Comic History of the United States, Bill Nye [read after TXT] 📗

General Kearney was sent to take New Mexico and California. His work consisted mainly in marching for General Frémont, who had been surveying a new route to Oregon, and had with sixty men been so successful that on the arrival of Kearney, with the aid of Commodores Sloat and Stockton, California was captured, and has given general satisfaction to every one.

In March, 1847, General Scott, with twelve thousand men, bombarded Vera Cruz four days,[Pg 229] and at the end of that time the city was surrendered.

At Cerro Gordo, a week later, Scott overtook the enemy under General Santa Anna, and made such a fierce attack that the Mexicans were completely routed. Santa Anna left his leg on the field of battle and rode away on a pet mule named Charlotte Corday. The leg was preserved and taken to the Smithsonian Institute. It is made of second-growth hickory, and has a brass ferrule and a rubber eraser on the end. General Taylor afterwards taunted him with this incident, and, though greatly irritated, Santa Anna said there was no use trying to kick.

Puebla resisted not, and the army marched into the city of Mexico August 7. The road was rendered disagreeable by strong fortifications and thirty thousand men who were not on good terms with Scott. The environments and suburbs one after another were taken, and a parley for peace ensued, during which the Mexicans were busy fortifying some more on the quiet.

September 8 the Americans made their assault, and carried the outworks one by one. Then the castle of Chapultepec was stormed. First the outer works were scaled, which made them much more desirable, and the moat was removed by means of a stomach-pump and blotting-pad, and then the escarpment was up-ended, the Don John[Pg 230] tower was knocked silly by a solid shot, and the castle capitulated.

Thus on the 14th of September the old flag floated over the court-house of Mexico, and General Scott ate his tea in the palace of the Montezumas. Peace was declared February 2, 1848, and the United States owned the vast country southward to the Gila (pronounced Heeler) and west to the Pacific Ocean.

The Wilmot Proviso was invented by David Wilmot, a poor, struggling member of Congress, who moved that in any territory acquired by the United States slavery should be prohibited except upon the advice of a physician. The motion was lost.

Gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley in August, 1848, by a workman who was building a mill-race. A struggle ensued over this ground as to who should own the race. It threatened to terminate in a race war, but was settled amicably.

In eighteen months one hundred thousand people went to the scene. Thousands left their skeletons with the red brother, and other thousands left theirs on the Isthmus of Panama or on the cruel desert. Many married men went who had been looking a long time for some good place to go to. Leaving their wives with ill-concealed relief, they started away through a country filled with death, to reach a country they knew not of.[Pg 231] Some died en route, others were hanged, and still others became the heads of new families. Some came back and carried water for their wives to wash clothing for their neighbors.

SOME CAME BACK AND CARRIED WATER FOR THEIR WIVES TO WASH CLOTHING.

It was a long hard trip then across the plains. One of the author's friends at the age of thirteen years drove a little band of cows from the State of Indiana to Sacramento. He says he would not do it again for anything. He is now a man, and owns a large prune-orchard in California, and people tell him he is getting too stout, and that he ought to exercise more, and that he ought to walk every day several miles; but he shakes his head, and says, "No, I will not walk any to-day, and possibly not to-morrow or the day following. Do not come to me and refer to taking a walk: I have tried[Pg 232] that. Possibly you take me for a dromedary; but you are wrong. I am a fat man, and may die suddenly some day while lacing up my shoes, but when I go anywhere I ride."

When he got to Sacramento, where gold was said to be so plentiful, he was glad to wash dishes for his board, and he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into the fields for to feed swine, and he would fain have filled his system with the California peaches which the swine did eat, and he began to be in want, and no man gave unto him, and if he had spent his substance in riotous living, he said, it would have been different.

About thirty years after that he arose and went unto his father, and carried his dinner with him, also a government bond and a new suit of raiment for the old gentleman.

I do not know what we should learn from this.[Pg 233]

CHAPTER XXIII. THE WEBSTERS.

Daniel Webster, together with Mr. Clay, had much to do with the Compromise measures of 1850. These consisted in the admission of California as a free State, the organizing of the Territories of Utah and New Mexico without any provision regarding slavery pro or con, the payment to Texas of one hundred million dollars for New Mexico,—which was a good trade for Texas,—the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the enactment of a Fugitive Slave Law permitting owners of slaves to follow them into the free States and take them back in irons, if necessary. The officials and farmers of the free States were also expected to turn out, call the dog, leave their work, and help catch these chattels and carry them to the south-bound train.

