasn t As a good Christian he wouldn t consider suicide A neighbor suggested he move out of California This he did His body as he had hoped soon declined and finally gave up the ghost His friends having received news of his death went and retrieved the body so that they could bury him in California soil But at the funeral as they were committing his body to the earth his limbs began to surge with life His eyes opened he stood up and he walked out of the service with a spring in his step Such tall tales were circulated around the country in the 1840s to boast of California s qualities and to persuade people to move there which at the time was a sparsely populated province of Mexico One man who responded to the stories and who might claim that there was some truth in them was John Sutter a Swiss immigrant who arrived in California in 1839 Sutter succeeded in securing a land grant of 50 000 acres from the Mexican government There in the north central part of the province near the present capital of Sacramento he built a fort and began farming and ranching Sutter prospered By 1848 he had increased his lands to over 150 000 acres Many Indians Mexicans and immigrants from the United States worked for him He also employed some native Hawaiians who had come with him to California His fort supplied explorers like John Fremont and pioneers like the Donner Party Though few other Californians could match Sutter in wealth he stood out as an example of the possibilities of this paradise Then one unexpected event changed everything Sutter had built a lumber mill on the American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains On a January morning the mill supervisor a carpenter named James Marshall spotted 67

some glittering flecks in the river Upon closer inspection the suspicion grew on him that he had discovered gold Marshall collected a few samples and took them out of the hills to Sutter in Sacramento In the privacy of Sutter s office they did some basic tests and found that Marshall s hunch had been correct it was indeed gold That moment must have felt to them as pregnant as the moment before a great battle Sutter sensed both opportunity and impending doom He instructed Marshall and his crew to keep the news a secret and he doubled his employees wages But a secret like this could not be kept long By May men from all over the region including Sutter s own workers had abandoned their jobs to search for gold In San Francisco a merchant named Sam Brannan rode through the streets with a vial of gold in his hand waving his hat in the other and yelling Gold Gold Gold from the American River Workers left their jobs sailors their ships and soldiers their posts San Francisco s newspaper closed shortly after due to a shortage of subscribers In those days before the telegraph or train even big news like this spread slowly but by December President James Polk was announcing to the nation and world that the rumors were true there was gold in California The rush was on and over the next year over 100 000 prospectors poured into the territory The big response was partly due to the conditions of the times For over a decade the United States economy had been severely depressed and business opportunities were scarce Revolution in Europe and famine in Ireland drove people across the Atlantic War wreaked havoc in China particularly in the southern regions so boats brought gold hunters across the Pacific Ocean too Mexicans and Chileans sailed up from Central and South America Many people from around the world embraced the hope that their troubles would be relieved by California gold At first miners could take gold straight out of the rivers much as James Marshall had done They used large heavy pans to scoop out silt mixed with water from the river bed Using a finely honed technique they swirled the mixture around so that the water and lighter gravel separated from the heavier gold dust which clung to the bottom of the pan This is called placer mining and though it is simple and relatively inexpensive one has to remain bent over for hours a day in a freezing cold river Some men found big nuggets and struck it rich but most men had to work at it a long time before they accumulated a profit Even so in the first year of the rush the miners combined efforts extracted over ten million dollars approximately equal to two hundred million today from California s rivers With thousands of miners going at it the easy pickens soon became harder to find and men turned to more aggressive and complex methods Quartz mining involved finding veins of quartz which frequently appears with gold and smashing the rock to separate the gold from the quartz More complex still was hydraulic mining which involved shooting highly pressurized jets of water through a large cannon like machine into the mountainside This loosened the soil and as it descended the hillside miners directed the slush into a wooden sluice where the gold could be extracted As hydraulic mining became more common the solitary miner working his claim became less common The machinery that hydraulic mining required was expensive and only big outfits supplied with ample cash reserves could afford it It also required a lot of hands to operate the system More and more miners started accepting the steady wages of hydraulic mining companies over the dwindling opportunities of placer mining Besides the mining companies merchants were the other group who benefitted most from the Gold Rush Early on bright men like Sam Brannan realized that they could make a fortune selling tools supplies and food to the miners With few suppliers and high demand among a lot of goldcrazed miners stores charged sky high prices and make sky high profits It was less risky and 68

backbreaking than mining and it was a more sure way of making a fortune Many of the people who got rich off the gold rush did so through this more indirect path Life in mining camps and towns was raw Sanitation was terrible and disease spread quickly Miners tended to spend much of their earnings on overpriced whiskey in the saloons Drinking went with gambling and the two led to fighting and fighting often led to murder Violent disputes over claims were also common For awhile there was no law enforcement at all and when communities formed vigilance committees justice was swift and brutal One town even earned the name Hangtown Placerville today If you were not white and American life would be even harder Foreigners ethnic minorities and Indians faced all kinds of discrimination and abuse Indians were driven from their lands sometimes enslaved and often murdered The government charged foreigners higher taxes and in court cases judges blatantly favored white interests and claims of those of others Nevertheless many minorities and Indians overcame the injustices and made a decent profit Often they exploited claims and mines that whites had abandoned as worthless A Chinese miner if he earned a few hundred dollars had enough to return to China and live comfortably for the rest of the life The risks and injustices many reasoned were worth it The Gold Rush was an environmental disaster Hydraulic mining in particular caused terrible erosion in the mountains Most trees were cut down for firewood and for constructing build towns and sluices causing further erosion Miners used mercury to separate gold from gravel and when they were done with it they washed it into the rivers poisoning fish and other sea creatures as far away as San Francisco Bay And what about John Sutter the man who was there where it all began When all his workers left him for the gold fields he could no longer tend to his herds and crops His business failed and people tore up his lands in search of gold When he registered formal complaints the state gave him some compensation but it was only a small fraction of what he had lost Eventually he left California and ended his days in Pennsylvania Like Sutter s fortunes California had changed over night The quiet slow paced beautiful and peaceful rancher s dream was transformed into a noisy bustling destructive and treacherous nightmare It is difficult to imagine anyone living a long and healthy life in a place like that Chapter 32 Express Interests May 24 1844 was a revolutionary day in America On that day inventor Samuel Morse from the chambers of the United States Supreme Court in Washington D C tapped out a short message on a battery powered device called the telegraph He used a system of short and long taps Morse Code which traveled through a wire to a railroad station in Baltimore forty miles away where they were heard almost instantly Morse s assistant received the message and then repeated it back to Morse The message was What hath God wrought This moment says a lot about America at that time Scientific achievements in communication and transportation were changing life in dizzying ways Besides the telegraph the other supreme invention of the times was the steam engine powered locomotive As for the words of the message they reflected America s religiosity In the 1840s few people saw a conflict between faith and science on the contrary they believed ardently that science would serve religion and make America a more heavenly nation A nation that was rapidly enlarging The United States was making plans to annex Texas and pioneers were venturing into the disputed territory of Oregon and California which belonged to 69

Mexico Within the next four years the United States would make these lands her own realizing a dream to stretch her borders from sea to shining sea The telegraph was just the thing to keep this vast nation connected and wired Until the thousands of miles of poles wires and stations could be built however news would still have to travel by stagecoach or ship Both were very slow It could take weeks or months for the mail to travel from one coast to the other For an immense country experiencing war gold rushes and increasing tension over slavery this was not fast enough In 1859 the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company devised a plan for faster mail delivery to the west coast Their owners employed men on horseback riding at top speed to carry the mail pouches across the country There were almost 2000 miles of country unconnected by telegraph between St Joseph Missouri and Sacramento California so every 10 15 miles stations were built where riders could obtain fresh horses Every 75 100 miles they constructed home stations where a new rider took the mail relay like from the arriving rider and galloped off to the next station When everything worked right mail service took ten days Like jockeys riders were light and athletic young men of small wiry build Especially since they often rode at night they needed to know the terrain so riders from the West were preferred They also had to be fearless Indians were quite understandably displeased to see these riders and stations on their lands Both were sometimes attacked For this reason the riders used mustangs horses known for their speed and agility The Pony Express worked Most mail was delivered within ten days and during its eighteenmonth existence only one mail pouch was lost When news arrived either in St Joseph or Sacramento telegraph operators relayed the messages from those points to the newspapers or businesses that had paid for them The speed record five days was achieved for the purpose of announcing Abraham Lincoln s election as President in November of 1860 By that time though the Pony Express s days were already numbered It was expected Central Overland had partly cooked up the idea as a way of winning a mail contract from the government but it was an expensive business to maintain and few people could afford to pay the price of delivery over 100 in today s money Only the government and the very wealthy could afford those rates More importantly in October of 1861 the transnational telegraph lines were completed linking east and west Now messages could be sent and received almost instantly at far less expense and risk Shortly after the riders of the Pony Express made their final deliveries Over one hundred and fifty years later you will find Pony Express monuments and parks in several places in the West including Sacramento St Joseph and Salt Lake City Utah If you drive the right roads you ll find signs that mark the route riders used You will not however find in the West any signs or memorials to mark the route of the telegraph Chapter 33 A Self Made Man I was born in Tuckahoe near Hillsborough and about twelve miles from Easton in Talbot County Maryland I have no accurate knowledge of my age never having seen any authentic record containing it This is how Frederick Douglass began his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave in 1845 Like most autobiographers Douglass begins at the beginning of 70

