The Nation in a Nutshell by George Makepeace Towle

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THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL

A _RAPID OUTLINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY._

BY

GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE

AUTHOR OF "YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND," "YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY
OF IRELAND," "HEROES OF HISTORY," "MODERN FRANCE," ETC.

1886

THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL

CONTENTS:

I. AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES
II. THE ERA OF DISCOVERY
III. THE ERA OF COLONIZATION
IV. THE COLONIAL ERA
V. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
VI. SOCIETY IN 1776
VII. THE REVOLUTION
VIII. THE CONFEDERATION AND CONSTITUTION
IX. WASHINGTON'S PRESIDENCY
X. THE WAR OF 1812
XI. THE MEXICAN WAR
XII. THE SLAVERY AGITATION
XIII. THE CIVIL WAR
XIV. THE PRESIDENTS
XV. MATERIAL PROGRESS
XVI. PROGRESS IN LITERATURE
XVII. PROGRESS IN THE ARTS
XVIII. PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND INVENTION
XIX. POLITICAL CHANGES

THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL

AN OUTLINE OF

AMERICAN HISTORY.

I.

AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.

[Sidenote: Geology and Archaeology.]

The sciences of geology and archaeology, working side by side, have made
a wonderful progress in the past half a century. The one, seeking for
the history and transformations of the physical earth, and the other,
aiming to discover the antiquity, differences of race, and social and
ethnical development of man, have obtained results which we cannot
regard without amazement and more or less incredulity. The two sciences
have been faithful handmaidens the one to the other; but geology has
always led the way, and archaeology has been competed to follow in its
path.

[Sidenote: Four Eras of Civilization.]

Though we may doubt as to the exactness of the detailed data established
by the archaeologists, there are certain broad facts which we must
accept from them as established beyond doubt. These facts are of the
highest value and interest. The antiquary has been able, from discovered
remains of extinct civilizations, to reconstruct societies and peoples,
and to trace the occupancy of countries to periods far anterior to that
of which history takes cognizance. The general fact seems to be settled
that, in prehistoric times, Europe passed through four distinct eras.
These were the Rude Stone Age, when man was the contemporary in Europe
of the extinct hairy elephant and the cave bear; the Polished Stone Age;
the Bronze Age, when bronze was used for arms and utensils; and the Iron
Age, in which iron superseded bronze in the making of useful articles.

[Sidenote: Ancient America.]

In the same way it has been established that, on our own continent, the
oldest discoverable civilization was one in which rude stone implements
were used, and man lived contemporaneously with the megatherium and the
mastodon. Then polished and worked stone implements came into use; and
after the lapse of ages, copper. The researches of our antiquaries
have rendered it probable that America is as ancient, as an inhabited
continent, as Europe. Evidences have been brought to light, leading to
the conclusion that many thousands of years before the Christian era,
America was the seat of a civilization far from rude or savage. Groping
into the remains of the far past, we find skeletons, skulls, implements
of war, and even basket-work, buried in geological strata, which have
been overlaid by repeated convulsions and changes of the physical earth.
But so few are the relics of this dim, primeval period, that we can
only conclude its antiquity, and we can infer little or nothing of its
characteristics.

[Sidenote: Primeval Races.]

Advancing, however, another stage in research and discovery, we come
upon clear and overwhelming proofs of the existence on this continent of
a great, enterprising, skilful, and even artistic people, spread over an
immense area, and leaving behind them the most positive testimony, not
only of their existence, but of their manners and customs, their arts,
their trade, their methods of warfare, and their religion and worship.
Compared with this people, the Red Indians found here by the Pilgrims
and the Cavaliers were modern intruders upon the land. These ancient
Americans, indeed, were far superior in all respects to the Red Indian
of our historic acquaintance. When the Red Indians replaced them, the
civilization of the continent fell from a high to a much lower plane.

[Sidenote: The Mound-Builders.]

The great race of which I speak is known as "the Mound-Builders." Like
the "Wall-Builders" of Greece and Italy, they stand out, in the light of
their remains, as distinctly as if we had historical records of them.
The Mound-Builders occupied, often in thickly settled communities, the
region about our great Northern Lakes, the valleys of the Mississippi,
the Ohio, the Missouri, and the regions watered by the affluents of
these rivers, and a wide and irregular belt along the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico. There is little or no evidence that the same race inhabited
any part of the country now occupied by the Eastern and Middle States;
but some few traces of them are found in North and South Carolina.

