Great Epochs in American History, Vol. I

Epochs in American History,
Volume I., by Various

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Title: Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. Voyages Of
Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682
Author: Various
Editor: Francis W. Halsey
Release Date: June 11, 2005 [EBook #16037]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GREAT EPOCHS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS FROM COLUMBUS TO
WILSON
Edited, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes
By FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"; Associate Editor
of "The Best of the World's Classics"; author of "The Old New York
Frontier"; Editor of "Seeing Europe With Famous Authors"
IN TEN VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. I
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY AND EARLY EXPLORATIONS: 1000
A.D.-1682
COPYRIGHT, 1912 AND 1916, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Printed in the United States of America]

[Transcriber's Note: This text retains original spellings.]

PREFACE
In these ten volumes the aim has been to present striking accounts of
ten great epochs in the history of the United States, from the landing of
Columbus to the building of the Panama Canal. In large part, events
composing each epoch are described by men who participated in them,
or were personal eye-witnesses of them.

Columbus, for example, described his own first voyage; Washington,
the defeat of Braddock; Gen. "Sam" Houston the battle of San Jacinto;
General Robert E. Lee, the capture of John Brown at Harper's Ferry;
Murat Halstead, the nomination of Lincoln; Jefferson Davis, the
evacuation of Richmond, and his own arrest in Georgia by Federal
troops; Mrs. James Chesnut, wife of the Confederate general, the firing
on Fort Sumter; Edmund Clarence Stedman, the retreat from Bull Run;
Gen. James Longstreet, Pickett's charge at Gettysburg; General
Sheridan, Sheridan's ride to Winchester; James G. Blaine, the funeral of
Lincoln; Cyrus W. Field, the laying of the Atlantic cable; Horace White,
the great Chicago fire; William Jennings Bryan, the first Bryan
campaign; Admiral Dewey, the battle of Manila Bay, and Admiral
Peary, the finding of the North Pole.
These accounts are often supplemented by passages from the writings
of historians and biographers, including George Bancroft, Washington
Irving, Francis Parkman, Richard Hildreth, William E.H. Lecky, James
Schouler, and John Fiske; or from those of statesmen, journalists and
publicists, among them, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas H.
Benton, Robert Toombs, Horace Greeley, "Bull Run" Russell, Carl
Schurz, and Theodore Roosevelt.
The tables of contents prefixt to the several volumes, or the index
appended to the last, will show how wide is the range of topics. The
events described have been of vital, and often of transcendant,
importance to this country and Europe. The writers will be found
interesting as authorities, and are often supremely competent, alike as
authorities and writers. The work is believed to present American
history in a form that will appeal to readers for its authenticity and its
novelty.
Francis W. Halsey.

INTRODUCTION
(Voyages of Discovery and Early Explorations.)

Schoolboys have been taught from their earliest years that Columbus
discovered America. Few events in prehistoric times seem more
probable now than that Columbus was not the first to discover it. The
importance of his achievement over that of others lay in his own faith
in his success, in his definiteness of purpose, and in the fact that he
awakened in Europe an interest in the discovery that led to further
explorations, disclosing a new continent and ending in permanent
settlements.
The earliest voyages to America, made probably from Asia, led to
settlements, but they remained unknown ever afterward to all save the
settlers themselves, while those from Europe led to settlements that
were either soon abandoned or otherwise came to nought. Wandering
Tatar, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, or Polynesian sailors who drifted,
intentionally or accidentally, to the Pacific coast in some unrecorded
and prehistoric past, and from whom the men we call our aborigines
probably are descended, sent back to Asia no tidings of what they had
found. Their discovery, in so far as it concerned the people of the Old
World, remained as if it had never been.
The hardy Northmen of the Viking age, who, like John Smith, six
hundred years afterward, found in Vinland "a pleasant land to see,"
understood so little of the importance of what they had found, that, by
the next century, their discovery had virtually been forgotten in all
Scandinavia. It seems never to have become