his life Unlike most autobiographers he did not know his birthday That s just one thing it meant to be an American slave Douglass s mother was a slave and his father a white man most likely his owner As a young boy living on his master s Maryland plantation he did little work but he saw enough to know how awful slavery was Every day he would watch the other slaves carry out their backbreaking labor in the fields When they didn t work hard enough they were beaten Once he watched his master beat his aunt to the point of dripping blood Understandably this memory left a lifelong impression on Douglass When he was seven or eight his master sent him to live with relations in Baltimore He soon learned that city slaves had a somewhat freer and easier life than those living on plantations Also his new master s wife Mrs Auld began to teach him to read Both of these changes made a big difference in Douglass s life In many places in the South Mrs Auld s actions were illegal Why Her husband Mr Auld spoke for most slaveholders when he told his wife that if young Frederick learned to read T here would be no keeping him He would at once become unmanageable and of no value to his master Not surprisingly as soon as Mr Auld heard about the lessons he commanded his wife to stop them Undaunted Douglass decided that if lessons were denied him he would teach himself Whenever he could he sneaked practice with books from the Auld s home More often he learned from white boys in the neighborhood whom he befriended Many of them though they could read were poor and not as well fed as Douglass so he could offer them bread in exchange for lessons When the Aulds sent Douglass out on errands he would complete the task as fast as he could so that he could snatch a little time with his books As much as Douglass loved reading though he would eventually have to agree with his master I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing It had given me a view of my wretched condition without the remedy In moments of agony I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity When Douglass had grown to be a young man he was by his own admission somewhat unmanageable For that reason he was sent to work for a Mr Covey a notorious breaker of slaves Douglass suffered mightily under him Covey gave Douglass tasks for which he was untrained and when he failed to do them correctly Covey whipped him Tasks requiring no brains but a lot of muscle like stacking wheat were no better because having lived in a house for so long Douglass lacked the kind of stamina only gained through many years of heavy labor When Douglass couldn t keep working after many hours Covey brought out the whip Douglass later wrote that Mr Covey succeeded in breaking me My natural elasticity was crushed my intellect languished the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died In spite of this Douglass respected Covey as a hard worker and felt sympathy for him as a poor man This arrangement was typical on plantations it wasn t the owners but the poor white foremen who managed the slaves and meted out the punishments One day though Douglass decided that he had had enough and he refused to work When Covey again tried to whip him Douglass resisted Then they fought wrestling for two hours Covey eventually gave up and after that day he never whipped Douglass again He didn t try to have Douglass punished either probably because he didn t want his reputation as a breaker to suffer This battle Douglass said was the turning point in my career as a slave It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom and revived within me a sense of my own manhood For five more years Douglass endured his enslaved condition During the last part of that time he returned to Baltimore to work on ships as a caulker Even though this was better than working for Mr Covey Douglass still wanted his freedom In 1838 disguised as a sailor and supplied 71

with identity papers from a free black Douglass took a train north to New York Once he was there he sent for his girlfriend Anna Murray a free black he had met in Baltimore Douglass said that he felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions After Murray and he wed they moved to New Bedford Massachusetts Douglass tried to get a job caulking ships but the white workers refused to work with him He found other work though and for the first time he knew the thrill of earning his own wages and providing for his own family The next turning point in Douglass s life was in 1841 when he attended an anti slavery meeting Many people took turns speaking and at one point in the meeting Douglass himself was invited to speak Although he was unprepared and spoke extemporaneously he found that he was good at it and liked it He was certainly happy to have the opportunity to speak to a responsive and sympathetic audience about the evils of slavery With this speech Douglass s career as an abolitionist had begun From then on he toured the free states giving anti slavery lectures He also began to write After publishing his Narrative which sold thousands of copies he founded a an abolitionist periodical called The North Star By then he was internationally famous and respected Douglass was the most photographed American of his time even more than Abraham Lincoln Until slavery was finally abolished at the end of the Civil War he continued to crusade tirelessly against it Like Benjamin Franklin Douglass achieved that quintessentially American ideal of the selfmade man More so than probably any American before him Douglass also made himself into a leader of a moral cause For this reason perhaps we should regard him as a different sort of founding father one who gave his life to fighting our nation s injustices on behalf of the oppressed inspiring others to do the same Chapter 34 General Tubman Slaves were property Helping a slave escape was therefore a kind of stealing and stealing of course is against the law The people who ran the Underground Railroad however believed that when it came to slavery one could break the law Indeed they believed one should break the law Like other resistance movements the Underground Railroad began with the loosely coordinated actions of a few people and over time grew into something more organized In the early 1800 s various Christian groups but especially Quakers began helping slaves escape north by offering shelter food clothing and transportation Networked through their religious bond they could often offer directions to another safe place farther north As their activities became known and slave catchers became more determined to pursue fugitives they created hiding places in attics in barns or under staircases They devised passwords and coded messages in order to distinguish friend from foe Participation was risky Thomas Garrett of Wilmington Delaware helped over 2 500 slaves escape during his life Several times he was caught by the authorities and forced to pay a fine Others were imprisoned Free blacks who helped slaves even those who had never been slaves were sometimes seized and sold in the South The movement had no name until 1831 when a slave owner from Kentucky after having unsuccessfully chased an escaping slave remarked that the slave must have got away by an underground railroad A newspaper published the comment and the name stuck As the name caught on people employed railroad language to describe the network s parts Safe houses were called stations and their owners station masters Escaping slaves were referred 72

to as passengers The bold people who ventured into slave states to guide slaves north were called conductors The most famous of these conductors is Harriet Tubman An escaped slave herself Tubman soon after her escape in 1849 returned to her former home in Maryland to help family members escape As her skill and success became known other slaves accepted her help Over the next eight years Tubman made at least thirteen trips guiding between seventy and eighty slaves to freedom Among slaves who were deeply immersed in the stories and language of the Bible she was known as Moses Slave owners though considered her a threat and they offered a reward for her capture Success required Tubman to be clever and resourceful When she was leading fugitives she mostly traveled at night following the North Star Sometimes she used the disguise of an old lady to avoid being recognized She would carry a newspaper to make whites think she was a free black slaves usually couldn t read If she had babies with her she drugged them with medicine so that they would sleep and keep quiet Sometimes while they were fleeing slaves got cold feet and told Tubman they wanted to return to their plantations They feared being caught and they feared the new and unfamiliar the slave life was all they had ever known and their master s home or farm was likely the only home in which they had ever lived Like the Israelites under Pharaoh many slaves preferred the known to the unknown even if it meant remaining in slavery Also since they mostly traveled at night through forests swamps and other wild places there were spooky and mysterious noises all around It could become too much to bear For such moments Tubman kept a revolver in her shawl Pointing it at the person s head she would say firmly You move on or die She also used codes and signals to avoid capture Tubman was always singing hymns so no one really paid much attention to the words For that reason it was a perfect way to communicate with her fugitives If she needed to tell a group to stay hidden she would sing Go Down Moses once Go down Moses way down in Egypt land Tell old Pharaoh let my people go If she sang it twice it was safe to come out One time she and Thomas Garrett devised a spectacular plan to elude the slave catchers The group of fugitives Tubman was leading included a particularly prized man named Joe His owner had posted advertisements all over Delaware and he was offering two thousand dollars forty thousand in today s money as reward for his capture There were rewards for the other fugitives as well and of course there was a price on Tubman s head Catching this group would bring a police officer a small fortune so not surprisingly the roads were thick with them In Wilmington Delaware Garrett s home town two stood guard at a bridge that Tubman needed to cross in order to reach free soil Garrett had an idea He knew some bricklayers who every day crossed the bridge from the other side riding in a wagon When the work day ended they returned across the bridge A boisterous crew the men tended to sing and shout loudly as they went Therefore the guards were not surprised when at the end of one day here came the bricklayers making the usual racket in their wagon When they later learned that the fugitives they had been seeking had been lying low in the wagon bed surrounded by the bricklayers they must have been surprised and embarrassed After they crossed the bridge Tubman and her passengers pushed on to New York and then Canada I never lost a passenger Tubman once boasted but she didn t credit her own ability for her success When she was a girl and still a slave she had once prayed that her cruel master would die 73

