Other holidays were given the slaves on the Fourth of July and at Christmas time. One negro tells us about the barbecue which his master gave to him and the other slaves. “Yes, honey, dat he did gib us Fourth of July—a plenty o’ holiday—a beef kilt, a mutton, hogs, salt, pepper, an’ eberyting. He hab a gre’t trench dug, and a whole load of wood put in it an’ burned down to coals. Den dey put wooden spits across, an’ dey had spoons an’ basted de meat. An’ we ’vite all de culled people aroun’, an’ dey come, an’ we had fine times.”

The life of the slaves was sometimes hard and bitter, especially when they were in charge of a cruel overseer on a large plantation. But it was not always so. For it is pleasant to think that when they had good masters, there were many things to cheer and brighten their lives. We know that household slaves often lived in the most friendly relations with their owners.

We must pass over many of the events which took place while Washington was President, but you will very likely take them up in your later study. After serving with marked success for two terms, he again returned (1797) to private life at Mount Vernon. Here, on December 14, 1799, he died at the age of sixty-seven, loved and honored by the American people.

Let us always remember with grateful hearts the noble life of the great man who has rightly been called the “Father of his Country.”

Some Things to Think About

1. How did the people express their feeling for Washington when he was on his way to New York to be inaugurated as President?

2. Describe one of his public receptions.

3. Who were the men Washington chose to help him in his new task as President?

4. What effects did the invention of the cotton-gin have upon slavery?

5. In imagination visit some old plantations and tell what you can about slave life there.

6. Why has Washington been called the “Father of his Country”?

CHAPTER XII

INCREASING THE SIZE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC

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As with reverent thought we turn from the closing days of George Washington’s life, our interest is drawn to the career of another national hero, with whom we associate the most remarkable expansion in the area of our country.

Already through the achievements of early pioneers and settlers, such as Daniel Boone in Kentucky, John Sevier and James Robertson in Tennessee, and George Rogers Clark in the region of the Great Lakes, the country lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River had come to be a part of the United States.

But now in a very different and much easier way the territory lying beyond the Mississippi and stretching westward to the Rocky Mountains was added to the national domain. This we obtained, not by exploration or settlement, but by purchase; and the man who had most to do with our getting it was Thomas Jefferson.

The story of the purchase is most interesting, but hardly more so than the story of Thomas Jefferson himself.

He was born in 1743 near Charlottesville, Virginia, on a plantation of nearly two thousand acres. As a boy he lived an out-of-door life, hunting, fishing, swimming, or paddling his boat in the river near his home, and sometimes riding his father’s horses. He was a skilful and daring rider, and remained to the end of his long life fond of a fine horse.

He was a most promising lad. At five he entered school, and even at that early age began his lifelong habit of careful reading and studying. While still but a boy he was known among his playmates for his industry and the thorough way in which he did his work.

At seventeen he entered William and Mary College at Williamsburg, Virginia. Here he worked hard, sometimes studying fifteen hours a day. But for his sound body and strong health he must have broken down under such a severe strain.

Yet this hard-working student was no mere bookworm. He was cheerful and full of life, and was very much liked by his fellow students. Among other friends made during his college days was the fun-loving Patrick Henry, who with his jokes and stories kept every one about him in good humor. In time their friendship became so intimate that when Patrick Henry came to Williamsburg as a member of the House of Burgesses, he shared Jefferson’s rooms. Both were fond of music, and spent many a pleasant hour playing their violins together.

We have a description of Jefferson as he appeared at this time. He was over six feet tall, slender in body, but with large hands and feet. His freckled face was topped by a mass of sandy hair, from beneath which looked out keen, friendly gray eyes. He stood erect, straight as an arrow, a fine picture of health and strong young manhood.

Thus we may imagine him as he stood one day while a law student at Williamsburg, in the doorway of the courthouse, earnestly listening to his friend Patrick Henry as he delivered his famous speech against the Stamp Act. The fiery words of the eloquent speaker made a deep impression upon young Jefferson’s quick, warm nature.

Both young men were earnest patriots, but they served their country in different ways. To Patrick Henry it was given to speak with the silver tongue of the orator; while Jefferson, who was a poor speaker, wrote with such grace and strength that he has rightly been called “The Pen of the Revolution.”

