America, A History - free ebook by Robert Mackenzie

America. A History.

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Book First.

It was late in the history of the world before Europe and America became known to each other. During the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era Europe was unaware of the vast continent which lay beyond the sea. Asia had ceased to influence her. Africa had not begun. Her history was waiting for the mighty influence which America was to exercise in her affairs through all the future ages. Men had been slow to establish completely their dominion over the sea. They learned very early to build

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Book Second.

In the year 1740 there fell out a great European war. There was some doubt who should fill the Austrian throne. The emperor had just died, leaving no son or brother to inherit his dignities. His daughter, Maria Theresa, stepped into her father’s place, and soon made it apparent that she was strong enough to maintain what she had done. Two or three Kings thought they had a better right than she to the throne. The other Kings ranged themselves on this side or on that. The idea of looking on while

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Book Third

When Europeans first visited the southern parts of America, they found in abundant growth there a plant destined to such eminence in the future history of the world as no other member of the vegetable family ever attained. It was an unimportant-looking plant, two or three feet in height, studded with pods somewhat larger than a walnut. In the appropriate season these pods opened, revealing a wealth of soft white fibre, embedded in which lay the seeds of the plant. This was Cotton. It was not unk

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Book Fourth.

When his Inaugural Address was delivered, Mr. Lincoln was escorted by his predecessor in office back to the White House, where they parted—Buchanan to retire, not with honour, into a kindly oblivion; Lincoln to begin that great work which had devolved upon him. During all that month of March and on to the middle of April the world heard very little of the new President. He was seldom seen in Washington. It was rumoured that intense meditation upon the great problem had made him ill. It was asser

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Book Fifth.

Long ago thoughtful men had foreseen that a permanent union between slave communities and free communities was impossible. Wise Americans knew that their country could not continue “half slave and half free.” Slavery was a fountain out of which strife flowed perpetual. There was an incessant conflict of interests. There was a still more formidable conflict of feeling. The North was humiliated by the censure which she had to share with her erring sisters. The South was imbittered by the knowledge

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POSTSCRIPT.[11] PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

The reconstruction of the Union was completed during General Grant’s term of office. The Presidentship of his successor, Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes, was uneventful. It was not on that account the less fruitful in good results. The complete amalgamation of the North and the South could only be the work of time. President Hayes helped forward this useful work. He visited the South in his first year of office, and was everywhere well received. The Census of 1880 showed the population of the United Sta

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CHAPTER I. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY.

The dazzling success which had crowned the efforts of Columbus awakened in Europe an eager desire to make fresh discoveries. Henry VII. of England had consented to equip Columbus for his voyage; but the consent was withheld too long, and given only when it was too late. Lamenting now the great mischance by which the glory and the profit of these marvellous discoveries passed away from him, Henry lost no time in seeking to possess himself of such advantage as Spain had not yet appropriated. There

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CHAPTER II. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.

The fierce strifes which raged between Catholic and Protestant during the latter half of the sixteenth century engrossed the mind of France to the exclusion of all that concerned her remote and discouraging possession. But while the strong hand of Henry IV. held the reins of government, these strifes were calmed. The hatred remained, ready to break forth when circumstances allowed; but meantime the authority of the King imposed salutary restraint upon the combatants, and the country had rest. Du

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CHAPTER III. THE JESUITS IN CANADA.

The Reformation had made so large progress in France that at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Protestants were able to regard themselves as forming one-half of the nation. They had accomplished this progress in the face of terrible difficulties. The false maxim prevailed in France, as in other countries, that as there was but one king and one government, there should be but one faith. Vast efforts were made to regain this lost uniformity. The vain pursuit cost France thirty-five year

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CHAPTER IV. THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

The discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand de Soto was not immediately productive of benefit. For nearly a century and a half after this ill-fated explorer slept beneath the waters which he had been the first to cross, the “Father of Rivers” continued to flow through unpeopled solitudes, unvisited by civilized men. The French possessed the valley of the St. Lawrence. The English had thriving settlements on the Atlantic sea-board; but the Alleghany Mountains, which shut them in on the west, al

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CHAPTER V. THE AMERICAN CONTINENT GAINED BY THE BRITISH.

