Creating a 'Civilized Nation': Religion, Social Capital, and the Cultural

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Creating a ‘Civilized Nation’: Religion, Social Capital, and the Cultural Foundations of Early American State Formation

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Mark Boonshoft

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Professor John L. Brooke, Advisor

Professor Margaret Newell

Professor Randolph A. Roth

Mark Boonshoft

2015

Abstract

From the very founding of the United States, education’s actual influence on

American society has not measured up to Americans’ belief in education as a vehicle of meritocracy. Shortly after the American Revolution, the lexicographer, editor, and would-be education reformer, Noah Webster noted that in the United States “The constitutions are republican and the laws of education are monarchical.” For Webster, this paradox threatened to destroy the American republic. He and many others believed that education inculcated societal morals that were the foundation of republican government. Americans did not adopt any of Webster’s proposed solutions—namely a public school system—until the nineteenth century. Yet the republic survived anyway.

This dissertation argues that Americans’ very desire for geopolitical independence explains their continued deference to European education. Rather than revolutionizing

American social order, education became a primary means for reconciling traditional hierarchy with the republican political culture born of revolution.

Based on archival research in over twenty libraries in eight states, this dissertation explains the origins of “monarchical education” in colonial America and explores the consequences of its persistence into the early republic. In particular, this dissertation focuses on academies, high-level secondary schools, in the mid-Atlantic and upper South from 1730 to 1810. The religious revivals of the Great Awakening fueled most of the early development of academies. Both British and colonial officials, though, sought to ii use education not only to establish domestic social order, but also to convince the world that British North America belonged in the world of “civilized nations.” The term

“civilized nation” described societies that contained the requisite institutions, culture, and manners to follow the law of nations and command diplomatic recognition.

Ironically, many of the colonists reared in this Europeanized educational culture became the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. Desperate to cement their independence, Americans in the early republic continued to use education to demonstrate that the United States was a “civilized nation.” This explains why early American educators continued the “absurdity of … copying the manners and adopting the institutions of monarchies,” as Webster noted. American independence rested on a foundation of conformity to European precedents. Large scale systems of public education did not emerge in first decades of independence. Instead, local civil associations and religious groups, with some state-level governmental support, built numerous academies throughout the region. In this way, local communities and state governments took part in the broader process of post-revolutionary state formation. At the same time, the broader goals of state formation impacted local education, often stifling curricular development and educational innovation. Ultimately, these educational practices undermined some of the Revolution’s most democratic impulses. Education shaped the structure of inequality on the grounds in hundreds of American communities, establishing the boundaries of participation in public life along explicit class and gender, and implicit racial, lines.

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Dedication

For my Parents

Acknowledgments

Over the last few years, I have driven across much of the mid-Atlantic and upper

South chasing down eighteenth-century school records in numerous archives and libraries, big and small. For sharing their expertise, I am grateful to staff members at the

Bedford Historical Society, the Bedford Free Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Westchester County Historical Society, the Alexander Library at Rutgers University, the Mudd and Firestone Libraries at Princeton University, the North Jersey History

Center at the Morristown Public Library, the Trenton Public Library, the Historical

Society of Pennsylvania, the Presbyterian Historical Society, the University of

Pennsylvania Department of Special Collections, the David Library of the American

Revolution, the University of Delaware Archives, the Maryland Historical Society, the

Maryland State Archives, the Virginia Historical Society, the North Carolina Division of

Archives and History, the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, and the Southern

Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. For making my extended stays in Philly and Newark so productive, I am especially happy to thank Jim

Green and Connie King at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Doug Oxenhorn and James Amemasor at the New-Jersey Historical Society.

The generous support of a number of institutions made this research possible. The

Ohio State University Department of History funded summer research trips and a semester off from teaching to write. The OSU Graduate School funded my first year of

v graduate study and my final year of dissertation writing. I am also grateful to the

Virginia Historical Society, the David Library of the American Revolution, the New

Jersey Historical Commission, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical

Society of Pennsylvania, and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic for their generous research support.

My path to becoming a historian began at the University at Buffalo. As a sophomore, I had the good luck to stumble into Erik Seeman’s early American history survey. Since then, Erik has taught me a great deal about the historian’s craft, and has been a steady source of support and friendship. Also at UB, the late Richard Ellis made me want to study the American Revolution. Carole Emberton made me feel like a colleague when I was a mere undergraduate. Tamara Thornton is simply a mensch. I’ll always be thankful that she nudged me to go to OSU.

Ohio State is an ideal place to study early American history. At different stages of this project, Alan Gallay, Joan Cashin, Margaret Sumner, and the late Bill Pencak read my work and offered thoughtful suggestions. Though they work in different fields, Paula

Baker, Alice Conklin, Jane Hathaway, Robin Judd, and Dodie McDow all helped me realize what I was actually trying to say. Jim Bach and Rich Ugland made everything run smoothly so I could focus my attention on research and writing. My greatest professional debts are to my dissertation committee. Margaret Newell always pushed me to see the other side of my arguments, and this dissertation is immeasurably better for it. Randolph

Roth’s careful critiques always sharpened my thinking. His conviction that I was saying something worth saying kept me motivated. I was incredibly lucky to have John Brooke

vi as my advisor. John invested a staggering amount of time and energy into making me a capable historian. His own scholarship remains a model of how to ask big questions while still doing justice to the sources.

Fellow graduate students at OSU made the study of history fun. Though they don’t work on early America, Patrick Potyondy, Peggy Solic, Leticia Wiggins, and

Adrienne Winans are good friends and always full of good advice. During my time at

OSU, I’ve been fortunate to be part of a large and vibrant community of early

Americanists, which included Matt Foulds, Jamie Goodall, Scott King-Owen, Tim Leech,

Marcus Nevius, Grace Richards, Abby Schreiber, Lisa Zevorich Susner, Dan Troy, Dan

Vandersommers, Kevin Vrevich, Jessica Wallace, and Josh Wood. Hunter Price generously read grant proposals, talked theory, and helped me refine my thinking.

Special thanks go to Cam Shriver and Emily Arendt, who have listened to me work through most of the ideas and arguments that made it into this dissertation and many more that did not.

I owe a different sort of debt to my family. Aiden, Billy, Charlie, and Ellen

Dreskin have been nothing but encouraging over these last five years, which has meant a great deal to me. Ivy Barsky has been one of my biggest cheerleaders for as long as I can remember. Happily, dissertation research often gave me an excuse to be in Philly where I could spend more time with her. Thanks go to my brother Michael both for his unwavering support and for distracting me from work when I most needed it. Katie made the last many years more joyous than I could ever have imagined. Finally, I am delighted to dedicate this to my parents, who made it all possible.

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Vita

2010...... B.A. History, (SUNY) University at Buffalo

2012...... M.A. History, Ohio State University

2010 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, Ohio State University

Publications

“The Great Awakening, Presbyterian Education, and the Mobilization of Power in the Revolutionary Mid-Atlantic,” in Michael Zuckerman and Patrick Spero eds., The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2016).

“The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 561- 595.

“Doughfaces at the Founding: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Slavery, and the Ratification of the Constitution in New York,” New York History, Vol. 93, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 187- 218.

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments...... v Table of Contents ...... ix List of Tables ...... x Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 1: The First Great Awakening as an Organizing Process: Denominational Education and the Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Social Capital Formation ...... 38 Chapter 2: Provincial Ambition, Imperial Integration, and the Origins of the American Revolution ...... 99 Chapter 3. Denominational Networks, Revolutionary Upheaval, and Educational Institution Building in the Early Republic ...... 162 Chapter 4: Merit, Ambition, and Elite Formation...... 222 Chapter 5: French Schools and Polite Manners: Class, Gender, and Geopolitics after the American Revolution ...... 267 Chapter 6: Feigning Consensus: The States, Civil Associations, and Counter-Revolution ...... 315 Epilogue ...... 366 References ...... 373

List of Tables

Table 1: Academies Founded by State, 1780-1805 ...... 341

Introduction

By the time he enrolled at Harvard College, John Quincy Adams had already seen the world. From the late 1770s to the early 1780s, Adams moved from one European court to another. After accompanying his father to France and the Netherlands, he served as a private secretary to another American diplomat in Russia. Needless to say, Adams brought a unique perspective to Cambridge. He had already experienced a life that most of his classmates could only dream of living after they left Harvard.

Adams put his worldly experiences to good use as member of the A.B. Club.

Members of this literary society debated fundamental questions about the nature of society and politics. In one essay that he presented before the Club in June of 1786,

Adams argued that “Education is one of the most important subjects that can engage the attention of mankind; a subject on which the welfare of States and Empires … depend.”

Refining his contention more precisely, Adams posited that “Civilization is to a State what Education is to an Individual.” In this way, “all depends entirely upon civilization and Education.” Adams claimed to “suppose beyond all doubt, that the progress of every virtue, and of every amiable Quality in a Nation, or an individual, is always in Proportion

1 to the progress of civilization.”1 That is to say that a nation’s success was determined by its level of civilization, which rested on the education of its inhabitants.

But what kind of nations produced the “greatest degree of civilization?” Adams answered this question that October at another meeting of the A.B. Club. Dismissing

“Common Place arguments” that lauded ancient republics, Adams asked rhetorically

“whether at the present day the most civilized Nations are not subjected to Despotic monarchs: and whether Republics are not rather remarkable for being backward in the progress of civilization?” It was a question that Adams’ opponent had difficulty answering. In fact Adams rested his rebuttal largely on the fact that his opponent conceded “that the most civilized Nations extant are governed by despotic Monarchs.”

According to Adams, it then “must follow that republics are not so much civilized.”2

This was a startling argument to make. The American republic had only won its independence a few years earlier and its long-term viability was far from assured. As close as fifty miles to the west, disgruntled former soldiers and other young men led by

Daniel Shays had closed the courts just weeks before, challenged the legitimacy of republican institutions in Massachusetts, and seemed to portend the demise of the republican experiment.

Adams wrote these essays for a debating society so he did not necessarily believe what he argued. But it was an informed argument, made by someone who had lived in and attended school in a number of different nations. He made his points so forcefully

1 John Quincy Adams, Diary, June 26, 1786, in Robert J. Taylor and Marc Friedlaender, eds., The Adams Papers, Diary of John Quincy Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 44–58. 2 Adams, Diary, Oct. 2, 1786, in Ibid., 106–20.

2 that his opponent could hardly answer them. Regardless of their hopes and beliefs,

Adams and his colleagues seemed to recognize some truth in the idea that the most civilized and educated nations tended to be monarchies. How Adams thought about these questions matters because he would become a major force in shaping both foreign and domestic policy in the early United States. He was both the architect of Manifest Destiny and the mastermind of the “American System” of internal improvements, a plan to create the necessary infrastructure to support domestic development and economic expansion.

Adams, more than almost any of his contemporaries, understood how a nation’s foreign policy and its place in the world were deeply interconnected with its internal development and level of “civilization.” Adams also understood as well as anyone that this assumption was not unique to Americans. Indeed the standards of “civilized nationhood”—a term used often by contemporaries to describe nations that contained the requisite institutions, culture, and manners to follow the law of nations and command diplomatic recognition—were set by European nations and empires. Americans’ conviction that the citizens of “civilized nations” were always well-educated states took hold during the colonial period and influenced the development of schooling into the early republic.

Benjamin Rush was equally concerned about civility in the new nation. Twenty- two years older than Adams, he was part of an entirely different generation and the product of a different educational path. Born near Philadelphia in 1745, Rush received his early education at a Presbyterian academy run by Samuel Finley—who would later become president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University)—in rural

3 northern Maryland along the Pennsylvania border. Rush would later graduate from the

College of New Jersey and take a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in

Scotland before returning home to Pennsylvania to serve as a professor in the medical department of the College and Academy of Philadelphia (now the University of

Pennsylvania). In 1783, shortly after the Revolutionary War ended, Rush led the group that founded Dickinson College, the first institution of higher education chartered in the new republic. Rush and his colleagues justified the importance of Dickinson in a way that would have made sense to Adams. In a circular letter soliciting support for

Dickinson College, Rush and his fellow trustees wrote that education was “the grand source of national Reputation and happiness,” which “distinguisheth the polite and civilized from the rude and barbarous nations of the World.” As a consequence, “it has been a grand object of the wisdom and care of civilized Nations” throughout history “to promote and encourage such Seminaries” that taught “Learning, Manners and Religion.”

Americans, the trustees argued, should follow suit.3

Rush had a decidedly different upbringing than Adams, but his own early educational experiences led him to a similar conclusion about the importance of education to the power of nation-states. To both Rush and Adams, education helped create “civilized nationhood,” an inner condition of a society, but one judged by an international audience. If Adams came to this conclusion because of a unique childhood,

Rush came to it through a much more common provincial educational experience shared by many middling and elite colonists-turned-revolutionaries-turned-Americans in the

3 “Copy of Circular Letter,” n.d., vol.. 41, Rush Family Papers, LCP, 3.

4 mid-Atlantic and upper South.4 This dissertation describes the provincial educational experience of Rush and his generation, and traces its impact on education and social and cultural life in the early United States. It thus illustrates the connections between the colonial world of Rush’s formative years, and the early national world that Adams, as much as anyone, would help to define.5

“Creating a ‘Civilized Nation’” argues that academies—high-level secondary schools—were critical instruments of power and authority in the British Empire and then the early United States. Most historians have assumed that academy leaders had shortsighted goals and that the institutions they founded had only limited, local importance.6 Instead, historians have tended to focus on various proposals for national or

4 On the provinciality of colonial America, see John Clive and Bernard Bailyn, “England’s Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 11 (April 1954): 200–213; and Ned C. Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997). 5 During the 1990s and 2000s, a number of historians identified the disjunctures between colonial and early national history as among the most troubling trends in the field. See for example Pauline Maier et al., “The State of Early American History: A Forum,” Historically Speaking 6 (April 2005): 19–32; and Brendan McConville, “Early America in a New Century: Decline, Disorder, and the State of Early American History,” Journal of the Historical Society 5 (Winter 2005): 461–482, esp. 475-6. More recently, Jack P. Greene has argued that historians should focus on the interconnected processes of state and identity formation to better understand continuities across the American Revolution; see “Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem,” William and Mary Quarterly 64 (April 2007): 235–250, and the forum that follows. This dissertation is, in part, an attempt to answer Greene’s call. Education, certainly as both Adams and Rush understood it, was critical both to forging American culture and legitimating the American nation-state in a world of nations. 6 Until very recently, scholars of education policy have looked mostly at how patterns of state formation explain the development of public systems of education in different national contexts. See especially, Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990). Nancy Beadie has led the way in analyzing how educational development helped constitute states, rather than vice versa. Most notably, Beadie argues that education produced “social capital and its conversion into political capital for the modern liberal state”; in Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 320. See also, Beadie, “Toward a History of Education Markets in the United States An Introduction,” Social Science History 32 (Spring 2008): 47–73. For this new literature in comparative perspective, see Kim Tolley, ed., Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). While I agree with Beadie’s analysis that local support for

5 state-run education systems. These plans sought to supplant the academy-dominated educational landscape of the colonial period, and to create an informed citizenry, democratize social and political hierarchies, and foster a republican American national identity. Nearly every one of these plans failed in the short run.7 Widespread public

education empowered the state, my interpretation differs from Beadie’s in a critical way. Beadie argues that, outside of men who “had revolutionary military experience or belonged to a Masonic lodge,” most people’s support for education did not derive from broader political commitments; see Beadie, “Education, Social Capital, and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspective: Preliminary Investigations,” Paedagogica Historica 46 (2010): 15–32, quote on 30. Similarly, George Thomas argues that the clarion call for a national university in the early republic was a product of the inadequacy of existing schools and academies, which were “parochial state institutions with clear sectarian affiliations unlikely to promote the nationalizing and liberalizing sentiments deemed instrumental in helping to secure and perpetuate the new constitutional order”; Thomas, The Founders and the Idea of a National University (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 6. I emphasize the broad-mindedness of school trustees and supporters. On the cosmopolitan outlook of eighteenth-century eleemosynary leaders, see Amanda Bowie Moniz, “‘Labours in the Cause of Humanity in Every Part of the Globe’: Transatlantic Philanthropic Collaboration and the Cosmopolitan Ideal, 1760-1815” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2008); and Moniz, “Saving the Lives of Strangers: Humane Societies and the Cosmopolitan Provision of Charitable Aid,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Winter 2009): 607–640. 7 On how historians came to focus on this narrative at the expense of others; see Siobhan Moroney, “Birth of a Canon: The Historiography of Early Republican Educational Thought,” History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 4 (December 1999): 476–491. For studies that focus on education’s connection to republicanism and plans for government-run education, see Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 7–10; Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 107–28, 148–50; Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700- 1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 290–1; Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 49–118, esp. 92–103; Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 471–4; Benjamin Justice, ed., The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Thomas, Founders and the Idea. While agreeing with the general idea that Americans saw education as necessary to sustain a unique constellation of values, some historians argue that the Revolution did not create this so much as derive from it. They argue that colonial education Americanized along with the rest of North American society in advance of the Revolution. See especially Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 1960), esp. 45–9; and Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 567–8. Bailyn’s work on education anticipated his larger argument that the “social shocks” of Revolution “had taken place in America in the course of the previous century” before 1765; see Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 19. Similarly, Bailyn argued that the American turn toward Whig republican

6 education would not take off until the nineteenth century, and is less a story of the

American Revolution, than part and parcel of the social, religious, and cultural transformations that accompanied the Market Revolution.

Nevertheless, Adams and Rush’s assumption that local institutions and local stability mattered to national stability and legitimacy—or, more precisely, that any education, including local schooling, mattered to nation building—did not crumble with these plans. Local academies might have mostly educated students from the same state or region. But in the aggregate, academies represented a network of institutions that could reach into local communities and shape people’s sense of political belonging and cultivate political stability.8 Inasmuch as local schools contributed to the nation-building process, so too would that process influence local schools. Finally, then, the dissertation considers how American efforts to use education to make the United States into a

“civilized nation” impacted the formation of a uniquely American identity.

Contemporaries assumed that education would directly shape gender norms and social and political hierarchies, the fundamental building blocks of national culture and social order. Yet as Adams understood, the Revolution notwithstanding, American education ideals grew out of the colonial political experience; see The Origins of American Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968). 8 On the importance of local institutions in this period to forging national belonging and support for the nation-state, see Kathleen Wilson, “Citizenship, Empire, and Modernity in the English Provinces, C. 1720- 1790,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (Fall 1995): 69–96; John L. Brooke, “Cultures of Nationalism, Movements of Reform, and the Composite–Federal Polity: From Revolutionary Settlement to Antebellum Crisis,” The Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Spring 2009): 1–33; Johann N. Neem, “Civil Society and American Nationalism, 1776-1865,” in Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present, ed. Elisabeth S. Clemens and Doug Guthrie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 29–53. My arguments are also indebted to Christopher P. Loss, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), which demonstrates that higher education was the predominant institution mediating between state and society in the twentieth-century United States.

7 and American claims to “civilized nationhood” would continue to be measured against standards set by European monarchies and empires. Through education, these expectations shaped the structure of inequality on the ground in hundreds of American communities.

* * * * *

If any region had the capacity to adapt their educational system to revolutionary changes, it was Rush’s mid-Atlantic and the adjoining upper-South. Historians have long debated whether the middle colonies represented a coherent region, while historians confidently treat the Chesapeake as its own area of study.9 In terms of education, though, the middle colonies, Virginia, and North Carolina developed similarly. During the

9 On the middle colonies, see Douglas Greenberg, “The Middle Colonies in Recent American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (July 1979): 396–427; Wayne Bodle, “The ‘Myth of the Middle Colonies’ Reconsidered: The Process of Regionalization in Early America,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 113 (October 1989): 527–548; Wayne Bodle, “Themes and Directions in Middle Colonies Historiography, 1980-1994,” William and Mary Quarterly 51 (July 1994): 355–388; Ned C. Landsman, “Roots, Routes, And Rootedness: Diversity, Migration, and Toleration in Mid-Atlantic Pluralism,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (2004): 267–309; Liam Riordan, Many Identities, One Nation : The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). On the Chesapeake, see Thad W. Tate and David Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean Burrell Russo, eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1988); and most recently Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs, eds., Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). Jack Greene argues that the Chesapeake was the prototypical British North American region in Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). On colonial American regionalism more generally, see Michael Zuckerman, “Puritans, Cavaliers, and the Motley Middle,” in Friends and Neighbors: Group Life in America’s First Plural Society, ed. Michael Zuckerman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Wayne Bodle, “The Fabricated Region: On the Insufficiency of ‘Colonies’ for Understanding American Colonial History,” Early American Studies 1 (Spring 2003): 1–27; Michael Zuckerman, “Regionalism,” in A Companion to Colonial America, ed. Daniel Vickers, Blackwell companions to American history; (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 311–34. For a comparative perspective on regionalism, see the essays in “AHR Forum: Bringing Regionalism Back to History,” American Historical Review 104 (October 1999): 1156–1220.

8 eighteenth century, especially in the decades following the First Great Awakening, the area from southern New York to North Carolina witnessed rapid educational change.

The region had few deeply entrenched educational institutions or norms before the mid- eighteenth century. But in the aftermath of the First Great Awakening, competing religious factions built academies to train likeminded ministers and institutionalize their theological and sociological ideas. Academies spread across the mid-Atlantic and became one of the most enduring educational institutions in American life. The story of academies in the region holds the key to understanding how the relationship between education and civic life did or did not change in the era of the American Revolution, and is thus the subject of this dissertation.

In comparison, John Quincy Adams and his peers in New England benefitted from educational structures that long pre-dated mid-Atlantic academies. For the century preceding the emergence of academies in the mid-Atlantic, New England town schools and Latin grammar schools built a broad base of literacy and numeracy and also sent hundreds of qualified young men to Harvard and Yale. Up to the Revolution, this system proved reasonably effective at educating various levels of their New England’s political and religious leadership. The New England educational system remained viable into the early republic.10 Yet academies even came to New England in the years following the

10 Robert Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). Education in New England did grow more effective over time, especially in teaching literacy; see Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry Into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), 51. Jason Opal questions the importance of New England’s eighteenth-century system of education; see Opal, Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 27–8.

Revolution. The degradation of war necessitated a massive rebuilding effort that allowed for institutional innovations. At the same time, the corporate ethic that had underlain the system of public education started to erode.11

Though they could differ in size and scope, most academies offered instruction in classical languages and moral philosophy, alongside more practical math and English courses. Better academies could blur the line between secondary and higher education.12

American academies descended from both a Scottish Enlightenment educational tradition, embedded in Irish and Scottish Presbyterian schools, and English dissenting academies.13 Through the early national period, they remained the most dominant type of secondary school. Clergy continued to teach at academies and denominations continued to support them, though after the American Revolution, legally-incorporated boards of trustees took control and churches no longer directly controlled most academies.

Regardless, the educational culture, curriculum, and organizational structure of academies persisted in striking ways across the American Revolution.

11 For New England academies, see Opal, Beyond the Farm. On how the emergence of academies in post- revolutionary New England was part of a broader shift to more voluntary forms of social organization, see John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 186–7, 241–3. 12 Some colleges allowed students with a good academy education to skip the first two years of college and begin in the junior class. Every so often, professors from colleges would take over academies. In one instance, Peter Wilson, the classical languages professor at Columbia College, resigned in order to become the principal at an academy in Brooklyn; New-York Daily Advertiser, April 28, 1792. 13 Theodore R. Sizer, The Age of Academies (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, 1964), 6–7; Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, 1971); Elizabeth Nybakken, “In the Irish Tradition: Pre-Revolutionary Academies in America,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (July 1997): 163–183; Nancy Beadie and Kimberley Tolley, eds., Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925 (New York: Routeledge Press, 2002).

This, then, is a study of education’s role in the process of state formation during the American Revolutionary era, from roughly 1730 to 1810. As subjects of the British

Empire, Americans learned how to harness education not only to create domestic social order, but to achieve their diplomatic and geopolitical ambitions for national legitimacy within a world of “civilized nations.” The British Empire came to support colonial academies, even those founded by dissenting denominations, because of the overriding assumption that education promoted stable governance. While academies helped

Americans cement their place within the British Empire, the expansion of education emboldened them to foment revolution and bolstered their claims to geopolitical independence after the war. The American Revolution amplified American anxieties about fitting in among the world of civilized nations. It was unclear whether a republic could provide the necessary institutional and legal foundation for a legitimate global power. It was clear, though, that geopolitical considerations would continue to shape the development of American education.

After a brief period during the Revolution when education acted as a destabilizing force, academies reemerged again as instruments of both local and national stability. In rebuilding education after the Revolutionary War, Americans drew heavily on their colonial experience. Overlapping networks rooted in both the Revolution and colonial academies, buoyed by some legal and financial support from state governments, led the charge in building and rebuilding academies after the war. They modeled early national education on what they experienced as subjects of the British Empire; academy curriculum and culture changed surprisingly little. The colonial influence on early

11 national education was not without consequences. Though they couched their work in arguments about the public good, trustees used academies to cement their vision for social and political stability and gentry governance in the wake of revolutionary upheaval. Ultimately, the pursuit of “civilized nationhood” that undergirded educational development also subverted many of the Revolution’s most foundational democratic impulses. Mimicking European education helped the new republic to survive as a state while presenting challenges to American attempts to forge a unique national identity and a more democratic and egalitarian social order.14

Education and Histories of State Formation

Americans operated under the assumption that other nations would judge the legitimacy of the United States against European conceptions of what constituted a legitimate statehood and empire. Other nations on the global scene recognized “civilized nations” as “treaty worthy” governments and legitimate members of the Westphalian states system—the dominant community of European states that took shape in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Most importantly, the law of nations governed interactions between Westphalian states and, at least theoretically, encouraged peace and discouraged war. To claim membership in this system, a polity needed to possess an

14 On the tension between Americans’ desire to create a unique national culture, and the difficulty of fully abandoning English norms, see Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Elisa Tamarkin, Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

12 adequate institutional basis to secure internal stability that would allow it to follow the law of nations.15

Both colonists and Americans defined “civilized nationhood” quite broadly, to include education. John Quincy Adams was not the first member of his family to understand the connections between education and nationhood. Writing in 1760, his father, John Adams, argued that the developments in science and navigation led to the emergence of “civilized Nations round the Globe.” This in turn vastly expanded human knowledge.16 During an exercise at a debating club at the College of New Jersey in 1771, one student argued that “The great Difference then … in the Manners of the numerous

Nations on this Earth, may cheifly[sic] be attributed to the Difference in their

Education.”17 The opposite connection—between incivility and a lack of education— was even more obvious. In a 1765 book that claimed education provided the foundation of civil liberty, the English writer John Brown argued that uncultivated societies and nations existed in a state of nature, or what he called “a savage state.”18 Similarly, the famous American educator and lexicographer, Noah Webster, argued that when “nations

15 David M. Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation: The Early American Constitution, the Law of Nations, and the Pursuit of International Recognition,” New York University Law Review 85 (2010): 932–1066; Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). For historiographical overviews of this perspective, see Tom Cutterham, “The International Dimension of the Federal Constitution,” Journal of American Studies 48 (May 2014): 501–15; and Lawrence B. A. Hatter, “Taking Exception to Exceptionalism: Geopolitics and the Founding of an American Empire,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Winter 2014): 653–660. 16 John Adams to Jonathan Sewall, February 1760, Robert J. Taylor, ed., Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), vol. 1: 41–5. 17 Philip Vickers Fithian, “On Habits. An Exercise in the Whigg Society at Nassau-Hall,” Oct. 2, 1771, vol. 2, Philip Vickers Fithian Collection, PUL. 18 John Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty: On Licentiousness, and Faction. By the Author of Essays on the Characteristics, &c (Dublin: Printed for A. Leathley, 1765), 7.

13 are in a barbarous state,” they have little need for education.19 Throughout the period under study, support for academies derived in part, but never exclusively, from people who both believed that strong states were educated states, and who wanted British North

America and later the United States to take its place among the dominant community of

European nations. George Washington, for instance, believed that “in civilized Societies the welfare of the State and happiness of the People are advanced or retarded in proportion as the morals and good education of the youth are attended to.” He took pleasure “in seeing the encrease of our Seminaries of Learning” in the decades after independence.20 Europeans, colonists, and Americans shared basic underlying assumptions about the political role of education

Historians have shown convincingly how the hope of bringing the North

American colonies into the dominant community of European powers drove imperial reform in the mid-to-late-eighteenth century, as well as the development of American law and institutions in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.21 Viewed this way, there were striking similarities between the new American republic, and the British

Empire it overthrew. Before and after the Revolution, the same security fears and early- modern European geopolitical conventions dictated how Americans conducted diplomacy, and triggered efforts to create a legal system, secure public credit, establish a

19 Webster, “On the Education of Youth in America,” in Frederick Rudolph, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 44. 20 Washington to the Officials of Washington College, New York July 11, 1789, in W.W. Abbot and et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1987), Presidential Series vol. 3: 177–9. 21 On legal thought, see Ellen Holmes Pearson, Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011).

14 fiscal-military state, and forge a union.22 During both the colonial and early national period, the presence of active and autonomous Indian groups within territory claimed by

Americans threatened internal stability and Anglo-Americans’ ability to abide by treaties.

American international security thus depended on the subjugation of American Indians.

According to one scholar, the framers “elevated conquest of Indians to a constitutional principle.”23 Geopolitical realities also led Americans to emulate Europe when structuring the institutions of the nation-state. Most notably, a European tradition of composite empire provided the basis for the American federal system, in which a powerful and centralized fiscal-military state coexisted with sovereign states that wielded profound power over local internal police.24

22 Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas G. Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993); Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); Daniel J. Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Robbie J. Totten, “Security, Two Diplomacies, and the Formation of the U.S. Constitution: Review, Interpretation, and New Directions for the Study of the Early American Period,” Diplomatic History 36 (Jan. 2012): 77–117. 23 Gregory Ablavsky, “The Savage Constitution,” Duke Law Journal 63 (February 2014): 999–1089, quote on 1008. See also, Jeffrey L. Pasley, “Midget on Horseback: American Indians and the History of the American State,” Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life 9 (October 2008), accessed December 11, 2014, http://www.common-place.org/vol-09/no-01/pasley/; and Leonard J. Sadosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010). 24 Jack P Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); H.G. Koenigsberger, “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American Revolution,” Historical Research 62 (June 1989): 135–53; J.H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past & Present, 137 (Nov. 1992): 48–71; Stefan Heumann, “The Tutelary Empire: State- and Nation-Building in the 19th Century United States” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009), 53–68; and Brooke, “Cultures of Nationalism,” esp. 4-5. For a different perspective, which locates the origins of federalism in an ideological transformation that accompanied the Revolution and founding of the American republic; see Alison L. LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010). See also Forrest McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000).

Even though historians of the American state have elucidated the geopolitical context that explains exactly why education mattered to constructions of statehood, they have not integrated education into their studies of state formation. It is worth asking why. In 1756, an English writer noted that “Important as it is to the state, education hath never once claimed the attention of the legislature.”25 This could just as easily describe most of colonial and early national America as well, at least outside of New England.

Perhaps for this reason, historians of early American state formation have paid scarce attention to schools. With the goal of overturning “the myth of the weak American state,” recent historians have focused their attention on defining the tangible reach and power of the early national federal government.26 While uncovering the profound power of the American state, this literature also demonstrates how an American tradition of anti- statism constrained its reach. The framers designed a state that was “light” and

“inconspicuous,” one that remained “out of sight” to the vast majority of American citizens well into the early-twentieth century. Besides the Post Office, the national government only deployed its authority directly along the coast and the frontier, regulating trade and policing borders.27 Outside of these areas, as Brian Balogh notes,

25 Thomas Sheridan, British Education: Or, The Source of the Disorders of Great Britain (London: Printed for R and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1756), 11. 26 William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113 (June 2008): 752–772; Richard R. John, “Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787–1835,” Studies in American Political Development 11 (Fall 1997): 347–380; Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Max M. Edling, “‘A Mongrel Kind of Government’: The U.S. Constitution, the Federal Union, and the Origins of the American State,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 150–77. 27 Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government, 10; Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

16 the national government wielded power indirectly, often working with lower levels of government or private groups to implement policy goals such as internal improvements or the creation of hospitals.28 Yet even viewed in this indirect way, the national government’s impact on education barely registers—though one could argue that the federal government enabled the market expansion that drove some demand for education.

In short, the underlying assumptions of the prevailing literature on early American state formation preclude an analysis of education, even though contemporaries believed the two were not only interconnected, but that the state and education rose and fell as one.

As something crucial to early-modern conceptions of the nation state, but to which centralized agencies paid little mind, education offers a unique opportunity to rethink the nature of imperial and national state formation in the revolutionary era. To borrow an insight from Michael Braddick, a historian of seventeenth-century England, this dissertation analyzes state formation as a process of negotiation and cooperation

2009). The foundational essay on the state in the West is Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans- Appalachian West,” The Journal of American History 79 (June 1992): 39–67. See also Nathan R. Kozuskanich, “‘For The Security and Protection of the Community:’ The Frontier and the Makings of Pennsylvania Constitutionalism” (Ph. D. Diss., Ohio State University, 2005); Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); Patrick K. Spero, “Creating Pennsylvania: The Politics of the Frontier and the State, 1682-1800” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009); Heumann, “Tutelary Empire”; Lawrence B.A. Hatter, “Channeling the Spirit of Enterprise: Commercial Interests and State Formation in the Early American West, 1763-1825” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Virginia, 2011); William H. Bergmann, The American National State and the Early West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Bethel Saler, The Settlers’ Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America’s Old Northwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). The tendency of the American national state to project its strength outwardly persisted into the late-nineteenth century; see Andrew Wender Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” Journal of American History 97 (2010): 371 –398. 28 For a concise delineation of these boundaries, see Max M. Edling and Brian Balogh, “Book Forum on A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Policy History 21 (2009): 466–8. On marine hospitals, see Gautham Rao, “Sailors’ Health and National Wealth: Marine Hospitals in the Early Republic,” Common-Place 9 (October 2008), accessed January 29, 2015, http://www.common-place.org/vol-09/no-01/rao/.

17 between different levels of government, and between government and society. In early- modern England, the “Central government depended on the co-operation of unpaid local officials, and these local brokers of central authority acted as mediators between central government and the locality.” Local power brokers worked to further the interests of the state because they identified with it and believed they could benefit from affiliating with it. It was at once a patriotic and a self-interested calculation.29 Imperial governance in the colonies was also a product of negotiation between different levels of authority, and this legacy impacted political practices into the early republic.30 Such an idea flies in the face of a pervasive tendency in American historiography to assume tensions between local and national authority.31 Without dismissing these very real tensions, “Creating a

‘Civilized Nation’” joins recent work that demonstrates the applicability of Braddick’s model to the early American context.32 Though locally rooted, and benefitting from favorable laws and special privileges passed and granted by state legislatures, academies were an important component of the nation’s broader claims to “civilized statehood.”

29 Michael Braddick, “State Formation and Social Change in Early Modern England: A Problem Stated and Approaches Suggested,” Social History 16 (January 1991): 1–17, quote on 2. See also, Steve Hindle, “The Keeping of the Public Peace,” in Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox, and Steve Hindle, eds., The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 213–48. 30 Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994). 31 The American fear of centralization is a central theme in studies of education; see especially Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, x; and Peter S. Onuf, “State Politics and Republican Virtue: Religion, Education, and Morality in Early American Federalism,” in Toward a Usable Past: An Inquiry into the Origins and Duplications of State Protections of Liberty, ed. Paul Finkelman and Stephen E. Gottlieb (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 91–116. 32 In a slightly different way, Gautham Rao shows how local cultures influenced the administration of customs houses, a critical arm of the American state. In the process, local communities shaped how the American state wielded national authority writ large; see “The Creation of the American State: Customhouses, Law, and Commerce in the Age of Revolution” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Chicago, 2008), 4–9. Rob Harper has argued that the process of coalition-building at the local level was instrumental to the formation of the American state in the west; see “Revolution and Conquest: Politics, Violence, and Social Change in the Ohio Valley, 1765-1795” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Wisconsin, 2008), esp. 18–21.

School supporters understood this. Indeed school trustees and the agents of American state formation were often the same people. Even when that was not the case, these groups shared a commitment to the project of American state building. In founding schools, trustees mobilized local resources and their influence over state governments to bolster the nation-state. In certain areas like education, cooperation between local and state governments and religious and secular voluntary associations basically comprised the nation-state.

The role of academies in determining the relationship between religion and the state best underscores both the degree to which state authority was negotiated in similar ways before and after the American Revolution. Neither the British Empire nor the federal government—at least in the earliest decades of the republic—successfully imposed a top-down model for church-state relations. Rather, colonists and Americans tended to hash out these institutional arrangements at the local and provincial/state level, even if just through laws chartering academies. In fact, many contemporaries understood the relationship between religion and the state through local education. For generations, historians have argued that the Great Awakening presented a challenge to prevailing authority that ultimately helped fracture the relationship between the North American colonies.33 It is perhaps more helpful to see the Awakening as a moment when

33 Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966); William G. McLoughlin, “‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to the Revolution,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings 87 (1977): 69–96; Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

19 denominations—and the laity they represented—carved out power to negotiate their place within the British Empire. If commerce, culture, and Protestantism bound together the

Empire, then denominational academies were integral for socializing colonists into the

British nation.34 As a consequence, even dissenting denominations could command some leverage to negotiate for the security of their institutions within the imperial framework.

Similarly during the early republic, denominations commanded political authority through education. Though some churches were caught in the crossfire of the War, religious institutions were among the most stable in the Revolutionary era. Americans assumed religious groups would continue providing education and other forms of social welfare, which they had done for centuries throughout the Atlantic World.35 Their efforts took on new meaning in the early republic, when a growing push for disestablishment and a refashioning of the boundaries of acceptable religion actually amplified the connection between religion and political order.36 While Americans during the early republic challenged the idea that academies should reflect particular theological or denominational ideas, denominations maintained a privileged place in creating educational infrastructure and, in turn, cemented religion’s influence over a critical part of public administration. At the same time, the American Revolution unleashed debates

34 Susan O’Brien, “A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735-1755,” American Historical Review 91 (October 1986): 811–32; Frank Lambert, “’Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Great Awakening,” Journal of American History 77 (Dec. 1990): 812–837; T.H. Breen and Timothy Hall, “Structuring Provincial Imagination: The Rhetoric and Experience of Social Change in Eighteenth-Century New England,” American Historical Review 103 (Dec. 1998): 1411–1439. 35 Susanna Linsley, “The American Reformation: The Politics of Religious Liberty, Charleston and New York 1770-1830” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2012), 2–3. 36 See Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); and Eric R. Schlereth, An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

20 about what role government—local, state, and national—should play in public administration and regulating political economy. It is clear that for much of the nineteenth century, local and state authorities actively regulated public safety and health, defined the boundaries of citizenship, and built the foundations of a market economy by funding canals and railroads, encouraging shipping and bridge construction, and chartering banks.37 Early Americans certainly thought that education was an important part of economic development. Writers in the first decades after independence argued that because “A general diffusion of knowledge is essential to the prosperity of a people.”

