The Beginner's American History

187. Jefferson is chosen President of the United States; what he said about New Orleans.—A number of years after the war was over Jefferson was chosen President of the United States; while he was President he did something for the country which will never be forgotten.

Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, with the lower part of the Mississippi River, then belonged to the French; for at that time the United States only reached west as far as the Mississippi River. Now as New Orleans stands near the mouth of that river, the French could say, if they chose, what vessels should go out to sea, and what should come in. So far, then, as that part of America was concerned, we were like a man who owns a house while another man owns one of the doors to it. The man who has the door could say to the owner of the house, I shall stand here on the steps, and you must pay me so many dollars every time you go out and every time you come in this way.

188. Jefferson buys New Orleans and Louisiana for the United States.—Mr. Robert R. Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was in France at that time, and Jefferson sent over to him to see if he could buy New Orleans for the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte[5] then ruled France. He said, I want money to purchase war-ships with, so that I can fight England; I will sell not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana besides, for fifteen millions of dollars. That was cheap enough, and so in 1803 President Jefferson bought it.

6 See map in this paragraph, and compare map in paragraph 187.

189. Death of Jefferson; the words cut on his gravestone.—Jefferson lived to be an old man. He died at Monticello on the Fourth of July, 1826, just fifty years, to a day, after he had signed the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, who had been President next before Jefferson, died a few hours later. So America lost two of her great men on the same day.

Jefferson was buried at Monticello. He asked to have these words, with some others, cut on his gravestone:—

190. Summary.—Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote the Declaration of Independence. After he became President of the United States, he bought Louisiana for us. The purchase of Louisiana, with New Orleans, gave us the right to send our ships to sea by way of the Mississippi River, which now belonged to us. Louisiana added so much land that it more than doubled the size of the United States.

Before Whitney invented his cotton-gin how much cotton did we send abroad? How much do we send from New Orleans now? Did we own New Orleans or Louisiana when Whitney invented his cotton-gin? Who bought them for us? Who was Thomas Jefferson? What is said about Monticello? Tell how Jefferson's slaves welcomed him home. For what profession was Jefferson educated? Tell about Patrick Henry. What did he say? What did Washington and Jefferson do? What did Jefferson write? What was he called? How was the Declaration sent to all parts of the country? What was Jefferson chosen to be? To whom did New Orleans and Louisiana then belong? How far did the United States then extend towards the west? What could the French say? What were we like? What did Jefferson say? Did we buy it? How much did we pay? How large was Louisiana then? How much land did we get? What else did we get? When did Jefferson die? What other great man died on the same day? What words did Jefferson have cut on his gravestone at Monticello?

191. What Mr. Livingston said about Louisiana; a small family in a big house; settlements in the west; the country beyond the Mississippi River.—Even before we bought the great Louisiana country, we had more land than we then knew what to do with; after we had purchased it, it seemed to some people as though we should not want to use what we had bought for more than a hundred years. Such people thought that we were like a man with a small family who lives in a house much too large for him; but who, not contented with that, buys his neighbor's house, which is bigger still, and adds it to his own.

If a traveller in those days went across the Alleghany Mountains[1] to the west, he found some small settlements in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but hardly any outside of those. What are now the great states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were then a wilderness; and this was also true of what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi.

If the same traveller, pushing forward, on foot or on horseback,—for there were no steam cars,—crossed the Mississippi River, he could hardly find a white man outside what was then the little town of St. Louis. The country stretched away west for more than a thousand miles, with nothing in it but wild beasts and Indians. In much of it there were no trees, no houses, no human beings. If you shouted as hard as you could in that solitary land, the only reply you would hear would be the echo of your own voice; it was like shouting in an empty room—it made it seem lonelier than ever.

1 See map in paragraph 140.

192. Emigration to the west, and the man who helped that emigration.—But during the last hundred years that great empty land of the far west has been filling up with people. Thousands upon thousands of emigrants have gone there. They have built towns and cities and railroads and telegraph lines. Thousands more are going and will go. What has made such a wonderful change? Well, one man helped to do a great deal toward it. His name was Robert Fulton. He saw how difficult it was for people to get west; for if emigrants wanted to go with their families in wagons, they had to chop roads through the forest. That was slow, hard work. Fulton found a way that was quick, easy, and cheap. Let us see who he was, and how he found that way.

