 CHAPTER 41 OF HERO TALES FROM HISTORY William Lewis, a nephew of General Washington's sister Betty, lived near Thomas Jefferson's beautiful estate in Abermarle County, Virginia. Two years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a boy was born into the Lewis family. This baby was given his mother's maiden name, Maryweather. Twenty-five years after writing the Declaration, Jefferson became President of the United States and went to live in the still-unfurnished White House in the new city of Washington. Then he chose for his secretary, Maryweather Lewis, whom he had seen grown up from boyhood. He was such a remarkable young man that later ex-President Jefferson wrote in a story of the life of his former secretary. When only eight years of age he often went out in the dead of night, alone with his dogs into the forest, to hunt the raccoon and opossum, which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be taken, plunging through the winter's snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object. His talent for seeing things led him to a true knowledge of plants and animals of his own country. At the age of twenty yielding to the ardor of youth and a passion for more dazzling pursuits, he engaged as a volunteer in a body of militia called out by President Washington. At twenty-three he was promoted to a captaincy and appointed paymaster of his regiment. In 1803 President Jefferson, acting for the United States, bought of France, through Napoleon, all of the country west of the Mississippi, which La Salle had claimed and named Louisiana. That vast region was sold for fifteen million dollars, which amounted to only two-and-a-half cents an acre. This act is known as the Louisiana Purchase. The new country, called Louisiana Territory, was an unknown region thousands of miles in extent. Traders had gone up the Missouri River a few hundred miles, and voyagers along the Pacific coast had traded with the Indians at the mouth of the Columbia River. But no one knew much about the wide expanse of territory lying between, or of the rise and course of either of those great rivers, so it was decided that someone should undertake the long and dangerous journey, among savage tribes and wild beasts, and find out all about the region. Young Lewis had wished years before to explore that country, and had been kept from going. So now he begged the President to let him take charge of the great hunt for facts. The President had good reasons for consenting. He knew that Captain Lewis was brave, firm and persevering, and that nothing could turn him from his purpose. He was well acquainted with the character and customs of the Indians, and was used to the hunting life. He had carefully studied the plants and animals of his own country. Above all, he was honest, fair-minded and truthful, so that whatever he might report would be sure to be true. For these reasons, the President felt no hesitation in trusting Captain Lewis to do so important a task. With fatherly pride, ex-President Jefferson afterward wrote that Young Lewis was not certain that he could do this great work right, so he attended a scientific school to learn more about plants, animals, minerals, physical geography and astronomy. He wanted all he should see to be of the highest value to his own country, and to the other nations which claimed the great tracts next to the vast territory he had been appointed to explore. Besides, he went to a factory where firearms were made, so as to gain the working knowledge he might need some time to save the lives of his party. He started down the Ohio by boat from Pittsburgh. At Louisville he picked up his former neighbor, William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark. He had been a mighty hunter and Indian fighter, and had served his country under General Anthony Wayne. Captain Lewis thought at best there should be two leaders in case of an accident to himself. The two captains were real comrades and generous commanders, keeping the respect and friendship of their men through the many hardships of their wanderings in the wilderness. They started out from St. Louis in May 1804, with 32 experienced hunters, scouts and woodsmen, on their great adventure. They had only a barge with sails and two smaller boats to go up the Big Muddy, as the Indians called the Missouri River. With the aid later of a few Indian canoes, they were to find their way to the far distant purple mountains and into the hazy regions of mystery beyond. The President had charged his two young neighbors, keep in peace and goodwill with the savages, so the wise partners and their picked men joined in councils and powwows with the various Indian tribes all the way up the Long River. They had brought with them bright medals which the chiefs admired. Though the Redmen could not read the words printed on them, peace and friendship, they could understand the two clasped hands, one red and the other white, under the lettering. For that was the way they expressed the same thought in the Indian sign language, and the big chiefs hung the shining medals around their sturdy necks, and grasped the white captains' hands in token of their lasting goodwill. The Indians were experts in signs. When a red scout came to invite the white travelers to join in a council with the chief men of his tribe, he would hold a folded blanket above his head, and, with a slow flourish, unfold it. Then he bent forward and spread it on the ground like a carpet, sat on it himself, and motioned to the white chiefs to do the same. Then he would tell them with signs that his chief had invited them to come and join in a solemn, peace-smoke talk at the Indian Lodge. The city which stands on the place of one of these friendly powwows is called Council Bluffs. Captain Lewis and Clark made careful record of the adventures they had, and the strange things they saw and heard as they journeyed and camped across half the continent. Their diaries filled three thrilling volumes. During the first summer Captain Clark jotted down in his journal. The mosquitoes were so numerous that I could not keep them off my gun long enough to take sight, and by that means missed. One morning Captain Lewis, who was away exploring by himself, awoke to find that he had a huge rattlesnake for a bed-fellow. Another time they all lay down to sleep on a soft dry sandbar in the middle of the river. In the night the men on watch awoke them. The strangest thing was happening. Whether they were lying on a quicksand or over an ancient volcano, their sandbar was sinking. It was so uncanny to feel the earth giving way under them that they trembled as they got into the boats, just in time to save their lives. Of all of the dwellers in those westerned wilds, the grizzly bears seemed most to object to the white strangers who proud about their country. Unlike the Indians, the grizzlies attacked the explorers. The great angry brutes rushed up and stood on their hind legs, threatening the strangers with wicked eyes and red wide open jaws, and striking with their great clumsy paws. Some of the party brought back big bearskins as trophies of their hair-breath escapes. The buffalo were almost as eager to look at their white visitors as the strangers were curious about them. A few of the awkward beasts would follow the travelers about as if fascinated. One night a blundering buffalo bull came into the camp, sniffing right and left between the rows of sleepers. The travelers waked up and tried to teach that big bison better manners than to call on strange gentlemen at such unseemly hours. The captains made several copies of the records of the trip and placed them in charge of different members of the party. One of these was carefully written on a kind of birch bark paper, which they believed would stand the hardest tests of time, dampness and rough usage. They explored for a little distance up every river flowing into the Missouri and put down on their maps what they found out. They shot deer, antelope and buffalo and noted down what they could about all the small animals and the birds, trees, fruits, flowers, soil and minerals they found. It took the explorers nearly six months to examine sixteen hundred miles of the Missouri Valley. They went into winter quarters among the Mandan tribe of Indians, building a stockade like a high picket fence of logs with cabins inside, near where Bismarck North Dakota now stands and naming it Fort Mandan. If they had not had so much to do in exploring and making friends with the Redskins, the party might have moaned like the Indian and Hiawatha. Oh, the long and dreary winter! But Lewis and Clark found plenty for one and all to do. They met the chiefs of the neighboring tribes around their council fires. They told all about the great father in Washington who loved the Redmen as his own children and showed them a portrait of kindly gray-haired President Jefferson. After these love feasts, the savages rubbed cheeks with the white men. Of course the greasy red paint rubbed off and the explorers must have laughed at one another in secret, where they did look funny with their faces all smeared and modeled. But the Indians were so in earnest that they would have been deeply offended if a white man had dared to smile. After a love feast they had another kind of feast on buffalo meat, venison and wild duck, then they exchanged presents. The white men gave the Indian speeds. Blue and white were the colors the Redmen liked best, with knives, guns, pewter mirrors and trinkets. And the Indians made return presents of ponies and of Indian corn and of other foodstuffs. Then the travelers showed the Indians how white people danced, and the Red Braves gravely performed their war, peace, scalp, and snake dances for their guests. Big Indians solemnly played a game in which one side passed around a piece of bone, while the rest tried to guess where it was, as in the children's game of button, button, who's got the button? The Mandan tribe told the strangers about the fierce Sioux, the Shoshonis, the Blackfeet, and other tribes farther west. As the Great River grew shallower and was obstructed by falls and rapids, Lewis and Clark tried to buy Indian ponies for the trip over the mountains. At Fort Mandan they found a French scout, whom they engaged as their guide and interpreter for the rest of the way. He had a young Indian wife, Sacajawea, or bird woman, who insisted on going with him. She had a funny little papouse, only two months old, that could not be left behind of course. Observed as it seemed to take a weak woman with a little baby on such a hard and dangerous journey, the party soon found that they could not have gone much farther without her. She was most useful as an interpreter. In some places, for example, Captain Clark would say in English what he wished to tell a certain chief. One of the other men would repeat this in French. The Indian woman's French husband would translate that into an Indian dialect she spoke. She would then repeat it in another language, which an Indian in the strange chief's party understood, and he in turn would translate it into the dialect of the chief to whom Captain Clark had addressed his original remark. Round about as this method was, it was far better than not to be able to talk at all and make friends of the Red Strangers. The bird woman's greatest service was yet to come. They had finally discovered the source of the Missouri, a cool clear crystal brook, very different from the Big Muddy a thousand miles below. An Irishman in the party stood astride this narrow streamlet and called out, Sure, and I never thought to see the day I could stand a straddle of the Big Missouri River. Captain Clark and other men of the party started out in different directions to forage for facts, and tried to find the small beginning of the other river which the Indians said would take them down to the Great Western Sea. One day, Lewis met a party of Shoshone's and tried to persuade them to go with him and act as guides. He needed help moving the baggage over the mountains, which are called the Great Divide, because they separate the rivers which flow east into the Mississippi River from those which run west to the Pacific Ocean. Though he offered the Shoshone's presence and the others' favors, they still refused to go. Then he appealed to the Indians' curiosity by telling them that if they would come with him, he would show them a black man with curly hair, for Captain Clark's Negro servant was one of the party. Also there was an Indian woman of their own tribe in the Whitemans' camp. This was more than the chief and several of his braves could resist. So they returned with Lewis. To the surprise and joy of all, the Shoshone chieftain discovered that the bird woman was his long lost sister, who had been carried away by a hostile tribe many years before. The bird woman helped her own tribe to a better understanding of the