Before taking up his public life, it will be of interest to us to see how he helped his countrymen in other ways. Two valuable and lasting improvements have come down from him. The first of these was the system of decimal currency, which replaced the clumsy system of pounds, shillings, and pence used in colonial days. When you are called upon to work out examples in English currency, be grateful to Thomas Jefferson that we have instead the much simpler system of dollars and cents.

The second improvement—which was for the benefit of agriculture, in which Jefferson always felt a deep interest—had, perhaps, even greater importance, for it was not merely a convenience but a means of increasing wealth. It was a new form of plough, which, sinking deeper into the soil, vastly increased its productive power, and has been of untold value to the people not only of our country but of the whole world.

Jefferson showed his interest in the work of the farm in another way. While he was in France as American minister to the King he found that, although the French ate a great deal of rice, especially during Lent, very little of it came from the United States, because rice raised here was thought to be of an inferior quality. The best rice came from Italy.

Wishing to help American rice-growers, Jefferson, therefore, went to Italy to study the Italian method of growing it. He found that in both countries the hulling and cleaning machine was the same. “Then,” thought he, “the seed of the Italian rice must be better.”

So, doing up some small packages of the best seed rice he could find, he sent them to Charleston. The seeds were carefully distributed among the planters, who made good use of them, and from those seeds as a beginning some of the finest rice in the world is now produced in our own States.

JEFFERSON’S GREATEST WORK AS A STATESMAN

But valuable as these services were to his countrymen, Jefferson’s great work in the world was that of a statesman. He first came into prominence in the Second Continental Congress, when, you recall, the brave men representing the several colonies decided that the time had come for the American people to declare themselves free and independent of England. Here Jefferson’s ability as a writer did good service; for of the committee of five appointed to draw up the Declaration of Independence Jefferson was a member, and it fell to him to write the first draft of that great state paper.

Congress spent a few days in going over this draft and making some slight changes in it. In the main, however, it stands as Jefferson wrote it.

After filling many of the high offices in the country, in 1801 Jefferson became the third President of the United States. In this lofty position history gives us another striking picture of the man. It shows that he was simple in his tastes, and that he liked best those plain ways of living which are most familiar to the common people.

On the day of his inauguration he went on foot to the Capitol, dressed in his every-day clothes and attended only by a few friends. It became his custom later, when going up to the Capitol on official business, to go on horseback, tying his horse with his own hands to a near-by fence before entering the building. He declined to hold weekly receptions, as had been the custom when Washington and Adams were Presidents, but instead he opened his house to all on the Fourth of July, and on New Year’s Day. In these ways he was acting out his belief that the President should be simple in dress and manner.

Many things which Jefferson did proved that he was an able statesman, but the one act which stands out above all others as the greatest and wisest of his administration, was the “Louisiana Purchase.”

Let us see how this purchase came to be made. Before Jefferson became President many pioneers, we know, had already settled west of the Alleghany Mountains. Most of them lived along the Ohio and the streams flowing into it from the north and the south. In the upland valleys of the Kentucky and Tennessee Rivers settlers were especially numerous.

These lands were so fertile that the people living there became very prosperous. As their harvests were abundant, they needed a market in which to sell what they could not use.

We have seen how in the autumn it was their custom to load the furs on pack-horses, and driving the cattle before them along the forest trail, to make the long journey over the mountains to cities and towns along the Atlantic coast.

But to send their bulky products by this route was too expensive. Water transportation cost much less. Such produce as corn-meal, flour, pork, and lumber had to go on rafts or flatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Here the cargo and the boat were sold, or the cargo sold and loaded on ocean vessels, which in time reached the eastern market by a cheaper though longer route than that by land. Thus the Mississippi River, being the only outlet for this heavy produce, was very necessary to the prosperity of the west.

But Spain at this time owned New Orleans and all the land about the mouth of the Mississippi River; and as the river became more and more used for traffic Spanish officers at New Orleans began to make trouble. They even went so far as to threaten to prevent the sending of produce to that port.

This threat greatly troubled and angered the western farmers. They proposed wild plans to force an outlet for their trade. But before anything was done, news came that Napoleon, who was then at the head of affairs in France, had compelled Spain to give up Louisiana to France.

Then the westerners grew still more alarmed about their trade. It was bad enough to have a weak country like Spain in control of Louisiana. But it might be far worse to have France, the greatest military power in the world at that time, own it. All this was very plain to Jefferson, and he knew that Napoleon was planning to establish garrisons and colonies in Louisiana.