The next week he did Tubman felt remorseful but from that moment she was a believer in the power of prayer On all her rescue missions Tubman firmly believed that God was with her On one journey north she and a group of fugitives arrived at a station owned by a station master well known to Tubman When she knocked at the door and gave the password an unfamiliar and angry voice shouted back Who are you What do you want Upon inquiring about her friend Tubman learned that he had been run off for harboring escaped slaves Tubman had to think fast She turned the group around and took them to a nearby swamp to hide and she prayed for help She and the fugitives had to wait there a long time scared and undoubtedly harassed by mosquitoes Then a man dressed in the black clothes and hat of a Quaker strolled by their hiding spot He seemed not to notice Tubman and her companions As if he were talking to himself he remarked My wagon stands in the barnyard of the next farm across the way The horse is in the stable the harness hangs on a nail Taking the hint that night Tubman led her group to the farm and found things arranged just as the man had said There was even food in the wagon Soon they were on their way When in 1861 the Civil War began Tubman was certain that freedom for her people was near She offered herself fully to the cause She was with the all black 54th Massachusetts regiment when they made their historic charge on Fort Wagner After the battle she helped nurse the wounded It was around that time she guided Union boats up the Combahee River on a raid that destroyed a good deal of Confederate property and freed many slaves After the war she helped establish schools for former slaves For all her achievements Harriet Tubman was respected and even famous Frederick Douglass honored her courage and shrewdness Thomas Garrett told others about her deep faith in God John Brown referred to her as General Tubman The greatest heroine of the age said Thomas Wentworth Higgenson Those words must have enraged slave owners To them Harriet Tubman and any other employee of the Underground Railroad was something else a thief and a lawbreaker And if someone didn t put a stop to their thieving ways well something would have to be done about it Chapter 35 Bleeding Kansas We like democracy because we think it s fair every person gets a vote and in any given group decision the majority rules This is how it is supposed to work The reality is often much messier In the 1850s democracy got messy in Kansas A territory at the time Kansas was the next stop in America s westward expansion Women and men moved in to try their luck farming on the wild prairie Most of these were free soilers people opposed to the expansion of slavery or people who were less concerned about political issues than making a living Almost no one owned slaves in Kansas but if they wanted to could they Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois argued that the people of Kansas should answer the question by a vote It was a democratic solution after all Others didn t want to give slavery any chance to take root in another state if slavery had to continue it should be limited to those places where it already existed in the South they argued Congress eventually sided with Douglas and gave Kansans the right to choose Since the law applied to the territory of Nebraska as well it was called the Kansas Nebraska Act American citizens understood something that Douglas apparently did not by passing the Kansas Nebraska Act Congress created a battle ground quite literally for the nation to unleash its passions over slavery pro and con People started moving there more for the purpose of influencing 74

the upcoming election than out of interest in settling there Abolitionists arrived from the North Poor farmers from Missouri the slave state next door set up camp on the Kansas side of the border These men known as Border Ruffians for their coarse and uncouth ways frequently tried to scare off free soilers When words didn t work they sometimes used violence The vote took place in the fall of 1855 and the pro slavery voters won They set up a government at Shawnee Mission near the Kansas Missouri border Curiously there were more votes cast than there were registered voters Anti slavery free soilers blamed it on the meddling of Border Ruffians and in protest set up their own government in Topeka Kansas had two governments proslavery and anti slavery Who was in charge After all voting is one thing but enforcing the results is another President Franklin Pierce would have to decide Fearing what pro slavery states might do if he didn t he accepted the election results and recognized the government at Shawnee Mission When looking at the big picture Pierce thought that accepting the voting results was better than investigating the free soilers claims and risking civil war The decision didn t really settle matters In Lawrence Kansas abolitionists continued to publish anti slavery newspaper articles and disregard the government in Shawnee Mission Not my government they said in effect This provoked several hundred pro slavery men to stage an attack upon Lawrence in May of 1856 They destroyed the town s printing presses and the Free State Hotel After that some of them took to the streets looting and robbing as they could Back in Washington abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts condemned the attack on Lawrence before in a speech before Congress He referred to the pro slavery attackers as hirelings picked from the spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization The rhetoric in American politics has always had a tendency to get overheated He also took the opportunity to make insulting remarks about pro slavery Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks also of South Carolina and a relation to Butler was outraged Two days after the speech while Sumner was in the Senate quietly working at his desk Brooks strode up to Sumner and began pummeling him with his gold handled cane Sumner soon slumped to the floor and lay there bloody and not resisting but Brooks continued the barrage until the cane broke Sumner was seriously injured and he never fully recovered Both men were instant heroes though predictably to different regions of the country In the North Sumner s outspokenness and defiance were celebrated he was regarded as a martyr in the abolitionist cause Southerners who hated abolitionists like Sumner and prized honor and family loyalty praised Brooks They sent him canes as gifts and even after he resigned from Congress they re elected him So far the violence had been one sided abolitionists tended to be pacifists who believed that their cause should be advanced without use of force After the Lawrence raid and Brooks s attack on Sumner one abolitionist decided that since peaceful methods for ending slavery were not working it was time for a change in tactics His name was John Brown Like other abolitionists Brown had not come to Kansas to farm he had come to fight slavery and when he said fight he meant fight Convinced that slavery was evil he believed that God allowed any means necessary to stop it He brought several of his sons along with him and they brought weapons Three days after the Lawrence raid after dark Brown his sons and a handful of other men armed themselves and moved out from their campsite They had earlier identified the homes of five pro slavery men Now they visited these homes and forced the men to come out front Each one was ushered into the dark countryside where in an isolated spot Brown and his men hacked to them to death with swords 75

As you might expect once the murders became known the violence escalated on both sides Mostly there were attacks on one or two people at a time but there were also a couple battles involving dozens of men In the most significant John Brown led a group of forty against a much larger force at Osawatomie One of Brown s sons was killed in the fight and another was injured Brown and his men were outmatched and eventually had to run for it Over fifty people died in Bleeding Kansas over the next few years Democracy had proven both messy and limited If it couldn t keep Kansas together how effective could it be in keeping together an increasingly fragmented nation Chapter 36 Scenic Harpers Ferry Harpers Ferry is a small town that stretches up the hillside in a lush and forested valley among the Blue Ridge Mountains on the spot where the Potomoc and Shenendoah Rivers serenely flow together in West Virginia Thomas Jefferson called the view from above the town perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature The United States government had chosen somewhat ironically to build in this sublime setting one of its two arsenals It was a good place to make and store weapons because it was far from the coast where an enemy nation might more easily carry out a raid This calculation failed to consider the possibility of a raid from within the nation That is the reason that when a raid came on October 16 of 1859 there were only a few poorly armed guards stationed at the arsenal The raiders were twenty anti slavery men some white and some black Their leader was John Brown famous or infamous depending on your point of view for his violent attacks on pro slavery people in Kansas three years before Brown and his men had been living incognito at a nearby farm making plans and training since summer Having secured the financial support of six prominent northern abolitionists The Secret Six they were supplied with firearms and pikes They aimed to take possession of the arsenal and arm local slaves for a revolt against their masters No mere impulse had led Brown here he had been contemplating an attack on Harpers Ferry for years Many people from whom he had sought support thought the plan was insane Frederick Douglass the former slave turned abolitionist journalist thought it would sour Americans to the abolitionist effort and he predicted that Brown and his men could not escape Harpers Ferry alive It was a perfect steel trap he argued Brown entirely certain of himself and his cause could not be dissuaded Brown and his men scared off the guards and seized the armory buildings quite easily and then Brown sent out men into the surrounding countryside to capture hostages and notify slaves to join the uprising They were more successful in the first objective than the second though they captured some hostages including a great grand nephew of George Washington only a few slaves responded to the call From within the brick buildings of the armory Brown and his men waited If Brown had no clear idea of what should happen next the residents of Harpers Ferry had no doubts Grabbing their guns they surrounded the armory and began blasting away at the building where Brown and his men hid Members of the local militia soon arrived and joined in From behind the thick walls that protected them Brown s band fired back but they were outnumbered and trapped just as Douglass had forecast Over the course of several hours of gunfire eleven people were killed eight of Brown s men and three town residents Seven of Brown s men escaped though two were eventually captured 76