Whitemen and persuaded them to furnish horses, canoes, guides, and helpers over the Divide to the headwaters of the Snake River, which empties into the Columbia. When they were in their canoes floating down this beautiful stream, they laughed to think how much easier it is to go down than to pull up against the current, but their speed greatly increased the danger. They rushed into rapids and nearly plunged over falls. One canoe ran upon a rock and they had a hard time rescuing from the boiling waters several men who, strange to say, could not swim. Once Lewis and one of the men, while climbing cliffs, slipped over the brink of a lofty precipice and narrowly escaped being dashed to pieces on the rocks far below. When they were floating down the Columbia, they saw their first live salmon and the Indians cooked some for them. At one place a great rock jetted far out into the channel, leaving it very narrow and swift so that the waters whirled around in dangerous rapids and whirlpools. The cliffs on each side were so high and slippery that the two captains decided to risk shooting or steering a canoe through these rapids. Though several passing Indians had warned them not to attempt it, landing the rest of their party and their precious records, Lewis and Clark made the trial trip and shot through without an accident. After this they steered the other boats and men through in perfect safety. Before long they noticed that the water was a little salt, showing them that tide water from the Pacific came up there. Farther down they saw three European ships at anchor near the mouth of the river. On the 7th of November 1805 they reached a point from which they could see the surf heaving and rolling in the west. The happy young captain rode of this first view. The fog cleared off and we enjoyed the prospect of the ocean, that ocean, the object of all our labours. This cheering view exhilarated the spirits of all the party who were still more delighted on hearing the distant roar of the breakers and went on with great cheerfulness. They built seven wooden huts on the shore of the Pacific, calling this winter camp Fort Clatsop. They made friends with the Indians of the Columbia River region and gathered data for the government and supplies for their return trip. As instructed by President Jefferson they sent two of their number back around the world on a ship by way of China and the Cape of Good Hope with copies of records and information they had thus far collected. In March 1806 Louis and Clark started back on their journey of more than 4,000 miles reaching St. Louis in six months after many more thrilling adventures and hair-breath escapes. They had been gone from St. Louis two years and four months and during that time had travelled altogether a distance of almost 8,500 miles. Often the party suffered terrible hardships and were in almost constant danger from wild animals, the winter cold and the lack of supplies and comforts. For fourteen months they were shut off from all communication with the world and their friends were very anxious about their safety. Louis and Clark had accomplished great things by their expedition. They had made friends at the natives and learned many things about the wonderful regions they explored. Their work helped to keep Russia and England out of the valley of the Columbia River and to give that rich country to the United States. The task of opening up the West, begun so long before by brave French explorers, was now completed by those American Patriot partners, Mary Weather-Lewis and William Clark. End of Chapter 41 Chapter 42 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Holland, Charleston, South Carolina. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Chapter 42 Davy Crockett, the Hero of the Alamo Most of the great men in the New West a hundred years ago were born poor, but few were ever as poor as little Davy Crockett. His father seemed to be unable to get along well and was always in debt. When Davy was still a lad, he was hired out for twenty-five cents a day, but he did not receive the pay himself. It was given to his father. Once a drover to whom Davy's father owed money hired Davy to help drive cattle from the Crockett's log cabin in East Tennessee over the mountains to a place in Virginia, four hundred miles away. Though Davy had had a poor place to live, it made him homesick to stay away from there long. He knew what that lonely man meant when he wrote while a stranger in a foreign land, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. The drover wanted Davy to stay and work for him in another part of the country, but he did not treat the boy very well, thinking that a twelve-year-old lad, four hundred miles from home, could not help himself. But that hard-hearted man did not know Davy Crockett. The boy found a man who was going in a wagon to a place within a hundred miles of his home in Tennessee. Davy planned to meet this man very early one morning, about seven miles from where he worked. The lad did not sleep much that night, and at four o'clock next morning he was on his way to keep his word, though he had to wade seven miles through the deep snow in a blinding blizzard. He met the man with the wagon and was soon happy in being headed for home. The roads were rough and the heavy cart jolted over logs and stumps. The boy could not stand it, not because it was rough, but because they went so slowly. He soon got off to walk the two or three hundred miles that remained. But after he had hurried on foot a hundred miles or so, he saw to his great joy a drover whom he recognized. For the man had stopped at his father's log tavern in Tennessee. The drover took him about a hundred miles on his way, but turned off before reaching the place where Davy lived. The boy had to walk on quite a distance farther, swimming rivers and wading swamps. He did not mind that, for his heart was light. He was going home. He had a happy time telling the family. Davy had seven brothers and sisters, all about his strange journey over the mountains and back. The boy was soon hired to pay another of his father's debts. When Davy expected to be paid in money, the man gave him a note instead. But Davy was glad to be able to help in this way. Another time he went and hired out on purpose to pay a bill his father owed. As his wages were small, it took a long time to pay a few dollars. When Davy was thirteen, he could not read nor write. At that time he was working for a good Quaker neighbor. The boy asked permission to work two days a week just to pay his board and spend the other days in school. Young Crockett learned the three R's. Reading, writing, arithmetic. Well enough to do the simple business of pioneer life. Davy's highest ambition was to want a horse and a gun. When he had a rifle and a pony, he thought he was old enough to marry a girl of seventeen. He seems not to have thought much about having a home of his own. The boy bridegroom took possession of a deserted log cabin. The bride's father gave them a cow and a good Quaker lent the young couple fifteen dollars to start housekeeping. Davy Crockett wrote, after they had bought many fine things with that fifteen dollars, we were then fixed up pretty grand, so we thought. After three years, the young Crockett zoned, besides the horse and gun, two cows, two calves, two colts, and two children. But now that he had a home of his own, the young hunter was too restless to stay in it. When that region became so thickly settled that neighbors lived within a mile or two of one another, the nervous young pioneer moved hundreds of miles to a newer country where he could find elbow room. His devoted wife took their little children and went with him to the rougher region among Indians, bears, and other wild animals. Davy Crockett found friends wherever he went. He was happy-hearted and full of funny stories. He had a humorous way of saying things that pleased those rough and ready Western people. His homely yarns had a meaning deeper than the surface, like those told twenty years later by a young man named Abe Lincoln. Crockett's Backwood stories in Western slang were quoted all over the country. He told of treing a coon once, and of how as he was about to shoot, the raccoon exclaimed, Don't shoot, I'll come right down. I know I'm a gone coon. I'll come right down and I'm a gone coon. Crockett became popular expressions everywhere. Crockett became a great hunter. He killed all the bears in the country around him and had exciting times hunting big game wherever he lived. He was wise and sensible in helping and advising his neighbors. The people in that pioneer country elected David Crockett a justice of the peace. They did not care whether he knew much about common law so long as he was possessed of common sense. The creeks and other Indians in the southern states went on the warpath and murdered hundreds of people. General Jackson, the great man of Tennessee, led thousands of white men to kill all the Indians known to have taken part in that massacre, just as he would have tried to rid the country of dangerous bears or snakes. When David Crockett got the word, he told his patient little wife, I'm going to help fight the Indians. Oh, Davey, she exclaimed. What will become of us? Hundreds of miles from all my friends? The Indians will come and kill us while you're away. But Davey Crockett could not stay. I have to go, he said. My country needs me. And if we don't fight and kill the Indians, they will come and kill us all. That's sure. Even when fighting in General Jackson's army, Davey Crockett was a law unto himself. The officers decided to let him do as he liked, for he seemed to wish to do the right thing by them all. He would be missing for hours and then come back with some game, big or little, to feast the company. Food was very scarce on the long march. When they got to fighting the Indians, Crockett knew exactly what to do. His aim was assured then as it was when hunting bear or deer. Many a time when a big brave had his tomahawk raised to kill a fallen white man, the savage suddenly dropped dead where he stood. The astonished soldier would rise, look around, and mutter, Davey Crockett must be somewhere around. Davey's bear hunting, sharp shooting, and Indian fighting were so remarkable that his life was a strong proof of the saying, proved the stranger than fiction. After General Jackson had put all of the hostile savages out of the way and made it safe to live in those western states, the people were so grateful to Davey Crockett for his part in it that they put him up for election to Congress. Rival candidates who felt much more fitted to go to Washington made all manner of fun of Davey Crockett and said the people ought to be ashamed to send a man like that to represent them in Congress. But the people said, Davey Crockett ain't much on book learning and spouting poetry, but neither are we. He knows our life and just what we want. He ain't much of a lawyer, but he's got good sense and he can represent us better than a dozen lawyers. Those people knew what they were doing. Though Davey Crockett did not know much about books, he was not ignorant, for he was well educated in the real life of that western frontier. So the people elected him three times to Congress and he came to be loved and admired there for his homely wisdom and his quaint way of making others understand just what he meant. While he was a member of Congress, he traveled up and down the eastern states. Wherever he went, he was cheered and feasted. In Philadelphia, the home of American independence, the people presented him with a beautiful rifle and a hunting knife and tomahawk of razor steel. He told the people he would love and cherish that rifle as he would a daughter. Then and there he named the gun Betsy. While he was away in Congress and the East, Crockett's enemies worked against him and he was defeated in the fourth election. The boyish longing for home came over him then and he wrote, In a short time I set out for my own home. Yes, my own home, my own soil, and my own humble dwelling, my own family, my own hearts, my own ocean of love and affection which nothing else nor time can dry up. Here, like the wearied bird, let me settle down for a while and shut out the world. Yet much as Davey Crockett loved his home, he loved his country more. With this spirit he had also such reckless love of adventure that he could not bear to live at ease when his country needed him. The American settlers were having terrible times down in Texas. Thousands of Americans in that country were struggling with the Mexicans to decide who should control and own the Texas territory. General Santa Ana, the President of Mexico, had sent thousands of soldiers into that region, captured a brave little army of Americans, and when these had been disarmed, coolly shot them down as if they had been cattle in a slaughterhouse. All these