“ This took place long before any of my young readers were born. But there are many old soldiers living who took part in it, and when you see the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, marching with their ragged flags and battle-scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of what they have seen, and make you think of the fallen comrades they left behind, dead or bleeding upon the battle-field.
During your short lives there has been no war which came near to us in our homes. The angel of peace has spread her white wings over our land, and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. ”

“ Washington was the man. All men, all parties, settled upon Washington. No one opposed him; there was no man in the country like him. He was unanimously elected the first President of the United States.
In olden times, when a victorious general came back to Rome with the splendid spoils brought from distant countries, the people gave him a triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and to gaze upon the splendor of the show. Washington had no splendid spoils to display. But he had the love of the people, which was far better than gold and silver won in war ”

“ The history of the past hundred years is a story of magic for our land. In it you will learn of how the steamboat was first made [12] and in time came to be seen on all our rivers and lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and railroads were built, until they are now long enough in our country to go eight times round the earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and telephone—the talking wire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a thousand factories and work away like living things, and of a multitude of marvels which I cannot begin to speak of here. ”

“ No doubt there are many poor boys among my readers, but I do not believe that any of you are as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as hard a life. So you see that while a king must have a king or great noble for father, a President may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any one of my young readers, if he can bring himself strongly to the notice of the people, may become President, and I should not wonder at all if some one among you should do so in future times. ”

“ He could not then have gone over the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of our people were killed or wounded, and the ground in hundreds of places was red with blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, railroads were torn up, ships were sunk, growing crops were trampled into the earth. And last of all came that horrid murder of our good and great President Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men who ever sat in the presidential chair. Such is war—the most frightful thing we can think of or talk about. Some of my young friends may like to play soldier ”

“ Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the world. ”

“ Never was there a country with so many inventors or men that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors; I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help everybody—the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand, as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine. ”

“ War is the most terrible thing upon the earth, though men try to make it look like a pleasant show with their banners and trumpets and drums.
As soon as the news of the war came there was a great coming and going of soldiers, and beating of drums, and fluttering of banners, and making of speeches, and thousands marched away, some to Washington and some to Richmond, and many more to the strongholds of the West. Mothers wept as they bade good-by to their sons, whom they might never see again. ”

“ CHAPTER XX HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR
ALL of my young readers must know what a wonderful age this is that we live in, and what marvelous things have been done. Some of you, no doubt, have read the stories of magic in the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But if any one, a hundred years ago, had been told about the railroad, the telegraph, the photograph, the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the surface of the water, and ships that sail in the air, I fancy they would have called all this nonsense and "Arabian Nights" magic. ”

“ To-day there is not a slave in Europe or America. All these millions of slaves have been set free. Do you not think I am right in saying that the world has grown better as well as richer? Why, fifty years ago there were millions of slaves in our own country, and now there is not one in all the land. ”

“ The king may be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; he may be a genius, or he may be an idiot, without any sense at all; he may be kind and just, or he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he is king. There may be some good points in letting a man be born king, but you can see that there are many bad ones. The history of the nations has [209] often shown this, as you may have seen in what we have said of some of the English kings who had to do with America.
In a republic the ruler—who is called president instead of king—is not born to his office, but is chosen by the people ”

“ I can tell you that was a busy and bloody day for Boston. The great war-ships in the harbor thundered with their cannon at the men on the hill. And the soldiers began to march up the hill, thinking that the Yankees would run like sheep when they saw the red-coats coming near. But the Yankees were not there to run.
"Don't fire, boys, till you see the whites of their eyes," said brave General Prescott.
So the Yankee boys waited till the British were close at hand. Then they fired and the red-coats fell in rows, for the farmers did not waste their bullets. ”

“ We cannot feel so much pity for the Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties, and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has been done, good has come of it. ”

“ Yet how sad it is to think that it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, and misery to multitudes of families, to set them free.
"Where did all these black men come from?" I am sure I hear some young voice asking that question. Well, they came from Africa, the land of the negroes. In our time merchant ships are used to carry goods from one country to another. In old times many of these ships were used in carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The wicked captains would steal the poor black men in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had taken them prisoners in war. ”