In view of the possible dangers, he sent James Monroe to France to aid our minister there in securing New Orleans and a definite stretch of territory in Louisiana lying on the east side of the Mississippi River. If he could get that territory, the Americans would then own the entire east bank of the river and could control their own trade.

When Monroe reached France, he found that Napoleon not only was willing to sell what Jefferson wanted, but wished him to buy much more. For as Napoleon was about to engage in war with England, he had great need of money. Besides, he was afraid that the English might even invade and capture Louisiana, and in that case he would get nothing for it. He was satisfied, therefore, to sell the whole of the Louisiana territory for fifteen million dollars.

This purchase was a big event in American history, for you must remember that what was then called Louisiana was a very large stretch of country. It included all the region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from Canada down to what is now Texas. Look at your map and you will see that it was larger than all the rest of the territory which up to that time had been called the United States.

NEW ORLEANS IN 1803

The people of that day did not realize the importance of their purchase. For the most part the territory was a wild region, uninhabited except for scattered Indian tribes, and almost unexplored. The place most alive was New Orleans, which would have interested you keenly had you been a pioneer boy or girl. New Orleans has been called a Franco-Spanish-American city, for it has belonged to all three nations in turn and been under French control twice. You remember that the French settled it. Let us imagine ourselves pioneers of 1803, and that we have just brought a cargo down the river.

We find New Orleans to be one of the chief seaports of America. We see shipping of all sorts about the town—barges and flatboats along the river bank, merchant vessels in the harbor, and farther down some war-ships.

There are buildings still standing which are unchanged parts of the earlier French town—for instance, the government house, the barracks, the hospital, and the convent of the Ursulines. We notice that the walls and fortifications, built partly by the French and partly by the Spaniards, are but a mere ring of grass-grown ruins about the city.

But the city is very picturesque with its tropical vegetation, always green, and its quaint houses, many of them raised several feet above the ground on pillars. The more pretentious mansions are surrounded by broad verandas and fine gardens, and scattered here and there among the houses of the better class are those of the poor people.

The streets are straight and fairly wide, but dirty and ill-kept. The sidewalks are of wood, and at night we need to take our steps carefully, for only a few dim lights break the darkness. Beyond the walls of the city we see suburbs already springing up.

Three-fourths of the inhabitants are creoles—that is, natives of French and Spanish descent, who speak in the French tongue. We do not understand them any more than if we were in a really foreign city. They seem a handsome, well-knit race. But they are idle and lacking in ambition, and for that reason are being crowded out of business by the active, thrifty American merchants, to whom, we observe, they are not quite friendly.

Such was the New Orleans of 1803, a human oasis in a waste of forest, which made up the greater part of the new territory. There were, to be sure, in this trackless wilderness a few French villages near the mouth of the Missouri River. Traders from the British camps in the north had found their way as far south as these villages, but the great prairies had not been explored, and the Rocky Mountains were yet unknown.

LEWIS AND CLARK’S EXPEDITION

Before the purchase was made Jefferson had planned an expedition to explore this region, and Congress had voted money to carry out his plan. Two officers of the United States army, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, were put in command of the expedition.

They were to ascend the Missouri River to its head and then find the nearest waterway to the Pacific coast. They were directed also to draw maps of the region and to report on the nature of the country and the people, plants, animals, and other matters of interest in the new lands.

In May, 1804, the little company of forty-five men left St. Louis and started up the Missouri River, passing the scattered settlements of French creoles. After eleven days they reached the home of Daniel Boone, the last settlement they passed on the Missouri. Leaving that, they found no more white settlers and very few Indians. But the woods were alive with game, so there was no lack of food.

Late in October they arrived at a village of Mandan Indians situated at the great bend of the Missouri River, in what is now known as North Dakota. Deciding to winter here, they built huts and a stockade, calling the camp Fort Mandan. The Mandans were used to white men, as the village had been visited often by traders from both north and south.

Although the Indians gave them no trouble, the explorers suffered greatly from cold and hunger, game being scarce and poor in the winter season.

When spring came the party, now numbering thirty-two, again took up the westward journey. All before them was new country. They met few Indians and found themselves in one of the finest hunting-grounds in the world. Sage-fowl and prairie-fowl, ducks of all sorts, swans, and wild cranes were plentiful, while huge, flapping geese nested in the tops of the cottonwood-trees.