things were more than Davey Crockett's flesh and blood could bear. In his opinion, such cattle as those Mexicans should be treated like bears or murderous Indians. Armed with Betsy, his new rifle, to use if need be for his country's glory, he was ready to leave for Texas. He was now 54 years old, but his heart was young. When his friends tried to convince him that the trouble in Texas was no affair of his, Crockett replied that the news from those struggling heroes down there wrung his heart. Sorrow will make even an Oysterfield poetical, and Davey left behind him a farewell poem of which this is a small part. The home I forsake where my offspring arose, the graves I forsake where my children repose, the home I redeemed from the savage and wild, the home I have loved as a father his child, the corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared, the flocks that I raised and the cabin I reared, the wife of my bosom farewell to ye all, in the land of the stranger I rise or I fall. When Davey Crockett arrived at San Antonio, Colonel Travis, the commander of the Americans, had turned an old Spanish mission called the Alamo into a fort. Santa Ana was near at hand with a large army to capture the 180 men who were waiting in the Alamo. It would have made the hearts of that brave garrison glad if they could have looked into the future far enough to see that General Sam Houston would soon come there and drive the Mexicans out of the country. And that would the war cry, remember the Alamo. American soldiers would free Texas from Mexico's cruel rule and finally add the vast territory of Texas, New Mexico and California to the United States. But they only knew that Santa Ana was near with 5,000 Mexican soldiers and that there was no hope of relief. When Santa Ana and his army had arrived and surrounded the flimsy Spanish convent fort, he called on Colonel Travis to surrender. The American answer was a cannon shot. Then the Mexicans raised a red flag as a signal that no quarter would be given. That is, that no American could expect anything but death at their hands. Then the battle began. The walls of the Alamo were not strong, for the convent was not built for a fort. Yet it took that great Mexican army 11 days to capture it. Among the Americans were 13 backwoods hunters like David Crockett and Colonel James Bowie, the inventor of the famous Bowie knife, then much used in frontier fighting. Bowie was ill, but he fought like a hero, as did each of the others to sell his life as dearly as possible. On the last day, Colonel Travis offered to let the few men who were left go out with a white flag and ask the Mexicans to spare their lives, but not a man would go. At last the walls of their frail fortress were battered down and 4,000 Mexicans came rushing in. They found Crockett with only five men left. They're backs to the wall fighting to the bitter end. They said that Crockett was the last to fall. When beset by too many Mexicans to reload and fire Betsy, he took his gun by the barrel and clubbed several Mexicans to death before they shot him down. The Alamo fell on the 6th of March, 1836. When they found the journal Davy Crockett had kept during the fight, they read his last words in it, written late the night before. March 5. Pop, pop, pop. Bomb, bomb, bomb. Throughout the day. No time for memorandums now. Go ahead. Liberty and independence forever. End of Chapter 42 Chapter 43 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Famous Inventors How Eli Whitney Made Cotton King Eli Whitney began to make things when he was a small boy. He was called a genius because he was so ingenious. But he was not satisfied with doing things with his hands. He had a strong desire to make the most of his mind. So he went to Yale College and studied philosophy. One day the professor said he could not show a certain method to the class because the machine he kept for the purpose was broken. He could not teach that lesson until a new apparatus could be brought from England or France. But the ingenious student looked at the machine and said, Let me fix it. The professor thought it could do no harm to let him try. Eli made the fine machine work just as well as it did when it was new. One of the bravest officers in the Revolutionary War, which ended a few years before this time, was General Nathaniel Green. After the war General Green lived on a beautiful estate near Savannah, Georgia, and died there. When young Whitney finished his college course he was engaged to teach a school in Savannah. But when he went down there he found that the school was not what he expected. So he acted as tutor in the family of General Green's widow. While he was tutor Whitney made placings for the children and fixed many handy things for Mrs. Green to use about the house. She told him he ought to make a machine that would take the seeds out of the bowls, or fluffy heads, of the cotton plant. Great machines had been contrived for spinning and weaving cotton, but it took a man or woman all day to pick the seeds out of a pound of cotton wool. Eli Whitney went to work to make something that would do what in those days seemed impossible. He not only had to invent a cotton gin, as the new machine was called, but he was obliged to make tools for making the machine itself, and even tools for making the other tools. But within a short time he had invented, and built, a machine which worked quite well. Still he was not satisfied. He locked himself up in a room and worked day and night until he had built a perfect cotton gin, which would work very fast and would clear out all the fine cotton seeds. This was in 1793 while Washington was president and Philadelphia was the capital of the United States. Whitney would not let anyone but Mrs. Green and a friend named Miller see the model, or pattern, of his cotton gin until he could take out a patent for it. But before he could get money enough to have his gin patented, someone broke into his little shop and carried off his precious model. Then the poor inventor had to begin again and make another machine to prove to the officials in the patent office that the cotton gin was his invention before they could make out for him the patent right, which said he was the only person allowed to make and sell that machine in the United States. Before he could get this patent he found that others were making, selling, and trying to get a patent for machines made like the stolen pattern. Young Whitney's friend Miller furnished him money not only to secure his patent rights and make the machines, but to go into the courts and fight those who were trying to steal his rights as they had stolen his model. These people made him so much trouble and expense that it took thirteen years to beat them by lawsuits. A patent protected an inventor by keeping others from making and selling that machine for only fourteen years. When his rivals were beaten, Whitney had but one year left in which he and his friends could sell the machine so as to pay for all his time, labor, and expense. In that year he just made his cotton gin pay for itself. But he had the great satisfaction of making the land in the southern states known as the Cotton Belt because cotton could be grown in those states worth hundreds of millions of dollars more than before. The raising of cotton grew to be such a great industry that Negro slavery became more and more necessary in the cotton growing states. So without knowing it, Eli Whitney, by increasing the production of cotton increased the number of black slaves in the south and helped to cause the struggle for and against slavery many years later. But as the inventor did not know that his cotton gin would make slavery a curse to the United States, he was not to blame. After his patent had run out and he could make no more money by selling his cotton gins, Whitney got a government contract for the making of guns. He invented new machinery to make the parts of his guns and was the first to have each part made by a different man according to an exact pattern. When the parts were put together to make a complete gun, no special fitting was necessary because each piece was exactly like every other piece for that same part. If a part of the gun was broken it could be replaced with a new one without any difficulty. Before that, when one man made an entire gun all the parts were specially fitted and if one got broken a new one had to be made and fitted by hand which took a long time and made repairs very expensive. His factories and the homes of his workmen formed a suburb of New Haven called Whitneyville. Eli Whitney furnished hundreds of thousands of men with the weapons they used in putting down the slavery which his cotton gin had been made the innocent cause of increasing. End of Chapter 43 Chapter 44 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Fulton's Folly Robert Fulton was a Pennsylvania boy. His father, a Quaker, died when Robert was a baby. His mother was a beautiful Irish lady whose mind was as lovely as her face. She taught little Robert who knew much that was worthwhile before he began to go to school at the age of eight years. In those days school teachers were often strict and harsh with young children. Parents seemed to think their children would not learn fast unless they were whipped or beaten with a ruler. Though little Robert was not a bad boy in school he sometimes seemed to be idle because he was thinking of something else. So his strict Quaker teacher punished him one day by striking his hands with a ferrule. Robert's boyish sense of fairness rose up within him and he exclaimed, I came here, sir, to have something beaten into my head, not my hands. One of the pupils brought some artist's brushes and paints to school and Robert, who already showed real talent for drawing was allowed to use them. He made such fine pictures that the other boy gave him the paints. This was the beginning of Young Fulton's career as a painter. But Robert was not content with painting pictures. He was always trying to make things or to find ways of doing things more easily. Robert was eleven when the American colonies went into the war for independence. During this war, when candles were scarce people were warned not to waste them in lighting up for the Fourth of July. It was to be a saving rather than a safe and sane holiday. The Fulton boy made up his mind to celebrate the day. So he got some gunpowder and pasteboard and made little tubes with a stick pointing out at one end of each. The neighbors were astonished on the night of the Fourth of July to see these tubes, one after another, go whizzing up in the sky, leaving a trail of sparks behind them. They said to one another, that Fulton boy's a genius. Robert had made the first skyrockets these Americans had ever seen. Robert Fulton afterward became acquainted with Dr. Benjamin Franklin and learned much from the kind old inventor. When Fulton was a young man he went to London and studied painting with Benjamin West, the greatest American painter up to that time. He also went to France to study art. Meantime he kept on inventing things. The French were at war with many of the countries of Europe at that time. Fulton had always been interested in boats and we have seen that he knew how to use gunpowder. He planned a new kind of boat which he thought would help the French in their war. It was a submarine and was provided with torpedoes which could be shot under water. They would have pierced the wooden sides of the best ships built in those days. Fulton's diving boat was shown to be a minister of war but the government experts could not understand its great value in war and refused to make use of it in the war. Shortly after a British officer remarked that Napoleon's loss of Fulton's diving boat was the most important event of the century. Napoleon, who was then Emperor of the French wrote to one of his own advisors, I have just received the project of Citizen Fulton and sent me too late since it may change the face of the world. But, harmful as Fulton's submarine might have proven to Napoleon's enemies the chance which Napoleon missed was not important compared with the results of Robert Fulton's next invention. Robert Fulton had, as a lad, gone fishing with some neighbours on a flat boat in the river. This craft they had to push along with poles which was very slow, hard work. Bob began at once to try to fix something which would make the boat go faster and more easily. He arranged paddles at the stern, which worked quite well. Then he improved this by making paddle wheels. After that he attached the wheels to an engine. He went on working with engines and wheels until at last, while he was in Paris, he succeeded in building a boat with a steam engine to make it go. He tried it on the river Seine which flows through Paris. The boat did go a little but the engine was too heavy and the watching crowds saw Fulton's queer