she had made the United States gulp down the very dregs in the cup of humiliation; for, on June 22, 1807, in sight of the capes of Virginia, the unlucky Chesapeake, disgraced and degraded, had been compelled to drag her way, a battered, helpless hulk, back to the port from which she had the day before sailed with officers and crew smarting under a humiliation never either forgotten or forgiven. Unresistingly pounded into abject submission, her company had been mustered on her deck by a British subaltern, and those whom he saw fit to designate had been taken forcibly from her. That such an event could have occurred seems now incredible. The mere recollection of it a century later suffices to bring hot blood to the American face. The affair of the Chesapeake occurred in 1807 and the day came when the frigate Constitution took upon herself the quarrel of her sister ship, and in her turn hungered for a meeting with the Guerrière. On August 19, 1812, that hunger was appeased. Suffice it to say that on the 18th of June preceding, war had at last been declared with Great Britain. The Constitution, Captain Isaac Hull in command, on July 12 passed out of Chesapeake Bay, and into the midst of a British squadron. She eluded and outfooted them, her escape a marvel of maritime skill and sustained physical endurance; but during a part of that three-days ordeal the Guerrière was at the front, and pitted against her; nor did that fact pass unnoticed by watchful eyes of the escaping frigate. They would not have dared to hope it, but a day of reckoning was at hand. July 26 Hull reached Boston. He then had reason to believe he was about to be called upon to turn his command over to another; but, first, he was in search of a fight. He knew his ship; he had tested his crew; he craved the square issue of battle. . . . His ship's company shared his eagerness; from the youngest powder-monkey to the executive officer, they were in the hunt; and when, at last, on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 19, the drums beat to quarters and the grim order came to clear decks for action, it was met with a ringing cheer. This was at 4 P.M. Two hours and a half later the Guerrière was rolling in the trough of the summer sea, a battered, sparless, foundering hulk. The next day she sank. She is there in mid-ocean now; not far from the spot where, a foundered. century later, the Titanic The victory, moreover, was most dramatic a naval duel. The adversaries - not only commanders, but ship's companies to a man – had sought each other out for a test of seamanship, discipline, and gunnery - arrogance and the confidence of prestige on the one side, a passionate sense of wrong on the other. They had met in mid-Atlantic - frigate to frigate. On that August afternoon the wind was blowing fresh; a summer sea was running. For about an hour the antagonists manœuvred for position, the British ship wearing from time to time to fire a broadside; and the American yawing to avoid being raked, and discharging an occasional shot from her bow guns. Finding that nothing was accomplished in this way, Hull wore around, set the main-topgallantsail, and headed directly for his enemy, who bore up with the wind, to meet him at close quarters. The Constitution had then been worked into the exact position in which her commander wanted to get her. This was a few minutes before six o'clock; and the historian, writing since, has recorded that now the two opponents came together side by side, within pistol-shot, the wind almost astern, and running before it they pounded each other with all their strength. As rapidly as the guns could be worked, the Constitution poured in broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape, — and, without exaggeration, the echo of those guns startled the world." 66 "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside from the enemy," Captain Hull afterward reported to the Secretary of the Navy, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above water." One word more and I am done. In John Adams's family in 1812 was a granddaughter, born in 1808, a little over four years before, and so still an infant. More than ninety years later, one serene June afternoon in 1903, it devolved on me to sit by that granddaughter's parting bedside. A woman of four-score and fifteen, the lamp of life was flickering out. In those closing hours, however, one memory and only one seemed uppermost in my mind. In extremest old age her thoughts reverted to the first and deepest impression of her early childhood, and, over and over again, in a voice clear and distinct, yet tremulous with emotion, she kept repeating these words: "Thank God for Hull's victory!" THE FIGHT AT THE ALAMO1 ERNEST PEIXOTTO [The Alamo, now a museum of relics, was built in 1744 as a Spanish mission church. Later it was surrounded by walls and converted into a fort. After the massacre in 1836, "Remember the Alamo" became a rallying