Part 1

[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON]

_GRADED SUPPLEMENTARY READING SERIES_

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

FOR THE FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADES

REQUIRED BY THE SYLLABUS FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF THE NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

BY EDNA HENRY LEE TURPIN

AUTHOR OF “CLASSIC FABLES,” “STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY,” “FAMOUS PAINTERS,” ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK CHARLES E. MERRILL CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY CHARLES E. MERRILL CO.

PREFACE

“Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in the world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here,” says Carlyle. “The history of the world is the biography of great men.”

What the historian-philosopher esteemed the truest form of history is undoubtedly the form which appeals earliest and most strongly to the child mind. This fact has been recognized by educators, and biographical stories in the lower grades are wisely made the foundation for more comprehensive work in advanced grades.

The following biographies of men and women prominent in the making of American history are intended as an introduction to a topical study of the history of the United States. These biographies are prepared to meet the requirements of the New York State schools; the author has followed the plan outlined in the State Syllabus. She has in every case consulted the most recent and authoritative biographies, and has endeavored to make the narrative truthful and vivid.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

This book contains all the biographical matter required for the fifth and sixth grades in the Elementary Syllabus of the New York State Education Department, and follows faithfully the outlines given.

The style is clear, easy, and concise, common words and short sentences being used.

The aim is to bring out, so far as the brief space will allow, those biographical and dramatic elements which make the strongest appeal to the pupil.

While no attempt is made to present a continuous history of our country, these biographies show its development from the time of discovery and exploration through the days of colonization and settlement to the present period of invention and industrial supremacy.

CONTENTS

PAGE

ADAMS, SAMUEL 149

BACON, NATHANIEL 122

BALTIMORE, CECIL CALVERT, LORD 105

BARTON, CLARA 290

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM 236

BOONE, DANIEL 200

CABOT, JOHN 37

CARNEGIE, ANDREW 297

CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE 94

CLAY, HENRY 247

CLINTON, DEWITT 218

COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER 20

DE SOTO, FERDINAND 31

DEWEY, GEORGE B. 292

DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS 41

EDISON, THOMAS A. 238

FARRAGUT, DAVID G. 282

FIELD, CYRUS W. 236

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN 126

FULTON, ROBERT 223

GRANT, ULYSSES S. 267

GREENE, NATHANAEL 176

HAMILTON, ALEXANDER 193

HENRY, PATRICK 142

HUDSON, HENRY 80

JACKSON, ANDREW 240

JEFFERSON, THOMAS 186

JONES, JOHN PAUL 181

LAFAYETTE, MARIE JEAN, MARQUIS DE 212

LA SALLE, ROBERT DE 100

LEE, ROBERT E. 277

LEIF THE LUCKY 7

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM 257

MCCORMICK, CYRUS 230

MACDONOUGH, THOMAS 204

MINUIT, PETER 84

MONTCALM, LOUIS, MARQUIS DE 136

MORSE, SAMUEL F. B. 233

OGLETHORPE, JAMES EDWARD 114

PENN, WILLIAM 109

PERRY, OLIVER HAZARD 204

PHILIP, KING OF WAMPANOAGS 118

POCAHONTAS 58

POLO, MARCO 13

RALEIGH, SIR WALTER 46

SCHUYLER, PHILIP 169

SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN 51

STANDISH, MILES 62

STEPHENSON, GEORGE 220

STUYVESANT, PETER 89

WASHINGTON, GEORGE 156

WEBSTER, DANIEL 253

WHITNEY, ELI 226

WILLIAMS, ROGER 76

WINTHROP, JOHN, GOVERNOR 70

WOLFE, JAMES 136

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

FOR THE FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADES

Leif the Lucky

From the northwestern coast of Europe projects the rock-ribbed Scandinavian peninsula. The scenery is grand and picturesque, but the soil is sterile and the climate severe. In this bleak, beautiful country and on the adjacent islands of the Baltic Sea, there lived, a thousand years ago, the people called the Norsemen or Northmen.

Their houses were usually long wooden structures a hundred or two hundred feet in length. Sometimes these houses were divided into several rooms, but often the dwelling consisted of only one large hall or living-room. On the floor of stone or hard-trampled earth, was kindled a fire, the smoke from which found its way upward and out through the crevices of the high-pitched roof. On three sides of the room were built beds,--shelf-like structures of boards, with skins for bedding and blankets.

The Norsemen did not even attempt to wrest a living from the reluctant soil. At home their days were given to hunting and fishing, their evenings to feasting in the hall. While they sat at table, the scalds, as their poets were called, sang or recited tales of battles, conquests, voyages,--the daring deeds of the vikings or sea-robbers and the sea-kings of their race. Thus in hunting, fishing, and feasting passed the winter.