It was imperative for “men anxious for the prosperity of your country” to support education. Americans thought education not only offered individuals access to wealth but also taught passions that “are calculated to promote happiness and prosperity” more generally. Taken to an extreme, some Americans believed that education made possible all wealth creation and economic development.38 Despite this, states did not create public

37 William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Brian Phillips Murphy, Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). The literature on government’s role in economic development dates back to commonwealth studies; see Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947); Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948); Harry N. Scheiber, “Government and the Economy: Studies of the ‘Commonwealth’ Policy in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (July 1972): 135–151. On how political partisanship dictated visions for state involvement in political economy, see John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 178– 217. On citizenship and the states, see Douglas Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009). 38 New-York Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1786; The Mail, July 19, 1792; United States’ Gazette, Aug. 7, 1805. Jason Opal has made the argument that, in New England, academies socialized young men into the new culture of capitalism, which made possible the rise of capitalist economic development; see Opal,

21 systems of education until well into the nineteenth century. Yet many states did support privately-run academies in haphazard ways, through grants of legal privileges, approvals to hold lotteries, and intermittent grants of money and land.39

Education underscores how religious groups influenced the nature of state power in early America, not just how laws and governments set the boundaries of religious authority. Dissenting groups used education to gain power in an Empire that legally subordinated them to the state church. The founding of the United States challenged the very idea of religious establishment, but denominations used their sway over education to garner privileges from government. In both cases, legal strictures seemed to limit denominations’ influence on public life, while education afforded them a means to maintain some political power. This may have been the Great Awakening’s most profound legacy on American life before the Civil War.

Education, the State, and the Problem of Social Cultural Change in the Revolutionary

Era

One of the main reasons that contemporaries believed education mattered so much to state formation, was because they assumed that schools could inculcate culture.

National authority depended on both institutional and cultural foundations. In this way, the process of state formation and the structuring of culture, social order, and political

“Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s-1820s,” Journal of American History 91 (Sep. 2004): 445–470. 39 New York was among the most active states in supporting economic development. Not coincidentally, they did more than almost any other state during the 1780s through 1800s to support privately-run schools. This often goes unmentioned in discussions of the state’s economic policy; see for instance L. Ray Gunn, The Decline of Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York, 1800-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

22 culture at the local level were deeply interconnected.40 English historians have long understood that state formation is a fundamentally cultural process. Philip Corrigan and

Derek Sayer famously argued that English state formation was also a cultural revolution that defined and was defined by the state. States comprised “acceptable forms and images of social activity and individual and collective identity; they regulate … social life.”41 Both neo-Progressive and intellectual histories of the American founding explored how Americans tried to formulate cultural norms and build a social order that could sustain their new frame of government. In this view, the Revolution and founding appeared as an internal conflict between elites and non-elites—or, sometimes, aristocracy and democracy. Focused on outward issues of law, diplomacy, and state building, though, recent historians of the founding have consciously defined themselves against this earlier literature.42 In focusing so closely on defining the institutional structure of the early American state and delineating the boundaries between different levels of

40 My perspective here is indebted to Keith Wrightson, “The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,” in Griffiths, Fox, and Hindle, Experience of Authority, 10–46, esp. 25–31. 41 Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 3. 42 See especially Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government, 33–9. Tom Cutterham offers a similar critique to mine in “International Dimension.” The older interpretation on the conflict between democracy and aristocracy traversed traditional boundaries between historiographical “schools,” namely ideological historians and neo-progressives. Compare, for instance, Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists; Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1961); and Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 471–518. See also Ruth H. Bloch, “The Constitution and Culture,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (July 1987): 550–555.

23 government, American historians have obscured the degree to which American cultural, social, and gender norms emerged out of the process of state formation.43

Looking beyond the traditional sinews of governmental power reveals that the process of state formation, and the international diplomatic and geopolitical context in which it occurred, impacted the most basic levels of social interaction and cultural formation. To a certain extent, all local politics during the early republic occurred within a hostile geopolitical context that seemed to threaten the survival of the American nation.44 As political scientist Mlada Bukovansky has argued, domestic and international legitimacy are interdependent. This truism only grew more ingrained with the rise of popular sovereignty in the revolutionary era. As people who were not a part of, or

43 See also Saler, The Settlers’ Empire, 5–8, 13–40. This critique does not only apply to American historians. Kathleen Wilson argues that “the performative nature of state power, and the cultural intimations and practices of state-building tend to escape sustained attention … within eighteenth-century British colonial history, while the studies of institutional forms of state power in turn tend to forget that the entity called ‘the state’ is a fiction”; Kathleen Wilson, “Rethinking the Colonial State: Family, Gender, and Governmentality in Eighteenth-Century British Frontiers,” American Historical Review 116 (Dec. 2011): 1294–1322, quotation on 1295. 44 Generations of historians have understood that international relations could shape national politics and identity formation, and vice versa, a perspective that has only gained ground during the recent transnational turn. In early America, historians have tended to focus on the ways in which the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions shaped national identities and political cultures throughout the revolutionary Atlantic. For some recent examples, see Matthew Rainbow Hale, “Neither Britons nor Frenchmen: The French Revolution and American National Identity” (Ph.D. Diss., Brandeis University, 2002); Matthew Rainbow Hale, “‘Many Who Wandered in Darkness’: The Contest over American National Identity, 1795—1798,” Early American Studies 1 (Spring 2003): 127–75; Doina Pasca Harsanyi, Lessons from America: Liberal French Nobles in Exile, 1793-1798 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010); Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Philipp Ziesche, Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Seth Cotlar, Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011); Rachel Hope Cleves, The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti- Jacobinism to Antislavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2014). Many of the best studies on the interconnections between domestic politics and American diplomacy look at the late- nineteenth century. See Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Nicholas Guyatt, “America’s Conservatory: Race, Reconstruction, and the Santo Domingo Debate,” Journal of American History 97 (March 2011): 974 –1000.

24 empowered by, a dynastic order took part in the high politics of European diplomacy, the connection between their place in international society, and the structure of domestic social order became abundantly clear. This was especially true in the United States, a nation that vested a great deal in becoming a member of an old regime diplomatic system while also harboring a deep distrust of its social norms.45

Following this logic, “Creating a ‘Civilized Nation’” bridges the new international history of the Revolution and American state formation, with an earlier social history of the Revolution that examined how political transformations affected everyday social practices and interactions.46 Put another way, how colonists and

Americans experienced and perceived authority and inequality internally, affected the central state’s ability to project power outwardly. In particular, Michael Braddick has shown that social refinement, especially among elites and especially in diplomatic circles—the cultural articulation of authority—was an integral component of the performance of early-modern English statehood. A culture of civility undergirded British

45 Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 128–30, 162–3. On the connection between internal and external legitimacy, Bukovansky argues that “While international legitimacy is one condition for sustaining domestic legitimacy, the reverse is also true; without domestic legitimacy a government will have difficulty mustering the resources to act as a state on the international scene,” p. 212. 46 See also Saler, The Settlers’ Empire, esp. 31–2. For an overview of the social history of the Revolution, see Alfred Fabian Young and Gregory H. Nobles, Whose Revolution Was It?: Historians Interpret the Founding (New York: New York University Press, 2011). My sense that situating early America in its global context actually allows historians to better understand the emergence of the nation-state and its impact on local communities is indebted to Johann N. Neem, “American History in a Global Age,” History and Theory 50 (February 2011): 41–70, esp. 62-8. Also see, Rosemarie Zagarri, “The Significance of the ‘Global Turn’ for the Early American Republic: Globalization in the Age of Nation-Building,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Spring 2011): 1–37 esp. 1-9.

25 conceptions of authority throughout the Atlantic World.47 These assumptions about the connections between culture and state power cast a shadow over the efforts of American state-builders. The Revolution did open the question of whether literary culture and men of letters could actually threaten the bonds of political citizenship in a republic.48 And at its most radical, republicanism did threaten the foundation of elite rule. Ultimately, in deference to the pursuit of civilized nationhood, the connection between civility, culture, and authority persisted, and it often did so through education.49 Local power brokers, including those who administered academies, acted out of similar motivations to the architects of the American fiscal-military bureaucracy. They mobilized academies to create an American culture that befit a “civilized nation.” In so doing, they ensured that the broader process of state formation shaped the lives of ordinary Americans. Education that furthered the new nation’s standing abroad also challenged its sense of republican national identity, especially in the construction of gender norms and social and political

47 David S. Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997), esp. 38–9; Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, C. 1550-1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 337–425; Michael J. Braddick, “Administrative Performance: The Representation of Political Authority in Early Modern England,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy, and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 166–87; Michael Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael Braddick, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–32; Wilson, “Rethinking the Colonial State.” On the transformation in English culture that undergirded the British Atlantic culture of civility, see Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 48 Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan, Men of Letters in the Early Republic: Cultivating Forums of Citizenship (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA., by the University of North Carolina Press, 2008). 49 Culture may have even taken on increasing importance because of the instability of governance in the revolutionary age; see Michael Meranze, “Culture and Governance: Reflections on the Cultural History of Eighteenth-Century British America,” William and Mary Quarterly 65 (Oct. 2008): 713–744, esp. 714. On the connection between education and civility in England, see Martin Ingram, “Reformation of Manners in Early Modern England,” in Griffiths, Fox, and Hindle, Experience of Authority, 47–88, esp. 53–4.

26 hierarchies. In limiting cultural change, education also often entrenched the power of elites.

Civic republicanism taught Americans that good citizens acted virtuously and disinterestedly, and that these traits were specifically masculine. Monarchical courts, to the contrary, instilled luxury, frivolity and dependence, traits that civic republicanism cast as feminine.50 Americans planned to use education to inculcate gender norms that served the needs of a republic. But academy leaders found it difficult to square this goal with their desire to emulate European education. The self-conscious revolutionary elite and

Continental Army officer corps—many of whom became academy trustees—latched on to many of the values, mannerisms, and characteristics popular among European elites.

From a republican perspective, this elevated the importance of “ornamental” and feminine accomplishments. Americans were more successful at conforming female academies to a new gender order, as numerous historians have shown. Education taught women how to act as republican wives, mothers, and sisters, who could guide males along a virtuous path and check them when they strayed. In this way, education transformed women from threats to republicanism into the moral compass of the nation.51

50 Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13 (1987): 37–58; Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (Oct. 1987): 689–721; and Rosemarie Zagarri, “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post- Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quarterly 55 (April 1998): 203–230. 51 By expanding women’s access to academic education, female academies empowered women. Simultaneously, education reinforced the sense of gendered difference that sustained the connection between masculinity and citizenship. For the most recent examination of the paradoxical influence of education on women in the early republic, see Lucia McMahon, Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). Mary Kelley has offered the best assessment of the long-term impact of female academies on the emergence of women’s activism and politicization in Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg,

Even still, female academies blended new academic learning with a more traditional emphasis on ornamental accomplishments.52 More than any other institution, academies undertook the work of cultural diplomacy by preparing both men and women to participate in the budding court culture in which the domestic politics and international relations of the early republic took place. And more than any other domain, the court at

Philadelphia and later Washington flouted strict republican ideas about gender. Women dominated this political space until the rise of an explicitly white and hyper-masculine vision of democracy destroyed it during the Age of Jackson.53

Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006). On women’s education in the period, see also Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980); Lynne Templeton Brickley, “Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy, 1792 - 1833” (Ed. D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1985); Margaret A. Nash, “Rethinking Republican Motherhood: Benjamin Rush and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (1997): 171–91; and Nash, Women’s Education in the United States, 1780-1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 52 Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Sarah Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies: Women and Elite Formation in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008); Kim Tolley, “The Significance of the ‘French School’ in Early National Female Education,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 133–54. 53 On the republican court, see Fredrike Teute, “Roman Matron on the Banks of Tiber Creek,” in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1999), 98–121; Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000); Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); and Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006). On education’s role in training young elites for the republican court, see Mark Boonshoft, “The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Winter 2014): 561–95. On the destruction of the republican court, see Kirsten E. Wood, “‘One Woman so Dangerous to Public Morals’: Gender and Power in the Eaton Affair,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (July 1997): 237–275.

“Creating a ‘Civilized Nation’” also underscores the interconnectedness of state formation and class, especially elite, formation.54 To make sense of how education could simultaneously serve the interests of local elites and the state, this dissertation engages with an interdisciplinary literature on the concept of social capital. Like all forms of capital—cultural, human, and financial, to name a few—social capital is a resource.

Unlike other forms, social capital is embedded in interpersonal relationships. It encompasses the networks, norms and trust that connect people to one another.55 At the societal level, social capital can create a sense of belonging, encourage political participation, and provide a foundation for democracy.56 Yet voluntary associations, even those that claim to operate in the interests of the public good, often create or affirm exclusive identities.57 Most importantly, exclusive networks ensure that different groups

54 On elite formation and state formation in the British Isles, see Braddick, State Formation, 340–79. 55 On differing conceptions of social capital; see Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1–24; the essays in Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley, and Mario Diani, eds., Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001); and James Farr, “Social Capital: A Conceptual History,” Political Theory 32 (2004): 6–33. 56 Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000). 57 On this point, see Michael W. Foley and Bob Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society,” Journal of Democracy 7 (1996): 38–52; Jason Kaufman, “Three Views of Associationalism in 19th-Century America: An Empirical Examination,” American Journal of Sociology 104 (March 1999): 1296–1295; Kaufman, For the Common Good?: American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Karen Schweers Cook, “Networks, Norms, and Trust: The Social Psychology of Social Capital 2004 Cooley Mead Award Address,” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (2005): 4–14. For the early American context, in particular, see Albrecht Koschnik, “The Democratic Societies of Philadelphia and the Limits of the American Public Sphere, circa 1793-1795,” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (July 2001): 615–636; Johann N. Neem, “The Elusive Common Good: Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts, 1780-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Autumn 2004): 381–417; and Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). On how associational competition can, at times, hurt democracy, see Pamela Paxton, “Social Capital and Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship,” American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 254–277. To the contrary, Mary Ryan has argued that associational competition, not mere associational proliferation, spurred on the development of democracy in the nineteenth-century United

29 of people in a given society have different levels of access to social capital. At the individual level, people can use social capital to better their situation.58 Access to social capital, particularly exclusive networks, can be an important determinant of status.59

In early America, academies mediated between politics and class formation precisely because they were a main engine of social capital creation. They often benefitted the state and certain groups or interests simultaneously.60 At the same time, these projects conferred social capital on certain individuals who took leading roles within the school. Academies themselves—while serving the “public good,” and expanding the pool of social capital available in a given society—in practice, expanded access to social capital for certain groups over others.

Americans regularly mobilized social networks to build schools because of the salutary effects they believed education would have on the development of civil society

States; see Mary P. Ryan, “Civil Society as Democratic Practice: North American Cities during the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 559–584. 58 James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, supplement (1988): 95–120. 59 The foundation work on the importance of social capital as an individual resource is Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241–258. Networks foster various types of connections. Non-redundant connections, so-called “weak ties,” offer people access to new connections and new pools of social capital in a way that the “strong ties” of family, neighborhood, and ethnicity do not; see Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–1380; Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), 26–32; Ronald S. Burt, “The Contingent Value of Social Capital,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997): 339–365; Xavier de Souza Briggs, “Social Capital and the Cities: Advice to Change Agents,” National Civic Review 86 (1997): 111–17; Putnam, Bowling Alone, 22–3; Michael Woolcock, “Social Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework,” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 151–208, esp. 171. On the ways in which social capital can create common culture—perhaps even shared identities—among groups of people, see Claude S. Fischer, “Network Analysis and Urban Studies,” in Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting, ed. Claude S. Fischer (New York: Free Press, 1977), 19–37; Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 415–444. 60 For an insightful and fine-grained local analysis of this, see Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital.

30 and the stability of local and national government. But it was not enough to simply have schools. The discourse of civilized nationhood suggested that they needed to compare favorably with European schools. As a consequence, access to and the command of certain types of traditional knowledge remained important determinants of elite status. In fact, the republican veneration of education only elevated the importance of academies and the specialized knowledge they taught—a form of social and cultural capital—to political and social hierarchies. Education inculcated the culture that underpinned the

“common brand of gentry governance” that Robert Wiebe argues was shared by

Jeffersonians and Federalists alike, and which undermined the revolutionary challenge to traditional patterns of political leadership.61

What did it mean if Americans felt the need to conform education to standards developed by European monarchies and empires? Why was it significant that education responded to geopolitical stimuli? And why should we be surprised by any of this? Most importantly, why did it matter that there was continuity between colonial and early national education? After all, the structure of the American fiscal-military state, the

61 Wiebe found “no basic ideological conflict separating Hamilton and his Federalist associates from Jefferson and his Republican colleagues: no aristocracy versus democracy, no mercantilism versus laissez- faire, no Court vs. Country value systems.” Instead, he argues that their shared vision for gentry governance “compressed” their “differences into a struggle over the interior design of the same ideological house.” See Robert H. Wiebe, The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1984), xiii. On the revolutionary challenge to traditional notions of social and political power, see Jackson Turner Main, “Government by the People: The American Revolution and the Democratization of the Legislatures,” William and Mary Quarterly 23 (July 1966): 391–407; Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992), 287–305. Nathan Hatch argues that the “redefining [of] leadership itself” in the wake of the Revolution occurred in analogous ways in religion and politics; see The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 10.

31 nature of American diplomacy, and the federal union itself all mimicked or were shaped by European standards of state formation.

Colonists-turned-Americans tended to assume that not only would education transform after the Revolution, but that the success of the Revolution and the emergence and persistence of uniquely American values depended on it. Most notably, the famous doctor, education reformer, and republican philosophe, Benjamin Rush argued that “[t]he principle of patriotism stands in need of the reinforcement of prejudice, and it is well known that our strongest prejudices in favor of our country are formed” during youth. He hoped that that “[o]ur schools of learning, by producing one general and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.” Rush sought to make Americans into what he called, “republican machines.”62 As Michael Meranze has argued, “Rush wished to prevent American youths from becoming attached to foreign countries or customs.” Instead, education should create a unique and unifying American culture.

This would make possible a “reorientation of the way people thought of their relationship to their institutions,” a transformation in social order that would allow republican governance to thrive.63 Implicitly, calls for reform suggested that the prevailing, academy-dominated educational landscape was insufficient to the unique needs of republican governance.

62 Rush, “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” in Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, ed. Michael Meranze (Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 1988), 5–6, 9. 63 Meranze, “Introduction,” in Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, xiv, ii. Thomas Jefferson also believed education was essential to achieving his wider vision for post-revolutionary society; see Johann N. Neem, “Developing Freedom: Thomas Jefferson, the State, and Human Capability,” Studies in American Political Development 27 (April 2013): 36–50.

The absence of widespread institutional change, coupled with a pervasive rhetoric venerating the communal value of education, imbued academies with profound power to shape social and political order. Indeed, elites could use academies to achieve counter- revolutionary goals precisely because of the assumed connection between education and the public good.64 In deference to geopolitical considerations, the elites who ran academies used education to erect rigid boundaries around participation in public life.

Americans hoped that governments would reform education and make possible a revolutionary overhaul of society. Instead, academies became a tool for adapting old colonial and imperial conceptions of social and political order to a new republican government. The early history of American education, then, explains how a revolution that destroyed hereditary and legally-ordained orders and ranks could also create a society in which limited mobility and elite rule still remains the norm in the twenty-first century.

Chapter Outline

Chapter 1 explains the expansion of denominational education during the mid- eighteenth century. The revivalism of the Great Awakening responded to the failure of church institutions to provide clergymen for many congregations or attend to the spiritual needs of the laity. More broadly, the Awakening was symptomatic of a much wider failure of church, state, and civil society to provide the necessary institutions for a growing society—what we might call a crisis of social capital formation. From both a

64 See also, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 102–3.

33 religious and secular point of view, the lack of adequate colonial education was a major root of this crisis. The Awakening was ultimately a spur to action. This broader context helps explain why the Awakening’s most pronounced legacy was in education, not religious practice. Churches mobilized networks and money to build academies to train ministers, ameliorating the religious crisis of the Awakening. At the same time, academies proved to be an incubator for a variety of associations and clubs that buoyed a nascent public sphere, created extra-local and inter-denominational networks, and helped solve the broader crisis of social capital formation. Most importantly, this experience taught colonists of the critical importance of denominational networks to the development of education and, in turn, social capital in North America.

Chapter 2 turns to the political ramifications of provincial educational expansion.

Initially, imperial officials supported academies—even those run by dissenting denominations—because they socialized provincial elites into the norms of authority that structured power throughout the British Atlantic. They hoped provincial elites would then strengthen imperial governance in the colonies by maintaining traditional ideas and structures of power. For colonists, education was one of a number of ways they obsessively sought to demonstrate that they belonged to the wider world of European culture. At a more tangible level, colonists sought to use their education to lay claim to elite status and fulfill professional, cultural, and political ambitions. But these ambitions, once unleashed, proved difficult for imperial officials to control. Frustrated in their inability to reach the highest levels of power, educated colonists became the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. Shared educational experiences provided a unifying culture

34 for America’s nascent revolutionary elite, who used their education to legitimate their claims to new positions of authority. Ultimately, the chapter offers a new interpretation of the origins of the American Revolution based on a close analysis of the transformation of fledgling elites from nodes of Empire into the second and third tier of American founders.

Academies closed down as students and teachers left in droves to fight in the

Revolutionary War. Towns and armies repurposed academy buildings as barracks, storehouses, and hospitals, which put them in the line of fire during the long, violent conflict. Chapter 3 looks at the process of rebuilding and expanding the United States’ shattered educational infrastructure during the 1780s. Interconnected networks of colonial academy alumni and revolutionary leaders provided the social and financial capital for rebuilding American schools after the war. Through them, the Awakening’s influence extended into the early republic. For many Americans, academies became the site for working out the relationship between religion and the state in the new republic.

There was no clean settlement of the issue. Nationalistic academy trustees, along with a growing popular view that religious divisions could undermine republican political consensus, challenged the strict connection between academies and denominations, diluting some of the religious power of academies. Even still, local churches and ministers continued to take on leading roles in academies. Through education, then, religious institutions and networks maintained their influence over a critical part of public administration, and remained an important source of social capital in American life.

Chapter 4 examines how academies shaped the cultural foundations of social hierarchy and political order in the early republic. Eager to use education to demonstrate that the United States was a “civilized nation,” school trustees maintained a curriculum and educational culture modeled after Europe. They gleefully argued that their academies compared favorably with European institutions. Geopolitical ambitions—as much as, if not more than, concerns about inculcating republican values—animated the efforts of many early American school administrators. This academy curriculum left a lasting impact on domestic social and political life nonetheless. In an attempt to establish some semblance of traditional hierarchy, American elites harnessed academies to create new notions of “natural aristocracy.” Through public ceremonies and celebrations, academies erected class and racial boundaries around participation in civil society, politics, and government. Moreover, these exhibitions credentialed future elites and cemented them as members of a leadership class. In the absence of hereditary and legal markers of status, academies became an institution that sustained, at the very least, the ideal of gentry governance.

Chapter 5 surveys the surprising rise of European-style, especially French,

“ornamental” or “polite” education for both and female students in the early United

States. Beginning in the early 1780s, an increasing number of American academies offered classes in French, dancing, fencing, and the visual arts. Critics certainly abounded. But supporters made a compelling case for ornamental education, and its importance throughout the region only grew during the 1790s and 1800s. Nationalistic

Americans claimed that ornamental subjects taught the skills and manners necessary for

36 the elite of a “civilized nation.” If the United States relied on an English model to shape its fiscal-military state, they looked to France to understand the cultural mores of

European diplomacy.

Finally, chapter 6 explains how the support of state governments and major voluntary associations cemented the power of academies around the turn of the nineteenth century, ensuring that they remained a viable model for the future. Across the region, nearly every state government supported academies over other types of schools.

Sometimes legislatures provided academy boards with loans or land grants. More often, states gave academies preferential treatment by approving lotteries and passing favorable incorporation laws. This served to put the imprimatur of the state on an institution that offered the most elite curriculum of any type of secondary school. At the same time, powerful voluntary associations with national influence—namely the Masons and the

Society of the Cincinnati—lent their support to academies and used them to further their own initiatives. These groups exploited the assumed connection between education and the public good. They attempted to turn academies into institutions that would perpetuate gentry rule by training would-be elites according to their standards. Academies endured as a viable model for education well into the nineteenth century, alongside and despite a growing clamor for democratic education reform and common schooling.

Chapter 1: The First Great Awakening as an Organizing Process: Denominational

Education and the Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Social Capital Formation

The very characteristics that seemed to define the colonial mid-Atlantic region also fragmented it. Religious and ethnic pluralism along with a vibrant and factional proto-democratic political culture distinguished the middle colonies from much of the

British Atlantic world.1 At the same time, these characteristics divided the middle colonies from each other. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, all vied with the forces of pluralism and factionalism, though the exact dynamics varied from colony to colony. Across the middle colonies and into parts of the upper South, these centrifugal forces produced a common crisis of social capital formation. In social-capital rich societies, networks produce trust that allows the community to undertake collective action for the public good.2 Through the first quarter of the eighteenth century, mid-

1 On mid-Atlantic politics, see Alan Tully, Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). 2 Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 65–78, quote on 67; see also Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000). Putnam’s conception of social capital as a communal resource based on networks, norms, and trust is indebted to James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, supplement (1988): 95–120. See also Karen Schweers Cook, “Networks, Norms, and Trust: The Social Psychology of Social Capital 2004 Cooley Mead Award Address,” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (2005): 4–14. Putnam’s communal emphasis on the communal outcomes of social capital elides the ways in which it also creates class distinctions; for this point, see James Farr, “Social Capital: A Conceptual History,” Political Theory 32 (2004): 6–33, esp. 9; see also Pamela Paxton, “Social Capital and Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship,” American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 254–277. The foundation text on the class implications of social capital formation is Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory

Atlantic colonists failed to create either wide-ranging networks along ethnoreligious lines or concentrated local networks that traversed traditional markers of identity. Both a cause and a consequence of this state of affairs, colonial North America outside of New

England suffered from a lack of formal education. In an under-governed society like colonial America, this was especially problematic. Well-governed societies are usually well-educated societies. The lack of educational infrastructure and the crisis of social capital were mutually reinforcing.

At first blush, the Great Awakening would seem to have clarified and perhaps amplified the fractured state of colonial America. The revivals hit different regions at different times, and then often only produced brief bursts of excitement that did not necessarily reshape religious practice in the long-term, let alone social or political life.

This holds true in the mid-Atlantic and especially the upper South. Delaware,

Philadelphia, and New York, especially New York City, saw little in the way of revivalism. The most extensive revivals happened in rural New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Even then, religious enthusiasm did not ever engulf or sweep over—to use the sort of rhetoric that revivalists tended to employ—much of Pennsylvania. Where it did, it met with opposition and contestation.3 In some cases, the revivals seemed to divide groups

and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241–258. While in much of the dissertation I explore the class implications of education’s role in social capital formation, in this chapter I focus on education as the main source of communal social capital formation in the mid-eighteenth-century mid-Atlantic. For another application of this perspective of social capital formation to American history, see Johann Neem’s synthetic analysis of the early republic and antebellum periods in “Taking Modernity’s Wager: Tocqueville, Social Capital, and the American Civil War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41 (Spring 2011): 591–618. 3 Jon Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction,” Journal of American History 69 (Sep. 1982): 305–325 esp. 311-12, 322; on Philadelphia especially, see Fred

39 that were relatively united in the years leading up to the Awakening.4 From this point of view, the Awakening probably undermined the capacity of religious organizations to create social capital.5

The tendency to equate the entire Awakening with revivalism, though, obscures much of what made the Awakening productive and its influence longstanding.6 The revivalism of the Great Awakening might have signaled the ascendance of piety over institutional order in the Church, but it ultimately gave rise to a new pattern of organization that served the realities of life in the middle colonies better than what came before. 7

Witzig, “The Great Anti-Awakening: Anti-Revivalism in Philadelphia and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1739-1745” (Ph. D. Diss., Indiana University, 2008), 308–63. 4 For example, Douglas Greenberg has argued that “the Awakening had a shattering effect on the settled character of Presbyterianism in the Middle Colonies;” in “The Middle Colonies in Recent American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (July 1979): 396–427, quote on 418. More recently, Christopher Pearl argued that “The revival and the animosity it inaugurated ultimately tore more communities apart than it brought together”; in Christopher R. Pearl, “‘For the Good Order of Government’: The American Revolutions and the Creation of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1740- 1790” (Ph. D. Diss., Binghamton University, 2013), 109. 5 On the Awakening as a crisis of religious institutions, see Martin E. Lodge, “The Crisis of the Churches in the Middle Colonies, 1720-1750,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 95 (April 1971): 195– 220; and also, Lodge, “The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies” (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1964). 6 That said, the current historiographical trend is to emphasize long-term continuities in revivalism from at least the early-eighteenth century, carrying through the Awakening, into the Second Great Awakening; see especially Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); and Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 7 Here I am influenced by Donald G. Mathews, “The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis,” American Quarterly 21 (April 1969): 23–43. On piety’s triumph over order, see Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. 195–214. In stressing the long-term importance of revivalism and emotional religion to the rise or popular authority in colonial American religion, Westerkamp casts the Awakening’s institutional impact as epiphenomenal, 191-4. My interpretation makes essentially the opposite argument. Revivalism was a response to a broad range of institutional problems, which clarified the need to strengthen institutions, especially schools. This attempt at institutional revitalization, the subject of this chapter, represents the Awakening’s most enduring and profound legacy. Martin Lodge also stressed the fundamental importance of institutions to the Awakening, though he focused on the origins and course of the revivals themselves; see Lodge, “Crisis of the Churches.” Yet

Nothing reveals this more clearly than education. At similar rates regardless of their positions on revivalism, denominations and denominational factions created schools to bolster their theological and sociological positions and to train likeminded clergy who would serve the whole region. The Awakening’s immediate shocks produced divisions, disputes, and upheavals. Yet by creating more coherent religious factions, the expansion of denominational educational was a signal moment in the development of bonding—that is, exclusive—social capital on a regional scale. Moreover, the Awakening’s impact was seismic, and its aftershocks did much to foster cooperation between religious factions.

Schools created a similar educational culture regardless of their denominational affiliations, which provided the norms and trust for new inter-denominational networks and an unprecedented accumulation of bridging (inclusive) social capital.8 These networks of educated men formed informal communities as readers and writers, as well as more formal voluntary associations, fortifying a nascent provincial public sphere and civil society and drawing together people across space, ideology, and ethnoreligious identity.

While denominations created schools in reaction to immediate religious concerns, education—or the lack thereof—had always sat at the heart of the broader crisis of social capital formation. Unsurprisingly then, the expansion of denominational education that

Lodge also gestured toward the idea that education was central the institutional settlement of the awakening in the mid-Atlantic; see “The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 277–81. Even in New England, institutions, especially schools, were the agents of continuity, carrying the legacy of eighteenth-century revivalism forward into other movements well into the nineteenth century ; see David W. Kling, “New Divinity Schools of the Prophets, 1750-1825: A Case Study in Ministerial Education,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (July 1997): 185–206. 8 Putnam, Bowling Alone, 22–3.

41 mitigated a crisis in religious organization also led to an efflorescence of social capital formation.9 In post-Awakening colonial America, the interdependent relationship between education and social capital worked productively—social capital created education and education created social capital.10 If education was a necessary precondition to stable social order in the colonial mid-Atlantic, sustained religious conflict and the disorder it engendered was a necessary precondition to the development of colonial education. Ultimately, then, the Awakening was formative in establishing order in the middle colonies and setting the stage for revolution.11

Education Before the Awakening

The population of the mid-Atlantic boomed during the early and mid-eighteenth century. German and Dutch speaking-peoples of many reformed denominations and

9 Rather than viewing the Awakening as an agent of social development, historians have often thought of it as a response to changing social and economic conditions. This view drove debate on the Awakening especially in studies of New England; see Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (New York: Norton, 1986); and John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 66–96. For a theoretical approach to American awakenings as reactions to fundamental changes in social order, see William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 10 On the interconnected development of education and social capital in other times and places, see Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Human Capital and Social Capital: The Rise of Secondary Schooling in America, 1910-1940,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 683–723; and Nancy Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 11 On social development as precondition to revolution, see many works by Jack P. Greene, especially “The Search For Identity: An Interpretation of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth Century America,” Journal of Social History 3 (1970): 189–220; “An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Preconditions of the American Revolution,” in Essays on the American Revolution, ed. Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Huston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 32–80, esp. 39-41; and Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). See also T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution" Revisions Once More in Need of Revising,” Journal of American History 84 (June 1997): 13–40.

42 pietistic sects, along with Scottish and Irish Presbyterians, flooded areas of New Jersey,

Delaware, and backcountry Pennsylvania. As was the case in the seventeenth century, migration both clarified transatlantic connections between Europe and North America, and bred diversity in the colonies that distinguished it from the Old World.12 The groups that migrated to North America in the eighteenth century confronted the environmental realities of settling and colonizing foreign lands and relied on their ethno-religious heritages to build communities on the western shores of the Atlantic. The developing areas in which these groups settled lacked both strong civil institutions and churches. As populations grew and communities formed, it became apparent that a lack of available formal education exacerbated these atomizing tendencies.

During the seventeenth century, most colonists received the majority of their education at home or at church. Continuing a trend that dated back to Tudor England, colonists viewed the household as a fundamental unit of social organization, and thus of socialization. Fears that the colonial environment would degrade society fostered an acute sense of the importance of education. Household education served two main functions: teaching youths the patriarchal social norms of early modern society and providing basic vocational training. Churches took care to teach young people the moral standards and religious ideas that governed a given society.13

12 Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 191–216. 13 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 113–66; Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 14–21.

In Puritan New England, religion inspired support for more formal schooling.

Puritan theologians understood their world through a Calvinist framework that assumed the innate depravity of all humans. Though everyone was susceptible to sin, uncultivated children, in particular, could not restrain their inner desires and would surely commit sinful acts if left untutored.14 This worldview put a premium on literacy. Young boys needed to know how to read the Bible so that they might understand religious teachings and stay vigilant against Satan. Many New England colonies passed so-called “old deluder Satan” laws that required towns to create local public schools to teach basic literacy, numeracy, and writing.15 Early on, formal education accomplished surprisingly little. In Plymouth, for instance, most school laws did not actually result in stable educational institutions. Throughout much of New England, even the public schools that did exist may not have accounted for the modest rise in literacy rates during the seventeenth century.16 Well into the eighteenth century, the mid-Atlantic lagged behind in creating formal schools. Literacy in the region, though, kept pace with New England before 1700. Large portions of the English, Dutch, and German-speaking migrants who came to the mid-Atlantic were literate. By the turn of the eighteenth century, male literacy hovered around 75% regardless of the extent of formal education.17 During the

14 Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1970), 73–9. 15 Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study, 27; Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry Into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), 49–50. 16 John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 142–4; Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England, 51, 74. 17 On the mid-Atlantic, see Alan Tully, “Literacy Levels and Educational Development in Rural Pennsylvania, 1729-1775,” Pennsylvania History 39 (July 1972): 301–312; Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England, 74–5.

44 eighteenth century, though, New England school laws finally made a difference. Over time, the social development of towns threatened to tear them apart. In this context, education became a central means of accommodating the various economic, social, regional interests, and drawing together expanding towns.18 Town schools functioned as sites of brutal socialization that “traumatized” children into becoming productive laborers. In exchange, they received protection from non-town-born laborers, and had a vested stake in the political health of their community.19

The mid-Atlantic and upper South lacked the longstanding tradition of local self- government that characterized New England. By the eighteenth century, all the mid-

Atlantic and upper South colonies operated under either royal or proprietary control.

Even where the urge for local control was strong, colonies did not support education to the extent that New Englanders did. William Penn founded Philadelphia with a robust plan for municipal government. That plan never operated as Penn intended, and stability proved elusive throughout Pennsylvania. Quakers provided most of the education in the city and colony’s early years. But without state support, it was never nearly adequate to serve the whole population.20 At the same time, centralized government did little to pick up the slack and shape local society in other colonies. In New Jersey, for instance, royal

18 Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms, 128–9. 19 Barry Levy, Town Born : The Political Economy of New England from Its Founding to the Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 3, 263–88. 20 On Philadelphia, see Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: Origins of American Political Practices in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 11–79. On the failure across Pennsylvania to establish social and political stability according to the founders’ plans, see John Smolenski, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), esp. 61–177. On the challenges faced by the “colonial state” in Pennsylvania during the first third of the eighteenth century, see Patrick K. Spero, “Creating Pennsylvania: The Politics of the Frontier and the State, 1682-1800” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009), 72–115.

45 institutions could not even secure basic social and political stability, let alone provide widespread education.21 Down into the Chesapeake, the search for stability was a torturous process. Though it eventually created a stable social and political order that balanced racial hierarchy with white-male democracy, Virginia spent almost a century perpetually on the brink of disintegration. And there too the development of education lagged.22 Similar problems plagued North Carolina, which like Pennsylvania had a potent anti-authoritarian streak but did not create stable local governance.23 Colonial officials there complained that biennial assembly elections precluded the possibility that the colony would elect a “reasonable Assembly.” According to the governor, because

North Carolina has “been so long in confusion,” assemblymen catered to a populace

“whose ignorance and want of education makes them obstruct everything for the good of the country even so much as the building of churches, or erecting of schools, or endeavouring to maintain a direct trade to Great Britain.”24 Here Governor Johnston drove at the paradox of educational development in the mid-Atlantic and upper South.

The lack of strong governance hindered the development of education. But the lack of education itself destabilized governance. It was a mutually reinforcing problem.

21 Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 107–11. 22 Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Colonial Virginia,” in Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 90–115. 23 Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 24 Governor Johnston to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Edenton, NC, Calendar of State Papers [hereafter CSP], item 410, vol. 42 (1735-1736): 304-309

The lack of education not only upset governance but church life as well. Regular colonists would most directly feel this lack of social cooperation—broadly a failure to create social capital—through religion. Congregationalists in New England founded

Harvard in 1636 and Yale in 1701, while Anglicans in Virginia founded the College of

William and Mary in 1693. These schools brought an imperfect degree of stability to their respective denominations. Colonial colleges trained some mid-Atlantic ministers.

This did little to ameliorate the situation, though, because most churches in the mid-

Atlantic were not Congregational or Anglican. Many churches in the region needed ministers trained abroad. Without local educational institutions, the colonies could not produce a sufficient number of ministers to serve all the churches in the region. Though colleges trained most ministers, religious groups had rarely founded them solely on their own. Most colleges emerged out of cooperation between religion and the state. Papal bulls provided the foundation of most of the Scottish and Irish universities with which colonial Presbyterians had a connection.25 History suggested to colonists that the state would step in to compensate for the lack of education. But the colonial state, it seemed, would not. In essence, then, the mid-Atlantic crisis of social capital bred a crisis in religious institutions. Only when this institutional crisis engulfed religion, did colonists finally stand a chance to mobilize in strong enough numbers to ameliorate the lack of

25 Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: The Shaping of a Nation (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1974), 244–5.

