REFERENCE MAPS

PAGES

TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 1783-1916 8,9 PHYSICAL MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH LOCATION OF IMPOR

TANT INDIAN TRIBES..

NATIONAL SETTLEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA, 1750.

COLONIAL TRADE AND COMMERCE, 1689-1775

REVOLUTIONARY WAR....

UNITED STATES IN 1802..

OPENING OF THE WEST, 1815-1830..

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94

113

132

182

222

239

UNITED STATES, 1822-1830..

PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1850
ACQUISITIONS OF TERRITORY, 1845-1853, AND CAMPAIGNS OF THE

WAR WITH MEXICO..

UNITED STATES IN 1861....

EASTERN UNITED STATES. EMANCIPATION, 1863-1865.

THE FAR WEST AND THE PACIFIC COAST, 1890..

UNITED STATES AND ITS POSSESSIONS..

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290

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444, 445

UNITED STATES (SHOWING ADMISSION OF STATES AND PRINCIPAL AGRICULTURAL, MINING, AND MANUFACTURING REGIONS) 482, 483

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SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER I

FORERUNNERS OF AMERICAN HISTORY (1200-1550)

1. What is the United States? Upon any globe that shows the world there will be seen a continent marked "North America." Across it,

extending from the

Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, lies a broad expanse labeled "United States," which is divided into forty-eight parts called "states." That is our home, three thousand miles west of the coast of Europe and five thousand miles east of the islands off the coast of Asia.

Hundreds of volumes have been written about the United States, telling of its harbors, its rivers, and its lakes, and describing such natural won

Nevada Falls (about 600 feet high) in Yosemite
National Park, California

ders as Niagara Falls with its plunge of one hundred and sixty feet of bright green water; the marvelous Yosemite

Valley; the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, scooped out of solid rock, in places six thousand feet deep; and Glacier National Park on the northern border. Still, however interesting this land may be, a description of it would belong to geography and not to history; for history is an account of the origin and growth of the people who live upon a land.

2. The American People. The phrase "the United States" is sometimes loosely applied to the people who live within the country, as for instance: "the United States has a federal government." We mean by that phrase that the people of the United States live under a federal government. Both at home and abroad, the people of this land are usually known as "Americans," though the native Indians are also Americans and there are other North and South Americans who do not live within our boundaries and rather resent it that we should think of ourselves as especially "The Americans."

This School History of the United States aims to tell how there came to be an American people and what they have done; for the land is important only because it is inhabited by wideawake, industrious, and thoughtful men, women, and children. It would take a million books to tell the whole story of the beginnings and growth of the United States, for scores of millions of people have come to this land or have been born here, have lived and died here, have worked and suffered here, in order to make the nation. In one small book we can select only a few people, events, and governments, such as stand out most clearly. We can learn much about the history of our country from the lives of the great leaders who made discoveries, founded colonies, built up the states, and helped to make the American nation. We must also learn what was thought and what was done by the plain common people who did the hard work, fought the battles, and elected the statesmen to office. We must try to see them at work, hunting for furs or fishing or farming, weaving cloth, building ships, opening mines, starting factories, running railroads, digging canals, or manning ships of war. We must learn what sort of governors, presidents, legislatures, congresses, and courts the American people have had; how they have framed

AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THEIR LAND

13

a system of "government by the people." All these things are parts of our history which young Americans ought to know.

3. The United States a Part of the Greater World. - The physical United States, the land and water which make up the face of the country, cannot be cut off by the hand of man from the rest of the North American continent. That continent cannot be set apart from the rest of the western hemisphere; and that hemisphere is not far away from the eastern hemisphere. They are all parts of the same world. So with the people of the United States. They are not a race by themselves, but are made up of descendants of all the races of Europe and of many of the races of Asia and Africa. No one can write a history of the United States without taking into account the other parts of the earth where the ancestors of the present Americans lived.

We must remember that every American, except those of the native Indian race, is an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. Nearly all the immigrants to North and South America down to 1820 came from those parts of Europe which lie on the Baltic Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea, or from Africa. Therefore, the first step in the study of our own history is to find out what kind of nations and people discovered and occupied America.

4. European Countries and Commerce (1200-1500). Out of

Only the boldest mariners would venture into unknown seas believed to abound in fabled monsters. (From a picture published in 1555)

the territory which a thousand years before had been occupied by the mighty Roman Empire, a group of European countries slowly grew up - England, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Greek Empire of which Constantinople was the capital. These were all commercial nations; and the boldest and bravest of the people engaged in business