A School History of the United States | Page 2

EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS,
1763 THE BRITISH COLONIES IN 1764 BRITISH COLONIES,
1776 RESULTS OF THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE THE
UNITED STATES, 1783 THE UNITED STATES, 1789
DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION, 1790 SLAVE AND FREE SOIL
IN 1790 THE UNITED STATES, 1801 THE UNITED STATES, 1810
NORTH AMERICA AFTER 1824 DISTRIBUTION OF
POPULATION, 1820 FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN 1820 THE
UNITED STATES, 1826 TERRITORY CLAIMED BY TEXAS IN
1845 THE OREGON COUNTRY ROUTES OF THE EARLY
EXPLORERS TERRITORY CEDED BY MEXICO, 1848 AND 1853
RESULTS OF THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 THE UNITED STATES
IN 1851 EXPANSION OF SLAVE SOIL, 1790-1860 DISTRIBUTION
OF POPULATION, 1850 THE UNITED STATES, 1861 WAR FOR
THE UNION INDUSTRIAL AND RAILROAD MAP OF THE
UNITED STATES

A SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
* * * * *
DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS


CHAPTER I

EUROPE FINDS AMERICA
%1. Nations that have owned our Soil.%--Before the United States
became a nation, six European powers owned, or claimed to own,
various portions of the territory now contained within its boundary.
England claimed the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. Spain once
held Florida, Texas, California, and all the territory south and west of
Colorado. France in days gone by ruled the Mississippi valley. Holland
once owned New Jersey, Delaware, and the valley of the Hudson in
New York, and claimed as far eastward as the Connecticut river. The
Swedes had settlements on the Delaware. Alaska was a Russian
possession.
Before attempting to narrate the history of our country, it is necessary,
therefore, to tell
1. How European nations came into possession of parts of it.
2. How these parts passed from them to us.
3. What effect the ownership of parts of our country by Europeans had
on our history and institutions before 1776.
%2. European Trade with the East; the Old Routes.%--For two hundred
years before North and South America were known to exist, a splendid
trade had been going on between Europe and the East Indies. Ships
loaded with metals, woods, and pitch went from European seaports to
Alexandria and Constantinople, and brought back silks and cashmeres,
muslins, dyewoods, spices, perfumes, ivory, precious stones, and pearls.
This trade in course of time had come to be controlled by the two
Italian cities of Venice and Genoa. The merchants of Genoa sent their
ships to Constantinople and the ports of the Black Sea, where they took
on board the rich fabrics and spices which by boats and by caravans
had come up the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris from the Persian
Gulf. The men of Venice, on the other hand, sent their vessels to
Alexandria, and carried on their trade with the East through the Red
Sea.

[Illustration: Routes to India]
%3. New Routes wanted.%--Splendid as this trade was, however, it
was doomed to destruction. Slowly, but surely, the Turks thrust
themselves across the caravan routes, cutting off one by one the great
feeders of the Oriental trade, till, with the capture of Constantinople in
1453, they destroyed the commercial career of Genoa. As their power
was spreading rapidly over Syria and toward Egypt, the prosperity of
Venice, in turn, was threatened. The day seemed near when all trade
between the Indies and Europe would be ended, and men began to ask
if it were not possible to find an ocean route to Asia.
Now, it happened that just at this time the Portuguese were hard at
work on the discovery of such a route, and were slowly pushing their
way down the western coast of Africa. But as league after league of
that coast was discovered, it was thought that the route to India by way
of Africa was too long for the purposes of commerce.[1] Then came the
question, Is there not a shorter route? and this Columbus tried to
answer.
[Footnote 1: Read the account of Portuguese exploration in search of a
way to India, in Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I., pp. 274-334.]
%4. Columbus seeks the East and finds America.%[2]--Columbus was
a native of Genoa, in Italy. He began a seafaring life at fourteen, and in
the intervals between his voyages made maps and globes. As Portugal
was then the center of nautical enterprise, he wandered there about
1470, and probably went on one or two voyages down the coast of
Africa. In 1473 he married a Portuguese woman. Her father had been
one of the King of Portugal's famous navigators, and had left behind
him at his death a quantity of charts and notes; and it was while
Columbus was studying them that the idea of seeking the Indies by
sailing due westward seems to have first started in his mind. But many
a year went by, and many a hardship had to be borne, and many an
insult patiently endured in