Big game, such as buffalo, elk, antelope, whitetail and blacktail deer, and big-horned sheep, was also abundant. It happened more than once that the party was detained for an hour or more while a great herd of buffalo ploughed their way down the bank of a river in a huge column.

Many of the animals in this region were very tame, for they had not learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which beset them in great swarms.

The second autumn was almost upon them when they arrived at the headwaters of the Missouri, and their hardest task was yet to be accomplished. Before them rose the mountains. These, they knew, must be crossed before they could hope to find any waterway to the coast. The boats in which they had come thus far, now being useless, were left behind, and horses were procured from a band of wandering Indians.

Then they set out again on their journey, which presently became most difficult. For nearly a month they painfully made their way through dense forests, over steep mountains, and across raging torrents, whose icy water chilled both man and beast. Sometimes storms of sleet and snow beat pitilessly down upon them, and again they were almost overcome by oppressive heat.

Game was so scarce that the men often went hungry, and were even driven to kill some of their horses for food.

But brighter days were bound to come, and at last they reached a river which flowed toward the west. They called it Lewis, and it proved to be a branch of the Columbia, which led to the sea. With fresh courage they built five canoes, in which the ragged, travel-worn but now triumphant men made their way down-stream. The Indians whom they met were for the most part friendly, welcoming them and providing them with food, though a few tribes were troublesome.

Before the cold of the second winter had set in they had reached the forests on the Pacific coast, and here they stayed until spring, enduring much hunger and cold, but learning many things about the habits of the Indians.

The next March, as soon as travel was safe, they gladly turned their faces homeward, and after a fatiguing journey of about three months, reached the Great Plains.

Then the party separated for a time into two companies, Clark following the course of the Yellowstone River, and Lewis the Missouri, planning to meet where the two rivers united.

This they succeeded in doing, though both parties were troubled somewhat by Indians. The Crow Indians stole horses from Clark’s party, and eight Blackfoot warriors attacked Lewis and three of his men. But Lewis got the better of them and captured four of their horses.

The explorers suffered no further injury, and in September, 1806, about two years and four months after starting out, they were back in St. Louis, with their precious maps and notes. They had successfully carried out a magnificent undertaking, and you may be sure they received a joyful welcome from their friends. I wonder if any of you can tell which of our world’s fairs commemorated the leaders of this expedition.

Through the efforts of these explorers the highway across the continent became an established fact. When you think of the great trunk lines of railroad, over which fast trains carry hundreds of passengers daily, stop a moment and remember that it was little more than a hundred years ago that we first began to know much about this region!

ANDREW JACKSON

The next addition made to our expanding nation was in the extreme southeast, and with it we associate the name of another of our Presidents, Andrew Jackson. The story of how Florida came to be a part of the United States will be more interesting if we know something of the career of the picturesque hero who brought about its purchase.

Andrew Jackson was born in Union County, North Carolina, in 1767, of poor Scotch-Irish parents, who about two years before had come from Ireland. In a little clearing in the woods they had built a rude log hut and settled down to hard work.

But Andrew’s father soon died, and his mother went with her children to live in her brother’s home, where she spun flax to earn money. She was very fond of little Andrew and hoped some day to make a minister of him.

With this in view, she sent him to school, where he learned reading, writing, and a little ciphering. But the little fellow loved nature better than books and did not make great progress with lessons. You must remember, however, that he was far from idle and that he did many hard and brave tasks, worth being put into books for other boys to read.

“Mischievous Andy,” as he was called, was a barefooted, freckle-faced lad, slender in body, with bright blue eyes and reddish hair, and was full of life and fun. Although not robust, he was wiry and energetic, and excelled in running, jumping, and all rough-and-tumble sports. If, when wrestling, a stronger boy threw him to the ground, he was so agile that he always managed to regain his feet.

While he was yet a lad the Revolution broke out, and there was severe fighting between the Americans and the British near his home. He was only thirteen when he was made a prisoner of war.

One day, soon after his capture, a British officer gave him a pair of muddy boots to clean. The fiery youth flashed back: “Sir, I am not your slave. I am your prisoner, and as such I refuse to do the work of a slave.” Angered by this reply, the brutal officer struck the boy a cruel blow with his sword, inflicting two severe wounds.