193. Robert Fulton's boyhood; the old scow; what Robert did for his mother.—Robert Fulton was the son of a poor Irish farmer in Pennsylvania.[2] He did not care much for books, but liked to draw pictures with pencils which he hammered out of pieces of lead.

Like most boys, he was fond of fishing. He used to go out in an old scow, or flat-bottomed boat, on a river near his home. He and another boy would push the scow along with poles. But Robert said, There is an easier way to make this boat go. I can put a pair of paddle-wheels on her, and then we can sit comfortably on the seat and turn the wheels by a crank. He tried it, and found that he was right. The boys now had a boat which suited them exactly.

When Robert was seventeen, he went to Philadelphia. His father was dead, and he earned his living and helped his mother and sisters, by painting pictures. He staid in Philadelphia until he was twenty-one. By that time he had saved up money enough to buy a small farm for his mother, so that she might have a home of her own.

2 Fulton was born in Little Britain (now called Fulton) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. See map in paragraph 135.

194. Fulton goes to England and to France; his iron bridges; his diving-boat, and what he did with it in France.—Soon after buying the farm for his mother, young Fulton went to England and then to France. He staid in those countries twenty years. In England Fulton built some famous iron bridges, but he was more interested in boats than in anything else.

While he was in France he made what he called a diving-boat. It would go under water nearly as well as it would on top, so that wherever a fish could go, Fulton could follow him. His object in building such a boat was to make war in a new way. When a swordfish[3] attacks a whale, he slips round under him and stabs the monster with his sword. Fulton said, 'If an enemy's war-ship should come into the harbor to do mischief, I can get into my diving-boat, slip under the ship, fasten a torpedo[4] to it, and blow the ship "sky high."'

Napoleon Bonaparte liked nothing so much as war, and he let Fulton have an old vessel to see if he could blow it up. He tried it, and everything happened as he expected: nothing was left of the vessel but the pieces.

3 Swordfish: the name given to a large fish which has a sword-like weapon, several feet in length, projecting from its upper jaw.

4 Torpedo: here a can filled with powder, and so constructed that it could be fastened to the bottom of a vessel.

195. What Fulton did in England with his diving-boat; what he said about America.—Then Fulton went back to England and tried the same thing there. He went out in his diving-boat and fastened a torpedo under a vessel, and when the torpedo exploded, the vessel, as he said, went up like a "bag of feathers," flying in all directions.

The English people paid Fulton seventy-five thousand dollars for showing them what he could do in this way. Then they offered to give him a great deal more—in fact, to make him a very rich man—if he would promise never to let any other country know just how he blew vessels up. But Fulton said, 'I am an American; and if America should ever want to use my diving-boat in war, she shall have it first of all.'

196. Fulton makes his first steamboat.—But while Fulton was doing these things with his diving-boat, he was always thinking of the paddle-wheel scow he used to fish in when a boy. I turned those paddle-wheels by a crank, said he, but what is to hinder my putting a steam engine into such a boat, and making it turn the crank for me? that would be a steamboat. Such boats had already been tried, but, for one reason or another, they had not got on very well. Robert R. Livingston was still in France, and he helped Fulton build his first steamboat. It was put on a river there; it moved, and that was about all.

197. Robert Fulton and Mr. Livingston go to New York and build a steamboat; the trip up the Hudson River.—But Robert Fulton and Mr. Livingston both believed that a steamboat could be built that would go, and that would keep going. So they went to New York and built one there.

In the summer of 1807 a great crowd gathered to see the boat start on her voyage up the Hudson River. They joked and laughed as crowds will at anything new. They called Fulton a fool and Livingston another. But when Fulton, standing on the deck of his steamboat, waved his hand, and the wheels began to turn, and the vessel began to move up the river, then the crowd became silent with astonishment. Now it was Fulton's turn to laugh, and in such a case the man who laughs last has a right to laugh the loudest.

Up the river Fulton kept going. He passed the Palisades;[5] he passed the Highlands;[6] still he kept on, and at last he reached Albany, a hundred and fifty miles above New York.

Nobody before had ever seen such a sight as that boat moving up the river without the help of oars or sails; but from that time people saw it every day. When Fulton got back to New York in his steamboat, everybody wanted to shake hands with him—the crowd, instead of shouting fool, now whispered among themselves, He's a great man—a very great man, indeed.

