The Story of Our Country Part 11

Marion's force kept changing. Now it went down to twenty men, now up to a hundred or more. It was never large, for there was not food or shelter for many men. But there were enough of them to give the British plenty of trouble. They had their sentries on the outlook, and when a party of British or Tories went carelessly past out would spring Marion's men, send their foes flying like deer, and then back they would go before a strong body of the enemy could reach them.

These brave fellows had many hiding places in the swamps and many paths out of them. To-day they might strike the British in one place and to-morrow in another many miles away. Small as their force was they gave the enemy far more trouble than Gates had done with all his army.

Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known as Snow's Island, where a creek ran into the Pedee. It was high and dry, was covered with trees and thickets, and was full of game. And all around it spread the soaking swamp, with paths known only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding places, this was their chosen home.

You may be sure that the British did their best to capture a man who gave them so much trouble as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down. Marion was then far from his hiding place and Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox was hard to catch. He lead the British a lively chase, and when they gave it up in despair he followed them back. He came upon a large body of Tories and struck them so suddenly that hardly a man of them escaped, while he lost only one man. Tories, you should know, were Americans who fought on the British side.

The next man who tried to capture Marion was Colonel Tarleton, a hard rider and a good soldier, but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in the South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the North. There is a good story told about how he was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as he and his men were riding furiously along they came up to an old farmer, who was hoeing in his field beside the road.

"Can you tell me what became of the man who galloped by here just ahead of us?" asked one of them. "I will give you fifty pounds if you put me on his track."

"Do you mean the man on a black horse with a white star in its forehead?" asked the farmer.

"Yes, that's the fellow."

"He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of Marion's men, but he went past so fast that I could not be sure."

"Never mind who he was. What we want to know is where to find him."

"Bless your heart! he was going at such a pace that he couldn't well stop under four or five miles. I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty pounds."

On rode the troop, and back into the woods went the farmer. He had not gone far before he came to a black horse with a white star in its forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The farmer was Jack Davis himself.

That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal with, and you may be sure that he did not catch any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no game.

While Marion was keeping the war alive in South Carolina, an army was gathering under General Greene, who was, next to Was.h.i.+ngton, the best of the American generals. With him were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of riflemen, William Was.h.i.+ngton, a cousin of the commander-in-chief, and Henry Lee, or "Light-horse Harry," father of the famous General Lee of the Civil War.

General Greene got together about two thousand men, half armed and half supplied and knowing nothing about war, so that he had a poor chance of defeating the trained British soldiers. But he was a Marion on a larger scale, and knew when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell you what he did.

In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the bold Colonel Tarleton and gave him a sound flogging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the South. Cornwallis thought he would catch Morgan napping, but the lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He hurried back with the prisoners he had taken from Tarleton, and crossed the Catawba River just as the British came up. That night it rained hard, and the river rose so that it could not be crossed for three days.

General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat continued to the Yadkin River. This, too, was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain again came up and swelled the river before the British could follow.

When the British got across there was a race for the Dan River on the borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, crossed the stream, and held the fords or crossing-place against the foe. Cornwallis by this time had enough of it. Provisions were growing scarce, and he turned back. But he soon had Greene on his track, and he did not find his march a very comfortable one.

Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote about General Greene. Once, during his campaign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy rain. Steele, the landlord, knew him and looked at him in surprise.

"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.

"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone, very tired, hungry, and penniless."

Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal before the hungry traveler. Then, while he was eating, she drew from under her ap.r.o.n two bags of silver and laid them on the table before him.

"Take these, general," she said. "You need them and I can do without them."

You may see that the women as well as the men of America did all they could for liberty, for there were many others like Mrs. Steele.

I have told you that General Greene was one of the ablest of the American leaders, and you have seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in the retreat. Several times afterwards he fought with the British. He was always defeated. His country soldiers could not face the British veterans. But each time he managed to get as much good from the fight as if he had won a victory, and by the end of the year the British were shut up in Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free again.

Where was Cornwallis during this time? Greene had led him so far north that he concluded to march on into Virginia and get the troops he would find there, and then come back. There was fighting going on in Virginia at this time. General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting against his own people. Against him was General Lafayette, a young French n.o.bleman who had come to the help of the Americans.

I suppose some of you have read stories of how a wolf or some other wild animal walked into a trap, from which it could not get out again.

Lord Cornwallis was not a wild animal, but he walked into just such a trap after he got to Virginia. When he reached there he took command of Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet strong enough to face Lafayette, so he marched to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River, where he expected to get help by sea from New York. Yorktown was the trap he walked into, as you will see.