[Sidenote: Ancient Mounds.]

The chief relics left by this comparatively polished race are the very
numerous mounds, or artificial hills, found scattered over the country.
These are sometimes ten, and sometimes forty and fifty, feet in height,
with widely varying bases. They present many forms; they are circular
and pyramidal, square and polygonal, and in some places are manifestly
imitations of the shapes of beasts, birds, and human beings. There are
districts where hundreds of these mounds appear within a limited area.
Sometimes--as at Aztalan, in Wisconsin, and at Newark, in the Licking
Valley--a vast series of earthwork enclosures is discovered, sometimes
with embankments twelve feet high and fifty broad, within which are
variously shaped mounds, definitely formed avenues, and passages and
ponds. These enclosures amply prove, aside from the geological evidences
of their antiquity, the existence of a race very different from the
Red Indians. They were clearly a people not nomadic, but with fixed
settlements, cultivators of the soil, and skilful in the art of military
defence.

[Sidenote: Altars and Temples.]

The excavations of the wonderful mounds have brought to light many
things more curious than the mounds themselves. It seems to be
established that the mounds were used for four distinct purposes. They
were altars for sacrifice, and, like the Persians, whose sacrificial
ceremonies strikingly resembled those of the Mound-Builders, they were
sun-worshippers. They offered up the most costly gifts, and even human
victims. The pyramidal mounds, with avenues leading to the summits, were
the sites of the stately sun and moon temples. Here, undoubtedly,
imposing ceremonies were often performed. The lower or "knoll" mounds
were used as the sepulchres of the dead. They yield up to the modern
antiquary numberless skulls, of a type distinctly different from those
of the Red Indians. The Mound-Builders buried their dead, most often, in
a sitting posture, adorned with shell beads and ivory ornaments.
Sometimes the dead were burned. Finally, the mounds were employed as
points of observation.

[Sidenote: Relics of the Mounds.]

[Sidenote: Early Arts.]

That the Mound-Builders were a far more civilized race than the Indians
is clearly revealed by the relics found in and about the mounds. They
have left behind them thousands of flint arrow-heads, many of beautiful
workmanship. They used spades, rimmers, borers, celts, axes, fleshers,
scrapers, pestles, and other implements whose use cannot now be
determined, made of various stones, such as porphyry, greenstone, and
feldspar. They knew well the use of tobacco, for among their most
artistic and elaborately carved remains are pipes, some of them
representing animals and human heads. It seems to be certain that they
had even attained the art of weaving cloth fabrics; for pieces of cloth,
of a material akin to hemp, have been found in the mounds, with uniform
and regularly spun threads, and every evidence that they were woven by
some deft invention or mechanical device. It is certain that the Red
Indian was ignorant of this valuable art.

[Sidenote: Primeval Mining.]

Among the highly wrought remains of the mounds are fanciful water-jugs,
well carved and symmetrical in shape, some of which were evidently
made to keep water cool. The human heads represented on these bear no
resemblance to the Indian types. Drinking cups with carved rims and
handles, sepulchral urns with curious ornaments, kettles and other
pieces of skilful pottery, copper chisels, axes, knives, awls, spear and
arrow heads, and even bracelets, come to light, here and there. There
is no doubt that the Mound-Builders were miners. For, on the southern
shores of Lake Superior, great excavations indicate an extensive and
skilful mining of copper at a very remote period. It is singular, on
the other hand, that no iron implement has ever been discovered in the
mounds. The builders used iron-ore as a stone, but never learned the art
of moulding it into weapons or utensils.

Thus the fact that vast areas of what are now the United States were
once occupied by an active, skilful, imaginative, and progressive race,
seems fully established. Not less certain is it that in their physical
type, in their government, in their arts, habits, and daily pursuits,
they were separated by a wide gap from the Red Indians whom our
ancestors found in possession of the continent. The Indian was roving,
and hunted for subsistence. The Mound-Builders were sedentary, and
undoubtedly cultivated maize as their chief article of food.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Mound-Builders.]

But how remote the Mound-Builders were from the era of European
settlement, whence they came; how, whither, and when they
vanished,--these are questions before which science stands harassed,
impotent to answer positively. There are those who, marking certain
apparent resemblances between the implements, religious rites and
customs, and cranial formations, of the Mound-Builders, and those of
the Asiatic Mongols, conclude that the former were originally Asiatic
hordes, who, crossing Behring Straits, when, perhaps, the two continents
were united at that point, formed a new home and established a new
empire here. Others, with more proof, connect them with that great
Toltec race which occupied Central America and Mexico, before they were
driven out by the ruder and more warlike Aztecs.

[Sidenote: The Aztecs.]

The Toltecs have left ample records of their existence and gorgeous
civilization, in noble monuments and very numerous though till recently
undecipherable inscriptions; and many similarities lend weight to the
theory that the empire of the Mound-Builders, in the Ohio, Mississippi,
and Missouri valleys, was the result of a great Toltec migration from
Central America, which they left to Aztec dominion. Thus while we call
our continent the "New World," it is not improbable that we may be
living in a country which was alive with art, splendor, invention,
and power, when Europe was a dreary waste, over which the now extinct
monsters roamed unmolested by man.

II.

THE ERA OF DISCOVERY.

[Sidenote: Historic Myths.]

We live in times when the researches of scholars are minute, pitiless,
and exhaustive, and when no hitherto received historical fact is
permitted to escape the ordeal of the most critical scrutiny. Many are
the cherished historical beliefs which have latterly been assailed
with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs,
unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the
story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from
being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and
that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies
counted, not by thousands, but by hundreds.

In the same way the old familiar question, "Who discovered America?"
which every school-boy was formerly as prompt to answer as to his age
and name, has in recent years become a perplexing problem of historical
disputation; and at least can no longer be accurately answered by the
name of the gallant and courageous Genoese who set forth across the
Atlantic in 1492.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Discoverers.]

Bancroft, on the first page of his history, pronounces the story of
the discovery of our country by the Icelandic Northmen, a narrative
"mythological in form and obscure in meaning"; and adds that "no clear
historical evidence establishes the natural probability that they
accomplished the passage." But the first volume of Bancroft was
published in 1852. Since then, the proofs of the discovery of the
continent by the Icelanders, very nearly five hundred years before
Columbus was thrilled with the delight of beholding the Bahamas, have
multiplied and grown to positive demonstration. They no longer rest upon
vague traditions; they have assumed the authority of explicit and well
attested records.

[Sidenote: Discoverers of America.]

The discovery of the New England coast by the Icelanders is the earliest
which, down to the present, can be positively asserted. But it has been
recently urged that there are some evidences of American discovery by
Europeans or Asiatics long prior to Leif Erikson. There are certain
indications that the Pacific coast was reached by Chinese adventurers in
the remote past; and it is stated that proofs exist in Brazil tending to
show that South America was discovered by Phoenicians five hundred years
before Christ. The story is said to be recorded on some brass tablets
found in northern Brazil, which give the number of the vessels and
crews, state Sidon as the port to which the voyagers belonged, and even
describe their route around the Cape of Good Hope and along the west
coast of Africa, whence the trade-winds drifted them across the
Atlantic.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Voyagers.]

Confining ourselves to credible history, it appears that in the year 986
(eighty years before the conquest of England by William of Normandy), an
Icelandic mariner named Bjarne Herrjulson, making for Greenland in his
rude bark, was swept across the Atlantic, and finally found himself
cast upon dry land. He made haste to set sail on his return voyage, and
succeeded in getting safely back to Iceland. He told his story of the
strange land beyond the seas; and so pleased had he been with its
pleasant and fruitful aspect that he named it "Vineland."

[Sidenote: Leif Erikson.]

The story of Bjarne impressed itself upon an intelligent and adventurous
man, Leif Erikson; who, having purchased Bjarne's ship, set sail for
Vineland in the year 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men. He reached
what is now Cape Cod, and passed the winter of 1000-1 on its shores.
Returning to Iceland, his example was followed, two years later, by
another Erikson, who established a colony on the shores of Narragansett
Bay, not far from Fall River, where the founder died and was buried.

[Sidenote: Columbus in Iceland.]

It is well nigh certain that Christopher Columbus, in the year 1477,
visited Iceland, and even sailed one hundred leagues beyond it,
discovering there an unfrozen sea. The idea of western discovery was
already in his mind, and he had received hints of a western continent,
from certain carved objects picked up in the Atlantic by other
navigators. It is altogether probable that the conjectures of Columbus
were confirmed into conviction by the Icelandic traditions of Leif's
discovery, during his sojourn at Rejkjawik. From this time Columbus was
more than ever intent upon the enterprise which, fifteen years after,
conferred upon him imperishable glory.

[Sidenote: Voyage of Columbus.]

The story of Columbus is, or should be, familiar to every American who
can read. How he sailed forth from the roads of Saltez on the 3d of
August, 1492, with three vessels and a crew of one hundred and twenty
men; how the voyage was stormy and full of doubts and discouragements;
how, finally, early on the morning of October 12, Rodrigo Triana, a
seaman of the _Pinta_, first descried the land which Columbus christened
San Salvador; how they pushed on and found Cuba and Hayti; how, after
returning to Spain, Columbus made two more voyages westward,--one in
1493, when he discovered Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Porto Rico: and
another in 1498 when the Orinoco and the coast of Para rewarded his
researches; and his subsequent unhappy fate--all these events have been
related by many writers, and most vividly of all by the graphic pen of
Washington Irving.

[Sidenote: Menendez.]

The era of American discovery may be said to have continued till the
memorable fourth day of September, 1565, when the Spaniard Menendez
founded the first town on this continent, on the Florida coast, which he
called St. Augustine. In one sense, indeed, the era of discovery did not
cease down to within the memory of men still living; for the discovery
of a path across the Rocky Mountains might well be regarded as included
in it. But during the period which intervened between the return of
Columbus from his first voyage and the building of St. Augustine, the
extent and character of the eastern portion of our continent was
revealed to Europe by many and successful navigators.

[Sidenote: The Cabots.]

The story of Columbus inspired the cupidity and territorial ambition of
England, France, Spain, and Italy; and in the year 1497 John Cabot, a
Venetian by birth, but long a resident of Bristol, England, set out
thence across the Atlantic. He was accompanied by his son Sebastian.
On the 24th of June he came in sight of Newfoundland, and then of Nova
Scotia; then he sailed southward and reached Florida. As this was a year
before the third voyage of Columbus, in which he saw the coast of the
mainland, to John Cabot belongs the honor of having landed upon the
American continent before Columbus.

[Sidenote: Amerigo Vespucci.]

Voyages to the new land now followed each other in quick succession
for many years. It was in 1499 that the accomplished but unscrupulous
Amerigo Vespucci made his first voyage to Hispaniola, following it up by
voyages along the coast of South America. He returned thence to claim,
after the death of Columbus, the honors due to the great Genoese.

[Sidenote: Verrazzani.]

Portugal and France, jealous of the success of the Spanish and English
expeditions, lost no time in entering into this perilous and brilliant
competition for maritime honor and western possession. Portugal sent out
Cortereal, and France Verrazzani. The former skirted the coast for six
hundred miles, kidnapping Indians, and spending some time at Labrador,
where he came to his death. Verrazzani, in 1524, sailed for the Western
Continent in the _Dolphin_, ranged along the coast of North Carolina,
and so northward until he espied the beautiful harbor of New York, and
anchored for a brief rest in that of Newport. Verrazzani returned to
France with glowing accounts of the beauty, fertility, and noble harbors
of the country.

[Sidenote: Jacques Cartier.]

Within ten years France sent forth another expedition, under the command
of the famous Jacques Cartier, which was destined to acquire for that
nation its claim to the possession of Canada. Cartier sailed from St.
Malo to Newfoundland in twenty days. He went up the St. Lawrence, and
returned home to tell the thrilling tale of his adventures. The next
year he came back to discover the sites of Montreal and Quebec; and he
made two more voyages, in 1540 and 1542.

[Sidenote: Ponce de Leon.]

Meanwhile, Spain was resolved to sustain the great prestige she had
gained by the expeditions of Columbus, and to yield to no rival her
claims to dominion on the new continent. In 1512, Don Juan Ponce de
Leon, a brave soldier and adventurous man, who had accompanied Columbus
on his second voyage, landed on the peninsula of Florida, and
established the right of Spain to its possession. Five years after,
Fernandez landed on the coast of Yucatan; and ere long Garay explored
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: De Soto.]

It is not possible, in this survey, to follow, or even to name, the
Spanish expeditions of discovery and conquest between 1512 and 1550.
Suffice it to say that during this period subjects of the Spanish king
landed on the coast of South Carolina, entered the harbors of New York
and New England, crossed Louisiana and northern Mexico to the Pacific,
explored Mexico and Peru, marched across Georgia under the lead of the
renowned Ferdinand de Soto, penetrated to the interior, and, after many
romantic adventures and desperate hardships, discovered the magnificent
river which we call the Mississippi; made perilous excursions into the
wild depths of Arkansas and Missouri, and even to the remote banks of
the Red River.

[Sidenote: Character of the Discoverers.]

The enterprises of Spaniards, English, Portuguese, and French were alike
prompted by the greed of gain. All sought the fabled El Dorado; all
craved the power of colonial dominion. None the less were the navigators
and soldiers, whom the nations sent forth to reveal a new world to
civilization, men of courage and fortitude, able in achieving the
momentous tasks assigned to them. Columbus and Cabot, at least, thought
less of riches and fleeting honors than of the proper and noble glories
of discovery; it was left to their Spanish successors to kidnap the
Indians, to rob their settlements and murder their women, and to invade
the peaceful wilds of America, with fire and the sword.

III.

THE ERA OF COLONIZATION.

[Sidenote: Voyages of Colonization.]

To acquire a title to the fertile and fruitful lands and fabled riches
of the newly discovered continent, became the aspiration of the great
maritime states of Europe, which had shared between them the honors of
its discovery. From the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the voyages of adventure and projected colonization
were almost continuous. Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen fitted out
vessels and crossed the ocean, to make more extended researches, and to
found, if possible, permanent settlements. Although failure generally
attended these attempts at colonization, they gradually led the way to
the final occupation of the continent.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots in America.]

Of these abortive efforts, that of Admiral Coligny to found a settlement
of the Huguenots, who were persecuted in France, on the new shores, was
the earliest and one of the most romantic. As long ago as 1562, America
became a refuge of the oppressed for conscience's sake. The Huguenot
colony, taking up their residence on the River May, gave the name of
"Carolina" (from King Charles IX.) to their new domain. After many and
terrible hardships, they returned again to France, to be soon succeeded
by another colony of Huguenots, also sent out by brave old Coligny,
which settled on the same soil of Carolina.

[Sidenote: Menendez in Florida]

This aroused the jealousy and cupidity of Spain. The "most Catholic"
king was not only enraged to find the soil which he claimed as his own
by right of discovery, taken possession of by the subjects of his French
rival, but was scandalized that the new colonists should be Calvinistic
heretics. It was the very height of the gloomiest period of religious
fanaticism and persecution in Europe. Menendez was accordingly sent
out to Florida by King Philip, and assumed its governorship; and on
September 8, 1565, Saint Augustine, the oldest town in the United
States, was founded, and Philip of Spain was solemnly proclaimed
sovereign of all North America. Menendez lost no time in attacking the
Huguenot colonists of Carolina. They were speedily defeated, and most
of them were ruthlessly massacred; and our almost virgin soil was thus
early the scene of another St. Bartholomew.

Meanwhile, England was not idle in contesting with France and Spain
the supremacy of the western land. Very early in the sixteenth century
projects of colonizing America were formed in England.

[Sidenote: English Colonization.]

Numerous voyages hither were undertaken during the reign of Henry VIII.;
but the accounts which remain of them are rare and meagre. Some of them
resulted in terrible disasters of shipwreck and death. Late in the
century a courageous and determined navigator, Martin Frobisher, made
three voyages to America, but without establishing a colony, or finding
the treasures of gold and gems which he sought. Later, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, the half-brother of Raleigh, and Barlow, made attempts to found
colonies, but in vain.

[Sidenote: Raleigh's Expedition.]

It was in the spring of 1585 that Sir Walter Raleigh fitted out his
famous expedition of seven ships, and one hundred and eight emigrants,
and sent it forth, bound for the shores of Carolina. At first it seemed
as it art English colony were really about to prosper in the new land.
They established themselves at Roanoke, and explored the country.
Hariot, one of the shrewdest of them, discovered the seductive proper-
ties of tobacco, the succulence of Indian corn, and the nutritive
quality of potatoes.

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