the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the publication of Noah Webster's Dictionary, the annexation of Oregon and of the land conquered and purchased from Mexico, the discovery of great deposits of gold, anthracite, petroleum, and natural gas, and Perry's treaty with Japan.

The American showed his genius for invention by giving to the world during this period the telegraph, the submarine cable, the use of anaesthetics, the sewing-machine, the revolving printing-press, the reaper, and the thresher.

The immigrants during this period were chiefly English, Irish, and German, the two latter peoples being driven here by famine in Ireland and political disturbances in Germany. The Irish settled in the large cities of the East and the Germans throughout the farms and villages of the Middle West.

There was a general spread of humanitarian ideas, shown not only by interest in the slave, but by care for defectives, improvement in the treatment of criminals, and the erection of hospitals. The year 1860 found the United States extending from Canada to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, prosperous and progressive, but distracted by sectional differences of feeling and policy.

RECOMMENDED READINGS

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Mc

TEACHERS' LIST. Hart's American History by Contemporaries, vol. III, chaps. XIII-XXIV, XXVI-XXIX; vol. IV, chaps. II, IV-VII. Fiske's United States, pp. 253-350. Sparks's Expansion of American People, chaps. XIIXIV, xx-xxix. Channing's Jeffersonian System, chaps. v, VII, XII. Babcock's Rise of American Nationality, chaps. v-XI, XV. Turner's Rise of New West, chaps. v, x, XII, XIII. McDonald's Jacksonian Democracy, chaps. I, III-V, IX, XVIII. Hart's Slavery and Abolition, chaps. IV, VII-IX, XVIII. Garrison's Westward Expansion, chaps. III, VI-XI, XIII. T. C. Smith's Parties and Slavery, chaps. I, II, V, VII, IX, XII, XIII, XVII, XIX, xx. Master's United States, vol. III, chap. XXII; vol. IV, chap. XXXIII; vol. v, chaps. XLI, XLIV, XLVII; vol. VI, chaps. LVIII, LXI, LXV, LXIX, LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXV; and With the Fathers, pp. 1-54. Wilson's History of American People, vol. III, chaps. III, IV. Henry Adams's History of United States, vol. 1, pp. 185–91. Rhodes's United States, vol. I, chaps. I, IV; vol. II, chaps. VII, IX, X; vol. III, chap. XII. Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. iv, chaps. I, II. Hosmer's Short History of Mississippi Valley, chaps. VI, VII. Thwaites's Rocky Mountain Exploration, pp. 81-187; Wilson's Washington the Capital City, vol. 1, chaps. I-IX. Laut's Story of the Trapper. Garrison's Texas, chaps. XVIII, XXI. Page's Old South, pp. 143-85, 277-344. Schafer's Pacific Northwest, chaps. IX, XII, XIV. Preble's History of Steam Navigation, pp. 35-66. Carter's When Railroads were New, chaps. I, II. Wright's Industrial Evolution, pp. 133-42. Thwaites's "McCormick," in Wisconsin Historical Society Proceedings, 1908, pp. 234-59. Morse's

Jefferson. Gay's Madison. Goodwin's Dolly Madison. Gilman's Monroe. Sumner's Andrew Jackson. Schurz's Henry Clay. Lodge's Webster. Goldwin Smith's Garrison. Thurston's Robert Fulton. Morse's Morse.

PUPILS' LIST. Hart's Source-Book of American History, chaps. XI-XVII; How Our Grandfathers Lived. Elson's Child's Guide to American History, pp. 104-259; Side Lights on American History, vol. I, chaps. VIX, XII-XVI. Tappan's Our Country's Story, pp. 171-207; American Hero Stories, pp. 207-54. Coffin's Building of the Nation, chaps. VIIIXVI, XIX, XX, XXIII, XXV-xxxi, xxxiv. Lodge and Roosevelt's Hero Tales, pp. 103-47, 171-81. Blaisdell and Ball's Hero Stories from American History, chaps. XI-XIV. Hurlbut's Lives of Our Presidents, pp. 85-169. Bolton's Famous American Statesmen, pp. 133-272. Abbott's Blue Jackets of 1812. Seawell's Twelve Naval Captains, pp. 53-82, 102-29, 182-91, 20833. Beebe's Four American Naval Heroes (Perry). Barnes's Giant of Three Wars (Winfield Scott). Brooks's First Across the Continent. Sparks's Book of Famous Explorers (Lewis and Clark). Irving's Astoria. Kingsley's Four American Explorers (Frémont). Perry and Beebe's Four American Pioneers (Crockett and Carson). Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. Parkman's Oregon Trail. Wright's Children's Stories of American Progress, pp. 191-229. Hale's Stories of Invention, pp. 259-83.

FICTION

TEACHERS' LIST. Allen's Choir Invisible. Altsheler's Heralds of the West; Wilderness Trail. Atherton's Splendid Idle Forties. Bacheller's D'ri and I. Bank's Oldfield. Cable's Grandissimes; Old Creole Days. Edward Eggleston's Circuit Rider; Graysons; Hoosier Schoolmaster; Roxy. G. C. Eggleston's Dorothy South. Hale's Philip Nolan's Friends. Bret Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp; Tales of the Argonauts. Johnston's Lewis Rand; Old Times in Middle Georgia. Paulding's Westward Ho! Stowe's Minister's Wooing; Uncle Tom's Cabin.