boat sink to the bottom. After he returned to America Fulton went on improving his steamboat until he had built one which he thought would run up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany. He named this odd-looking craft the Clermont and invited a few of his friends to make the trial trip. A great crowd came down to the wharf in New York City to have a little fun watching Fulton's folly as they called the steamboat. People laughed at the idea that a heavy iron engine could make a boat go anywhere but to the bottom. Even Fulton's friends, waiting on the deck of the queer-looking vessel felt foolish and looked anxious. The boat, however, started off and the people on the shore began to cheer. In the river it stopped like a bulky horse and the cheers were turned to jeers. Fulton looked hurriedly at the engine, found out what was the trouble and soon fixed it. Then the boat went puffing away up the river against the current at the rate of six miles an hour and the friends on deck thought they were going very fast as there were no railroads then and this was faster than a sailboat could go. Fulton kept on improving his boats so that within a few years there were steamboats on other rivers of the country. Within a century ocean greyhounds were racing across the Atlantic and super-dreadnoughts, the largest battleships, were being built for the great navies of the world. Submarines were used by many nations in the World War but their invention, important as it was, could not well be called the greatest event of the century. It was the sailing of Fulton's folly which might have been said to change the face of the world because it was the first step on the way to the wonderful steamships of today. Just as that ingenious little boy tried to help his friends by making their flatboat run faster so Robert Fulton, as a man, had made the people of the world richer, happier and better for all the ages to come. End of Chapter 44 Chapter 45 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alan R. Tate, Bedford, Massachusetts Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham How Morse Sent Letters by Lightning Into the family of Dr. Morse, a much-respected minister living on the side of the hill on which the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, there came a little baby boy. They named him Samuel Finley for his great-grandfather, a president of Princeton College. To this was added Breeze, the maiden name of the boy's mother. When this baby grew up, he was known all over the world as SFB Morse. This Morse boy had the best kind of schooling at home. His father was a teacher as well as a preacher and wrote the Morse geographies which were used in the schools of that day. Finley, as he was called at home, showed real town as a boy for drawing and painting. One of his first pictures showed the Morse family around a table with the father teaching them from a large globe showing all the countries of the world. Finley Morse was sent to Yale College where he was much interested in science and philosophy, but he kept at his drawing and coloring and became a successful painter. That was years before anyone knew how to take photographs, so Mr. Morse painted a great many portraits and did such good work that he received high prices for them. Believing that the artists of America could help one another, he influenced some of them to organize the National Academy of the Arts of Design and they elected him their first president. When Lafayette, who had been a young officer on General Washington's staff nearly 50 years before, came to America again as an old man, the people of America wished to have the best portrait that could be painted of the Frenchman who had helped the Americans in the war for independence. Finley Morse was chosen to paint this picture of General Lafayette. While Mr. Morse was in Washington at work on this picture, he received word from his home in New Haven that his young wife had died suddenly of heart disease. Before he could receive the letter, she was buried. People in those days traveled by stagecoach and it took at least a week for a letter to go from Boston to Washington. When the sorrowing father went home to arrange for the care of his three motherless children, he spoke of the slowness of sending word from place to place and said he hoped the time would come when news could be sent long distances in an instant. But of course he had no idea then that he would have anything to do with bringing that blessing to mankind. When Morse was returning from one of his visits to Europe to study art, several of his friends on the ship were talking at the table about what someone had done by way of sending signals like lightning by means of electricity. If they can do that, said Mr. Morse, why could we not write letters in a second or two from New York to Charleston with it? The others laughed at the idea. Why not? kept ringing in Mr. Morse's ears. He stayed in his state room to study and think. He remembered what he had learned from his professors in college about electricity. With such materials as he could get together on shipboard, he made magnets in electrical appliances. By the time the ship sailed up New York Harbor, Mr. Morse had not only a good idea of a way to go to work to make a telegraph apparatus, but he had made up the dot-and-dash coat, now in use in telegraphy. The idea took such a hold on his mind that he could no longer paint pictures. But when he talked to others about it, it all seemed impossible, too good to be true, and he could not find wealthy men who would lend money enough to enable him to prove that a message could be sent a long distance in a moment of time by telegraph. While Mr. Morse was waiting and struggling to start the electromagnetic telegraph, he made a bare living by taking the first photographic likenesses, called daguerreotypes, in America. After eleven years of hard work and poverty, so keen he had to go hungry sometimes, Mr. Morse's friends in Congress passed the bill in the house to furnish him government money enough for a trial line forty miles long. But on the last day of the session, which was to end at midnight, there were over a hundred bills ahead of his in the Senate. Mr. Morse went home that night utterly discouraged. In the morning Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, came to congratulate him. His bill had been passed just before midnight, and the President had signed it, giving Mr. Morse all the money he needed to show how he could send letters by lightning. The overjoyed inventor told Miss Ellsworth that when his line was all ready, she should send the first message over it. It was decided that the trial line should be put up between Washington and Baltimore. It was completed before the 24th of May, 1844. One end of it was in the Capitol at Washington and the other at Baltimore. Miss Ellsworth's first message flashed by S. F. B. Morse to his partner, Mr. Vale, in Baltimore, was this text of Scripture. What hath God wrought? The first news sent out to the whole country was that of James K. Polk's nomination at the convention in Baltimore as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Mr. Morse's struggles were now over. The telegraph became a wonderful success and he was honored by presidents, kings, and princes with medals, stars, crosses, and other decorations. The inventor now turned his attention to running telegraph lines underwater and laid a cable under New York Harbor. About 20 years later, another man, Cyrus W. Field, succeeded in connecting America with Europe by laying a cable beneath the Atlantic Ocean. So, S. F. B. Morse's words were realized. If I can make the telegraph work ten miles, I can make it go around the globe. He really made true these words of Puck, one of Shakespeare's fairies. I'll put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes. Then soon began trying to talk without connecting wires. Marconi invented the radio telegraph in 1896 and the radio phone followed. Now it is possible to send wireless messages almost around the world. Chapter 46 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Wayne Cook. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Cyrus H. McCormick and the Story of the Reaper. When little Abraham Lincoln was three days old in Kentucky, Cyrus H. McCormick was born in Virginia. When the McCormick boy was seven, he used to go out to his shed and watch his father working at a machine to take the place of the scythe, which was then used in cutting grain. Father McCormick was never satisfied, the neighbor said. He was always fussing and trying to invent and improve something. After working for years to make a machine to harvest grain, Farmer McCormick gave it up, saying that it could not be done. Meanwhile, young Cyrus, who had inherited his father's inventive term of mind, went to the fields to work with the men. He found it very hard to keep up with them, so he invented a cradle or improved scythe, which made his work so much easier that he was able to do as much as a grown man. When he was twenty-two, Cyrus McCormick had invented a plow that would throw up a furrow on whichever side the farmer desired. Two years later, he made the first self-sharpening plow. Although the neighbors had laughed at his father for being so foolish as to wish to invent a labor-saving machine for harvesting, and in spite of his father's warnings that such a thing could never be made, the idea of a Reaper haunted the young man's mind. He began to work at it as a boy, and kept it up until he was a grown man. He had improved the cradle and his two plows without much difficulty, but the reaping machine was a hard problem. It was more difficult because the grain is often lodged or matted down, and it is necessary not only to cut it, but to lay it in even rows so that it can be bound in sheaves ready for threshing. But in 1831, the same year in which he made his double furrow plow, McCormick built a machine that would reap quite well. He had made every part of it by hand. This machine had vibrating blades which cut against each other in about the same manner as shears. It also had a reel to draw the standing grain within reach of the moving blades and a platform to catch the grain as fast as it was cut. He first tried the machine by reaping several acres of oats. The next year he harvested 75 acres of wheat to the great astonishment of the neighboring farmers and his father's pride. Cyrus McCormick was not satisfied to let well enough alone. He spent nine more years in making his reaper do everything just right before he was willing to sell it. The farmers admired the clever machine, but they were not ready to buy it because they thought it would take work from many laborers. The money panic of 1837 occurred during this time and young McCormick went into the iron smelting business to make a living during the hard times. In 1840, he had put his reaper into more perfect shape and now began to manufacture it. First in Cincinnati, then in Chicago. The farmers in the western prayers could not hire laborers enough to harvest their great fields of grain by hand so the McCormick reaper began to be used in that part of the country. Cyrus H. McCormick, unlike most inventors, was a successful businessman. He had to enlarge his factories. To his harvester he kept adding devices until he gathered the grain into sheaves, bound the sheaves with twine and tossed them out sideways on the ground. He made them so they would mow grass also. After his reapers and moors became well-known in America, the successful inventor and manufacturer went abroad to introduce them in Europe. He showed the machine at the First World's Fair in London in 1851. People in England laughed and the London Times reported that the reaper was a cross between a chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine. But when the object of their laughter was taken out harvesting in England, the joke was on the men who had made fun of a machine they could not understand. The newspapers then began to praise the inventor. They had ridiculed. And Cyrus H. McCormick awoke one morning and found himself famous. He not only received the great medal from the World's Fair, but was elected an officer of the Legion of Honor in Paris and received the high honor of being made a member of the French Academy of Science. So the McCormick boy, who did not mind being laughed at and was never content with doing less than his very best, became not only one of the wealthiest men of America, but added many hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth of his country and gave an immense benefit to the world. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by Betty B. He wrote Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Elias Howe and his sewing machine. Elias Howe was the son of a poor miller. He had to go to work when he was six years old. He was a lame, sickly boy and could never do hard work. When he was old enough, he went away to work in the mills. But as he grew up, his health was still so poor that he had to go back and live with his father. Elias married when he was 21 and within a few years he had a wife and three children to support. Once when he was ill, his wife took in sewing to support their little family. As the young father lay on the bed, watching his wife slowly plying her needle, he thought what a blessing it would be if a machine could be invented to sew much faster and better than by hand. The idea seemed to fill his mind, for he was an ingenious man. He said to himself, I can't do heavy work, but perhaps I can invent that machine. At first he said nothing about it to his wife, but he watched her taking stitch after stitch for hours at a stretch. When he was out of bed, he made a model of the machine which he had been planning. In this rude affair, he had to sew the needle in the middle. This needle was pointed at both ends and worked sideways through the cloth, which was held upright. The stitches on this first machine were made like a chain and the thread rattled out too easily. How kept patiently at work until he hit upon the idea of laying the cloth to be sewed on a small table and making the needle go up and down through it. He thought of a way to have the cloth pulled along so that the trouble was to get a stitch that would not rip or pull out. At last he tried a shuttle which looped another thread with that in the needle so that the two made a lock stitch. When he had done this, he had invented the sewing machine. Like most inventors, Elias Howe was poor. He found a coal dealer named Fisher who agreed to keep Howe in his family and furnish $500 to pay for the first machines and have them patented. The inventor was to receive a half interest in the patents and the sewing machine business afterward. At first no one would buy the machine. Taylor thought it would throw too many men out of work. Mr. Fisher grew tired of his bargain and the house had to leave his house. There seemed to be a better chance to sell sewing machines in England so the family went across the sea to London. But the inventor was again disappointed. He was glad to come back to his father's house in America with his sick wife and his small children. The wife died soon after their return and the inventor had to do something to support his motherless children. He hired out to help an engineer on one of the first railroads in the United States. While he was working at that, a friend offered to see what he could do in selling sewing machines in New York City. They found that others were making and selling machines very much like Howe's. Money was furnished to sue those dealers. Howe's rights to his patents were confirmed by the courts in 1846 and all other makers of sewing machines were made to pay him a certain amount called a royalty on every machine they sold. In this way, Elias Howe soon became a very wealthy man. After the Civil War broke out, Howe enlisted as a private and when the government was slow in paying the soldiers wages, he lent the money himself for the men in his company. He died before he was fifty years old with medals and honors from many countries. He had brought a great blessing to the women of the world just as he had wished to do when he lay on his bed watching his tired wife sewing hour after hour to support him and their three little children. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Like Many Waters. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Edison, The Wizard of Many Inventions. Thomas Alva Edison was born in the little village of Milan, Ohio. His father was a mechanic who could turn his hand to anything while Alva, as they called him at home, was a small boy. The family moved to Port Huron. Here the lad was sent to school but he asked so many questions the teacher sent him home. Then Alva's mother, who had been a school teacher, tried to educate him. She had great patience with his questions but there were so many that neither she nor his father could answer that he took to reading books. He had the same desire to know the why of everything that great men have shown when they were boys. Though the Edison boy had no taste for school, he was fond of reading. When he learned how much he could find out from books, he started in, Boy Like, to read all the books in a public library. He had worried through several great sets of volumes when he discovered that not all books were of interest to him. After that he chose only those on subjects he liked to read about. His father was a poor man and as Alva was not in school he wanted to do his part toward making a living for the family. He began by selling papers around the home. Then he had a chance to be a train boy on the old Grand Trunk Railroad between Port Huron and Detroit. His mother was afraid to have him run on trains and be away from home but he showed that he could take care of himself. It was during this time that he began taking books in a public library. He was such a wide awake good natured lad that the trainmen liked him. He found that he had a good deal of time to spare so he got some old type from a printer and in a corner of the baggage car began to print a four page newspaper about the size of a small handkerchief which he named the Grand Trunk Herald. The trainsmen and their families and friends liked this young Edison's news. Soon he had about 500 subscribers so he made about $10 a week from his little newspaper. Meanwhile he attended strictly to business. During the Civil War he would find out where there had been a battle and had the telegraph operator send word of the event ahead of the train to the towns where the trains would stop. This brought hundreds of people down to the stations at train time to learn the news of the battle. Young Edison would sell hundreds once he sold a thousand papers at 10 to 25 cents a piece. He was always trying to do something new. After his little paper became well known he began to buy chemicals and keep them in bottles in his printing office in the car. One day the phosphorus jar fell off the shelf and broke. This set fire to the floor of the car while Alva was putting out the fire the conductor came through. It made him so angry to have a boy around who might burn up the train with his experiments that he threw out the bottles, printing press and type and pushed the boy after them. Alva did not hold a grudge against that conductor. He only wondered that the trainman had stood that sort of thing so long. He saved all he could out of the ruins and set up his printing plant in the cellar of his father's house. He went back to work as though nothing had happened and attended only to selling papers. One day while waiting on the platform of a station he saw the station agent's child on the tracks and an express train coming. Throwing down his newspapers he jumped seized the child and sprang across the track just in time to save its life and his own. The stationman wept as he seized the heroic newspaper boy's hand. I am a poor man he said so I can't repay you for saving my child's life but I can teach you telegraphy. Edison was delighted he stopped at that station several times a week and very soon learned to sin and receive messages. It is harder to take than to send telegraph dispatches. Young Edison invented a machine which would run more slowly than the telegraph and which gave him time to write out the words while the dots and dashes of the telegraph alphabet were clicking away. But sometimes it is impossible to attach this appliance so young Edison practiced till he could receive the fastest news story. He knocked about the country hiring out as telegraph operator but he was always trying to make new machines and improvements this was more interesting to him than telegraphing. After living in several western cities the young telegrapher and inventor applied for a job in the western union office in Boston here is Mr. Edison's own account of his first experience there. I had been four days and nights on the road and having had very little sleep I did not present a very fresh or stylish appearance. The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work. Now I replied. I was then told to return at 5.30 p.m. and punctually at that hour I entered the main room and was introduced to the night manager. My appearance caused much mirth and as I afterwards learned the night operators consulted together how they might put up a job on the J from the woolly west. I was assigned to New York number one wire. After waiting upwards of one hour I was told to come over to a certain table and take a special report for the Boston Herald the conspirators having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in New York send the dispatch and salt the new man. I sat down without suspecting and the New York man started slowly. I had perfected myself in a simple and rapid style of handwriting without flourishes which could be increased from 45 to 54 words a minute by reducing the size of the lettering. This was several words faster than any other operator in the United States could write. Soon the New York man increased his speed and I easily adapted my pace to his. This put my rival on his metal and he was soon doing his fastest work. At this point I happened to look up and saw the operators all looking over my shoulder with their faces with fun and excitement. I knew then that they were trying to put a job on me but I kept my own counsel and went on placidly with my work even sharpening a pencil now and then as an extra aggravation. The New York man then commenced to slur over his words running them together and sticking the signals but I had been used to this style of telegraphy in taking reports and was not in the least disconfident. At last when I thought the fun was over I opened the key and clicked back to him. Say young man change off and send with the other foot. This broke the New York man all up and he turned the job over to another man to finish. Young Edison got the greatest benefit he could from the Boston Public Library. The following year he went to New York and found work with the Gold Reporting Telegraph Company where he invented the ticker now so common in Stockbroker's offices. He employed at a salary of $300 a month. He now began to devote all his time to inventing. In a short time he had devised and constructed several machines and improvements for which he was offered $40,000. This enabled him to begin inventing and manufacturing on a large scale. He built a factory and employed 300 men to carry out his fast increasing ideas and make the necessary machines and drawings for securing his competence. He improved the telegraph so that six messages could be sent at once over the same wire. He made improvements in electric and other motor cars as well as in the telephone. He also made a delicate instrument to measure the heat of the stars which he called the tassimeter. Out of more than 1400 different inventions any one of which would have made him famous the best known are the incandescent electric light, the phonograph picture machine. Thomas A. Edison is the greatest inventor that ever lived. He has done more for the world's wealth, comfort and happiness than any other man say perhaps Dr. Benjamin Franklin yet he is one of the most modest of men. When he was invited to a dinner at which several distinguished men wished to pay him some of the high honors do him he said, I would not sit and listen to an hour of such talk for $100,000. When asked how he gained his great success Mr. Edison replied by not looking at the clock. End of Chapter 48 Chapter 49 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Betty B. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Benjamin Franklin, the boy who was diligent in business. When Benjamin Franklin was a little boy he lived in Boston where his father was a maker of soap and candles. Little Ben was only 10 years old when his father took him out of school and set him at work in his shop. Hipping candles all day long is hard, disagreeable work and Ben, who loved books often wished that he was back in school. His uncle Benjamin sometimes tried to cheer the lad at his tiresome toil by telling him it is not so much what you do in life as how you do it. One day Ben's uncle brought a Bible into the smoky soap fat room and read from it. Seized thou a man diligent in his business he shall stand before kings. Then Franklin was a thoughtful boy while he was bending over the little that of hot tallow all that long day he could not help thinking of what his uncle had read to him. His mother by the burning grease he whispered to himself stand before kings I'm so tired and my back is so lame when night comes that I can hardly stand at all. After Ben had worked at home for two long years his father said to him my son you have been so faithful that I cannot bear to let you dip candles all your life you are fit for something better what trade would you like to learn? Ben was delighted he was able to read a book that he thought sure he would like to learn how to make them he answered his father's question by saying I would like to be a printer when a boy went to learn a trade in those days he had to serve as an apprentice that is he was bound out by law to work for a master until he was 21 at first he received nothing for his work but his boarding clothes and when he was 19 or 20 he was given very small wages at that time James Franklin Ben's older brother had a printing office in Boston it was soon arranged that Ben should be his brother James Apprentice and worked for nine years to learn the printing business Ben was clever and willing the work of a printing office boy was very hard more than this James Franklin was a hard master he sometimes boxed Ben's ears and treated him very unkindly the more the young brother tried to please the crosser James seemed to be then bore this abuse for five years he soon learned to set type well and to run the hand or foot press which was hard even for a man to do James was so mean to him at home that the boy asked for just half the money it cost his brother to feed him so that he might board himself of course James was pleased with such a bargain the boy was so eager to learn that he saved half of the small sum to buy books he ate no meat, only bread and a few plain vegetables instead of going out as the men and the other apprentices did to get a good dinner he stayed in the shop at noon to eat his dry bread and read Benjamin Franklin like books which other boys thought too dry even better than good things to eat besides being studious Ben was ingenious he had the knack of finding out what was wrong with things and making them right when the printing press would not work he fixed it and said it going again he soon wrote pieces for his brother's newspaper he was so bright willing and useful that everyone praised him except his brother who instead of being proud of Ben was jealous and treated him worse than ever so Ben had to run away not to see but to Philadelphia where he could get printing work to do he quickly found a place there and worked with a royal will if ever a young man was diligent in his business it was Benjamin Franklin when he was about 21 he became the owner of the largest printing business in America he was soon editing and publishing the best newspaper in the country before long he also started Poor Richard's Almanac a sort of yearly magazine containing Franklin's maxims or short wise sayings these have been translated into many languages and are quoted all over the world Franklin founded the first library in Philadelphia and started the University of Pennsylvania he kept on improving and inventing useful things he made printers type and presses better than they were before one night his whale oil lamp smoked he went to fix it to do this he had to find out what made it smoke like that before he finished he had invented the best lamp in the world with this new knowledge of the action of drafts he went on and invented a stove to take the place of the fireplace which before this time was generally used for heating and cooking many people thought the most striking thing that Franklin did was to make a silk kite with a steel wire projecting from the end of the long cross stick to flying the clouds during a thunderstorm when the lightning struck the steel wire it ran down the kite string to a big iron key which Franklin had hung there for that purpose he then put the key into a big wide mouth glass jar this was like catching the lightning in a trap in this simple way Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is nothing but electricity flashing up in the clouds thus by studying into things every chance he had Benjamin Franklin became not only one of the most learned men in the world but the greatest inventor of his time he was honored with the title philosophy by the greatest universities in Europe better than this he was known and loved by the people all over the world while the war for independence was under way the leaders of the new nation called the United States of America came to Dr. Franklin and urged him to go to France and persuade the king and the people to help the United States Dr. Franklin said he would see what could be done when he reached Paris he received a more wonderful welcome than was ever given to a king the good Dr. Franklin's portrait and his stove were seen in nearly every home in France he became the fashion in Paris the city of fashion storekeepers were selling Franklin hats Franklin canes Franklin snuff boxes and so on while he was entertained by the king of France the kings of four other nations came to see him not only did he stand before kings but he sat at table with the rulers of five great nations of Europe the French government supplied him with money men and ships to help to win the independence of the United States then he stayed in France and signed the treaty of peace which he brought home to America he arrived at the old wharf in Philadelphia where he had landed many years before a poor hungry lad of 17 running away from his cruel brother this time he was welcomed by thousands of people cheering cannon were booming the bells of the city were ringing above them all told the great Liberty Bell of Independence Hall the happy people shouted to one another hurrah for Dr. Franklin hurrah for peace and Benjamin Franklin told some of them about the words his uncle had read to him when he was a boy seats thou a man diligent in his business he shall stand before kings end of chapter 49 chapter 50 of Hero Tales from History this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Betty B Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham George Washington and his mother when George Washington was a little boy there was no such country as the United States the part of America where he was born was called Virginia but it was not a state then it was a colony or new country settled by people from England these colonists lived along the eastern shore back from the seacoast were beautiful valleys and high hills covered with woods that region was called a howling wilderness because there were tribes of Indians roaming through its forests hunting bears and wolves war whooping and killing and scalping one another sometimes they stole up to a lone cabin or settlement to murder a few white people who were brave enough to try to live there and set fire to their little home the wealthy Virginia colonists built handsome houses on their large estates the first families of Virginia as they came to be called onigros that had been stolen from the jungles of Africa and sold to the planters these slaves worked in the tobacco fields and did other work on the farms then there were also white men who had broken the laws in England and were condemned to hard labor in the fields of Virginia instead of being shut up in the prisons of England as most of the labor on their farms and plantations was done by black slaves and white convicts the young gentlemen of the colony thought all that kind of work to do so instead of laboring to improve their new country as men did in other colonies the strong young men of Virginia led lives of ease drinking, carousing, gambling and horse racing little George Washington's father was a wealthy planter who owned three plantations he was a member of a great English company buying up vast tracts of land in the new country he also owned a big interest in some iron mines and besides all these he was owner and master of a ship which took his tobacco and iron to London and brought back cargos of silks, furniture, tea, coffee and many other things not then made or raised in Virginia Mr. Washington sometime sailed to England on his ship and commanded his crew from this he was called Captain Captain Washington's oldest son Lawrence 14 years older than George had enlisted in the Army while at school in England and was now a captain fighting the Spaniards under Admiral Vernon when George was seven years old the Washington house was burned down and the family had to move about 50 miles in a sailboat to another estate named Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River from there George went to school riding several miles a day on his own pony the school house was a mere shed of tobacco field George did not learn much there but he did have a great time playing soldier small as he was he was captain of the white men the other men were Spaniards French or Indians for England was at war with all these people most of the time so just then there were three captains in the Washington family Augustine the father Lawrence the soldier's son and George the school leader in 1911 his father died leaving the best part of his wealth to Lawrence by English law the most of the property went to the eldest son so the people of Virginia felt that this was the right thing to do but George's mother thought it was all wrong when the oldest son of her husband's first wife was made a rich man and her oldest son was left a poor boy by their father's will as for George he believed it must be right because his father had willed it so instead of being jealous or grudging his half brother such good fortune George began to plan how to earn his own living in this way the boy George Washington was preparing for the great war for independence to keep his little brother from going to work Lawrence persuaded his stepmother to let him find George a good place where he might become an officer in the English Navy he could do so through Admiral Vernon for whom Lawrence had named the mansion where his father's house had burned down but when the time came for parting with her oldest son and standby stern dignified Mary Washington broke down and cried pleading with George not to leave his mother alone in her widowhood in poverty it was so hard for George to give up what he thought was his only chance in life that his face turned white but for his mother's sake he gave it all up taking off his bright midi uniform he folded it away in his new sailor chest never to be worn again when he saw the warship which had been anchored below Mount Vernon sailing away in the morning sunshine young George Washington's future looked as dark as ever it could to a heart-rope and lad of 15 but who would have led the colonists in their rebellion against England if George Washington had entered the English Navy then and had later become a British Admiral instead of commanding general of the American Army by the time George was 21 his brother Lawrence was dead and as his father had willed it most of the property including Mount Vernon belonged to the oldest son of the second wife George at once provided for his mother against worry or want in future but he had to tell her he was a man now and that his devotion to country must come first even before his duty to his mother the English Governor of Virginia sent him still little more than a boy as messenger of the British government to the French and Indian commanders in the distant Ohio region this was a lonely journey of many hundred miles through frozen and pathless forests full of cruel savages George had several hair breath escapes once from drowning in an icy river and once from being shot by a treacherous Indian guide a great writer says of his wonderful success on this difficult and dangerous errand through that western wilderness he went in a schoolboy he came out the first soldier in the colonies the brave youth was appointed major Washington and given command of a little army to fight the French and Indians he soon gained a victory which was called the first blow in a war which lasted in America and Europe more than 50 years General Braddock's staff Young Washington saved the remaining part of the British army at Fort Duquesne he was Colonel Washington when he was sent to the Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence while there he was made commander in chief of the continental army in the war for independence his faith and courage and patience endeared him so that to the country that no other man could be thought of for the first president of the United States except the father of his country End of Chapter 50 Chapter 51 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Betty B Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Alexander Hamilton The Orphan Boy from the West Indies On the little island of Nevis in the West Indies lived a small boy who had lost his mother a bright young woman from France His father, James Hamilton who was a Scotch planter soon left the island and the boy Alexander heard little of him after that No one knows today what became of the father of Alexander Hamilton but his grandfather was the Scottish Laird or Lord The next that is known of Alexander is that