Chapter X: Preface (10)

He was Colonel Washington when he was sent to the Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence. While there he was made commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the War for Independence. His faith and courage and patience endeared him so to the country that no other man could be thought of for the first President of the United States except the “Father of his Country.”

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, THE ORPHAN BOY FROM THE WEST INDIES

On the little island of Nevis, in the West Indies, lived a small boy who had lost his mother, a bright young woman from France. His father, James Hamilton, who was a Scotch planter, soon left the island, and the boy, Alexander, heard little of him after that. No one knows to-day what became of the father of Alexander Hamilton, but his grandfather was a Scottish laird, or lord.

The next that is known of Alexander is that he was a clerk in the store of a merchant on Santa Cruz, a smaller island, and that the lad was not contented there. When he was twelve he wrote back to a friend in Nevis, “I would be willing to risk my life, but not my character, to exalt my station.”

Alexander studied with a minister of Santa Cruz who did all he could to help the boy to improve his position in life. As Alexander was a devout lad it is believed that the good man was trying to fit him to be a minister.

The first thing young Hamilton did to win credit was to write a wonderful description of a hurricane, or violent wind storm, that did great damage on the island. The article was printed in a London newspaper. When the people who knew the lad read his account, they could hardly believe that one so young could have written it and several wealthy planters decided to give such a bright boy a chance “to exalt his station” by sending him to school in America.

Soon the little Scotch lad who could speak French and write splendid stories in English was on his way to Boston in a British packet boat. It is stated that on that voyage he first heard of George Washington. When Alexander Hamilton reached Boston, he found the people up in arms because the British government had sent soldiers to keep order in that rebellious city; but the boy had been brought up to think that the king and the great men of England were always right.

The little Britisher from the West Indies was first sent to a grammar school not far from New York to prepare for college. He was so keen and studied so hard that he was fitted to enter King’s College in New York City at the age of sixteen. After the war against the king the name of the college was changed from King’s to Columbia.

After a year in college, the British-bred youth went to Boston again. This was about the time when the “Sons of Liberty” dressed up as Indians and threw the taxed tea overboard into Boston harbor. This act was intended to show the king and the English statesmen that the Americans would not pay taxes when they had nothing to say in the government as to what taxes they should pay. No doubt Alexander, while studying for college, had learned something of the history and the spirit of the people in America, so that he did not feel so sure that all the king did was right. After he returned to New York, there was a great mass meeting in “the Fields” to talk about the unjust acts of the king of England. In the city were many Tories, loyal to the king. Young Hamilton went down from college to hear the discussion, and it was not long before he was answering a rich Tory in a sharp, vigorous way. The people shouted to him to go up on the platform, and the brilliant West Indian youth of seventeen made a strong speech that became the talk of New York City.

A little while after this the students called on the president of King’s College. He was a Tory, and very bitter against the people who were fighting for their rights as British subjects. He scolded the students roundly, calling them traitors, rascals, and other hard names. This made the young men so angry that it might have gone hard with the old gentleman if young Hamilton had not jumped up on the porch and spoken earnestly in his defense. The president, seeing who was speaking, and thinking that the youth was talking against the Tories again, put his angry red face out of an upper window and shouted: “It’s a lie! Don’t believe a word that rogue says. He’s crazy!”

As Hamilton was really taking their foolish president’s part, this made the students shout and laugh. The young orator, taking advantage of this, kept on talking till the old Tory made his escape by a back way to a British man-of-war in the river near by. After this Hamilton wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles about the rights of the people. Events began to happen thick and fast. Washington was elected commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and drove the British soldiers out of Boston. Then the Americans decided to separate from England; so the Declaration of Independence was written and signed. Young Hamilton was soon in the midst of the fight--in command of an artillery company. When Washington and his ragged Continentals were retreating from New York, he saw a youth in charge of a battery keeping the red-coats from crossing a wide river, so that the American commander-in-chief and his little army could keep on their way to Philadelphia.

“Who is that young man?” asked Washington.

“That, your Excellency, is Alexander Hamilton.”

The great general was so pleased with the skill and courage of the young officer that he soon invited him to become his _aide_ and secretary, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The commander-in-chief liked to have bright young men around him. Colonel Hamilton was now twenty. Colonel Aaron Burr was a year older. “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was about the same age; and General Lafayette, who was added to General Washington’s staff that summer, was only nineteen. Colonel Hamilton was such a discreet and faithful secretary that it was said, “The pen of the army is held by Hamilton.” In some ways Hamilton’s pen was mightier than his sword.

At Brandywine, where Lafayette was wounded, Hamilton’s horse was shot under him; but he kept at the head of his regiment, on foot. At Valley Forge young Hamilton had occasion to remember the language his mother used in talking with him when he was a baby on the island of Nevis, for he often spoke French with young Marquis de Lafayette. The West Indian colonel was welcome wherever

_From an old print_]

he went. He was thoughtful and kind to the sick, writing beautiful letters home for disabled and dying soldiers.