5 See map in paragraph 55.

6 See map in paragraph 55.

198. The first steamboat in the west; the Great Shake.—Four years later Fulton built a steamboat for the west. In the autumn of 1811 it started from Pittsburg[7] to go down the Ohio River, and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The people of the west had never seen a steamboat before, and when the Indians saw the smoke puffing out, they called it the "Big Fire Canoe."

On the way down the river there was a terrible earthquake. In some places it changed the course of the Ohio so that where there had been dry land there was now deep water, and where there had been deep water there was now dry land. One evening the captain of the "Big Fire Canoe" fastened his vessel to a large tree on the end of an island. In the morning the people on the steamboat looked out, but could not tell where they were; the island had gone: the earthquake had carried it away. The Indians called the earthquake the "Big Shake": it was a good name, for it kept on shaking that part of the country, and doing all sorts of damage for weeks.

7 Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 135.

199. The "Big Fire Canoe" on the Mississippi; the fight between steam and the Great River; what steamboats did; Robert Fulton's grave.—When the steamboat reached the Mississippi, the settlers on that river said that the boat would never be able to go back, because the current is so strong. At one place a crowd had gathered to see her as she turned against the current, in order to come up to the landing-place. An old negro stood watching the boat. It looked as if in spite of all the captain could do she would be carried down stream, but at last steam conquered, and the boat came up to the shore. Then the old negro could hold in no longer: he threw up his ragged straw hat and shouted, 'Hoo-ray! hoo-ray! the old Mississippi's just got her master this time, sure!'

Soon steamboats began to run regularly on the Mississippi, and in the course of a few years they began to move up and down the Great Lakes and the Missouri River. Emigrants could now go to the west and the far west quickly and easily: they had to thank Robert Fulton for that.

Robert Fulton lies buried in New York, in the shadow of the tower of Trinity Church. There is no monument or mark over his grave, but he has a monument in every steamboat on every great river and lake in America.

200. Summary.—In 1807 Robert Fulton of Pennsylvania built the first steamboat which ran on the Hudson River, and four years later he built the first one which navigated the rivers of the west. His boats helped to fill the whole western country with settlers.

What did Mr. Livingston say about Louisiana? What did such people think we were like? What would a traveller going west then find? What is said of the country west of the Mississippi? Who helped emigration to the west? What did he find? Tell about Robert Fulton as a boy. Tell about his paddle-wheel scow. What did Robert do for his mother? Where did he go? How long did he stay abroad? Tell about his diving-boat. What did he do with it in France? What in England? What did the English people offer him? What did Fulton say? Where did Fulton make and try his first steamboat? Tell about the steamboat he made in New York. How far up the Hudson did it go? Tell about the first steamboat at the west. What did the Indians call it? What happened on the way down the Ohio River? Tell about the steamboat on the Mississippi River. What is said of steamboats at the west? What about emigrants? Where is Fulton buried? Where is his monument?

201. War with the Indians; how the Indians felt about being forced to leave their homes; the story of the log.—The year 1811, in which the first steamboat went west, a great battle was fought with the Indians. The battle-ground was on the Tippecanoe[1] River, in what is now the state of Indiana.

The Indians fought because they wanted to keep the west for themselves. They felt as an old chief did, who had been forced to move many times by the white men. One day a military officer came to his wigwam to tell him that he and his tribe must go still further west. The chief said, General, let's sit down on this log and talk it over. So they both sat down. After they had talked a short time, the chief said, Please move a little further that way; I haven't room enough. The officer moved along. In a few minutes the chief asked him to move again, and he did so. Presently the chief gave him a push and said, Do move further on, won't you? I can't, said the general. Why not? asked the chief. Because I've got to the end of the log, replied the officer. Well, said the Indian, now you see how it is with us. You white men have kept pushing us on until you have pushed us clear to the end of our country, and yet you come now and say, Move on, move on.

1 Tippecanoe (Tip-pe-ka-noo'): see map in this paragraph.

202. What Tecumseh[2] and his brother, the "Prophet,"[3] tried to do.—A famous Indian warrior named Tecumseh determined to band the different Indian tribes together, and drive out the white men from the west.

Tecumseh had a brother called the "Prophet," who pretended he could tell what would happen in the future. He said, The white traders come here, give the Indians whiskey, get them drunk, and then cheat them out of their lands. Once we owned this whole country; now, if an Indian strips a little bark off of a tree to shelter him when it rains, a white man steps up, with a gun in his hand, and says, That's my tree; let it alone, or I'll shoot you.