When summer unlocked the storm- and ice-bound harbors, the Norsemen put forth in their ships. Their long-ships, or ships of war, were long, narrow vessels; on each side were benches for rowers and over the sides hung the shining shields of the Norsemen. Hundreds of these little vessels pushed off boldly from the shores of Scandinavia every summer. The Norsemen knew nothing of the mariner’s compass, and they directed their course on the pathless seas by means of the stars. This was a dangerous undertaking, and in stormy, foggy weather, many a boat lost its bearings and went down with all on board.

Fleets of the long-boats, however, braved the rough seas and sought distant lands--the coasts of England, France, Spain, Italy, even of Greece and Africa. What was their object? Plunder and always plunder. The fierce, merciless sea-soldiers descended on a land suddenly, like a thunder-cloud from the blue summer sky. They laid it waste; then, with stores of gold and silver, household goods and provisions, they sailed back home. Year after year, century after century, the Norsemen made these summer raids and were a terror to all the western and southern coasts of Europe.

But in the course of time, the character of the Norse invasions changed. The men did not sail forth alone for summer raids. Instead, men, women, and children went together and wintered on the coasts which they plundered. Sometimes they remained summer and winter and made the stolen lands their own. They were so strong and fierce in battle that few people could withstand them.

They overran the coasts of England, and it seemed as if they would take possession of the land. But a brave, wise king, Alfred the Great, defeated them on land, and built boats, the beginning of the English navy, to defend the coasts. Thus the Norse people in England became subjects instead of masters.

France, however, did not have an Alfred the Great. In the ninth century Rolf, a bold Norseman, established himself on the fair coastland of France. In course of time, the people there were called Normans instead of Norsemen, and the land they had seized was known as Normandy. These Normans, like their Norse ancestors, were fond of battle and conquest. One of them, Duke William, went to England, took possession of the land, and made himself King William.

The Norsemen went west as well as south, and in the ninth century, they settled in Iceland. Thence they pushed on to Greenland, where they established a colony. Farther west than Greenland it is said that they went, to the continent of America, hundreds of years before Columbus was born.

Here is the story as the Sagas, or old Scandinavian tales, tell it.

In 985, Bjarni, a merchant and ship-master who was traveling from Iceland to Greenland, was driven out of his course by a storm and foggy weather. “They were borne before the wind for many days, they knew not whither.” When at last calm and sunshine came, they reached a low wooded shore, probably Cape Cod. Leaving this land on the left, Bjarni sailed northward, with a favoring wind. Two days later, he again came near land, low and wooded. This is supposed to have been Nova Scotia. Again Bjarni turned from the coast which he felt sure was not the land that he sought, “because they told me,” he said, “that there are great mountains of ice in Greenland.” Three days later, he reached a rocky, snow-covered shore. He coasted along this till he found that it was an island,--probably Newfoundland,--and then again he turned away. A storm from the south drove him on his course and in four days he reached Greenland.

He told the story of his wanderings on the western seas, but he did not attempt to revisit the lands he had found. At last the tale came to the ears of Leif Eriksen, “a man strong and of great stature, of dignified aspect, wise and moderate in all things.”

Leif bought Bjarni’s ship and in 999 sailed forth with about twenty-five men to find the new land. He reached the snow-covered island--Newfoundland--which he called Helluland, “land of broad stones,” and he went ashore to see its “frozen heights and bare flat rocks.” Next he visited the “low wooded land of white sandy shore”--Nova Scotia--which he called “Markland, land of woods.” At last he reached the third promontory--Cape Cod,--the first which Bjarni had beheld; there he landed and passed the winter. From the wild grapes, then as now plentiful on the coast of Massachusetts Bay, the Norsemen gave the land the name “Vinland,” land of wine. The next spring they returned to Greenland, rescuing on the way a crew of shipwrecked men. From this time Leif was called “Leif the Lucky.”

Two years later Leif said to his brother Thorvald, “Go brother, take my ship to Vinland.” Thorvald with thirty men spent the winter in the dwellings Leif had erected two years before; the next summer they explored the surrounding country and wintered again in “Leif’s booths.” In the summer of 1004, the Norsemen coasted along the shore exploring the country. At one time when they landed, they were attacked by natives, supposed to be Esquimaux, whom they called Skrælings. In the skirmish Thorvald received a fatal wound from an arrow. His followers returned to “Leif’s booths” and in the summer of 1005 went back to Greenland; they gave an enthusiastic description of Vinland, with its vines, wild corn, fish, and game.

A few years later, Thorfinn Karlsefne and his wife Gudrid with three ships and one hundred and sixty persons made a voyage to Vinland. Gudrid’s son Snorri, the ancestor of the famous Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen, is said to have been born in Vinland. At the end of three years, the party returned to Greenland. After the death of her husband, Gudrid made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she described to the pope the fair new land in the west, the Christian settlement in “Vinland the Good.”

