Rupert Sargent Holland

“ Elijah Lovejoy was only thirty-five years old when he met his martyr's death. His life in Missouri and Illinois had been one constant fight against slavery, and for liberty of speech. His Puritan ancestry made it impossible for him to give up the battle he knew to be right. The story of his heroic struggle and death aroused lovers of liberty all over the country, and newspapers everywhere denounced the acts of the mob at Alton. Such acts meant that men could not speak their minds on public questions, and a "free press" had been one of the dearest rights of American citizens. ”

“ We who know the story of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery think of John Brown as a hero. We forget the outlaw and remember the martyr. If he was setting the laws of men at defiance he was also following the law that he felt was given him by God. His faith and his simplicity have made him a great figure in history. A man who met him riding across the plains of Kansas in the days of the border warfare drew a vivid picture of him. He said that a tall man on horseback stopped and asked him a question. ”

“ THE FATE OF LOVEJOY'S PRINTING-PRESS
Ever since the thirteen colonies that lay along the Atlantic coast had become a nation ambitious men had heard the call, "Go West, young man, go West!" There was plenty of fertile land in the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains, and it was free to any who would settle on it. Adventure beckoned men to come and help in founding new states, and many, who thought the villages of New England already overcrowded, betook themselves to the inviting West. ”

“ There were many other men in the United States bent on destroying slavery, but few so impulsive as John Brown. His plan was rash in the extreme, and even its success would have profited only a few slaves. But Brown was a born crusader. The men who followed him were all impulsive, and many of them were already trained in the rude ways of frontier life. They knew what he had done in Kansas, and were ready to fight on his side anywhere else. They had a real reverence for John Brown. The tall man with the long, almost white hair, keen eyes, and flowing beard was no ordinary leader. ”

“ I wish the Rocky Mountains were an impassable barrier. If there was an embankment of even five feet to be removed I would not consent to expend five dollars to remove it and enable our population to go there." Another statesman declared, "With the exception of land along the Willamette and strips along other water courses, the whole country is as irreclaimable and barren a waste as the Desert of Sahara. Nor is this the worst; the climate is so unfriendly to human life that the native population has dwindled away under the ravages of malaria." ”

“ Our country was young and poor, and our navy consisted of only seventeen seaworthy ships, carrying less than four hundred and fifty cannon. England was indeed "Mistress of the Seas," with a great war-fleet of a thousand vessels, armed with almost twenty-eight thousand guns. No wonder that the British consul at Algiers had told the Dey "the American flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and its maritime arsenals reduced to a heap of ruins." ”

“ But the one season of 1897 was enough to prove the great value of Alaska, and to show that the United States had done well to buy that great territory from the Czar of Russia. Yet gold is only a small part of its riches, and even should the fields of the Klondike yield no more of the precious mineral, the seals, the fur trade, and the cities springing up along its coast are worth much more than the $7,000,000 paid for it. It is still a land of adventure, one of the few waste places that beckon men to come and find what wealth lies hidden within its borders. ”

“ The Americans had shown the Japanese that they were a friendly people, with no desire to harm them. A race that had lived shut off from the rest of the world for so many centuries was naturally timid and fearful of strange people. From time to time European ships had landed in Japan, and almost every time the sailors had done injury to the natives. Perry, however, convinced them that the United States was a friend, and the treaty, slight though its terms were, marked the dawn of a new era in Japan. ”

“ As the canoes were heavily loaded the men who were not needed to paddle them walked along the shore. The country here was very picturesque. At times they climbed hills that gave them wide views of open country never explored by white men; again they waded through fields of wild rye, reminding them of the farm lands of the East; sometimes their path wound through forests of redwood trees, and always they could see the high mountains, still snow-capped. The glistening light on the mountain tops told the explorers why they were called the Shining Mountains. ”

“ The finding of gold had changed that almost unknown wilderness into a thriving land in the twinkling of an eye. Railroads were built to reach it, and more and more men poured west. Some men made great fortunes, but more in a few months abandoned their claims and drifted to the cities, or made their way slowly back to the eastern farms and villages from which they had set out. The Forty-niners, as the gold-seekers were called, found plenty of adventure in California, even if they did not all find a short-cut to wealth. ”

“ The roads that ran from San Francisco to Sutter's Fort had formerly lain between prosperous farm lands, but now the crops were going to waste, the houses were empty, and the cattle free to wander through fields of grain. Along the American River, on the other hand, hills and valleys were filled with sheltering tents, and huts built of brush and rocks thrown together in a hurry. Men could not stop for comfort, but worked all day on the river bank. There were almost as many ways of searching for the gold as there were men. ”