Daniel Webster was born in 1782, and Noah in 1758. Daniel was educated at Dartmouth College, where he was admitted in 1797. He taught school winters and studied summers, as many other great men have done since, until he knew[Pg 234] about everything that anybody could. What Dan did not know, Noah did.

Strange to say, Daniel was frightened to death when first called upon to speak a piece. He says he committed dozens of pieces to memory and recited them to the woods and crags and cows and stone abutments of the New England farms, but could not stand up before a school and utter a word.

DANIEL WEBSTER COULD NOT STAND UP BEFORE A SCHOOL AND UTTER A WORD.

In 1801 he studied law with Thomas W. Thompson, afterwards United States Senator. He read then for the first time that "Law is a rule of action prescribing what is right and prohibiting what is wrong."

In 1812 he was elected to Congress, and in[Pg 235] 1813 made his maiden speech. One of his most masterly speeches was made on economical and financial subjects; and yet in order to get his blue broadcloth coat with brass buttons from the tailor-shop to wear while making the speech, he had to borrow twenty-five dollars.

When the country has wanted a man to talk well on these subjects it has generally been compelled to advance money to him before he could make a speech. Sometimes he has to be taken from the pawn-shop. Webster, it is said, was the most successful lawyer, after he returned to Boston, that the State of Massachusetts has ever known; and yet his mail was full of notices from banks down East, announcing that he had overdrawn his account.

Once he was hard pressed for means, as he was trying to run a farm, and running a farm costs money: so he went to a bank to borrow. He hated to do it, because he had no special inducements to offer a bank or to make it hilariously loan him money.

"How much did you think you would need, Mr. Webster?" asked the President, cutting off some coupons as he spoke and making paper dolls of them.

"Well, I could get along very well," said Webster, in that deep, resinous voice of his, "if I could have two thousand dollars."[Pg 236]

"Well, you remember," said the banker, "do you not, that you have two thousand dollars here, that you deposited five years ago, after you had dined with the Governor of North Carolina?"

"No, I had forgotten about that," said Webster. "Give me a blank check without unnecessary delay."

We may learn from this that Mr. Webster was not a careful man in the matter of detail.

His speech on the two-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims was a good thing, and found its way into the press of the time. His speech at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, and his eulogy of Adams and Jefferson, were beautiful and thrilling.

Daniel Webster had a very large brain, and used to loan his hat to brother Senators now and then when their heads were paining them, provided he did not want it himself.

His reply to Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, in 1830, was regarded as one of his ablest parliamentary efforts. Hayne attacked New England, and first advanced the doctrine of nullification, which was even more dangerous than secession,—Jefferson Davis in 1860 denying that he had ever advocated or favored such a doctrine.

Webster spoke extempore, and people sent out for their lunch rather than go away in the midst of his remarks.[Pg 237]

Webster married twice, but did not let that make any difference with his duty to his country.

SENT OUT FOR THEIR LUNCH RATHER THAN GO AWAY IN THE MIDST OF HIS REMARKS.

He tried to farm it some, but did not amass a large sum, owing to his heavy losses in trying[Pg 238] year after year to grow Saratoga potatoes for the Boston market.

No American, foreign or domestic, ever made a greater name for himself than Daniel Webster, but he was not so good a penman as Noah; Noah was the better pen-writer.

Noah Webster also had the better command of language of the two. Those who have read his great work entitled "Webster's Elementary Spelling-Book, or, How One Word Led to Another," will agree with me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express himself. He was a brainy man and a good speller.

One by one our eminent men are passing away. Mr. Webster has passed away; Napoleon Bonaparte is no more; and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away. This has been a severe winter on Red Shirt; and I have to guard against the night air a good deal myself.

It would ill become me, at this late date, to criticise Mr. Webster's work, a work that is now, I may say, in nearly every home and school-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr. Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my books.

I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks egotistical in me; but, although Noah's book is larger than mine, and has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at[Pg 239] the table, it does not hold the interest of the reader all the way through.

He has introduced too many characters into his book at the expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour, perhaps, but it