“ It is not so easy to rule in war as in peace, and I must say that poor Lincoln had a very hard time of it. But he did the best he could, and people say now that no man in our nation could have done better. Abraham Lincoln stands next to George Washington among the great and noble men of America.
There is one more thing it is well to know. It is not only the rich and proud that we choose to be our Presidents. ”

“ What I wish to say is, that those who come from Europe to this country leave countries that are governed by kings, and come to a country that is governed by the people. In some of the countries of Europe the people might almost as well be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to speak for them, and the man who rules them is born to power. Even in England, which is the freest of them all, there is a king and queen and a House of Lords who are born to power. ”

“ There are hundreds who do not have time to read large histories, which try to tell all that has taken place. For those this little history will be of great service, in showing them how, from a few half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this great nation has grown up. How men and women have come to it over the seas as to a new Promised Land. How they have ploughed its fields, and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold, [13] and built thousands of workshops, and fed the nations with the food they did not need for themselves. ”

“ Here every man in power is put there by the votes of the people. As President Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We did not have such a government before the 4th of July, 1776. Our country was then governed by a king, and, what was worse, this king was on the other side of the ocean, and cared nothing for the people of America except as money bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of July we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord and master; and we have got along very well without one. ”

“ Every one feels like helping his friends against his enemies. But you may be sure that it made the British very angry, and in the end they took a cruel resolution. This was to send all the Acadians away from their native land to far-off, foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who were acting as spies, so the English government ordered them all to be removed. They were told they might stay if they would swear to be true subjects of the king of England, but this the most of them would not do, for they were French at heart, and looked on King Louis of France as their true and rightful ruler. ”

“ If you should ask me what we gained from the war, I would answer that we gained in the first place what the war was fought for, the freedom of Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did not come out of it without something for ourselves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto Rico in the West Indies and the large group of the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia. These last named came as the prize of Dewey's victory, but I am sorry to say that there was a war with the people themselves before the United States got possession. ”

“ The second region of the war was in the West. This was a vast region, extending from Kentucky and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here there were many long, weary marches and much hard fighting and great loss of life. The third region was on the ocean and rivers, where iron-clad ships first met in battle, and where some famous combats took place.
Over these three regions a million and more of men struggled for years, fighting with rifle and cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and wounding one another and causing no end of misery in all parts of the land. ”

“ The dark places are those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and happiness to the nations. ”

“ Is not that a great gain to mankind? But it is sad to think that this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall have to tell you about this war, after I have told you how slavery brought it on.
In the early part of this book you read of how white men first came to this country. I have now to tell you that black men were brought here almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after Captain John Smith and the English colonists landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the James River and sold them some negroes to be held as slaves. ”

“ In that way the best and wisest man in the nation may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always get the best man in the United States; but that is the fault of the people, it is not the fault of the plan. There is one thing sure, we never get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.
There are times when we do choose our best and wisest man, and everybody thinks we did so when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As I have told you, as soon as he was made President a great war began between the two halves of our people. ”

“ We have had a man like him in our own country, who fought for us in the Revolution. His name was Francis Marion, and he was known as the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived in the swamps of South Carolina as Robin Hood did in the forests of England, and he was the stinging foe of the oppressors of the people.
I have already told you about the war in the North, and of how the British, after doing all they could to overthrow Washington and conquer the country, found themselves shut up in the city [154] of New York, with Washington like a watch-dog outside. ”

“ WE are justly proud of our great war-ships, with their strong steel sides and their mighty guns, each of which can hurl a cannon-ball miles and miles away. And such balls! Why, one of them is as heavy as a dozen of you tied together, and can bore a hole through a plate of solid steel as thick as your bodies.
Such ships and such guns as these had not been dreamed of in the days of the Revolution. Then there were only small wooden vessels, moved by sails instead of steam, and a cannon-ball that weighed twenty-four pounds was thought very heavy. Six and twelve-pound balls were common. ”