he was a clerk in the store of a merchant on Santa Cruz a smaller island and that the lad was not contented there When he was twelve he wrote back to a friend in Nevis I would be willing to risk my life but not my character to exalt my station Alexander studied with the minister of Santa Cruz who did all he could to help the boy to improve his position in life As Alexander was a devout lad it is believed that the good man was trying to fit him to be a minister The first thing young Hamilton did to win credit was to write a wonderful description of a hurricane or violent windstorm that did great damage on the island The article was printed in a London newspaper When the people who knew the lad read his account they could hardly believe that one so young could have written it and several wealthy planters decided to give such a bright boy to exalt his station by sending him to school in America Soon the little scotch lad who could speak French and write splendid stories in English was on his way to Boston in a British packet boat It is stated that on that voyage he first heard of George Washington When Alexander Hamilton reached Boston he found the people up in arms because the British government had sent soldiers to keep order in that rebellious city The boy had been brought up to think that the King and the great men of England were always right The little Britisher from the West Indies was first sent to a grammar school not far from New York to prepare for college He was so keen and studied so hard that he was fitted to enter King's College in New York City at the age of 16 After the war against the King the name of the college was changed from Kings to Columbia After a year in college, the British red youth went to Boston again This was about the time when the sons of Liberty dressed up as Indians and threw the taxed tea overboard into Boston Harbor This act was intended to show the King and the English statesmen that the Americans would not pay taxes when they had nothing to say in the government as to what taxes they should pay No doubt Alexander, while studying for college, had learned something of the history and the spirit of the people in America so that he did not feel so sure that all the King did was right After he returned to New York there was a great mass meeting in the fields to talk about the unjust acts of the King of England In the city were many Tories loyal to the King Young Hamilton went down from college to hear the discussion and it was not long before he was answering a rich Tory in a sharp, vigorous way. The people shouted to him to go up on the platform and the brilliant West Indian youth of 17 made a strong speech that became the top of New York City A little while after this the students called on the president of King's College He was a Tory and very bitter against the people who were fighting for their rights as British subjects He scolded the students roundly calling them traitors, rascals and other hard names He made the young men so angry that it might have gone hard with the old gentleman if Young Hamilton had not jumped up on the porch and spoken earnestly in his defense The president, seeing who was speaking and thinking that the youth was talking against the Tories again put his angry red face out of an upper window and shouted It's a lie, don't believe a word that Rogue says, he's crazy As Hamilton was really taking their foolish president's part this made the students shout and laugh The young orator taking advantage of this kept on talking till the old Tory made his escape by a back way to a British man of war in the river nearby After this, Hamilton wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles about the rights of the people Events began to happen thick and fast Washington was elected commander in chief of the continental army and drove the British soldiers out of Boston Then the Americans decided to separate from England so the Declaration of Independence was written and signed Young Hamilton was soon in the midst of the fight in command of an artillery company When Washington and his ragged Continentals were retreating from New York you saw youth in charge of a battery keeping the Redcoats from crossing a wide river so that the American commander in chief and his little army could keep on their way to Philadelphia Who is that young man asked Washington That Your Excellency is Alexander Hamilton The great general was so pleased with the skill and courage of the young officer that he soon invited him to become his aide and secretary with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel The commander in chief liked to have bright young men around him Colonel Hamilton was now 20 Colonel Aaron Burr was a year older Light Horse Harry Lee was about the same age and General Lafayette General Washington staff that summer was only 19 Colonel Hamilton was such a discreet and faithful secretary that it was said the pen of the army is held by Hamilton In some ways Hamilton's pen was mightier than his sword At Brandywine where Lafayette was wounded Hamilton's horse was shot under him but he kept it ahead of his regiment on foot At Valley Forge young Hamilton had occasion to remember the language very used in talking with him when he was a baby on the island of Nevis for he often spoke French with young Marquis de Lafayette The West Indian Colonel was welcome wherever he went he was thoughtful and kind to the sick writing beautiful letters home for disabled and dying soldiers One day when the young staff officer was hurrying to meet his chief Lafayette detained him Finally breaking away from the friendly young Frenchman Hamilton found the commander in chief said Colonel Hamilton you have kept me waiting these ten minutes I must tell you sir that you treat me with disrespect The young aid flushed Scarlett and replied I am not conscious of it sir but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so we part Very well sir if it be your choice said Washington With Faye still aflame Hamilton turned and left the commander in chief Within an hour the general was sorry he had been so severe with my boy as he called his aid and sent for him asking that their two hasty words might be forgotten But even then Hamilton could not quite forgive his chief for reproving him So Alexander Hamilton was placed in command of a detachment in the south where Light Horse Harry and Lafayette were officers also At Yorktown the last battle in the war for independence Colonel Hamilton was the first man to mount the wall before the town where he was quickly followed by his devoted men Within a very few minutes the American flag was floating over Yorktown After the war Hamilton returned to New York City to practice law It married the daughter of General Schuyler one of the richest men in that state Attorney Hamilton soon became successful and prosperous when the time came to frame the Constitution which was to bind 13 states into one union and make them true to their name the United States Alexander Hamilton was one of the leaders in that great undertaking After that his former chief was elected the first president One of the first acts of president Washington was to send for Alexander Hamilton to be the first secretary of the treasury The young secretary had to create success for the new nation like making bricks without straw There was no national treasury Continental money was without value so that when anything was considered worthless it was said to be not worth a continental rival states had been jealous of one another and as there was no head nothing was owned in common by the whole country but debts money had been borrowed of other nations and of patriotic people in America to carry on the war for independence Many good people thought it would be possible for the new government just starting to pay its debts besides building up a new government and meeting the running expenses but Alexander Hamilton still a young man saw that a country in debt could never be independent and that if the government of the United States did not pay all it owed it could not go on any more than a bank drop business which could not pay its bills The only way to secure credit was to pay every dollar it owed Hamilton devised ways and means to do all this with such success that in the street parades which the people arranged in different cities to celebrate the new constitution wherever a float represented the constitution the only man's name on the ship of state was Hamilton the plans of the young secretary of the treasury work like magic and the new government was soon on a solid foundation Daniel Webster, the greatest man who ever lived in America in speaking of Hamilton's work compared to two miracles told of in the Bible one that of Moses when he drew water from a rock with the thirsty Israelites in the wilderness the other the raising of a dead man to life by Elijah these are Webster's words Hamilton smote the rock of the national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth he touched the dead corpse and it sprang upon its feet Alexander Hamilton continued to act as the first president's private secretary it is generally believed that it was he who wrote out Washington's immortal farewell address when he gave up the office of secretary of the treasury Hamilton returned to the practice of law he had gladly given up a large income and served his country for about one third the amount of money he had been receiving from his law business in New York Hamilton's chief rival was Aaron Burr whom Washington had disliked and allowed to retire from his military staff the Colonel Burr was a brilliant lawyer and a popular politician when Thomas Jefferson was elected president of the United States by the House of Representatives Aaron Burr might have been chosen president if three men had voted the other way Burr was bitterly disappointed and blamed Hamilton for his defeat nursing revenge in his heart Burr practiced shooting as Hamilton continued to oppose Burr's schemes Burr easily found an excuse to challenge him to fight a duel dueling was still a common means of deciding questions of honor Hamilton's eldest son had been killed in that way as a man was called a coward if he did not fight Hamilton accepted Burr's challenge but he felt sure it would mean death to himself the place chosen for the shooting was the spot where Hamilton's son had lately been killed when the signal was given Alexander Hamilton pointed his pistol upward and fired into a tree to avoid hitting Burr whose aim was as true as when shooting at a target Hamilton fell face downward and died next day declaring that he forgave the enemy who had planned and practiced to kill him this duel did more than anything else to show the wickedness of the duel as a way of settling disputes Aaron Burr later was accused of being a traitor to the country which Hamilton had given his great and noble life to place upon a firm foundation what is true of dueling is also true of war the unworthy party may succeed by wicked means but America remembers Aaron Burr as a curse and Alexander Hamilton as a blessing to his country End of Chapter 51 Chapter 52 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Betty B Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham Thomas Jefferson the father of democracy Thomas Jefferson was born on his father's many thousand acre farm near Charlottesville, Virginia on the banks of river Anna whose name was shortened to Rivanna Thomas's father Colonel Peter Jefferson had come over the sea from Wales and his mother was Jane Randolph a daughter of one of the FFVs or First Families of Virginia the Jefferson boy grew up tall, thin, awkward freckled and red haired his father, like George Washington's was a wealthy planter who died while Thomas was yet a lad but young Jefferson's mother was not left poor like Washington's she was able to send her son to William and Mary College though Thomas was always reading and studying he was very fond of playing the violin several stories are told about Jefferson and his fiddle as they called it then one is that he played duets with Patrick Henry another is that he once performed with George Washington very well on the flute Thomas was so eager to learn and so afraid of wasting time in college that he took the four years course in two years graduating at nineteen besides the regular college branches he studied architecture and after graduating devoted some time to that profession before fully deciding to study law young Jefferson was not admitted to practice law until five years after finishing his college course this was because he was not content merely with reading law but he read many books on other subjects and continued his study of music while he was attending court at Charlottesville his home at Shadwell was burned to the ground an old negro house servant came to tell the young master all about the fire lawyer Jefferson