ARMSTRONG 



ARMSTRONG, SAMUEL CHAPMAN (1839- 

 1893), the founder of Hampton Normal and 

 Agricultural Institute (which see) and the man 

 who fashioned the educational policy for 

 negroes and Indians in America. He was a 

 son of an American missionary, and was edu- 

 cated at Oahu College, Honolulu, and Williams 

 College, Massacl: He entered the Union 



I during the War of Secession and 

 was mustered out with the rank of brigadier- 

 general of volunteers. 



On leaving tin- army, he was associated with 

 d O. O. Howard in the Freedmen's 

 Bureau, and during the two years in which he 

 was engaged in this work matured a careful 

 plan for educating negroes. He then founded 

 Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. 

 To the establishment and work of this school 

 he devoted the remainder of his life. The 

 men and women trained at Hampton return to 

 their nativ ablish similar institu- 



tions there, or into a variety of life occupations 

 carry Hampton enthusiasm, and in this manner 

 1 Armstrong's ideas have been extended 

 throughout the country. 



378 ARMY 



ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM GEORGE, Lord (1801- 

 1900), became famous as the inventor of the 

 one-time remarkable Armstrong gun. He was 

 an English mechanical engineer, whose interest 

 in scientific work had lured him from the 

 study of law. The hydro-electric machine and 

 the hydraulic crane were among his earlier 

 inventions, and in 1854 he invented the rifled 

 gun which bears his name. On presenting his 

 patents to the British government he was 

 knighted by Queen Victoria and appointed 

 engineer of rifled ordnance. The universities 

 of Cambridge and Oxford conferred honorary 

 degrees upon him, and in 1887 he was made a 

 peer. 



Armstrong Gun, the breech-loading rifled 

 gun invented by William George Armstrong, 

 first used by the British in the Chinese War 

 in 1860. It was made of wrought iron in coils 

 welded together and had an inner tube of 

 steel rifled in several grooves. Although it 

 marked a great advance when first used, it has 

 now been superseded by more efficient weapons, 

 which are all, however, based on the principles 

 embodied in Armstrong's model. 



L A: 



^THE STORY OFl 



.RMY, a term applied to a body 

 of men organized and disciplined to act to- 



r to conduct warfare on land, and placed 

 at the disposal of a nation or person for that 

 purpose. 



Though hugo hosts of fighting men were 

 gathered in ancient times, the modern army 

 outgrowth of the fourteenth-century "free 

 companies," which were men organized under 

 definitely-appointed leaders for the purpose of 

 improving the art or "handicraft" of war, and 

 of making their own services more valuable. 



-e free companies hired themselves out to 

 fight for those v.ho were willing to pay for 

 their help. Their members became the most 

 efficient lighters and therefore were in great 

 demand. But with them war was merely a 

 trade. There was no patriotism in their fight- 

 ing, no desire for personal distinction, no spirit 

 of emulation. Soldiers were simply members 



of a well-organized labor union, fighting for 

 pay; they lacked love of country or conviction 

 of the justice of the cause for which they 

 fought. Such a group were the Hessians hired 

 by England to fight the American colonists 

 in the Revolutionary War. It is of interest to 

 note, however, in this connection, that some of 

 tjhese Hessians remained in America after the 

 war and became citizens of the new nation, and 

 that their descendants are to-day among tin- 

 sturdiest and most loyal supporters of the 

 government. Gradually came the end of the 

 employment of the free companies, as soldiers 

 fighting for hearth and home proved superior to 

 mere war mechanics. But the methods by 

 which the free companies had brought their 

 fightirfg powers to a high state of efficiency have 

 been retained and adapted by military authori- 

 ties to meet modern requirements. This was 

 demonstrated in the War of the Nations. 



