Washington and Jefferson had advised their countrymen to steer clear of all entangling alliances with Europe. Monroe went one step farther, and warned the nations of Europe not America for to interfere in the affairs of the western hemisphere. Hence- Americans forth America was to be for Americans. The Monroe Doctrine was accepted as the settled policy of the United States. For nearly a century it has guarded the New World against the control of its affairs by the powers of Europe. REFERENCES. Channing, The Jeffersonian System; Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality; Turner, Rise of the New West; Hart, Formation of the Union; Walker, The Making of the Nation; Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812; Histories of the United States by Adams, McMaster, Schouler, Wilson, and Channing. TOPICAL READINGS. 1. The Danger to Neutral Commerce. Channing, The Jeffersonian System, 195-208. 2. The Effect of the Embargo. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, III, 289-294. 3. The Affair of the Leopard and the Chesapeake. Channing, The Jeffersonian System, 182-194. 4. The Story of Tecumseh. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, III, 529-536. 5. The Constitution and the Guerriere. of 1812, 88-97. Roosevelt, The Naval War 6. The Chesapeake and the Shannon. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 178-187. 7. Perry's Victory on Lake Erie. 1812, 262-271. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 8. The Last Fight of the Essex. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 291-300. 9. MacDonough at Lake Champlain. Brady, American Fights and Fighters, 258-271. 10. How Jackson Fought the Creeks. American People, IV, 159-172. McMaster, History of the 11. The Battle of New Orleans. Brady, American Fights and Fighters, 287-303; or Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 458-493. 12. The Results of the War of 1812. Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality, 187-201. 13. The Monroe Doctrine. Turner, Rise of the New West, 199-223. ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. Poems: Holmes, Old Ironsides; Key, The Star-Spangled Banner; Scollard, The Battle of Plattsburg Bay; Thomas Dunn English, The Battle of New Orleans. Stories: Brady, Reuben James; Stephen Decatur; Seawell, Midshipman Paulding; Little Jarvis; Decatur and Somers; Pyle, Within the Capes; Read, By the Eternal; Altsheler, Herald of the West; Barnes, Yankee Ships and Yankee Sailors; The Hero of Erie; Atherton, Rezanor; Aimard, Queen of the Savannah; White, El Supremo. Biographies: Seawell, Twelve Great Naval Captains; Schouler, Thomas Jefferson; Gay, James Madison; Stevens, Albert Gallatin; Gilman, James Monroe; Schurz, Henry Clay; Sumner, Andrew Jackson. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 1. In what ways were our complaints against England before the War of 1812 similar to our grievances against Germany before our war with her in 1917? In what ways were they unlike? 2. What effect does a war in Europe have upon the price of American farm products? Why? Was this true during the great war which began in 1914? 3. Did England have a legal right to impress native-born Britons who were naturalized Americans? Try to find out if she claims such a right now. 4. In your opinion, was the Embargo Act a wise law? Why? 5. What is meant by "public opinion"? How is it made or changed? 6. Draw a map of the Canadian frontier illustrating the war on that border. Locate Erie, Queenstown, the Thames, Lundy's Lane, Fort McHenry, Plattsburg, the Lake of the Woods, the Sabine River. 7. What is meant by "preparedness"? What does the history of the War of 1812 teach us about it? What ought to be our permanent policy in regard to it? 8. Did England or the United States have the better claim to the Oregon country? Why? 9. Has the Monroe Doctrine been a wise policy? What changes have come in its interpretation? Ought we still to uphold it? 10. What are the two most important dates in this chapter? Why do you think so? 11. Question for debate: Resolved, that instead of making war on England in 1812 we ought to have joined the English in fighting Napoleon. CHAPTER XIII LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC Then and Now.-There is a striking contrast between our mode of life and that of our ancestors a century ago. We would think it a real hardship to give up our comfortable houses A striking heated by steam, hot air, or hot water, and lighted by gas or contrast electricity and go back to the open fireplaces and tallow candles of those days. One hundred years ago a bathroom was an almost unknown luxury, and even in the city the water supply of the family was carried in buckets from the town pump. Few houses are now so poor that their floors are not covered with carpets or rugs. In the early years of the republic such floor coverings were found only in the homes of the rich. "The floors were strewn with rushes, Bare walls let in the cold, Oh, how they must have suffered In those good old days of old.” About one-half of our people now live in cities and towns. When the first United States census was taken in 1790, nineteen out of every twenty Americans lived in the country. But life Old-time on the farm in the "good old times" was very different from farm life the rural life of today. When Washington was president there was not a grain drill nor a reaper nor a threshing machine in all the land. Grain was still sown by hand, cut with a sickle, and threshed with a flail, very much as it had been ever since the days of ancient Egypt. No one had yet even dreamed of the mowing machine, the hay loader, or the horse fork. Practically all the implements and the machines which now save labor on the farms of our country have been invented within the last hundred years. When judged by our standards, life in the towns and cities a century ago was quite as backward as in the country. The streets were unpaved and badly lighted at night. Street cars City life a and omnibuses were unknown. No city building had an century ago elevator in it, and such business conveniences as typewriters and telephones were still far in the future. There were no factories in the sense in which we use the word, and most manufactured articles were still made in the homes of the people much as they had been for thousands of years. Perhaps the greatest contrast between our ways of living and those of our ancestors a few generations ago is seen when we compare our methods of travel with theirs. When the nineteenth century dawned the American people were still living in the days of the stage coach and the wayside tavern. It then took about as many days as it now takes hours to go from Boston to New York or from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Our limited express trains, our millions of automobiles, and the palatial hotels in all our large cities would have seemed strange indeed to the men who made the Constitution of the United States. The first century in the history of the American nation was destined to see more wonderful changes in the ways in A wonderful which people worked, traveled, and lived than all the precentury ceding ages had witnessed. In this chapter we shall see what the old-time American life was like before inventions and discoveries almost without number swept it away. In the next we shall study the marvelous changes which gave us the world we know today. 1800 Our People about 1800.-The growth of our population. since the days of our first presidents is no less marvelous than the change in our ways of working and living during the same The settled period. Our country now has about twenty times as many area about inhabitants as it had in 1800. The number of people in the United States was a little less than four millions in 1790, somewhat more than five millions in 1800, and about seven millions in 1810. We were a rural people in those days. In 1800, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Charleston were the only cities in the land that had a population of more than eight thousand, and the largest of them had only seventy thousand. A vast majority of our people still lived in the thirteen original states upon the Atlantic seaboard. But the call of the rising West was steadily luring the more daring and ambitious people of the older states toward the frontier. If you will draw a line upon the map from Cleveland to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to Nashville, and thence to Savannah you will mark the limits of western settlement in 1800. When the nineteenth century opened, the most interesting and dramatic chapter in our history-the story of the westward march of our people to possess and subdue a vast, rich continent-was well begun. In all parts of America the people still lived the plain and simple life of colonial days. Yet there was a marked difference between the inhabitants of the different sections of the coun- Life in New try. In New England the scores of busy manufacturing cities England which now fill that section with the hum of industry had not yet grown up, but there were numerous villages along the seacoast and beside the streams whose swift waters turned many a mill wheel. These villages, "with their neat white houses adorned with green blinds, the gardens, the grassy commons, the graceful elms, the excellent roads, the neat country stores," and the stony but well tilled little farms about them all spoke of the thrift of the people. The New Englanders retained many of the traits of their Puritan ancestors. They were a pious people much under the influence of their ministers. They were industrious in their habits and still inclined, like their forefathers, to frown upon popular sports and amusements. New |