thought first of his large library and asked if his precious books had been saved by the slave dem books is all burnt up but to fire didn't caught your dear old fiddle I carried dad out myself I did perhaps the best story of all that are still told of Jefferson and his fiddle is that about two young men admires of the young and beautiful widow Skelton they called on her one evening and found Tom Jefferson there already he was playing his violin while she accompanied him on her spin it an old fashioned piano they listened a moment and laughed we won't play second fiddle or break up their duet said one of the callers so they went away without leaving their names it was not long before Thomas Jefferson like George Washington married a wealthy widow and brought her to live on one of the largest and finest estates in old Virginia Thomas Jefferson had planned and built a new house in place of the one which had been burned down he chose a high hill plantation from which across the surrounding country the town of Charlottesville could be seen miles away he named the estate Monticello the Italian word for little mountain about the time that Jefferson's were married the whole country was stirred by the stamp act and other taxes demanded by England of the American colonists these taxes seemed unjust because the people were not allowed the right to send men from America to help make the laws which they had to obey Jefferson wrote a pamphlet on the subject which he called a summary view of the rights of British America in it he said the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time when the people of the colonies in America were fully aroused they sent men to the Continental Congress of Philadelphia to decide what to do about the unjust acts of the British King and his wrong officers George Washington Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee were among the men called delegates sent from old Virginia one day in the Congress Richard Henry Lee arose and made this motion resolved that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states after discussing these resolution for three days the Congress voted to have a statement to send to King George III declaring that the people of the united colonies could not stand wrong treatment any longer Thomas Jefferson was appointed chairman of a committee of five to write this paper which came to be called the Declaration of Independence this is one of the four greatest legal papers ever written in it were these lines which will be repeated as long as there are people living in the world who love liberty these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor when the war for independence was one Thomas Jefferson was sent to France to represent the young American Republic then when Washington was president he was called home to be secretary of state after Washington died Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States instead of being fond of show and using the power given to him by the people Thomas Jefferson was very simple in his tastes when he came to be inaugurated president he did not drive through the streets of Washington in a coach with six horses and outriders and escorts as other presidents had done but walked with a few friends from his boarding house to the new capital then building where he delivered his inaugural address and took the oath of office this so called Jeffersonian simplicity seems strange then because he was a man of wealth and lived in a beautiful mansion many people did not like his simple ways they thought the president of the United States should show more dignity the minister from Great Britain attended because when he came to present his respects and those of the king of England president Jefferson received him in a dressing gown and slippers and heavy yarn socks but the sensible people thought so much of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence that they did not mind what kind of stockings Thomas Jefferson wore while he was president Jefferson saw that the country's interests would be hampered and the Mississippi River belonged to France it was like having another nation own and control the south door of the United States so Jefferson sent men to purchase from the French government New Orleans and the right of way out of the Mississippi Napoleon was then in power and as he needed money to carry on his war with England he offered to sell to the United States for 15 million dollars not only New Orleans but all the French had claimed since the days of LaSalle and other explorers this was a great bargain and the men whom president Jefferson had sent bought the land without waiting to hear from home this was called the Louisiana Purchase and the people were more than glad to approve what the president had done the expedition of Lewis and Clark was sent out by Jefferson to explore and make maps of the Louisiana Purchase so Thomas Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but he was the means of doubling the size and wealth of the country making it extend from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean End of Chapter 52 Chapter 53 of Hero Tales from History this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chad Horner from Benidorm in the province of Alicante in South East Spain on the Mediterranean coast Andrew Jackson America's most popular hero about 10 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence two Irish linen weavers Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson came across the Atlantic to a backward settlement in North Carolina there the young settlers built a cabin but before they had lived long in their rude little home Andrew Jackson died leaving his wife with two small sons Hugh and Robert the young widow went to live with a sick sister a few miles away and when the third baby boy was born to her here she named him Andrew for his dead father the house in which little Andrew Jackson was born was so near the boundary line between North and South Carolina that years afterwards both states claimed him as their son Elizabeth Jackson had to keep house for her sister to support herself and her three little boys Andrew was in his 10th year when the War of Independence broke out in the North three years later the British came to fight near the Jackson's home in the South Hugh the oldest now a lad of 17 fought of Stono and died soon after of heat and exhaustion then the British troops came nearer and widow Jackson with Robert and Andrew was driven from her poor home these terrible experiences developed in the tall red haired freckled 13 year old Scotch Irish lad a deep hatred of the red coats as the British soldiers recalled as if Andrew had not already reasons enough for hitting his enemies a squad of dragoons surprised him with his brother Robert and a cousin Lieutenant Thomas Crawford at the home of the Crawfords where they had brought Tom wounded and ill for his mother's care after capturing the young American soldiers three the British cavalryman broke the Crawfords dishes tore their clothing ripped open feather beds insulted the frightened mother and abused the little children then as for a crowning insult the British officer ordered Andy to clean his boots the young Irish soldier drew himself up and said proudly sir I am not a servant but a prisoner of war and I claim to be treated as such the angry dragoon struck at the youth's head with his saber Andrew threw up his hand and saved his own life by breaking the force of the stroke but received deep cuts on his forehead and hand he wore the two scars to his dying day Andrew's brother Robert was commanded to perform the same low service and refused with the same pride spirit he also received a sword cut on his head which nearly killed him the two Jackson youths were then taken away to a prisoner pen at Camden South Carolina where American soldiers were treated like beasts and were many were already dying of smallpox while the Jackson brothers were in this prison a battle was fought nearby young Andrew whittled a hole through a board with an old razor so that he could watch the battle that was raging around them when the poor mother heard that her wounded sons were confined in a filthy prison where they were exposed to smallpox she walked 40 miles to Camden and managed to have them exchanged for some British soldiers the Americans had captured begging the use of two horses on one of them as he was very ill with smallpox she rode the other horse to hold her son in his saddle and young Andrew weak and wounded sick and sore staggered along behind them on foot Robert died two days after reaching home but Andrew recovered after a long and severe illness after nursing her only remaining son back to health that brave unselfish mother heard that many American soldiers were sick and dying in the British ship in the harbour of Charleston South Carolina she walked more than 150 miles to nurse and help them as she had nursed her own sons she took the ship fever and died giving her devoted life for freedom and for country so Andrew Jackson now a tall thin youth of 14 with a shock of sandy hair was without father, mother, brothers money or near friends but with a bitter grudge against British the cause of all his troubles and sorrows his life was made better by his deep love of his brave noble mother's memory when he grew up and became the most popular man in the United States Andrew Jackson often said with a smile of pride that I learned from my good old mother Andrew Jackson had but few chances to go to school and then only a few weeks at a time he learned the Saddler's trade and studied when he could take the time from hard work little as he learned from books he knew more than most of his neighbors he taught school sometimes to add to what he earned at his trade so that he could study law even North Carolina wild as that new country was became too civilized for Andrew Jackson and he crossed the mountains into Tennessee and settled at Nashville where he began to practice law in that rough country he soon became a leader in the midst of the wildlife in which the chief sports were horse racing, Indian shooting fighting Jills and the like young Judge Jackson was heel fellow well met he soon was elected to Congress but he found life at the capital entirely too genteel for him when the southern Indians went on the war path and massacred white settlers General Jackson and his trips from Tennessee drove them from place to place to savage murderers he was called the hero of the war of 1812 because he won the battle of New Orleans the greatest land victory in that war the people loved General Jackson because he was a bluff, warm hearted man and because whether he fought with the Indians or the British he thrashed him every time he was named Old Hickory because he was about as tough in fibre and as rough on the outside as the Hickory tree he was probably the most popular hero that ever lived in America for more boys were named Andrew Jackson than even George Washington or Abraham Lincoln January 8th the date of Jackson's victory at New Orleans is celebrated as Jackson Day Jackson was called the man of the people including the rough and ready people of the great New West Jefferson represented the more educated classes while Washington was the man of the upper class of people still Jackson stood for the white people only it was Abraham Lincoln who came 30 years later and stood for all the people black and white General Jackson was elected and carried to the White House by a great wave of popularity the people were so pleased to have him for their president that they crowded into the White House and stood on the new satin covered furniture in their muddy bits they broke the china and glassware and spilled punch on the velvet carpets in their frantic efforts to shake hands with their hero president they nearly crushed him to death President Jackson treated his political enemies as he did the Indians and the English he turned thousands of men out of office and appointed his friends in their places to the victors belong the spoils he said but most people today believe the war like president had the wrong idea in treating public service as spoils of war after serving his country as president Andrew Jackson lived at the Hermitage a beautiful mansion he had built near Nashville, Tennessee when the aged ex-president knew he was dying he called his friends and slaves around his bed and told them he wanted them all to meet him in heaven when the simple blood old hero died they found his dead wife's miniature close to his heart where he had won it for many years then they remembered that rough violent as he often had been with men he had never spoken a cross or cruel word to his wife or any of his own household the bravest are the tenderest End of chapter 53 Recording by Chout Horner from Benadorm in the province of Alicante in southeast Spain on the Mediterranean coast