Then the "Prophet" said to the red men, Stop drinking "fire-water,"[4] and you will have strength to kill off the "pale-faces" and get your land back again. When you have killed them off, I will bless the earth. I will make pumpkins[5] grow to be as big as wigwams, and the corn shall be so large that one ear will be enough for a dinner for a dozen hungry Indians. The Indians liked to hear these things; they wanted to taste those pumpkins and that corn, and so they got ready to fight.

2 Tecumseh (Te-kum'seh).

3 Prophet (prof'et): one who tells what will happen in the future.

4 Fire-water: the Indian name for whiskey.

5 Pumpkins (pump'kins).

203. Who William Henry Harrison was; the march to Tippecanoe; the "Prophet's" sacred beans; the battle of Tippecanoe.—At this time William Henry Harrison[6] was governor of Indiana territory. He had fought under General Wayne[7] in his war with the Indians in Ohio. Everybody knew Governor Harrison's courage, and the Indians all respected him; but he tried in vain to prevent the Indians from going to war. The "Prophet" urged them on at the north, and Tecumseh had gone south to persuade the Indians there to join the northern tribes.

Governor Harrison saw that a battle must soon be fought; so he started with his soldiers to meet the Indians. He marched to the Tippecanoe River, and there he stopped.

While Harrison's men were asleep in the woods, the "Prophet" told the Indians not to wait, but to attack the soldiers at once. In his hand he held up a string of beans. These beans, said he to the Indians, are sacred.[8] Come and touch them, and you are safe; no white man's bullet can hit you. The Indians hurried up in crowds to touch the wonderful beans.

Now, said the "Prophet," let each one take his hatchet in one hand and his gun in the other, and creep through the tall grass till he gets to the edge of the woods. The soldiers lie there fast asleep; when you get close to them, spring up and at them like a wild-cat at a rabbit.

The Indians started to do this, but a soldier on guard saw the tall grass moving as though a great snake was gliding through it. He fired his gun at the moving grass; with a yell up sprang the whole band of Indians, and rushed forward: in a moment the battle began.

Harrison won the victory. He not only killed many of the Indians, but he marched against their village, set fire to it, and burned it to ashes.

After that the Indians in that part of the country would not listen to the "Prophet." They said, He is a liar; his beans didn't save us.

The battle of Tippecanoe did much good, because it prevented the Indian tribes from uniting and beginning a great war all through the west. Governor Harrison received high praise for what he had done, and was made a general in the United States army.

6 William Henry Harrison was born in Berkeley, Charles City County, Virginia, about twenty-five miles below Richmond. His father, Governor Harrison of Virginia, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

7 See paragraph 173.

8 Sacred: something holy, or set apart for religious uses.

204. Tecumseh takes the "Prophet" by the hair; the War of 1812; General Harrison's battle in Canada; President Harrison.—When Tecumseh came back from the south, he was terribly angry with his brother for fighting before he was ready to have him begin. He seized the "Prophet" by his long hair, and shook him as a terrier[9] shakes a rat. Tecumseh then left the United States and went to Canada to help the British, who were getting ready to fight us.

The next year (1812) we began our second war with England. It is called the War of 1812. One of the chief reasons why we fought was that the British would not let our merchant ships alone; they stopped them at sea, took thousands of our sailors out of them, and forced the men to serve in their war-ships in their battles against the French.

In the course of the War of 1812 the British burned the Capitol at Washington; but a grander building rose from its ashes. General Harrison fought a battle in Canada in which he defeated the British and killed Tecumseh, who was fighting on the side of the English.

Many years after this battle, the people of the west said, We must have the "Hero of Tippecanoe" for President of the United States. They went to vote for him with songs and shouts, and he was elected. A month after he had gone to Washington, President Harrison died (1841), and the whole country was filled with sorrow.

9 Terrier (ter'ri-er): a kind of small hunting-dog.

205. Summary.—In 1811 General Harrison gained a great victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe, in Indiana. By that victory he saved the west from a terrible Indian war. In the War of 1812 with England General Harrison beat the British in a battle in Canada, and killed Tecumseh, the Indian chief who had made us so much trouble. Many years later General Harrison was elected President of the United States.

