Chapter IV: Part 4

In the winter of 1733, the colonists reached the New World and selected for their settlement a place on the Savannah River, a few miles from the sea. The Indians were conciliated with gifts and kindly treatment and assurances that their rights should be regarded. One of the desires of the philanthropic Oglethorpe was to civilize and christianize the natives. In six months there were one hundred and fifty persons in the settlement. They were a turbulent people unaccustomed to labor and with habits of improvidence and idleness. Oglethorpe was kind but firm; he allowed no idlers and provided tasks for even the children. Their neighbors in South Carolina were friendly and helpful, and the colony prospered. In the summer of 1734 Oglethorpe visited England, taking with him as guests several Indian chiefs. Early in February, 1736, he returned to Savannah.

Clear-sighted man of affairs that he was, he realized that a contest with Spain must come sooner or later. He endeavored to put the country in a position of defense. When war was declared between England and Spain in 1739, Oglethorpe had already secured the alliance of the Indian tribes. The Spaniards attacked an English settlement, and in return Oglethorpe captured a Spanish outpost. With his Indian allies, he marched against St. Augustine, but it was too strongly defended to be taken by the forces at his command. Two years later the Spaniards attacked Georgia; by a fortunate union of good chance and good generalship, they were defeated. “The pauper colony,” as it had been called, not only defended itself but saved its neighbor, South Carolina.

After this war was over, Oglethorpe returned to England and never again revisited his colony. About ten years later, the trustees of the colony resigned their patent and Georgia became a royal province.

Oglethorpe made his home in London where he was the friend of Walpole, Goldsmith, Johnson, and other famous men. He died at a ripe old age, having lived to see the colony which he had founded win its independence in the War of the Revolution. When John Adams came to England as minister from the United States, Oglethorpe called “to pay his respects to the first American ambassador and his family, whom he was glad to see in England; he expressed a great esteem and regard for America and much regret at the misunderstandings between the countries and felt very happy to have lived to see a termination of it.”

Philip

An Indian King

The Pilgrims were not the first white men who had visited Massachusetts. Explorers and trading parties had landed on the coast. At one time a fishing party had come to trade for furs and skins, and had carried off five Indians, one of whom was Squanto. Later, another vessel carried off twenty-seven Indians. The red men early learned to distrust and fear the pale faces.

The settlers of Plymouth endeavored to win the friendship of the Indians. They presented knives, copper chains, and other trinkets to Massasoit who was sachem, or chief, of the Indian tribes of the neighborhood, and made a treaty of friendship with him. As long as Massasoit lived, the Indians and the English lived in comparative peace.

But year after year the natives and the colonists became less friendly to each other. The white men came in constantly-increasing numbers and occupied the best of the land. When the Indians had sold it for beads or knives or trinkets, they thought that the English wished it for a season’s hunting and fishing. But the English established farms and villages and towns and took permanent possession. Game and fish grew less plentiful and as the English prospered the Indians grew poorer. The Indians resented being treated as an inferior race by the white people. The Pilgrims resented the savages’ lack of regard for property rights, their gathering fruit and grain and shooting cows like deer. The two races were too different to thrive and prosper side by side. Some of the natives adopted the faith of the white men. These “praying Indians,” as they were called, identified themselves to a great extent with the white people and were regarded as traitors to their own race.

However, there was no open outbreak till after the death of Massasoit. The old sachem left two sons whom the English called Alexander and Philip. Alexander, the elder, succeeded his father as sachem. The English suspected that Alexander was plotting with a hostile tribe against them, and they seized him and carried him as a prisoner to Plymouth. Nothing could be proved against him and he was soon released, but on the way home he died--probably of fever. The Indians, however, thought that he had been poisoned by the white men.

Philip succeeded his brother in authority. He was a renowned warrior, as wise and prudent as he was brave. We are told that instead of treating his wife as a slave, according to Indian custom, he made her his friend and companion. Next to his wife and child, Philip loved the people of his tribe. He saw with grief that his people were constantly growing weaker and the English were constantly increasing in numbers and in strength. He protested against the wrongs of the Englishmen but these wrongs were unredressed. Still, we are told, that he did not favor war; he realized that his people were unable to withstand the English and war would only hasten their ruin.