PUPILS' LIST. Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. Barr's Remember the Alamo. Barton's Prairie Schooner (tale of Black Hawk War). Brady's Reuben James. Brooks's Boy Emigrants. Butterworth's Log School House on the Columbia. G. C. Eggleston's Big Brother (and its sequels). Garland's Boy Life on the Prairie. Hale's New England Boyhood. Harris's Aaron in the Wildwoods. Henderson's Strange Stories of 1812. Howells's A Boy's Town. Larcom's A New England Girlhood. Munroe's Golden Days of '49; With Crockett and Bowie. Seawell's Decatur and Somers; Little Jarvis; Midshipman Paulding. Stowe's Oldtown Folks. Tomlinson's Search for Andrew Field (also others of his "Stories of 1812"). Trowbridge's Cudjo's Cave. Twain's Tom Sawyer.

POETRY

Butterworth's Death of Jefferson; Whitman's Ride for Oregon. Halleck's Death of Drake. Holmes's Old Ironsides. Key's Star-Spangled Banner. Longfellow's Slave's Dream. Lowell's Biglow Papers. Miller's Defence of the Alamo. Proctor's Sacagawea. Mrs. Sigourney's California. Stedman's How Old Brown took Harper's Ferry. Whittier's Angels of Buena Vista; Crisis; Farewell of a Slave Mother; Kansas Emigrants; Texas; Yankee Girl. Willis's Death of Harrison.

THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE BEGINNING OF LINCOLN'S ADMINISTRATION:
SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES

315. Election of President Lincoln.

The presidential

election in November, 1860, resulted in the election of Abra

ham Lincoln, of Illinois,1 the candidate of the new Republican party. The Republicans had insisted in their platform that Congress should not allow slavery in the new Western Territories, or in the States that should be formed from those Territories. The newly elected President and members of Congress had promised to carry out this policy. The Southern leaders feared that the Republicans would not only refuse to extend the bounds of slavery, but would next

Copyright, 1891, by M. P. Rice attempt to free the slaves

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

From a photograph taken in 1864

solved at once to prevent such

in every section of the Union. They therefore rean attempt. As a matter

1 Lincoln was born in 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. When he was seven years old the family moved to Indiana; but in his twenty-first year they left that State on foot, with an ox team, and emigrated two hundred

of fact, however, neither the President nor Congress at that time wished to take any such step.

316. South Carolina secedes. On December 20, 1860, about six weeks after Lincoln's election,1 delegates from all parts of South Carolina met in convention at Charleston and passed an "Ordinance of Secession." This convention repealed the laws under which that State had ratified the Federal Constitution and declared "that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." Having done this, the members passed laws preparing the State for war, for they feared that the Federal Government might attempt to force her to remain in the Union.

317. The Confederate States of America organized. South Carolina's example was promptly followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These seven seceding States sent delegates to a convention held at Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, commencing February 4, 1861. This convention organized a new government, called " The Confederate States of America." Its constitution was much like that of the United States, except that:

(a) It forbade any protective tariff.

(b) It upheld the right of State sovereignty.

(c) It agreed that the "institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States shall be recognized and protected."

miles westward to central Illinois. His parents were poor, hard-working pioneers, and the boy was obliged to begin earning his own way as soon as possible. At eight years of age he could chop wood for the household, and as a young man he split fence rails for a living. He was six feet four inches tall, and of enormous strength; and he needed it all in the vigorous out-of-door life which he then led. He was a constant reader of the few books to be obtained in the neighborhood, and in 1834 he began the study of law in Springfield. Twelve years later this frontier lawyer had become one of the leading men in Illinois and was elected to Congress. His debates with Douglas, which gave him a national reputation as one of the great thinkers and statesmen of his age, have already been mentioned.

1 Lincoln, of course, had not yet been inaugurated. The President at the time that South Carolina seceded was Buchanan, whose term had begun in 1857.

Jefferson Davis,1 of Mississippi, was elected by the convention as President of the Confederacy, as it was popularly called, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as VicePresident. Montgomery was chosen as the capital; but later the seat of government was removed to Richmond.

JEFFERSON DAVIS

Meanwhile, a strong attempt was being made in Congress to restore harmony between the States. One proposition was to ask the Northern States to repeal their personal liberty laws, that made it impossible to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law within their borders; another was to provide for the gradual freedom of slaves by compensating their owners for the loss of their property. But these efforts failed, for the majority of both Northerners and Southerners were now

too angry to listen to compromise. It did not seem possible to prevent war between them.

318. The Confederates seize Federal property. When, in 1832, South Carolina had merely threatened to secede, President Jackson had promptly sent troops to prevent her, declaring that he would never allow the Union to be broken, no matter what the excuse. President Buchanan, however, whose term of office was, in 1860, nearing its end, was a weaker man than Jackson. He said that it was wrong for

1 Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. After graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he served for several years in the army, chiefly in the West, and became a colonel. Then he settled down as a cotton planter in Mississippi, and in 1845 was elected to the Federal House of Representatives. After serving in the Mexican War he became a member of the Federal Senate, then Secretary of War under President Pierce, and again a Senator. But he withdrew from the Senate when Mississippi seceded, and soon was elected President of the Confederacy. After the Civil War he was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe for two years, charged with treason; but he was never tried, and in 1868 was, with other Secessionists, pardoned by Congress. He lived in retirement at his home in Mississippi until his death in 1889.