Where was a great battle fought with the Indians in 1811? How did the Indians feel about the west? Tell the story of the log. What did Tecumseh determine to do? Tell about the "Prophet." Who was William Henry Harrison? Tell about the battle of Tippecanoe. Tell about the sacred beans. What did the Indians say about the "Prophet" after the battle? What good did the battle of Tippecanoe do? What did Tecumseh do when he got back? Where did he then go? What happened in 1812? Why did we fight the British? What did General Harrison do in Canada? What did the people of the west say? How long did General Harrison live after he became President?

206. Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812; his birthplace; his school; wrestling-matches;[1] firing off the gun.—The greatest battle of our second war with England—the War of 1812—was fought by General Andrew Jackson.

He was the son of a poor emigrant who came from the North of Ireland and settled in North Carolina.[2] When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Andrew was nine years old, and his father had long been dead. He was a tall, slender, freckled-faced, barefooted boy, with eyes full of fun; the neighbors called him "Mischievous little Andy."

He went to school in a log hut in the pine woods; but he learned more things from what he saw in the woods than from the books he studied in school.

He was not a very strong boy, and in wrestling some of his companions could throw him three times out of four; but though they could get him down without much trouble, it was quite another thing to keep him down. No sooner was he laid flat on his back, than he bounded up like a steel spring, and stood ready to try again.

He had a violent[3] temper, and when, as the boys said, "Andy got mad all over," not many cared to face him. Once some of his playmates secretly loaded an old gun almost up to the muzzle, and then dared him to fire it. They wanted to see what he would say when it kicked him over. Andrew fired the gun. It knocked him sprawling; he jumped up with eyes blazing with anger, and shaking his fist, cried out, "If one of you boys laughs, I'll kill him." He looked as though he meant exactly what he said, and the boys thought that perhaps it would be just as well to wait and laugh some other day.

1 Wrestling (res'ling).

2 He settled in Union County, North Carolina, very near the South Carolina line. See map in paragraph 140. Mecklenburg Court House is in the next county west of Union County.

3 Violent: fierce, furious.

207. Tarleton's[4] attack on the Americans; how Andrew helped his mother.—When Andrew was thirteen, he learned what war means. The country was then fighting the battles of the Revolution. A British officer named Tarleton came suddenly upon some American soldiers near the place where young Jackson lived. Tarleton had so many men that the Americans saw that it was useless to try to fight, and they made no attempt to do so. The British should have taken them all prisoners; but, instead of that, they attacked them furiously, and hacked and hewed them with their swords. More than a hundred of our men were left dead, and a still larger number were so horribly wounded that they could not be moved any distance. Such an attack was not war, for war means a fair, stand-up fight; it was murder: and when the people in England heard what Tarleton had done, many cried Shame!

There was a little log meeting-house near Andrew's home, and it was turned into a hospital for the wounded men. Mrs. Jackson, with other kind-hearted women, did all she could for the poor fellows who lay there groaning and helpless. Andrew carried food and water to them. He had forgotten most of the lessons he learned at school, but here was something he would never forget.

4 Tarleton (Tarl'ton).

208. Andrew's hatred of the "red-coats";[5] Tarleton's soldiers meet their match.—From that time, when young Jackson went to the blacksmith's shop to get a hoe or a spade mended, he was sure to come back with a rude spear, or with some other weapon, which he had hammered out to fight the "red-coats" with.

Tarleton said that no people in America hated the British so much as those who lived where Andrew Jackson did. The reason was that no other British officer was so cruel as "Butcher Tarleton," as he was called. Once, however, his men met their match. They were robbing a farm of its pigs and chickens and corn and hay. When they got through carrying things off, they were going to burn down the farm-house; but one of the "red-coats," in his haste, ran against a big hive of bees and upset it. The bees were mad enough. They swarmed down on the soldiers, got into their ears and eyes, and stung them so terribly that at last the robbers were glad to drop everything and run. If Andrew could have seen that battle, he would have laughed till he cried.

5 Red-coats: this nickname was given by the Americans to the British soldiers because they wore bright red coats.

209. Dangerous state of the country; the roving bands.—Andrew knew that he and his mother lived in constant danger. Part of the people in his state were in favor of the king, and part were for liberty. Bands of armed men, belonging sometimes to one side, and sometimes to the other, went roving about the country. When they met a farmer, they would stop him and ask, 'Which side are you for?' If he did not answer to suit them, the leader of the party would cry out, Hang him up! In an instant one of the band would cut down a long piece of wild grapevine, twist it into a noose, and throw it over the man's head; the next moment he would be dangling from the limb of a tree. Sometimes the band would let him down again; sometimes they would ride on and leave him hanging there.