That night ninety United States Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E Lee arrived The next morning rather than continuing the hail of bullets placing the hostages at risk Lee commanded his men to storm the building where Brown and his remaining men had retreated The marines succeeded killing two of Brown s men and capturing the rest including Brown Brown and his men were tried convicted and sentenced to hang This as it turned out may have been what Brown envisioned all along His trial provided him with the perfect platform for voicing his views on slavery and the executions gave abolitionists something to rally around While he awaited his fate Brown wrote I John Brown am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land with never be purged away but with Blood Brown s trial and death received national attention and in the North many confirmed Brown s conviction that he was a martyr Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Henry David Thoreau were among the writers who praised the raid Thoreau called Brown a crucified hero and an angel of light Preachers in the North gave sermons that honored Brown s sacrifice In Lawrence Kansas back where Brown first made a name for himself a newspaper editor wrote that the death of no man in America has ever produced so profound a sensation The response in the South was understandably quite different Many noted with pleasure that few slaves responded to Brown s call This proved they argued that slaves were happy in their condition and didn t want to be free To others Brown s raid confirmed that abolitionists were fanatics who would stop at nothing to see slavery eradicated Furthermore it was now clear that conspiratorial groups like the Secret Six were funding them More and more Southerners spoke seriously of secession On December 2 of 1859 a wagon carried Brown to the gallows surrounded by a heavy guard to prevent any attempt at a rescue Among them was Thomas Jackson who would during the Civil War earn the nickname Stonewall fighting in as a general in the Confederate army A deeply religious man Jackson prayed for Brown s soul as he watched him approach the scaffold The Virginia militia was also present It included a young man named John Wilkes Booth whose feelings were quite different from Jackson s he was eagerly looking forward to seeing the traitorous abolitionist hanged Before he was fitted with the noose Brown looked out to the landscape all around him Very composedly he remarked This is a beautiful country I never had the pleasure of seeing it before Chapter 37 Forever Free In 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War neither the Confederacy nor the Union would have admitted out loud that the war was about slavery either to end it or preserve it For the states of the Confederacy it was about defending their right to make their own laws For the Union it was about keeping the country together As President Lincoln wrote in a letter to a newspaper editor in 1862 My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and it is not either to save or destroy slavery If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that The fact that Lincoln would have to explain himself revealed that whatever he or anyone else said the underlying cause of the conflict was indeed slavery What else after all had the North and South been bickering about for the past forty years Lincoln had understandable reasons for downplaying the significance of slavery When the war began he hoped to end it quickly and reconcile with the Confederacy if Lincoln made slavery s abolition a condition of peace there would be no peace Also several slave states the border 77

states of Missouri Kentucky Delaware and Maryland had sided with the Union Lincoln couldn t risk upsetting them and losing them to the Confederacy denying the Union potential soldiers and resources That his army was not performing very well didn t help matters a losing army could hardly free anyone The situation improved some for Lincoln on September 17 1862 when the Union army under General George McClellen clashed with Confederate General Robert E Lee s forces near the town of Sharpsburg Maryland The battle began at dawn and continued for twelve brutal hours over the undulating farmland More than 100 000 men total fought in the titanic battle and more than 22 000 of them became casualties It was the bloodiest single day of the war and it still ranks as the bloodiest day in American history Neither side could claim a clear victory but since Lee s army retreated at the end of the day McClellen could at least say that he held the field The Battle of Antietem as Sharpsburg was called in the North gave Lincoln the chance he sought to direct the war s purpose towards ending slavery It had grown to be in many ways a necessity for winning the war Great Britain was considering entering the war on the Confederacy s side but slavery was unpopular enough there that if Lincoln made ending it a goal of the war they would likely stay on the sidelines Also any loss of slave labor would hurt the Confederacy s overall strength and help the Union army s cause And at this point after more than a year of ferocious fighting it was clear that reconciliation was not going to happen soon or easily Lincoln was a practical man and he saw the sense in now making the war about ending slavery Therefore shortly after Antietem Lincoln announced that as of January 1 all slaves under Confederate control would be forever free This did not include slaves in border states or slaves in lands that the Union army currently controlled which wasn t much Nevertheless as expected Great Britain s wavering came to an end and they decided to stay out of the war As a direct result of the Proclamation no slaves were actually freed the areas affected were in the Confederacy and no one recognized Lincoln as the president there However as the news trickled south many slaves chose to make their escape journey north and take refuge behind Union lines Over the course of the war thousands of slaves would secure their own freedom in this way The Emancipation Proclamation also gave the Confederacy a new incentive to fight The end of slavery would end life as they knew it even for those who did not own slaves which was most people It may seem strange to us that the average Johnny Reb would risk his life to defend a system and a right that he did not enjoy but even if he didn t own any slaves a poor white farmer in the South could at least hope that some day he would have wealth enough to do so Like most Americans from any part of the country at any time in our history Southerners didn t want any President telling them how to live their lives especially one like Lincoln who was so offensive to them that he hadn t even been included on Southern ballots in the 1860 presidential election Besides hadn t the Rebels been whipping the Yankees over the last year and a half Summing up Southern feelings Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy called the Emancipation Proclamation the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man In the North the response to the Emancipation Proclamation was not much better Abolitionists of course were elated but they were in the minority Even though slavery was illegal in the North blacks faced all kinds of discrimination and racism Only six free states allowed blacks to vote Many soldiers didn t want to fight for blacks who might now compete for jobs after the war Volunteers for the army plummeted and eventually in order to find enough soldiers Lincoln had to instate the nation s first draft One group was now eager to enlist African Americans Some had already seen service in the army and navy but now they were actively recruited Frederick Douglass the former slave turned abolitionist led the way in organizing two of the first and most famous regiments the 54th and 55th 78

