Part 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865).

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

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

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

244. The Lincoln family move to Indiana; "Abe" helps his father build a new home; what it was like.--Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809, in a log shanty on a lonely little farm in Kentucky. When "Abe," as he was called, was seven years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln, moved, with his family, to Indiana; there the boy and his mother worked in the woods and helped him build a new home. That new home was not so good or so comfortable as some of our cow-sheds are. It was simply a hut made of rough logs and limbs of trees. It had no door and no windows. One side of it was left entirely open; and if a roving Indian or a bear wanted to walk in to dinner, there was nothing whatever to stop him. In winter "Abe's" mother used to hang up some buffalo skins before this wide entrance, to keep out the cold, but in summer the skins were taken down, so that living in such a cabin was the next thing to living out-of-doors.

245. The new log cabin with four sides to it; how the furniture was made; "Abe's" bed in the loft.--The Lincoln family stayed in that shed for about a year; then they moved into a new log cabin which had four sides to it. They seem to have made a new set of furniture for the new house. "Abe's" father got a large log, split it in two, smoothed off the flat side, bored holes in the under side and drove in four stout sticks for legs: that made the table. They had no chairs,--it would have been too much trouble to make the backs,--but they had three-legged stools, which Thomas Lincoln made with an axe, just as he did the table; perhaps "Abe" helped him drive in the legs.

In one corner of the loft of this cabin the boy had a big bag of dry leaves for his bed. Whenever he felt like having a new bed, all that he had to do was to go out in the woods and gather more leaves.

He worked about the place during the day, helping his father and mother. For his supper he had a piece of cornbread. After he had eaten it, he climbed up to his loft in the dark, by a kind of ladder of wooden pins driven into the logs. Five minutes after that he was fast asleep on his bed of sweet-smelling leaves, and was dreaming of hunting coons, or of building big bonfires out of brush.

246. Death of "Abe's" mother; the lonely grave in the woods; what Abraham Lincoln said of his mother after he had grown to be a man; what "Abe's" new mother said of him.--"Abe's" mother was not strong, and before they had been in their new log cabin a year she fell sick and died. She was buried on the farm. "Abe" used to go out and sit by her lonely grave in the forest and cry. It was the first great sorrow that had ever touched the boy's heart. After he had grown to be a man, he said with eyes full of tears to a friend with whom he was talking: "God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

At the end of a year Thomas Lincoln married again. The new wife that he brought home was a kind-hearted and excellent woman. She did all she could to make the poor, ragged, barefooted boy happy. After he had grown up and become famous, she said: "Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused to do anything I asked him: Abe was the best boy I ever saw."

247. The school in the woods; the new teacher; reading by the open fire; how "Abe" used the fire-shovel.--There was a log schoolhouse in the woods quite a distance off, and there "Abe" went for a short time. At the school he learned to read and write a little, but after a while he found a new teacher, that was--himself. When the rest of the family had gone to bed, he would sit up and read his favorite books by the light of the great blazing logs heaped up on the open fire. He had not more than half a dozen books in all. They were "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," AEsop's Fables, the Bible, a Life of Washington, and a small History of the United States. The boy read these books over and over till he knew a great deal of them by heart and could repeat whole pages from them.

Part of his evenings he spent in writing and ciphering. Thomas Lincoln was so poor that he could seldom afford to buy paper and pens for his son, so the boy had to get on without them. He used to take the back of the broad wooden fire-shovel to write on and a piece of charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or with sums in arithmetic, he would shave it off clean and begin over again. If "Abe's" father complained that the shovel was getting thin, the boy would go out into the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new one; for as long as the woods lasted, fire-shovels and furniture were cheap.

Moral: Don't try to be bigger than you can.]

248. What Lincoln could do at seventeen; what he was at nineteen; his strength.--By the time the lad was seventeen he could write a good hand, do hard examples in long division, and spell better than any one else in the county. Once in a while he wrote a little piece of his own about something which interested him; when the neighbors heard it read, they would say, "The world can't beat it."

At nineteen Abraham Lincoln had reached his full height. He stood nearly six feet four inches, barefooted. He was a kind of good-natured giant. No one in the neighborhood could strike an axe as deep into a tree as he could, and few, if any, were equal to him in strength. It takes a powerful man to put a barrel of flour into a wagon without help, and there is not one in a hundred who can lift a barrel of cider off the ground; but it is said that young Lincoln could stoop down, lift a barrel on to his knees, and drink from the bung-hole.

249. Young Lincoln makes a voyage to New Orleans; how he handled the robbers.--At this time a neighbor hired Abraham to go with his son to New Orleans. The two young men were to take a flat-boat loaded with corn and other produce down the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was called a voyage of about eighteen hundred miles, and it would take between three and four weeks.

Young Lincoln was greatly pleased with the thought of making such a trip. He had never been away any distance from home, and, as he told his father, he felt that he wanted to see something more of the world. His father made no objection, but, as he bade his son good by, he said, Take care that in trying to see the world you don't see the bottom of the Mississippi.

The two young men managed to get the boat through safely. But one night a gang of negroes came on board, intending to rob them of part of their cargo. Lincoln soon showed the robbers he could handle a club as vigorously as he could an axe, and the rascals, bruised and bleeding, were glad to get off with their lives.

250. The Lincolns move to Illinois; what Abraham did; hunting frolics; how Abraham chopped; how he bought his clothes.--Not long after young Lincoln's return, his father moved to Illinois. It was a two weeks' journey through the woods with ox-teams. Abraham helped his father build a comfortable log cabin; then he and a man named John Hanks split walnut rails, and fenced in fifteen acres of land for a cornfield.

That part of the country had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts. When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt. First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing; next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent. Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might. The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to the pole in the clearing; there they were shot down in heaps.

Young Lincoln was not much of a hunter, but he always tried to do his part. Yet, after all, he liked the axe better than he did the rifle. He would start off before light in the morning and walk to his work in the woods, five or six miles away. There he would chop steadily all day. The neighbors knew, when they hired him, that he wouldn't sit down on the first log he came to and fall asleep. Once when he needed a new pair of trousers, he made a bargain for them with a Mrs. Nancy Miller. She agreed to make him a certain number of yards of tow cloth, and dye it brown with walnut bark. For every yard she made, Lincoln bound himself to split four hundred good fence-rails for her. In this way he made his axe pay for all his clothes.