47 education, which in turn would have profound consequences for the creation of social capital writ large.26

Challenges to Religious Networks, Revivalism, and the Rise of the Log College

German and Dutch churches across the region suffered from a lack of qualified ministers. In Pennsylvania by 1740, no more than ten-percent of German Reformed and

German Lutheran congregations had settled clergymen. Dutch Reformed and Swedish and Dutch Lutheran congregations fared better, yet ordained ministers still only filled about half of the available pulpits at best. Denominations with well-developed ecclesiastical structures in Europe had the most difficult time providing ministers—and in turn creating institutional stability—for colonists. Comparatively, German pietistic sects like the Moravians fared much better. Their ecclesiastical informality—with no large church structures in the colonies or in Europe—made them more adaptable to the colonial environment, and they thrived both spiritually and economically.27 The basic problem that denominations faced was that ecclesiastical power rested in Europe. Colonists remained dependent on European co-religionists across the Atlantic to secure religious stability in North America. Old world schools trained, and old World institutions ordained, clergy, most of whom did not want to move to unsettled areas of North

America. Local congregations in the periphery had no role in this process so long as they

26 To colonists in Pennsylvania, the lack of education, clergy, and government intervention all added up to a failure to establish “good order of government.” In the long, run this shaped Pennsylvanians’ belief in the importance of an active state; see Pearl, “Good Order of Government,” esp. 85–114. 27 Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 101–25; Katherine Carte Engel, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 71–9. Also see Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 14–25.

48 recognized and stayed connected to their denominations in Europe. The clergymen who did come to the middle colonies found their power over their congregations severely limited by unusually independent-minded lay leaders who already blamed the clergy for religion’s impotence. From the lay point of view, problems of church authority placed obstacles on their personal road to salvation. Though not devised entirely in response to this growing crisis, the evangelical message of Theodorus Frelinghuysen, a Dutch

Reformed minister, provided a solution. Frelinghuysen’s preaching offered people a path to salvation through an emotional and personal conversion experience. While imbuing individuals with power over their personal spiritual destiny, Frelinghuysen also impelled the laity to see him as an authority. As the population stresses on denominations grew, this evangelical message spread and the clergy regained their power to shape the lives of the laity on terms that fit the peculiarities of life in North America. For the German denominations, revivalism solved at least some of the problem of weakened church authority in the colonies.28

A long history of intra-denominational infighting shaped how Presbyterians confronted the peculiar structural problems of building a denomination in colonial North

America. During the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century the Presbyterian

Church in Ulster, Ireland found its influence over the laity waning. Amid a rash of economic and political changes, Ulster Presbyterians increasingly looked to Irish civil institutions to settle disputes within the community. This threatened the Presbyterian

28 Lodge, “Crisis of the Churches”; and on Frelinghuysen, see Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 114–5. Also see Pearl, “Good Order of Government,” 85–96.

Church’s authority over the daily lives of the laity. As laypeople raised questions about the role of religion in public life, factions emerged within the Ulster Presbyterian Church.

“New Lights” represented groups that had most benefitted from economic changes, especially linen production. They welcomed the ascendance of civil institutions, embraced a British imperial identity, and harnessed the rhetoric of British rights to maintain their good fortune. “Old Lights” tried, to the contrary, to find innovative ways to bolster the strength of denominational authority in lieu of a formal religious establishment. In particular, they looked to the Westminster Confession of Faith—an expression of guiding principles and doctrines of Calvinism—to create and sustain their vision of orthodoxy. They reasoned that forcing ministers to subscribe to the Confession would encourage true religion among Presbyterians and secure the Synod of Ulster as an institutional bastion against the encroaching secular world.29

The Scottish Presbyterian Church experienced factionalism along similar lines to its counterpart in Ireland. In the Kirk, the so-called Moderate Party played the role of the

Irish “New Lights.” Centered in Scottish universities, they promoted a less doctrinaire version of Calvinism and a more rational sort of religion, which they hoped would connect the Church with the development and improvement of civil society. The Popular

Party coalesced to oppose the Moderates, defend hard line Calvinism, and build an identity based on their conception of traditional Presbyterianism.30 In both Ireland and

29 Patrick Griffin, The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689-1764 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), chap. 2, esp. 47–50. 30 On the moderates, see Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985). On the disputes among

Scotland, the emergence of people who advocated for a more malleable form of

Presbyterian piety, for a Presbyterian Church that made peace with changes in secular society, bred intra-denominational strife. In light of this, the North American colonies beckoned to more traditional groups. They saw the colonies as a place where they could fulfill their vision of creating a Church that taught true Calvinist religion and exercised profound power over the lives of the laity.31

In the main, between 1700 and 1730, Presbyterians were more successful than

Reformed and Lutheran denominations at providing institutional stability for colonists.

The creation of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1706 inaugurated a period of ecclesiastical organization in the mid-Atlantic. By the end of the 1717, the Church had created the Synod of Philadelphia, which oversaw active presbyteries based in

Philadelphia, New Castle, Delaware, and another on Long Island. The reach of their ecclesiastical organization however, was weak in the Pennsylvania backcountry, and the

Synod created the Presbytery of Donegal in 1732 to try and offset this disparity. Though the middle colonies had no schools producing ministers, these domestic church organizations had the power to ordain and regulate the clergymen who came to the middle colonies from universities in Scotland and New England. Presbyterians

Scottish Presbyterians, see Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683-1765 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 50–71; J. David Hoeveler, James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition: From Glasgow to Princeton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 8–9, 14–29; and also Hoeveler’s Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in the Colonial Colleges (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 118–22. 31 Ned C. Landsman, “Witherspoon and the Problem of Provincial Identity in Scottish Evangelical Culture,” in Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment, ed. Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 29–45 esp. 34-5; Griffin, People with No Name, 100–1.

51 successfully filled their pulpits, especially when compared with other denominations in the region. In the 1730s, however, even regions that Presbyterians had successfully organized began to feel the stress of population growth. More Irish arrived in the colonies during the 1730s than in the preceding three decades combined. At the same time, a new generation of staunch Presbyterians came to the colonies from southwestern areas of Scotland. The Church continued to add presbyteries and expand their ecclesiastical organization as immigrants arrived. But as the 1730s progressed,

Presbyterian networks proved insufficient and could not fill pulpits at the same rate as immigrants streamed into the colonies and started congregations.32

William Tennent, an Irish-born minister, led the way in bringing moderate evangelicalism to Presbyterians in the colonies. After nearly a decade in New York,

Tennent took charge of a Presbyterian congregation in Pennsylvania, where he spent the rest of his life. There Tennent created his “Log College,” a school that trained most of the early Presbyterian revivalist ministers from the mid-1720 to 1740. Even before he opened the school, however, Tennent educated his own children for the ministry and inculcated in them his belief in the importance of personal conversion experiences.33

Tennent’s eldest son, Gilbert, was particularly important in the making of the mid-

Atlantic Presbyterian awakening. The younger Tennent took from his father an abiding

32 On migration, see Aaron Fogleman, “Migrations to the Thirteen British North American Colonies, 1700- 1775: New Estimates,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (April 1992): 704–8; Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 176–7. On Presbyterian ecclesiastical development, see Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 28–30; Lodge, “Crisis of the Churches,” 201; and Griffin, People with No Name, 114–6. 33 Tennent believed that conversions were supposed to be painstaking, which Ned Landsman argues was a uniquely Scottish idea; see Scotland and Its First American Colony, 181–7.

52 faith in the power of evangelicalism. Yet he also came under the influence of the

Reformed minister Theodorus Frelinghuysen when both men served congregations in

New Brunswick, New Jersey. Gilbert Tennent came to accept the idea that church structure should not ever hamper a minister’s ability to save souls. Ironically then, though reared in a Scots-Irish Presbyterian tradition that valued order, Tennent’s trajectory led him to side with a contingent of New England Congregationalists that he opposed as recently as 1729 over the question of adopting the Westminster Confession in

North America. Historically, Tennent and the Congregationalists made for strange bedfellows. In the religious climate of the middle colonies during the 1730s, they became natural allies.34

A subset of colonial Presbyterians viewed the increasingly dire situation they faced as evidence of insufficient institutionalization. For many, this was a scary proposition. Old World experiences led many Scottish and Irish Presbyterians to conclude that declining ecclesiastical power allowed worldly ideas and institutions to supplant true religion and the Church as the organizing forces in people’s lives. Without properly enforced norms throughout the Church, orthodoxy and pan-Presbyterian unity would suffer. The fear of what might happen if Church order faltered often led many

Presbyterians to look for ways to strengthen ecclesiastical organizations. But the peculiarities of mid-Atlantic Presbyterianism had and would continue to hinder these efforts. For instance, throughout the 1720s, culminating in 1729, some Scottish and Irish

34 Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 133–42, 164; W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 270–3; Griffin, People with No Name, 144–5; and Kidd, Great Awakening, 28–31.

53 clergy pushed for the Synod of Philadelphia to adopt the Westminster Confession of

Faith, and make subscription to it a requirement for ordination. This never came to fruition, at least not as its proponents envisioned. A contingent of New England

Congregationalists who moved to the mid-Atlantic and identified with the Presbyterian

Church but never shed their Puritan roots stymied the effort. Concentrated especially in northeast New Jersey, these people believed that individual congregations, not hierarchical ecclesiastical institutions, best preserved true religion.35 The so-called

“Adopting Act” of 1729 was something of a compromise between these

Congregationalists and those hard-line Presbyterians who wanted to double down on ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Synod of Philadelphia adopted the Confession, though they allowed ministers to take issue with nonessential parts of it. Presbyteries also reserved the power to decide whether specific scruples were acceptable. In effect it fragmented the existing network of presbyteries by destabilizing the norms that should have united them.36

As the 1730s wore on, threats to existing Presbyterian networks came from other sources as well. The Presbyterian laity grew increasingly tired of plans to strengthen church hierarchies. The laity might support ecclesiastical hierarchies in the abstract. But

35 Edward P. Rindler, “The Migration from the New Haven Colony to Newark, East New Jersey: A Study of Puritan Values and Behavior, 1630-1720” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1977). 36 Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 30–3; Griffin, People with No Name, 118–24; Bryan F. LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 27–45; Ned C. Landsman, Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 131–2, 135. For the text of the “Adopting Act,” see Sep. 19, 1729, Guy Klett, Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706-1788 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1976), 103–4.

54 ineffective institutions did more harm than good, often closing off the path salvation.37

The way that the Congregationalist wing of mid-Atlantic Presbyterianism privileged piety over order, then, provided a useful model for an alternative means of religious organization. Revivalism also emerged, not coincidentally, during this crisis of faith in the power of Presbyterian Church institutions. Scottish and Irish Presbyterians had their own reasons for turning toward revivalism in the face of institutional strife. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Presbyterians in western Scotland and in Ulster regularly took part in multi-day religious communion built around the Lord’s Supper.

Bringing together laypeople from multiple congregations to hear emotional preaching, they ideally helped to revive religiosity when it faltered. These sorts of gatherings forced the laity to think deeply both about their personal piety and about their relationship to their co-religionists. Though emotional and somewhat disorderly, sacramental occasions served similar ends to church hierarchies, insofar as they intended to cultivate religious orthodoxy and community. Scottish and Irish Presbyterians brought these traditions across the Atlantic, just as they had their conceptions of ecclesiastical order.38 Many of the Scottish and Irish ministers who looked to ecclesiastical hierarchy upon arriving in the colonies would thus not necessarily find it theologically inconsistent to turn to revivalism when it seemed convenient and potentially more effective.39

37 Lodge, “Crisis of the Churches,” 217–9; and for more detail, see Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 56–69. 38 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton University Press, 1989); Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity, 15–73. 39 Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 267–8; Griffin, People with No Name, 125–6.

With support from ministers of multiple ethnic groups and wings within the

Church, Gilbert Tennent was well positioned to inaugurate a widespread revival of religion among colonial Presbyterians. Interestingly, Tennent did not flout ecclesiastical order at the outset. He tried to use the Synod to spread his evangelical ideals, arguing that the Church should ensure that ministers received grace and had a conversion experience. At first the synod was receptive. Tennent, though, often thought they did not go far enough in enacting his policy suggestions.40

Frustrated but emboldened, Tennent took his message to the laity. Concentrated near Tennent’s home base in New Jersey’s Raritan Valley, a small cadre of revivalists spent the early 1730s spreading an evangelical message on the ground. Quickly, a number of ministers grew weary of the Revival party’s increasingly audacious actions.

They fired a warning shot at a synod meeting in 1737, shortly after Tennent preached without permission to a congregation within the bounds of the Presbytery of

Philadelphia—Tennent’s church was, at that point, part of the Presbytery of East Jersey.

Declaring that “Inasmuch as God, who is a God of order, requires in an especial manner, that all the affairs of his kingdom on earth should be done decently and in order,” the

Synod forbade clergy from preaching at a church outside of their own presbytery without permission from the presbytery they entered. Congregational approval was not enough.

40 Sep. 24, 1734, in Records of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America Embracing the Minutes of the General Presbytery and General Synod 1706-1788, Together with an Index and the Minutes of the General Convention for Religious Liberty, 1766-1775. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1904), 108–9; Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 271–2. On Tennent and the Confession, see Griffin, People with No Name, 144.

With this, the anti-revivalists hamstrung the ability of ministers to spread evangelicalism through itinerant preaching.41

An unlikely coalition opposed the increasing power of the revival party. As the reaction to Tennent’s dalliance with itinerancy suggests, traditional proponents of ecclesiastical order divided over revivalism. Tennent’s followers toned down their commitment to ecclesiastical power and fell in with Congregationalists. But many Irish and Scottish ministers, men who emerged out of a similar milieu to the Tennents and had sided with them for decades, remained steadfast in their belief that ecclesiastical order was necessary to sustain orthodoxy even in the face of diminishing returns. They too found allies in their former enemies from the old country and the early decades of colonization. Led by the Irish-born but Glasgow-educated Francis Alison, these men descended from the Scottish Moderates and Irish New Lights—the groups that embraced the changing secular world at the expense of ecclesiastical power and, their critics charged, of religious orthodoxy. Their embrace of the Enlightenment led them to seek a more rational style of religion. The ascendant emotional revivalism was the antithesis of the piety they sought to spread. Somewhat unwittingly, these moderate rationalist

Presbyterians sided with the staunchest and most obdurate proponents of traditional ecclesiastical hierarchy.42

41 May 30, 1737, in Records of the Presbyterian Church, 132-3, my italics. 42 My interpretation of these factional alignments tracks closely with the work of Ned Landsman; see Crossroads of Empire, 168–9; and for a closer look at a single colony, see his Scotland and Its First American Colony, 231–2, 242–3. For a different perspective, see Elizabeth I. Nybakken, “New Light on the Old Side: Irish Influences on Colonial Presbyterianism,” Journal of American History 68 (March 1982): 813–832 esp. 816-7.

These unlikely alignments hardened in the wake of Tennent’s decision to yet again flout the will of the Synod and preach outside of his Presbytery without the requisite permission. Nevertheless, in 1738 the Synod seemed on the verge of forging a compromise that would allow these two factions to coexist. The Synod agreed to a reorganization of the presbyteries that the revivalists proposed. Namely, the Synod created the Presbytery of New Brunswick under the revivalists’ control. In exchange, the revivalists agreed to honor a new set of rules regarding itinerancy. Compromise was fleeting. Knowing that a number of revivalist candidates for the ministry were set to finish at William Tennent’s Log College in the very near future, the anti-revivalists decided to attack the school, the main source of the revivalists’ strength. They pushed through a rule that empowered the Synod, not the individual presbyteries, to vet candidates who had not attained a university degree in Europe or New England. In 1739, they revised the rule to limit the presbyteries’ power even further. With that, the anti- revivalists ensured that the new, pro-revival presbytery in New Brunswick lacked the authority to license the candidates that Tennent trained at the Log College. Rendered powerless to pursue their mission according to the rules of the Synod, the New

Brunswick Presbytery simply defied the Church hierarchy and licensed the candidates anyway.43

As these debates heated up, the New Side, as the revivalists came to be known, relied on famous popular evangelists to advance their message in ways that the anti-

43 May 25-26, 1738, and May 29, 1738, in Records of the Presbyterian Church, 136–7, 139–40. Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 156–62; Kidd, Great Awakening, 38–9.

58 revivalist Old Side could not hope to match. George Whitefield arrived in the mid-

Atlantic in 1739. The Old Side alleged that the New Side “drew [him] into their Party to encourage Divisions.”44 While in Pennsylvania, Whitefield publicly expressed his support for the Log College, declaring that he believed it “resemble[d] the school of the old prophets.” Similarly, faced with what he saw as the obstinate opposition of the Old

Side who continued to use the Synod to limit the revivalists’ ability to save souls, Gilbert

Tennent ratcheted up the rhetoric. In 1740, he gave his famous sermon, Dangers of an

Unconverted Ministry. The sermon accused Old Side ministers of impiety. Worse still, he argued that by limiting itinerancy, the Old Side obstructed the laity’s own ability to pursue a pious lifestyle and hear the best and most orthodox preachers. Finally, Tennent argued that to offset the influence of these “Pharisees,” the Church should support

“Private Schools of the Prophets,” like his father’s Log College.45 Recognizing the sensation it might cause, Benjamin Franklin published Tennent’s sermon as he had many of Whitefield’s. In the process, Tennent and Franklin broadcasted the internal machinations of the Presbyterian Church to people across the region, which altered the dynamics of the factional dispute.46

By the time Tennent and the evangelical New Side officially severed their relationship with the synod of Philadelphia in 1741, Presbyterians of all stripes

44 May 31, 1746, in Klett, Minutes, 212. 45 Whitefield and Tennent both quoted in Kidd, Great Awakening, 50, 60. See also, Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 36. 46 Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, Considered in a Sermon on Mark VI. 34. Preached at Nottingham, in Pennsylvania, March 8. Anno 1739,40. (Philadelphia: Printed by Benjamin Franklin, 1740). On the increasingly public nature of the controversies over revivalism, see Kidd, Great Awakening, 117–8.

59 understood that education would remain the central battleground for future intra- denominational competition. Religious groups themselves would have to build schools without substantial help from the state. In offering a feasible solution to the main problem facing the denomination in the mid-Atlantic, the lack of ministers, the Log

College set an important precedent. The Old Sides were acutely aware that this was the case. In 1746—the year that the New Side officially created the new, revivalist, synod of

New York—the Old-Side Synod of Philadelphia wrote a letter to the trustees of Yale in which they acknowledged that “Some years ago our Synod found the interest of Christ's kingdom likely to suffer in these parts for want of a college for the education of young men.” They had always understood the importance of education. Indeed they attacked the Log College precisely because it confronted the problem of denomination-building in the mid-Atlantic, and was thus the main source of strength for the growing revivalist movement. Both contingents of the uneasy anti-revival, now Old Side, coalition saw the

Log College as a grave threat to their worldviews. In the 1746 letter, one wing of the Old

Side, the defenders of church hierarchy, recalled that “Tennent set up a school among us, where some were educated, and afterwards admitted to the ministry,” though “without sufficient qualifications as was judged by many of the Synod.” In deference to the other wing of the Old Side coalition, which supported rational religion, the same letter added that “what made the matter look worse, those that were educated in this private way decried the usefulness of some parts of learning that we thought very necessary.” In essence, the Log College did not offer an enlightened enough education for their tastes.

Revivalism, they charged, blinded the New Side to the importance of creating a rational clergy.47

Their arguments were lucid, and certainly compelling to some. Yet even the Old

Side ministers recognized that it would take much more to explain their decision to oppose the Log College, the only viable mechanism anyone had devised to ameliorate the pervasive shortage of clergy that wracked the Church for the better part of a decade. The narrative of the dispute, which they relayed to Yale in 1746, drew attention to the fact that they had actually started to develop a plan for a college. In the late 1730s, the Old

Side did set about “appointing commissioners to Britain, &c. to promote the thing.” But, they argued, when “the war with Spain was proclaimed,” they had to “put a stop to our proceedings.” Only then, they claimed, did they create the new licensing rules that threatened the Log College. With their plan to promote education scuttled by the War of

Jenkins’ Ear, they figured they would regulate the existing school.48 In reality, when they passed the first licensing rule in 1738, the War had not yet interfered with their plans.

Only in 1739, the year the Synod passed the more stringent licensing rule, did the War of

Jenkins’ Ear hinder their efforts.49 The War undoubtedly slowed down the Old Side’s effort to build a school, but that did not change the fact that they still opposed the Log

College well before they had come anywhere close to providing an alternative. In reality, the War provided the Old Side with a pretext for their decision to embolden the power of

47 May 31, 1746, in Klett, Minutes, 211–14. On the differing educational priorities of the Old and New Sides, see Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 164–7, 184–8. 48 May 31, 1746, in Records of the Presbyterian church, 185. 49 The first mention of the War’s impact on their plans to create a school is from May 29, 1739, in Records of the Presbyterian Church, 149. See also LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson, 167.

61 the Synod, which obscured their real goal of simply limiting the revivalists’ power. Their fears were probably overblown. Nearly everyone who trained with Tennent at the Log

College entered the clergy. But the graduates numbered fewer than twenty, hardly enough to offset the shortage of clergymen that plagued the whole region.

Nevertheless, the Log College made an impression. If the Awakening was a purely spiritual event, revivalism might have offered a more permanent solution to religious communities. Yet a crisis in social capital formation was the underlying problem that created the Awakening, and ten years of conflict over evangelicalism had only made it apparent to everyone that education was the solution. That the Old Side felt the need to use the War of Jenkins’ Ear as an excuse shows that the Old Side knew that they would need to create some school if they hoped to retain any sway over the laity.

Revivalism could save souls. But schools, colonists realized, would foster networks that would sustain religion more generally. It was patently obvious to laity and clergy alike that domestic education was the key to solving the ministerial shortage and bringing some semblance of order to Presbyterianism in the region. In fact, the Old Side’s vehement attacks on the Log College actually amplified the sense of urgency for expanding educational opportunity in the region. Old Side attempts to limit the power of revivalism widened the gulf within the Church and ensured that education would figure prominently in the coming years. This particular and peculiar moment of intra- denominational competition engendered a sort of cold war, an educational arms race between the Old and New Sides. This proved to be one of the most productive conflicts the mid-Atlantic would ever know. This was the Awakening’s main legacy.

Bonding Social Capital: Educational Competition and the Creation of Factional

Networks

Delaware and parts of Pennsylvania hardly experienced any revivals during the

Awakening. Viewed from the vantage point of education, though, the Awakening cut almost as deep in Old-Side dominated Delaware and areas of Pennsylvania as in New

Side areas of New Jersey. In 1744, the Old Side Synod of Philadelphia finally created a school. Their goal was, of course, “to educate youths for supplying our vacancies” in the clergy. That said, the Synod specified that “all persons who please may send their children and have them instructed gratis in the Languages, Philosophy, and Divinity.”

The Old Side wanted the school to draw together its entire constituency. A broad educational mission would make this goal easier to achieve, especially because one wing of their coalition remained deeply enmeshed in the Enlightenment world of the Scottish

Moderate Party. The Synod “agreed that every Congregation under our Care” should help to financially support the school. They also provided that the trustees of the school would include members of both the Philadelphia and the New Castle Presbyteries. At the same time, they considered a proposal from the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church in

Bucks County, which had inquired as to “whether the Dutch Churches may be joined in

Communion with said Synod.” The Synod said they were willing to “joyn with the

Calvinist dutch Churches here,” in part to promote common religious interest, but

63 especially “with Desire yt they may help in educating men for the work of the

Ministry.”50

To lead the school, they Synod appointed Francis Alison, the Irish-Born, Scottish educated, Old-Side stalwart. Interestingly, they also specified that he “is exempted from all publick Business, save only attending Church Judicatures.” This important work would require Alison’s undivided attention.51 Alison ran the school for almost a decade in

New London, Pennsylvania. When he left, one of his former students, Alexander

McDowell, took over the school. McDowell brought the school to New Castle and later

Newark, Delaware, where it evolved into the University of Delaware. Matthew Wilson, another of Alison’s former students, taught at the Newark Academy as well as another academy in Lewes, Delaware. James Latta, also an Alison student, ran an academy in

Chestnut Level, Pennsylvania. Measured in terms of revivals, the Awakening had no discernible effect in Delaware or Old Side strongholds in Pennsylvania. Yet in terms of education, the Awakening utterly remade these areas.52

The growth of New Side education kept pace during the 1740s.53 Jonathan

Dickinson—a Yale-educated minister who helped to garner support for the revivals

50 May 25, 1744, in Klett, Minutes, 197–9. 51 May 25, 1744, in Klett, Minutes, 198. 52 Thomas Clinton Pears, Jr., “Francis Alison, Colonial Educator,” Delaware Notes 17 (1944): 9–22; John A. Munroe, The University of Delaware : A History (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, 1986), 11–4; Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, 1971), 57–8; G. S Rowe, Thomas McKean: The Shaping of an American Republicanism (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1978), 7–8. 53 On New Side schools, see Jacob Newton Beam, “Dr. Robert Smith’s Academy at Pequea, Pennsylvania,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society VIII (Dec. 1915): 145–161; Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746-1896 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 11; Henry D. Funk, “The Influence of the Presbyterian Church in Early American History,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society XII (April 1924): 152–89 and the list of academies, 184-6; J.D. Edmiston Turner, “Reverend Samuel Blair,

64 among the New England Congregationalists who affiliated with the Presbyterian

Church—ran a small school in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey. In 1746, “to supply the very numerous vacencies[sic] in all those provinces as far as Virginia, with qualified

Candidates of the Ministry,” and to balance out Alison’s academy, Dickinson and his colleagues asked for and received a charter to found the College of New Jersey

(Princeton University) in Elizabeth Town.54 Dickinson died shortly thereafter. The school then moved to Newark, New Jersey, where Aaron Burr, Sr., who had also run a small school out of his home in the early 1740s, took charge. Around the same time, alumni of the Log College opened a slew of fairly successful academies. Samuel Blair ran an academy in Fagg’s Manor, Pennsylvania. Blair trained Samuel Davies, who taught young people in his parish in Hanover, Virginia before eventually taking over the presidency of the College of New Jersey. Blair also taught Robert Smith, whose academy in Pequea, Pennsylvania opened in 1751 and operated into the 1790s. There

Smith taught his son, Samuel Stanhope Smith, who helped found Hampden-Sydney

College and also served president of the College of New Jersey. Robert Smith also trained a future president of the University of Pennsylvania and other students who set up academies as far away as North Carolina. Samuel Finley ran a school in West

1712-1751,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 29 (Dec. 1951): 227–36; Sloan, Scottish Enlightenment, 55–61, and the list of schools, 281–4; Elizabeth Nybakken, “In the Irish Tradition: Pre- Revolutionary Academies in America,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (July 1997): 163–183; Murray S. Shereshewsky, “Academy Keeping and the Great Awakening: The Presbyterian Academies, College of New Jersey, and the Creation of a New Jersey Way, 1727-1768” (Ph. D. Diss., New York University, 1980); Nina Reid-Maroney, Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740-1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001); Kidd, The Great Awakening, 31–2. 54 Jonathan Dickinson to Theophilus Howell, Jan. 30, 1746/7, Elizabeth Town, NJ, in Jonathan Dickinson Collection, PUL.

Nottingham, Pennsylvania, before taking charge of the College of New Jersey. In 1756,

Finley boasted that “We have a number of hopefully pious youth looking towards [?] ministry, severals[sic] of whom have been, & now are, at my school.”55 Finley also trained a large number of men who went on to successful careers in other professions, especially medicine.56

The zeal for education that the Awakening triggered spread beyond

Presbyterians.57 In 1749, Benjamin Franklin publicized a plan for what became the

Academy of Philadelphia, which also received a charter for an affiliated college a few years later. Franklin hired the Anglican minister William Smith to take charge of the schools, and brought in the Old-Side Presbyterian Francis Alison to teach there as well.

Whereas founders of denominational schools tended to harp on their importance to clerical education, Franklin envisioned that “Youth will come out of this School fitted for learning any Business, Calling or Profession” and ready to “execute the several Offices of civil Life.”58 The school was ostensibly non-sectarian, though the teachers fought to control it for their denominations. Moreover, Franklin and his school bore the influence of the Awakening. Franklin maintained a mutually beneficial business relationship with

George Whitefield, printing his sermons and promoting his preaching. The Academy

55 Samuel Finley to Joseph Bellamy, Nov. 25, 1756, Nottingham, box 1, folder 2, Samuel Finley Collection, PUL. 56 Scott A. Mills, History of West Nottingham Academy - 1744-1981 (Lanham, MD: Maryland Historical Press, 1985), 23–5; and Reid-Maroney, Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 4, 95–114. 57 For an important analysis of how the enthusiasm of the Awakening engulfed Anglicans and Quakers in Pennsylvania, see Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Ommohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 201–34. 58 Benjamin Franklin, Idea of the English School, Sketch’d Out for the Consideration of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Academy (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, 1751), 8.

66 itself occupied a building originally constructed so that Whitefield had a place to preach in Philadelphia.59

New Yorkers also felt an increasing sense of urgency to create a college in this milieu, which led to the chartering of King’s College (Columbia University). Though the initial impetus for the College was not religious, Anglicans viewed the proposed school as a place to entrench their particular vision of the Anglophone Enlightenment. A very public fight over the school’s charter played out in the press between Anglicans and group of upstart Presbyterians. Along with two other young men, William Livingston, a

Yale-educated lawyer, began publishing a serial journal in New York called The

Independent Reflector. Aimed at stymieing Anglican plans to turn the proposed school into a bastion of their Church, the Reflector focused on the importance of education to maintaining liberty. The expansion of Presbyterian academies still conditioned how New

Yorkers interpreted the debate over the College. In one issue, Livingston drew attention to the importance of “those little Country Seminaries, that the Scotch” developed. These schools had provided a model for the Presbyterian academies sprouting up across the mid-Atlantic. Supporters planned for King’s College to far outstrip the average denominational academy in size and influence.60

59 Cremin, Colonial Experience, 402–5; Frank Lambert, “’Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Great Awakening,” Journal of American History 77 (Dec. 1990): 812–837. 60 Independent Reflector, New York, Nov. 8, 1753, no. L, 202. See also John L. Brooke, Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 240. On the King’s College dispute generally, see Cremin, Colonial Experience, 405–6; Ned C. Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 159–62; Robert A. McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754-2004 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 8–9. Michael D. Hattem, “‘Anglifying' an Empire: Cultural Politics and Imperial

The expansion of Presbyterian academies also influenced the founders of Queen’s

College in New Jersey. As late as the 1760s, the Dutch Reformed Church still suffered from a lack of ministers. Church leaders looked throughout New Jersey and saw a colony

“consisting of many churches and religious assemblies, the ministers and elders of which have taken into serious consideration, the manner in which the said churches might be properly supplied with an able, learned and well qualified ministry.” Based on what they saw Presbyterians doing, leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church thought it would be

“very desirous that a College might be erected for that purpose.” Queen’s College (now

Rutgers University) was the result.61 Neither education’s role in religious disputes, nor the role of religious disputes in expanding education showed signs of abating.

The importance of individual schools to entire denominations changed the dynamics of religious life and put a new premium on trans-regional networks. Whereas disputes had long occurred within congregations or presbyteries, they now occurred between presbyteries and within a synod. And after 1746, debates occurred between competing synods with vast geographical reaches. Even groups that sought to use revivalism to supplant powerful ecclesiastical structures ended up using new organizations to their benefit. Jonathan Dickinson was probably the most emblematic example of this change. Before the Awakening, Dickinson brought an insular,

Congregationalist perspective to mid-Atlantic Presbyterianism. Like his New England forbearers, he saw the congregation as the most significant ecclesiastical unit. But by the

Anglicanism in the Middle Colonies, 1749-1757” (unpublished manuscript, July 20, 2013), PDF file, explores the vision of Enlightenment that the school’s Anglican supporters hoped it would inculcate. 61 Charter of a College to Be Erected in New-Jersey, by the Name of Queen’s-College (New York: Printed by John Holt, 1770), 5.

68 mid-1740s, Dickinson took an active role in the Presbytery of New York and played a key part in creating the revivalist Synod as well. The nature of the Awakening controversies required people to create wide-ranging alliances in defense of one position or another.62 Schools made unique contributions to these Presbyterian regional networks.

If they worked as planned, schools would convey the theological and sociological positions of a denominational faction at an ideological and even emotional level.

Agreements within a synod could be, more or less, political. But school gave religious ties a friendly and sometimes familial tone. Many of the teachers went to school with one another before taking up pulpits where they preached to and educated the next generation. The men who ran schools, especially those involved with colleges certain academies, also tended to be among the most prominent clergymen and they trained the most prominent laypeople. These men would become church decision makers. Personal relationships built through schools undergirded their handling of Church business.

Samuel Davies, the future president of the College of New Jersey, understood that schools and factional ecclesiastical structures were mutually reinforcing institutions. In

1753, while still a preacher and teacher in Virginia, the trustees of the College tapped

Davies to cross the Atlantic to try and raise money for the New Side school. Davies, always reluctant to leave his wife and his congregation, ultimately decided to accept. He realized that the College “is of the greatest Importance to the Interests of Religion and

Learning in 3 Colonies, New-York, the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, and to the Dissenters in

62 LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson, 146–50.

Maryland, Virginia and both Carolina’s.”63 Davies clearly valued the wide-ranging impact his efforts could have. Later in life he remarked that “the service of God & mankind is not a local thing in my View.”64 In light of this, he reasoned “that Providence has directed the Trustees to make application for me,” instead of someone from New

Jersey.65 Both the means and the ends of this venture seemed designed to reinforce regional links among the New Side.

The first part of Davies’ journey, before he boarded a vessel for Europe, would take him up the east coast. The work of building regional religious networks was not always pleasant. Throughout his diary, Davies bemoaned that “I am still stung with the

Tho’ts of Home. My dear Wife frequently enters my Mind, and raises a passionate

Commotion there.” Yet friendly encounters with colleagues helped sustain Davies during the early part of his journey.66 His experiences underscore the importance of schools to the unification of the New-Side-Presbyterian mid-Atlantic. Amid the homesickness and constant pangs of despair that he was unqualified to succeed at his appointed task, Davies frequently found that “My soul was rejoiced to see my old Friends, and observe the

Continuance of their Respect for me.”67 One of Davies’ first stops along the way was at

Samuel Finley’s church in West Nottingham, along the border of Pennsylvania and

Maryland. After preaching there, Davies “Conversed with my ingenious and dear Friend,

63 Jul. 2, 1753, in George William Pilcher, ed., The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad: The Diary of a Journey to England and Scotland, 1753-55 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 2. 64 Davies to David Cowel, Hanover, VA, Sep. 14, 1758, folder 2, Samuel Davies Papers, PHS. 65 Jul. 2, 1753, in Pilcher, The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad, 5–6. 66 Sep. 12, 1753, in Ibid., 12. 67 Oct. 17, 1753, in Ibid., 21.

Mr. Finley.”68 The two teachers did some committee work for the Church, before Davies continued on his journey.69 Next he stayed with the widow of his former teacher, Samuel

Blair. Davies reveled in “having so many valuable Friends in various Parts!” Being at

Blair’s reminded Davies in particular of “my old Walks about her House in the happy

Days of my Education,” which “raised a Variety of tender and solemn Tho’ts in my

Mind.” Two days later, Davies “Rode into Philadelphia, was kindly received by Mr.

Tennent and my Friends there.”70 He spent a few weeks in Philadelphia meeting with men from other denominations, as well as at least one representative of the Old Side

Synod. Davies also found the time to converse with “a promising youth” from the

College of New Jersey.71 Early in the next month, Davies “Saw my dear Friend Mr.

Rodgers,” another of Blair’s former students.72 And before he rode again to Mrs. Blair’s in Fagg’s Manor for a Presbytery meeting, he “Visited the Academy in Company with sundry of my Brethren; and entertained with a View of what was remarkable in it.” He liked some of what he saw, but criticized the students’ renditions “of Brutus and M.

Antony” as “extremely languid, and discovered Nothing of the Fire and Pathos of a

Roman Soul.”73 These thoughts about education were fresh when he returned to Blair’s.

Being there evoked “the Image of the incomparable Mr. Blair, once my Minister and

Tutor, but now in superior Regions.”74 Davies’ trip constantly reminded him of the

68 Sep. 9, 1753, in Ibid., 10–1. 69 Sep. 11, 1753, in Ibid., 11. 70 Sep. 15, 1753, in Ibid., 13. 71 Sep.27, 1753, in Ibid., 16. 72 Oct. 3, 1753, in Ibid., 18. 73 Oct. 8, 1753, in Ibid., 19. 74 Oct. 9, 1753, in Ibid., 20.

71 importance of educational institutions to his own life and the lives of many of his friends.

Most importantly, the trip reinforced that education, more than anything, created the bonds—the social capital—that tied together New Side Presbyterians across the region.

The factionalism of colonial Presbyterianism followed Davies and his partner,

Gilbert Tennent, across the Atlantic. Tennent’s reputation as the author of Dangers of an

Unconverted Ministry preceded him. The envoy had to constantly try and explain away the divisive arguments in the tract. Davies, however, saw something more nefarious afoot. He was “shocked to think of the inveterate Malignity of the Synod of Philad. who have sent their Accusations after Mr. Tennent so far.” 75 Davies believed, in short, that he and Tennent confronted so much opposition because the Old Side had actively tried to prejudice people against their mission before they even arrived in Britain.

Much as this interference clarified the importance of their work to the intra- denominational dispute at home, it also altered their tactics while abroad. Davies and

Tennent found themselves contending with “charges that the College was a Party-

Design.” This of course was true; the trustees saw the College as a vehicle to train revivalist New Side ministers. But just as in the colonies, Presbyterians in Britain did not uniformly support revivalism. Highlighting the school’s role in breeding intra- denominational factionalism would limit the potential funding base. Moreover, the men pitched the school to people of many denominations. To do this, Tennent and Davies had to emphasize the ‘catholic’ nature of the school’s charter, which explicitly prohibited the

College from excluding students who did not share the denominational affiliation or

75 Jan. 22, 1754, in Ibid., 60.

72 theological ideals of the trustees.76 In some instances, when faced with groups “would not countenance the College, unless it were upon a catholic Plan,” Davies and Tennent

“shewed them the Charter, and they were satisfied.”77 But it was not always so easy.

Around a month after they arrived, Davies conceded that “I think if we can but clear our

Expences, we shall be well off.” Just as Davies and Tennent prepared themselves for failure, their luck finally turned.78

Toward the very end of their time in the British Isles, Davies and Tennent won an unequivocal victory. In the most dramatic moment of the trip, in May of 1754, they appealed to the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for assistance.

Nobody spoke against the College. Davies gushed that “The Approbation of the General

Assembly will be attended with many happy Consequences; particularly, it will recommend our College to the World, and wipe off the Odium form the Synod of New-

York, as a Parcel of Schismatics.”79 Rather disingenuously, Davies and Tennent had convinced enough European Protestants that they and the school were not simply agents of a single faction. Eventually the school would shed its factional mission, but at that moment the College of New Jersey was the centerpiece of intra-denominational competition. It is unclear exactly how much money Davies and Tennent raised— sometimes Davies wrote down details about donations, and sometimes he did not—but it was certainly a few thousand pounds. Later in 1754, the College used this money to

76 Jan. 22, 1754, in Ibid. See also George William Pilcher, “Preacher of the New Light, Samuel Davies, 1724-1761” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1963), 152–7. 77 Jan. 5, 1754, in Pilcher, The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad, 49. 78 Jan. 23, 1754, in Ibid., 61. 79 May 27, 1754, in Ibid., 96.

73 begin construction on a massive building, Nassau Hall, in Princeton, New Jersey, where the trustees had decided to lay down the school’s permanent roots. The building opened in 1756.80

The mission’s success and the erection of Nassau Hall were important episodes in the New Sides’ triumph over the Old Side. Both events mattered on the regional level.