cry along the border. In the same year as the massacre, the Mexicans were badly defeated by the Texans under Sam Houston at San Jacinto. Texas, winning her independence, became a republic with Houston as its first and only president. The annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845 led to the war with Mexico (1846-48), the chief result of which was the acquisition of a large body of territory by the United States. This territory included California, Utah, and parts of Arizona and New Mexico. The settlement of Texas by Americans, its revolt from Mexico, the Mexican War, and the acquisition of new territory were successive steps in the inevitable westward march of empire. A somewhat parallel movement took place in the Northwest, where Oregon was the bone of contention between the United States and England. In this case, however, all differences were adjusted by compromise and treaty, and without resort to arms. 1 Reprinted by permission from Our Hispanic Southwest; copyright, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. Of the men killed in the Alamo, Davy Crockett and Bowie were notable characters. Crockett, born in Tennessee, was a hunter, pioneer, and politician. Bowie, a native of Georgia, where he was notorious as a duelist, became a colonel in the Texan army. The famous Bowie knife took its name from him. Bowie, Crockett, and Houston belonged to a type of American which has almost passed. With all their eccentricities and irregularities they had the stout hearts and hands that were needed to clear the paths.] THE Alamo was the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes of American history the tragic siege which takes on new interest and significance in these troubled days of Mexican strife, and for that reason, if for no other, will bear repetition. Since 1822, when Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain, the few American colonists in Texas had endured much at the hands of the new government. A climax was reached when Santa Anna seized Mexico city, overthrew the constitutionalists, and made himself dictator. He was the particular enemy of the Americans, and ordered the arrest of some of the most prominent among them. This brought clashes between them and the Mexican soldiers. Friends came from Missouri and Louisiana to help, until finally they organized a little army and, with Ben Milam at their head, marched upon San Antonio. After a stubborn house-to-house fight they took the town on the 7th of December, 1835. Here they were joined by Davy Crockett and others, and here they awaited the coming of the enraged dictator, fortifying themselves as best they might in the old mission church and its outbuildings. When Santa Anna arrived, at the head of his five thousand men, he summoned the two hundred Americans shut up in the Alamo to surrender. Their only reply was a shot fired from the cannon that William Travis commanded. The Mexicans immediately laid siege to the old church and for ten days pressed it with vigor. Its defenders, hopelessly outnumbered and with no chance of reinforcement, prepared to fight to the death. On March 6, to the sound of the "deguillo" (no quarter), the Mexicans advanced for the final assault. Their ammunition exhausted, but fighting with their clubbed muskets or anything else that they could find, the heroic band of Americans fought on until, little by little, they were killed to a man, Travis athwart his cannon, Crockett upon a heap of Mexican soldiers in front of the main church door, Bowie, sick upon his cot, defending himself with his famous knife. So "Remember the Alamo" became the watchword of Texan freedom. THE HERALD OF AN EMPIRE FREDERICK J. TURNER [From an address before the American Historical Association at Indianapolis, Indiana, December 28, 1910; reprinted from the American Historical Review, January, 1911.] SEEN from the vantage-ground of present developments, what new light falls upon past events! When we consider what the Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life, and when we consider what it is yet to be, the young Washington, crossing the snows of the wilderness to summon the French to evacuate the portals of the great valley, becomes the herald of an empire. When we recall the titanic industrial power that has centered at Pittsburgh, Braddock's advance to the forks of the Ohio takes on new meaning. "Carving a cross on the wilderness rim," even in defeat, he opened a road to what is now the center of the world's industrial energy. The modifications which England proposed in 1794 to John Jay in the northwestern boundary of the United States, from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, seemed, doubtless, to him significant chiefly as a matter of principle and as a question of the retention or loss of beaver grounds. The historians hardly notice the proposals. But they involved, in fact, the ownership of the richest and most extensive deposits |