Massachusetts Over the next two years over 190 000 African Americans about ten percent of the total number of Union soldiers would serve in the war The rigors of training and the risks of battle made the soldier s life hard enough but for African Americans it was even harder Their pay was less than the pay for whites and white regiments often didn t want to work with them The very fact that there had to be segregation into black and white regiments shows just how deeply racism ran Meanwhile blacks were placed under the command of white officers and only over time were any blacks promoted At first AfricanAmerican regiments were only given labor duty and were not sent into battle The prevailing opinion among military leadership was that whites were superior to blacks in combat On July 18 1863 the 54th Massachusetts got a chance to prove these white leaders wrong As part of an army besieging Fort Wagner located on the coast outside Charleston South Carolina they volunteered to lead an early morning assault on the fort s walls It was a costly way to make their point but they did it suffering fifty percent casualties they stormed and held a part of the fort for an hour before being forced to retreat In terms of land the 54th gained no ground the ground they gained was of a different kind After Fort Wagner the Union generals increasingly included African American regiments in key battles and roles During the war sixteen black soldiers won the army Medal of Honor and eight sailors won the Navy Medal of Honor Not surprisingly the Confederate treated African American soldiers with little respect Many black soldiers were former slaves and if captured they were often returned to their former owners Sometimes they were simply treated like traitors and shot The most notorious incident occurred at Fort Pillow Tennessee The Union account of it was that after a tough fight their soldiers who had been defending the garrison had surrendered They should have therefore been taken peacefully as prisoners When Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest s men entered the fort however they singled out the black soldiers and murdered them Among black regiments Remember Fort Pillow became a rallying cry in battle The Emancipation Proclamation admitted what everyone had been trying to avoid saying the North and South were at war over slavery Unintentionally it also exposed something that Americans from both regions North and South held in common racism When the war to end slavery was over the war to end that injustice had only begun Chapter 38 High Water Mark of the Confederacy By the summer of 1863 the Union states of the North and the Confederate states of the South had struggled through two years of bloody civil war Although the two armies had fought battles all over the South Virginia was the most critical state and therefore the most contested As a result Virginia had suffered the most Farmland roads and towns were torn up and food clothing and other supplies were depleted Confederate general Robert E Lee decided that a new tactic was needed The new tactic was an invasion of the North Only that way Lee reasoned would Northerners see the horrors and pain of war up close If they did they might give up and let the South go its own way peacefully He also hoped to feed his hungry troops on Yankee beef and corn So in June of 1863 he marched his army of 60 000 north across Maryland and into Pennsylvania Meanwhile the Union army was going through another leadership change President Abraham Lincoln had been unhappy with the performance of three previous head generals and he had fired them all Now the job was given to General George Meade a serious thoughtful man and a 79

good soldier He was also however somewhat bland and modest and in contrast to Lee he did not inspire a great deal of affection in his troops When he was informed of his promotion Meade gloomily commented Well I ve been tried and condemned without a hearing and I suppose I shall have to go to the execution So as Lee s army marched north through the valleys of Pennsylvania gathering food along the way Meade and his army of over 90 000 pursued looking for a suitable place to engage battle On July 1 the vanguards of the two armies met just to the northwest of a small Pennsylvania college town named Gettysburg Both sides were a little caught off guard and disorganized and the scattered fighting during this first day showed it As more divisions of soldiers arrived the battle s size grew in size and took clearer shape The Confederates did well at first pushing the Union army back through the town and gaining control of the battlefield However in the process the Union army established a strong defensive position on top of Cemetery Ridge just to the southeast of town This would prove important By the next day more troops from both sides had arrived and taken fixed positions The Union army was spread out in a fishhook shape across three miles on the high ground The Confederate army was distributed around the north and western sides of the hook looking up at them The center of their lines was cloaked in forest Farmland filled most of the open space between the two armies Lee focused his energies on the two ends of the fishhook On the northern end the attack developed slowly and little progress was made On the southern end where the terrain is very thickly forested and in places quite rocky his troops did much better They bravely fought their way through the terrain and up the hills In this assault Colonel William Oates s 15th Alabama regiment stood out The goal was to take a hill called Little Round Top If they reached it Confederate cannons would be able to fire along the Union lines to the north creating havoc and possibly securing victory If not for the quick and decisive leadership of Union Colonel Strong Vincent Oates may have succeeded From his hilltop position Vincent saw that the Confederates were outflanking the Union defense Against his orders he rushed his brigade south over a half mile to Little Round Top where they took up positions among the rocks and trees The fighting was hot some of the hottest of the battle Oates s Alabamians fought with determination and grit steadily pushing up the hill even as bullets whizzed all around them Holding the end of the Union line was the 20th Maine regiment under the command of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain Oates s men made several charges up the hill but the 20th Maine repulsed them each time This went on for a long bloody hour Little more than thirty yards separated them The 15th Alabama though exhausted and thirsty began one more desperate charge Meanwhile the 20th Maine was practically out of bullets Thinking on his feet Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge down hill Oates s men who had no more left to give turned and ran like a herd of wild cattle according to Oates Vincent Chamberlain and the 20th Maine had saved the end of the line for the Union but in other parts of the battle Union leaders had made poor decisions that caused many unnecessary casualties and near disaster Attacking a foe in a superior position the Confederate army had performed well overall They had not gained much ground but they had fought bravely and spirits were high in camp As the sun set and the armies tended to their dead and wounded the battle s outcome was uncertain On the third day of battle Lee decided to risk a big bold stroke that he hoped would dislodge Meade s army from Cemetery Ridge He began by concentrating fire from his one hundred fifty or so cannons on the center of the Union lines After a few hours of softening them up Lee commanded 80

General George Pickett to lead the better part of three divisions around 13 000 men towards the same location It was about three o clock on a hot afternoon almost ninety degrees when the Confederate columns extended in a line of almost a mile in width marched out of their forested position About five hundred yards laid out in a gentle rising slope separated them from the Union lines on top of the ridge A few fences farm buildings and a road broke up the fields but it was otherwise open land The Union soldiers waited for them some in trenches and some behind a low stone wall that ran along the top of the ridge As the Confederate army came within range the Union army began pouring down heavy fire upon them When Confederates at the front fell others moved up to take their places As they neared the top of the hill the three divisions concentrated their numbers on a small grove of trees that stood out on the horizon behind the stone wall At the front Confederate General Lew Armistead pierced his sword through his hat and lifted it above his head to make an improvised flag Nearing the wall at the top of the ridge he turned to his men and yelled Come on boys give them the cold steel Who will follow me With that Confederate troops surged over the wall A frenzied melee followed Armistead s men ripped into the Union line and it looked like they might split it More and more Confederate soldiers pushed through the gap Union troops swarmed around them Meade s forces in that location were under the direct command of General Winfield Hancock It is one of the war s many ironies that he was a good friend of Armistead the man leading the enemy against him Hancock s men responded vigorously and efficiently collapsing upon the Rebels and battering them with rifle and cannon fire Armistead fell mortally wounded and many of his men fell with him The Confederate attack though courageous and spirited was not enough and the Union troops sealed up the gap in their line making prisoners of those not already killed Against such a smothering defense the only option for the remaining Confederate army was retreat In that one hour of battle known as Pickett s Charge Lee s army suffered 6 500 casualties a fifty percent rate The Union army had lost 1 500 casualties At the end of the day the winner of the Battle of Gettysburg was clear Lee could have elected to fight again the next day which happened to be in another irony the Fourth of July He thought though that he had lost too many men already and that the cost of staying would be too high He gave the command to decamp and return to Virginia Though victorious the Union army was also shattered from the three days of brutal warfare It would take months to care for all the wounded and bury the dead Under the circumstances Meade considered pursuit impossible and he let Lee s army slip away Lincoln was critical of this decision and it is possible that had Meade pursued Lee more aggressively the war would have ended sooner than it did The war continued for nearly two more years and Lee never hazarded another invasion He went back to the strategy of trying to wear down the Union army in Virginia Some have called Gettysburg and specifically Pickett s Charge the high water mark of the Confederacy That is it was the closest the South came to achieving their goal of victory and independence Which raises the question What if Pickett s Charge had succeeded 81