The envoy’s success revealed the already existing strength of the New Side’s factional networks. Davies relied on overlapping educational and religious networks for support during his mission. But his work made possible the continued vitality of New Side education, which in turn allowed the faction to, more or less, ‘win’ the mid-Atlantic

Awakening. When the Synods of New York and Philadelphia reunited in 1758, and the official schism ended, the number of Old Side ministers had declined while the New Side clergy increased nearly three-fold. Theologically, revivalism had triumphed and the ascendance of New Side schools ensured that this would continue.81 That Davies, a

Virginian, helped make the New Side’s ascendance possible through his work on behalf of a college in New Jersey reflected the degree to which religious disputes in the mid-

Atlantic cemented the interconnectedness of the region as a whole. Education was the main source of bonding social capital that connected factional networks across the mid-

Atlantic and upper South.

80 Pilcher, “Preacher of the New Light,” 175–6; Wertenbaker, Princeton, 35–6. 81 Lodge, “Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies,” 280; Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity, 204–5. While Lodge and Westerkamp differ vastly in their approaches to studying the Awakening, they both agree that, in broad strokes, revivalist religion triumphed.

Intra-Denominational Competition After the Presbyterian Reunion of 1758

In 1746, the New Side-dominated Presbytery of New York seceded from the

Synod of Philadelphia, creating a new Synod of New York. In 1758, the two synods reunited as the Synod of New York and Philadelphia. This official 1758 reunion of the

Presbyterian Church in the middle colonies, though, was illusory.82 Surely the rejoining of the synods reconnected the Old and New Sides in very fundamental and tangible ways.

But competition between factions continued unabated. With the reunited Synod dominated by New Side sympathizers, it was clear that one group had the upper hand within the ecclesiastical structures of the Church. Divisions persisted and factions continued to fight the battles of the Awakening through education. This sapped some of the strength of the Presbyterian Church within the religious marketplace of the 1760s and

1770s. Yet the continued infighting also ensured that building schools remained an imperative. Presbyterian educational development could easily have stagnated in 1758.

In fact, there were fleeting attempts to consolidate major Old and New Side schools.

Instead, educational competition flourished. On the one hand, educational competition was divisive. On the other hand, education was productive. It created social capital, albeit for competing religious factions. In the very long term, the proliferation of schools reached a critical mass when teachers and trustees felt compelled to broaden the mission

82 For other views of the 1758 reunion, see Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 250–5; Marilyn J. Westerkamp, “Division, Dissension, and Compromise : The Presbyterian Church During the Great Awakening,” Journal of Presbyterian history 78 (Spring 2000): 14–7; John Fea, “In Search of Unity : Presbyterians in the Wake of the First Great Awakening,” Journal of Presbyterian history 86 (Fall/Winter 2008): 53–60; as well as Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 40–47.

75 of denominational schools in order to compete for enrollments, which actually undermined schools’ disintegrative tendencies.

In light of the official ecclesiastical reunion, the College of New Jersey became the main source of tension between the Old and New Sides. The reunion coincided with a turbulent time in Princeton. The College president, Aaron Burr Sr., died in the fall of

1757. In early 1758, Burr’s father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards, moved down from New

England and assumed the presidency of the College, though he died less than two months later. His successor, Samuel Davies lasted only two years. Another staunch New Side minister, Samuel Finley, took over for his good friend Davies. Finley died in 1766, the latest in the long line of New Side leaders. The New Side had no logical successor to appoint to the College presidency. The vacancy, then, opened a window for the New and

Old Side to reconcile, a window that closed very fast. Many members of the Old Side firmly believed that cooperation was particularly necessary at that moment in time.

Francis Alison had served on the faculty of the College and Academy of Philadelphia for a number of years. But according to an Old Side partisan, Samuel Purviance, Alison seemed “determind to leave … which will certainly ruin Phila College” for

Presbyterians.83 Whenever Alison chose to relinquish his post at the College and

Academy of Philadelphia, the Old Side would no longer have any influence on the school. After that point, “By supporting ye College of Philada the Flower of our youth are

83 Samuel Purviance to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, Nov. 1, 1766, in Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, 1755-1794: With A Selection from His Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916), 558. Excerpts of the letter are also available in Lyman Henry Butterfield, ed., John Witherspoon Comes to America: A Documentary Account Based Largely on New Materials (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1953), 4–5.

76 every Day perverted by the Intrigues of that designing subtile mortal Dr. Smith,” the

Anglican leader of the school. Around the same time, Governor William Franklin agreed to charter Queen’s College, “doubtless with ye most unfriendly Intentions agst the present

College & the Interest of Presbyterians in general,” Purviance reasoned.84 The growing strength of other denominations tempered some of the Old Side’s appetite to fight the

New Side. One observer noted that Anglicans’ “success here and at n. York” in creating schools, along with their role in assisting the Dutch Reformed Church’s efforts to procure a charter for Queen’s College “at Brunswick 15 Miles from Princeton … renders a very particular attention to the Concerns of that Seminary highly necessary.” The growing movement among Anglicans “to introduce Bishops” to North America added to the sense of urgency and made “a close Union among ourselves [Presbyterians] absolutely necessary.” Unfortunately, “that is yet far from having taken place & perhaps nothing has so much prevented it as a mistaken Zeal to promote the N. Jersey Coll.”85 The changing religious marketplace of the 1760s put pressure on Presbyterians to unify, but the factionalism of the Awakening died hard.

The Old Side saw Finley’s death as something of an opportunity. A number of

Francis Alison’s students had opened academies, but the Old Side still did not control a chartered college. Though the line between good academies and colleges was fairly porous, chartered colleges could grant formal degrees and possessed a certain cachet.

With the New Side scrambling to find a replacement for Finley, Old Side leaders

84 Samuel Purviance to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1766, in Dexter, Ezra Stiles, 559. 85 John Wallace to Archibald Wallace, Philadelphia, Dec. 4, 1766, in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 17.

“propose[d] to have the Institution put on a new Plan, to have 4 able Professors appointed

& Dr. Alison at their Head.”86 Alison and two of the professors would belong to the Old

Side, and the other two professors would belong to the New Side. It was a fairly moderate proposal that honored, in practice if not entirely in spirit, the sense that cooperation between Presbyterian factions was possible and desirable.

The Old Side’s mistrust of the New Side shaped their tactics in nominating Alison to the presidency of the College. This cast doubt on their insistence that their plan was in fact moderate. “So sensible are we of the narrow Biggotry of our Brethren the New

Lights,” the Old Side tried to keep their plan quiet in advance of the synod meeting. This only made their efforts look clandestine.87 The Old Side’s “Memorial was treated contemptuously” by the New Side and the plan to create a unified College of New Jersey was scrapped. Perhaps the most obvious solution for creating an Old Side college rested with Alison’s old academy in Delaware. The Newark Academy had consistent enrollments and good teachers. But the Old Side had opted to try and forge a compromise in the College of New Jersey in the first place largely because they worried that trying to strengthen the Newark Academy would only further inflame tensions.

Purviance, for instance, feared that “if we attempt converting our flourishing Schl. at

New Ark into a Seminary for ourselves, we must unavoidably perpetuate the unhappy

Parties that destroy our common Interest & Strength,” and undermine Presbyterianism

86 Samuel Purviance to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, Nov. 1, 1766, in Dexter, Ezra Stiles, 557. Excerpts of the letter are also available in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 4. 87Samuel Purviance to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, Nov. 1, 1766, in Dexter, Ezra Stiles, 557.

78 altogether. “In this disagreeable situation, encroach’d by our Adversaries, & rejected by our Friends,” Old Sides asked, “whither shal we turn ourselves?”88

Ultimately, though, the struggle for control of the College of New Jersey that followed laid bare the persistent tensions between the Old and New Sides. The New Side proved unwilling to strike a middle ground. They justified their obstinacy by pointing to the Old Side’s disingenuous tactics in proposing their compromise. Nevertheless, the evidence bears out Old Side suspicions of the New Side’s “Biggotry.” Benjamin Rush played a leading role in recruiting John Witherspoon, a staunch member of the evangelical party in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, to take the presidency of the

College. Rush wrote to Witherspoon that “I am pretty well acquainted with the

Characters of most of our eminent Clergymen in America.” Rush was “convinced there is not one of them thoroughly qualified for the office of being President of the College.”

He conceded that “Dr. Allison is the only man who has the Reputation and scholarship eno [sic] for it.” Hiring him, however, was not an option so far as Rush and the New

Sides were concerned. He could scarcely convey “how awful would such a step be to the interests of Religion.” Rush believed that Alison was “a man of the moste virulent and bitter Temper, & had from [the?] Beginning of his life shown himself an enemy to vital

Religion.”89 The reunion of 1758 notwithstanding, supporters of the New Side still largely perceived the Old Side as a threat to orthodoxy. Archibald Wallace, an

Edinburgh resident who seems to have worked closely with Rush in recruiting

88 Samuel Purviance to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1766, in Ibid., 558–60. 89 Benjamin Rush to John Witherspoon, Edinburgh, Apr. 23, 1767, in folder, John Witherspoon papers, N- JHS.

Witherspoon, certainly saw it that way. In a telling letter to Witherspoon, Wallace wrote that “the old side will always be the old side till God give them grace, and then they become the new Side, and will unite, but not till then.”90 Unification was not possible in any meaningful way without compromise. But compromise was not likely when the New

Side so mistrusted the Old. The revivals might have subsided, but some New Side

Presbyterians seemed to think that the conflicts that the Awakening created would be a fight to the death.

Other New Sides seemed to value Presbyterian unity slightly more than Rush and

Wallace. Richard Stockton, a trustee of the College, also wrote to John Witherspoon in an effort to recruit him to come to New Jersey. The letter betrayed Stockton’s anxieties about how the New Side treated the Old, especially in regards to the College. From his perspective, there were limited options. The New Side might “turn to our old

Antagonists and thereby let them in by wholesale.” By this, Stockton meant supporting the Old Side gambit for taking over the College with Alison as the president. Of course, the Old Side plan might simply alter the balance of power without relieving any of the underlying tension. Yet if the New Side continued on its current path, Stockton wrote,

“we make them [the Old Side] greater Enemies than ever by totally neglecting them” and their interests and perspectives.91

Stockton’s misgivings aside, the New Side ultimately got their man. In 1768 John

Witherspoon left his home in Paisley, Scotland to take charge of the college at Princeton.

90 Wallace to Witherspoon, Edinburgh, Feb. 6, 1767, in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 26. 91 Stockton to Witherspoon, London, April 14, 1767, in Ibid., 38.

Some contemporaries and historians alike have portrayed Witherspoon’s election as a triumph of a moderate course and a harbinger of a sincere Presbyterian reunification.92 In the long view, Witherspoon’s career bears out this interpretation to a certain extent. But the infectious moderate evangelicalism that Witherspoon eventually developed was far from inevitable. When he first set foot in the western hemisphere, it was relatively unlikely. Rush’s relentless efforts at recruiting Witherspoon preyed on the Scot’s fears of the corrosive potential of men like Alison, men who looked an awful lot like the old

Scottish Moderate party. If Witherspoon did not get the implication, Anthony Wallace spelled it quite clearly. Without a hint of subtlety, Wallace informed Witherspoon that

“the old side … are the Robertsons & Carlisles of that side of the watter[sic].”93 With

Alison and the Old Sides seemingly ready to pounce and the growing threat of other denominations looming, Witherspoon undoubtedly shared the trustees’ sense of urgency.

The trustees certainly hoped that was the case. Rush wrote to Witherspoon that “You will likewise see in what Danger and Difficulties the College is involved—how thick and fast its Enemies encrease—and how much the hearts of its pious Friends are trembling for

Fear that united Forces of civil and religious Combinations will end in the Ruin of the

College.”94 Witherspoon found this line of argument at least somewhat compelling. In

92 Wertenbaker, Princeton, 52; Westerkamp, “Division, Dissension, and Compromise,” 16–7. For a very nuanced perspective on the issue, which focuses on the ethnic unification of Scots that Witherspoon helped engender in the decade prior to the American Revolution, see Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 251–4. 93 Wallace to Witherspoon, Edinburgh, Feb. 6, 1767, in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 25. Alexander Carlyle and William Robertson were central figures in the intellectual circles of the Scottish Moderate Party, described most fully in Sher, Church and University. 94 Rush to Witherspoon, [Edinburgh?], Oct. 23, 1767, typescript in folder 3, Benjamin Rush Papers, PUL. The original copy of this letter is closed to researchers.

81 fact, for a time it seemed as though arguments against the Old Side mattered more to

Witherspoon than those about the good he might do as president of the College. Towards the end of 1767, Witherspoon informed Rush that “I assure you I have had many

Thoughts upon that Account of declining the thing altogether since what you chiefly feared Dr Allison or any of his party getting in has not happened.”95 Witherspoon never entirely shed these prejudices after he took the helm of the College of New Jersey.

Presbyterian factions continued to use schools as proxies for their larger competition well after Witherspoon’s election. In 1773, the Newark Academy sent John Ewing on a fundraising trip to Britain to raise money for the school. When he arrived in London,

Ewing found his efforts hampered by Witherspoon. Everywhere he went, it seemed, he confronted people influenced by “Dr. Witherspoon’s letters against the Design of our mission.”96 Ewing tried in vain to secure a copy of Witherspoon’s letters. To offset their effects, Ewing worked to enlist people who would “undertake to prove that

[Witherspoon] may appear here in his proper colours.” Ewing evidently also asked

Alison to send “authentic proofes of the Falsehood of Dr. Witherspoons assertions.” He hoped, especially, for documentation proving that the Newark Academy predated the

College of New Jersey and that the school’s “Trustees applied for and obtained synodical

Recommendation of that Academy.”97

Well into the 1770s, Witherspoon, Alison, and most of the leaders of major academies and colleges, continued to view schools as bastions of the sociological and

95 Witherspoon to Rush, Paisley, Dec. 21, 1767, in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 63. 96 Ewing to Hannah Ewing, Edinburgh, June 24, 1774, folder 1, John Ewing Papers. 97 Ewing to Hannah Ewing, Edinburgh, July 5, 1774, folder 1, John Ewing Papers.

82 theological positions of their denominations and factions. This meant that the Old and

New Side continuously jockeyed for educational preeminence and tried to sabotage each other’s efforts at supporting colleges and academies. At the same time, it meant that both sides continued to encourage congregations and ministers to set up small, local academies that offered young men access to advanced education. Had the 1758 reunion proved meaningful, this competition might have cooled. Instead, nominal reunification actually created a perfect storm, which propelled educational development well beyond 1758.

The façade of union limited the degree to which disputes could reasonably occur within the confines of the Church’s ecclesiastical structure. Schools were, more or less, the only suitable and acceptable arena in which to fight the lingering debates of the Great

Awakening.

Bridging Social Capital: The Triumph of the Old Side Educational Culture and the

Creation of Provincial Civil Society

The education that students received differed very little whether they attended an

Old or a New Side school, or even a school that Presbyterians did not control for that matter.98 Despite teachers’ best efforts, schools provided a unifying experience for students across denominations, which underlay new networks that bridged denominational divides. Though created for divisive purposes, denominational schools ultimately provided an important source of bridging social capital. Most importantly,

98 Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials, 92–3; Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind, 348; Ned C. Landsman, “The Legacy of British Union for the North American Colonies: Provincial Elites and the Problem of Imperial Union,” in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 297–317.

83 they gave rise voluntary associations that contributed to a growing provincial civil society and a nascent public sphere, both of which helped bind the region together.

Influenced by a strong Scottish Enlightenment tradition, the schools offered, what teachers believed was a range of modern and practical subjects. Most schools taught logic, arithmetic and other types of math, English writing and speech, natural philosophy

(science), as well as Latin and Greek.99 At least one student had notes on “gunnery” and

“of Shooting in Mortar-Pieces” comingled with his work on math.100 The broad congruities extended beyond the basic curriculum to matters of philosophy and systems of organizing knowledge. Isaac Watts’ Logic, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry

After Truth… first appeared in England in 1724. The first American edition, and the sixteenth overall, was published in Philadelphia in 1789.101 Well before that, by the mid- eighteenth century, teachers across the mid-Atlantic relied on the famous hymnist’s work to structure how they taught logic. The Old Side stalwart, Francis Alison, organized his lectures on logic just as Watts did, dividing the subject into four parts: perception, judgment, reasoning, and method, which Alison sometimes called “disposition.”102

Robert Smith streamlined Watt’s work for his lectures on logic at the New Side academy in Pequea. Like Watts, Smith focused the first two parts on perception and “Of

99 Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment, 61–3; Douglas Sloan, Education in New Jersey in the Revolutionary Era (Trenton: The New Jersey Historical Commission, 1975), 11; Nybakken, “In the Irish Tradition,” 172– 3; Nina Reid-Maroney, “Science and the Presbyterian Academies,” in Theological Education in the Evangelical Tradition, ed. R. Albert Mohler and Darryl G. Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 203–216; as well as Reid-Maroney’s Philadelphia’s Enlightenment. 100 John Ewing’s math notebook, papers of John Ewing, Van-Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania. 101 Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth. With a Variety of Rules to Guard against Error, in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as Well as in the Sciences, The sixteenth edition. (Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Dobson, 1789). 102 “Logick,” in box 1, folder 7, Francis Alison Papers, PHS.

Judgement [sic].” But Smith combined reasoning and method into a single section, which he titled “Of Argumentation.”103 The library of the College of New Jersey contained a copy of Watts’ Logic by 1760, at the very latest.104 Even before that, Watts’ influence spread among the New Side. Esther Edwards Burr—whose father, Jonathan

Edwards, was the famous theologian and president of the College of New Jersey, and whose husband was Aaron Burr Sr., also served as president of the College—kept a lengthy diary, which she shared with a friend in Boston named Sarah Prince. In an entry from 1754, Burr wrote that “For my amusement … I have been reading Dr Watt’s miscellaneous thoughts.” She added that “I think them like the rest of that valluable gentlemans works,” which were “more imagining—but I need not tell you how good his works are.”105 Regardless of their theological positions, teachers taught logic, a fundamental part of teaching students to think and argue, using basically the same curriculum.

The capstone at most academies and colleges was lectures in moral philosophy, based largely on the ideas of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Francis Hutcheson.

This subject was perhaps the most open to interpretation by the men who taught it. Since it engaged in many questions that dovetailed with religion, especially the innate habits and senses of man, it reflected the theological ideas of teachers more than most other subjects. Francis Alison usually gets the credit for bringing Hutchesonian ideas to the

103 Notes on Robert Smith’s “Lectures on Logic On the dignity & use of Philosophy,” in the Robert Smith Papers, Notebooks vol. 1, PHS. 104 David W Robson, Educating Republicans: The College in the Era of the American Revolution, 1750- 1800 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 73. 105 Oct. 1, 1754, in Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 45.

American colonies. He had a degree from Edinburgh, but seems also have also studied divinity at Glasgow directly under Hutcheson. Alison’s moral philosophy, though filtered through his own experiences, drew heavily on Hutcheson’s writings. The College of New Jersey, to the contrary, was relatively slow to introduce Hutchesonian moral philosophy to its curriculum. Ironically, John Witherspoon, a staunch opponent of

Hutcheson in Scotland, forced the change. By the 1760s, schools of all religious stripes taught a broadly similar moral philosophy derived heavily, though sometimes begrudgingly, from the work of the famed Scottish Enlightenment philosopher.106

This convergence in educational culture was an unlikely and significant development. Despite their dominance in seemingly every facet, the New Side came to terms with a decidedly Old Side curriculum. Indeed, men like Witherspoon, veterans of infighting in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, had devoted a great deal of energy to opposing the worldliness that Old Side education invited. During the Awakening the

New Side had, at least from the perspective of the Old Side, privileged religiosity over the sort of Enlightenment rationality that colonial colleges and academies ultimately taught. But this juxtaposition was always too stark. The New Side adoption of a Scottish

Enlightenment curriculum reflected the changing nature of the relationship between the cosmopolitan Enlightenment and Calvinist evangelicalism in provincial America, not a

106 Elizabeth A. Ingersoll, “Francis Alison: American Philosophe, 1705-1799” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Delaware, 1974), 39–69; and Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment, 73–102. For useful discussions of how and why Witherspoon came to terms with Hutcheson, see Landsman, “Witherspoon and the Problem”; and Peter J. Diamond, “Witherspoon, William Smith, and the Scottish Philosophy in Revolutionary America,” in Sher and Smitten, Scotland and America, 29-45, 115-32. An edition of Witherspoon’s moral philosophy lectures have been published as John Witherspoon, An Annotated Edition of Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. Jack Scott (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1982). See also, Notes on Robert Smith’s moral philosophy lectures, in the Robert Smith Papers, Notebooks vol. 2, PHS.

86 complete reversal of their position.107 If Witherspoon ever played the moderate, if he ever acted as a unifying force, it was in his embrace of Hutchesonian moral philosophy and the educational culture of the Scottish Moderates more broadly. The official reunion of the Presbyterian synod happened on New Side terms. But the true settlement of the

Awakening, which occurred within educational institutions, favored the Old Side position. The New Side continued to dominate the reunited Synod of Philadelphia and

New York, and their schools would train plenty more candidates for the ministry than

Old Side schools. But the New Side trained their ministers using a curriculum dictated by Old Side sensibilities. Ironically, as leading clergy continued to fight factional disputes through education, they had already forged a compromise.

The New Sides perhaps felt compelled to take up this curriculum because it simply had wider appeal to students. Denominational schools of all stripes benefitted from strong secular education because it brought enrollment. When trustees and teachers tried to claim one school was superior to another, they often simply compared enrollments. While president of the College of New Jersey, Samuel Finley heard about the “disingenuous Representation” one man made publicly “respecting the Colleges of

New York & Philadelphia.” Finley saw through this man’s braggadocio, claiming he

“was well informed, that in New York College there were in all but 23. & in

Philadelphia, abstracting from a large Number of English Scholars in the Academy, there

107 See Landsman, “Witherspoon and the Problem.” Landsman’s essay helps to clarify an important problem in the literature that prevailed during the 1970s and 1980s, which posited an inherently unified Presbyterian educational culture; see especially Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment; and Howard Miller, The Revolutionary College: American Presbyterian Higher Education, 1707-1837 (New York: New York University Press, 1976). For a similar point, and an astute reading of the literature, see Shereshewsky, “Academy Keeping,” 30–1.

87 were properly Collegians but about 20.”108 Finley’s information was largely correct. The

College of New Jersey awarded nearly three times as many degrees as King’s College and the College of Philadelphia combined between 1763 and 1765, though those enrollments still paled in comparison to Harvard and Yale.109 After Finley died, and as the Old and New Sides jockeyed for control over the College, at least one person simply suggested chartering another academy as a college in order to sidestep the conflict. John

Wallace, a Philadelphia merchant, singled out “a fine Grammer school in the Govt. of

New Castle [Delaware] & under the care of 3 able masters.” There were “more scholars than at Princeton,” which meant that “A Charter can be produced to make it a Coll. and there will be no difficulty to find able professors &c.”110 Steady enrollments conveyed at least an illusion of success and stability. Robust enrollment, even of students interested only in a secularized Enlightenment education, strengthened denominational schools and afforded teachers the chance to carry out their religious goals.

Only a small subset of colonists could afford advanced schooling for their children. Attendance at academies and colleges was still relatively miniscule. In the

1770s, only around one-third of one-percent of white men in the colonies were college graduates.111 Costs for academies were usually lower than for colleges, yet few people

108 Finley to William Hogg, Princeton, Jun. 27, 1764, typescript copy, box 1, folder 10, Samuel Finley collection, PUL. 109 James McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1976), xix. 110 John Wallace to Archibald Wallace, Philadelphia, Dec. 4, 1766, in Butterfield, John Witherspoon Comes to America, 18–9. 111 See also James Kirby Martin, Men in Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973), 128. I use the same estimate for the number of college graduates in the colonies as Martin, 3,000, but calculate the rate relative to the estimated white male population, not the total population. For estimates of the population of the North

88 could afford it and even fewer chose to attend.112 To draw as wide of a clientele as they could, the Newark Academy actively worked to keep the cost of room and board low. In

1771, having heard that “some of the Inhabitants of Newark, had taken 18 or 20 Pounds per Ann. For the Board, &c. of Pupils” the trustees asked for and received “the fullest

Assurance from the Inhabitants that they will not ask nor receive more than Fifteen

Pounds per Annum for the future.” Furthermore, in order to keep access to the academy as widespread as possible, the trustees maintained “that no Student can be admitted into that Institution, whose Parents or Guardians insist upon extraordinary Attendance or

Accommodations” which would presumably drive up the cost for other students, or make distinctions between them more obvious.113 The Newark Academy trustees bragged that students “could not hope for such advantages, were they obliged to educate ym. in

[Philadelphia].” Some students still found it necessary to go to Philadelphia or elsewhere to “finish their education.” Even if they did, they would have paid significantly less over the course of their education by first attending the Newark Academy.114

Most importantly, robust enrollments allowed schools to undertake charitable missions that served the primary goals of the school officials. Benjamin Franklin thought his Academy was important because “a proportion of men of learning is useful in every

American colonies by race, see John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 54. 112 In a fairly generous estimate, Jackson Turner Main surmised that about ten-percent of children could afford to go to the Newark Academy. For the most part, he concluded, “[o]nly the upper class and the urban upper middle class could acquire a formal secondary education;” see Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 246. 113 Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 11, 1771. 114 Francis Alison to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, May 7, 1768, in Dexter, Ezra Stiles, 433.

89 country.” To that end, the trustees of the Philadelphia Academy also ran a “Charity

School… for instructing poor Children in Reading, Writing and Arithmetick.” Donations from the city government would offset some of the costs of this education, and provide every year for “one Scholar out of those that shall be taught in the Charity School, to be received into the Academy, and educated there, gratis.”115 Denominational schools usually used charitable schemes in similar ways, but to train clergymen. Francis Alison was proud of the Newark Academy for providing, in its early years, “Instructions gratis, for some Years to all Ranks and Denominations, that pleased to accept of the same.”

Over time, the school developed “A scheme for the education of poor & pious youth,” whereby Presbyteries could propose candidates, who the Synod would vet, to receive a free education. If the student opted out of the ministry after he finished, he simply paid back the money spent on him. In all likelihood, he would be able to do this because of the opportunities that education offered. If the student became a clergyman, the Old Side had received their money’s worth. With money donated by supporters in England, the

College of New Jersey also funded less well-to-do ministerial candidates in a similar way.116 High enrollments did not bring in enough tuition to sustain these programs.

Rather, enrollments indirectly contributed to the, often, religiously-driven charitable goals of schools because they offered potential donors concrete evidence that the school deserved their support. Robust enrollments created the impression of success. In a

115Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 24, 1749; Aug. 2, 1750. 116 Klett, Minutes, 256, 490, also 228. For the list of donors to the fund allowing poor students to attend Princeton see 298–9. The Synod meetings kept close track of this account and it was mentioned at nearly every yearly meeting from 1758 into the 1780s, see, 366, 373–4, 383, 395, 403–4, 414–5, 429, 444, 459, 486, 527, 539, 550, 559, 570, 575.

90 climate of widespread competition, denominational schools could not afford to focus all of their attention on religious concerns. The factional religious missions of schools depended on teachers’ ability to cultivate broad-based appeal and to generate high enrollments.

The shared educational culture of the mid-Atlantic begat regional networks that transcended denominational and factional lines. Thought students usually attended an academy with the religious affiliation of their parents, in actively pursuing their career ambitions, many attended whichever school made the most sense. For example, John

Ewing attended Alison’s Old Side academy in Delaware, then the New Side College of

New Jersey, before working at both institutions as a teacher. He finally settled down in

Philadelphia as pastor at the First Presbyterian Church and a faculty member at the

College and Academy of Philadelphia. He was the provost when the school became the

University of Pennsylvania in 1779. A number of Samuel Finley’s students from his

New Side West Nottingham Academy attended colleges other than Princeton. Two of his students, Edward Shippen and John Morgan, helped found the medical school at the

College of Philadelphia. Another of his students, Benjamin Rush, was one of the school’s first professors.117

Many of the patterns of sociability that this educational culture fostered brought together students from rural and urban areas. For instance, Philip Vickers Fithian, the famous diarist, frequently attended singing schools around south Jersey where he had

“the opportunity of seeing company in their different sects and degrees.” Fithian was

117 Mills, West Nottingham Academy, 23–5.

91 particularly pleased when an “eloquent singer from Philadelphia” attended a singing school at a local church.118 For a host of reasons, colonists built most academies and many colleges in rural areas. Parents worried about the health of their children, particularly when they moved to cities. This fear was justified. In 1754, a student died at the Academy of Philadelphia. The school held a memorial service for the student, an account of which they published in a local newspaper. The trustees also felt it necessary to add that “our Academy has been remarkably happy, in sustaining so few Losses of this

Kind;” this student was only the second to die on their watch, out of “several Hundreds” who had attended in the last four years or so.119 Parents also tended to worry that, far from their watchful eye, children would succumb to vice and immorality. These fears became exaggerated when it concerned school because, as one almanac suggested,

“Education has so great an Influence over the whole Course of Man’s Life, that the

Virtues and Vices Men are addicted to at riper Years, are pretty much owing” to it. In a rather alarmist argument, the writer continued, “if the foul Characters of Vice be once stamp’d thereupon, they are apt to make so deep an Impression as is not easily obliterated.”120 Many people also feared that teachers often exacerbated the potential for vice. In the care of many teachers, one almanac claimed, “Youth are deprived of

Learning, and instead of improving in Virtue, which ought to be the main Design of

118 Jan. 24, 1766; May 12, 1767, both in Vol. 1 of the Philip Vickers Fithian Papers, 3, 173. Here my interpretation differs from John Fea, “The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian’s Rural Enlightenment,” Journal of American History 90 (Sep. 2003): 462–490; and Fea’s Way of Improvement. Though he recognizes some interconnections between urban areas and the hinterlands, he argues that the rural Enlightenment was a unique, and locally-constructed, phenomenon. 119 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 5, 1754. 120 The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanac, for the Year of Our Lord, 1772 (Wilmington, DE: Printed and Sold by James Adams, 1771).

Instruction, rather become proficients in Vice.”121 Good education, however, should

“[raise] us above those meaner Enjoyments that lead to Vice.”122 Cities, of course, aggravated these fears.

Officials at rural schools claimed they were healthier and safer than urban schools. Yet they appealed, in part, to urban audiences. Advertisements for the Newark

Academy reassured parents that their children would be safe. At their school, the trustees wrote, “Parents of Children have the utmost Security, that can be desired, for their Morals in this Place.” The town “is generally inhabited by sober industrious People, affords no public Amusements, nor any remarkable Instances of Profligacy or Vice.” In very direct language, the trustees also claimed that “Newark has been healthy, very few students sick or dead.”123 Similarly, another academy master in Ulster County, New York advertised that his “House is in a very healthy Part of the Country.”124 When he moved his academy to New Rochelle—located in Westchester County, much closer to New York City—he boasted that it was “ a very pleasant and healthy Place, and so near the City as to be only an agreeable Ride.”125 Teachers strategically set up schools in rural areas that city dwellers could access relatively easily, drawing them into the hinterlands. At the same time, it introduced residents of the hinterlands to a provincial civil society and public sphere, which had traditionally developed in cities.

121 The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord 1758 (Germantown, PA: Printed and sold by C. Sower, 1757). 122 Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov. 28, 1754. 123 Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 10, 1771. 124 New-York Gazette, Sep. 20, 1762. 125 New-York Journal, May 7, 1767.

The popular revivalism of the Awakening benefitted from the connection between the new consumer economy and print culture. Harnessing especially urban commercial and print networks, partisans of the Awakening turned leading revivalists, people like

George Whitefield, into veritable celebrities.126 As a consequence, the popularity of revivalism helped attune colonists to the powerful role that print could play in public controversies.127 But much as the culture of revivalism harnessed growing print networks

126 Lambert, “’Pedlar in Divinity’”; Hall, Contested Boundaries. 127 For a long time, historians tended to situate the emergence of American civil society and the public sphere in a transformation of political culture in the years leading up to the imperial crisis. Taken together, print culture and republican ideology reinforced and radicalized each other, making way for revolution. See especially, Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). Recently, historians have shown that, in fact, the development of civil institutions and the opening of a provincial public sphere predated even the earliest inklings of revolution. See Jack P. Greene, “Social and Cultural Capital in Colonial British America: A Case Study,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Jan. 1999): 491–509; and Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition. These developments in print culture and sociability grew out of the rise of a metropolitan consumer culture in the colonial periphery. Far from inevitably leading to a break between the colonies and England, it fostered cultural similarity, if only for a time. See T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776,” The Journal of British Studies 25 (Oct. 1986): 467–499; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992); David S. Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For localized case studies of these phenomena, see McConville, Daring Disturbers, 107–36, 223–37; Sarah Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies: Women and Elite Formation in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008). Borrowing insights from historians of the English public sphere—who traced the usage of print in early religious disputes to the revolutionary power of newspapers and pamphlets in creating the revolutionary fervor surrounding the English Revolution especially, but also the Glorious Revolution—recent colonial historians have offered a new explanation for the origins of the revolutionary public sphere. Among a large literature on the early English public sphere, the following works focus on religion: David Zaret, “Religion, Science, and Printing the Public Spheres in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Craig J Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 212–35; Peter Lake and Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72 (Sep. 2000): 587–627; and Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45 (April 2006): 270–292. For work on the North American colonies, which applies some of the insights of the long-term development of the English public sphere, see T.H. Breen and Timothy Hall, “Structuring Provincial Imagination: The Rhetoric and Experience of Social Change in Eighteenth-Century New England,” American Historical Review 103 (Dec. 1998): 1411–1439; and Larry Skillin, “From Proclamation to Dialogue: The Colonial Press and the Emergence of an American

94 and generated compelling material that helped to reveal the growing power of print culture, it seemed to do little to influence the structures of the public sphere and civil society.

Students, teachers, and school trustees took part in this new print culture.

Through their connections with schools, they helped to create and strengthen the mechanisms of the public sphere and civil society and shape the vectors of their influence. During his fundraising trip in the early-1750s, Samuel Davies focused some of his attention on expanding the world of print to his own benefit and that of his New Side colleagues. Davies cultivated relationships with the hope of subsidizing the publication of one of his sermons. Davies also spent time with the prominent Philadelphia printer and bookseller, William Bradford.128 He attempted to expand the range of printed materials that reached hinterland areas where most Presbyterian congregations and schools were located. While in England, Davies also cultivated a fruitful relationship with the Society in London for Promoting Religious Knowledge, securing from them a few large shipments of books. Davies’ own efforts at self-improvement and continuing education meant that he developed his own networks for sharing and spreading written works, which, as a teacher, he then harnessed to the benefit of his students.

Denominational schools had unique power to shape the reading habits of an entire generation.129

Public Sphere, 1640-1725” (Ph. D. Diss., The Ohio State University, 2009). For an early take on the connection between the Awakening and changes in the fabric of civic culture, see Brooke, Heart of the Commonwealth, 69–96. 128 Nov. 13, 1753 and Oct. 22, 1753, both in Pilcher, The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad, 26, 22–3. 129 Pilcher, “Preacher of the New Light, Samuel Davies, 1724-1761,” 118–20, 123–4.

People affiliated with schools also produced new printed materials. William

Smith, provost of the College and Academy of Philadelphia, helped create the American

Magazine. Smith’s endeavor, and magazine culture more generally, attempted to bring the polite and refined side of Enlightenment literature and culture to Philadelphia and the middle colonies. The American Magazine situated “the college in a network of manuscript and print circulation that was emerging around the Atlantic World.”130 Even

Francis Alison—Smith’s Old-Side Presbyterian colleague, and frequent adversary at the

Philadelphia Academy—helped promote the publication among his circle of friends.131

This spirit trickled down to students. During the mid-1770s in the ‘Cohansie’ region of southern New Jersey, a group of academy and college-educated men created their own rudimentary manuscript newsletter to spread ideas and to debate about politics. The

Plain Dealer, as they fashioned it, brought the conventions of the dominant transatlantic print culture to a rural region. Significantly, the Plain Dealer grew out of an

“admonishing society” in which many of its writers had participated. Before that, many of these men had participated in the Whig and Cliosophic societies while at the College of New Jersey. Those institutions certainly provided the seed for many smaller debating and improvement societies that alumni of the College created. In essence, education helped bring far flung areas into a wider regional and transatlantic culture of print, but embedded that transformation in a culture of associationalism, which was as essential to

130 Rodney Mader, “Politics and Pedagogy in the American Magazine, 1757-58,” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 16 (2006): 4; see also George W. Boudreau, “Provost Smith and His Circle: The College of Philadelphia and the Transformation of Pennsylvania,” in “The Good Education of Youth”: Worlds of Learning in the Age of Franklin, ed. John Pollack (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009), 168–87, esp. 178; and Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials, 81. 131 Ingersoll, “Francis Alison,” 85–6.

96 the fabric of civil society.132 The schools that emerged out of the Great Awakening contributed to the expansion of networks of print. Education also socialized newly educated men into the political culture fostered by the eighteenth-century provincial civil society.

Conclusion

According to Benjamin Franklin, before the mid-eighteenth century, “the culture of minds by the finer arts and sciences” in the colonies “was necessarily postpon’d to times of more wealth and leisure.” By 1749, Franklin argued, “those times are come.” In the midst of unprecedented social and economic development, Franklin believed that

“numbers of our inhabitants are both able and willing to give their sons a good education, if it might be had at home, free from the extraordinary expence and hazard in sending them abroad for that purpose.”133 To Franklin, the slow development of colonial education stemmed from a lack of demand. But according to others, supply was the real problem. Looking back on the 1740s, when Francis Alison first began teaching students at his home in New London Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Synod remembered that

“Learning was under great Discouragements, and Opportunities of Education scarce.”134

Across the mid-Atlantic and upper South, governments failed to provide inhabitants with education, and no networks of colonists mobilized to compensate for state inaction.

Governmental and associational inaction were both a cause and product of insufficient education. Though often portrayed as a crisis of religious institution

132 Fea, Way of Improvement, 152–5, 74–7. 133 Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 24, 1749. 134 May 26, 1757, Klett, Minutes, 256.

97 building, the Awakening grew out of this broader crisis of social capital formation.

Denominations depended on schools to provide ministers. While the Awakening fractured existing religious networks, it also mobilized denominations to build academies and colleges. In order to compete in the religious marketplace, denominational factions channeled their energies into building schools, which they then used to cement regional networks. Over time, education encouraged a significant degree of inter-denominational cooperation. Denominational schools became a constant source of social capital formation that the region had lacked for decades. Able to generate and mobilize immense social capital, these networks remade the region and held the power to remake the Empire entirely.