One day when the young staff officer was hurrying to meet his chief, Lafayette detained him. Finally breaking away from the friendly young Frenchman, Hamilton found Washington waiting for him. The commander-in-chief said, “Colonel Hamilton, you have kept me waiting these ten minutes! I must tell you, sir, that you treat me with disrespect.”

The young _aide_ flushed scarlet and replied: “I am not conscious of it, sir; but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.”

“Very well, sir, if it be your choice,” said Washington.

With face still aflame, Hamilton turned and left the commander-in-chief. Within an hour the general was sorry he had been so severe with “my boy” as he called his _aide_, and sent for him, asking that their too hasty words might be forgotten. But even then Hamilton could not quite forgive his chief for reproving him. So Alexander Hamilton was placed in command of a detachment in the south, where “Light-Horse Harry” and Lafayette were officers also. At Yorktown, the last battle in the War for Independence, Colonel Hamilton was the first man of the American army to mount the wall before the town, where he was quickly followed by his devoted men. Within a very few minutes the American flag was floating over Yorktown.

After the war, Hamilton returned to New York City to practise law. He had married the daughter of General Schuyler, one of the richest men in that state. Attorney Hamilton soon became successful and prosperous. When the time came to frame the Constitution which was to bind the thirteen states into one Union and make them true to their name, the _United_ States, Alexander Hamilton was one of the leaders in that great undertaking.

After that, his former chief was elected the first President. One of the first acts of President Washington was to send for Alexander Hamilton to be the first Secretary of the Treasury. The young Secretary had to create success for the new nation, like making “bricks without straw.” There was no national treasury. Continental money was without value, so that when anything was considered worthless it was said to be--“not worth a continental.”

Rival states had been jealous of one another, and as there was no head, nothing was owned in common by the whole country--but debts. Money had been borrowed of other nations, and of patriotic people in America, to carry on the War for Independence. Many good people thought it would be impossible for the new government, just starting, to pay its debts, besides building up a new government and meeting the running expenses. But Alexander Hamilton, still a young man, saw that a country in debt could never be independent, and that if the government of the United States did not pay all it owed, it could not go on, any more than a bankrupt business which could not pay its bills. The only way to secure credit was to pay every dollar it owed.

Hamilton devised ways and means to do all this with such success that, in the street parades which the people arranged in different cities to celebrate the new Constitution, wherever a float represented the _Constitution_, the only man’s name on the ship of state was “Hamilton.” The plans of the young Secretary of the Treasury worked like magic, and the new government was soon on a solid foundation.

Daniel Webster, the greatest orator who ever lived in America, in speaking of Hamilton’s work, compared it to two miracles told of in the Bible; one, that of Moses when he drew water from a rock for the thirsty Israelites in the wilderness; the other, the raising of a dead man to life by Elijah. These are Webster’s words:

“Hamilton smote the rock of the national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it sprang upon its feet.”

Alexander Hamilton continued to act as the first President’s private secretary. It is generally believed that it was he who wrote out Washington’s immortal “Farewell Address.” When he gave up the office of Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton returned to the practise of law. He had gladly given up a large income and served his country for about one-third the amount of money he had been receiving from his law business.

In New York Hamilton’s chief rival was Aaron Burr, whom Washington had disliked and allowed to retire from his military staff. But Colonel Burr was a brilliant lawyer and a popular politician. When Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States by the House of Representatives, Aaron Burr might have been chosen President if three men had voted the other way. Burr was bitterly disappointed, and blamed Hamilton for his defeat. Nursing revenge in his heart Burr practised shooting. As Hamilton continued to oppose Burr’s schemes, Burr easily found an excuse to challenge him to fight a duel.

Dueling was still a common means of deciding questions of honor. Hamilton’s eldest son had been killed in that way. As a man was called a coward if he did not fight, Hamilton accepted Burr’s challenge, though he felt sure it would mean death to himself. The place chosen for the shooting was the spot where Hamilton’s son had lately been killed. When the signal was given, Alexander Hamilton pointed his pistol upward and fired into a tree to avoid hitting Burr, whose aim was as true as when shooting at a target. Hamilton fell, face downward, and died next day, declaring that he forgave the enemy who had planned and practised to kill him.

This duel did more than anything else to show the wickedness of the duel as a way of settling disputes. Aaron Burr later was accused of being a traitor to the country which Hamilton had given his great and noble life to place upon a firm foundation. What is true of dueling is also true of war--the unworthy party may succeed by wicked means. But America remembers Aaron Burr as a curse, and Alexander Hamilton as a blessing to his country.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, THE FATHER OF DEMOCRACY

Thomas Jefferson was born on his father’s many-thousand-acre farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, on the banks of River Anna, whose name was shortened to “Rivanna.” Thomas’s father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, had come over the sea from Wales, and his mother was Jane Randolph, a daughter of one of the “F. F. V.’s,” or First Families of Virginia.