Chapter 39 The Angel of the Battlefield There were many ways to get hurt or killed in the Civil War On the battlefield of course bullets and cannonballs are constantly whizzing all around and their was the occasional bayonet charge or hand to hand fighting with sabers knives and fists If a bullet hit someone next to you you could get pierced by flying bone fragments After the battle was over you still weren t safe Even if you finished the day unscarred you would likely be suffering from thirst hunger heat stroke or a lack of decent shoes if you had any shoes at all Illnesses like dysentery typhoid pneumonia and small pox were common in camp In fact more soldiers died off the battlefield than on it Medical care was by our standards crude Morphine and laudanum were available as pain killers but one could easily become addicted to them Most other medications had little effect If you were shot in the torso you would likely die because doctors did not have medicine to prevent infections If you were hit in a limb amputation was likely In that case at least Civil War doctors could offer the latest in anesthesia ether or chloroform If they were out of supplies though you were dosed with whiskey and given a leather strap or two bullets to bite down on This is where the saying bite the bullet comes from Many soldiers understandably chose to hide their wounds rather than go to a doctor With so many ailing men nurses were badly needed Most were women volunteers They assisted the doctors and tended convalescents Not only did this include the obvious duties of changing bandages serving food and administering medication but also it meant sitting beside the soldiers and keeping them company Just having someone to talk to or pray with comforted many men Those who were illiterate or too injured often asked nurses to write letters home Frequently the last letter a family received from their husband or son was one written by a battlefield nurse Nursing was almost as risky as battle itself By necessity hospital tents were close to the battlefield and stray bullets or cannonballs could come flying through Also since you were working with so many sick or infected men it was easy to contract something The smell from the dead the wounded and the stacks of amputated limbs was nightmarish and the screams and moans of the injured and dying were possibly even worse The most famous nurse of the Civil War was Clara Barton When she was younger Barton had been a teacher and head of school In the years right before the war she was working in a federal government position she was one of the first women to hold a government job Her success was not without setbacks though she was removed as head of school because she was a woman and her anti slavery views cost her the government job In the second year of the war she was back working for the government President Lincoln s government shared her anti slavery views but her religious convictions soon compelled her to leave the post and offer her services as a battlefield nurse Spending her own money she was later reimbursed Barton purchased supplies and recruited other women to join her She organized and deployed her nurses in the hospitals like a skilled officer A doctor said that Union General McClellan with all his laurels sinks into insignificance beside the true heroine of the age the angel of the battlefield From then on Clara Barton was known as The Angel of the Battlefield The war ended in the spring of 1865 but not Barton s work Many soldiers were missing in action and many of the dead could not be identified Barton helped lead the effort to locate count and identify the Union dead When they could make a positive identification and contact the man s family they would make arrangements for burial or transportation home This job took Barton to Andersonville the Confederate prisoner camp in Georgia where over 13 000 soldiers had died 82

After the war Barton remained interested in nursing She visited Europe to observe nursing operations there But being who she was she couldn t merely observe and during the FrancoPrussian War of 1870 she pitched in to help soldiers and civilians in France It was during this time that she learned about an organization called the Red Cross The Red Cross founded in Switzerland went into war zones and provided medical care and relief Wherever there was war in Europe they were ready Barton was impressed with their peaceful mission and the efficiency with which they went about their work When her work was done in Europe she returned to America with two ideas The first was to found an American branch of the Red Cross The other idea was to broaden the organization s mission and provide aide in response to any disaster not just war With Barton in the lead the American Red Cross prepared to meet any disaster America faced The first big opportunity came in 1889 when a devastating flood swept through Johnstown Pennsylvania The flood caused over two thousand deaths and most of the downtown area was destroyed A Red Cross team showed up soon after and for the next five months Barton personally supervised the relief work Barton remained active her entire life She continued to lead the American Red Cross until she was 83 usually accompanying her workers to the site of the disaster Besides helping victims of disasters in the United States the Red Cross under Barton s leadership provided aide to Russia during a famine in 1892 and Turkey during a Civil War in 1896 She also passionately campaigned for women s suffrage Never married she poured all her energy into her work Wars and natural disasters are often described in terms of the damage they inflict and the lives they take but each catastrophe also produces stories of lives saved Over the past one hundred and fifty years Clara Barton and the Red Cross have played a big part in many of those stories Chapter 40 A Remarkable Peace For almost two full years after the Battle of Gettysburg the Civil War raged on This may seem incredible in view of Meade s great victory and Lee s crushing loss but morale in the Army of Northern Virginia had remained high even after retreat and two other large Confederate armies were still out there fighting And Lee s invasion of the North had been successful in a one critical respect they returned to Virginia with wagonloads of food and thousands of head of livestock Lee s men had lost at Gettysburg but at least they were eating again By the spring of 1865 this was no longer true The Union s Army of the Potomac now 120 000 strong and under the command of Ulysses S Grant had applied steady implacable pressure on Lee and the 55 000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia Since the previous June the center of the action was Petersburg Virginia just south of the Confederate capital at Richmond where Grant besieged Lee Cut off from most roads that could have delivered supplies Lee s men were nearly out of food again Meanwhile Union General William Tecumsah Sherman and his troops and had rampaged across the deep South including Georgia and South Carolina capturing food and burning towns that resisted them Now that they were in North Carolina the distance between his army and Grant s was narrowing More and more of the South was held by Union troops and there was less and less for which the Confederate army could say they were fighting In Petersburg Union lines were stretching out to form a circle around the city Soldiers fought from behind earthworks and in trenches that scarred the region around the city In order to 83

have a clear view of the approaching enemy the Confederate army had cut down all trees causing the area to look even more desolate Mortar shells and mines had cratered most of what remained Both armies were battle weary The numbers of dead were staggering and with the armies entrenched any gains came at huge cost The Union army had lost more men but they had more men to lose They were better supplied with food and weapons and these were critical advantages Many of Lee s men were deserting and it seemed only a matter of time before Lee would have to surrender So when Union forces cut off the railroad south of Petersburg taking away their last major supply line Lee chose to pack up abandon the city and move his army south where he hoped to link up with a Confederate army of 20 000 under General Joseph E Johnston creating a more potent force The Union could not claim victory as long as the Confederacy was willing to fight It was a hard march for Lee s men When expected materials and rations did not arrive to resupply the troops Lee redirected his course west where he hoped to reach a railroad line All along the way Union General Philip Sheridan s Union cavalry harassed Lee s men Many times during the march battle broke out and in most of these the Union prevailed capturing prisoners weapons and supplies Lee s army was shrinking fast and those who remained were exhausted By now the Union army had them practically enveloped Lee who had faced so many previous crises in the war with calmness and control openly began to display his anguish and frustration Lee knew that the end was near but he couldn t just give up his men had fought too hard and he felt that he owed them more than that So the armies kept skirmishing their way across the fields roads and towns of Virginia Meanwhile he exchanged notes with Grant to try to negotiate terms of surrender When one last big attempt to punch through the Union army lines failed Lee sent an officer to Grant with a white flag of truce and an offer of surrender Upon receiving Lee s note Grant who had been suffering from splitting headaches instantly felt better The generals met in the parlor of a spacious home located in the country village of Appomattox Court House Lee wore his finest uniform and brought just one officer inside with him Grant wore his battle uniform still dirty from action and brought several officers each of whom represented something significant about the Union victory General Sheridan was there General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain a hero of Gettysburg and Captain Robert Todd Lincoln President Lincoln s son were also present Included in the party was Lieutenant Colonel Ely Parker Grant s Seneca Indian secretary Addressing him Lee said At least one real American is here Lee and Grant began with small talk about their shared experience fighting in the Mexican War almost twenty years before But Lee emotionally drained from four years of war could only take so much and he reminded Grant of the business at hand Grant s terms were generous Lee s men were allowed to keep their personal property and swords but they had to turn over their rifles After a special plea from Lee they were also allowed to keep their horses They had to promise to not take up arms against the United States again Lee signed to accept the terms It was April 9 1865 almost exactly four years after the Civil War had begun Lee stoically exited the house and mounted his horse Traveller Following him out Grant and his fellow officers stepped onto the porch and raised their hats in salute As he rode out Confederate soldiers mobbed and cheered Lee their hero To his men Lee was all that was good about the South Understandably as the news of surrender spread through the two camps the reactions on both sides differed Confederate soldiers wept and Union soldiers whooped and danced with delight All felt immense relief that the war was finally over Some took souvenirs An apple tree under which Lee had sat before the meeting was ripped to shreds Union officers bid for the desks and chairs Grant and Lee had used The next day the Confederate soldiers began turning over their weapons one by one stacking them in great heaps One man kissed his rifle before setting it down Most said nothing at 84