Chapter 2: Provincial Ambition, Imperial Integration, and the Origins of the American

Revolution

While conducting his duties as officer of the day on February 11, 1783, Colonel

Francis Barber mounted his horse and started back towards his quarters. As he rode through camp at the end of a long war, Barber was very lucky to be alive. He had suffered a severe wound at Monmouth, a less severe wound to his head at Newton, and “a slight wound in his face” from a bayonet at Yorktown.1 More than most, Barber probably thought that the end of his service could not come soon enough. Indeed it had not; his luck ran out. Barber was killed that day “by the fell of a tree, which was cut down by a soldier of the American army, at the cantonment near Newburgh, a short time before the army was disbanded, and after the articles of peace had been signed.”2 Two days later, “[h]e was buried with the honors of war.”3

Though Barber rose rapidly through the ranks of the Continental Army, he was a soldier neither by training nor inclination. Barber taught at a Presbyterian academy in

Elizabeth Town, New Jersey through the mid-1770s, “until called from that employment

1 Ebenezer Elmer, An Elogy on Francis Barber, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the Second New Jersey Regiment (New York, Reprinted for C.F. Heartman, 1917), 12–3. 2 George Clinton Barber’s Statement, Washington D.C., June 20, 1802, in B.L.11-450, reel 136, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land-Warrant Application Files, microfilm, DLAR. 3 Ebenezer Elmer, Feb. 13, 1783, in his “Military Notes,” folder 16, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS.

99 to take … the field, for the defence of America.”4 His death might have been unusual, but the trajectory that brought Barber to Newburgh was not. Decades later, trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth Town, who supervised Barber’s academy, proudly recalled that “[a]t their country’s call,” the “scholars ran from their masters, and with them, to the rescue.”5 Barber and his students at the Elizabeth Town Academy are emblematic of a much wider generational experience. Across the mid-Atlantic, colleges and academies emerged out of the controversies of the Great Awakening to institutionalize the theological and sociological positions of denominations and denominational factions. Later, teachers and students left these schools in droves to take positions of civil and military leadership during the American Revolution. This generation of revolutionary elites represents one of the clearest links between the Great

Awakening and the Revolution.

Since at least the 1966 publication of Alan Heimert’s Religion and the American

Mind, historians have debated the existence and extent of the connections between the

Awakening and the Revolution.6 In increasingly complex ways, historians have argued

4 Elmer, An Elogy on Francis Barber, 12. 5 Quote from a petition to Congress written by the trustees of the church in 1840 in Nicholas Murray, Notes, Historical and Biographical, Concerning Elizabeth-Town, Its Eminent Men, Churches and Ministers (Elizabeth-Town, NJ: E. Sanderson, 1844), 105. 6 Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). For a strong critique of Heimert, see Bernard Bailyn, “Religion and Revolution: Three Biographical Studies,” Perspectives in American History 4 (1970): 83– 169. William G. McLoughlin, “‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to the Revolution,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings 87 (1977): 69–96, offered trenchant support for Heimert’s position. Other important studies on the topic include: Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Nathan Hatch, “The Origins of Civil Millennialism in America: New England Clergymen, War with France, and the Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (July 1974): 407–430; Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” William and Mary

100 that the revivals were a formative experience for colonists in learning to overthrow traditional authority, which mentally prepared them for both the experience of revolution and the democratization of the early republic.7 That said, it is clear that in many ways, ostensibly anti-authoritarian revivalists often actually reinvigorated church institutions.

From this point of view, the Awakening seems to have done little to bring about the

Revolution.8 Moreover, other scholarship has demonstrated that the Awakening was a

Quarterly 34 (Oct. 1977): 519–541; Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), esp. 198–232; Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought 1756- 1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Among Mark Noll’s many works on the subject, see especially “The American Revolution and Protestant Evangelicalism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, (Jan. 1993): 615–638. For a very recent perspective, see Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Thomas Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010). There have also been a number of useful historiographical essays on the issue; see especially John Murrin, “No Awakening, No Revolution? More Counterfactual Speculations,” Reviews in American History 11 (1983): 161–171; Philip F. Gura, “The Role of the ‘Black Regiment’: Religion and the American Revolution,” New England Quarterly 61 (Sep. 1988): 439–454; Philip Goff, “Revivals and Revolution: Historiographic Turns since Alan Heimert’s ‘Religion and the American Mind,’” Church History 67 (Dec. 1998): 695–721; Allen C. Guelzo, “God’s Designs: The Literature of the Colonial Revivals of Religion, 1735-1760,”; and Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” both in Harry Stout, D.G. Hart, and Gordon S. Wood, eds., “Religion and the American Revolution,” in New Directions in American Religious History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 141–205. 7 For instance, Patricia Bonomi argued that colonists, not just New Lights, “having taken part in dismantling of old institutions and the shaping of new ones … would find themselves less hesitant to do it again.” Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 160. 8 Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 194–224, esp. 165, 195. See also Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction,” Journal of American History 69 (Sep. 1982): 305–325, esp. 319-25. For a critique of Butler, see Frank Lambert, “The First Great Awakening: Whose Interpretive Fiction?,” New England Quarterly 68 (Dec. 1995): 650–9. For more on the nature of New Side institution-building, see Elizabeth I. Nybakken, “New Light on the Old Side: Irish Influences on Colonial Presbyterianism,” Journal of American History 68 (Dec. 1982): 813–832.

101 transatlantic phenomenon that cemented connections between metropolitan and provincial culture.9

The story of Barber, his students, and their generation reveals a middle way between these lines of interpretation. Successful revolutions depend as much on the consolidation of new power groups as the destruction of prevailing power structures.10

And the Awakening gave rise to a new cadre of essential power actors, a crucial group of would-be provincial elites. This chapter traces how denominational schools encouraged students’ social and political ambitions and transformed their sense of self amid imperial political and social upheaval. Conventional wisdom held that education would bolster imperial authority in a colonial environment. Ultimately, though, academies and their students and teachers mobilized as a driving force behind the revolutionary cause. The

Revolution was not a religious event. Yet the trajectories of denominational schools,

9 The last chapter makes this point, as does work that argues for connections between the Awakening and the growing culture of consumerism, which drove cultural convergence across the Atlantic; see Frank Lambert, “‘Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Great Awakening,” Journal of American History 77 (Dec. 1990): 812–837; and T.H. Breen and Timothy Hall, “Structuring Provincial Imagination: The Rhetoric and Experience of Social Change in Eighteenth-Century New England,” American Historical Review 103 (Dec. 1998): 1411–1439. On consumerism, see Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John Harold Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776,” Journal of British Studies 25 (Oct. 1986): 467–499; Carole Shammas, “Consumer Behavior in Colonial America,” Social Science History 6 (1982): 67–86; T.H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century’,” Past and Present 119 (1988): 73–104; T. H. Breen, “Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 50 (July 1993): 471–501; Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?,” in Of Consuming Interests: The Styles of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994), 483–697. The literature culminated with T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 10 Jack P. Greene, “An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Preconditions of the American Revolution,” in Essays on the American Revolution, ed. Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Huston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 32–80, esp. 35-6, 39-40.

102 their students, and teachers, highlight how the Awakening could be part of a larger trans-

Atlantic phenomenon, engender institutional and organizational stability, and still contribute to the coming of the American Revolution.11

Education and Ambition

In the eighteenth century, education mattered to individuals as much as it did to society writ large. Then as now, Americans believed they felt societal benefits of education through the individual lives that schools touched.12 Though denominational schools had fairly traditional origins as bastions of Protestantism, which colonists saw as essential to maintaining piety and religious order, their influence over students butted up against these original intentions. Calvinist educators empowered students with a sense of purpose, that through the pursuit of knowledge they could affect change in their world.

The new outlook that academies instilled in students held the potential to remake an

Empire.

Despite the Calvinist cloud that hung over many denominations, teachers relied more often on the carrot than the stick to motivate students. Teachers employed a pedagogy that inspired students through a “Love of Credit” rather than by threat, compulsion, or the specter of retribution from “Sprits and Goblins, of Raw-head and

11 My interpretation is influenced by Donald G. Mathews, “The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis,” American Quarterly 21 (April 1969): 23–43. 12 See, for instance, James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, supplement (1988): 95–120; Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Human Capital and Social Capital: The Rise of Secondary Schooling in America, 1910-1940,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 683–723; Reed Ueda, “Second-Generation Civic America: Education, Citizenship, and the Children of Immigrants,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 661–681; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 296–306.

103

Bloody-bones that are ready to fetch them away, and devour them.”13 Students at Robert

Smith’s New Side academy in Pequea, Pennsylvania, for instance, “were stimulated to exertion by being brought into frequent competition and by having conferred upon the successful candidates for distinction such honours as were calculated to awake their boyish emulation, and to quicken their diligence and attention.”14 According to officials at Delaware’s Old Side Newark Academy the pursuit of academic distinction “must be the Object of every Student’s Ambition.” It was the best means for encouraging students to take an active role in their education. Even the most mundane curricular tools followed this logic. For instance, the Newark Academy promoted students through the curriculum based on the “Genius and Industry of the Pupil, and not by the Number of

Years that he has studied.”15 Students could not rest on laurels or their social status.

Friendly competition between peers prepared students for the more daunting prospect of facing the scrutiny of visitors, local educated people who publicly examined students, passing judgment on their progress and the school’s effectiveness. By the time Francis

Barber took over the Elizabeth Town academy in the early 1771, it was already standard practice to use visitors “to excite an emulation in the youth to study & excel.”16

13 Poor Roger, 1761. The American Country Almanack for the Year of Christian Account 1761 (New York: Printed and Sold by James Parker, 1760). 14 Quote from “The Life of Dr. Smith,” the introduction to Sermons of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Philadelphia: S. Potter and Co., 1821), 4. Frederick Beasley, a close friend Robert Smith’s son Samuel Stanhope Smith, probably wrote the introduction; see Jacob Newton Beam, “Dr. Robert Smith’s Academy at Pequea, Pennsylvania,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society VIII (Dec. 1915): 150. 15 Pennsylvania Gazette, Mar. 11, 1755; Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 10, 1771. 16 Aug. 24, 1767, Trustee Minutes of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, PHS, 14.

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As this rhetoric indicates, one of the main perceived advantages of academies over other forms of education, especially private tutoring, was precisely that it fostered

“emulation.” As one pamphleteer noted, “where there is a community, that it will create an emulation, a laudable desire to excel” among students.17 In promoting this type of pedagogy, denominational schools took part in a larger trans-Atlantic educational culture that attempted to harness the power of emulation and ambition, which Enlightenment thinkers viewed as powerful cultural forces that could propel beneficent action. In particular, historians of late-eighteenth-century France have illustrated the ways in which schools and public academic prize competitions inculcated the value of emulation in a broad range of people. Putting the Enlightenment into practice, as Jeremy Caradonna has phrased it, emulation would ideally mobilize people and “reward individual energies in ways that would produce benefits for the rest of society.”18 Leading English educators

17 Seven Rational Sermons, on the Following Subjects, Viz. I. Against Covetousness. II. On the Vanity of This Life. III. Against Revenge. IV. Of Mirth and Grief. V. The Cruelty of Slandering Innocent, and Defenceless Women. VI. The Duty of Children. VII. Advantages of Education. Written in England, by a Lady, the Translatress of Four Select Tales from Marmonte (Philadelphia: Printed by Robert Bell, 1777), 72. 18 John Iverson, “Introduction: Forum on Emulation in France, 1750-1800,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, (Dec. 2003): 217–223, quote on 218. See also the forum that follows; Nira Kaplan, “Virtuous Competition among Citizens: Emulation in Politics and Pedagogy during the French Revolution,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (Dec. 2003): 241–248; John Shovlin, “Emulation in Eighteenth-Century French Economic Thought,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (Dec. 2003): 224–230; Laura Auricchio, “The Laws of Bienséance and the Gendering of Emulation in Eighteenth-Century French Art Education,” Eighteenth- Century Studies 36 (Dec. 2003): 231–240. See also Jeremy L. Caradonna, “The Monarchy of Virtue: The ‘Prix de Vertu’ and the Economy of Emulation in France, 1777-91,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41 (July 2008): 443–458; and Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670-1794 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). For the American colonial context, see John Fea, “The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian’s Rural Enlightenment,” The Journal of American History 90 (Sep. 2003): 462–490; and Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 58–82; T. A. Milford, The Gardiners of Massachusetts: Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2005); Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee. For a later period see Rodney Hessinger, “‘The Most Powerful Instrument of College Discipline’: Student Disorder and the Growth of Meritocracy in the Colleges of the Early

105 also advocated the importance of student communities to fostering emulation. Joseph

Priestley, a dissenting minister and academy teacher, was a leading English pedagogical thinker. For Priestley, it was obvious that when students had “no road of ambition open to them but that of excelling in their studies, they of course applied their time, and bent their application, that way.” Emulation among students fostered this unmitigated good.

“[R]eal emulation,” he argued, developed in students from “contests with equals.” Thus

Priestley maintained that any young man “intended for any sphere of life, in which much spirit and courage will be an advantage … should not be educated in private, or at least care should be taken that he have frequent intercourse, and mutual exercise, with his equals.”19 Denominational academies in North America intended to ameliorate some of the specific problems in a colonial society by emulating a pedagogy rooted in Europe.

Not everyone in North America immediately accepted the social utility of emulation. In 1756, a pamphlet published in Germantown, Pennsylvania bemoaned that it was “too plain to need any proof” that most colonists believed “the nature of the best education of our sons” was to “stir [students] to action from principles of covetousness or a desire of distinction, that they may accumulate wealth, excel others and shine in the eyes of the World.” This author argued, instead, that children should “never do any thing through strife, or envy, or emulation, or vainglory. Never do any thing in order to excel

Republic,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Oct. 1999): 237–262; J. M. Opal, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s-1820s,” Journal of American History 91 (Dec. 2004): 445–470; and more generally Opal’s Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 19 Joseph Priestley, Miscellaneous Observations Relating to Education. More Especially, as It Respects the Conduct of the Mind. To Which Is Added, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell, 1778), 54, 78.

106 other people.” They should only try to please God.20 In opposing emulation’s pedagogical value, the pamphleteer was in the minority. However, the author’s particular critique probably had wider resonance than it might seem at first blush. The pamphlet not so subtly alerted readers that emulation could easily lead students toward an uncontrolled desire for wealth, fame, and power. A much larger group of colonists shared fears that the “venal” side of ambition was very difficult to control.21

This nefarious potential consequence of emulation was not lost on academy teachers. Hutchesonian moral philosophy, republicanism, and Calvinism, all the main streams of thought to which many of these men subscribed, cast ambition as a corrupting passion. Teachers nevertheless used emulation as a pedagogical tool for a host of reasons. Even staunch critics of ambition recognized that it had an equally toxic opposite, idleness. As Francis Hutcheson put it, “most opposite temper to ambition is the love of ease.”22 Though teachers might fear ambition, their Calvinist backgrounds also made them particularly susceptible to caricatured laments about the innate laziness of humanity. Some of the earliest almanac writers to encourage emulation used laziness as

20 A Patern of Christian Education, Agreable [sic] to the Precepts and Practice of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Germantown, PA: Printed by Christopher Sower Junior, 1756), 2, 6–7, my italics. Interestingly, much of the published criticism of using emulation and ambition in schools came from pamphlets and almanacs printed in Germantown. Other critical appraisals of emulation include John Tobler, The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack for the Year 1754 (Germantown, PA: Prin. and sold by C. Sower, Jun., 1753); Christian Education Exemplified Under the Character of Paternus Instructing His Only Son (Germantown, PA: Printed by Christopher Sower Junior, 1754). 21 The line between emulation and ambition was rather porous. The OED defines the word emulation using the word ambition, but ambition often carried a negative connotation. “ambition, n;” and "emulation, n." OED Online. December 2012. Oxford University Press (accessed February 21, 2013). On the social manifestations of fears of economic ambition, see Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee, iv–v, 22–38, 135–43, 193, 267. 22 Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, In Three Books (Glasgow: R. and A. Foulis, Printers to the University, 1755), I: 165.

107 a foil. One argued that parents needed “to excite [their children] to proper Action; to moderate and direct their Passions, and to do all we can to set them into the right Way of

Life” before they ever received official schooling. “Parents are the original Models upon which we form our Tempers and Behaviour.” Teachers never taught a class of blank slates, but rather a body of students with preconceived ideas about character and morality.23 Writers pinpointed idleness as the most notorious trait that parents possessed, which often like “Leprocy follows and spreads on their Children.”24 Almanac writers reminded parents that children were “like wax, capable of any impression” and thus that

“the Extravagances of the lewdest Life, are nothing else but the more consummated

Follies and Disorders of either a mis-taught, or a neglected Youth.”25 Calvinist ministers and especially Evangelicals often had to contend with accusations that their teachings actually encouraged idleness.26 In such a context, where fears of the deleterious influence of lazy and idle people abounded, Calvinist clergy could make a Calvinist’s case for emulation. In fact, they reasoned that with their supervision and the checks that students would exert over each other, competition for distinction could “hardly ever be prostituted to mean or venal Purposes.”27 The right education could direct emulation to productive ends and stave off idleness.

23 John Taylor, The Value of a Child; or, Motives to the Good Education of Children. In a Letter to a Daughter (Philadelphia: Re-printed and sold by B. Franklin, and D. Hall, 1753), 5, 25. 24 The Countryman’s Lamentation, on the Neglect of a Proper Education of Children; with an Address to the Inhabitants of New-Jersey (Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by W. Dunlap, 1762), 46. 25 The Burlington Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord, 1772 (Burlington, NJ: Printed and Sold by Isaac Collins, 1771); see also The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanac, for the Year of Our Lord, 1772 (Wilmington, DE: Printed and Sold by James Adams, 1771). 26 Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, 53–4. 27 Pennsylvania Gazette, Mar. 11, 1755.

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In justifying emulation as a pedagogical tool, many teachers actually vindicated some of their own ambitions. Many academy and college teachers had ascended to noteworthy positions as both educators and clergymen. Their success sometimes invited accusations of ambition, which often caused them great anxiety. Nearly every time the president of the College of New Jersey died—which happened frequently enough to be a cause for concern—filling the office was a difficult and drawn-out endeavor. Candidates had to come to terms with leaving their congregations and other obligations for a more noteworthy job. When the trustees tapped Samuel Davies in 1758, he claimed that it evoked “such a strong Temptation to Vanity, as requires no small Degree of self- knowledge to resist.”28 He accepted the job only after failing to get Samuel Finley—who he claimed was a better fit—elected in his stead. The College had an even more difficult time convincing John Witherspoon to accept the presidency a decade later. Though

Witherspoon blamed his wife for his reticence to move from Scotland to New Jersey, he harbored similar anxieties as Davies about following his ambitions.29 Yet in recruiting both men, the College’s representatives appealed to their personal ambitions. To assuage his fears about leaving his congregation, the trustees reminded Davies that the “College of New Jersey ought to be esteem’d as much importance to the interests of Religion and

28 Samuel Davies to [David?] Cowel, Sep. 14, 1758, Hanover, VA, in folder 2, Samuel Davies Papers, PHS. Earlier in his career when he spearheaded a fundraising effort in Britain, Davies expressed similar anxieties about privileging college business over his church and family. See George William Pilcher, ed., The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad: The Diary of a Journey to England and Scotland, 1753-55 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 3–4. 29 See the letters in Lyman Henry Butterfield, ed., John Witherspoon Comes to America: A Documentary Account Based Largely on New Materials (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1953).

109

Liberty as any institution of the kind in America.”30 With less tact, Benjamin Rush suggested to Witherspoon that if he continued to decline the College’s offer, “you can have no prospects of moving into a higher place of usefulness in the Church of

Scotland.”31 Both ultimately took the job and the fame that came with it. Davies died shortly after taking office. Witherspoon held the post for nearly thirty years, and embraced the public influence of the office in unprecedented ways.

Likewise, students and some of their parents valued schools for the opportunities they offered for personal advancement. Compared with the entrenched hierarchies of

England, colonial education offered social mobility to those young men who could afford it. The Old Side Newark Academy was particularly adept at balancing the goals of students, and their parents for that matter, with the religious mission of the school.

Francis Alison explained to Ezra Stiles, the famous Congregationalist minister and educator in Connecticut, that the students “that intend to study Divinity apply to some

College” after their time in Newark. Those students who chose to “study law, or Physick generally are contented with ye Proficiency they make at this school.” At Newark, then,

Alison concluded, “farmers can educate their children, so as to fit ym. for almost any station in life.”32 Parents should realize, one almanac declared, that in colonial America it was “a foolish and most absurd Piece of Thrift, for the Sake of adding 20 or 50 Pounds

30 [David?] Cowel to Davies, Dec. 25, 1758, Trenton, NJ, in folder 2, Samuel Davies Papers, PHS. 31 Rush to Witherspoon, Apr. 23, 1767, Edinburgh, copy in folder 2, MG58 John Witherspoon Papers, N- JHS. 32 Francis Alison to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, May 7, 1768, in Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, 1755-1794: With A Selection from His Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916), 433.

110 to a Child’s Fortune, to deprive him of the Benefit of such an Education.”33 In fact, according to some prescriptive literature, parents stood to benefit from educating their children. Those parents who did, according to another almanac, would have “far better

Title to his [the son’s] Obedience and Duty, than [those who gave] him a large Estate without it.”34 Many families staked their future prospects on the power of a good education.

Academies offered an informal curriculum that taught the skills of enlightened gentlemen and would ideally allow students to realize their ambitions. At Samuel

Finley’s West Nottingham Academy, students always ate meals with prominent visitors.

Benjamin Rush, a student of Finley’s, remembered that “The benefits derived from the news, anecdotes, and general conversations which young people are thus permitted to hear are much greater than is generally supposed.” Finley also “frequently exercised his pupils in delivering and receiving letters, and in asking and receiving favors,” essential skills for someone with ambitions of moving up in their profession or in politics. Rush thought this helped explain why “Many of my schoolmates filled important stations, and discharged the duties of useful professions with honor to themselves and benefit to their country.”35 In addition, through practicing emulation, students learned to harness their

33 The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord 1758 (Germantown, PA: Printed and sold by C. Sower, 1757). 34 The Virginia Almanack for the Year of Our Lord, 1771... (Williamsburg, VA: Printed and Sold by William Rind, 1770). 35 George Washington Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush; His “Travels Through Life” Together with His Commonplace Book for 1789-1813 (Princeton: Published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1948), 30–3. Franklin also thought that schools should teach letter-writing; see Benjamin Franklin, Idea of the English School, Sketch’d Out for the Consideration of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Academy (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, 1751), 5.

111 emotions. This helped them to strive for distinction without appearing greedy and passionate. During the late-colonial period emotion was integral to creating social distinctions. The differences between men who controlled their passions and those control by their passions served as an important determinant of status. Properly handling passions could give men license to lead other men.36

In addition to teaching skills and behaviors, academies fostered networks that students could use to their advantage as they embarked on their careers. The Philadelphia

Academy Constitution, for instance, provided “that the Trustees will make it their

Pleasure … to promote and establish” their students “in Business, Offices, Marriages or any other Thing.”37 Students also took much of the responsibility for themselves, actively trying to maintain networks after finishing school. The famous diarist Philip

Vickers Fithian created a mutual improvement society with some of his schoolmates, which, he optimistically declared, “is most certainly of very considerable advantage to every diligent member of it.” The society helped the members continue to develop their skills as rising men of the Enlightenment. They proceeded from the belief that “our personal entertainment & improvement as individuals, depends on the diligence of the

Members in general.”38 Denominational education helped create a generation of men who valued personal success but who also believed it derived in part from social

36 Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Ommohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 197, see also, 190. My discussion draws, in particular, on her interpretation of anger. 37 Constitutions of the Publick Academy, in the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Printed by Benjamin Franklin, 1749), 4. 38 “An Exercise to the Admonishing Club,” Deerfield, New Jersey, March 16, 1773, in Vol. 2, Philip Vickers Fithian Papers, PUL. See also Fea, Way of Improvement, 98–9.

112 interaction. The attainment of both cultural capital, in the form of knowledge and skills, and social capital, in the form of inter-personal connections and access to large networks of horizontal association was “the surest way to preserve an estate when got, amass together money enough to purchase one,” declared one advice guide.39

A good proportion of students at denominational schools went into professional careers that satisfied their secular ambitions. Francis Barber, for instance, “being designed by his parents to wear the sacred robe,” attended the College of New Jersey. To the dismay of his parents certainly, and also probably some of his teachers, he found that

“this office did not suit his taste.”40 Barber was not unusual in that way. Until the war,

Barber passed his time at the Elizabeth Town Academy. While he searched for his calling, he socialized yet another generation of students into Enlightenment culture within the walls of a religious institution. Instead of just creating ministers and reliably pious community members, the practices and pedagogy of emulation also taught young men how to distinguish themselves in secular pursuits.41

From the outset, the College of New Jersey educated more people who would not become clergymen than who would. In the quarter-century that the College existed prior to the start of the Revolutionary War only about forty-seven percent of graduates entered

39 John Barnard, A Present for an Apprentice: Or, A Sure Guide to Gain Both Esteem and Estate. With Rules for His Conduct to His Master, and in the World. More Especially, While an Apprentice, His Behaviour after He Is Free, Care in Setting Up, Company with the Ladies, Choice of a Wife, Behaviour in Courtship, and Wedding-Day, Complaisance after Marriage, Education of Children, &c. (Philadelphia: Re-printed by J. Crukshank, 1774), 81. 40 Elmer, An Elogy on Francis Barber, 11–2. 41 The fact that they possessed a high-level formal education already differentiated them; see Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 264–7.

113 the ministry. This was a higher rate than at many colleges, but still reveals the importance of secular curriculum to the school’s success.42 During the Revolutionary

War years, that proportion dropped dramatically to twenty-one percent.43 The smaller, poorly-documented academies that opened throughout the mid-Atlantic in the aftermath of the Awakening also seemed to serve a large clientele who used their education in pursuit of worldly gains. For instance, Alexander McWhorter, a Presbyterian minister and teacher who trained under Samuel Finley, started an academy affiliated with his church in Newark, New Jersey. There were also small-scale academies in Basking-

Ridge, Deerfield, and Mendham, New Jersey, none of which developed a particularly notable reputation, but altered the shape of local life nonetheless.44 Even before Barber took it over, the academy Elizabeth Town, New Jersey operated during most of the 1760s and 1770s under the direction of men who had little theological influence or interest.45

Tapping Reeve, the son-in-law of Aaron Burr Sr., taught in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey after graduating college. Reeve went on to have a distinguished legal career, opening up

42 To come up with this figure, I combined data drawn from both James McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748- 1768: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1976), xxi; and Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1980), xxix. 43 Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1776-1783: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1981), xxvi. 44 On academies in New Jersey, see Douglas Sloan, Education in New Jersey in the Revolutionary Era (Trenton: The New Jersey Historical Commission, 1975), 11–2. John Fea discusses the Deerfield Academy in Fea, Way of Improvement, 59–69. Many of Rev. Enoch Green’s students used their education to pursue professional and political careers; see John Fea, “Rural Religion: Protestant Community and the Moral Improvement of the South Jersey Countryside, 1676-1800” (Ph. D. Diss., Stony Brook: State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1999), 452–7. 45 On the Elizabeth Town Academy teachers, see Murray, Notes, Historical and Biographical, 87–8; Edwin Francis Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, New Jersey: Including the Early History of Union County (New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1868), 519–21.

114 arguably the first American law school in Litchfield, Connecticut.46 Aaron Ogden,

Barber’s brother-in-law and the namesake of the famous 1824 steamboat case, Gibbons v.

Ogden, served as an assistant teacher during the 1770s as well. Many of these small schools opened in places that took strong stances during the Awakening. In this way, religion mattered immensely to these schools. Yet while they offered some pious young men a pipeline to the ministry, small local academies opened up opportunities for men to pursue other career trajectories.47

Cultures of Ambition and Empire

Throughout the British Atlantic World, teachers simultaneously hoped and feared that the pedagogy of emulation would incite political ambitions in students. As Philip

Vickers Fithian wrote, “Without Instruction & Refinement Men are advanced but a little above their fellow Creatures the Brutes; they are ignorant of themselves, & of the wonderful Works of Providence.”48 Those contemporaries that thought about the problem of ambition, believed it was essential to the Enlightenment idea of improvement.

Society could not develop without the exertions of ambitious men. Conceding that ambition stoked desires for political recognition, the task became harnessing political ambition to serve Enlightenment ideals of societal improvement. Political ambition

46 Evidence that Reeve taught at the Elizabeth Town Academy is in, Aug. 24, 1767, Trustee Minutes of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, PHS, 14. On Reeve, see Marian C. McKenna, Tapping Reeve and the Litchfield Law School (New York: Oceana, 1986). 47 Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, 1971), 60. 48 John Rogers Williams, ed., Philip Vickers Fithian: Journal and Letters, 1767-1774 (Princeton: Published by The University Library, 1900), 4; John Fea discusses many of the internal dilemmas that Fithian confronted by taking part in the educational and enlightened culture of the region in “Way of Improvement.”

115 threatened the tenuous ideological fusion of Calvinism, republicanism, and Scottish moral philosophy that colonists held so dear. Paradoxically, it was integral to creating a world in which that fusion could thrive.49 Frances Hutcheson, for instance, argued that societies should fear men who betrayed, too readily, their “desires of power and of glory.” On the one hand, “A moderate degree” of ambition for power and glory “is innocent and useful.” Put another way, a “desire reputation for integrity and moral worth is natural” and “is useful in our constitution.” On the other hand, when these desires

“grow too violent they are restless and uneasy to the individual, and often pernicious to society.” The desire “may grow so violent as to be a perpetual torment, and the source of the vilest and most wretched passions,” which could create a situation wherein “superior merit will then raise envy, and ill-will, and an humour of detraction.”50 Finding a balance between beneficent and venal political ambition was a central problem in all societies.

Hutcheson filtered his moral philosophy through civic republicanism, which only exaggerated fears of political ambition.51 From a republican perspective, power inherently encroached upon liberty. Ambition, taken to an extreme, would result in the accumulation of power. Furthermore, ambition led to faction, which created tyranny, and could corrupt democratic and aristocratic government alike.52

Civic virtue could encourage measured and responsible political ambitions. At the heart of Hutchesonian moral philosophy was the idea of an internal moral sense that

49 On colonists’ conception of the Enlightenment, and its connection to religious and political ideas, see Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). 50 Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, I: 164. 51 Caroline Robbins, “‘When It Is That Colonies May Turn Independent:’ An Analysis of the Environment and Politics of Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746),” William and Mary Quarterly 11 (April 1954): 214–251. 52 Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, II: 186, 218, 214, 255.

116 felt pleasure when one pursued anything that was inherently good. According to

Hutcheson, this sense encouraged civic virtue because “where the moral sense is in its full vigour, it makes the generous determination to publick happiness the supreme one in the soul.”53 Another internal sense, the sense of “honour,” drove people to pursue pleasure in their public sense. This third sense compelled people to seek the approval of their peers, and to emulate the peers they admired. But who they approved was not subjective. Comparing approval of virtuous behavior to viewing something beautiful,

Hutcheson noted that “we do not say that it is beautiful because we reap some little pleasure in viewing it, but we are pleased in viewing it because it is antecedently beautiful.”54 Thus in order to inculcate civic virtue, someone simply needed to set the right example. The honour sense, then, confirmed that the moral and public sense worked properly. The approval of one’s peers indicated that you had indeed followed your moral sense to the benefit of a community. Though Hutcheson did not use these words, the honour sense was similar to emulation.55 If republicans and moral philosophers worried about ambition because it might make one hungry for political power, the irony is that the curriculum of academies had a similar end result: the creation of a group of political leaders. The difference was ostensibly that through an academy

53 Ibid., I: 77. 54 Ibid., I: 54, see also 79–83. 55The connection between civic virtue and emulation was one that French writers made explicitly, according to Jeremy Caradonna, “The Monarchy of Virtue,” 445–7. See also, Kaplan, “Virtuous Competition among Citizens.”

117 education students cleansed their ambitions. According to Hutcheson, not unlike other skills, one could hone and improve the moral sense.56

Colonists entrusted academies with overseeing the development of political ambition and nurturing virtuous leaders. Filtered through an academy curriculum, the motivation to achieve political standing would derive ostensibly from an ambition to excel amongst one’s peers in the pursuit of the moral and public sense, not a passionate pursuit of power. For instance, William Smith told students of the Philadelphia Academy and College that they “can acquire no Authority so lasting, no Influence so beneficial” as through the “superior Talents, joined to inflexible Integrity” that students developed while in school. But Smith would also “beseech you to avoid all Manner of Passions.”

Part of the means of checking these passions was the realization that often men would not

“receive the full Applause of your Virtue in your own Day” for actions taken on behalf of fellow citizens. Throughout the 1750s, Smith encouraged educated young men to aspire to positions of importance. Simultaneously, he tempered their expectations for what prominence would offer them.57

In his famous sermon, Religion and Public Spirit, the evangelical Calvinist and

Princeton president, Samuel Davies, offered the most sustained treatment of the problem of political ambition. Davies argued that an ambitious showing of “public spirit” was acceptable when one recognized that God “is the sole Author of all that little Religion

56 Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, I: 58. 57 Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 11, 1757; Prayers, for the Use of the Philadelphia Academy (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, and D. Hall, 1753), 12; William Smith, A Charge, Delivered May 17, 1757, at the First Anniversary Commencement in the College and Academy of Philadelphia, to the Young Gentlemen Who Took Their Degrees on That Occasion. (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, and D. Hall, 1757), 10.

118 and true Virtue.” In this sense, God chose who would be virtuous and ambitious. It was thus not irreligious to be ambitious because “the Idle have no Reason to expect his

Assistance” in developing that passion. By implication, people active in promoting the public spirit did. Davies expected that education would invigorate the public spirit of young men. In fact, “devoid of this [public spirit] … all the valuable Ends of a liberal

Education, will be lost upon you.” Thus Davies exhorted a Princeton graduating class that if they ever possessed the chance to “be of Service to Posterity, rejoice in the

Opportunity, be ambitious to survive yourselves, to be immortal upon Earth.”58 Davies’ vision of public spiritedness jived with republican conceptions of virtue. He recognized that ambition created men of action who might sustain the public good, but also represented an existential threat to prevailing conceptions of political society.59

English education reformers shared colonists’ conviction that schools had a special duty to nurture the political ambitions of future leaders. Joseph Priestley’s earliest writing on education explored, in his words, “how to fill up with advantage those years of a young gentleman’s life which immediately precede his engaging in those higher spheres of active life in which he is destined to move.” He criticized the fact that most English educational institutions saw training ministers as their main function. In a period when “the connection of states are extended,” teachers should develop plans for

58 Samuel Davies, Religion and Public Spirit. A Valedictory Address to the Senior Class, Delivered in Nassau-Hall, September 21, 1760. The Sunday before Commencement: By Samuel Davies, A.M. Late President of the College, Deceased. (Portsmouth, NJ: Printed and sold by Daniel Fowle, 1762), 12, 8, 6. 59 When he took over the presidency of the College of New Jersey, John Witherspoon also focused on encouraging public service; see Christie L. Maloyed and J. Kelton Williams, “Reverend John Witherspoon’s Pedagogy of Leadership,” American Educational History Journal 39 (March 2012): 349– 364.

119 education directed at “Gentlemen who are designed to fill the principal stations of active life.”60 Along with other thinkers of his time, Priestley realized danger lurked because men were “so eager” to pursue “this career of ambition.” According to Priestley, “care should be taken to rouse the ambition of opulent youth” to achieve “reputable distinction, which arises from being among the first either in domestic improvements, or public employments.”61 Likewise, Thomas Sheridan—an Irish actor and major advocate of teaching elocution—bemoaned that English education did little to “train up the youth destined to compose the august body of our legislature.” He argued that pedagogy based on “rewards, honours, and emulation, may spirit up person of the highest birth and fortune to laborious studies and to dedicate themselves chiefly to pleasures of the rational kind.”62 British society needed to create schools that used a pedagogy centered on emulation to direct the ambitions of the future political elite.

The focus on the connection between education and politics stemmed from widespread mid-century fears about British national decline. According to one writer,

Dr. John Brown, the growing factionalism and rise of luxury that followed the Glorious

Revolution threatened British greatness. Education was the best antidote. Drawing on examples from Ancient Greece and Rome, Brown focused especially on how education could foster societal homogeneity. In many ways his arguments anticipated the language

60 Joseph Priestley, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life … (London: Printed for C. Henderson under the Royal Exchange, 1765), 8–9, 4, 1. 61 Priestley, Miscellaneous Observations, 21, 114–5. 62 Thomas Sheridan, British Education: Or, The Source of the Disorders of Great Britain (London: Printed for R and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1756), 533, 497.

120 of republican educational reform that took hold in the early American republic.63

According to Brown, education sustained the “Foundations of civil Liberty” by “forming the Habits of the youthful Heart, to a Coincidence with the general Welfare.” Brown’s ideas bore a striking resemblance to Davies’ sentiments in Religion and Public Spirit. He argued that “This affection is distinguished by the Name of public spirit, or the Love of our Country; the highest Passion that can sway the human Heart.” In dire times, these bonds of affection proved important. Sparta provided an excellent example. Brown noted that even as Sparta went into decline, the “Force of a rigorous Education essentially mixed with the Principles of the State, was still conspicuous.” This led Sparta’s enemies to conclude that “the only effectual Method of destroying” the commonwealth “must be in dissolving the Education of their Youth.”64 From this, Brown concluded that in order to stave off enemies, the English government needed to take a more active role in setting education policy.

Much of Joseph Priestley’s early work actually responded to Brown’s Thoughts on Civil Liberty. Priestley disagreed both with Brown’s insistence that government should oversee schooling, and that education should foster societal homogeneity.

Priestley surmised that Brown arrived at this conclusion because he “seems to consider as the only object of education, the tranquility of the state.” Instead, Priestley argued that

“Uniformity is the characteristic of the brute creation.” He believed that “humans are capable of infinite improvement,” and governmentally-imposed uniformity in education

63 Siobhan Moroney, “Birth of a Canon: The Historiography of Early Republican Educational Thought,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Dec. 1999): 476–491. 64 John Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty: On Licentiousness, and Faction. By the Author of Essays on the Characteristics, &c (Dublin: Printed for A. Leathley, 1765), 23, 24, 59.

121 would stifle creativity. Education should focus on “the forming of wise and virtuous men” who would create “more variety among us.” This was “certainly an object of the greatest importance in every state.”65 In essence, creating homogenous education suited specifically to an existing state would certainly stabilize it. But it could also prop up a defective state. Encouraging variety, though, would unleash human potential to improve the state itself, a more effective long-term solution.

Despite their disagreements over specifics, Brown, Priestley, and Sheridan all recognized that the potential political benefits of education existed at the national level.

Perhaps not coincidentally, all three wrote in the middle of a century of imperial transformation that precipitated widespread reconsiderations of the nature of British nationalism.66 John Brown, more than anyone else, stressed about the place of the colonies in plans for national integration. He argued that “Colonies, when peopled beyond a certain Degree, become a Burthen to the Mother Country.” Insofar as “they divide her compacted Strength,” colonies threatened Brown’s vision for a uniform national education. Yet this was just one example of “the incurable Defect of our political State, in not having a correspondent and adequate Code of Education.” Insofar as this problem extended throughout the realm, it seems that Brown would have applied his overarching solution—to better legislate education—to the colonies. From Brown’s point of view, education could help integrate and strengthen the whole Empire, not just

65 Priestley, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education, 143, 149, 151. 66 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), on education, see 167–70.

122 the nation.67 Similarly, Thomas Sheridan relied on historical evidence to argue that “In all well-regulated states … the education of youth, ought to … shape their talents in such a way as will render them most serviceable to the support of that government.”68

Moreover, there was a strong current of thought that saw culture, or more accurately manners, as among the most powerful national ties. Brown reminded his readers that even the great legal thinker Montesquieu knew that “He who violates established

Manners, strikes at the general Foundation; [while] he who violates Law, strikes only at a particular Part of the Superstructure of the State.”69 Viewed from this perspective, cultural reform, even more than desperately-needed constitutional change, looked like the surest route to creating national cohesion between metropole and periphery.70 Given their sense of history, and considering the strength of trans-Atlantic intellectual networks, it made a great deal of sense to try and harness education as a force for imperial integration.