Against the wishes and commands of Philip, war began, brought on by the excesses of bad men on both sides. In June, 1675, some young Indians burned a village and were attacked by the settlers. The aroused savages went from one bloody deed to another, burning houses and villages, murdering men, women, and children. About the time that the war began, Philip crossed Narragansett Bay and went to a tribe in the Connecticut valley. For nearly a year he was not seen by the English, and we do not know to what extent he countenanced and directed the war that was being waged.

The town of Deerfield was burned and Hadley and Hatfield were attacked. While the settlers at Hadley were in confusion, it is said that a venerable old man suddenly appeared and led them forward to repel the foe. When victory was gained, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. It was asserted that this was Goffe, one of the men who had sentenced Charles I. to death. When Charles II. became king, Goffe fled to the New World and lived in seclusion in Connecticut. In “The Gray Champion” Hawthorne tells this story with some changes.

The Narragansett Indians went on the war-path against the white men. Their headquarters were on an island in a swamp which was thought to be inaccessible. Here, in five hundred wigwams, were sheltered the women and children of the tribe and were stored their supplies of corn. By the treachery of one of Philip’s warriors, the path to the island was betrayed to the white men. In the depth of winter the colonists made their way through the swamp to the island, killed men, women, and children without mercy, and burned the fort and the whole settlement. King Philip’s wife and son had been taken prisoners and sent to the Bermudas where they were sold as slaves. Still the Indians refused to submit. One of the warriors who advised surrender was killed by King Philip’s own hand. At last in August, 1676, he was surrounded at his old home, Mount Hope, not far from Providence, Rhode Island, and was shot. His body was cut to pieces and fastened on trees, and his head was exposed on the top of a pole in Plymouth. The Puritans held a thanksgiving to celebrate their victory in King Philip’s War. The inevitable conflict between the white men and the red had come and the whites were the victors. But nearly one-tenth of the fighting force had been killed, and there was hardly a village or even a home in New England which had not suffered loss.

Nathaniel Bacon

The Leader of the Great Rebellion

It was not only with outsiders--French, Dutch, Spaniards, and Indians--that the English settlers had trouble. One faction in the colonies warred against another. In Virginia the established order was almost overthrown in the seventeenth century by the “Great Rebellion.”

For many years the governor of the colony was Sir William Berkeley, an aristocrat who would not allow the people to have any share in the government of the colony. He feared that if the House of Burgesses was dismissed and new members elected he would lose control of it. So he adjourned it from one session to another, and year after year called together men whom he could trust to obey his will. A very stubborn and overbearing will it was, opposed to all progress and firmly set against granting rights to common people. He approved of high taxes and did not wish the common people to vote; above all, he opposed public education and the liberty of the press. “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses,” he said in 1671, “and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years.”

There were now about forty thousand people in Virginia, many of whom had been born and reared there. For the most part, they disapproved of Berkeley’s high-handed course and of his disregard of the rights and privileges of the colonists. But he was the lawful governor and they were loyal, law-abiding people; probably they would have gone on submitting and grumbling had it not been for the Indian attacks and Governor Berkeley’s failure to protect the outlying settlements. Fierce Indian tribes from Pennsylvania had come south; they were now on the borders of the Virginia colony--murdering, burning, and pillaging, making life and property unsafe. In the spring of 1676 the House of Burgesses voted to send five hundred men to protect the frontiers, but instead of ordering them to march Berkeley disbanded the little army.

There was at this time in Jamestown an Englishman as brave and resolute as Berkeley himself and as devoted to the rights of the people as Berkeley was to those of the king. This was Nathaniel Bacon. He had been in Virginia only a few months, but he was so popular and so talented that soon after his arrival he was chosen a member of the governor’s council.

A few weeks after the governor disbanded the army which should have marched to protect the frontier settlements, Bacon received news that the Indians had attacked his plantation on the James and had killed the overseer and a servant. Immediately he collected a little band of his friends and neighbors and servants, and marched against the Indians. He sent to ask Berkeley for a commission; this was refused and Bacon marched on without it. He defeated the Indians and returned home in triumph.

