American Leaders and Heroes Part 28

Up to the evening of the last day of the session the bill had not been considered by the Senate. Morse sat anxiously waiting in the Senate chamber until nearly midnight, when, believing there was no longer any hope, he withdrew and went home with a heavy heart.

Imagine his surprise, therefore, next morning, when a young woman, Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, congratulated him at breakfast on the pa.s.sage of his bill. At first he could scarcely believe the good news, but when he found that Miss Ellsworth was telling him the truth his joy was unbounded, and he promised her that she should choose the first message.

By the next year (1844) a telegraph line, extending from Baltimore to Was.h.i.+ngton, was ready for use. On the day appointed for trial Morse met a party of friends in the chamber of the Supreme Court, at the Was.h.i.+ngton end of the line, and sitting at the instrument which he had himself placed for trial, the happy inventor sent the message, as dictated by Miss Ellsworth, "What hath G.o.d wrought!"

The telegraph was a great and brilliant achievement, and brought to its inventor well-earned fame. Morse married a second time and lived in a beautiful home on the Hudson, where, with instruments on his table, he could easily communicate with distant friends. Simple and modest in his manner of life, he was a true-hearted, kindly Christian man. He was fond of flowers and of animals. The most remarkable of his pets was a tame flying-squirrel that would sit on his master's shoulders, eat out of his hand, and go to sleep in his pocket.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Telegraph and Railroad.]

In his prosperity, honors were showered upon him by many countries. At the suggestion of the French Emperor, representatives from many countries of Europe met at Paris to determine upon some suitable testimonial to Morse as a world benefactor. These delegates voted him $80,000 as an expression of appreciation for his great invention. Before his death, also, a statue to his memory was erected in Central Park, New York.

In 1872 this n.o.ble inventor, at the ripe age of eighty-one, breathed his last. The sincere expression of grief from all over the country gave evidence of the place he held in the hearts of the people.

REVIEW OUTLINE

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

THE YOUNG ARTIST AND HIS TEACHER.

MORSE GOES TO YALE COLLEGE.

HIS SUCCESS IN DRAWING.

WITH THE PAINTER WEST IN LONDON.

MORSE'S INTEREST IN INVENTION.

TWELVE YEARS OF BITTER STRUGGLE.

THE STORY OF MORSE AND YOUNG STROTHERS.

MORSE'S SCHEME DEBATED IN CONGRESS.

SUCCESS AT LAST.

TO THE PUPIL

1. What was the new problem?

2. Tell the story of Morse and the painter, Mr. West.

3. How was the idea of the telegraph suggested to Morse?

4. Give an account of Morse's trials and sufferings.

5. What honors were showered upon him?

6. Describe Morse. What do you admire in his character?

CHAPTER XXIV

Abraham Lincoln the Liberator of the Slaves

[1809-1865]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Abraham Lincoln.]

While Morse had been patiently struggling toward the completion of his invention, the nation had been growing more and more tense in its contest over slavery and State rights. As an outcome of the bitter feeling in 1846, two years after the fulfilment of Morse's scheme, Congress declared war against Mexico.

The Southern slaveholders hoped by this war to gain from their weak neighbor territory favorable for the extension of slavery. For slavery had long since been dying out in the States east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason and Dixon Line and the Ohio. On the south of this natural boundary line the soil and climate were adapted to the cultivation of rice, cotton, sugar, and tobacco. These four staples of the South called for large plantations and an abundance of cheap labor always subject to the bidding of the planter. Slavery satisfied these conditions, and therefore slavery seemed necessary to the prosperity of the South.

It was because the soil and climate north of this natural boundary line did not favor the use of slaves that slavery gradually died out in the North. The result was that in one section of the Union, the South, there was a pressing demand for slavery; and in the other, the North, there was none. As time wore on, it became evident that the North was growing in population, wealth, and political influence much faster than the South. Observing this momentous fact, the slaveholders feared that in the course of years Congress might pa.s.s laws unfriendly to slavery.

Hence, their stubborn purpose to struggle for the extension of slavery as far as possible into the territory west of the Mississippi.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lincoln's Birthplace.]

But in the North so powerful did the opposition to the spread of slavery to new States become, that by 1855 there was a great political party that had such opposition as its leading principle. One of its ablest and most inspiring leaders was Abraham Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809. The rough log cabin in which he first saw the light was the wretched home of a father too lazy and s.h.i.+ftless to work, and so ignorant that he is said not to have learned his letters until taught by his wife. Little Abe's only playmates were his sister Sarah, two years older than himself, and his cousin, Dennis Hanks, who lived in the Lincoln home.

When Abe was seven years old the family moved to Indiana, and settled about fifteen miles north of the Ohio River. The journey to their new home was very tedious and lonely, for they had in some places to cut a roadway through the forest.

Having arrived safely in November, all set vigorously to work to provide a shelter against the winter. Young Abe was healthy, rugged, and active, and from early morning till late evening he worked with his father, chopping trees and cutting poles and boughs for their "camp." This "camp" was a mere shed, only fourteen feet square, and open on one side.