France had sent a fleet and an army to help the Americans, and just then this fleet came up from the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake, shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same time Was.h.i.+ngton, who had been closely watching what was going on, broke camp before New York and marched southward as fast as his men could go. Before Cornwallis could guess what was about to happen the trap was closed on him. In the bay near Yorktown was the strong French fleet; before Yorktown was the army of American and French soldiers.

There was no escape. The army and the fleet bombarded the town. A week of this was enough for Lord Cornwallis. He surrendered his army, seven thousand strong, on October 19, 1781, and the war was at an end. America was free.

CHAPTER XV

THE VOYAGE OF OUR s.h.i.+P OF STATE

HAVE any of my young readers ever been to Europe? Likely enough some of you may have been, for even young folks cross the ocean now-a-days. It has come to be an easy journey, with our great and swift steamers. But in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in which the s.h.i.+p was often tossed by terrible storms, and sometimes was broken to pieces on the rocks or went to the bottom with all on board.

What I wish to say is, that those who come from Europe to this country leave countries that are governed by kings, and come to a country that is governed by the people. In some of the countries of Europe the people might almost as well be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to speak for them, and the man who rules them is born to power. Even in England, which is the freest of them all, there is a king and queen and a House of Lords who are born to power. The people can vote, but only for members of the House of Commons. They have nothing to do with the monarch or the lords.

Of course you all know that this is not the case in our country. Here every man in power is put there by the votes of the people. As President Lincoln said, we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

We did not have such a government before the 4th of July, 1776. Our country was then governed by a king, and, what was worse, this king was on the other side of the ocean, and cared nothing for the people of America except as money bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of July we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord and master; and we have got along very well without one.

Now you can see what the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution meant. With the Declaration we cut loose from England. Our s.h.i.+p of state set out on its long voyage to liberty. The Declaration cut the chain that fastened this great s.h.i.+p to England's sh.o.r.es. The Revolution was like the stormy pa.s.sage across the ocean waves. At times it looked as if our s.h.i.+p of state would be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back to the sh.o.r.es from which it set sail; but then the clouds would break and the sun s.h.i.+ne, and onward our good s.h.i.+p would speed. At length it reached the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away from the land of kings.

This is a sort of parable. I think every one of you will know what it means. The people of this country had enough of kings and their ways, and of being taxed without their consent. They made up their minds to be free to tax and govern themselves. It was for this they fought in the Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood.

And now, before we go on with the history of our country, it will be wise to stop and ask what kind of government the Americans gave themselves. They had thrown overboard the old government of kings. They had to make a new government of the people. I hope you do not think this was an easy task. If an architect or builder is shown a house and told to build another like that, he finds it very easy to do. But if he is shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and told to build out of them a good strong house unlike any he has ever seen, he will find his task a very hard one, and may spoil the house in his building.

That was what our people had to do. They could have built a king's government easily enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow for that. But they had no pattern for a people's government, and, like the architect and his house, they might spoil it in the making. The fact is, this is just what they did. Their first government was spoiled in the making, and they had to take it down and build it over again.

This was done by what we call a Convention, made up of men called "delegates" sent by the several states. The Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 for the purpose of forming a Const.i.tution; that is, a plan of government under which the people should live and which the states and their citizens should have to obey.

This Convention was a wonderful body of statesmen. Its like has not often been seen. The wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent to it. They included all the great men--some we know already, Was.h.i.+ngton, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams and many others of fine ability. For four months these men worked in secret. It was a severe task they had to perform, for some wanted one thing and some another, and many times it looked as if they would never agree; but at length all disputes were settled and their long labors were at an end.

General Was.h.i.+ngton was president of the Convention, and back of the chair on which he sat the figure of the sun was painted on the wall.

When it was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this painting and said to those who stood near him:

"Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes and fears, I have looked towards that figure, and asked myself if it was a rising or a setting sun. Now I know that it is the rising sun."

The rising sun indeed it was, for when the Convention had finished its work it had formed the n.o.ble Const.i.tution under which we now live, the greatest state paper which man has ever formed.

But I fancy you want to know more about the n.o.ble framework of government built by the wise men of the Convention of 1787.

After the Union was formed there were thirteen states still, but each of these had lost some of its old powers. The powers taken from the states were given to the general government. Every state had still the right to manage its own affairs, but such things as concerned the whole people were managed by the general government.

What were these things? Let us see. There was the power to coin money, to lay taxes, to control the post-office, and to make laws for the good of the whole nation. And there was the power to form an army and navy, to make treaties with other countries, and to declare war if we could not get on in peace.

Under the Confederation which was formed during the Revolutionary War, the states could do these things for themselves; under the Const.i.tution they could do none of these things, but they could pa.s.s laws that affected only themselves, and could tax their own people for state purposes.