Governor Berkeley was angry because Bacon had assumed authority without a commission and would have liked to punish him as a traitor. But the sympathies of the people were with the young Englishman; the governor had to give up and in the end had to promise Bacon a commission to fight against the Indians. He delayed drawing up the paper, however, until Bacon at the head of several hundred planters marched to Jamestown and required it by force.

At the head of these troops, Bacon marched from Jamestown into the Indian country. The governor, meanwhile, declared Bacon a traitor, raised forces, and prepared to fight. Bacon and his men pledged themselves to stand together in defence of the rights of the people. This was in August, 1676, a hundred years before the American Revolution, which, like the Great Rebellion, was undertaken to uphold the people’s rights.

When Bacon returned from war with the Indians he found war awaiting him at home. The people of the colony were divided in their interests and sympathies. Some sided with Bacon for people’s rights, some sided with Berkeley because that was the cause of the king and lawful authority. There was a stubborn fight in which Bacon was victor and became master of Jamestown. Fearing that they could not hold it and unwilling for it to fall into Berkeley’s hands, the rebels burned the town, the capitol of Virginia, the first seat of English power on this continent. It is said that Bacon and other gentlemen who had houses there fired them with their own hands.

Bacon showed no disposition to take power into his own hands, only wishing to put down the tyranny of Berkeley. After a brief course of victory, he died of fever, October, 1676. His followers buried him in the forest and the place of his grave remains unknown to this day.

A few months later, troops from England came as reinforcements to Berkeley. He made himself again master of the colony and took swift and bloody revenge oil his enemies. More than twenty persons were hanged for their share in the rebellion.

“As I live,” said Charles II., angrily, when the news reached him, “the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did for the murder of my father.”

Benjamin Franklin

A Great Typical American

The men about whom we have been reading were all natives of Europe--Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Dutchmen,--adventurers seeking wealth or power, settlers intent on gaining national or personal power, religious or civil liberty. It is not until the eighteenth century that we come across our first, our great typical American. This is Benjamin Franklin, keen and quick of wit, shrewd and energetic, a man of business and a scholar, a politician and a scientist.

Benjamin Franklin was the son of an English tradesman of plain respectable family, who came to New England in order to enjoy the free exercise of his religion. He made his home in Boston. There Benjamin was born in 1706 and there his childhood was passed. Many incidents of it are familiar to us all. You remember how when he was a child of seven he gave all his pennies for a whistle. But the money was not wasted, for the incident taught him to consider the real value of things and not to spend too much time, thought, or, money for trifles,--in other words, “Don’t give too much for the whistle.”

When a little older he led his companions in taking some building-stones to construct a wharf to stand on while fishing; he tried to justify his conduct to his father, saying that his wharf was a public benefit but his father taught him a great truth: “My son, nothing can ever be truly useful, which is not at the same time truly honest.”

Benjamin learned to read almost as soon as he learned to talk, and he was so fond of books that his father wished to have him educated for the ministry. This plan had to be given up for lack of money. Mr. Franklin was a poor man with seventeen children, and when Benjamin was only ten years old he had to leave school and help his father in the shop. Mr. Franklin made and sold soap and candles, and it was Benjamin’s duty to cut candle-wicks and to pour tallow into molds to make candles. He did not like this work, and when he was twelve years old he was apprenticed to his brother James to learn the trade of a printer. He was so fond of books that it was thought he would like this work. He had read with interest his father’s few books, among which were Bunyan’s wonderful “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Plutarch’s Lives.” With his brother James, Benjamin had access to more books and more opportunity for reading, but the two brothers did not get on well together. Partly this was James’s fault, for he was harsh and overbearing; partly it was Benjamin’s, for he tells us that he was pert and provoking.

Although Benjamin Franklin’s school days had ended so early, his education was just beginning; he appreciated the value of learning and was spending his leisure in study. When he was an old man he wrote for his son the story of his life. In this autobiography he tells how he trained himself. He read carefully one of the papers of the “Spectator,” a model of good English, and afterwards wrote it down in his own words. Sometimes he changed it into verse and then later turned it back into prose. By comparing his version with the original, he discovered and corrected his faults. This is of interest because Franklin became one of our best writers of good English. His command of clear, simple, strong English won attention for what he had to say.