It made even more sense to encourage colonial education, because it might help overcome one of the main perceived differences between North America and Europe.

Despite increased interchange, Europeans still viewed North America as an uncivil, even savage place. The presence of slavery and Indian groups colored how metropolitans

67 Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, 172, 182. 68 Sheridan, British Education, 13. 69 Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, 68–9. See also Eliga H. Gould, “An Empire of Manners: The Refinement of British America in Atlantic Perspective,” Journal of British Studies 39 (Jan. 2000): 114–22. 70 On the constitutional history of the British Empire, see Jack P Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607- 1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

123 viewed colonists. More importantly, the problem of controlling non-whites called into question whether colonies could abide by the law of nations and honor treaties. Did the colonies exist outside of the world of treaty-worthy states? If that was the case, then as the imperial connection tightened the colonies might actually erode British authority and harm the nation from within.71 Underscoring the point, Priestley proposed a syllabus for a course on history directed at statesmen, which included a discussion of “The influence of the practice of domestic slavery on the minds of the ancients,” within a larger lecture on the “Influence of POLITENESS in a state.”72 Yet English writers maintained that history demonstrated how education could civilize uncivil domains, and thus was an integral part of establishing national strength and legitimacy. John Brown argued that education helped drive that Sparta’s transformation from “A Tribe of untaught Savages” to a society that epitomized “Civilization and Humanity.”73 Priestley echoed the notion, arguing that any many who can “extend the bounds of the knowledge of nature and art … may do more than any mere statesman.”74 Thomas Sheridan claimed that “it is well worth observing, that Rome never appeared in such glory, never enjoyed such happiness at home, nor was so much respected abroad, as during the time that the arts flourished in

71 Patrick Griffin, America’s Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 36–88; Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 14–47, 79–110; and Gould, “The Laws of War and Peace: Legitimating Slavery in the Age of the American Revolution,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 52–76. Over time, the Empire would attempt to assert new legal power over the colonies in order to bring them under tighter control. This would of course precipitate a period of resistance and ultimately revolution, see also Greene, “An Uneasy Connection”; and Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), xii–xiii, 740–5. 72 Priestley, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education, 61. 73 Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, 53. 74 Priestley, Miscellaneous Observations, 116.

124 their highest degree of perfection.” Rome and Roman art, language, and oratory rose and fell together. Modern Britons should thus take note of the importance of these subjects— as well as poetry, dancing, and music—to the political health of a nation. In particular, he argued that “the very nature of our constitution, can proceed only from a general good taste in the people.” “Ought it not therefore to be the first care of a nation that is ambitious to distinguish itself in the world,” Sheridan asked, “to cultivate and refine their language … to be a perpetual ornament and support to the state.” In sum, education and the “the cultivation of the arts is absolutely necessary to the well-being of this country.”75

This was a lesson that could translate across the Atlantic, where the necessity of political refinement was all the more pressing.

This whole line of argument makes sense in light of the long history of English and British state formation. In the seventeenth century, the English vastly expanded the capacity of the state to govern without many significant institutional innovations. Rather, local power brokers who increasingly identified with the state worked to strengthen its authority within their communities. State authority depended on the reputation of local elites whose authority was negotiated and performed time and again, in every locale.76

The expansion of education for upper-middling and gentry ranks in late-sixteenth and

75 Sheridan, British Education, quotes on 505, 518–9, 184, 519; see also 175–86, 259–60, 404–25. 76 Michael Braddick, “State Formation and Social Change in Early Modern England: A Problem Stated and Approaches Suggested,” Social History 16 (Jan. 1991): 1–17; and Braddick “Administrative Performance: The Representation of Political Authority in Early Modern England,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy, and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 166–87. Colonial American historians have used the concept of negotiated governance quite extensively; see Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994); and Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2013).

125 seventeenth-century England helped consolidate a national ruling class united by a shared culture.77 The Glorious Revolution inaugurated a period of sustained growth of the

British fiscal-military apparatus, which changed the way colonies confronted metropolitan power.78 At the same time though, the seventeenth-century model of

English state formation did not disappear. In fact, it became more potent in the colonies.

Extending an English elite culture of civility into colonies held the promise of stabilizing

British authority across a far-flung empire.79 Promoting colonial education was thus one part of a broader effort not only to integrate the colonies into the Empire, but also into the world of treaty-worthy European states.

Throughout the eighteenth century, imperial officials bemoaned that a lack of educated colonists stifled the Empire’s ability to govern the colonies effectively.

Creating stable political and social structures in Virginia was a drawn-out process.80

According to imperial and local officials, education—or the lack thereof—was a major

77 Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 191–3. For a detailed examination of the expansion of educational institutions and an analysis of the social composition of students, see Lawrence Stone, “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640,” Past & Present 28 (July 1964): 41–80. 78 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Steven C. A Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 8; and Pincus, “Wars and State Making: Re-Examining the Paradigm” (presented at the Center for Historical Research, Ohio State University, September 5, 2014). 79 David S. Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 38–9; Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, C. 1550-1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 337–425; Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael Braddick, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–32; and Kathleen Wilson, “Rethinking the Colonial State: Family, Gender, and Governmentality in Eighteenth-Century British Frontiers,” American Historical Review 116 (Dec. 2011): 1294–1322. 80 Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Colonial Virginia,” in Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 90–115.

126 part of the problem. In 1691, the lieutenant governor sought to create a plan to establish

“strict enforcement of the laws in every branch of administration.” To this end, he set about collecting county-level information on militias and other classic institutions of authority, as well as “the promoters of education.”81 A few years later, another report on

Virginia suggested that problems with the “Administration of Justice” stemmed from a lack of education. County courts had worked “irregularly” for their entire history in

Virginia. But they functioned better under the English-educated gentry of a prior generation, than under the current creole generation who “have been born in Virginia, and have had generally little more education than to read, write and cast accounts, and that very indifferently.”82 The lack of colonial education caused as many problems for the administration of the empire as the execution of local law. In nearby Maryland, the governor complained to the Board of Trade that “Royall commands before the Generall

Assembly” were rarely followed. He blamed this on the fact that there “was not any person of liberall education.” The governor could not “graft good manners on so barren a stock.” Time and again he failed to convince the assembly to take any action on royal plans.83 Colonial leaders assumed that empowering educated men would make a dramatic difference. Lieutenant Governor Spotswood of Virginia, for instance, explained that he delayed appointing a “Sollicitor of the Virginia affairs” until the candidate with

“the advantages of a more liberal education” was ready to take the post. Spotswood

81 “Extract from Minutes of Council of Virginia,” Calendar of State Papers [hereafter CSP], item 1292, vol. 13 (1689-1692): 380. 82 Henry Hartwell and others to William Popple; CSP, item 1396, vol. 15 (1696-1697): 641-666. 83 Governor Seymour to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Maryland, CSP, item 410, vol. 24 (1709): 249-252.

127 argued that the young, English-educated man would welcome the opportunity. He hoped also that it “will likewise convince him how much its interest and prosperity depends on the indulgent favour of the Crown.” The appointment might then have a longer-term impact on colonial governance.84 By the 1730s, officials in New York expressed

“confiden[ce] that public schools for the education of youth will always find countenance from” the Board of Trade.85 That confidence was misplaced. For decades, colonists assumed they needed the state to help spread education, while government officials assumed the lack of education hindered the effectiveness of the colonial state. So nothing really changed. The institutional transformation that accompanied the Awakening opened the possibility that education could finally support imperial governance in a meaningful way.

The connection between colonial colleges and imperial ambitions became obvious during the controversy over chartering King’s College in New York in the 1750s. The

City’s Anglican establishment believed that a chartered college could help cement a particular vision of empire in the mid-Atlantic. Around the same time, Anglican clergy in Pennsylvania began using education as part of a broader effort to Anglicize German immigrants. The proponents of both policies favored strong, High-Church Anglicanism and a more powerful imperial presence, which would reinforce each other. Ultimately, the vocal opposition to Anglicanizing King’s, led by William Livingston and the

Presbyterian party, lost the war. But they won a few major battles along the way. Most

84 Lt. Governor Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, CSP, item 195, vol. 33 (1722- 1723): 94. 85 Lieut. Governor George Clarke to Council of Trade and Plantations, New York, CSP, item 268, vol. 44 (1738): 126-136

128 importantly, the Anglican trustees guaranteed equal access to all Protestants. They also revoked a proposed requirement that all students attend Anglican religious services.86 In the end, King’s College resembled the other chartered schools in the mid-Atlantic, run largely by dissenters.

In fact, the concessions that dissenters won from the Anglicans in this case were basically identical to those that imperial officials mandated when chartering the dissenting schools, most notably the New Side Presbyterian, College of New Jersey.

Lewis Morris, a zealous Anglican and governor of New Jersey, denied the Presbyterian synod’s first request to grant a charter for the College. But John Hamilton, Morris’ successor and another Anglican, granted it in 1746.87 In deciding to charter the school,

Hamilton left his stamp on it. Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of the school maintained that the “chief Design of erecting the College, is for the Education of pious and well qualified Candidates for the Ministry.” Founded in 1746, the year the

Presbyterian synod split, Dickinson clearly envisioned that the school would strengthen his New Side faction. But, as Dickinson noted, the trustees were “by our Charter obliged to admit without Distinction, those of any & of every religious Profession to the

86 On the King’s College dispute generally, see Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 405–6; Ned C. Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 159–62; Robert A. McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754- 2004 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 8–9. My arguments here most closely echo, Michael D. Hattem, “‘Anglifying' an Empire: Cultural Politics and Imperial Anglicanism in the Middle Colonies, 1749-1757,” (unpublished manuscript, July 20, 2013. 87 Bryan F. LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 172–80.

129

Privileges of a liberal Education.”88 This was Hamilton’s contribution. From

Dickinson’s perspective, this might overemphasize the secular mission of school and dilute its religious impact. At the very least, this would divert some of the school’s attention away from the Presbyterian factional dispute in which its leaders were enmeshed. This might have perturbed Dickinson, but in the end these concessions ensured that the school received its charter. Similarly, officials of the Old Side

Presbyterian Newark Academy in Delaware reassured potential English donors that there

“is no clause in the charter, by which the least preference is given to any Protestant denomination of Christians ; and the Trustees are determined, that they never will, by any subsequent act or bye-law, remove it from its present catholic foundation.”89 Unlike

King’s College, the Newark Academy, or the College of New Jersey, the College and

Academy of Philadelphia was founded with strong interdenominational support from

Anglicans and Old Side Presbyterians. All four schools received some combination of tacit or explicit support from imperial officials, including approvals for lotteries to raise money.90 And the charters of all the schools bound them to serve the whole community, regardless of denomination. Taken together, all these schools helped foster a culture of

Protestant ecumenism that spread through the colonies in the years following the Great

88 Dickinson to [Theophilus Howell?], March 3, 1746/7, Elizabeth Town, folder 9, Jonathan Dickinson Collection, PUL. 89 Pennsylvania Packet, June 15, 1772. 90 Beverly McAnear, “The Raising of Funds by the Colonial Colleges,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 38 (March 1952): 591–612, esp. 594-9. On the emergence of lotteries in colonial America, see Neal Elizabeth Millikan, “‘Willing to Be in Fortune’s Way:’ Lotteries in the Eighteenth-Century British North American Empire” (Ph. D. Diss., University of South Carolina, 2008), 54–87.

130

Awakening, and in the face of clerical machinations to prolong denominational fighting.91

The trustees of King’s College attempted to capitalize on the perceived connection between education and the state. They addressed their fundraising appeals to

“Patrons of Learning and Knowledge, And Friends of the British Empire in America.”

According to the trustees, a “public Seminary of Learning” like King’s would inculcate

“the Principles of Virtue, Religion and Loyalty” and thus deserved the “Approbation of every Friend to the Prosperity of the British Empire in America.” The letter also noted that King’s was “favoured with a Royal Charter, the Design, by the Countenance of the

Government.”92 Yet all the chartered schools could claim this, and they all at least ostensibly educated Anglicans and dissenters alike. At least one English Anglican minister recognized and celebrated this state of affairs. In a sermon about the American colleges given in 1763, Daniel Watson praised how “protestant youth of all denominations are received into” the colleges. Education, he surmised, “will give birth to many amiable and lasting friendships in after-life, between men of different persuasions … and tend to wear off that sourness of party.” Watson went on to describe

America as “the school of christian knowledge, useful arts and liberal science, under the

91 On ecumenism in the period, see Chris Beneke, Beyond Toleration : The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 79–112, and on education in particular, 96–103. 92 Sir James Jay, A Letter to the Governors of the College of New York: Respecting the Collection That Was Made in This Kingdom in 1762 and 1763, for the Colleges of Philadelphia and New York. To Which Are Added, Explanatory Notes; and an Appendix, Containing the Letters ... Between Mr. Alderman Trecothick and the Author. (London: Printed for G. Kearsly, 1771), 39. This pamphlet was printed in 1771 in response to some of the College’s English patrons who questioned, with more than a hint of hostility, whether the money had actually gone to good use.

131 countenance and protection of a powerful liberal state.”93 In effect, all the chartered schools offered the same political benefits to the Empire.

While imperial support for colonial ecumenism was already on the rise, the Seven

Years’ War laid bare its value to the Empire.94 The conflict with Catholic France shocked the British Empire into embracing Protestant unity.95 As public institutions that already fostered ecumenism, schools’ importance to the Empire only grew with the outbreak of war.96 Schools leaders also understood the mutually beneficial nature of the relationship between education and Empire. Throughout the War, they constantly reminded colonists and imperial officials of this fact. At the end of year exercises at the

Philadelphia Academy in 1754, just shortly after the War broke out, Francis Hopkinson— a future signer of the Declaration of Independence—argued that “Knowledge is incompatible with arbitrary Power … THE RIGHT EDUCATION of YOUTH has ever been esteemed, by wise men, one of the chief cares of the best constituted States.” He would later argue that the College and Academy protected both “the true Principles of

93 Daniel Watson, A Sermon, Preached on Occasion of the Brief for the American Colleges (Newcastle: J.White, 1763), 31, 34. 94 This was not unique to the period of the Seven Years’ War. As Carla Pestana shows, “a broadly shared culture that united believers from different Protestant churches” helped draw together the British Atlantic World; see Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 5–6, 9. Douglas Bradburn has also shown that Protestantism was a factor in English colonization in Virginia from the very outset; see “The Eschatological Origins of the British Empire,” in Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion, ed. Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 15–56. Yet attachments to an overriding Protestantism seemed to have peaked in moments of crisis and vigorous imperial competition. Owen Stanwood, for instance, argues that a similar emphasis on Protestant cooperation arose in response to fears of French Catholicism in the late-seventeenth century, helping to draw together the British Empire in the wake of the Glorious Revolution; see The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 95 See also, David W Robson, Educating Republicans: The College in the Era of the American Revolution, 1750-1800 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 30–3. 96 Beneke, Beyond Toleration, 86, 93–4.

132

Liberty, and the Protestant Religion.” 97 In the early years of the war, leaders of the

College and Academy positioned the school as an interdenominational, civic meeting place. One week, a note appeared in the local newspaper inviting “Free Electors” to the school to formulate a plan for dealing with the possibility that Quaker elected officials would not provide supplies for the war effort.98 The next week, the newspaper published an account of George Whitefield’s appearance at the “Academy-yard,” where he preached “to a vast Number of People of all Denominations.”99 The two events, which welcomed all Protestants but excluded Quakers, positioned the Academy as a central arbiter in establishing the boundaries of political community when people’s faith in the

Quaker assembly was at a low ebb.100 By virtue of location, the nonsectarian College and

Academy of Philadelphia had an easy time getting their patriotic message in to print. The

Philadelphia school also lacked the built-in funding networks that official denominational attachments provided. Patriotism was thus far more integral to the school’s survival.

Yet dissenting schools likewise saw the Seven Years’ War as an opportunity to assert their utility to the Empire. Among Presbyterians, the New Side minister Samuel

Davies led the way in mobilizing colonists against the French. Though he claimed God would inevitably side with English, he demanded that his Virginia congregation actively

97 Pennsylvania Gazette Nov. 21, 1754; and Aug. 26, 1756. 98 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 12, 1754. 99 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 19, 1754. 100 The crisis of the Seven Years’ War emboldened voluntary associations to assert authority in unprecedented ways, which challenged local government. See, Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: Origins of American Political Practices in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 131–57. On the ways in which the Seven Years’ War fostered cooperation between Anglicans and New and Old Side Presbyterians against Quakers, see Eustace, Passion Is the Gale, 201–15.

133 take up arms. Pacifism was not an option. The first Virginia militia unit came from

Hanover County, Davies’ county. Later in the 1750s, as he took up the presidency of the

College of New Jersey, Davies spread his patriotic message to a wider audience. Most notably, he gave his famous sermon on Religion and the Public Spirit toward the end of the War. He followed that up with a eulogy for King George II. Throughout the War,

Davies saw it as his duty to maintain morale. Davies believed dissenters needed to demonstrate their patriotism in order to continue receiving political protection for their school and denomination. He probably hoped that students, as leaders of future, would take this message to heart. Both of Virginia’s wartime governors understood and honored the relationship that Davies hoped to maintain.101 In essence, Davies and other

Presbyterian leaders had grown accustomed to an arrangement where their allegiance to the Empire secured their autonomy over faith and education. As Ned Landsman has shown, after the 1707 Scottish Act of Union, imperial officials had grown somewhat used to relinquishing autonomy over certain institutions to local authorities. In the colonial case, this comity emerged out of shared fears of Catholicism. It betrayed the fact that dissenters envisioned the Empire as one that lacked a national church and in which the source of authority did not exist solely in London. This ultimately clashed with the

101 Samuel Davies, A Sermon Delivered at Nassau-Hall, January 14. 1761. On the Death of His Late Majesty King George II. By Samuel Davies, A.M. Late President of the College of New-Jersey. Published by Request. To Which Is Prefixed, a Brief Account of the Life, Character, and Death, of the Author. By David Bostwick, A.M. Minister of the Presbyterian Congregation in New-York. (Boston: Printed and sold by R. Draper, 1761); George William Pilcher, “Preacher of the New Light, Samuel Davies, 1724-1761” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1963), 210–18. On Davies and politics, also see Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, 326–31; Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

134 centralizing ambitions of many imperial officials.102 But the extent of those disagreements would not become manifest until after the British secured victory over the

French. Before then, dissenters felt confident of their place within the Empire.103

Denominational Education and Revolutionary Mobilization

From the 1740s through the Seven Years’ War, colonists and imperial officials attempted to use education as a force of imperial integration. During the imperial crisis education transformed into a force of imperial disintegration. In fact, the politicization of education in the decades preceding 1765 ensured that students, teachers, and trustees would embroil schools in the political controversies that ultimately led to American independence. During the crisis of the 1760s—as Parliament asserted its authority over colonial law, trade, and institutions—Protestant ecumenism fractured. When dissenters’ belief that their interests allied with the Empire’s shattered, denominational distinctions once again became potent sources of political identity. Dissenting schools and churches—especially Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed—reemerged as important institutions of political mobilization. In this climate, the very same effects that imperial

102 See Ned C. Landsman, “British Union and the American Revolution: Unions, Sovereignty, and the Multinational State,” in The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century, ed. Michael Zuckerman and Patrick K. Spero (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Forthcoming, 2016); and Landsman, “The Episcopate, the British Union, and the Failure of Religious Settlement in Colonial British America,” in The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America, ed. Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 75– 97. On the composite nature of early modern empires, and the British in particular, see J.H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past & Present 137 (Nov. 1992): 48–71; and H.G. Koenigsberger, “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American Revolution,” Historical Research, 62 (June 1989): 135–53. On colonists’ understanding of imperial governance, see John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 178– 217, esp. 184-6. 103 T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution" Revisions Once More in Need of Revising,” Journal of American History 84 (June 1997): 13–40, esp. 26-7.

135 officials believed made education useful for colonial governance actually emboldened

American resistance and helped convince colonists that independence was feasible. At a more personal level, denominational academies had stoked the political ambitions of countless students. They now found an outlet for their ambitions in the nascent revolutionary movement. Seemingly unrelated forces of religious conflict and personal ambition conspired to place schools and students at the heart of the revolutionary struggle. During the 1770s and 1780s, men like Francis Barber would take their place on the international stage.

For all the ways that education obscured major differences between colonial and metropolitan culture during the mid-eighteenth century, colleges and academies also underscored some key divergences. American educators took their cue from the Scottish

Enlightenment, which emphasized “useful” education. North American academies and colleges were thus firmly British, but never wholly English. Moreover, colonial political traditions exaggerated the republican influences that undergirded this educational culture.104 This led many denominational schools to avoid teaching “ornamental” subjects, which usually included some combination of dancing, music, fencing, visual arts, and modern languages, particularly French and Italian. Urban merchant elites and the southern planter gentry, however, actively sought out these subjects. These elites cultivated a self-consciously Court style of gentility. Dancing masters, in particular,

104 On colonial republicanism, see Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968); Richard R. Beeman, “Deference, Republicanism, and the Emergence of Popular Politics in Eighteenth-Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly 49 (July 1992): 401–430; and Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

136 fostered this culture by teaching young men and women the choreography—both for the dances and the social interactions—of balls and assemblies, the central site of courtly gentility. While establishing the social status of the dancers, these rituals also connected participants to a firmly English Court culture, and reaffirmed their loyalty to the Empire and the King especially.105 Many colleges and high-level academies did teach French, but often as something extra. The College of New Jersey, a patriot hotbed, offered

French instruction in the 1770s. King’s College had the most developed curriculum in modern languages.106 Benjamin Franklin thought French, and most other ancient and modern languages, served specific purposes. In his vision for the College and Academy of Philadelphia, only those students who intended to pursue a career in law, physics, or as a merchant would learn languages. Similarly, while he thought that “Drawing is a kind of Universal Language, understood by all Nations,” and could be useful to gentleman travelers or middling mechanics, Franklin argued that “Art is long, and their Time is short.” He “therefore propos'd that [students] learn those Things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental.”107

Colonists resisted the larger corpus of ornamental education largely because it did not conform to their conceptions of masculinity. In the 1750s, one writer proposed a

105 Here I am drawing on Serena Zabin, Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 87–99. On colonial dancing masters and the culture of balls and assemblies, see also Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 81–7; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992), 55–6; and Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America, 145–58. 106 Joe W. Kraus, “The Development of a Curriculum in the Early American Colleges,” History of Education Quarterly 1 (June 1961): 64-76, esp. 67, 71. 107 Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Printed by Franklin and Hall, 1749), 11–2. See also Arthur Efland, A History of Art Education: Intellectual and Social Currents in Teaching the Visual Arts (New York: Teachers College Press, 1990), 46–7.

137 sarcastic plan for an academy that “seems much better calculated for the free-born Sons of Gentlemen” than the “old-fashioned” curriculum of most colonial colleges and academies. He designed the academy “to win the Hearts of all Mothers.” To do so, “I will take care, that my Pupils shall not be over-burdened with Learning.” Instead, students “shall learn DANCING to the greatest perfection.” Discipline would be loose at such as school because correction “is infinitely worse than any Vice” a student might develop. To add to the lack of structure, students “shall go Home to their Mamma’s one

Week in every Month.”108 The republican rhetoric of masculine virtue only reinforced the idea that ornamental education had no place in American society. In 1774, a would- be Loyalist newspaper in New York ran advertisements for “A NEW ACADEMY FOR

TEACHING MUSICK, DANCING, AND THE ITALIAN and FRENCH

LANGUAGES.”109 With boycotts of English luxury goods on the rise, it was clear just how antithetical ornamental education was to the revolutionary movement. Not long after this advertisement appeared, a student at the Old Side Newark, Delaware academy gave a public address “In which the mischiefs of luxury were shewn.”110 Ornamental subjects, dancing especially, seemed to embody the republican caricature of luxury as trivial exercises that brought pleasure but little else. If luxury corrupted virtue, and virtue was masculine, that ornamental education was inherently feminine. When men came

108 Pennsylvania Gazette, Dec. 12, 1754. 109 Rivington’s New-York Gazette, May 5, 1774. 110 Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, Oct. 9, 1775.

138 under the influence of ornamental education, it followed that luxury would corrupt their virtue, and a republic would cease to function.111

Educated people did not uniformly support independence. Like most colonists, location, ethnicity, and denomination conditioned the positions colonists took on resistance and revolution. Yet schools provided a place for men to sort through their allegiances. In 1766, on the heels of the Stamp Act crisis, the College of Philadelphia held an essay competition on the “reciprocal advantages of a perpetual union” between the Great Britain and the colonies. The tone of the essays was measured. Some essayists, though, did critique imperial officials for causing a disruption in an otherwise fruitful relationship.112 The influence of the school’s provost, the Anglican minister

William Smith, tempered the arguments of both sides. Smith taught Hutchesonian moral philosophy, and through it republican principles, to his students. Smith, though, was hardly an ardent radical. He never took as staunch a loyalist position as some, though he was at the very least ambivalent about the American Revolution.113 Smith is an

111 On the gendering of republicanism, see Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13 (Autumn 1987): 37–58; and Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (Oct. 1987): 689–721. On luxury and republicanism more generally, see Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 24 (Jan. 1967): 3–43; Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 107–24, 418; and Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 247–51. 112 Four Dissertations, on the Reciprocal Advantages of a Perpetual Union between Great-Britain and Her American Colonies. Written for Mr. Sargent’s Prize-Medal. To Which (by Desire) Is Prefixed, an Eulogium, Spoken on the Delivery of the Medal at the Public Commencement in the College of Philadelphia, May 20th, 1766. (Philadelphia: Printed by William and Thomas Bradford, 1766). For a critique of imperial policy, see, for instance, John Morgan’s essay, esp. 27-8. 113 Peter J. Diamond, “Witherspoon, William Smith and the Scottish Philosophy in Revolutionary America,” in Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment, ed. Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), esp. 125–8. On Smith’s unique contributions to the educational culture of the mid-Atlantic, see George W. Boudreau, “Provost Smith and His Circle: The

139 emblematic example of how the positions that educated people took during the imperial crisis largely reflected local circumstances and, in particular, their denominational and ethnic affiliations.

The Anglican influence was much more welcoming to future loyalists than

Presbyterian schools, which were overtly radical.114 At the College of New Jersey, support for patriot resistance ran rampant and continued nearly unabated from the time of the Stamp Act through the outbreak of war. Students focused on imperial politics in graduation orations, took part in non-importation agreements, and even staged their own tea party.115 This extended beyond colleges. Alumni from the local academy led the radical movement in the Cohansie region of Cumberland County, New Jersey, where they also staged another local tea party.116 The Old Side Newark Academy politicized as well, albeit somewhat less dramatically. By 1772, one observer noted that, during their public

College of Philadelphia and the Transformation of Pennsylvania,” in “The Good Education of Youth”: Worlds of Learning in the Age of Franklin, ed. John Pollack (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009), 168–87, esp. 178-84. 114 On the denominational dynamics of revolutionary affiliations, especially in the mid-Atlantic, see Kevin Phillips, The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 164–70; J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, 1660-1832 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 335– 62; and James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). By the end of the imperial crisis, these denominational divisions resulted in violence toward Anglican clergy; see Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 295–9. 115 Sheldon S. Cohen and Larry R. Gerlach, “Princeton in the Coming of the American Revolution,” New Jersey History 92 (Summer 1974): 69–92. A number of historians have explored the politicization of colleges; see Howard H. Peckham, “Collegia Ante Bellum: Attitudes of College Professors and Students toward the American Revolution,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 95 (January 1971): 50–72; Howard Miller, The Revolutionary College: American Presbyterian Higher Education, 1707-1837 (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 79–94; Robson, Educating Republicans, 34–45, 58–93; Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 32–3, 48–54; J. David Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in the Colonial Colleges (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 241–346. 116 See Fea, Way of Improvement, 42–9.

140 examinations, Newark Academy students discussed “the most perplexing political topics” concerning “difficult and knotty questions, relating to the British constitution.” Their disquisitions made him feel as though he “was within a circle of vociferous politicians at

Will’s coffee-house, instead of being surrounded with the meek disciples of wisdom, in the calm shades of academic retirement.”117

If any single factor radicalized Presbyterians, it was probably the specter of a colonial Anglican bishop. In the early 1760s dissenters detected a change in the Empire’s posture toward religious pluralism in the colonies. Increasingly, it seemed, imperial officeholders were staunch Anglicans, determined to bolster the power of the Church of

England in the colonies. Dissenting colonists had long feared that the Anglican Church would attempt to assert its power over the colonies by establishing a colonial bishop.

Doing so, they argued, would surely undermine the freedom of dissenters and their control over important local institutions like education. Shortly after the repeal of the

Stamp Act, some Anglican leaders raised the possibility of establishing a colonial episcopacy. In all likelihood, the policy never really had a chance to go into effect. But dissenting colonists had their guard up. They reacted to mumblings about a colonial bishop within the context of imperial policies that threatened their political liberties.118

More than anything, education influenced how men experienced the Revolution.

Recent scholarship tends to emphasize the large number of colonists—perhaps even a majority—who did everything they could to avoid taking sides in the conflict and simply

117 Pennsylvania Chronicle, Oct. 31, 1772. 118 The most forceful argument for the importance of the episcopacy controversy is Bell, War of Religion. My interpretation here has also been influenced by Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven, 199–209; and Beneke, Beyond Toleration, 119–26.

141 maintain their livelihood.119 Educated men tended to take clear sides. Those that hoped to remain neutral often found it difficult to do so. To a certain extent the structure of college and major academies explain this situation. Faculty members and trustees often had to take oaths of allegiance to the King when accepting their positions. School charters thus forced teachers and trustees to take clear-cut stances, which probably trickled down to impact how the students handled the increasingly tense political environment. Oaths of allegiance and other sorts of covenants and agreements took on a life of their own during the imperial crisis. Taking oaths and signing their names to boycott agreements and political association allowed ordinary people to take part in the

Revolution.120 These people, though, understood the stakes when they signed the oaths.

Many college officials took oaths well before anyone had conceived of imperial tension let alone outright hostility. Having signed them though, their options during the imperial crisis we circumscribed. They could either renounce the oath, which for all intents and purposes was a revolutionary action. Or they could not renounce the oath, which to revolutionaries looked like an affirmation of loyalism. There was little middle ground.

119 Michael McDonnell, “Resistance to the Revolution,” in Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (London: Blackwell, 2000), 342–51; and the essays by Aaron Sullivan, Michael McDonnell, and Travis Glasson, in Michael Zuckerman and Patrick K. Spero, eds., The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Forthcoming 2016). The classic statement of this interpretation is Sung Bok Kim, “The Limits of Politicization in the American Revolution: The Experience of Westchester County, New York,” Journal of American History 80 (Dec. 1993): 868–889. 120 T.H. Breen has made the most important case for the importance of taking oaths and signing boycotts; see both Marketplace of Revolution, 235–93; and American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 160–84. Also see Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), esp. 50–2.

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The importance of oaths became evident again when revolutionary governments began issuing new charters for schools in the 1780s.121

In addition, there was a growing sense that colleges and academies could bolster the colonies’ ability to foment revolution and sustain independence. This became clear during the 1770s, when colonists solicited money for their schools from Caribbean planters. Hugh Williamson went to Jamaica in 1772 to solicit support for the Newark

Academy. In an almost imperial vision for the school and the North American colonies, he argued that “This tender plant, watered by your hands, in due time shall become a great tree, whose branches shall cover the Continent, and extend to these distant isles, while millions that are yet unborn shall fit in peace under its shadow, and bless the virtuous and liberal memory of their ancestors.”122 At the same time, John Morgan was in Jamaica soliciting money for the College of Philadelphia’s medical school. Morgan appealed to “The large commercial connexion between these Islands and the city of

Philadelphia.”123 He wanted plantation owners to send their children to the colonies, not

England, for their education. West Indian planters frequently sent their children to

England for an education, which was one of the major bonds that connected them with

121 The state of Pennsylvania changed the College of Philadelphia’s loyalty oath as part of a larger act “to conform the estates and interests of the College, Academy, and charitable School of Philadelphia … to the Revolution and to the Constitution and Government of this Commonwealth;” Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 20, 1779. The College of New Jersey amended its charter in 1780 to eliminate the oath to the King; The Charter and By-Laws of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey: Together with a Statement Concerning the Original Charter, and the Rules of Order of the Board (Princeton: Printed by order of the Board of Trustees, 1892), 25–6. 122 Pennsylvania Packet, June 15, 1772. 123 Pennsylvania Packet, June 29, 1772.

143 metropolitan elites.124 In essence, the same benefits that led the imperial officials to support colonial education could ultimately work against Empire. These appeals underscored a growing sense that North America had the potential to become the new imperial center. So as schools seemed to turn against the Empire, the Empire turned against colonial schools. When John Ewing went to England to raise money in 1774, he found “many discouragements” because people were “angry with the Americans.”125

By the onset of the Revolution, much of the academy generation was ambitious to take the reins of political and military leadership, poised to do so by the status that their formal and informal education conferred on them, and embedded in larger networks of like-minded individuals. The public started to think of educated men as nascent elites and natural leaders, arguing that teachers “should be made Delegates in Congress,

Assembly-men, Magistrates, &c.” This would ensure that “patriots, heroes and lawgivers” would “ris[e] up to fill the first offices of government.”126 Academy students and teachers provided a natural link between high-level leaders and the larger mass of citizens living in the communities in which academies were embedded.127 This was not just idle talk. The academy generation transitioned very directly into the revolutionary

124 See Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 21–7. 125 John Ewing to Hannah Ewing, London, March 3, 1772, folder 1, John Ewing Papers, University of Pennsylvania. 126 Norwich Packet, Jul. 27, 1779. This first appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet, but I have not located the original. 127 For a framework for thinking about interactions between different levels of involvement in the Revolution, see Linda Grant De Pauw, “Politicizing the Politically Inert: The Problem of Leadership in the American Revolution,” in The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives, ed. William M. Fowler, Jr. and Wallace Coyle (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1979), 7–25.

144 generation.128 The best data that exists is for the College of New Jersey, where over seventy-percent of the living alumni in 1775 served in the military or held a civil office during the Revolution. This number does not account for those who actively supported the Revolution informally or simply did not take an overt stand.129 Francis Barber’s academy in Elizabeth Town, which closed down when the teachers and students joined the Continental Army, provides one of the starkest examples of the mobilization of educational infrastructure and networks. A similar story played out at an academy in

Somerset County, Maryland. There, “[t]he rapid advances of the school were soon checked by the war with Britain, and the patrons engaged in a different scene. As they were the friends of literature, so were they the steady opposers of tyrannical usurpation.”130 These schools confirmed the belief that education “not only concerns the

Happiness of the Individual, but the Welfare and Prosperity of Society.”131 On the biggest stage, students actively showed the utility of emulation. In joining the

Revolution, students could claim to benefit their community while also raising their own

128 The following works demonstrate connections between denominational schools and revolutionary leadership: Beam, “Dr. Robert Smith’s Academy,” 152–3; Cohen and Gerlach, “Princeton in the Coming,” 69–92; Fea, “Rural Religion,” 452–7; Ned Landsman, “Presbyterians, Evangelicals and the Educational Culture of the Middle Colonies,” Pennsylvania History 64 (July 1997): 170; Miller, The Revolutionary College, 171–86; Scott A. Mills, History of West Nottingham Academy - 1744-1981 (Lanham, MD: Maryland Historical Press, 1985), 23–5; John A. Munroe, The University of Delaware : A History (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, 1986), 12; Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822, 20; Elizabeth Nybakken, “In the Irish Tradition: Pre-Revolutionary Academies in America,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (July 1997): 173; Thomas Clinton Pears, Jr., “Francis Alison, Colonial Educator,” Delaware Notes 17 (1944): 15; Robson, Educating Republicans, 22; Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment, 60–1, n. 70; Joseph S. Tiedemann, “Presbyterianism and the American Revolution in the Middle Colonies,” Church History 74 (June 2005): 337–9; Joseph S. Tiedemann, “Interconnected Communities: The Middle Colonies on the Eve of the American Revolution,” Pennsylvania History 76 (2009): 15–6; Sloan, Education in New Jersey, 11. 129 Tiedemann, “Presbyterianism and the American Revolution”, data on 339. 130 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784. This was in a “brief history” of the school, published as part of an advertisement. 131 Pennsylvania Town, 1758.

145 status.132 Students and teachers harnessed the networks they formed at school and used them to help their colonies mobilize for Revolution.133

There are very few extant lists of students or records of colonial academies, so determining who actually attended any given school is difficult. Evidentiary problems notwithstanding, New Jersey and Delaware provide clear examples of the centrality of schools to revolutionary mobilization. In these states, many newly educated men filled the ranks of the Continental Army officer corps, as well as some political offices. Of the twenty-four men who served as majors, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels in the New

Jersey Continental line, at least one-third had a direct connection with an academy as either a student or a teacher.134 Three attended Enoch Green’s Deerfield Academy—two of the three became Governor of New Jersey after the War—and one studied with

William Tennent Jr. at the Old Tennent Presbyterian Church.135 The world of New

Jersey’s Presbyterian Enlightenment provided the foundation for the state’s Continental ranks. During the 1st regiment’s expedition to Canada, Ebenezer Elmer recalled that one

132 On how ambition figured in to elites’ decision to join the war effort, see John A. Ruddiman, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 30–2. 133 Benjamin Carp has told a similar but more urban story about a different civil institution, the fire company; see Benjamin L. Carp, “Fire of Liberty: Firefighters, Urban Voluntary Culture, and the Revolutionary Movement,” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (Oct. 2001): 781–818. 134 Lists of officers are in Francis Bernard Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army During the War of the Revolution, April 1775, to December, 1783 (Washington, D.C.: Rare Book Shop Publishing Company, 1914); and William S. Stryker, Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War (Trenton, NJ: Wm. T Nicholson & CO., Printers, 1872). 135 For the three Deerfield students, Governors Richard Howell and Joseph Bloomfield—both majors during the war—and Colonel Silas Newcomb, see Fea, “Rural Religion,” 452–7. Bloomfield also had an Elizabeth Town connection; his mother was an Ogden. See below. Jonathan Forman studied with Tennent and finished out the war as a lieutenant colonel, though he was a major for most of the last two years of the conflict; see Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 377–8, 328–34.

146 day that he “Went in the forenoon with a number of the men & ½ the officers to the

Presbyterian meeting here, where Mr. Caldwell preached.”136

The central node of the New Jersey officer corps was Francis Barber’s school, the

Elizabeth Town Academy. The commanding officers of both the 1st and 3rd regiments for most of the War had important Elizabeth Town connections. Colonel Matthias Ogden,

Barber’s brother-in-law, attended Elizabeth Town during the 1760s, when the future legal educator Tapping Reeve was the teacher. Colonel Elias Dayton, who commanded the 3rd regiment, was Matthias Ogden’s father-in-law. Dayton’s son Jonathan attended the

Academy when Barber was in charge. The younger Dayton began the war as an ensign and finished as a captain. At various times he also served as the regimental paymaster.137

This was not unusual. Academy-educated officers frequently held posts handling logistical duties and maintaining the infrastructure of the New Jersey line. William

Barber, Francis’ younger brother, likely studied at the grammar school in Princeton and perhaps also at his brother’s academy before enrolling at the College of New Jersey.