Andrew was kept in a prison pen about the Camden jail. As he was without shelter and almost without food, the wounds refused to heal, and in his weak and half-starved condition he fell a victim to smallpox. His mother, hearing of her boy’s wretched plight, secured his release and took him home. He was ill for months, and before he entirely recovered his mother died, leaving him quite alone in the world.

In time, however, these early hardships passed, and some years later we see Andrew, a young man of twenty-one, now become a lawyer. He is over six feet tall, slender, straight, and graceful, with a long, slim face, and thick hair falling over his forehead and shading his piercing blue eyes. He has crossed the mountains with an emigrant party into the backwoods region of Tennessee.

The party arrived at Nashville, where their life was very much like that of Daniel Boone in Kentucky.

Young Jackson passed through many dangers without harm, and by his industry and business ability became a successful lawyer and in time a wealthy landowner.

After his marriage he built, on a plantation of one thousand one hundred acres, about ten miles from Nashville, a house which he called “The Hermitage.” Here he and his wife kept open house for visitors, treating rich and poor with like hospitality. His warm heart and generous nature were especially shown in his own household, where he was kind to all, including his slaves.

To the end of his life he had a childlike simplicity of nature. But we must not think of him as a faultless man, for he was often rough in manner and speech, and his violent temper got him into serious troubles. Among them were some foolish duels.

Yet, with all his faults, he was brave and patriotic and did splendid service as a fighter in Indian wars. After one of his duels, with a ball in his shoulder and his left arm in a sling, he went to lead an army of two thousand five hundred men in an attack on the Creek Indians, who had risen against the whites in Alabama. Although weak from a long illness, Jackson marched with vigor against the Creeks, and after a campaign of much hardship, badly defeated them at Horseshoe Bend, in eastern Alabama. He thus broke for all time the power of the Indians south of the Ohio River.

Some three years later (1817) General Jackson, as he was now called, was sent with a body of troops down to southern Georgia, to protect the people there from the Seminole Indians, who lived in Florida. At this time Florida belonged to Spain. Its vast swamps and dense forests made a place of refuge from which outlaws, runaway negroes, and Indians all made a practice of sallying forth in bands across the border into southern Georgia. There they would drive off cattle, burn houses, and murder men, women, and children without mercy.

When Jackson pursued these thieves and murderers, they retreated to their hiding-places beyond the boundaries of Florida. But it was more than Jackson could endure to see his enemy escape him so easily. And, although he was exceeding his orders, he followed them across the border, burned some of their villages, and hanged some of the Indian chiefs. He did not stop until he had all of Florida under his control.

This was a high-handed proceeding, for that territory belonged to Spain. However, serious trouble was avoided by our buying Florida (1819). This purchase added territory of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and sixty-eight square miles to the United States. It was only six thousand square miles less than the whole area of New England.

By studying your map you can easily see how much the area of the United States was extended by the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida. The adding of these two large territories made America one of the great nations of the world in landed estate.

Some Things to Think About

1. Tell all you can about Jefferson’s boyhood. What kind of student was he in college?

2. How did he help his countrymen before taking up his public life?

3. Why did the Westerners wish the Mississippi to be open to their trade?

4. Why was Napoleon willing to sell us the whole of Louisiana? Use your map in making clear to yourself just what the Louisiana Purchase included.

5. Why did Jefferson send Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition? What were the results of this expedition?

6. What kind of boy was Andrew Jackson? What kind of man?

7. What part did he take in the events leading up to the purchase of Florida?

CHAPTER XIII

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

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After the purchase of Louisiana and the explorations of Lewis and Clark, the number of settlers who went from the eastern part of the country to find new homes in the West kept on increasing as it had been doing since Boone, Robertson, and Sevier had pushed their way across the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee, twenty-five or thirty years earlier.

These pioneers, if they went westward by land, had to load their goods on pack-horses and follow the Indian trail. Later the trail was widened into a roadway, and wagons could be used. But travel by land was slow and, hard under any conditions.

Going by water, while cheaper, was inconvenient, for the travellers must use the flatboat, which was clumsy and slow and, worst of all, of little use except when going down stream.