The first English settlement which became permanent in Virginia was founded in 1606. Seven years later—while the settlement was still struggling for existence—the colonists began to form purposes of aggression against their still feebler neighbours in the far north. It was their custom to send annually to the great banks of Newfoundland a fleet of fishing-boats under convoy of an armed ship. Once the commander of this escort was a warlike person named Samuel Argall, whose lofty aims could not be

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CHAPTER VI. COLONIZATION BY FRANCE AND BY ENGLAND.

A century and a half had elapsed since Champlain laid the foundations of French empire among the forests of the St. Lawrence valley. During those years the nations of Western Europe were possessed by an eager desire to extend their authority over the territories which recent discovery had opened. On the shores of the Northern Atlantic there were a New France, a New Scotland, a New England, a New Netherlands, a New Sweden. Southwards stretched the vast domain for whose future the occupation by Sp

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CHAPTER VII. AFTER THE CONQUEST.

The condition of the Canadian people at the time of the conquest by the English was exceedingly miserable. Every man was in the ranks, and the fields on which their maintenance depended lay untilled. The lucrative fur trade had ceased, for the Indian hunter and the French trader were fighting against the English. The scanty revenues of the colony no longer yielded support to the officers of the Government, who plundered the wretched people without restraint of pity or of shame. Famine prevailed,

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CHAPTER VIII. CANADA DURING THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

The Quebec Act roused much indignation among the American colonists. From Pennsylvania and Virginia twenty thousand persons had already settled in the valley of the Ohio. These suddenly found themselves disjoined from the colonies of which they regarded themselves members, and subjected to the despotic rule which was imposed upon Canada. The American patriots enrolled the new arrangements among their grievances, and hoped that their fellow-sufferers the Canadians would be of the same opinion. 17

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CHAPTER IX. CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.

In course of years the English Government fought out its quarrel with the revolted American colonists and was defeated. 1783 A.D. A treaty of peace was concluded, and the independence which America had proved herself able to maintain was now acknowledged. At the opening of the war England had borrowed a suggestion from France, and sought, by attaching the valley of the Mississippi to Canada, to shut in the Americans on the west as on the north by Canadian settlements breathing the spirit of loya

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CHAPTER X. THE WAR OF 1812.

Canada was now, for a space of two and a half years, to be involved in war, and subjected to the miseries of invasion. It was a war with which she had no proper concern. The measures adopted by England and France in order to accomplish the ruin of each other fell injuriously upon American commerce, and the American people were reasonably displeased that their occupations and those of the world should be interrupted by the strifes of two unwisely guided nations. Certain high-handed proceedings of

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CHAPTER XI. DOMESTIC STRIFE.

During the ten or twelve years which succeeded the war with America, Canada increased more rapidly than at any previous period. The English Government offered free conveyance and a liberal grant of land to any person of good character who consented to accept a home in the Upper Province. Emigration from Great Britain was very inconsiderable during the Napoleon wars; but when peace was restored, and employment became scarce and inadequately paid, men sought refuge beyond the Atlantic from the mis

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CHAPTER XII. THE CANADIAN REVOLUTION.

The progress of years did not allay, but, on the contrary, steadily enhanced the fever of political discontent which now pervaded the colonies. The measure of representation which they enjoyed had seemed, when the Act of Pitt conferred it upon them, fairly satisfactory; but after the close of the great European war political opinion ripened fast, and the freedom which had seemed ample in 1791 was intolerably insufficient forty years later. The colonists perceived that they were living under a de

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CHAPTER XIII. CONFEDERATION.

The political system which existed in British America before the union of the two provinces was in a high degree inconvenient. There were, in all, six colonies—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and the two Canadas. They were the subjects of the same Monarch, but they possessed no other bond of union. Their interests were often in conflict; their laws and customs differed widely; each had its own currency; each maintained its own custom-house, to tax or to exclude th

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CHAPTER XIV. THE MARITIME PROVINCES.