The Jefferson boy grew up tall, thin, awkward, freckled and red-haired. His father, like George Washington’s, was a wealthy planter, who died while Thomas was yet a lad. But young Jefferson’s mother was not left poor like Washington’s; she was able to send her son to William and Mary College. Though Thomas was always reading and studying, he was very fond of playing the violin. Several stories are told about Jefferson and his “fiddle,” as they called it then. One is that he played duets with Patrick Henry; another is that he once performed with George Washington, who played quite well on the flute.

Thomas was so eager to learn and so afraid of wasting time in college that he took the four years’ course in two years, graduating at nineteen. Besides the regular college branches, he studied architecture, and after graduating devoted some time to that profession before fully deciding to study law.

Young Jefferson was not admitted to practise law until five years after finishing his college course. This was because he was not content merely with “reading law,” but he read many books on other subjects and continued his study of music.

While he was attending court at Charlottesville, his home at Shadwell was burned to the ground. An old negro house-servant came to tell the young master all about the fire. Lawyer Jefferson thought first of his large library and asked if his precious books had been saved.

“No, massa,” said the old slave. “Dem books is all burnt up, but de fire didn’t cotch your dear old fiddle. I carried dat out, myse’f, I did.”

Perhaps the best story of all that are still told of Jefferson and his fiddle is that about two young men admirers of the young and beautiful widow Skelton. They called on her one evening and found “Tom” Jefferson there already. He was playing his violin while she accompanied him on her spinet--an old-fashioned piano. They listened a moment and laughed. “We won’t play ‘second fiddle’ or break up their duet,” said one of the callers. So they went away without leaving their names. It was not long before Thomas Jefferson, like George Washington, married a wealthy widow and brought her to live on one of the largest and finest estates in old Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson had planned and built a new house in place of the one which had been burned down. He chose a high hill on the plantation, from which, across the surrounding country, the town of Charlottesville could be seen miles away. He named the estate “Monticello,” the Italian word for “little mountain.”

About the time the Jeffersons were married the whole country was stirred by the Stamp Act and other taxes demanded by England of the American colonies. These taxes seemed unjust, because the people were not allowed the right to send men from America to help make the laws which they had to obey. Jefferson wrote a pamphlet on the subject, which he called “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” In it he said, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”

When the people of the colonies in America were fully aroused, they sent men to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia to decide what to do about the unjust acts of the British king and his wrong advisers. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee were among the men, called delegates, sent from “Old Virginia.”

One day in the Congress, Richard Henry Lee arose and made this motion:

“_Resolved_, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to
be, free and independent states.”

After discussing Lee’s resolution for three days, the

Congress voted to have a statement drawn up to send to King George the Third, declaring that the people of the United Colonies could not stand wrong treatment any longer. Thomas Jefferson was appointed chairman of a committee of five to write this paper, which came to be called the Declaration of Independence. This is one of the four greatest legal papers ever written. In it were these lines, which will be repeated as long as there are people living in the world who love liberty:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.”

“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our
sacred honor.”

When the War for Independence was won, Thomas Jefferson was sent to France to represent the young American republic. Then when Washington was President he was called home to be Secretary of State. After Washington died, Thomas Jefferson was elected the third President of the United States. Instead of being fond of show in using the power given to him by the people, Thomas Jefferson was very simple in his tastes. When he came to be inaugurated President he did not drive through the streets of Washington in a coach with six horses and outriders and escorts, as other Presidents had done, but walked with a few friends from his boarding-house to the new Capitol, then building, where he delivered his Inaugural Address and took the oath of office.

This so-called “Jeffersonian simplicity” seemed strange then, because he was a man of wealth and lived in a beautiful mansion. Many people did not like his simple ways. They thought the President of the United States should show more dignity. The minister from Great Britain was offended because, when he came to present his respects and those of the king of England, President Jefferson received him in a dressing-gown and slippers and heavy yarn socks. But the sensible people thought so much of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence that they did not mind what kind of stockings Thomas Jefferson wore.

While he was President, Jefferson saw that the country’s interests would be hampered while New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, belonged to France. It was like having another nation own and control the south door of the United States. So Jefferson sent men to purchase from the French government New Orleans and the right of way out of the Mississippi. Napoleon was then in power, and as he needed money to carry on his war with England, he offered to sell to the United States, for fifteen million dollars, not only New Orleans, but all the western country which France had claimed since the days of La Salle and other explorers. This was a great bargain and the men whom President Jefferson had sent bought the land without waiting to hear from home. This was called the Louisiana Purchase, and the people were more than glad to approve what the President had done.