The great need both for travel and for trade, then, was a boat which would not be dependent upon wind or current, but could be propelled by steam. Many men had tried to work out such an invention. Among them was John Rumsey, of Maryland, who built a steamboat in 1774, and John Fitch, of Connecticut, who completed his first model of a steamboat in 1785.

In the next four years Fitch built three steamboats, the last of which made regular trips on the Delaware River, between Philadelphia and Burlington, during the summer of 1786. It was used as a passenger boat, and it made a speed of eight miles an hour; but Fitch was not able to secure enough aid from men of capital and influence to make his boats permanently successful.

The first man to construct a steamboat which continued to give successful service was Robert Fulton. Robert Fulton was born of poor parents in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765, the year of the famous Stamp Act. When the boy was only three years old his father died, and so Robert was brought up by his mother. She taught him at home until he was eight, and then sent him to school. Here he showed an unusual liking for drawing.

Outside of school hours his special delight was to visit the shops of mechanics, who humored the boy and let him work out his clever ideas with his own hands.

A story is told of how Robert came into school late one morning and gave as his excuse that he had been at a shop beating a piece of lead into a pencil. At the same time he took the pencil from his pocket, and showing it to his teacher, said: “It is the best one I have ever used.” Upon carefully looking at the pencil, the schoolmaster was so well pleased that he praised Robert’s efforts, and in a short time nearly all the pupils were using that kind of pencil.

Another example of Robert’s inventive gift belongs to his boyhood days. He and one of his playmates from time to time went fishing in a flatboat, which they propelled with long poles. It was hard work and slow, and presently Robert thought out an easier way. He made two crude paddle-wheels, attached one to each side of the boat, and connected them with a sort of double crank. By turning this, the boys made the wheels revolve, and these carried the boat through the water easily. We may be sure that Robert’s boat became very popular, and that turning the crank was a privilege in which each boy eagerly took his turn.

While still young, Robert began to paint pictures also. By the time he was seventeen he had become skilful in the use of his brush and went to Philadelphia to devote his time to painting portraits and miniatures. Being a tireless worker, he earned enough here to support himself and send something to his mother.

At the age of twenty-one his interest in art led him to go to London, where he studied for several years under Benjamin West. This famous master took young Fulton into his household and was very friendly to him.

After leaving West’s studio Fulton still remained in England, and although continuing to paint he gave much thought also to the development of canal systems. His love for invention was getting the better of his love for art and was leading him on to the work which made him famous. He was about thirty when he finally gave up painting altogether and turned his whole attention to inventing.

He went from England to Paris, where he lived in the family of Joel Barlow, an American poet and public man. Here he made successful experiments with a diving boat which he had designed to carry cases of gunpowder under water. This was one of the stages in the development of our modern torpedo-boat.

Although this invention alone would give Fulton a place in history, it was not one which would affect so many people as the later one, the steamboat, with which his name is more often associated.

Even before he had begun to experiment with the torpedo-boat Fulton had been deeply interested in steam navigation, and while in Paris he constructed a steamboat. In this undertaking he was greatly aided by Robert R. Livingston, American minister at the French court, who had himself done some experimenting in that line. Livingston, therefore, was glad to furnish the money which Fulton needed in order to build the boat.

It was finished by the spring of 1803. But just as they were getting ready for a trial trip, early one morning the boat broke in two parts and sank to the bottom of the River Seine. The frame had been too weak to support the weight of the heavy machinery.

Having discovered just what was wrong in this first attempt, Fulton built another steamboat soon after his return to America, in 1806. This boat was one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, with mast and sail, and had on each side a wheel fifteen feet across.

On the morning of the day in August, 1807, set for the trial of the Clermont—as Fulton called his boat—an expectant throng of curious onlookers gathered on the banks of the North, or Hudson, River, at New York. Everybody was looking for failure. For though Fitch’s boats had made trips in the Delaware only some twenty years earlier, the fact did not seem to be generally known. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a half-crazy dreamer and had called his boat “Fulton’s Folly.” “Of course, the thing will not move,” said one scoffer. “That any man with common sense well knows,” another replied. And yet they all stood watching for Fulton’s signal to start the boat.

The signal is given. A slight tremor of motion and the boat is still. “There! What did I say?” cried one. “I told you so!” exclaimed another. “I knew the boat would not go,” said yet another. But they spoke too soon, for after a little delay the wheels of the Clermont began to revolve, slowly and hesitatingly at first, but soon with more speed, and the boat steamed proudly off up the Hudson.