It was built of poles lying upon one another, and had a thatched roof of boughs and leaves. As there was no chimney, there could be no fire within the enclosure, and it was necessary to keep one burning all the time just in front of the open side.

In this rough abode the furniture was of the scantiest and rudest sort, very much like what we have already observed in Boone's cabin. For chairs there were the same kind of three-legged stools, made by smoothing the flat side of a split log, and putting sticks into auger-holes underneath. The tables were of the same simple fas.h.i.+on, except that they stood on four legs instead of three.

The crude bedsteads in the corners of the cabin were made by sticking poles in between the logs at right angles to the wall, the outside corner where the logs met being supported by a crotched stick driven into the ground. Upon this framework, shucks and leaves were heaped for bedding, and over all were thrown the skins of wild animals for a covering. Pegs driven into the wall served as a stairway to the loft, where there was another bed of leaves. Here little Abe slept.

In the s.p.a.ce in front of the open side of the cabin, hanging over the fire, was a large iron pot, in which the rude cooking was done. These backwoods people knew nothing of dainty cookery, but they brought keen appet.i.tes to their coa.r.s.e fare. The princ.i.p.al vegetable was the ordinary white potato, and the usual form of bread was "corn-dodgers," made of meal and roasted in the ashes. Wheat was so scarce that flour bread was reserved for Sunday mornings. But generally there was an abundance of game, such as deer, bears, and wild turkeys, many kinds of fish from the streams close by, and in summer wild fruits from the woods.

During this first winter in the wild woods of Indiana little Abe must have lived a lonely life. But it was a very busy one. There was much to do in building the cabin which was to take the place of the "camp," and in cutting down trees and making a clearing for the corn-planting of the coming spring. Besides, Abe helped to supply the table with food, for he had already learned to use the rifle, and to hunt and trap animals.

These occupations took him into the woods, and we must believe, therefore, in spite of all the hards.h.i.+ps of his wilderness life, that he spent many happy hours.

If we could see him as he started off with his gun, or as he chopped wood for the fires, we should doubtless find his dress somewhat peculiar. He was a tall, slim, awkward boy, with very long legs and arms. In winter he wore moccasins, trousers, and s.h.i.+rt of deerskin, and a cap of c.o.o.nskin with the tail of the animal hanging down behind so as to serve both as ornament and convenience in handling the cap. On a cold winter day, such a furry costume might look very comfortable if close-fitting, but we are told that Abe's deerskin trousers, after getting wet, shrunk so much that they became several inches too short for his long, lean legs. As for stockings, he tells us he never wore them until he was "a young man grown."

But although this costume seems to us singular, it did not appear so to his neighbors and friends, for they were used to seeing boys dressed in that manner. The frontiersmen were obliged to devise many contrivances to supply their lack of manufactured things. For instance, they all used thorns for pins, bits of stone for b.u.t.tons, and home-made soap and tallow-dipped candles. Candles, indeed, were a luxury much of the time, and in Abe's boyhood, he was obliged in the long winter evenings to read by the light of the wood fire blazing in the rude fireplace of the log cabin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lincoln Studying.]

Great as had been his privations in this Indiana home, Abe had now to suffer a more grievous loss in the death of his mother. The rough life of the forest and the exposure of the open cabin had been too much for her delicate const.i.tution. Before she died she said to her boy: "Abraham, I am going away from you, and you will never see me again. I know that you will always be good and kind to your sister and father.

Try to live as I have taught you, and to love your Heavenly Father."

Many years later Lincoln said, "All that I am, or I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

A year after this sad event, his father brought home a second wife, who became a devoted friend to the motherless boy. Energetic, thrifty, and intelligent, this woman, who had been accustomed to better things than she found in her new home, insisted that the log cabin should be supplied with a door, a floor, and windows, and she at once began to make the children "look a little more human."

Abraham Lincoln's schooling was brief--not more than a year in all. Such schools as he attended were nothing like the graded schools of to-day.

The buildings were rough log cabins with the earth for floor and oiled paper for windows. Desks were unknown, the little school-house being furnished with rude benches made of split logs, after the manner of the stools and tables in the Lincoln home. The teachers were ignorant men, who taught the children a little spelling, reading, writing, and ciphering. While attending the last school, Abe had to go daily a distance of four and a half miles from his home.

In spite of this meagre schooling, however, the boy, by his self-reliance, resolute purpose, and good reading habits, acquired the very best sort of training for his future life. He had but few books at his home, and found it impossible in that wild country to find many in any other homes. Among those which he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible, "aesop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," a History of the United States, and "Weems's Life of Was.h.i.+ngton."

His step-mother said of him: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a pa.s.sage that struck him, he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it before him until he could get paper. Then he would copy it, look at it, commit it to memory and repeat it."

His step-brother said: "When Abe and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, s.n.a.t.c.h a piece of corn-bread, take down a book, sit down, c.o.c.k his legs up as high as his head, and read." When night came he would find a seat in the corner by the fireside, or stretch out at length on the floor, and write or work sums in arithmetic on a wooden shovel, using a charred stick for a pencil or pen. When he had covered the shovel, he would shave off the surface and begin over again.