all but one said Killed Yankees as he lay down his rifle Another said I m an American Standing in their lines the Union troops saluted respectfully With good reason over the past few years these Rebels had whipped them many times Each Confederate soldier received a parole and now could go home For Virginians home was devastated Fields were neglected and picked clean barns and towns were blackened from fires roads were in tatters and there were many more cemeteries than there had been four years before It took a few more weeks before the other Confederate armies surrendered and the War came to a complete end but the two warring regions North and South though battered scarred and wary stood together again as one nation One hundred and fifty years later the peace still holds Chapter 41 Sic Semper Tyrannus John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his time In the 1850 s and 1860 s he played in theaters all over the United States especially around his home in Maryland Handsome and athletic with black wavy hair piercing eyes and a long moustache Booth looked like what you expect of a star Booth also loved his country and he was convinced that President Abraham Lincoln was ruining it When the Confederate States split from the Union and the Civil War began Booth who believed slavery to be a good thing sided with the Confederacy even though Maryland stayed in the Union When Lincoln was reelected in 1864 Booth began plotting with others to kidnap the President By the time of Lincoln s inauguration a few months later he was talking openly of assassination Then on April 14 1865 Booth the actor and Booth the patriot united in one historymaking role On April 11 three days before Booth had attended a speech of Lincoln s at the White House Lincoln expressed his opinion that with the war ending the work now was to mend the fractured nation s wounds Unlike many in the victorious North Lincoln favored treating the defeated South with benevolence not punishment He also suggested that the freed slaves be given the right to vote That means nigger citizenship said Booth to a friend next to him Now by God I ll put him through That is the last speech he ll ever give The people of Washington knew that Lincoln his wife Mary and General Grant and his wife were to attend a play at Ford s Theater on the evening of the 14th as it turned out the Grants cancelled and Major Henry Rathbone and his fianc e Clara Harris went in their place Americans and especially Lincoln needed some comic relief after four years of war Because Lincoln s attendance was expected the show sold out Booth would be there too but not to see the play That morning Booth made preparations He went up to the Presidential box which was located above and to the left of the stage The passage from the lobby to the box had two doors Booth brought a wooden bar to block entry to the inner door In the second door which leads directly to the box he drilled a small hole at eye level big enough to peep through Then he left That evening after the Lincolns had arrived Booth rode his horse to the theater and left the reins with a stagehand Booth knew the theater like a second home so he effortlessly made his way to a trap door that led below stage From there he walked under the stage to the cellar then up a ladder on the other side Next he exited the theater into an alleyway where he entered the saloon next door After brandy and small talk with the bartender he re entered the theater to mingle with those standing at the back near the Presidential box All of this careful movement had allowed him to get in position without being seen or disturbing the play Perhaps because he was absorbed in the play or as some say because he was out drinking 85

the policeman assigned to guard the door of the Presidential box did not see Booth when he slipped in Booth shut and barred the first door behind him Turning to face the second door he pulled a pistol and a dagger from his coat If he happened to look through his peephole he would have seen the Lincolns holding hands and watching the play below One of Booth s favorite roles as an actor was that of Brutus in Shakespeare s Julius Caesar Perhaps Booth like Brutus before the Ideas of March was thinking that Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream Booth was also very familiar the play a popular comedy called Our American Cousin being performed that night A moment came when the audience as he expected broke into laughter That s why he was not heard as he opened the box door stepped forward aimed his pistol at the back of Lincoln s head and fired The President slumped into his horrified wife s lap Hearing the shot Major Rathbone stood and turned to confront the assassin Booth stabbed Rathbone in the arm and stepped upon the railing from which he leapt to the stage Landing shakily he gained his footing faced the audience and pointing up to the box shouted Sic semper tyrannus Even those who didn t know Latin would recognize the meaning Thus always to tyrants it is the state motto of Virginia adopted during the American Revolution While the stunned and confused audience stared on Booth pushed aside the lone actor on stage and exited stage right Leaving the theater through the door in which he d first entered he mounted his horse and galloped away from the theater and out of town into the dark Maryland countryside Lincoln died the next morning The nation only days after celebrating the joyous news from Appomattox had new reason to grieve The government sent out Lieutenant Edward P Doherty and twenty five soldiers to capture Booth and bring him back alive Helped by co conspirators Booth had made his way to a Virginia farm where with David Herold one of those co conspirators he hid out in a barn It took twelve days to find him Led to the barn by detectives Lieutenant Doherty prepared to arrest Booth They approached in the early morning while it was still dark Fanning out around the barn they demanded that Booth and Herold come out Herold sheepishly obeyed but Booth armed and prepared to go down shooting remained defiantly inside Then Doherty ordered his men to set fire to the barn As the smoke and flames rose higher and higher Booth stumbled out holding guns in both hands One of Doherty s soldiers Sergeant Boston Corbett in spite of his orders had made up his mind that Booth would not live Acting as he believed as God s avenging agent Corbett fired on Booth hitting him in the neck Booth fell to the ground and the soldiers rushed forward to drag him away from the fire Lying on the ground Booth held to life for only a little longer Before he gave up the ghost he whispered Tell my mother that I died for my country Chapter 42 Done The steam powered locomotive was one of the inventions that made the Industrial Revolution so revolutionary The invention of the steam engine in the late 1700s had led to the invention of the steam powered locomotive by the early 1800 s By the 1840 s railroads were connecting cities and speeding up travel trade and communication all over Europe and North America By 1850 there were over 9000 miles of track laid in the United States In that year California became a state and the nation now stretched from sea to shining sea Americans began 86

to think that it would be a good idea to link its two coasts by railroad and create you might say a more perfect union Such a colossal project would require cooperation between government and business In 1862 President Lincoln granted two companies the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific the contracts to do the work The Union Pacific would begin in Omaha Nebraska and build west while the Central Pacific would begin in Sacramento California and build east They projected meeting somewhere in Utah This was not exactly half way everyone knew that the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California would slow the Central Pacific while the Central Pacific would be laying track across the relatively flat Great Plains The government paid each company in government bonds by the mile They received 16 000 per mile on flat land 32 000 per mile in foothills and 48 000 per mile in the mountains This system encouraged some hornswoggling With feigned innocence Leland Stanford one of the Big Four leaders of the Central Pacific asked the question But where do the mountains actually begin With the help of geologists he found that the western foot of the Sierra Nevada was at least fifteen miles from anything resembling a mountain But Stanford argued and the geologists agreed that the gentle slope was where the mountain began In this way the railroads obtained the higher mountain rate from the government for many miles that were basically level Making the deal even sweeter the government granted the train companies the land adjacent to the tracks This included the land immediately touching the tracks fifty yards in each direction and alternating square miles of land beyond that If you were to look at a map that showed property ownership it would look like a checkerboard the railroads owning one of the colors and the other color for everyone else Since gaining rights to the land required building track on it first there was an incentive for the railroads companies to build fast and cheaply This meant that though the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were in one sense working together in another they were competing Like rival armies they each had spies in the other s camp Construction began in 1863 The work itself was fairly simple but with teams of thousands of men working at a time it required skillful coordination First the ground was surveyed cleared and leveled Then the heavy wooden ties were laid perfectly parallel to each other across the path Two steel rails were laid perpendicular to the ties and parallel to each other Finally spikes were hammered in to fasten the rails All of this required machine like action and efficiency So that progress was steady trains had to deliver supplies on a regular schedule The workers also needed food and drink every day Directing this kind of effort required the skills of a general and not surprisingly the two men most directly involved in coordinating the Union Pacific effort Jack Casement and Grenville Dodge had both served in the Civil War as Union generals The workers were a diverse lot but most were men who had had trouble finding employment elsewhere They included Irish who worked for both companies and Chinese who worked for the Central Pacific Many in the Union Pacific were Civil War veterans When the tracks reached Utah thousands from Brigham Young s Mormon community at Salt Lake City took up the project At first the white supervisors didn t want to hire the Chinese and the Irish workers didn t want to work with them they appeared to be too small and weak Furthermore from the white perspective the Chinese wore funny clothes spoke a funny language and they ate funny things that smelled funny When Charlie Crocker one of the other Central Pacific Big Four decided partly out of necessity to give the Chinese a chance he found to his satisfaction that they were hardworking diligent and in general more effective than the white workers They built the Great Wall Crocker would argue shouldn t they be able to build a railroad Nevertheless he paid the Chinese less than whites 87

