The Books: “The True Story of the United States of America” (Elbridge Streeter Brooks)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library. US history shelf.

Next book in my American history section is a book I found in the second-hand bookstore near my parents house – and I just treasure it, in all its outdated glory. Even the title shows it is from a different age. It is called: The True Story of the United States of America. And even the author’s NAME shows it is from a different age. It is by Elbridge S. Brooks. Elbridge Brooks? Now that’s a 19th century moniker! It’s a book for kids – and it was first published in 1891 – but I guess it was a big hit at the time, so they kept re-releasing it over the years. But my copy is the 1891 copy. It has that almost glossy type of pages where if you run your hands over it, you can feel the imprint of the type. I love that. And it’s filled with awesome illustrations – woodcuts, and cartoons from the newspapers, and drawings of this or that great event in the “true history” of America — I love the drawings. I just love the whole she-bang. I even love the tone … the tone boils everything down to its essentials, so that high school kids could get the jist of it.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter III – called “The Naming of America”.

The whole John Cabot flag story reminds me of Eddie Izzard’s hysterical bit about Empire: “England took over other countries and then maintained a vast empire – They did this with the cunning use of flags.” He imagines the first confrontation with India. Snooty English voice: “You’re OUR country now.” Indian person: “What are you talking about? There are billions of us … we LIVE here, ya bastards.” Snooty English person: “Yes, but … do you have a flag?”

From The True Story of the United States of America, by Elbridge S. Brooks.

Columbus, as you have heard, did not know that he had discovered a new world. He thought he had merely touched some of the great islands off the eastern coast of Asia. Even when, in the month of August, 1498, he first saw the mainland of America, at the mouth of the river Orinoco, he did not imagine that he had found a new continent, but believed that he had discovered the fabled river of the East into which, so men said, flowed the four great rivers of the world — the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile.

But his success set other men to thinking, and after his wonderful voyage in 1492 many expeditions were sent westward for purpose of discovery and exploration. After he had found “Cathay” every man, he declared, wanted to become a discoverer. There is an old saying you may have heard that tells us “nothing succeeds like success.” And the success of Columbus sent many adventurers sailing westward. They, too, wished to share in the great riches that were to be found in “the lands where the spices grow,” and they believed they could do this quite as well as the great admiral. Once at a dinner given to Columbus a certain envious Spaniard declared that he was tired of hearing the admiral praised so highly for what any one else could have done. “Why,” said he, “if the admiral had not discovered the Indies, do you think there are not other men in Spain who might have done this?” Columbus made no reply to the jealous Don, but took an egg from its dish. “Can any of you stand this egg on end?” he asked. One after another of the company tried it and failed, whereupon the admiral struck it smartly on the table and stood it upright on its broken part. “Any of you can do it now,” he said, “and any of you can find the Indies, now that I have shown you the way.”

So every great king in Europe desired to possess new principalities beyond the sea. Spain, Portugal, France, England alike sent out voyages of discovery westward — “trying to set the egg on end.”

Of all these discoverers two other Italians, following where Columbus had led, are worthy of special note — John Cabot, sent out by King Henry the Seventh of England in 1497, and Amerigo or Alberigo Vespucci, who is said to have sailed westward with a Spanish expedition in the same year. Both of these men, it is asserted, saw the mainland of America before Columbus did, and England founded her claims to possession in South America and fought many bloody wars to maintain them because John Cabot in 1497 “first made the American continent” and set up the flag of England on a Canadian headland. In that same year of 1497 Cabot sailed along the North American coast from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson; and Vespucci, although this is doubted by many, sailed in the same year along the southern coast from Florida to North Carolina. In 1499 Vespucci really did touch the South American coast, and in 1503 he built the first fort on the mainland near the present city of Rio de Janiero.

Both these Italian navigators thought at first, as did Columbus, that they had found the direct way to the Indies, and each one earnestly declared himself to have been the first to discover the mainland. At any rate Vespucci could talk and write the best and he had many friends among the scholars of his day. When, therefore, it really dawned upon men that the land across the seas to which the genius of Columbus had led them was not India or “Cathay” but a new continent, then it was that the man who had the most to say about it obtained the greatest glory — that of giving it a name.

Wise men who have studied the matter deeply are greatly puzzled just how to decide whether the continent of America took its name from Amerigo Vespucci or whether Vespucci took his name from America. Those who hold to the first quote from a very old book that says, “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found it, we may call Amerigo or America;” those who incline to the other opinion claim that America came from an old Indian word Maraca-pan or Amarca, a South American country and tribe; Vespucci, they say, used this native word to designate the new land, and upon its adoption by map-makers deliberately changed his former name of Alberigo or Albericus Vespucci to Amerigo or Americus.

But whichever of these two opinions is correct, the Italian astronomer and ship chandler Vespucci received the honor and glory that Columbus should have received or that Cabot might justly have claimed, and the great continent upon which we live has for nearly four hundred years borne the name that he or his admirers gave to it — America.