Young Franklin and his brother got on so badly together that he resolved not to remain at home till the end of his apprenticeship. When he was seventeen, he sold some of his books and left home with a few dollars in his pocket. He went on board a vessel bound to New York. Three days after leaving home, he landed in that city where he hoped to find work. New York was then only a small town, and young Franklin found no demand for his services with “the printer in the place.” Therefore he went on to Philadelphia, which was then a much larger and more important place than New York. Part of the way he walked, part he traveled by boat; one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1723, he reached Philadelphia.

In his account of his life he gives us a vivid picture of himself, a friendless, homeless boy, walking hungry up the streets of the strange city. He met a boy with some bread and asked where he could buy food. Being directed to the baker’s, he asked for “three pennyworth” of bread and received “three great puffy rolls.” Then he says, he “having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm and eating the other.” Thus he passed the home of a Mr. Read, and at the door stood his daughter Deborah, who laughed at the “awkward, ridiculous appearance” of the strange lad. This Deborah Reed a few years later became Franklin’s wife. Being satisfied with one roll, the youth gave the other two to a woman and child who had come on the boat with him.

He soon got work with a printer in the town, but gave it up because the governor offered to set him up in business for himself. He went to London, to buy the outfit needed for his trade. On arriving there, he found that the governor had failed to send the promised letters of credit,--had, indeed, no credit himself--and the youth, penniless, in a foreign land, was thrown on his own resources. He sought and secured work as a printer, and remained in London about a year. He then returned to Philadelphia, where he worked awhile as salesman in a shop and afterwards at his trade. Soon after his return, he married Deborah Read, who made him a good and helpful wife, managing his home and aiding him in the shop.

Franklin had the “prospering virtues” of economy, industry, and temperance, and he increased in worldly goods and in the esteem of his townspeople. Despite some serious personal failings, he was a good citizen and in public questions people came more and more to respect his judgment.

In the American colonies in the eighteenth century, there were few newspapers and those had a small circulation. Nearly every printer, however, published an almanac which contained weather forecasts, advice, jokes, and miscellaneous information. These almanacs had a large sale and in many homes the only books to be found were an almanac and a Bible. In 1733 Franklin published an almanac which he announced was prepared by one Richard Saunders, called for short “Poor Richard,” a character which Franklin created and represented as overflowing with quaint humor and wise and witty sayings. “Poor Richard’s Almanac” became the most popular of all publications of the kind. Franklin kept up the yearly issue till 1758, when he turned it over to his partner.

Franklin was a man who was never so busy about many things that he did not have time for another. You have been told how he acquired a good English style; to this was added the charm that he always had something to say that was worth hearing. He was fond of different branches of science and was gifted with inventive talent. He studied the laws which govern the movement of hot air, and invented what is called an “open fireplace stove;” under the name of “the Franklin stove” or “Pennsylvania fireplace,” a modified form of it is still in use.

When he was about forty years old, Franklin became interested in the subject of electricity and became convinced that lightning is a manifestation of electricity. He proved this by a famous experiment, drawing the current down the string of a kite in a storm. He invented the lightning rod--for he was always trying to apply the principles of science so as to make them useful. Among his other inventions, was a musical instrument called the “Armonica,” a kind of musical glasses.

Franklin was a progressive and public-spirited citizen. He organized an orderly night-watch for Philadelphia, established the first volunteer fire company, the first hospital, and the first subscription and circulating library, in America. He interested people in the subject of education and established an academy which became the College of Philadelphia, and was the real origin of the University of Pennsylvania. He originated also the American Philosophical Society “to propagate useful knowledge.”

For years he served as postmaster, first of Philadelphia, and afterwards as deputy postmaster-general of the colonies; he introduced many reforms in the postal service and improved the methods of carrying mail to and from the seventy post offices then in the country.

Franklin was now nearly fifty years of age and he was just to begin the career which made him honored and renowned. This was his work as a patriot at home and abroad.

When the French and Indian War broke out, he was commissioned to procure wagons for Braddock’s army. In two weeks by the exercise of private means and wonderful energy, he procured one hundred and fifty wagons and two hundred and fifty pack-horses. After Braddock’s defeat, Franklin, with a band of men whom he had persuaded to enlist, went to protect the settlers on the frontier against the Indians.