It was hard work and the conditions of the West made it even harder Construction went on year round during the blazing heat of summer and the freezing cold of winter On the Great Plains the Union Pacific had to deal with occasional Indians attacks the men had to be prepared to lay down their hammers and pick up their guns in an instant In the Sierra Nevada the Central Pacific sometimes had to plow through drifts of snow thirty feet deep They also had to frequently use picks and explosives to carve their way through the granite mountainside This work was particularly dangerous and no one except the Chinese workers were willing to do it From the cliffs above they would lower themselves by rope in hand woven baskets to the location where the blasting was needed After picking a hole in the rock to place the explosives at first they used black powder and then later on the more effective but more volatile nitroglycerin Then with extreme quickness and agility they would light the fuse scramble back up the ropes to the top of the cliff and take cover If all went well the explosion would make a cavity in the mountain and no one would be hurt or killed by the flying chunks of rock As you might imagine it didn t always go well As the two crews neared a meeting point in the northern flats of Utah the competition heated up Two miles of track in a day had been considered a decent day s work but then the Union Pacific laid four Upon hearing news of the feat the Central Pacific laid six The Union Pacific responded with eight Finally Charlie Crocker with elaborate planning pushed his men to pull off ten miles in a day To do it the men had to practically run when carrying the ties and rails to their places For their efforts Crocker rewarded his men with four days pay In May of 1869 the two crews converged upon Promontory Point Utah The Union Pacific had built 1086 miles and the Central Pacific 689 The heads of both companies along with many politicians and journalists rode out from the two coasts for a ceremonial linking of the lines At the ceremony Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific and Thomas Durant of the Union Pacific each picked up a mallet to hammer in the final two spikes one gold and one silver A telegraph operator stood by to signal the historic moment of completion and other operators all around the country prepared to receive the signal and announce the big news Americans everywhere waited in public squares churches and streets to hear it The spikes were dropped in their holes and Durant and Stanford gently tapped the soft spikes into place they were soon extracted and replaced by iron spikes The crowd at Promontory Point cheered The telegraph operator in Morse code tapped out Done Across America celebrations erupted Cannons were fired and church bells rang Crowds sang The Star Spangled Banner and prayers of thanksgiving were offered For the first time in their history Americans celebrated a national event at exactly the same moment Coming as it did just a few years after the horrors and divisiveness of the Civil War a peaceful and unifying achievement was welcome indeed 88

Acknowledgements Besides the sources listed below visits to several historical parks and sites helped me in writing these stories Therefore I wish to thank the staff rangers guides and living historians at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park California State Railroad Museum Colonial Williamsburg Ford s Theatre National Historic Site Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine Gettysburg National Military Park Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Historic Jamestown James Monroe s Ash Lawn Highland Jamestown Settlement Kit Carson Home and Museum Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park Thomas Jefferson s Monticello Valley Forge National Historical Park and Yorktown Battlefield I am also indebted to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History which contributed to the project through its summer seminars for teachers These courses were Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment University of Edinburgh 2017 Lewis and Clark An American Epic University of Montana 2014 and The Transatlantic Slave Trade Yale University 2010 Through these classes I benefitted from the scholarship of those who led the seminars as well as the wisdom and knowledge of fellow history teachers who were in the course with me Without the financial assistance of Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley many of the aforementioned visits to East Coast historical sites would have been possible and many of the courses would not have been attended Thank you to John Carlstroem Laura Wolff and Diana Warren for supporting me in this project by approving my requests for funds and for giving me time off to write The inspiration and advice of Robert Lacey and David Dary helped me with crafting the tales and launching the project and they made me feel welcome to the writing community in spite of my amateur status I am deeply grateful to both Bibliography Ambrose Stephen E Undaunted Courage Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West New York Touchstone 1997 Anderson Fred The War That Made America A Short History of the French and Indian War New York Viking 2004 Bernstein R B Thomas Jefferson New York Oxford University Press 2003 Bailey Thomas A and David M Kennedy The American Pageant A History of the Republic Lexington MA D C Heath 1994 Tenth Edition Bain David Haward Empire Express Building the First Transcontinental Railroad New York Penguin Books 1999 The Battle of Concord Lexington British Battles Analyzing and Documenting British Battles from the Previous Centuries BritishBattles com 2010 Web 06 Feb 2012 Botkin B A Ed A Treasury of American Folklore Stories Ballads and Traditions of 89

the People New York Crown 1944 Boyer Paul S Editor in Chief The Oxford Companion to United States History New York Oxford University Press 2001 Bradford Sarah Harriet The Moses of Her People Electronic Edition Text Corrected and Encoded by Natalia Smith University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1995 Web 06 Aug 2013 Dary David The Santa Fe Trail Its History Legends and Lore New York Alfred A Knopf 2000 Department of Military Science Lexington Concord Preliminary Study Phase Worcester Polytechnic Institute WPI Department of Military Science 4 Nov 2006 Web 6 Feb 2012 Douglass Frederick The Narrative and Selected Writings Edited by Michael Meyer New York Random House 1984 Dublin Thomas Women at Work The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell Massachusetts 1826 1860 New York Columbia University Press 1993 Ellis Joseph J Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation New York Alfred A Knopf 2000 Ellis Joseph J His Excellency George Washington New York Alfred A Knopf 2004 Forbes Esther Paul Revere and the World He Lived In New York Mariner 1999 Founder Clara Barton American Red Cross 2013 Web 15 July 2013 Fradin Dennis B Bound for the North Star True Stories of Fugitive Slaves New York Clarion 2000 Harris Matthew L and Jay H Buckley Eds Zebulon Pike Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West Norman OK University of Oklahoma Press 2012 Hine Robert V and John Mack Faragher The American West A New Interpretive History New Haven Yale University Press 2000 Horwitz Tony Midnight Rising John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War New York Henry Holt 2011 Horwitz Tony A Voyage Long and Strange New York Henry Holt 2008 90

Howe Daniel Walker What Hath God Wrought The Transformation of America 1815 1848 New York Oxford University Press 2007 Johnson Paul A History of the American People New York HarperCollins 1997 Langguth A J Patriots The Men Who Started the American Revolution New York Touchstone 1989 Lavender David The Great West Boston Houghton Mifflin 1965 Laycock George The Mountain Men The Dramatic History and Lore of the First Frontiersmen New York The Lyons Press 1996 Lincoln Abraham A Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings Edited by Don E Fehrenbacher Stanford Stanford University Press 1964 McDougall Walter A Freedom Just Around the Corner A New American History 1585 1828 New York HarperCollins 2004 McPherson James M Battle Cry of Freedom The Civil War Era New York Oxford University Press 1988 Molotsky Irvin The Flag the Poet and the Song The Story of the Star Spangled Banner Collingdale PA Diane 2003 Morgan Edmund S Benjamin Franklin New Haven Yale University Press 2002 Morgan Robert Lions of the West Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion New York Shannon Ravenel 2011 Newman Richard and Marcia Sawyer Everybody Say Freedom Everything You Need To Know About African American History New York Plume 1996 Nofi Albert A The Gettysburg Campaign June July 1863 Conshohocken PA Combined Books 1993 Revised Edition Pfanz Harry W The Battle of Gettysburg Eastern National 2006 Philbrick Nathaniel Mayflower A Story of Courage Community and War New York Viking 2006 Quinn Arthur A New World An Epic of Colonial America from the Founding of Jamestown to the Fall of Quebec London Faber and Faber 1994 The Opening Battle of a World War Fort Necessity National Battlefield 2013 Web 20 Feb 2013 Rarick Ethan Desperate Passage The Donner Party s Perilous Journey West New 91

York Oxford University Press 2008 Remini Robert V A Short History of the United States New York Harper Collins 2008 Reynolds David America Empire of Liberty A New History of the United States New York Basic Books 2009 Rolle Andrew California A History Wheeling IL Harlan Davidson 2003 Sides Hampton Blood and Thunder The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West New York Anchor 2006 Steers Jr Edward The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth Gettysburg PA Thomas Publications 1992 Stewart David O American Emperor Aaron Burr s Challenge to Jefferson s America New York Simon and Schuster 2011 Treudeau Noah A The Campaign to Appomattox Eastern National 1995 Trussell Jr John B B The Valley Forge Encampment Epic on the Schuylkill Harrisburg Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1999 Walvin James Slavery and the Slave Trade A Short Illustrated History Jackson MS University Press of Mississippi 1983 Wexler Alan Atlas of Westward Expansion New York Facts on File 1995 What Was the Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party Historical Society 2008 Web 15 March 2012 White Jr Ronald C A Lincoln New York Random House 2009 92

93

94

95