FOREWORD This book is a tribute to some men who have been forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half the territory within our present borders, they lie for the most part in obscure and neglected graves, some of them under alien skies, their amazing exploits all too often unperpetuated in bronze or stone. Though their names hold small significance for their countrymen of the present generation, yet they played great parts in our national drama. It was the persistent and daring assaults made by such men as Bean and Nolan upon the Spanish boundaries which undermined the power of Spain upon this continent and paved the way for Travis, Bowie, Bonham, Crockett, and Houston to effect the liberation of Texas. Captain Reed of the General Armstrong, after holding off a British force twenty times the strength of his own, sunk his vessel rather than surrender. To a pirate and smuggler named Jean Lafitte, more than any other person save Andrew Jackson, we are indebted for saving New Orleans from capture and Louisiana from invasion. After two decades of historymaking in Hindustan, Boyd came back to his own country and ably seconded William Henry Harrison in breaking the power of the great Indian confederation which threatened to check the white man's westward march. A missionary, Marcus Whitman, by the most daring and dramatic ride in history, during which he crossed the continent in the depths of winter, facing death al |