210. Playing at battle; what Tarleton heard about himself.—Even the children saw and heard so much of the war that was going on that they played at war, and fought battles with red and white corn,—red for the British and white for the Americans.

At the battle of Cowpens[6] Colonel William Washington[7] fought on the American side, and Tarleton got badly whipped and had to run. Not long afterward he happened to see some boys squatting on the ground, with a lot of corn instead of marbles. They were playing the battle of Cowpens. A red kernel stood for Tarleton, and a white one for Colonel Washington. The boys shoved the corn this way and that; sometimes the red would win, sometimes the white. At last the white kernel gained the victory, and the boys shouted, "Hurrah for Washington—Tarleton runs!"

Tarleton had been quietly looking on without their knowing it. When he saw how the game ended, he turned angrily away. He had seen enough of "the little rebels,"[8] as he called them.

6 Cowpens: see paragraph 140.

7 Colonel William Washington was a relative of General George Washington.

8 Rebels: this was the name which the British gave to the Americans because we had been forced to take up arms to overthrow the authority of the English king, who was still lawfully, but not justly, the ruler of this country. Had he been a just and upright ruler, there would probably have been no rebellion against his authority at that time.

211. Andrew is taken prisoner by the British; "Here, boy, clean those boots"; the two scars.—Not long after our victory at Cowpens, Andrew Jackson was taken prisoner by the British. The officer in command of the soldiers had just taken off his boots, splashed with mud. Pointing to them, he said to Andrew, Here, boy, clean those boots. Andrew replied, Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and it is not my place to clean boots. The officer, in a great passion, whipped out his sword and struck a blow at the boy. It cut a gash on his head and another on his hand. Andrew Jackson lived to be an old man, but the marks of that blow never disappeared: he carried the scars to his grave.

212. The prisoners in the yard of Camden jail; seeing a battle through a knot-hole.—Andrew was sent with other prisoners to Camden, South Carolina,[9] and shut up in the jail-yard. There many fell sick and died of small-pox.

One day some of the prisoners heard that General Greene—the greatest American general in the Revolution, next to Washington—was coming to fight the British at Camden. Andrew's heart leaped for joy, for he knew that if General Greene should win he would set all the prisoners at liberty.

General Greene, with his little army, was on a hill in sight Of the jail, but there was a high, tight board fence round the jail-yard, and the prisoners could not see them. With the help of an old razor Andrew managed to dig out a knot from one of the boards. Through that knot-hole he watched the battle.

Our men were beaten in the fight, and Andrew saw their horses, with empty saddles, running wildly about. Then the boy turned away, sick at heart. Soon after that he was seized with the small-pox, and would have died of it if his mother had not succeeded in getting him set free.

9 Camden: see map in paragraph 140.

213. Mrs. Jackson goes to visit the American prisoners at Charleston; Andrew loses his best friend; what he said of her.—In the summer Mrs. Jackson made a journey on horseback to Charleston, a hundred and sixty miles away. She went to carry some little comforts to the poor American prisoners, who were starving and dying of disease in the crowded and filthy British prison-ships in the harbor. While visiting these unfortunate men she caught the fever which raged among them. Two weeks later she was in her grave, and Andrew, then a lad of fourteen, stood alone in the world.

Years afterward, when he had risen to be a noted man, people would sometimes praise him because he was never afraid to say and do what he believed to be right; then Jackson would answer, "That I learned from my good old mother."

214. Andrew begins to learn a trade; he studies law and goes west; Judge Jackson; General Jackson.—Andrew set to work to learn the saddler's trade, but gave it up and began to study law. After he became a lawyer he went across the mountains to Nashville, Tennessee. There he was made a judge. There were plenty of rough men in that part of the country who meant to have their own way in all things; but they soon found that they must respect and obey Judge Jackson. They could frighten other judges, but it was no use to try to frighten him. Seeing what sort of stuff Jackson was made of, they thought that they should like to have such a man to lead them in battle. And so Judge Andrew Jackson became General Andrew Jackson. When trouble came with the Indians, Jackson proved to be the very man they needed.