The Republic’s Footnotes

The footnotes the patriotic readings skipped.

A 1916 book of America’s noble moments, with a great many un-noble, forgotten and very human ones tucked between. The oddest here, each linking to the reading it came from.

1. The first white man to see Yellowstone's geysers was called a liar. After escaping a Blackfoot death-race barefoot and unarmed — outrunning the whole band, then hiding in a river under driftwood with only his nose above water — John Colter reached a trading post and told of springs that boiled and fountains that spouted steam hundreds of feet high. *"Nobody believed him then, but now we know that he was really the first white man to see the wonderful geysers of the Yellowstone Park."*Read it: Colter's Race for Life
2. A captive mother killed ten of her captors in their sleep — and collected a bounty. Hannah Dustin, seized near Haverhill in 1697 (one shoe, over a hundred miles on foot), quietly learned how to scalp, then with the nurse and a boy killed ten sleeping Indians, scalped them all, and paddled home. Massachusetts voted her a large reward and the Governor of Maryland sent a silver tankard *"preserved with much pride by her descendants"* to this day.Read it: Hannah Dustin
3. Israel Putnam crawled into a wolf's den three times to shoot it. After a she-wolf killed 75 of his sheep and goats in a single night, Putnam — rope tied to one foot so he could be dragged out — went head-first down a fifteen-foot cave by torchlight, and only on the third descent killed the beast whose glaring eyes he could see at the end of the den. — israel-putnam-captures- the-wolf — A+
4. "Old Ironsides" was named by an astonished sailor. As British cannonballs struck the USS Constitution's oak hull and dropped into the sea, a sailor looking over the side cried, *"See the balls falling away from her. She's an old ironside, sir, an old ironside."* — and the name stuck.Read it: Old Ironsides: Dacres
5. A poor farm boy raised a 50-year-old sunken treasure and was knighted for it. William Phips hunted a Spanish wreck off the Bahamas until a diver mistook a cannon for a "sea feather"; his crew brought up $1.5 million in silver bars, gold, pearls and coin from the ocean floor. The New England nobody came home so rich the King made him *"Sir William."* — sir-william-phips-and-the- treasure-ship-bahamas — A+
6. The governor who lit his pipe with the surrender demand. Peter Stuyvesant ("Old Silver Leg") tore up the letters urging him to give up New Amsterdam, hit one messenger over the head with his pipe and kicked the rest downstairs with his wooden leg, swearing to defend the town alone — until the burghers surrendered anyway, and the English renamed it New York. — old-silver- leg-english — A+
7. A doctor let a mosquito kill him to prove a point. Dr. Jesse Lazear deliberately allowed an infected mosquito to bite him, *"took the disease in its worst form, and died a martyr,"* confirming that yellow fever was mosquito-borne. Soldiers then volunteered for the proof camp — and refused all pay: *"It is a condition of our going that we receive no pay."* — conquering-the- yellow-fever-lazear — A+
8. Connecticut's charter was hidden in an oak — for 169 years. When Sir Edmund Andros came to seize it, the candles were snuffed and Wadsworth spirited the document into a hollow in a great oak. *"This oak will keep its secret,"* he said — and it did, standing until a storm felled the Charter Oak in 1856.Read it: The Charter Oak: Wadsworth
9. The lost colony left one word carved on a tree. Governor White sailed back to Roanoke to find the settlement gone and *"the word CROATAN"* cut into a tree — the pre-arranged signal for where they'd moved. Among the vanished was his granddaughter Virginia Dare, *"the first white child of English parents to be born in America."*Read it: The Lost Colony of Roanoke
10. The Fountain of Youth was an Indian's trick to get rid of a Spaniard. An old native, tired of Ponce de León, spun him a tale of magic waters across the sea; chasing it, De León instead became the first European since the Norsemen to land on the North American mainland — naming it Florida — and bathed hopefully in *"every stream, brook, river, and creek."* — the-fountain-of- youth — A+
11. One sergeant marched 132 prisoners home. Nearly alone in the Argonne, Sergeant Alvin York killed 20 men with his pistol, put 35 machine guns out of action, and used captured Germans as screens to force still more nests to surrender — delivering 132 prisoners. *"The Major was the gloomiest man in Europe when he found out that he had surrendered to a handful of Americans."*
12. Two boys routed a war party with jack-o'-lanterns. With their father away and Indians approaching, Joe and Obed Moore lit hideous pumpkin faces in the cabin windows, groaned and whooped, and fired a gun — and the attackers *"fled into the forest, and did not stop running until they were miles away."*Read it: How the Pumpkins Saved the Family: Moore
13. A mysterious old man saved a whole town, then vanished from history. At Hadley, a white-bearded stranger appeared to rally the panicked colonists against an Indian attack, led them to victory, and *"disappeared from view and from history"* — a hidden regicide judge in hiding.Read it: The Saving of Hadley
14. The conqueror of Peru couldn't read. Francisco Pizarro was *"so ignorant that never in all his life did he learn to read and write"* — yet he overthrew the Inca empire. — the-conquest-of- peru — A
15. Eli Whitney's world-changing machine was stolen before he could patent it. His first cotton gin did the work of twenty men, but his shop was broken open one night and the model carried off; rival gins were running before his patent came through, and he never made his fortune. (Earlier, British customs had seized eight bags of American cotton, sure so much *"could not be raised in the United States."*)Read it: Eli Whitney Invents the Cotton-Gin
16. Blackbeard took five bullets before he fell. The pirate (real name Thatch), shot five times and cut repeatedly, kept fighting until a wound through the head killed him; Lieutenant Maynard hung *"the pirate's head before the bow of his ship"* and sailed home to celebration.Read it: Blackbeard, the Pirate
17. Sentinels who vanished without a sound. At one frontier post the guards kept disappearing — *"leaving no trace behind them, not even firing off their guns"* — baffling the whole regiment, until the Indians' silent trick was uncovered.Read it: An Indian Trick That Failed
18. Lord Fairfax's rueful praise of Washington. On hearing of the victory at Yorktown, the old nobleman who had hired the teenage surveyor said: *"I knew, when he was a lad surveying the wilderness for me, that boy would make a great man. Still, I am sorry he did not fight for the King instead of against him."*Read it: A Young Surveyor: George
19. Stonewall Jackson's rule for a clear conscience. He once apologized to a stranger years later, explaining: *"I never carry anything to bed with me that will rob me of sleep."*Read it: Stonewall Jackson
20. Raleigh and the famous cloak. Told he could name his reward for spreading his cloak over a puddle for the Queen, Raleigh asked only to keep it: *"since your Majesty's foot has pressed on it, it has become valuable indeed."*Read it: Sir Walter Raleigh
21. Benjamin Franklin was the youngest of seventeen children — and so fond of books *"he borrowed them from anybody who would lend them to him, and, oftentimes, sat up all night reading."*Read it: Benjamin Franklin
22. The Erie Canal was only four feet deep. The greatest of the early channels ran 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, 40 feet wide but just four feet deep, and took eight years to dig.Read it: Traveling by the Canal