It was not as a soldier, however, that he was to serve his country best. Oppressive and burdensome laws were passed for the government of the colonies, and it was resolved to send someone to England to protest against them. Benjamin Franklin was sent to represent first Pennsylvania, later Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. He spent several years in England and succeeded in getting repealed the laws to which the colonies objected. Then he returned home. But soon the English government passed laws more oppressive than ever. One of these was the Stamp Act. Franklin ably and eloquently presented the cause of the colonists, stating that they were willing to bear their fair share of expenses, but that on principle they were opposed to taxation without representation. The king and his ministers were not disposed to grant the reasonable demands of the colonists. Franklin was insulted and abused. In 1775 he returned to a home made desolate during his absence by the death of his wife.

The battle of Lexington had already been fought, and the greatest and wisest of the Americans realized that there was nothing left but to fight for the rights they had failed to gain by respectful petition.

In 1776 there met at Philadelphia the second Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the colonies. It was resolved to form a colonial government and Benjamin Franklin was one of a committee appointed to draw up a declaration of independence. This declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and was adopted so nearly in his words that he is regarded as its author. On the fourth of July, 1776, this declaration was adopted by Congress, and henceforth the colonies were fighting not only for redress of wrongs but for freedom.

The next year Dr. Franklin, then over seventy years of age, was sent to France as one of the commissioners from the United States. It was very important for the struggling colony to gain aid and recognition from France. No more popular or more influential ambassador could have been selected than Franklin; he gained terms more favorable than any other American could have secured.

The three American commissioners did not always agree. Franklin was accused of mismanagement of affairs, or at least of failing to exercise proper oversight. He talked little in his own defence. “A spot of dirt thrown upon my character I suffered while fresh to remain;” he once said shrewdly. “I did not choose to spread by endeavoring to remove them, but relied on the vulgar adage that they would all rub off when dry.”

At first the French were not willing openly to help the rebelling English colonies, but they gave secret aid. The patriots, however, seemed to be losing instead of gaining ground, and the outlook was gloomy at home and abroad. The commissioners in France were distressed by a report that the English general Howe had taken Philadelphia.

“Well, doctor,” said an Englishman to Franklin, “Howe has taken Philadelphia.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Franklin, “Philadelphia has taken Howe.”

But though he endeavored to put a brave face on the matter, his heart was full of apprehension. A messenger came from the colonies and the commissioners rushed out to meet him, asking if Philadelphia were really taken.

“Yes,” answered the messenger.

Franklin clasped his hands and turned to stumble back into the house.

“But, sir, I have greater news than that,” continued the messenger. “General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war.”

The French government hesitated no longer; in a few weeks it openly recognized the United States, and made a treaty with them.

In 1785 Franklin returned home. He was now nearly eighty, but his public life was not at an end. He was elected President of Pennsylvania and the next year he was sent as a delegate to the Convention which met to form a Constitution for the United States. In April, 1790, he died and was buried in his adopted home in Philadelphia. He had years before written an epitaph for himself.

“The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stripped of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here food for worms.
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, (as he believed) appear once more
In a new
And more beautiful Edition
Corrected and Amended
By
The Author.”

Montcalm and Wolfe

You have heard of the beginnings of the French power in America--how Cartier and La Salle, Marquette and Champlain, explored the country and claimed it in the name of their king. They went up and down the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and established along the streams their trading-posts and military forts.

The English meanwhile, settled along the Atlantic coast and established farms and villages.

The English patents granted to their colonists the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The French claimed and were occupying the Mississippi valley. The English pressed westward and crossed the Alleghany Mountains through gaps made by the rivers which the French claimed; the French pressed eastward along these same rivers. Contact and conflict were inevitable. The French foresaw it and made their preparations accordingly. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, they established posts and organized their forces. French traders, French missionaries, French settlers, upheld the power of their king. They made friends with the Indians of many tribes, but from the day that Champlain joined battle against the Iroquois, the Five Nations were the deadly enemies of the French and therefore the friends of the English.

The English were, as you may think, most unwilling to give up the western lands which they claimed. Governor Spottswood of Virginia, who in 1716 rode westward to the summit of the Blue Ridge at the head of a company of gentlemen, realized how important it was to hold this fair region against the French. He urged the English government to establish a chain of posts from the lakes to the Mississippi in order to keep back the French. His advice was unheeded. A few years later the French began to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and it became evident that there the two nations would clash.