The expedition of Lewis and Clark was sent out by Jefferson to explore and make maps of the Louisiana Purchase.

So Thomas Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but he was the means of doubling the size and wealth of the country, making it extend from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

ANDREW JACKSON, AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR HERO

About ten years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two Irish linen weavers, Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson, came across the Atlantic to a backwoods settlement in North Carolina. There the young settlers built a cabin, but before they had lived long in their rude little home, Andrew Jackson died, leaving his wife with two small sons, Hugh and Robert. The young widow went to live with a sick sister a few miles away, and when the third baby boy was born to her here, she named him Andrew for his dead father. The house in which little Andrew Jackson was born was so near the boundary line between North and South Carolina that years afterwards both states claimed him as their son.

Elizabeth Jackson had to keep house for her sister to support herself and her three little boys. Andrew was in his tenth year when the War for Independence broke out in the north. Three years later the British came to fight near the Jacksons’ home in the south. Hugh, the oldest, now a lad of seventeen, fought in the battle of Stono, and died, soon after, of heat and exhaustion.

Then the British troops came nearer, and Widow Jackson, with Robert and Andrew, was driven from her poor home. These terrible experiences developed in the tall, red-haired, freckled, thirteen-year-old Scotch-Irish lad a deep hatred of the “red-coats,” as the British soldiers were called.

As if Andrew had not already reasons enough for hating his enemies, a squad of dragoons surprised him with his brother Robert and a cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, at the home of the Crawfords, where they had brought Tom, wounded and ill, for his mother’s care. After capturing the young American “soldiers three,” the British cavalrymen broke the Crawfords’ dishes, tore their clothing, ripped open feather beds, insulted the frightened mother and abused the little children. Then, as if for a crowning insult, the British officer ordered Andy to clean his boots. The young Irish soldier drew himself up and said proudly,

“Sir, I am not a servant, but a prisoner of war, and I claim to be treated as such.”

The angry dragoon struck at the youth’s head with his saber. Andy threw up his hand and saved his own life by breaking the force of the stroke, but received deep cuts on his forehead and hand. He wore the two scars to his dying day.

Andrew’s brother Robert was commanded to perform the same low service and refused with the same proud spirit; he also received a sword-cut on his head which nearly killed him. The two Jackson youths were then taken away to a prison pen at Camden, South Carolina, where American soldiers were treated like beasts and where many were already dying of smallpox.

While the Jackson brothers were in this prison, a battle was fought near by. Young Andrew whittled a hole through a board with an old razor, so that he could watch the battle that was raging around them.

When the poor mother heard that her wounded sons were confined in a filthy prison where they were exposed to smallpox, she walked forty miles to Camden and managed to have them exchanged for some British soldiers the Americans had captured. Begging the use of two horses, she placed Robert on one of them, as he was very ill with smallpox. She rode the other horse to hold her son in his saddle; and young Andrew, “weak and wounded, sick and sore,” staggered along behind them on foot. Robert died two days after reaching home, but Andrew recovered after a long and severe illness.

After nursing her only remaining son back to health, that brave, unselfish mother heard that many American soldiers were sick and dying in the British prison ship in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. She walked more than one hundred and fifty miles to nurse and help them as she had nursed her own sons. She took the ship fever and died, giving her devoted life for freedom and for country.

So Andrew Jackson, now a tall, thin youth of fourteen with a “shock of sandy hair,” was without father, mother, brothers, money, or near friends--but with a bitter grudge against Britain as the cause of all his troubles and sorrows. His life was made better by his deep love of his brave, noble mother’s memory. When he grew up and became the most popular man in the United States, Andrew Jackson often said with a smile of pride:

“_That_ I learned from my good old mother!”

Andrew Jackson had but few chances to go to school, and then only a few weeks at a time. He learned the saddler’s trade and studied when he could take the time from hard work. Little as he learned from books, he knew more than most of his neighbors. He taught school sometimes to add to what he earned at his trade, so that he could study law. Even North Carolina, wild as that new country was, became too “civilized” for Andrew Jackson, and he crossed the mountains into Tennessee and settled at Nashville, where he began to practise law. In that rough country he soon became a leader. In the midst of the wild life in which the chief “sports” were horse-racing, Indian shooting, fighting duels, and the like, young “Judge” Jackson was “hail-fellow, well met!” He soon was elected to Congress, but he found life at the capital entirely too “genteel” for him. When the southern Indians went on the warpath and massacred white settlers, General Jackson and his troops from Tennessee drove them from place to place and killed nearly all the savage murderers. He was called the Hero of the War of 1812, because he won the Battle of New Orleans, the greatest land victory in that war.