William spent the entire war in various administrative positions. Early on, Barber served as aide-de-camp to the New Jersey brigade commander, General William Maxwell. Later he turned down a position as adjutant in another Continental regiment before serving as aide-de-camp to General William Alexander, Lord Stirling, and as a deputy-adjutant under the command of Marquis de Lafayette. His service ended ignominiously with his

136 May 12, 1776, “Journal of an Expedition to Canada,” folder 2, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS. Caldwell was probably James Caldwell, the Presbyterian minister from Elizabeth Town turned Continental Army chaplain. 137 Harry M. Ward, “Dayton, Jonathan,’ American National Biography Online (Hereafter ANB) Feb. 2000. Access Date: Sun Feb. 19, 2012; and Harrison, Princetonians, 1776-1783, 31–3.

147 involvement in the Newburgh Conspiracy.138 Aaron Ogden—the namesake of the famous Gibbons v. Ogden steamboat case—had studied at the Elizabeth Town Academy when Tapping Reeve ran the school. After finishing at the College of New Jersey, Ogden returned to Elizabeth Town and taught at the Academy under the supervision of Francis

Barber, his brother-in-law. He had a wartime experience like William Barber’s, serving as an aide-de-camp to General Maxwell and Lord Stirling, and like his good friend and schoolmate Jonathan Dayton, serving a lengthy stint as paymaster.139 At a slightly higher level, one of the quartermasters of the 1st New Jersey was Barber’s predecessor at

Elizabeth Town, Joseph Periam.140

The Delaware line was much smaller, but it also felt the influence of the academy generation. Colonel David Hall commanded the Delaware line for most of the war. Hall attended an academy in Lewes, Delaware taught by Matthew Wilson, who eventually took over Francis Alison’s Newark Academy. Gunning Bedford, who served for a year as a lieutenant colonel before leaving the army for a militia commission and a seat on the

Delaware state council, studied at the Academy of Philadelphia under Alison.141 Robert

Kirkwood, though only a captain, took over command after the Delaware line suffered devastating losses at the Battle of Camden. He studied at the Newark Academy.142

138 Ibid., 140–3. Grammar schools and academies differed mostly in name; see Main, Social Structure, 243–6. 139 Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 328–30. Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 328–30. 140 Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, 520–1. 141 Gaspare Saladino, “Bedford, Gunning,” ANB. 142 On the Delaware line, see also Michael K. Madron, Presbyterian Patriots: The Historical Context of the Shared History and Prevalent Ideologies of Delaware’s Ulster-Scots Who Took up Arms in the American Revolution (School of Advanced Military Studies, 2009), accessed August 27, 2012, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA505604.

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James Tilton, the surgeon for Kirkwood’s unit, was one of Samuel Finley’s students at the West Nottingham Academy and later studied at the College of Philadelphia’s medical school.143 Alison’s influence on the Delaware line was clear. Indeed he felt comfortable writing the Committee of Safety to recommend his own nephew as someone “who may be set to act in a [quality?] of a Lieutenant or Ensign if appointed.”144

Most of these men were new to positions of leadership. Though in many ways they looked and acted the part convincingly, their aspirations to higher elective office had been stifled during the colonial era.145 None of the academy-educated officers from New

Jersey served in the state legislature before the war. Very few of their fathers held colony-wide office either, though a fair number held lower-level local offices such as justice of the peace and sheriff. Two of the Delawareans, including David Hall, served in the colonial assembly. Yet many of the educated officers from both states who survived the war held high-level political office in the 1780s or after the ratification of the

143 Mills, West Nottingham Academy, 25. 144 Francis Alison to the [Delaware?] Committee of Safety, n.d., case 8, box 21, Simon Gratz Collection, HSP. 145 Though it paled in comparison to the hereditary and established hierarchies of England, political immobility was very real in colonial America. See James Kirby Martin, Men in Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973), 23–61. For New Jersey in particular, see Thomas L. Purvis, “‘High-Born, Long-Recorded Families’: Social Origins of New Jersey Assemblymen, 1703 to 1776,” William and Mary Quarterly 37 (Oct. 1980): 592–615; and Michael S. Adelberg, “The Transformation of Local Governance in Monmouth County, New Jersey, during the War of the American Revolution,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Fall 2011): 467–498. Brendan McConville has shown how land disputes helped rectify some of the problem of political immobility in New Jersey; see These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 202–5, 249–55.

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Constitution. A few peaked as state assemblymen or council members. Many served in state executive office or as representatives to the Continental Congress.146

A large number of the earliest national-level officeholders—delegates to the

Constitutional Convention and representatives and senators to the first Congress—were educated at denominational schools. For example, Delaware sent five men to the

Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Three had academy backgrounds.

George Read studied with Alison at his academy in New Castle, Delaware. Read served a number of years in the Delaware assembly during the 1760s and 1770s. He also sat in the state legislature during the war and was one of Delaware’s senators during the first congress.147 Gunning Bedford Jr. attended the Academy of Philadelphia under Alison before graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1771. During the war, Bedford served as Delaware’s attorney general and represented the state in the Continental

Congress.148 Jacob Broom was a Quaker who attended an academy in Wilmington before taking a seat in the state legislature during the 1780s.149

146 For New Jersey, I used a copy of the New Jersey Civil List, 1664-1800, film# 298, DLAR; and the list of assemblymen and councilors from 1760 to 1776 compiled in Larry R. Gerlach, Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976), appendix 1–2. For Delaware, I used the list of officeholders in Claudia L. Bushman, Harold Bell Hancock, and Elizabeth Moyne Homsey, eds., Proceedings of the Assembly of the Lower Counties on Delaware, 1770-1776, of the Constitutional Convention of 1776, and of the House of Assembly of the Delaware State, 1776-1781 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 555–83. 147 John A. Munroe, “Read, George,” ANB. Delaware’s other senator, and the state’s lone member of the House of Representatives, do not seem to have received a formal education in a mid-Atlantic college or academy. 148 Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 131–3. Bedford may also have served in the state legislature and the Continental Army, though there is some confusion because he had a politically-active cousin of the same name. 149 Dorothy Rowlett Colburn. “Broom, Jacob,” in ANB. On Delaware officeholders, see also Bushman, Hancock, and Homsey, Proceedings, 555–83.

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New Jersey also sent five men to Philadelphia in 1787. William Livingston was

New Jersey’s only delegate to the Convention with pre-revolutionary office-holding experience. A staunch Presbyterian, Livingston graduated Yale in 1741, a few years before the expansion of education in the mid-Atlantic really began.150 Three of the state’s delegates to the Convention, including Jonathan Dayton, graduated from the

College of New Jersey. William C. Houston attended a Presbyterian academy in

Crowfield, North Carolina before enrolling at the College. Houston stayed in Princeton after his graduation. He taught math for a time, before working as a deputy secretary to the Second Continental Congress and then as a state assemblyman in the late 1770s.

Later, he represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress.151 William Paterson grew up in Princeton, where he attended the academy before entering the college. He served as the state’s attorney general for much of the war. Paterson was also one of New Jersey’s first senators. He served alongside Jonathan Elmer, a graduate of the medical school at the College of Philadelphia and a trustee of the College of New Jersey.152 The state’s final delegate to the Constitutional Convention, David Brearly, grew up near Princeton, in present-day Lawrenceville. It seems likely he had some schooling at the grammar school at Princeton, but it is not entirely clear.153

150 Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials, 160–1. 151 McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768, 643–6. Douglas Sloan identifies the Crowfield Academy as a Presbyterian school; see Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment, 283. 152 David J. Fowler. “Elmer, Jonathan,” ANB ; McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768, 437–9. One of New Jersey’s first four members of the House of Representatives studied with Alison at the Philadelphia Academy, while another graduated from Queen’s College. The final two entered professions and seem to have received private educations. 153 Harry M. Ward. “Brearly, David,” ANB.

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The American Revolution clearly allowed the academy generation to realize some ambitions that the social mobility of the colonial period had fostered, but that the political immobility of the period had frustrated. Even if education does not entirely explain why these men played such prominent roles in the Revolution, it seems undeniable that it played a significant role in their collective ascent. Education mattered to these men not because it made them more like their constituents. Rather education helped them realize their political aspirations precisely because it was exclusive.154 In this way, the academy generation’s experience was not necessarily part of a wholesale and revolutionary democratization of officeholding.155 Academies and colleges taught students refinement, gentility, and a range of cultural attributes that differentiated and distinguished them from the rest of the population and in turn justified their status as leaders.156

While they served in the Army, educated officers continued their pursuit of cultural improvement. Senior officers and Continental Congressmen saw the officer corps as a potential incubator of gentlemen leaders for the new republic. For this reason,

154 Some historians have argued that, along with a quantitative change in the socio-economic makeup of officeholders, the American Revolution precipitated a large cultural shift in conceptions of officeholding. This change served to limit, at least in appearance, the social distance between ruler and ruled. For instance, Jackson Turner Main argued that during the 1780s “voters had ceased to confine themselves to an elite, but were selecting instead men like themselves.” See “Government by the People: The American Revolution and the Democratization of the Legislatures,” William and Mary Quarterly 23 (July 1966): 391–407, quote on 405, see also 407. Gordon Wood followed this same trend into the early republic, arguing that Americans came to think “there were no specially qualified gentlemen who stood apart from the whole society … all were best represented by ordinary people.” Though Wood acknowledges that this did not lead to “any sudden invasion of offices by ordinary people,” he argues that even educated elites “behaved as common people” when in office. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992), 294–5, 304. 155 Jack P. Greene, “The American Revolution,” American Historical Review 105 (Feb. 2000): 93–102, esp. 100-1. 156 Michael Braddick argues that cultural and behavioral differences provided “the unarticulated legitimization for political power” throughout the early-modern British Atlantic; see Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” 116–7.

152 the officers held themselves to what historian Charles Royster calls “standards of ostentatious conduct.”157 Manners, civility, and comportment—many of the attributes students learned at academies—became essential to officers’ efforts to convey their status. And like at school, officers honed these cultural markers as a group. For instance, while stationed at Ticonderoga, “Major [Francis] Barber and sundry of the officers went to Crown Point in sleighs for a pleasure spell.”158 At another time, Ebenezer Elmer recalled that he “went up and played a few games of whist with some of the officers.”159

Part of what the officer corps experience taught, was sensibility—a kind of sensitivity and sympathy for others that encouraged common cause, patriotism, and ultimately nationalism.160 From a certain view, all of this posturing looked unbecoming. Elmer snidely concluded that “Much of the folly of gallantry is to be learned in the army.”161

An enlisted man in the New Jersey line commented that many officers “would not pass unnoticed in the politest courts of Europe.”162 Enlisted men saw the “officers’ gentlemanly pretensions” for what they were.163 Though the Continental officers tended to come from wealthier families than enlisted men, they were still not a hereditary elite.

In light of this, cultural distinctions mattered more in the Continental Army than in

European armies. Officers’ rank did not necessarily convey their status; rather their

157 Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1979), quote on 87, see also, 86–95. 158 Jan. 14, 1777, Ticonderoga, “Journal,” folder 8, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS. 159 Jan. 22, 1777, “Journal,” folder 11, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS. 160 Sarah Knott, “Sensibility and the American War for Independence,” American Historical Review 109 (Feb. 2004): 19–40; and Royster, A Revolutionary People, 89. 161 May 5, 1777, “Journal,” folder 11, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS. 162 Mark E. Lender, “The Enlisted Line: The Continental Soldiers of New Jersey” (Ph.D. Diss., Rutgers University, 1975), 127. 163 Royster, A Revolutionary People, 87.

153 status depended on their rank. They needed strict rules to enforce the social separation between officers and enlisted men.164 To some it seemed that the United States’ future depended on the emergence of a self-conscious national elite drawn especially from the ranks of the Continental Army.165 This model depended entirely on rigidly-enforced social differentiation.

War, Destruction, and the Future of American Education

Never before had New Jersey mobilized teachers and students for war. In fact, in

1704 the colony of New Jersey passed a law stipulating that people responsible for governing the colony—legislative and judicial officials, coroners, sheriffs—and key professionals such as ministers, doctors, and teachers “shall be free from being listed in any Troop or Company within this Province.”166 New Jerseyans understood how war could interrupt social and political routines in consequential ways. The Revolution in

New Jersey certainly did. After Washington’s surprise attacks on Trenton and Princeton in December of 1776, a protracted “forage war” for supplies wracked the Jersey countryside.167 Recognizing that education had suffered during the first years of

Revolution, the New Jersey Assembly in 1778 passed “An Act for the Encouragement of

164 Lender, “Enlisted Line,” 127–9, 190–3; Ruddiman, Becoming Men, 30–1. 165 According to historian Caroline Cox, “The institution of the army and its principal officers would be the agents by which the appropriate values of honor an status would be taught”; Caroline Cox, A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington’s Army (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 41. 166 “An Act for Settling the Militia of this Province,” in The Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey, 1703- 1745, vol. II, 3rd ser. (Trenton: New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, 1977), 19. 167 The best account of the violence in New Jersey during the early part of the war is, David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). For a study of the violence throughout the war in one corner of northern Jersey, see Adrian C. Leiby, The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley: The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775-1783 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980).

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Education.” Though education was “essential to the Prosperity of every Community,” it

“hath been greatly interrupted, and in many parts totally prevented by the Necessity of subjecting Instructors, as well as Scholars, to military Duty.” Because education was so integral to “well-regulated Governments,” the act declared that “each and every Master or

Teacher” who taught elementary subjects twenty-five or more students “shall be entitled to an Exemption from actual Service in the Militia,” provided they produce “Testimonials of his moral Character” and evidence that they took an oath of allegiance. That said, teachers still needed to maintain arms and to fight if the whole militia in his county were called to serve. Teachers at academies needed only to teach fifteen students to qualify for the exemption. Officials, teachers, ushers, and students at chartered colleges also received an exemption.168

This law notwithstanding, teachers still found themselves wrapped up in the violence of war. A daybook kept by a school teacher named John Stockholm elucidates how teachers experienced the waning years of the Revolution. During June of 1780,

Stockholm kept track of his reading habits and the days he “kept school.” Rather suddenly, amid the account of his quotidian activates, Stockholm noted that “the militia were alarmed by the landing of the British and Hessian troops at Elizabeth.” Stockholm mustered at the news. A few days later, though, he marched back to his home.169 A few weeks after that, Stockholm again found himself in a “pretty sever[sic] skirmish with the

168 Acts of the General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a Session Begun at Trenton on the 27th Day of October 1778, and Continued by Adjournments. Being the First Sitting of Their Third Session. (Trenton, NJ: Printed by Isaac Collins, 1779), chap. XII, 29–31. 169 June [?], 1780, and June 14, 1780, John Stockholm daybook, box 12, folder 16, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL.

155 enemy.”170 This was the last combat that Stockholm would see. But he had more encounters with the military. In 1781, he “had an interview with Col Lamb,” from New

York. During that encounter, he saw “his Excellency General Washington—who is but a man—tho’ a very superior one.”171 With the War won, Stockholm readied himself for the next stage of his life. His students had a public exhibition, which “exceeded my expectations.”172 With the War over, Stockholm then prepared to start college in

Princeton.

The greatest long-term impact of the War on education was physical. In late

January of 1780, “the Rebel Posts at Elizabeth Town & Newark were completely surprized and carried off, by different detachments of the King’s Troops.”173 British attacks in both towns focused on the local academies and Presbyterian churches. In

Elizabeth Town, “The barracks, and the Presbyterian parsonage then used as barracks, were found deserted, and in the rage of their disappointment the enemy set them on fire and they were burned down.” The British also burned down the “[t]he academy, adjoining the Presbyterian burying ground, [which] had been used for storing provisions for the troops.”174 Later that same night, the British entered Newark and “seized possession of the academy, which the rebels had converted into a barrack.” The loyalist newspaper reported that” a momentary defence being attempted, 7 or 8 of the enemy were killed; the remainder, consisting of thirty-four non-commissioned officers and

170 June 23, 1780, John Stockholm daybook, box 12, folder 16, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 171 Aug. 28, 1781, John Stockholm daybook, box 12, folder 16, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 172 Nov. 23, 1781, John Stockholm daybook, box 12, folder 16, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 173 Royal Gazette, Jan. 29, 1780. 174 Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, 473. A petition from Elizabeth Town residents asking for funds to rebuild the academy, is reprinted in Murray, Notes, Historical and Biographical, 104–7.

156 private men were taken prisoner.”175 The Whig paper conceded that the British “plan was well concerted, and as well executed.” The night ended when the regulars “burnt the academy, and went off with precipitation.”176 The Newark Academy trustees estimated that their “New Elegant building burnt with the [fences?] &c” sustained about £1400 in damages.177 At different points during the War the American and British armies used

Nassau Hall—the main building at the College of New Jersey—as a barracks or a hospital. The College also suffered from the handiwork of British regulars. A mark from a cannon ball is still visible on an exterior wall.

In Delaware, a similar story prevailed. The British fired cannon at the Newark,

Delaware Academy, allegedly in response to gunfire from inside.178 The trustees of the

Wilmington Academy noted that during the war, “this Building designed for the most quiet use of Society was thought necessary for the Accommodation of Troops & Military

Stores.” Used at times as a barracks, a storage facility, and a hospital, the war left the

Academy in “so shattered a Condition that … The Repairs necessary to place it in Status quo are estimated at abt £500.”179 In Maryland, The trustees of an academy in Somerset

County Maryland described in a newspaper article how “The rapid advances of the school were soon checked by the war with Britain.” As was true across the region

175 Royal Gazette, Jan. 29, 1780. 176 New-Jersey Gazette,Feb. 2, 1780. See also Frank John Urquhart, A History of the City of Newark, New Jersey: Embracing Practically Two and a Half Centuries, 1666-1913 (New York: The Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1913), 331–4. This event was dramatized in a play of Newark’s history staged at a celebration of the city’s 250th anniversary, published in Thomas Wood Stevens, Book of Words: The Pageant of Newark (Newark: The Committee of One Hundred, 1916), 63–5. 177 Newark Academy Claim, Essex County Claim #28 in Damages done by the British in Essex County, reel 1, Damages by the British and Americans in New Jersey, film #437, DLAR, Original at New Jersey State Archives. 178 Munroe, The University of Delaware, 31. 179 n.d. box 10, folder 7, Fisher Family Papers, HSP.

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“Exposed to the ravages of the enemy … the great business of education paused for a while.”180 The war, in short, wreaked havoc on the physical infrastructure of education in the region.

Most Americans thought the British attacked academies because of what they became during the war—barracks, hospitals, etc.—not because of what they meant before it began. But in New Jersey at least, the violence visited upon academies might have had more significance. As the Revolution devolved into civil war, it enflamed the denominational tensions that undergirded revolutionary affiliation, ensnaring religious institutions in a web of violence. Throughout the Raritan Valley, the British Army left a trail of destroyed churches in their wake. In New Brunswick, the Presbyterian meeting house suffered £400 worth of damage at the expense of the British, while the Dutch

Reformed Church claimed twice the amount. The Anglican Church in town, however, required only a little over £40 in repairs. The Presbyterian meeting house in Princeton required upwards of £160 in repairs, while the most damaged Anglican church in

Middlesex was in Piscataway, which the British left about £110 worse for wear.181 In nearby Somerset County, the regulars caused £80 of damage on one Presbyterian meeting house, and £250 on another. At the latter church, in Millstone, the British seem to have completely taken the church apart, making off with 11,000 feet of white pine boards.182

Based on the claims records, American forces only destroyed one, unsurprisingly

180 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784. 181 Damages by the British in Middlesex County, in reel 2, Damages by the British and Americans in New Jersey, Film #437, DLAR, 165, 176, 180, 328, 200. 182 Damages by the British in Somerset County, in reel 2, Damages by the British and Americans in New Jersey, Film #437, DLAR, 188, 186.

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Anglican, church in Trenton.183 In the context of internecine warfare, religion likely became a simple proxy for revolutionary affiliation.184 Academies also had denominational associations. Even more than churches themselves, academies had enabled religious groups to mobilize their collective strength for political ends. This exposed them to the depredations of war.

Conclusion

Much of this destruction must have been on the minds of Francis Barber’s friends, colleagues, and fellow soldiers as they mourned his death. Barber’s eulogist, Ebenezer

Elmer, celebrated his valor and leadership. Elmer remembered how “the popularity of

Colonel Barber” allowed him to put down “the unfortunate mutiny of the soldiers of the

Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines” in the winter of 1780-1781. The mourners recalled

Barber’s conduct in battle, especially in the engagements where he suffered wounds. Yet as they all tried to come to terms with just “How great the loss” of their colleague would ultimately be, they also looked to the future. Barber’s death was certainly tragic. Most of all, though, it was untimely. Barber had not reached his full potential. He was young and the war had interrupted his life even before it killed him. As his eulogist Ebenezer

Elmer put it, Barber had been “Cut off in the full meridian of life, heath and usefulness!”185

183 Damages by the Americans in Huntedon County, #46, reel 1, Damages by the British and Americans in New Jersey, film #437, DLAR. 184 British forces also caused significant damage to Presbyterian churches in New York City; see Susanna Linsley, “The American Reformation: The Politics of Religious Liberty, Charleston and New York 1770- 1830” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2012), 51–2. 185 Elmer, An Elogy on Francis Barber, 8, 15, my italics.

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Elmer’s eulogy paid tribute to Barber’s role in making American independence possible. It also betrayed Elmer’s apprehension over the nation-building that lay ahead.

For Elmer at least, Barber’s death made these anxieties ever more acute. After the

Revolution, the sudden absence of an imperial state created a crisis of infrastructure and development throughout the United States, but especially in Elmer’s home state of New

Jersey, where the War had proven particularly destructive. In no realm was this clearer than schooling. In his eulogy, Elmer foresaw the prominent role that the academy generation, Continental officers, and their allies would play in building schools, civil society, and the American state. 186 Nervous though they were, this generation had experiences to draw on. As they sought to create true national independence in a global

186 On the connections between the officer corps and post-revolutionary nationalism, see Edwin G. Burrows, “Military Experience and the Origins of Federalism and Antifederalism,” in Aspects of Early New York Society and Politics, ed. Jacob Judd and Irwin H. Polishook (Tarrytown: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1974), 83–92; Jackson Turner Main, Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 385–7; E. Wayne Carp, “The Origins of the Nationalist Movement of 1780-1783: Congressional Administration and the Continental Army,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107 (July 1983): 363–92; and Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, 2007), 346–7. The most extreme example of the officer corps’ nationalism is their involvement in the Newburgh Conspiracy, an effort to pressure the Confederation Congress to pass a 5% impost that would help put the national government on stable footing and pay overdue salaries and eventual pensions to the officers; see Richard H. Kohn, “The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d’Etat,” William and Mary Quarterly 27 (April 1970): 187– 220; Paul David Nelson, “Horatio Gates at Newburgh, 1783: A Misunderstood Role,” The William and Mary Quarterly 29 (January 1972): 143–158; C. Edward Skeen and Richard H. Kohn, “The Newburgh Conspiracy Reconsidered,” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (April 1974): 273–298; and Royster, A Revolutionary People, 331–41. For the construction and eventual destruction of the conservative vision of civil society that these groups tended to promote, see John L. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic,” in Launching the “Extended Republic”: The Federalist Era, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 273–377; and Johann N. Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).

160 world of nations, these Americans would embrace the lessons of their colonial past to shape their vision for the future.187

187 For a broader view of the connections between periods, see Jack P. Greene, “Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem,” William & Mary Quarterly 64 (April 2007): 235– 250, and the forum that follows.

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Chapter 3. Denominational Networks, Revolutionary Upheaval, and Educational

Institution Building in the Early Republic

Ebenezer Elmer kept a relatively detailed journal and account book while serving as an officer in the Continental Army for the duration of the Revolutionary War. In the back of the account book, Elmer listed £42 that he received from subscribers after the war in support of a proposed academy in Bridgeton, New Jersey. Located in Cumberland

County, Elmer’s native Bridgeton sits a little over five miles southwest from Deerfield, where he received his early education. The list of subscribers includes men that Elmer knew from his academy days and others from his interactions with a broader network of educated Presbyterians that had congregated around Bridgeton, Deerfield and Fairfield,

New Jersey in the 1770s. A number of these men served as officers, chaplains, and doctors in both the militia and the Continental Army. The paper trail on the Bridgeton

Academy begins and ends with this list; the academy probably never went into operation.

Nevertheless, the list’s appearance on a relic from the War points toward a widespread trend in the story of the reemergence of education in the mid-Atlantic during the 1780s.1

Across much of the region, the earliest and most successful attempts at creating schools after the Revolution depended on informal group initiatives, not state

1 Ebenezer Elmer Account Book, folder 16, Ebenezer Elmer Papers, N-JHS. On students from the Deerfield Academy, see John Fea, “Rural Religion: Protestant Community and the Moral Improvement of the South Jersey Countryside, 1676-1800” (Ph. D. Diss., Stony Brook: State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1999), 452–7.

162 intervention. In particular, the overlapping efforts both of networks formed in denominational schools during the Great Awakening and political and military networks formed during the Revolution were the driving force behind of the earliest and most successful post-revolutionary academies. These networks regularly rebuilt pre- revolutionary schools, or used them as models for new schools. In the post-revolutionary religious marketplace, church leaders understood that they needed to provide services like education in order to compete.2 At the same time, the Revolution undermined the explicitly denominational function of academies.3 For a host of reasons, including popular pressures and their own nationalist sentiments, academy leaders grew increasingly willing to undercut the denominational goals of schools for political purposes, even as they continued to rely on religious institutions and networks to lay the foundations of American civic life.4 Through these academies, the lingering aftershocks of the Great Awakening continued to influence the course of the American nation- building project.

2 Susanna Linsley, “The American Reformation: The Politics of Religious Liberty, Charleston and New York 1770-1830” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2012), 187–93. 3 On the paradoxical ways in which ministerial support for Revolution helped create a social order that lessened clerical and religious authority, see also Richard D. Brown, “Spreading the Word: Rural Clergymen and the Communication Network of 18th-Century New England,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 94 (1982): 1–14; and Christopher Grasso, A Speaking Aristocracy: Transforming Public Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 4 On these tensions, see also Benjamin Justice, “The Place of Religion in Early National School Plans,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 155–74.

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Jacob Green’s Vision

In the spring of 1781, an essay appeared in the New Jersey Journal arguing that

“The education of youth is a matter of importance to Church and State.”5 Penned under the pseudonym “Eumenes,” the author was the Jacob Green. Originally from

Massachusetts, Green came under the influence of Gilbert Tennent and George

Whitefield while a student at Harvard. Thereafter, he devoted himself to evangelical religion. His initial plans to work at Whitefield’s ill-fated Georgia orphanage quickly fell apart. Instead, leading New Side ministers—Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr, who would become the first two presidents of the College of New Jersey—brought Green to

New Jersey. In 1746, he took over as the minister at the Presbyterian Church in Hanover,

Morris County, New Jersey, where he spent the rest of his career.6 A founding member of the College of New Jersey’s board of trustees, Green devoted much of his time to educating local children in what he called a Latin grammar school. Most notably,

Green’s son Ashbel, the future president of the College of New Jersey, received his early education at this school.7

On the surface, Green’s 1781 essay made no particularly original arguments. In order to “strike deeper into the human heart,” Green wrote the piece “in an ironical mould.” In fact, most of the essay did not even deal with education. Rather, it read like a sarcastic advice column for both parents and children. “Eumenes” advised mothers and fathers to dote over their children and not to discipline them. Parents, he continued,

5 New-Jersey Journal, April 25, 1781. 6 Jacob Green, “Autobiography,” typescript, folder 1, Jacob Green Papers, N-JHS, 19, 23-5 7 Mark A. Noll, “Jacob Green’s Proposal for Seminaries,” Journal of Presbyterian History 58 (Fall 1980): 210–222.

164 should encourage their children’s uncontrolled passions and extol the importance of vengeance. Sons and daughters should lie, cheat, steal, and take up all the vices they could. Green reminded children that though “civil government” might attempt to

“regulate others…. This opposition should not discourage you, the laws you must elude.”

Religion, like government, aimed to stifle “those pleasurable exercises which have been the delight of your lives.” In essence, the essay instructed children to avoid acting rationally or in good conscience. In so doing, they would, at once, threaten both religion and civil government. Green implicitly argued that the right kind of education would discourage this sort of subversive behavior. By connecting religious and civil order,

Green suggested that for education to benefit political society and encourage social benevolence, it necessarily had to have a Christian foundation. Green hoped that education would not just simultaneously strengthen religion and the new United States, but would ensure that the fates of both rose and fell together.8 Green invoked “the state” in his essay because he cared deeply about the future of the United States. During the

1770s, Green ardently supported independence, writing pamphlets, working on revolutionary committees, and serving in the New Jersey Provincial Congress.9

8 New-Jersey Journal, April 25, 1781. On the similar goals of religious and secular educators, see Daniel Walker Howe, “Church, State, and Education in the Young American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Spring 2002): 1–24, esp. 13-4. 9 Jacob Green, Observations: On the Reconciliation of Great-Britain, and the Colonies: In Which Are Exhibited, Arguments For, and Against, That Measure. By a Friend of American Liberty. (Philadelphia: Printed by Robert Bell, 1776). See also Mark A. Noll, “Observations on the Reconciliation of Politics and Religion in Revolutionary New Jersey: The Case of Jacob Green,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (Summer 1976): 217–237; and S. Scott Rohrer, Jacob Green’s Revolution: Radical Religion and Reform in a Revolutionary Age (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 107–194.

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While he taught and valued so-called ‘liberal education,’ Green focused most of his attention on ministerial training. Beginning in the late colonial period and continuing through the American Revolution, Green’s concern with training clergymen to serve the ever-expanding number of congregations drove his efforts at creating adequate educational infrastructure in New Jersey.10 To some extent, Green’s thinking during the late 1770s and early 1780s still owed a debt to his relationship with Gilbert Tennent and

Jonathan Dickinson, both leading figures of the mid-Atlantic Great Awakening. Green oversaw revivals within his congregation in 1764 and again ten years later. More importantly, Green worried about the relationship between education, ministerial authority, and ecclesiastical organization, the central question that animated disputes over mid-Atlantic revivalism. For Green, the Awakening never really ended.11

In 1779, Green wrote to the “Presbytery of New York, as a Branch of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia,” explaining his decision to withdraw his church from their governance. Taking a position common to revivalists, Green objected to the

Synod’s power over the “ecclesiastical business” of congregations.12 Green believed that overarching church institutions were an “absurdity.”13 Harkening back to Tennent’s objections to the Synod’s attempts to stifle itinerancy in the late 1730s, Green argued

“that a gospel minister ought to be allowed to preach where he is invited & thinks he has

10 Noll, “Jacob Green’s Proposal,” passim, esp. 211–2. 11 Green, “Autobiography,” 29. 12 Jacob Green, Oct. 18, 1779, folder 7, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 13 Jacob Green, A View of a Christian Church and Church Government; Containing Many Interesting Matters; With an Address to Our Congregations, and an Appendix, Representing the Case and Circumstances of the Associate Presbytery of Morris County. To Which Is Subjoined, A Letter Relative to the Same Subject.” By the Associated Presbytery of Morris County. (Chatham, N.J.: Printed by Shepard Kollock, 1781), 24.

166 a prospect of doing good.” His solution was “to form into Voluntary associate

Presbyteries.”14 This ecclesiastical innovation would theoretically blend Presbyterian and

Congregationalist structures. As he wrote in his autobiography, “I am for Presbyterian ordination” but “Independent church government.”15 That said, Green opposed the prevailing system for ordination, which required candidates to obtain a college degree and train with a minister for a year. Green called this a “double imposition.” He would not abide by these overbearing rules.16 Because the new presbytery “will meet in synod as a voluntary society,” Green declared that it “shall have unrestrained liberty to license and ordain, for the gospel ministry, any person whom they shall think proper.”17

Congregations would still lack the power of ordination, but this plan chiseled away at the synod’s authority. Green’s position resembled the New Brunswick Presbytery’s response to synodal restrictions during the Awakening that had made it impossible to ordain Log

College students.

Green’s vision for the Morris Presbytery, and the other associated presbyteries he hoped would sprout up, would vest academies with a level of importance they had not possessed since 1758. If Green’s plan caught on, academies would have the power to directly train ministers for the new associated presbyteries. Recognizing that the plan might appear extreme to some, the Morris Presbytery clarified their position, claiming they were “very sensible of the importance of a learned ministry, and are determined not

14 Jacob Green, Oct. 18, 1779, folder 7, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. See also Noll, “Jacob Green’s Proposal,” 216. 15 Green, “Autobiography,” 39. 16 Jacob Green, Oct. 18, 1779, folder 7, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 17 Green, View of a Christian Church, 52.

167 to introduce unsuitable men.” Nevertheless, “of the degree of learning necessary, and of other qualifications, they must judge for themselves.”18 Of course, under these terms, if a presbytery controlled a well-functioning academy then they could ordain the students whose worldviews best matched their own.

The Morris Presbytery claimed “the present to be a proper time” to undertake these changes because “civil and religious liberty is attended to.”19 Just as religious education would instill the morality that enable republican government to flourish, Green argued that republican government would encourage the type of voluntary religious associationalism in church governance that he favored.20 In this way, education that bolstered the prevailing vision of American nationhood would also benefit Green’s vision for Church governance. Green then seemed to believe that education fostered a symbiotic relationship between his particular conception of denominationalism and civil government, republicanism, and American nationhood. If he was right, reinvigorating the pre-revolutionary academy system would benefit the state of New Jersey and the

United States. It would also help Green to pursue a religious agenda that remained very much shaped by the disputes of the Great Awakening. If denominational academies could support the United States the way they had, at least for a time, the British Empire, they might sit on firmer ground. In turn, academies could provide institutional support for his vision of New Side Presbyterianism.

18 Ibid., 54. 19 Ibid., 55–6. 20 On voluntary association as a model of church governance in the post-revolutionary United States, see Linsley, “American Reformation,” 174–223.

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Green’s vision simultaneously proved both prescient and untenable in a post- revolutionary world. Denominational networks did ultimately play a key role in rebuilding academies in the wake of the American Revolution. Yet this did not have the exact effect that Green hoped. In many places across the mid-Atlantic and upper South, denominationally-affiliated academies shed their explicitly factional religious roles in deference to a broader public good. For Green, the Awakening raged on. To the contrary, most Americans rarely thought about the Awakening, even as its institutional effects continued to shape their lives on a daily basis.

Academies and Religious and Revolutionary Networks in the mid-Atlantic

By 1780, the Newark Academy already had a long history. Originally opened in

New London, Pennsylvania by the staunch Old Side Presbyterian minister Francis

Alison, the school was one of the first academies to emerge out of the controversies of the Great Awakening. In the early 1750s, Alison handed control of the school over to a few of his students. They moved the school first New Castle then to Newark, Delaware.

Though officially open to students regardless of their denomination, the school remained a bastion of Old Side Presbyterianism from its founding in 1744 to the outbreak of the

American Revolution. As late as 1774, the trustees claimed that the colleges in New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York did not fulfill their needs because none was explicitly Old Side. At the same time, Alison and his students remained deeply immersed

169 in the European, especially Scottish, Enlightenment. They saw teaching as part of their clerical duties, but also as part of their duties as enlightened men.21

With the conflicts of the Revolutionary War concentrated in the South by the late

1770s, Delawareans decided the time had come to re-open academies. Rather instinctively, they turned first to the Newark Academy. Alison had passed away in 1779, and so the responsibility of reviving the school fell to others. In March of 1780, a number of Newark residents petitioned the state legislature to renew the Academy’s charter. Matthew Wilson, one of Alison’s protégés who taught at Old Side academies in

Delaware, agreed wholeheartedly. He wrote the trustees to convey his support and some thoughts on the Academy. Through the Newark Academy, Alison had “first & most effectually of all men, enlightened the before untutor’d souls of the middle colonies” during the late colonial period. Alison’s students had traveled far and wide, from New

Jersey to the Carolinas spreading education wherever they went. That is, until the British military put a stop to their work.22

Though the Newark Academy was a colonial institution, one that had deep ties to the educational culture of the British Empire, Delawareans hoped they might use it to strengthen the new national project. Many of the school’s records did not survive the

War, but in 1780 trustees informed the state assembly that they still possessed an authenticated copy of their charter. This stroke of good luck would ease the legal process

21 “Memorial of the Trustees of the Academy of New Ark,” Feb. 4, 1774, in box 1, folder 3, Records of Newark Academy, UD Archives. 22 “Memorial to General Assembly from Newark Academy Trustees,” Jan. 7, 1781, in box 1, folder 2, Records of Newark Academy; Copy of Matthew Wilson to Newark Academy Trustees, Nov. 21, 1780, Lewes, DE, box 1, folder 7, Records of Newark Academy, UD Archives. Original at Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

170 of reorganizing the board of trustees and opening the academy. The trustees asked the legislature to renew the school’s charter, which they were certain “would tend to the

Promotion of Learning and the public good.” Many people certainly remembered the factional religious origins of the school, so invoking the public good was important for generating wide support. The trustees also referenced the public good, and promised to serve all denominations, because they hoped the state legislature would help to fund the school. Prior to the War funding from the Presbyterian Synod and contributions from the southern colonies, the West Indies, and Europe sustained the school. The trustees argued, quite clearly, that if the legislature took on the onus of funding the school, “the publick

Education of the youth of the State may be made subservient to the purposes of good governments.” Despite its divisive religious roots, the trustees made a compelling case that the Newark Academy could serve the interests of the new state and nation.23

Matthew Wilson was an ordained minister and loyal Old Side Presbyterian, but he also understood that the Newark Academy was poised to take on a major role in the post- revolutionary period. The time had come, he thought, for this country to reap the benefits of widespread education. Channeling some of the pervasive revolutionary optimism,

Wilson claimed that the United States was “a country reserv’d by Heaven to give the last and best polish to all the Arts & Sciences.” He envisioned an entire educational system for Delaware. Wilmington, New Castle, Dover, and Lewes—except for Dover, all towns that had academies during the colonial period—would have schools that prepared

23 “Memorial to General Assembly from Newark Academy Trustees,” Jan. 7, 1781, in box 1, folder 2, Records of Newark Academy, UD Archives. On the school’s history, see John A. Munroe, The University of Delaware : A History (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, 1986).

171 students for the Newark Academy, “in its ancient & original meaning, University.”

Wilson knew the Newark Academy was the logical centerpiece of education in Delaware.