During this time there were growing into manhood two youths who were to be leaders when the conflict came.

One of these was a Frenchman, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. At the age of fourteen, he entered the army and at the age of eighteen he was a general. He did valiant service in Italy and in Germany.

Several years younger than Montcalm was the English soldier, James Wolfe. He also became a soldier at an early age and at sixteen was serving in the Netherlands, doing a man’s work in the battles which he described with boyish zest in his loving and dutiful letters to his mother in England.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French determined to shorten and strengthen their line of defence towards the south. They established a fort on French Creek and an outpost upon the Alleghany River. This was land which the English claimed, and George Washington, then a lad of twenty-one, was sent to the French to demand that they leave the Ohio. A forced march was made through the pathless winter woods. The French commander received the messenger courteously, but informed him that they regarded the land as their own and had no intention of yielding it to the English. This was in the winter of 1753. The next year Washington was sent in command of a little force of three hundred and fifty men to uphold the English claim, and was defeated at Great Meadows by a French force of double the size. The English began to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers on a site selected by Washington, but the French drove them away and finished the fort, which they called Fort Du Quesne.

In this emergency the colonies at first did not act together. Troops were sent from Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Maryland; but the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York said that the English claim to the valley of the Ohio was a matter of no importance, and did not move. Fortunately, the home government recognized the necessity of protecting the frontier, and of extending outposts; troops were sent from England for this purpose. Thus in 1755 began the Seven Years’ War which involved England and France in Europe; in America this contest was called the French and Indian War, from the enemies the English colonists had to encounter.

The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the first of many.

“I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat.

In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758, with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend in a death struggle with the English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758.

The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor. Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his energies to the struggle.

One place after another was captured by the English. News of their victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and Crown Point was captured and strengthened.

In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his forces--fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city. At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so steep that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly guarded.

One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:”

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave
Await alike the inevitable hour:--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.

By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to attack.

Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.”

He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised himself up on this news and smiled in my face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he died.”

Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the Mississippi.

Patrick Henry

An Eloquent Orator

Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and saw that the American cause--the cause of freedom--must be upheld by force of arms.

Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he spent most of his spare time in the woods.

It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop of his own--but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper. He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back to shopkeeping--and failed again. By this time people had a poor opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the course of time he was to find his element.

At the age of twenty-four, he read law for six weeks, was examined by judges, and was given a license to practice the profession. The judges granted his license with much hesitation. Henry was ignorant of the law,--had indeed read only the Virginia Statutes and one other law book. But he showed remarkable powers of thought and reasoning, natural not acquired qualifications, and the license was granted on condition that he would continue to study. One of the judges said, “Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”

It is not strange, however, that the small amount of law business which was in his community did not come Henry’s way. People naturally preferred to put their business in the hands of those whom they considered better qualified. He eked out a support for his family by aiding his father-in-law to manage a tavern.

In 1763 he had what seems to have been his first really important case,--one which was turned over to him because no one else cared to undertake it. This was the famous “Parsons’ Case.” In order to understand it, you must remember that the colony of Virginia was then a part of England and that the church of England, like its civil government, was established by law. The salaries of clergymen were raised by a regular tax on all the people. As money was scarce in the colonies, this tax was paid in tobacco which was the regular currency of Virginia. By law sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was a clergyman’s yearly salary.

The people do not seem to have objected to paying these salaries, and usually they found no fault with the amount of them. Twice, however, after bad crop years, the House of Burgesses passed laws allowing the payment of money instead of tobacco at a rate lower than the price of tobacco in these years of scarcity. Naturally, the clergymen did not like this, and they finally appealed to the king of England who decided that the salaries must be paid in tobacco every year. So the clergymen of Hanover county where Henry lived brought suit for the loss sustained by the payment of money instead of tobacco. As the king, who was the supreme authority, had decided the matter in favor of the clergymen, it seemed that there was nothing for the Virginia courts to do but to agree on the amount of damages due and pay them. Henry, however, offered to plead the case against the parsons and plead it he did with unexpected power. He told the people fearlessly that this was a matter for them to decide. They were to be governed by their House of Burgesses. It had made this law, and the king of England had no right to gainsay it. Henry spoke so eloquently that he won the sympathy of all. The jury could not put aside the king’s decree but it gave a nominal adherence to that and a real one to Henry’s argument; for it stated the clergymen’s damages as one penny each, about two cents.