From Greenland, we are told, hunters and fishermen made frequent voyages to Vinland. They established settlements there and carried on a fur trade with the Indians. But in course of time, these posts were destroyed by the Indians, and the Norse settlements in Greenland itself were destroyed by war and plague. The western voyages and the memory of them ceased. Only the Scalds, trained to repeat family histories and tales of war and conquest, remembered and related the story of Vinland. In the course of time, these sagas, or stories, were written down, and centuries later men learned about the Norse colony, or “western planting,” in the New World.

Marco Polo

A Famous Traveler

You do not need to be told that the world as known to us to-day is very different from the world as it was known--or misknown--to the people of the thirteenth century. Two great inventions broadened the horizon of Europe; these were the mariner’s compass and the printing press. The mariner’s compass made it possible for men to strike boldly across unknown seas instead of clinging to familiar shores; the printing press spread books abroad and conveyed the knowledge of the few to the masses.

To-day, the steamship and the railway unite countries and destroy distance. Even the parts of the world where these do not penetrate, own, to a greater or less extent, the power of the great nations of the world. A citizen of the United States can cross the deserts of Africa or penetrate the wilds of Asia and be protected by his nation’s flag. There is hardly a place so secluded that some hardy traveler has not visited it, describing and picturing the country, people, and customs so as to make them known to all the world.

Very different was the state of affairs in the thirteenth century. The European who started east had an unblazed trail before him. He had to make his way on foot or on horseback, by sail or row boats, through mountain passes, trackless forests, and vast deserts, and across streams and seas. On the land, he encountered robbers; on the waters, pirates. Everywhere were people with unknown customs and strange languages. The chances were that the adventurous traveler, instead of returning home, would leave his bones to whiten foreign sands.

Yet one traveler encountered and passed through all these dangers, returned safe home, and dictated an account of his travels,--a true story, as wonderful as the tales of the “Arabian Nights.” Perhaps some day you will read the story of Marco Polo’s travels.

Marco Polo began life with three advantages; he was born in the thirteenth century, he was a Venetian, and he was a Polo. Venice, in the Middle Ages, was one of the commercial centers of the world. The great oceans were as yet uncrossed; the Italian cities sent forth merchant-vessels which brought across the Mediterranean the goods conveyed overland by caravans from the East,--the spices, gold, and jewels of Asia. Among the Venetian families made wealthy by commerce--the merchant-princes, as they were called--was the Polo family. About the middle of the thirteenth century, there were three Polo brothers engaged in commerce.

Two of these brothers went to the East, first to the Crimea and thence to Cathay, as China was then called. They were probably the first European travelers who reached China. They went to Cambaluc, or Peking, where they were graciously received by the great emperor, Kublai Khan. He was the grandson of Jenghiz, who had made himself master of northern China. The son and grandson of Jenghiz extended his conquests, so that the kingdom of Kublai Khan embraced China, northern Asia, Persia, Armenia, and parts of Asia Minor and Russia. Under this powerful ruler, the East was not only bound together in one vast empire, it was open to Europeans as it had never been before and has never been since. Kublai Khan welcomed the Polo brothers to his court, and they spent there several years. At last they returned to Venice, where Nicolo had left his wife; his son Marco, born the year of his departure, was now a youth of about eighteen.

The Polo brothers remained in Venice two years and then returned to Cathay. With them went Marco Polo, a brave, intelligent youth. They passed through the country around the sources of the river Oxus and crossed the plateau of Pamir and the great desert of Gobi. Much of this country had never before been visited by Europeans, and we have no record of its being revisited until a few years ago when the Orient was again to some extent opened to the world.

The Polos were welcomed back by Kublai Khan, who was at his winter residence, Cambaluc, where “are to be seen in wonderful abundance the precious stones, the pearls, the silks, and the diverse perfumes of the East.” Marco mastered the four languages most in use at court. The Khan, seeing that he was both intelligent and discreet, sent him on public business to Kara Korum, Cochin-China, India, and other parts of the great empire. When he returned, he was able to give the Khan information stored in his memory and his note books not only about the business of which he had charge but also about the manners, customs, and peculiarities of the peoples he had visited. He became a great favorite with the Khan and was, we are told, made governor of the great city of Yang-Chow.

At the end of fifteen years, the Polos desired to revisit their home, and the Khan consented on condition that they would return to Cathay. Some idea of the difficulty of the return journey may be gathered from the fact that it took twenty-six months. We are told that their kindred did not recognize the long-absent merchants. They gave a grand feast in oriental style; at the end they donned costumes suiting their rank and ripped apart their travel-worn garments, displaying dazzling wealth of rubies, sapphires, and other gems therein concealed.