The people loved General Jackson because he was a bluff, warm-hearted man, and because, whether he fought with the Indians or the British, “he thrashed ’em every time!” He was named “Old Hickory” because he was about as tough in fiber and as rough on the outside as the hickory tree. He was probably the most popular hero that ever lived in America, for more boys were named Andrew Jackson than even George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. January eighth, the date of Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, is still celebrated as Jackson Day. Jackson was called “the Man of the People,” including the “rough and ready” people of the great, new west; Jefferson represented the more educated classes; while Washington was the man of the upper class of people. Still, Jackson stood for the white people only. It was Abraham Lincoln who came thirty years later and stood for all the people, black and white.

General Jackson was elected and carried to the White House by a great wave of popularity. The people were so pleased to have him for their President that they crowded into the White House and stood on the new satin covered furniture in their muddy boots. They broke the china and glassware and spilled punch on the velvet carpets. In their

_From the painting by D. M. Carter_]

frantic efforts to shake hands with their hero-president they nearly crushed him to death.

President Jackson treated his political enemies as he did the Indians and the English. He turned thousands of men out of office and appointed his friends in their places. “To the victors belong the spoils,” he said, but most people to-day believe the warlike President had the wrong idea in treating public service as “spoils of war.” After serving his country as President, Andrew Jackson lived at the Hermitage, a beautiful mansion he had built near Nashville, Tennessee.

When the aged ex-President knew he was dying, he called his friends and slaves around his bed and told them he wanted them all to meet him in heaven. When the simple but grand old hero died, they found his dead wife’s miniature close to his heart where he had worn it for many years.

Then they remembered that, rough and violent as he often had been with men, he had never spoken a cross or cruel word to his wife or any of his own household.

“The bravest are the tenderest.”

WEBSTER, CLAY, CALHOUN, THREE GREAT CHAMPIONS IN CONGRESS

“There were giants in those days,” a hundred years ago in the United States of America; not giants in body, but in mind and heart. Besides the Presidents and the generals in the War of 1812 and the Indian wars, the greatest men in America were Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who were in Congress together. Daniel Webster was the man of New England, Henry Clay of the west, and John C. Calhoun of the south.

Daniel Webster was born among the hills of New Hampshire, the ninth of the ten children of his father. He had a huge head, a high forehead, and great, deep, inquiring eyes. Webster once said that he did not remember when he could not read the Bible. He learned chapter after chapter of it by heart and remembered them all his life.

(From left to right.)

_From the painting by A. Tholey_]

Daniel’s father lived on a rocky farm in New Hampshire and had a hard time to educate his growing family. He was called Captain Webster because he had been an officer in the War for Independence. His children used to delight in hearing about General Washington. After Daniel grew to be a great man he was proud to tell how the Father of his Country had trusted his father. Once he said,

“I should rather have it said upon my father’s tombstone that he had guarded the person of George Washington and was worthy of such a trust, than to have carved upon it the greatest title that the world could give.”

Captain Webster said to his son one day after a gentleman who was riding by had stopped to speak to him:

“Dan, that man beat me by a few votes when I ran against him for Congress, and all because he had a better education. For that reason I intend you shall have a good education, and I hope to see you work your way up to Congress.”

Daniel’s next older brother’s name was Ezekiel. He was larger and stronger than Daniel who, because of his poor health, was not expected to do hard work on the farm. This gave Daniel time to read and improve his mind. Yet he was not allowed to be idle; he was expected to do “chores” and other light work about the place. One day Captain Webster went away, after giving both boys a certain task to do while he was gone. The lads, boy-like, spent the day having a good time, so that when their father came home he found the work not done.

“Zeke,” he said sternly, “what have you been doing all day?”

“Nothing,” said Zeke sheepishly.

“And what have _you_ been doing, Dan?” asked Captain Webster.

“Helping Zeke!” said the younger boy with a grin.

After that when any one was idle, it was said that he was “helping Zeke.”

When the time came for Father Webster to send Daniel away to school, as he had promised, the younger boy said he would not go unless Zeke could have the same chance. So Captain Webster mortgaged the farm to raise the money to educate both boys. Even then the sons had to stay out of school at times to earn money to help themselves through the academy and college.

In mental work Daniel proved stronger and better able to earn money than his older brother. A good story is told of Daniel’s coming, after teaching a term of school, to see Ezekiel at college and giving his brother one hundred dollars--nearly all he had earned, keeping only three dollars for himself until he could earn more. That was Daniel Webster’s best way of “helping Zeke.”

Daniel was the more brilliant of the two, so that he was through college as soon as his brother, though he had not spent so much time there. Their father explained one difference between the two sons:

“Ezekiel could not tell half he knew; but Daniel could tell more than he knew.”