From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg. This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion.

The people of the colonies--even the loyal Virginians--were beginning to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of money; in particular, the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send representatives to parliament--the English legislative body which has the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’”

England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act was passed,--that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed, Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765, a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain time.

In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, among stately gentlemen in silks and velvets with their curled and powdered wigs, sat a raw country man dressed in shabby clothes and wearing his own plain hair. This was Patrick Henry. One day he arose and addressed that gathering of high-bred scholarly men and presented certain resolutions to the effect that the people of the colonies had all the rights and privileges of the people of Great Britain,--were like them Englishmen--and that the taxes must, according to “characteristics of British freedom” be laid by the people themselves or by those chosen by them--that only the general assembly of Virginia had a right to lay taxes on Virginians, and that the people were not bound to obey any other laws.

In the heated discussion which followed, Henry protested against the despotic action of the king. “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”--

“Treason, treason!” came the interruption.

“May profit by their example,” concluded the orator. “If that be treason make the most of it.”

Henry’s resolutions were carried by a majority of one. These resolutions and his speech had “started the ball of revolution rolling.” The Stamp Act, so vigorously protested against, was repealed, but new and hateful taxes were laid on tea, glass, paper, and other articles.

Ten years passed during which Henry practiced his profession, served four years in the House of Burgesses, and took an interest in all public questions. During these ten years, the colonies had drifted and been driven further from England, the mother-country. Patrick Henry saw that the encroachments on the rights of the people must be resisted--not by words now, but by arms. In the spring of 1775 a convention of Virginia leaders met in St. John’s church in Richmond to consider the state of the country.

Henry rose and “resolved that this colony be immediately put in a posture of defence.” The matter was argued earnestly; many men advised sending new petitions to the king. Then Patrick Henry made the speech, which every schoolboy knows, urging not petition but action. “Is life so dear,” he ended, “or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me give me liberty or give me death!”

He carried the patriots with him and his resolutions were passed; thus Virginia announced that she would fight for her rights. A few weeks later the English general, Gage, attacked the people in Massachusetts and the colonies sprang to arms.

Henry served three years as governor of Virginia. After the Revolution, he took for some time an active part in public affairs and then withdrew to private life. In 1799, at the personal request of Washington, he became a candidate for office and was elected to the House of Delegates. But he did not live to take his seat, dying June 6, 1799.

Samuel Adams

A Massachusetts Patriot

Samuel Adams is often called “the father of the Revolution.” He was the great-grandson of one of the Puritan settlers who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1722.

Adams was not a typical thrifty New Englander. His private life was a series of business failures and hardships that remind us of the early career of Patrick Henry. Adams, however, unlike Henry, was college bred, having been educated at Harvard. He tried law as a profession, but did not like it well enough to continue its practice. Then he became, first a clerk and then a merchant, and as both he was a failure. Next he became a brewer, and in this trade, also, he was unsuccessful. The truth is, he kept too busy attending to public business to pay proper attention to his private affairs. Perhaps his attention was first called to public matters by a private grievance. A law passed by Parliament against certain stock-companies made it necessary to close a banking company with which his father was connected and swept away his fortune.

Unsuccessful as Samuel Adams was as a business man, it was known that he was a good citizen, with wise and patriotic views about public matters. He ably voiced colonists’ objections to the arbitrary taxation of the British government. “If taxes are laid upon us,” he said, in a paper in 1764, “in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only. We are born to them!”

Adams was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1765 and the famous “Massachusetts Resolves” were his work. They expressed loyalty to the king, but refused to aid to execute the Stamp Act. It was not against England as yet but against the unjust laws of the despotic king and ministry that there was hostility.

Hutchinson, who was the royal governor, informed the home government that its course was unwise. “It cannot be good policy,” he said, “to tax the Americans; it will prove prejudicial to the national interests. You will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance.” But his warning was unheeded, and it devolved upon him to execute the unpopular acts. He suffered as the instrument of British oppression. His house was attacked and destroyed, and he and his family were driven away.