The Polos had been at home only about three years when there arose war between Genoa and Venice, which were commercial rivals. The hostile fleets met in battle and the Venetians were defeated. Among the seven thousand prisoners was Marco Polo, who was an officer on one of the Venetian galleys. He was put in prison in Genoa and there he remained about a year. One of his fellow-prisoners was Rusticiano of Pisa, an author. The Pisan was much interested in the wonderful adventures of Polo and wrote them down from dictation.

The book consists practically of two parts. The first part, or prologue as it is called, relates the circumstances of the two Polos’ first visit to the Khan’s court, their second voyage accompanied by Marco, and their return home by way of the Indian Seas and of Persia. Polo informed the Europeans, who thought that eastern Asia ended in swamps and fog and darkness, that there was open sea east of Asia and that he, his father, and his uncle had sailed from the southeast coast of Cathay, or China, to the Persian Gulf. The second part of Polo’s “Travels” describes the different states and provinces of Asia, and the court and rule of Kublai Khan. Little is told of the traveler himself, but we gather that he was a brave, shrewd, and prudent man.

After Marco Polo’s release from prison in 1299, he seems to have returned to Venice, married, and lived quietly in his native city until his death in 1324.

“The Book of Marco Polo,” as Rusticiano of Pisa called his work, was read with much interest and was translated into many languages. For many centuries it was the only European description of the far East, written by an eye-witness. Polo was accused of falsehood and exaggeration, but as people learned more about the lands he described, they found that, in the main, he was right; he was truthful and accurate in describing what he had seen, but he was sometimes misled by the tales of others to whom he listened. In the prologue, Rusticiano says that he describes things seen by “Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice.... Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity, and we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our book and that all who shall read it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.”

Marco Polo was the first European traveler to make his way across the whole length of Asia, naming and describing the kingdoms which he visited. He was the first to describe the Pamir plateau, “the roof of the world,” the highest level country on the globe, the deserts and flowery plains of Persia, the wealth and size of China, the manners and customs of its people, and the splendid court of its emperor, the great Kublai Khan. He was the first to describe Tibet, and to tell of Burmah, Cochin-China, Siam, Japan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and India, not merely as names but as places he had seen and known. He gave an account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, of the tropical luxuriance of the far-off islands, of the negroes and ivory of Zanzibar, of vast and distant Madagascar, of Siberia and the Arctic shores with their dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer. In brief, he described Asia from Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, to Ceylon, from the Adriatic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and to him Europe owes its first geographical knowledge of Asia.

In the time of Marco Polo, the Mongolian Empire was probably the largest in the world. He informed Europeans that in the East, which they thought inhabited by savage and ignorant people, was a wealthy and civilized kingdom, swarming with inhabitants and _dotted with huge cities_. He described the palaces and pleasure grounds of Cambaluc, or Peking, somewhat as they are to-day. He told how “black stones” were dug out of the earth and burnt for fuel, because they “burn better and cost less” than wood,--whereat Polo marveled. He told about the emperor’s granaries for wheat, barley, millet, and rice, about the wool, silk, hemp, spices, sugar, gold, and salt of the country. At first it seems strange that Polo did not mention tea, for hundreds of years the national drink of the Chinese, but we must remember that he was associated with the Tartar ruling classes and so was to a great extent ignorant of the manners and customs of the subject natives.

Cipangu or Cipango--that is, Japan--was made known to Europeans by Polo. He described it as “an island in the high seas,” and said that the sea around it was studded with thousands of islands rich in spices and perfumes. Cipango was the only country attacked by Kublai Khan which was able to resist his power. Its people were civilized and it was rich in gold and in wonderful pearls, white and rose-colored. Polo says “rubies are found on this island and in no other country in the world but this.”

He described India,--the scanty garments of the people and their magnificent jewels. He gave an interesting account of the diamond mines of Golconda, and of the cotton plant--more valuable even than those rich mines--from which fiber is obtained for clothing. He visited and described the places from which are obtained ginger, pepper, cinnamon, camphor, and other gums and spices.

Seilan, or Ceylon, was another place visited by Polo. He described the pearl fisheries there, much as they are to-day.

Christopher Columbus

The Great Admiral

With the name and deeds of Christopher Columbus you are already familiar. You will be interested in a brief sketch of the main facts of his life; some day, it is hoped, you will read the story as told at length by our great American author, Washington Irving.

Careful research has not been able to ascertain the exact year of Christopher Columbus’s birth. It was sometime about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably 1445 or 1446. His father was a wool-comber who lived in a village near the great Italian city of Genoa. Genoa was a rich commercial city,--the rival of Venice, as you learned in the story of Marco Polo.

[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS]