List of Full-page Half-tone Illustrations.
["I am ready for any service that I can give my country"]
[ Search for the Fountain of Youth ]
[Pocahontas Saving the Life of John Smith ]
[The Marriage of Pocahontas ]
[Gallup's Recapture of Oldham's Boat ]
[William Penn, the good and wise ruler]
[Notable Audience in Maryland to hear George Fox]
[Hiawatha, Pounder of the Iroquois League ]
[Washington's First Victory ]
[The Battle of Bunker Hill]
[The Capture of Major André ]
[Daring Desertion of John Campe ]
[The Surrender at Yorktown ]
[United States Capitol, Washington ]
[The Battle of Fallen Timbers ]
[Campaign Speechmaking in Earlier Days ]
[Fremont, the Great Pathfinder, addressing the Indians ]
[Battle of Resaca de la Palma ]
[The Blue and the Gray]
[The First Battle of Bull Run, 1861 ]
[The Attack on Fort Donelson ]
[General Lee's Invasion of the North ]
[The Battle of Malvern Hill ]
[The Fatal Wounding of "Stonewall" Jackson ]
[Pickett's Return from his Famous Charge ]
[Attack on Charleston, August 23 to September 29, 1893]
[The Sinking of the "Alabama" ]
[Sherman's Three Scouts ]
[Surrender of General Lee at Appomattox Court-House, April 9, 1865]
[The Civil War Peace Conference ]
[The Electoral Commission, 1877 ]
[The Farthest North Reached by Lieutenant Lockwood on the Greely Expedition]
[The Washington Monument]
[Arbitration ]
[The Hero of the Strike, Coal Creek, Tenn ]
[Congressional Library, Washington, D.C. ]
[Cathedral Spires in the Garden of the Gods ]
[Greater New York ]
[President McKinley and the War Cabinet ]
[City of Havana, Cuba ]
[The U.S. Battleship "Maine" ]
[Map of Cuba ]
[The Battle of Manila, May 1, 1898 ]
[Americans Storming San Juan Hill ]
[U.S. Battleship "Oregon" ]
[The Surrender of Santiago, July 17, 1898 ]
[In the War-room at Washington ]
[The United States Peace Commissioners of the Spanish War ]
[Popular Commanders in the Filipino War ]
[Prominent Spaniards in 1898 ]
[San Juan, Porto Rico]
[The Escolta, City of Manila ]
[The Beautiful Luneta, Manila's Fashionable Promenade and Drive ]
[The Shipyard and Arsenal at Cavite, Philippine Islands ]
[Raising the Flag on Fort San Antonio de Abad, Malate ]
[Scenes from the Philippine Islands ]
[The Mouth of the Pasig River ]
Author's introduction.
The annals of the world contain no more impressive example of the birth and growth of a nation than may be seen in the case of that which has been aptly termed the Greater Republic, whose story from its feeble childhood to its grand maturity it is the purpose of this work to set forth. Three hundred years is a brief interval in the long epoch of human history, yet within that short period the United States has developed from a handful of hardy men and women, thinly scattered along our Atlantic coast, into a vast and mighty country, peopled by not less than seventy-five millions of human beings, the freest, richest, most industrious, and most enterprising of any people upon the face of the earth. It began as a dwarf; it has grown into a giant. It was despised by the proud nations of Europe; it has become feared and respected by the proudest of these nations. For a long time they have claimed the right to settle among themselves the affairs of the world; they have now to deal with the United States in this self-imposed duty. And it is significant of the high moral attitude occupied by this country, that one of the first enterprises in which it is asked to join these ancient nations has for its end to do away with the horrors of war, and substitute for the drawn sword in the settlement of national disputes a great Supreme Court of arbitration.
This is but one of the lessons to be drawn from the history of the great republic of the West. It has long been claimed that this history lacks interest, that it is devoid of the romance which we find in that of the Eastern world, has nothing in it of the striking and dramatic, and is too young and new to be worth men's attention when compared with that of the ancient nations, which has come down from the mists of prehistoric time. Yet we think that those who read the following pages will not be ready to admit this claim. They will find in the history of the United States an abundance of the elements of romance. It has, besides, the merit of being a complete and fully rounded history. We can trace it from its birth, and put upon record the entire story of the evolution of a nation, a fact which it would be difficult to affirm of any of the older nations of the world.
If we go back to the origin of our country, it is to find it made up of a singular mixture of the best people of Europe. The word best is used here in a special sense. The settlers in this country were not the rich and titled. They came not from that proud nobility which claims to possess bluer blood than the common herd, but from the plain people of Europe, from the workers, not the idlers, and this rare distinction they have kept up until the present day. But of this class of the world's workers, they were the best and noblest. They were men who thought for themselves, and refused to be bound in the trammels of a State religion; men who were ready to dare the perils of the sea and the hardships of a barren shore for the blessings of liberty and free-thought; men of sturdy thrift, unflinching energy, daring enterprise, the true stuff out of which alone a nation like ours could be built.
Such was the character of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, the hardy empire-builders of New England, of the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Catholics of Maryland, the Huguenots of the South, the Moravians and other German Protestants, the sturdy Scotch-Irish, and the others who sought this country as a haven of refuge for free-thought. We cannot say the same for the Hollanders of New Amsterdam, the Swedes of Delaware, and the English of Virginia, so far as their purpose is concerned, yet they too proved hardy and industrious settlers, and the Cavaliers whom the troubles in England drove to Virginia showed their good blood by the prominent part which their descendants played in the winning of our independence and the making of our government. While the various peoples named took part in the settlement of the colonies, the bulk of the settlers were of English birth, and Anglo-Saxon thrift and energy became the foundation stones upon which our nation has been built. Of the others, nearly the whole of them were of Teutonic origin, while the Huguenots, whom oppression drove from France, were of the very bone and sinew of that despot-ridden land. It may fairly be said, then, that the founders of our nation came from the cream of the populations of Europe, born of sturdy Teutonic stock, and comprising thrift, energy, endurance, love of liberty, and freedom of thought to a degree never equaled in the makers of any other nation upon the earth. They were of solid oak in mind and frame, and the edifice they built had for its foundation the natural rights of man, and for its super-structure that spirit of liberty which has ever since throbbed warmly in the American heart.