The first of November came--the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into effect. Boston church bells tolled and minute guns were fired. The stamps lay untouched; business stopped, because people would not buy and use them as required by law. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament at the same time took occasion to assert “that it was competent to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Other unjust taxes were laid and protest followed protest from the colonies.

In order to uphold the king’s authority, British soldiers were sent to Boston. On a March day in 1770 occurred one of the many quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens. A company of soldiers was sent out to disperse the mob; it refused to disperse, and the soldiers fired, killing three people and wounding several others. This was the famous “Boston massacre.”

The infuriated people would have attacked the soldiers but Samuel Adams persuaded them to refrain from disorder and bloodshed; he advised them to demand from the governor the withdrawal of the two regiments stationed in Boston. This was agreed to and the next day a committee, of which Samuel Adams was the spokesman, went to Governor Hutchinson to make this demand. The governor said at first that he had no authority to remove the troops; after talking with the commander, however, he promised to send one regiment away.

“Sir,” said Samuel Adams, “if you have authority to remove one regiment you have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the departure of the troops will satisfy the public mind or restore the peace of the province.”

The governor finally had to yield to the demand of the people that he withdraw “both regiments or none” and the soldiers were sent to the castle.

As time passed, Adams ceased to hope for reconciliation between the colonies and England. He realized that it was important for the colonies to make common cause in defence of their rights. On his motion in the Massachusetts legislature in 1772 citizens were appointed as Committees of Correspondence to “state, communicate, and publish the rights of the colonies.” From this beginning grew the union of the colonies.

Matters came to a crisis in Boston when the tea on which a tax was laid was sent to the port. It had been sent to New York and Philadelphia, and there the people refused to allow it to be landed and it was returned to England. In South Carolina it was landed and left to mold in cellars because the people would not purchase it. In December, 1773, Samuel Adams, so often the spokesman of the people, went to ask the governor to send the tea back to England, instead of having it landed in Boston. In old South Church were assembled seven thousand people, to hear the result of his embassy. The governor refused.

“This meeting can do nothing more to save the country,” said Samuel Adams when he announced the fact. But another scheme was on foot which was probably known to Adams if not inspired by him. Some men disguised as Indians went to the harbor and threw overboard the three hundred and forty chests of tea. The next morning the patriots drank a decoction of native herbs while the Chinese tea floated on the salt waters of the bay. The Boston Tea Party, as it was called, by its disregard of the rights of property and its defiance of his authority, made the king very angry. There was passed the Boston Port Bill, which forbade vessels to enter or leave that port.

General Gage was sent to Boston with soldiers to enforce the king’s laws. General Gage realized that Samuel Adams, “the Cromwell of New England,” was the ringleader of the rebellion. An attempt was made to bribe Adams, who was very poor, with money or with position. But Adams was proof against the British offers. “I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings,” he said. “No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country.”

In June Gage dissolved the general court, and the patriots organized a government of their own. Largely through the influence of Samuel Adams, it was resolved that representatives of the colonies should meet in Philadelphia to discuss affairs. He went as the representative of Massachusetts, which was suffering most from British oppression, having her port closed and an army stationed on her soil. We are told that Adams rode to Philadelphia on a borrowed horse, wearing a coat presented to him “to enable him to make a decent appearance.”

Delegates from eleven colonies met in this Congress in September, 1774, and discussed their situation. Among the delegates was a traitor who gave the royalists a full account of the meetings. This man said, “Samuel Adams eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much. He is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his object. He is the man who, by his superior application, manages at once the factions in Philadelphia and the factions of New England.”

The people were now getting ready to fight. Minute men were being drilled, firearms and powder and ball were being collected. Samuel Adams encouraged all these preparations.

One night lights in the belfry of the North Church at Boston--a system of signals agreed upon--informed the patriots that British troops were leaving the city. They were going to seize the military stores collected at Concord and Worcester by the patriots. Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere,” tells in stirring phrase how the patriot-messenger galloped forth to give the alarm. In Medford he roused John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two leaders whom Gage was anxious to capture. The minute men sprang to arms. When the British soldiers, eight hundred in number, reached the village of Lexington about four o’clock on the morning of April 19, 1775, they found sixty or seventy men collected on the green.