By the time Daniel was out of college his father had become a county judge, and was able to offer his youngest son a position as clerk of the court at fifteen hundred dollars a year, which was a large salary for that time and place. But Daniel refused the place, saying: “I intend to be a lawyer myself and not to spend my life jotting down other men’s doings.”

“‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’” said Judge Webster, reminding his son that there were already too many lawyers for them all to make a good living.

“There’s always room at the top,” said young Daniel Webster.

He went to Boston to study law, and his fame as attorney and orator spread far and wide. The two sons soon paid their father’s debts, and proud old Judge Webster soon saw his son Daniel not only in Congress, but acknowledged to be the greatest man in the Senate.

Ezekiel Webster did not have so brilliant a career as his younger brother, but Daniel always yielded to “Zeke’s” better judgment, even in the greatest public affairs. Ezekiel did not live to see Daniel’s highest success, and it was said that a new look of sadness came into the great Webster’s face, and never left it, after hearing of “Zeke’s” sudden death.

Although Daniel Webster was not six feet tall, his high, full, square brow and dignified bearing made him seem a giant. Carlyle, the great Scottish philosopher, met him in London and said: “Webster is a walking cathedral!”

When Daniel Webster was still a small boy on his father’s “rock-ribb’d” farm in New Hampshire, a thin, homely youth of fifteen came into the Court of Chancery in Richmond, Virginia. He was so awkward and bashful and dressed so queerly that the clerks winked at one another and snickered behind his back. That youth, whose name was Henry Clay, had come to Richmond from a low, swampy region called “the Slashes,” where he lived with his widowed mother. Because he used to ride a poor old horse to a mill near his home to get a little corn ground, Henry Clay was afterward called “the Mill Boy of the Slashes.”

Henry’s mother married again and moved out to Kentucky when it was still a western wilderness. Young Clay stayed in Virginia to study law and was soon admired because of his brightness. He improved his time, as well as his appearance, so that when he was eighteen, he was a popular orator and “the bright, particular star” of the Richmond Debating Society.

Then, instead of finding “room higher up” in his home state, Henry went west to be near his mother, and to “grow up with the country.” The twenty-one-year-old attorney hung out his sign in the new and growing town of Lexington, Kentucky. He was good-natured and thoughtful. He understood law very well for so young a man. As he was an eloquent speaker, he became a successful attorney. He married and settled down on a 600-acre estate which he named “Ashland.” This estate is still known all over the world as “the home of Henry Clay.”

The year before the War of 1812 began, Henry Clay was sent to Congress from Kentucky and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He raised his eloquent voice against England and bore a strong part in supporting President Madison in carrying on the war. He was so earnest in this that he was known as a leader of “the War Hawks.” When the war was over, Henry Clay was one of five men sent to Europe by the United States to arrange the terms of peace with Great Britain--a peace which has not been broken for more than a hundred years.

Henry Clay was three times a candidate for the presidency. He had done so much for the country that he had made enemies of many whom he had to oppose at different times. So each time he was defeated by a man not nearly so great or powerful, but for whom more people were willing to vote.

While Webster and Clay were leaders in Congress there was great excitement because that body passed a tariff law which the southern people did not like. Many of the southern leaders, especially those of South Carolina, said that Congress had no right to pass such a law and that each state might declare the objectionable law null and void or of no effect within its borders. Such action by a state was called “nullification.” There was talk that some of the states would withdraw from the Union if the President tried to enforce the hated law. Such withdrawal on the part of a state was called “secession.”

About the time these mutterings of disunion were in the air, Robert Y. Hayne, a great orator from South Carolina, made a strong speech in the Senate of the United States, maintaining the right of his state to “nullify” and withdraw from the Union. Daniel Webster, the champion of the Union, delivered one of the greatest appeals ever made by any orator, in his famous reply to Hayne. It closed with these now familiar words:

“Let my last feeble and lingering glance behold the glorious ensign
of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their
original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star
obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable question as,
‘What is all this worth?’ or those other words of delusion and
folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread
all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample
folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other
sentiment, dear to every true American heart--_Liberty and Union,
now and forever, one and inseparable_.”

The greatest leader in the south and champion of the right of his state, South Carolina, was John C. Calhoun. He also was an eloquent speaker. He declared in the Senate of the United States, in speaking of the tariff law meant to tax goods which people needed, “We look upon it as a dead law, null and void, and will not obey it.” South Carolina nullified the tariff law and threatened to secede from the Union.

General Andrew Jackson, the bluff old Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, was then President. He declared, “The Union must and shall be preserved!” John C. Calhoun and all others acquainted with “Old Hickory,” as the President was nicknamed, knew that he meant just what he said. It seemed that civil war was about to begin when Henry Clay, who loved the Union, averted the danger by proposing a plan of compromise which both sides could accept.

THE KIND HEART OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Little Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River into Indiana, and lived all winter in an open shed called a “half-faced camp,” before his father built a better cabin, with bare earth for its floor. Tom Lincoln, Abe’s father, was “a mighty hunter.” He liked to shoot game better than the hard work of clearing land and farming. He thought Abe was timid because he did not like to kill harmless animals or see them suffer.

During the fourteen years Abe lived in southern Indiana, he went to school a few weeks at a time--less than a year in all. A girl who went to school when he did, used to tell, after she became an old woman, that Abe’s first “composition” was against cruelty to animals. She always remembered how he read this sentence in it: “An ant’s life is as sweet to it as ours is to us.”

One day Abe caught several lads laughing at a turtle as it moved slowly about, showing, as well as a dumb animal could, the misery it was in. For there were burning coals on its back, and the biggest boy stood by with a smoking shingle in his hand. This showed Abe how the hot coals came upon the terrapin’s back. Snatching the shingle from the big bully’s hand, he brushed them off and began

to paddle the cruel boy with it, calling him a cowardly fellow for hurting a helpless turtle.

Just before Abe was twenty-one, Father Lincoln moved to newer country in Illinois. Abe’s step-sisters were now married, so there was a big family going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. One of the step-sisters took with her a pet dog. It was in the midst of winter, and some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice. One day the little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the Lincoln party had forded a shallow stream. After crossing, Abe, who was then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and whining, afraid of being left behind. It was growing dark and they had to make their camp for the night. All the others were for leaving the “troublesome cur” to its fate. Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving to Illinois, said of this:

“But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling
off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream and triumphantly
returned with the shivering animal under my arm. His frantic leaps
of joy and other evidences of a dog’s gratitude amply repaid me for
all the exposure I had undergone.”

Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness of heart. When he was a country lawyer he had to ride from one county seat to another, attending court. The judge and several attorneys rode from place to place where court was to be held. Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny stories.

The Illinois roads were then nearly always very dusty or very muddy. One day their party saw a hog stuck in a deep mudhole, squealing loudly. The party rode by and laughed at the pig’s plight, but no one took the trouble to help it out. But those despairing squeals touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln.

He soon fell behind and galloped back to rescue the animal. Taking several rails from the roadside fence, he used one to pry over, and another to lift the pig out. By taking care and plenty of time, he managed to place the end of a rail under the hog without hurting it. The animal was now so weak that this took a long time, and Lawyer Lincoln’s clothes were badly smeared with mud.

At last, when the pig realized that it was free, it started off toward the farmhouse where it belonged, flopping its big ears and grunting gratefully. Mr. Lincoln did not catch up with his friends until they had arrived at the tavern in the next town.

When they saw his mud-plastered clothes, they all began to laugh, for Lawyer Lincoln did not often have a new suit of clothes. When they stopped chaffing him about helping his “dear brother” in distress, Lincoln said soberly,

“That farmer’s children might have to go barefoot next winter if he lost his hog.”

Another day Lincoln was missing. One of the party explained,

“I saw him an hour ago over the fence in a grove with a young bird screaming in each hand, while he was going around hunting for their nest.”

It took a long time to find it. Lawyer Lincoln had to let one bird go while he climbed the tree to put the other in its nest. Then he had to climb up again to put the other bird in. So it was after dark when he rejoined his friends at the tavern table. It seemed so absurd for a big man like Lincoln to waste hours on two birds that had fallen out of their nest, that even the judge scolded him. Mr. Lincoln replied with deep feeling,

“Gentlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well to-night if I had not saved those birds. Their cries would have rung in my ears.”

The spring after he was twenty-one, Abraham Lincoln helped to build a flatboat and went on it to New Orleans to buy stock for a store in the village. While in the southern city with two companions, he witnessed the sale of a mulatto girl in a slave market. The sight filled his righteous soul with wrath. Clenching his fists, he exclaimed:

“Boys, let’s get away from this. If I ever get a chance to _hit that thing_ (slavery) _I’ll hit it hard_!”

So Lawyer Lincoln became the champion of the negro and lifted his voice against slavery. “This country cannot exist half slave and half free,” he exclaimed. His ringing words in the famous debates with Senator Douglas pleased the people of the north so much that Lincoln was elected President next time. Within six weeks after he went to live in the White House, the Civil War broke out.

The tender heart of President Lincoln was often hurt when the news of a battle came to Washington with its list of killed and wounded. He tried to keep up his own spirits and the heart of the nation by his constant flow of stories which made the people smile through their tears. To him it was an awful thing for his brothers in the north to be fighting and slaying their brothers down south.

When Abraham Lincoln saw that the time was right, he gave out the Emancipation Proclamation--his order to free four million slaves. He now had “a chance to hit that thing,” and he did “hit it hard.”

Grand as it was to write that great paper and free all the slaves, it was even greater to show the people of the United States and of the whole world how to look on the bright side of the hardest trials, and even to laugh in the face of trouble.

President Lincoln had the supreme joy of seeing the purpose of the war accomplished. His Gettysburg Address--which every boy and girl should know by heart--and the words from the Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” are ever-living witnesses of the kind heart and unselfish spirit of Abraham Lincoln.

William Cullen Bryant, one of the first of American poets, wrote these lines for the Martyr President’s funeral:

“O, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
Who in the fear of God didst bear
The sword of power, a nation’s trust.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the Sons of Light,
Among the noble hearts of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.”

ULYSSES S. GRANT, THE GENERAL WHO HATED WAR

“This poor little boy has no name!” exclaimed Miss Simpson, the aunt who was visiting the Grant family at Point Pleasant, overlooking the Ohio River, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati.

The rest of the family agreed that it would be a shame to let the baby go a day longer without a name.

“Let’s name him now,” said the aunt; “let’s vote on it.”

The others consented, and each wrote a preferred name on a bit of paper. Then a hat was passed and all put their

slips in it. The aunt took out a ballot which read, “Ulysses.” This name was on several slips, because Grandfather Grant had just been reading the story of the siege of Troy. “Hiram” and “Albert” were on two other ballots. At last they decided to call the baby Hiram Ulysses Grant.

When “Baby Lysses,” as the family called him, was about a year old, the Grants moved to Georgetown, a village about ten miles farther from Cincinnati, and ten miles back from the Ohio. Here little Ulysses grew and began to go to school, and some of the boys called him “Hug,” from his initials, H. U. G. Other boys, just to be funny, called him “Useless.”

Ulysses’ father was a tanner and leather worker. The boy did not like tanning hides because it was dirty, bad-smelling work; but he did like horses. Besides his tannery, Mr. Grant owned a small farm. So Ulysses, while he was a boy, learned to plow and harrow, and to haul logs to the creek near by, where they were floated to the sawmill to be cut up into boards and timber. The lad found a good way to make a horse do the heavy work of lifting or rolling logs on to the sled, so that he and the horse could do that better than two or three men.

A visitor in Georgetown was astonished one day to see a boy dash by, standing on the back of a horse on the run.

“Circus rider?” the stranger asked.

“No--only ‘Useless’ Grant,” was the reply.

When a circus did come to Georgetown, the Grant boy was there to see the trained horses and the fancy riding. There was a trick pony that had been trained not to allow a man or even a boy to stay on its back. The manager came to the side of the ring and called out that a prize of five dollars in gold would be given to any one who could ride the pony five times around the ring. Some of the men and boys in the crowd shouted, “Lyss Grant can do it. Try it! Oh, go ahead, Lyss!”

Although Ulysses was a bashful lad and hated to make a show of himself, the prize and his desire to see what he could do were too tempting to resist. So he went to the ringside and began to pat the pony. Then he sprang lightly upon its back. The vicious little beast began to rear and tear around to shake or rub the rider off, but Ulysses hung on in spite of all its frantic efforts. He won the prize, but that five dollars was of small value compared with the lesson he learned of trying hard and not giving up anything he attempted.

The Grant boy’s mastery of horses and his way of finishing whatever he started out to do made his services valuable to the neighbors. He rode hundreds of miles on important business errands. One time he was driving two young ladies and their baggage on a long journey where they had to ford a swollen stream. The ladies, seeing the horses were swimming and that the wagon was full of water, began to scream and take hold of his arms.

“Keep quiet, please,” said Ulysses calmly. “I’ll take you through safe.” And the Grant lad was as good as his word.

Sometimes he was asked to break a horse to trot or to pace. The wildest animal would soon become tame and gentle and would do whatever he wished. People thought he would be a horse-trainer or jockey, or keep a racing stable, but Ulysses Grant, much as he enjoyed training horses, had a mind above doing that all his life.

He was studious at school and excelled in games and sports. One day, while playing with a neighbor boy, he batted the ball through the window of a neighboring house. Instead of running away or pretending that another boy had done it, Ulysses went at once and knocked at the door of the house, and said to the lady when she came out, “I have broken your window, but I’m going to get a pane of glass and have it put right in.”

The woman, who had seen how it happened, told the Grant boy to go back and play, and she would attend to the glass. In telling about the accident, she said Ulysses was no more to blame than the other boy, and ended her story with, “I like Lyss Grant; he’s such a square, manly little fellow.”

The school at Georgetown was not advanced enough to suit Ulysses’ father; so the lad was sent away to a private school at Marysville. When he came home, though he did not like the tannery, he worked faithfully there. He told his father plainly that he would work at tanning hides until he was twenty-one--“but not one day after that!”

“What _would_ you like to do?” his father asked.

“I’d like to be a planter, or a river merchant, or--or--get an education,” stammered the boy.