“ When men learned that instead of finding a short route to China they had come upon two great continents that shared the Western Ocean, they turned their thoughts to discovering what was known as the Northwest Passage. They hoped to find a way by which ships might sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of America. The great English explorers in particular were eager to find such an ocean route, and this search was the real beginning of the fur-trading around Hudson's Bay, the cod-fishing of Newfoundland, and the whale-fishing of Baffin Bay. ”

“ Japan was satisfied to be a hermit nation.
On the afternoon of the seventh day of July, 1853, or the third day of the sixth month of Kayéi, in the reign of the Emperor Koméi, the farmers working in the muddy rice-fields near the village of Uraga saw a strange sight. It was a clear summer afternoon, and the beautiful mountain Fuji, its cone wreathed in white clouds, could be seen from sea and shore. What startled the men in the fields, the people in the village, and the boatmen in the harbor, was a fleet of vessels coming to anchor in the bay of Yedo. ”

“ They were then set to work in rigging and fitting out ships, in blasting rocks in the mountains, or carrying stones for the palace the Dey was building. Their lot was but little better than that of the slaves of olden times who worked for the Pharaohs. As more American sailors were captured and made slaves their friends at home grew more and more eager to put an end to these pirates, and when the Revolution was over the young Republic of the United States began to heed the appeals for help that came from the slave-markets along the Barbary coast. ”

“ The frigate Philadelphia, now the Pasha's prize ship, lay at anchor in the harbor, and the Intrepid slowly drifted toward her in the light of the new moon. No one on ship or shore realized the real purpose of the slowly-moving Intrepid. Had the men at the forts on shore or the watchman at the Pasha's castle suspected her purpose they could have blown her from the water with their heavy guns.
The Intrepid drifted closer and closer, with her crew hidden, except for six or eight men dressed as Maltese sailors. Decatur stood by the pilot at the helm. ”

“ They loaded their baggage on their packhorses, and started out, ready for any sort of country they might have to cross. Sometimes the trail lay over miry ground, where a false step to the right or left would send the horses or men deep into the bog; sometimes it led up steep and rocky mountainsides, where a man had to guard his horse's footing as carefully as his own; and much of the way was in the bed of an old river, where each step brought a splash of mud, and left the travelers at the end of the day spattered from head to foot. The journey was harder on the horses than on the men. ”

“ That summer many new towns sprang up, and in a few weeks the Bonanza and Eldorado mines made their owners rich, and all the tributaries of the Klondike River were yielding a golden harvest.
When men found land that they thought would prove rich they made haste to claim it. Sometimes wild races followed, rivals trying to beat each other to the government offices at Dawson in order to claim the land. Frequently after such a wild race the claim would amount to nothing, while another man, who had picked out some place that no one wanted, would find a rich lode and make a fortune from it. ”

“ Be careful of yourselves. Let any man fire without orders at the peril of his life. But let them fire first if they will, and we'll take the whole of them!"
The decks were cleared, and every man stood ready for action. The fleet of seven Algerine ships sailed close to the single American frigate in line of battle. The crews looked across the bulwarks at each other, but not a word was said until the last Algerine ship was opposite. "Where are you going?" demanded the Moorish admiral.
"Wherever it pleases me," answered Decatur; and the Guerrière sailed on her course. ”

“ The Alleghany Mountain range was one of the main roads for fugitives, for there men could hide in the thick forests of the mountainside, and could make some show of defense when the slave-catchers and bloodhounds came in pursuit. John Brown knew this country well. He traveled through the North, talking with other men who felt as he did, and trying to work out a plan which should force the country to decide this question of negro slavery. At last he decided to make a raid into Southern territory, and free slaves for himself. ”

“ Men had already pushed west to the Mississippi, and settled the fertile fields beyond the Alleghanies. Across the great "Mother of Rivers" lay a vast tract that men knew little about. To the south lay Spanish colonies and islands. The Gulf of Mexico was the home of freebooters and pirates. In Europe a man of the people named Napoleon Bonaparte was carving out an empire for himself, and stirring the blood of all ambitious men. Soldiers of fortune everywhere were wondering whether they might not follow in Napoleon's footsteps. ”

“ In the cold of the long ice-bound months, the passions of men lay dormant. But with the coming of spring the old feud smouldered afresh.
Bands of armed men from the South arrived in Kansas, and one from Georgia came to camp near the Brown settlement on the Swamp of the Swan. On a May morning John Brown and four of his sons walked over to the new camp to learn the Georgians' plans. He had some surveying instruments with him, and the newcomers took him for a government surveyor and therefore a slave man, for almost every official that was sent into Kansas held the Southern views. ”

“ In his sudden eagerness to prevent war with the Mexicans, General Wilkinson made terms of peace with them, which proved a great disadvantage to the United States at a later date, but which pleased the peace party of the day. He met the Mexican general at the very time when Burr and his allies were ready to launch their fleet of boats on the Mississippi River. Then Wilkinson made haste to raise the cry of "Treason in the West," which was to echo through the United States for months, and ruin the reputation of many men. ”

“ Captain Smith and his men knew who manned those long, low, rakish-looking frigates. But the Edwin carried no cannon, and if they could not out-sail the three ships to the south they must yield peaceably, or be shot down on their deck. Hour after hour they watched, and by sunset they could see the dark, swarthy faces of the leading frigate's crew. Before night the Edwin had been overhauled, boarded, and the Yankee captain and sailors were in irons, prisoners about to be sold into slavery. ”

“ The United States fell into the habit of buying peace with Algiers, Tripoli, Morocco, and Tunis by gifts of merchandise or gold or costly vessels. But the more that was given to them the more greedy these Moorish rulers grew, and so it happened that from time to time they sent out their pirates to board American ships in order to frighten the young Republic into paying heavier tribute. ”

“ In the days when Kansas was the battle-ground between those men who upheld negro slavery, and those who attacked it, a man named John Brown went from the east to that territory. Several of his sons had already gone into Kansas, and had sent him glowing accounts of it. Many New England families were moving west by 1855, and building homes for themselves on the splendid rolling prairies across the Mississippi. ”

“ At four o'clock in the morning the sentinels who were on guard waked the camp by shots from their rifles, the emigrants crept from their canvas-covered wagons or tents built against the side of the wagons, and soon the smoke of camp-fires began to rise in the air. Sixty men, whose duty it was to look after the cattle, would start out from the corral, or enclosed space, spreading through the horses and cattle, who had found pasturage over night in a great semicircle about the camp. ”

“ Everywhere was color. Tents, banners, houses, and the costumes of men, women and children blazed with it. The American sailors in all their voyages in the East had never seen such a brilliant picture.
Perry was not to be outdone. His men left the ships to the noise of cannon that echoed and re-echoed along the shore. Twenty-seven boats brought five hundred men, and as soon as they landed the marines formed a hollow square, while three bands played martial music. The great commodore, now looked upon by the Japanese with awe, embarked from the Powhatan in his white gig; more guns were fired ”

“ All this quickly changed the character of upper California. Every man wanted to be a miner, and no longer a cattleman or farmer, as before. It looked as though the towns would shrivel up, because of the tremendously high wages demanded by the men who were needed there. Cooks in San Francisco were paid three hundred dollars a month, and all kinds of mechanics secured wages of fifteen or twenty dollars a day. The forts found it impossible to keep soldiers on duty. As soon as men were paid off they rushed to the American River. ”

“ The Dey of Algiers, left to his own advisers and to the whispers of men who were jealous of the United States' success, began to wish he had not agreed to the treaty he had made with Decatur. His own people told him that a true son of the Prophet should never have humbled himself before the Christian dogs. In addition the English government agreed to pay him nearly four hundred thousand dollars to ransom twelve thousand prisoners of Naples and Sardinia that he was holding. ”

“ But in May a Mormon, coming from the settlement of Coloma to San Francisco, walked down the main street waving a bottle filled with gold-dust and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"
His words, and the sight of the glittering bottle, [183] caused tremendous excitement in San Francisco, and in the twinkling of an eye men took possession of sailboats, sloops, launches, any kind of craft, and started up the Sacramento River. Those who could not get boats to take the quicker course hurried off on horses or mules, in wagons or on foot. ”

“ The Eskimos were a race largely unknown to civilized men. White men had seen much more of the native American Indians who lived in more temperate climates. These young Americans found a great deal to interest them during the winter among these strange people of the far North. Hunting was their chief pursuit, and the Americans found that they spent much of their time indoors playing a game called Nu-glew-tar, which sharpened their quickness of eye and sureness of aim. ”

“ Business men in the East seized the opportunity to advertise tents, beds, blankets, and all manner of camp equipment, as well as pans, rockers, and every kind of implement for washing gold from the gravel. The owners of ships of every description, many of them unseaworthy, fitted up their craft, and advertised them as ready to sail for San Francisco. The ports of Boston, Salem, Newburyport, New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans were crowded with brigs and schooners loading for the Pacific. A newspaper in New York stated that ten thousand people would leave for the gold country within a month. ”