Sidney Lanier (la-nēr', 1842-1881), a poet of the South, although he came later, belongs in spirit to this group. His lines show the same high moral purpose:

"By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod,

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God."

A wonderful period.-Those who notice only the political parties, the change in Presidents, the debates in Congress, and the slavery struggle fail to realize the wonderful achievements of our country during this period. It annexed Texas and the lands beyond the Rockies to the Pacific. It even made a state out of part of this new sunset territory in three years. It began the building of railroads and carried them west to the Missouri. It invented machinery that enabled our farms to feed the world, and gave women the speed of fifty hands in clothing it. Its ships led those of every other nation on the highways of the sea. It pointed to the open door of opportunity for all, and immigrants came in throngs. It knocked at the closed gates of Japan and was admitted. It showed older nations how to make the power of the lightning carry messages faster than Shakespeare's Puck, who boasted that he could "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." It lifted a load of pain and disease from the world by showing how to stop the torture from surgery. It helped to make the world kinder. Its poets and prose writers crowned this golden age.

Summary of Points of Emphasis for Review.—(1) The railroad, (2) how Dickens traveled, (3) trails west of the Missouri, (4) result of the search for gold, (5) inventions for the farm, (6) improvements in communication, (7) other inventions, (8) ocean commerce, (9) opening trade with Japan, (10) why everybody had a chance, (11) immigration, (12) surgery, (13) health, (14) education, (15) religion, (16) how the world grew kinder, (17) writers and their ideals, (18) why this was a wonderful period.

Activities. By drawings on the blackboard, or by pictures, show the development of transportation (a) by land and (b) by water, from the earliest times in America to the present day.

Show on a map Dickens's route from Baltimore to St. Louis in 1842. Make a rough drawing of the various conveyances which he used at each change.

Imagine yourself a Forty-Niner. Write a letter to a friend describing your trip to California and your life in the gold fields. Read Discovery of Gold in California, in James, Readings in American History, 397-403.

(The teacher may read to the class an account of a trip over the Santa Fe Trail in 1831 and over the Oregon Trail in 1846-both in James, Readings in American History. The pupils should then be ready to give a short talk on one of the trails.)

Make a list of reasons to prove that the McCormick reaper is one of the world's great inventions.

Select three other inventions of the period from 1830 to 1860 and explain the importance of each.

Account for the "absence of pauperism" noted by European travelers. Prepare to talk for four minutes on the subject: Why Patriotic Americans may Feel Proud of this Period.

(The teacher should not leave this remarkable period without reading to the class at least a paragraph of prose or a few lines of poetry from some of the great authors of this period.)

References for Teachers.-McMaster, Hist. of People of U. S., VII.; Dickens, American Notes; Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, 184-229; Bogart, Economic Hist. of U. S., XVIII., XIX.; Bogart and Thompson, Readings in the Economic Hist. of U. S., XI., XIV., XVI.; Paine, Old Merchant Marine (Chron. of Am.), VIII.-X.; White, The Forty-Niners (Chron. of Am.); Fish, Development of Am. Nationality, 264-289; Halleck, Hist. Am. Lit., IV.-V.; Sparks, Expansion Am. People, 249-350; Hart, Am. Hist. Told by Contemporaries, III., 471-478, 524-530; Tiffany, Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix; Hall, Florence Nightingale.

For Pupils.-Bachman, Great Inventors and Their Inventions; Wright, Children's Stories of Am. Progress, 179-198, 209-228, 278-298; Bolton, Famous Men of Science, 202-245; Perry, Four Am. Inventors, 133-201; Elson, Side Lights on Am. Hist., I., 241-262; McMurry, Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains and the West, IV.

Fiction Munroe, The Golden Days of '49; McNeil, Boy Forty-Niners; Aldrich, Story of a Bad Boy; Clemens, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer; Eggleston, Hoosier Schoolboy; Larcom, New England Girlhood; Warner, Being a Boy.

CHAPTER XXV

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR

Formation of a Confederacy.-Lincoln was elected in November, 1860, to take office March 4, 1861. Without waiting for his inauguration, South Carolina seceded from the Union the month after he was elected. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas soon followed the lead of South Carolina. Delegates from six of these seven cotton states met in Montgomery, Alabama, the month before Lincoln was inaugurated, and formed a union of their own, called the Confederate States. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosen President, and Alexander Stephens of Georgia, Vice President. A constitution for the Confederacy was framed, much like that of the United States. Special points of difference were the right of states to secede, tariff for revenue only, and a provision that slavery should be protected in any new territory acquired.

The secession of these seven states did not necessarily mean war, if the North would allow the Union to be dissolved without a struggle. Efforts were made by both sides to avoid a conflict, but neither North nor South would accept the necessary compromises. Lincoln would not agree to a proposal to allow the Union to be dissolved. He said: "The Union of these states is perpetual." He realized that if fugitive slaves escaped from the Confederacy to the North and were not returned, there would soon be war in any case.

Attack on Fort Sumter.-During the time between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, the states that had seceded seized most of the national forts, arsenals, arms, and shipyards in their territory. Fort Sumter, which was on an island at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was still held by its Union garrison. Lincoln would not give up the fort, and