As she moved forward, all along the river people who had come from far and near stood watching the strange sight. When boatmen and sailors on the Hudson heard the harsh clanking of machinery and saw the huge sparks and dense black smoke rising out of her funnel, they thought that the Clermont was a sea-monster. In fact, they were so frightened that some of them went ashore, some jumped into the river to get away, and some fell on their knees in fear, believing that their last day had come. It is said that one old Dutchman exclaimed to his wife: “I have seen the devil coming up the river on a raft!”

The men who were working the boat had no such foolish fears. They set themselves to their task and made the trip from New York to Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, in thirty-two hours. Success had at last come to the quiet, modest, persevering Fulton. After this trial trip the Clermont was used as a regular passenger boat between New York and Albany.

The steamboat was Fulton’s great gift to the world and his last work of public interest. He died in 1815.

But the Clermont was only the beginning of steam-driven craft on the rivers and lakes of our country. Four years afterward (1811), the first steamboat west of the Alleghany Mountains began its route from Pittsburg down the Ohio, and a few years later similar craft were in use on the Great Lakes.

THE NATIONAL ROAD AND THE ERIE CANAL

But while steamboats made the rivers and lakes easy routes for travel and traffic, something was needed to make journeys by land less difficult. To meet this need, new highways had to be supplied, and this great work of building public roads was taken up by the United States Government. Many roads were built, but the most important was the one known as the National Road.

It ran from Cumberland, on the Potomac, through Maryland and Pennsylvania to Wheeling, West Virginia, on the Ohio River. From there it was extended to Indiana and Illinois, ending at Vandalia, which at that time was the capital of Illinois. It was seven hundred miles long, and cost seven million dollars.

This smooth and solid roadway was eighty feet wide; it was paved with stone and covered with gravel. Transportation became not only much easier but also much cheaper. The road filled a long-felt need and a flood of travel and traffic immediately swept over it.

Another kind of highway which proved to be of untold value to both the East and the West, was the canal, or artificial waterway connecting two bodies of water.

The most important was the Erie Canal, connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie, begun in 1817. This new idea received the same scornful attention from the unthinking as “Fulton’s Folly.” By many it was called “Clinton’s Ditch,” after Governor DeWitt Clinton, to whose foresight we are indebted for the building of this much-used waterway. The scoffers shook their heads and said: “Clinton will bankrupt the State”; “The canal is a great extravagance”; and so on.

But he did not stop because of criticism, and in 1825 the canal was finished. The undertaking had been pushed through in eight years. It was a great triumph for Clinton and a proud day for the State.

When the work was completed the news was signalled from Buffalo to New York in a novel way. As you know, there was neither telephone nor telegraph then. But at intervals of five miles all along the route cannon were stationed. When the report from the first cannon was heard, the second was fired, and thus the news went booming eastward till, in an hour and a half, it reached New York.

Clinton himself journeyed to New York in the canal-boat Seneca Chief. This was drawn by four gray horses, which went along the tow-path beside the canal. As the boat passed quietly along, people thronged the banks to do honor to the occasion.

When the Seneca Chief reached New York City, Governor Clinton, standing on deck, lifted a gilded keg filled with water from Lake Erie and poured it into the harbor. As he did so, he prayed that “the God of the heaven and the earth” would smile upon the work just completed and make it useful to the human race. Thus was dedicated this great waterway, whose usefulness has more than fulfilled the hope of its chief promoter.

Trade between the East and the West began to grow rapidly. Vast quantities of manufactured goods were moved easily from the East to the West, and supplies of food were shipped in the opposite direction. Prices began to fall because the cost of carrying goods was so much less. It cost ten dollars before the canal was dug to carry a barrel of flour from Buffalo to Albany; now it costs thirty cents.

The region through which the canal ran was at that time mostly wilderness, and for some years packets carrying passengers as well as freight were drawn through the canal by horses travelling the tow-path along the bank.

When travelling was so easy and safe, the number of people moving westward to this region grew larger rapidly. Land was in demand and became more valuable. Farm products sold at higher prices. Villages sprang up, factories were built, and the older towns grew rapidly in size. The great cities of New York State—and this is especially true of New York City—owe much of their growth to the Erie Canal.

THE RAILROAD