On the outer margin of the great bay into which the waters of the St. Lawrence discharge themselves, there lie certain British provinces which had till now maintained their colonial existence apart from the sister States of the interior. The oldest and most famous of these was Nova Scotia—the Acadie of the French period—within whose limits the Province of New Brunswick had been included. Northwards, across the entrance to the bay, was the island of Newfoundland. The Gulf Stream, moving northward

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CHAPTER XV. THE PROVINCES OF THE NORTH-WEST.

The boundary-line which marks the southern limit of British territory divides the continent into two not very unequal portions. On one side stretches out the vast area covered by the United States—the home of fifty million people—the seat of the manifold industries which their energy has called into existence. On the other side there lies a yet wider expanse of territory, whose development is still in the future. Northward and westward of the original line of settlement in the valley of the St.

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CHAPTER XVI. THE PROGRESS OF THE CANADIAN NATION.

Canada is, in respect of extent, the noblest colonial possession over which any nation has ever exercised dominion. It covers an area of three million three hundred and thirty thousand square miles. Our great Indian Empire is scarcely larger than one-fourth of its size. Europe is larger by only half a million square miles; the United States is smaller to nearly the same extent. The distances with which men have to deal in Canada are enormous. From Ottawa to Winnipeg is fourteen hundred miles—a j

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CHAPTER I. DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST.

Columbus prosecuted, down to the close of life, the great work of discovery to which, as he never ceased to feel, God had set him apart. He occupied himself almost entirely among those lovely islands to which Providence had guided his uncertain way; seeing almost nothing of the vast continents, on the right hand and on the left, which he had gained for the use of civilized man. Once, near the island of Trinidad, he was suffered to look for the only time upon the glorious mainland, so lavishly en

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CHAPTER II. THE INDIANS OF SPANISH AMERICA.

The native populations with which the Spaniards were brought into contact differed widely, in respect of the degree of civilization to which they had attained, from the Indians of the Northern Continent. The first colonists of Virginia, Massachusetts, and the St. Lawrence valley found the soil possessed by fierce tribes, wholly without knowledge of the arts of civilized life. The savages of the north supported themselves almost entirely by the chase, regarding agriculture with contempt; their dw

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CHAPTER III. SPANISH GOVERNMENT OF THE NEW WORLD.

The ruin which fell on the native population of the New World was at no time promoted by the rulers of Spain; it was the spontaneous result of the unhappy circumstances which the conquest produced. In early life Columbus had been familiarized with the African slave-trade; and he carried with him to the world which he discovered the conviction that not only the lands he found, but all the heathens who inhabited them, became the absolute property of the Spanish Sovereigns. 1495 A.D. He had not bee

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CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTION.

For three hundred years Spain governed the rich possessions which she had so easily won. At the close of that period the population was about sixteen million—a number very much smaller than the conquerors found on island and continent. The increase of three centuries had not repaired the waste of thirty years. Of the sixteen million two were Spaniards; the remainder were Indians, negroes, or persons of mixed descent. Spain ruled in a spirit of blind selfishness. Her aim was to wring from her tri

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CHAPTER V. INDEPENDENCE.

When the thirteen English colonies of the Northern Continent gained their independence, they entered upon a political condition for which their qualities of mind and their experience amply fitted them. They were reasonably well educated; indeed there was scarcely any other population which, in this respect, enjoyed advantages so great. They were men of a race which had for centuries been accustomed to exercise authority in the direction of its own public affairs. Since they became colonists they

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CHAPTER VI. THE CHURCH OF ROME IN SPANISH AMERICA.

At the time when the discovery and possession of the New World occupied the Spaniards, the Church of Rome exercised over that people an influence which had no parallel elsewhere in all her wide dominion. A religious war of nearly eight centuries had at length closed victoriously. Twenty generations of Spaniards had spent their lives under the power of a burning desire to expel unbelievers from the soil of Spain, and win triumphs for the true faith. The ministers of that religion, for which they

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CHAPTER VII. BRAZIL.

King John of Portugal, to whom Columbus first made offer of his project of discovery, was grievously chagrined when the success of the great navigator revealed the magnificence of the rejected opportunity. Till then, Portugal had occupied the foremost place as an explorer of unknown regions. She had already achieved the discovery of all the western coasts of Africa, and was now about to open a new route to the East by the Cape of Good Hope. Suddenly her fame was eclipsed. While she occupied hers

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