Given Newark’s longstanding reputation as a center of education, he hoped the

Academy’s influence would extend over the whole region. These grand plans proved difficult to enact.24

Wilson’s faith in the Academy ran deep and he saw little need to change the curriculum, though he did propose adding French. Wilson still thought that the classics had an important role to play in higher education, even as they would increasingly come under attack during the early republic. Above all, Wilson emphasized “rhetoric” and public speaking. Concerned that “In every lesson let … Beauty or elegance of diction, polite & true wit, & the true sublime be pointed out,” Wilson advocated giving students ample opportunities to address public audiences. By the late colonial period, public commencements and student exhibitions were fairly common in towns with schools. An even wider range of colonists familiarized themselves with these events through published accounts in newspapers. Wilson supported this innovation, and argued that exhibitions and commencements should be “as public & splendid as possible,” and that

“[t]he diplomas should be grand & solemnly & publicly delivered. These practices would “swell as notes of fame & make learning flourish in these states from generation to generation.” Ultimately, Wilson focused on the future, on building and developing the moral and intellectual health of the state of Delaware and the wider mid-Atlantic. No

24 Copy of Wilson to [?], Apr. 7, 1783, Lewes, DE, in box 1, folder 7, Records of Newark Academy, UD Archives. Original in Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

172 matter how focused he was on the future, Wilson predicated his vision on the past. There was very little innovation in what he proposed. He mostly urged the trustees to recreate the Newark Academy of old.25

For their part, the board seemed to give little thought to pedagogy and curriculum.

Instead they spent most of their time recruiting other men to serve as board members.

This was evidently a difficult task. When they actually had enough members to conduct business, the trustees focused on stabilizing the school’s finances, recouping debts, and hiring teachers. They basically affirmed Wilson’s ideas about how to actually educate students. More or less, this meant appropriating the Academy’s colonial-era educational culture for the needs of Americans in the early republic. Many of the trustees had a similar background to Wilson, so this is perhaps unsurprising. At least seven of the original thirteen men appointed as trustees had studied at one incarnation of the Newark

Academy or another, or under Alison at the College and Academy of Philadelphia, where he taught for much of the 1750s and 1760s. Most held some political office or served as military officers during the War. Even many of the trustees who were ordained

Presbyterian ministers contributed to the revolutionary cause, a few as chaplains, though at least one held substantive political office at both the state and national level. Others offered more informal support, such as Thomas Read, who supposedly led fifty of his congregants under arms to join Washington’s army at Philadelphia. The trustees were

25 Copy of Wilson to [?], Apr. 7, 1783; Copy of Wilson to [Newark Academy Trustees?], Apr. 7, 1783, Records of Newark Academy, UD Archives. On school exhibitions, see Joseph F. Kett, Merit: The History of a Founding Ideal from the American Revolution to the Twenty-First Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 68–92, esp. 72–3; and William J. Reese, Testing Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 8–37.

173 important cogs in the revolutionary movement, fiercely committed to its success during and after the war.26

The trustees hired William Thomson as the principal teacher in 1783. Little is known about Thomson. He was probably related to one of the pre and post-revolutionary trustees, Charles Thomson, who migrated to the colonies from Ireland and then studied under Alison at New Castle. Charles Thomson rose from humble beginnings to become a

Latin tutor at the Academy and College of Philadelphia in the 1760s. A leading Son of

Liberty in Philadelphia, Charles served as the secretary of the Continental Congress for its entire tenure as the main governing body of the thirteen colonies/states.27 It seems that—at the behest of some trustees, but before the board officially reformed—William

Thomson began informally teaching at some version of the Newark Academy. When the trustees reformed officially, they paid him some additional money for his work in that period. It is unclear whether William Thomson attended the Newark Academy before the war. Either way, the seamless way he took over the school, the lack of debate among the trustees about making him the principal, and his acceptance of older curricular models fit him firmly with trustees. Thomson offered a standard curriculum in the three

“schools”—English, mathematical, and Latin—that the Academy oversaw.28 It was a model of organization based on both English dissenting academies, which gained

26 John Smith Futhey and Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical and Biographical Sketches (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1881), 705. 27 Boyd Stanley Schlenther, "Thomson, Charles." American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Apr. 8, 2013. 28 Jun. 5, 1783; Oct. 16, 1783, both in Academy of Newark Board of Trustees Minute Book [hereafter Newark Academy Minutes], UD Archives, 2, 6. Thomson claimed that the trustees encouraged him to open the school in early 1780; see Pennsylvania Packet, Feb. 24, 1780

174 importance during the seventeenth century, as well as Scotch-Irish Presbyterian educational traditions in which Francis Alison and many leading colonial educators were reared.29

Though less well documented, evidence suggests that all of the other academies in early national Delaware developed in ways similar to Newark. In 1780, around when the

Newark trustees began meeting, a teacher named Samuel Armor proposed to open an academy in New Castle. Armor, a graduate of the College of Philadelphia, cited “His long experience in the education of youth, being Rector of Wilmington Academy from its first foundations.”30 The colonial Wilmington Academy received a charter in 1773, and was the brainchild of an inter-denominational group of men, including ministers from

Anglican and Swedish churches, as well as Thomas McKean, a Presbyterian and former student of Francis Alison’s. Though Armor’s was a solo venture, he planned to teach a fairly advanced curriculum, including the classics.31 It is unclear how long Armor stayed in business.

Only two other academies opened in Delaware during the early national period, both during the 1780s. One of these opened in Lewes in 1785, under the direction of

Matthew Wilson. To some extent, Wilson probably hoped to fulfill his vision of creating preparatory schools for the Newark Academy, which would allow it to operate much more like a college. An article about the school—it was not an advertisement—claimed

29 Theodore R. Sizer, The Age of Academies (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, 1964), 6–7; Elizabeth Nybakken, “In the Irish Tradition: Pre-Revolutionary Academies in America,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (July 1997): 172–3. 30 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 14, 1780. 31 Munroe, The University of Delaware, ch. 1.

175 that Wilson undertook the effort because of the high price of tuition and lodging at other academies. They made Wilson out as something of a martyr, writing that he “is obliged, though now old, to take the burden and charge of an academy,” where he taught classics and language, and “every branch of philosophy that opens the human mind, strengthens the powers of reasoning … to make them blessings and ornaments to the rising generation.” This curriculum certainly offered more than mere preparation for more advanced schooling. Indeed, it did not look much different from the curriculum of the

Newark Academy that Wilson himself had argued the trustees should maintain. As with

Armor’s academy, it does not seem that Wilson’s academy in Lewes lasted very long.

But as was the case with his work with the Newark Academy, Wilson brought his colonial experience to bear on his work in Lewes in the early national era.32

The Newark Academy’s chief competitor was the reorganized Wilmington

Academy. First organized in 1771 by leading Anglicans, “The Ravages of War” interrupted the academy’s work.33 By 1785, the trustees reorganized themselves and opened the school for students.34 Within a year, the school announced plans to recruit faculty capable of teaching “every branch of useful and ornamental literature,” moral philosophy—usually the capstone of even collegiate education—and ancient languages.35

The school’s principal, who would oversee this curricular development, was Patrick

Murdock. Trained at Edinburgh, Murdock also went on teach at a number of academies

32 Pennsylvania Freeman’s Journal, March 9, 1785. 33 May 7, 1782; the initial meeting of the Wilmington Academy occurred on Oct. 8, 1771; both in box 10, folder 7, Fisher Family Papers, HSP. 34 Pennsylvania Mercury, Oct. 14, 1785. 35 Pennsylvania Packet, June 23, 1786.

176 in New Jersey during the 1780s. One of those schools advertised that he was “well attested by the most ample recommendations from several of the first characters in

America.”36 Though a newspaper published an “obituary” for the school in 1794, it seems to have reopened later, and continued operating until at least the late 1790s.37 By that point, it seems the only competing academy was the Newark Academy. Both places had educational traditions stretching back into the colonial period, which seem to have buoyed schooling in those communities.

The Newark Academy depended on the persistence of Old Side Presbyterian networks with roots in the First Great Awakening and an educational culture firmly based in the mid-eighteenth century transatlantic Enlightenment. More broadly, education across Delaware seems to have entirely depended on colonial intuitional precedents and networks. Throughout the mid-Atlantic and upper South, similar dynamics prevailed.

Academies that arose out of Awakening-era denominational competition provided the institutional roots of, and pedagogical and curricular precedents for, academies that strove to support newly independent states.

By the outbreak of the American Revolution, New Jersey had the best-developed educational infrastructure of any state in the mid-Atlantic. Along with the College of

New Jersey and Queen’s College, the state possessed a dense network of denominational education. As was true in Delaware, many of these schools remerged in early national

36 New York Packet, May 5, 1789. 37 The obituary is in Gazette of the United States, Oct. 29, 1794; for its reappearance in the newspapers, Gazette of the United States, May 2, 1797.

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New Jersey. And like in Delaware, New Jerseyans also had to overcome the ravages of war, which destroyed much of its cultural infrastructure.

Due to the presence of the College of New Jersey and its president, the radical leader John Witherspoon, Princeton was an undisputed center of Whig activism. This public profile, the startling degree to which the town and College mobilized in favor of independence, and the presence of Nassau Hall, the largest building in New Jersey, made

Princeton a target of British forces during the war. As the brunt of the fighting moved southward in the late 1770s, Princeton regained its place as a center of education in New

Jersey. Everything was hardly back to normal, but Princeton was stable enough to begin attempting to return to pre-war patterns of schooling . The Princeton grammar school was one of the first academies to reopen in New Jersey during the war. In the autumn of

1780, the school held an examination in front of an impressive audience that included many officials from the College “and other Gentlemen of learning in the neighbourhood.”

Public exhibitions in the presence of local luminaries were an essential part of establishing the legitimacy of a school. Most academies, which individual congregations oversaw, relied on congregants and locals to observe these examinations. In 1780, many communities would have difficulty mustering an audience. Beginning in the colonial period, the Princeton grammar school relied on its connection with the College and the stability it afforded. The examination covered students at all levels. Some studied advanced languages and would soon enroll in the College, while other students learned

English grammar and math at lower levels. The school seemed to have picked up right

178 where it left off in 1776. The next day, the College of New Jersey held its graduation exercises in front of a similarly large and well-educated audience.38

The commencement exercises at the College followed the usual pattern of Latin orations, English speeches on topics of interests, and the granting of degrees. As was the case in Newark, Delaware, educators in Princeton tried to illustrate how to harness the stability of prevailing educational patterns to the state the country as a whole. While the rituals were the same as ever, the content intended to illustrate the centrality of education to the revolutionary project to both the audience in Princeton and a larger audience of newspaper readers throughout the state and region. To that end, one Latin oration focused on the “illustrious general,” George Washington. An English oration sought to explain education’s prominent role in the construction and success of “civil society.” The most poignant essay read on that day argued for the importance of reviving education in the new nation. In a narrow sense, the trustees of the College of New Jersey structured the newspaper report to show that those prospects for the future lay with them. A discerning reader might draw the more general conclusion that New Jersey simply needed to rebuild and expand the system—if you can call it that—of education they began to develop during the colonial period.39

All was not hopeless according to educators in New Jersey. Early in 1781, men from Trenton and nearby gathered to create an academy that would compensate for the

38 New-Jersey Journal, Oct. 18, 1780. Newspapers usually referred to it as a grammar school, though it differed very little from an academy. Like most academies, it offered a fairly extensive curriculum and prepared many young men for college. See Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 243–6. 39 New-Jersey Journal, Oct. 18, 1780.

179 inadequate state of schooling in southern Jersey. Unlike Princeton, and many other major towns in New Jersey, Trenton did not have an academy during the colonial period. Yet many of the initial subscribers and trustees had received their education at Presbyterian schools in New Jersey and elsewhere. This experience influenced their efforts. Five trustees signed the first advertisement for the Trenton Academy. The man with the most experience as an educator was William Churchill Houston, a native South Carolinian who attended the Presbyterian-run Crowfield Academy in North Carolina. He came to New

Jersey to enroll at the College of New Jersey and also to teach at the Princeton grammar school. After graduating he served as a professor and later a trustee of the College, held some public offices, and finally settled in Trenton. James Ewing had attended Enoch

Green’s Academy in Deerfield, New Jersey, and was a member of the informal admonishing society and contributor to the newspaper that other students created. During the war he served in the militia and in the New Jersey state assembly. Little is known about Moore Furman’s educational background, though he was a longstanding member of the Trenton Presbyterian Church and was elected to its board of trustees in 1760. He went on to become the first mayor of Trenton in 1792. The two remaining members of the board were Quakers who took a strong stance in favor of the American Revolution, an unusual step for members of the pacifistic sect. Isaac Collins was the founder and printer of the New-Jersey Gazette, New Jersey’s pro-Whig newspaper. Stacy Potts, whose house was used by the Continental Congress for a time, later became the mayor of Trenton.40

40 New-Jersey Gazette, Sep. 18, 1782. Feb. 10, 1781; and “List of Subscribers to the Friends of Trenton Academy,” both in Records of the Proprietors of the Trenton Academy, Trenton Free Public Library. For

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The Quaker presence in Trenton and on the Academy’s board broadened support for the school. The Trenton Academy, though, was very much a part of a Presbyterian educational tradition that dated to the colonial period. In 1782 the school hired George

Merchant, an alumnus of both the grammar school in Princeton and the College of New

Jersey, to serve as its first principal teacher. The school also retained some affiliation with the local Presbyterian Church. James Francis Armstrong, a minister who was a leading figure in mid-Atlantic Presbyterianism, took an abiding interest in the school and even ran it for a time. Armstrong received his early education at famous Presbyterian academies in Nottingham, under future Princeton president Samuel Finley, and at Samuel

Blair’s school in Fagg’s Manor, before graduating from the College of New Jersey. By

1800, female students of the academy attended class in a building owned by the Trenton

Presbyterian Church. The school also began offering French fairly early on in its history.

The Trenton Academy appropriated an institutional structure and curriculum from the colonial past, and used it to uphold “the good order of government,” in much the same way as schools with colonial roots in Delaware and Princeton. Even parts of New Jersey that had not felt the immediate impact of the Awakening’s influence on education, felt its long-term influence on schooling during the early republic.41

information on the Academy and its board members, I relied on John Hall, History of the Presbyterian Church in Trenton, N. J.: From the First Settlement of the Town (Trenton, NJ: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1859), 162, 308, 32–9, 350, 448. For more on Houston, see James McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1976), 643–7. On James Ewing, Fea, “Rural Religion,” 453. 41 Quote from, Feb. 10, 1781; for the first mention of French language instruction, Sep. 30, 1785, both in Records of the Proprietors of the Trenton Academy, 1, 49-50. On Merchant, see Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1776-1783: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1981), 272–5. For the rest of the board, see Hall, History of the Presbyterian Church in Trenton, N. J., 295–6, 326–7.

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Elsewhere the situation was more dire. Both Elizabeth Town and Newark, New

Jersey were hotbeds of revolutionary radicalism, and both had longstanding Presbyterian academies that mobilized for revolution in war time. For their troubles, both schools felt the might of the British Army. These places had deeply rooted educational traditions, but shattered infrastructure. Rebuilding took time. Elizabeth Town was the original site of the college of New Jersey in 1746, and the Presbyterian Church maintained a successful academy there into the American Revolution. Academy education did not seem to return to Elizabeth Town until 1787, when a newspaper reported that “an handsome edifice” was built for the new Elizabeth Town Academy. Here colonial-era denominational education again provided the precedents and networks to create schools for the new nation. In Elizabeth Town, the Presbyterian Church seems to have relinquished direct control over the school after the Revolution. The trustee minutes of the First Presbyterian

Church contain multiple entries pertaining to the academy during the late-colonial years, but none after the Revolution.42

Though not officially in charge, the Elizabeth Town Presbyterian Church stayed involved in the local academy. The president of the new board of trustees was the Yale- educated reverend from the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth Town, David Austin.

A number of the earliest members of the board of trustees had connections with the colonial iteration of the Elizabeth Town Academy. Aaron Ogden, the future governor of

New Jersey and namesake of the famous 1824 steamboat case, and his close friend

42 New-Jersey Journal, Aug. 1, 1787; Minutes of the Trustees of the First Presbyterian of Elizabeth Town, NJ, PHS.

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Jonathan Dayton, who represented New Jersey in both houses of Congress during the

1790s and 1800s, had attended the Academy before graduating from the College of New

Jersey. Ogden even taught at the Academy for a few years after college. When the

Revolution came to New Jersey, both of these men accepted commissions in the

Continental Army. Ogden was not the only member of the new board who had experience administering the academy before the Revolution. During the 1760s, the trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth Town appointed John Chetwood to a committee that oversaw the school examinations and managed the school’s teachers.

Chetwood reprised his role in the 1780s. John De Hart, the town’s mayor was a member, as was George Ross, about whom we know very little. The trustees also appointed

William Livingston, the governor, as a member of the board, though it is unlikely he was active.43 Not all of the trustees were Presbyterians, but they all had connections with

Presbyterian schools. At least one other of the remaining three trustees, Matthias

Williamson, was Anglican. Like his brother-in-law Jonathan Dayton, who was also an

Anglican, Williamson attended the College of New Jersey. As was the case in Trenton, and in a pattern that would continue, colonial denominational schools and networks provided a basis for post-revolutionary education. Yet it became increasingly clear that

43 The list of trustees is in New-York Daily Advertiser, May 18, 1789. See also Edwin Francis Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, New Jersey: Including the Early History of Union County (New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1868), 559–60; on Austin, 596–7; and for Chetwood, 563, 521. For Chetwood, also see June 5, 1769, in Minutes of the Trustees of the First Presbyterian of Elizabeth Town, NJ, PHS.

183 academies would need to transcend denominational interests in order to draw wide enough support to survive.44

The Newark Academy suffered as much during the War as any school in New

Jersey. The town sought £1400 to rebuild the academy and the fences surrounding it, all of which the British had destroyed. Two of the school’s trustees also claimed that the

British destroyed £513 worth of books during their attack on the town.45 Alexander

McWhorter, the long-time minister of the Presbyterian Church in Newark, took the lead in rebuilding the Newark Academy. Beginning in the waning days of the War,

McWhorter had taught some students this standard academy curriculum outside of

Newark proper. Recognizing that “The instruction of youth has been greatly marred by the war,” McWhorter decided to redouble his efforts.46 In the local newspaper,

McWhorter argued that Newark needed to support its academy because “every attempt to promote literature in this infant government, will be so readily acknowledge by all” as of

“high importance” to that government.47 Having served as chaplain in the Continental

Army, McWhorter was committed to this mission. Initially, he advertised that he would both prepare students for college, and instruct others who only would attend his academy

“in such branches of literature as are usually taught in our colleges.”48

44 Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1980), 123–4. 45 #28, #1, #59, Damages by the British in Essex County, Newark, in “Revolutionary War: Damages by the British and Americans in New Jersey,” reel 1, Film 437, DLAR, original at the New Jersey State Archives. 46 New-Jersey Journal, March 13, 1782. 47 New-Jersey Journal, March 13, 1782. 48 New-Jersey Journal, March 13, 1782.

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Evidently McWhorter felt both energized and emboldened by the Revolution. In addition to the fairly standard plan for the academy, McWhorter also shared an innovative proposal to provide education in the “liberal arts and sciences” for students who had no intention of attending college. He saw this as valuable for creating citizens who would understand the history and laws of their country and might then be able to serve as officers in government. McWhorter believed that this was how he could best serve the needs of his state and country. Unlike many other schools, including the regular academy McWhorter ran in Newark, which seemed to just resume old patterns, this was innovative and new. Here McWhorter thought deeply about how to reform education to fit the needs of the new republic. He was unsure whether his “experiment,” as he called it, to “form the sons of our principal farmers in these parts to fill public offices in government” would prove successful.49

By 1786, McWhorter had worn himself out and found that his teaching encroached on his pastoral duties. When he relinquished control of the Academy, other

Newark residents took over. The trustees advertised their plan to continue to the tradition of creating separate Latin, English, and mathematical schools, as well as to teach the

Belles Lettres. They hoped that under their control the school would still prepare students for college.50 During McWhorter’s tenure, though, local Presbyterians made little headway in raising funds to rebuild the school building.51

49 New-Jersey Journal, March 13, 1782; and Oct. 23, 1782. 50 New-York Packet, April 24, 1786. 51 New-Jersey Gazette, May 1, 1786.

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The Development of Academies in the Upper South

The influence of religious networks spread beyond New Jersey and Delaware to shape the early foundations of education in the South. A number of academies in

Virginia opened in the early years of the Revolutionary War and were among the earliest institutions to offer schooling in the state during the confederation period.52 In 1776, the

Hanover Presbytery established an academy, which became Hampden-Sydney College, under the direction of Samuel Stanhope Smith. Smith, a future president of the College of New Jersey, received his early education from his father Robert Smith at his academy in Pequea, Pennsylvania. One of Smith’s classmates, William Graham, was the earliest principal teacher at Liberty Hall Academy, which opened in Rockbridge County also under the authority of the Hanover Presbytery in 1776.53 Finally, the Washington-Henry

Academy opened in Hanover County in 1778 under the control of Daniel McCalla who studied at both Fagg’s Manor under Samuel Blair and then at the College of New Jersey.

Before taking over the school, McCalla served briefly as a chaplain in the Continental

Army. He hired John Blair, the nephew of his former teacher, to assist him at the school.

Though grounded firmly in Presbyterian networks, from the outset the Academy aimed

“to support and promote the public weal, from an unaffected attachment to the interest of the American states in general.”54 Even within Presbyterian circles, Virginia was fairly slow in developing academies during the colonial period. Yet this revolutionary era

52 Dale Glenwood Robinson, The Academies of Virginia, 1776-1861 (Dietz Press, 1977), 28–9. 53 May 13, 1776, Liberty Hall Academy Minutes of the Board of Trustees, handwritten copy, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, 19; Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 289–90. 54 Jan. 26, 1778, subscriptions folder, Washington-Henry Academy Trustee Records, VHS; McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768, 572–3.

186 migration of Presbyterian educators trained in Pennsylvania set the stage for the rapid expansion of academies in Virginia during the 1780s and 1790s.

Maryland relied on similar trans-regional networks to support its post- revolutionary educational revival. The first academy to open in Maryland during the

1780s was in Somerset County. Re-christened the Washington Academy, the school began operating in the late 1760s. During the late colonial period, it dominated education on the Eastern Shore and even drew students from the western part of the state and

Virginia. There are no extant records from the colonial period, though trustees during the early republic claimed that an inter-denominational group of Somerset County residents founded the academy. This notwithstanding, it is clear New Jersey Presbyterians played a guiding role in the school’s founding. They key figure here was Reverend Jacob Kerr.

Born in New Jersey, and trained first by William Tennent, Jr.—the son of the famed evangelist who founded the Log College—then at the College of New Jersey, the New

Brunswick Presbytery ordained Kerr in 1764. A year later, Kerr represented the

Presbytery of Lewistown at the yearly meeting of the Synod of New York and

Philadelphia. Sometimes called the Presbytery of Lewes, it was founded in 1758 and comprised Maryland’s Eastern Shore and part of Delaware. Probably not coincidentally, the school opened two years after took Kerr took his post as minister of a number of churches in Somerset County and affiliated with the Presbytery. During the War, as the

187 trustees remembered, “Exposed to the ravages of the enemy … the great business of education” was put on hold.55

In 1779, a board of trustees applied to the Maryland legislature for a charter to reopen the school as the Washington Academy. With good reason, Kerr’s was the first name on the list of the new board of trustees.56 To flourish, the school depended in large measure on the Presbyterian networks to which Kerr and a few other trustees belonged.

In need of a principal, the trustees elected, of all people, Alexander McWhorter of

Newark, New Jersey. Kerr and McWhorter came from similar New Side stock;

McWhorter also studied with William Tennent, Jr. The board instructed Kerr to inform

McWhorter of their decision. Foreshadowing McWhorter’s eventual decision to decline the appointment, Kerr claimed “it was inconvenient” to go all the way to New Jersey to inform McWhorter of his election, and wrote to him instead. When McWhorter declined, the board reined in their ambition a bit and elected Thomas Read, a Presbyterian minister from nearby Delaware, to the post. Read received his early education under Francis

Alison at the Academy of Philadelphia. Like many of his mentor’s former students, Read taught at the Newark, Delaware Academy, and served on the board of trustees from its

55 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784. For the school’s history, see Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784. For Kerr’s ordination, May 17, 1764; for Kerr’s first appearance as a member of the Presbytery of Lewes, May 15, 1765; and for the creation of the Presbytery of Lewiston, May 30, 1758, all in Guy Klett, Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706-1788 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1976), 394, 402, 343–4. See also McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748-1768, 228. 56 Nov. [?], 1779, Minutes of Trustees of Washington Academy, Washington Academy Collection, microfilm, MSA.

188 very first meeting after the Revolution, in 1783. With his many educational and pastoral commitments concentrated in Delaware, Read also declined the post.57

With a pressing need to fill the presidency, the trustees of the Washington

Academy finally decided on a sensible course. They sent a member of the board of the next meeting of the Presbyterian Synod to find someone who actually wanted the job.58

This plan worked. William Linn, a graduate of the College of New Jersey and a minister licensed by the Donegal Presbytery agreed to take up the school’s presidency. Only one obstacle remained. Linn needed permission to transfer from the Donegal Presbytery to the Presbytery of Lewistown. Hoping that his position in the Presbyterian Church would carry enough weight, the trustees instructed Kerr to write the Synod and “make a proper representation of the importance of the Washington Academy and apply for the dismission of Mr. Linn.” The letter had the desired effect and Linn, with the assistance of two teachers, instituted a college-level curriculum at the school. He taught oratory and moral philosophy along with Latin and Greek, while his assistants handled math science, geography, and history. Linn’s appointment did not last very long; he moved on to

Elizabeth Town, New Jersey a year later. Linn ultimately became a prominent member of the Dutch Reformed Church—ministers regularly moved between the two churches in the period—and served as the first chaplain of the House of Representatives.

57 Sep. 4, 1783; Oct. 21, 1783; May 3, 1784, all in Minutes of Trustees of Washington Academy, 1-3, MSA. On Read, see William Buell Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit: Or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of the Various Denominations ..., 9 vols. (New York: R. Carter, 1857), vol. III: 301. The Charlotte Academy in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina also tried to recruit McWhorter; see Edward D. Griffin, “A Sermon Preached July 22d 1807 at the Funeral of the Revd. Alexander MacWhorter D.D.,” folder 4, Joseph Black Collection, N-JHS, 24. 58 May 17, 1784, Minutes of Trustees of Washington Academy, MSA, 4.

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Nevertheless, thanks to some trustees’ stature in the Presbyterian Church, the Washington

Academy mobilized educational networks formed during the Great Awakening to bring high-level schooling to Maryland within a year of the Peace of Paris.59

Education developed slowly in North Carolina, though a few Presbyterian academies operated in the decades before the American Revolution. A school known as

“Science Hall” seems to have operated in the area as early as 1779. In 1783, a number of men in Hillsborough gathered together to create a school with sturdier roots. This, as they saw it, was for the good of the “Rising generation.” The trustees hoped they could secure funding from the state to offset some of the initial capital outlay. One of the members, William Hooper, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who was then serving in the state legislature, led this failed effort. Instead, on behalf of the Academy trustees, a militia general and state legislator named John Butler, along with a lawyer, acquired 140 acres of land, confiscated from a Loyalist, just outside of Hillsborough. It is not entirely clear whether the trustees built the school on this land or sold it again for a profit and opened the school elsewhere.60

Nevertheless, by 1785 the school was up and running. The trustees intended to offer much more than elementary education, expressing no interest in teaching the rudiments. They laid out a wide curriculum which included, among many other subjects,

“merchants accounts.” Within two years, though, the school lost its head teacher. Again,

59 May 17, 1784; July 5, 1784, both in Minutes of Trustees of Washington Academy, MSA, 4-5; Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784. On Linn, see Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 231–5. 60 Nov. 1, 1783; [n.d], both in Hillsborough Academy Papers, NCDAH, 6. On Hooper, see Mary Claire Engstrom, “William Hooper,” in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), available online http://ncpedia.org/biography/hooper- william.

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Presbyterian educational networks intervened. John Witherspoon, the president of the

College of New Jersey, received a letter from Hooper asking him to recommend potential teachers for the Academy. Witherspoon followed through. Zadoc Squire, a 1784 graduate of the College took over the Hillsborough Academy in 1787. This was not an isolated occurrence. Until Southern colleges started producing enough graduates, there was a dearth of teachers in the region. Beginning in the colonial period, and with increasing frequency during the early republic, recent graduates of the College of New

Jersey headed south to teach for a few years before embarking on their careers.

Presbyterianism in North Carolina was stronger inland than on the coast, which perhaps explains why education developed there first.61

Denominations continued to provide an important source of cultural and social capital for academies. Moreover, denominational academies educated many teachers and provided a model for a curriculum and pedagogy for new schools. But across the mid-

Atlantic and Upper South, denominations could not fully support the educational needs of

Americans. It is no coincidence that churches did not directly administer post- revolutionary academies, which they had done during the colonial period. Rather, as the stories of these early academies make clear, academies depended on boards of trustees comprised of civic leaders who could tap into revolutionary political networks to support

61 New-York Journal, Oct. 20, 1785; Trustee Minutes, Hillsborough Academy Papers, 7-8. Witherspoon to James Iredell, Feb. 19, 1787, Princeton, NJ, John Witherspoon Collection, C0274, PUL. On Squire, see Princeton University, General Catalogue of Princeton University 1746-1906 (Princeton, N.J.: Published by the University, 1908), 102; Jean B. Anderson, “Hillsborough Academy,” in William Stevens Powell and Jay Mazzocchi, eds., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), entry also available online at http://ncpedia.org/hillsborough-academy. On education in the South, see Donald Robert Come, “The Influence of Princeton on Higher Education in the South before 1825,” William and Mary Quarterly 2 (Oct. 1945): 359–96.

191 schools. Though often educated in denominational schools, these men did not necessarily see academies as a tool for strengthening denominations. Rather, they used denominational networks as a tool for strengthening academies. When political issues challenged Americans’ historic use of academies to bolster denominations, these men— some prominent clergymen included—tended to do what was best for academies and

American education more generally. Though they led the way in rebuilding of academies after the Revolution, denominations’ influence over education would decline in the political climate of the early republic. Hardly a product of some inevitable march toward secularization, this transformation was deeply embedded in broader political and geopolitical developments.

Education and the Decline of Transatlantic Protestant Networks

Despite the important role denominations played in reestablishing academies in the 1780s, the Revolution created challenges for religious leaders like Jacob Green who hoped to use education to serve sectarian purposes. The American Revolution wreaked havoc on transatlantic religious networks, creating divisions between co-religionists that overpowered evangelical fellowship. Even when this was not the case, the Revolution disrupted the normal vectors of communication and association that drew denominations together across the Atlantic and had long provided support for American education.62

62 Katherine Carté Engel has argued that the transatlantic Protestantism was actually fairly weak by the mid-eighteenth century, and “existed only as a narrow network of personal connections and as a rhetorical strategy.” See “The SPCK and the American Revolution: The Limits of International Protestantism,” Church History 81 (March 2012): 77–103; see also Engel’s “Transatlantic Protestantism and the Challenge of the Revolution” (presented at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies conference, The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century, Philadelphia, May 31, 2013). Also see P. J.

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These new Atlantic dynamics took some Americans by surprise and compounded the domestic issues that Americans faced in rebuilding educational infrastructure in the wake of a destructive war. The combination of domestic and Atlantic forces and a scarcity of resources compelled Americans to rethink the role denominations should play in schools and in national development more broadly.

The ink was scarcely dry on the Treaty of Paris before John Witherspoon, the radical revolutionary and president of the College of New Jersey, planned a trip to

England and Scotland to raise money for the school. Times were certainly desperate. In

1784, resources and capital were in short supply throughout New Jersey, while demand for rebuilding in the wake of military destruction loomed large. For Witherspoon, looking to Britain for support was a logical step. Throughout the colonial period, denominations depended on co-religionists abroad to support American academies and colleges.

Witherspoon quickly found that rebuilding transatlantic networks was no straightforward task. John Erskine—a member of the Popular Party of the Scottish

Presbyterian Church, and a leading figure in the development of transatlantic

Evangelicalism in the mid-eighteenth century—first informed Witherspoon of the obstacles he faced in securing British funding for the College.63 Erskine wrote that he

Marshall, Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 293–310. 63 On Erskine’s place in the transatlantic Evangelical movement, see Susan O’Brien, “A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735-1755,” American Historical Review 91 (Oct. 1986): 811–32; as well as W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 337; and Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 47.

193 had already told Benjamin Rush that if he came to Britain to raise money for the newly- founded Dickinson College, he should not expect to even offset the cost of a trip.

Witherspoon’s prospects looked just as bleak. The Revolution bred too much animosity to overcome. Erskine then relayed the opinion of their mutual friend Charles Nisbet—a

Scottish educator and minister who became the first principal of Dickinson College— who doubted that there was enough of “a spirit of reconciliation” among Scots to lend their support to American education. Witherspoon corresponded with many friends and supporters, and heard more or less the same thing from all of them. One warned that

“prejudices once taken, are not easily removed, in this country I fear at least you will find it so.” Another counseled that “the far greater part of the people in Scotland, are as yet no means friends to America.” With no support coming from co-religionists in Scotland,

Witherspoon would have to find other sources of funding for the College.64

Hesitantly, Witherspoon and the trustees turned their fundraising efforts inward.

The College had requested support from the Continental Congress, which actually met for a time at Princeton. Congress’s own dire financial situation precluded them from helping the school. Witherspoon and the trustees had long avoiding soliciting domestic

Presbyterian networks for support. They knew that the War had devastated many local communities and churches. Rebuilding demanded the time and resources of many

American Presbyterians. But having failed in “their foreign sollicitations,” the trustees were desperate. They appealed to the Presbytery of New Brunswick for help. The

64 Erskine to Witherspoon, Feb. 5, 1784, London; [?] Hogg to Witherspoon, Feb. 7, 1784, Edinburgh; Margaret [Watson?] to Witherspoon, Feb. 12, 1784, all in folder 3, John Witherspoon Papers, N-JHS. On Nisbet, see David W. Robson, “Enlightening the Wilderness: Charles Nisbet’s Failure at Higher Education in Post-Revolutionary Pennsylvania,” History of Education Quarterly 37 (Oct. 1997): 271–289.

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College of New Jersey and the New Brunswick Presbytery emerged together as staunch

New Side institutions, and the trustees hoped to benefit from this longstanding connection. The trustees also planned to “make a general application to the friends of religion & learning in this country” to support the College and, in turn, “our civil & religious interests.” The trustees’ initial instincts turned out to be correct. Overburdened with other obligations, members of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia failed to drum up much money and the College remained in a precarious situation.65

In nearby New Brunswick, the trustees of Queen’s College confronted similar troubles. Responding to the College’s request for support, the Reformed Synod claimed that though they hoped the school would rise out of “obscurity,” they deemed it

“impracticable at present to attempt a general collection of money in their respective congregations for the use of this institution.” All they could promise was to try and solicit some scattered donations for the school.66 As was true among Presbyterians, the

Dutch Reformed Church’s ecclesiastical infrastructure suffered during the War. Even members of the Reformed congregation in New Brunswick prioritized other projects above the College, namely raising an estimated £800 to repair damages to their local church.67

65 “Memorial of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey to the Presbytery of New Brunswick,” Sep. 30, 1784, folder 12A, John Witherspoon Collection, PUL. See also Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746-1896 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 67–9. The trustees’ appeal to Congress never had much potential of success. The trustees of the College of New Jersey had speculated in loan certificates early in the War, but Congress had ceased paying interest on these in the early 1780s. In light of this, asking Congress for monetary support outright was a very desperate ploy. 66 June 7, 1785, Minutes of the Trustees of Queen’s College, typescript, in box 2, folder 16, Elizabeth R. Boyd Historical Collection on Rutgers, RUL, 6. 67 Damages by the British in Middlesex County, reel 2, Damages by the British Americans in New Jersey, Film 437, DLAR, original in New Jersey State Archives, 176.

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Queen’s president, Jacob Hardenbergh, recognized the need to “liberally endow” colleges.68 Yet Hardenbergh’s commitment to this general principle only went so far.

After learning that a group in Hackensack applied to the legislature for a college charter, the Queen’s College trustees did their best to quash it. They argued that “the said bill of incorporation may prove inconsistent [sic] with and injurious to the interests of this institution.”69 A college in Hackensack, another heavily Dutch town, would directly compete with Queen’s College for support. In particular, Hardenbergh worried about dividing the precious little denominational funding that the Reformed Church could muster. Hardenbergh’s revolutionary commitment and political career suggest that he did care deeply about the fate of the United States, and he was probably sincere in his belief that schools benefited the nation. As was the case at Princeton, a genuine commitment to the public good coexisted with simple self-preservation. Denominations simply could not support schools to the extent they did before the Revolution. The hard realities of post- revolutionary rebuilding conditioned the actions of college trustees.

During the early 1790s, the two colleges attempted ease the growing tensions between their denominational and secular goals. As a result, in 1793 leaders from both colleges considered a plan to merge. Trustees actually broached the idea once before, just as Queen’s College secured its own charter in the 1760s.70 Due in part to a shared

Calvinist theology and a similar ecclesiastical structure, the Dutch Reformed and

68 Jacob Hardenbergh, “The Advantages of Education,” 1787, typescript, box 2, folder 17, Boyd Historical Collection on Rutgers, RUL. 69 Sep. 3, 1788, Minutes of the Trustees of Queen’s College, typescript, in box 2, folder 16, Boyd Historical Collection on Rutgers, RUL, 8. 70 Wertenbaker, Princeton, 74–5.

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Presbyterian Churches frequently overlapped during the colonial period. In some towns, one church served both Presbyterian and Reformed laypeople, and ministers sometimes moved between these denominational affiliations. During the Great Awakening, evangelical bonds forged even stronger inter-denominational, largely because of the relationship between Theodorus Frelinghuysen and Gilbert Tennent.71

Though not unprecedented, the 1793 plan clearly arose out of denominational failures to adequately fund the colleges during the 1780s. Moreover, it seems that funding issues pitted proponents of a more religious-focused college education against proponents of a more secular sort of college curriculum. The proposed 1793 plan would convert Queen’s College into a theological seminary with an affiliated academy. The school in New Brunswick would grant official divinity degrees, as well as provide certificates that were “a sufficient recommendation for trial in the Gospel Ministry in the

Presbyterian and Dutch Churches.” Students who went through the academy there, but wanted to pursue a career outside of the clergy, would head to Princeton for their degree.

Both schools would answer to a shared board of trustees.72 By freeing the denominations from single-handedly providing for both ministerial training and academic education for aspiring professionals, the plan would have strengthened both types of education.

71 See, for instance, Liam Riordan, Many Identities, One Nation : The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 4, 6. On the Awakening, see Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 270–3; and Kidd, The Great Awakening, 28–31. On the political implications of cooperation between the Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian Churches during the Revolutionary era, see Owen S. Ireland, “The Ethnic-Religious Dimension of Pennsylvania Politics, 1778- 1779,” William and Mary Quarterly 30 (July 1973): 427, 442–5; Owen S. Ireland, “The Crux of Politics: Religion and Party in Pennsylvania, 1778-1789,” William and Mary Quarterly 42 (Oct. 1985): 458; and especially Wayne L. Bockelman and Owen S. Ireland, “The Internal Revolution in Pennsylvania: An Ethnic-Religious Interpretation,” Pennsylvania History 41 (April 1974): 124–159. 72 Oct. 29, 1793, Minutes of the Trustees of Queen’s College, typescript, in box 2, folder 16, Boyd Historical Collection, RUL, 7.

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Nationalistic individuals could funnel their support of secular education to one school without worrying about potential denominational conflicts. Denominational organizations and pious philanthropists could direct their support to a school dedicated solely to theological education and would no longer have to subsidize collegiate education at the same time. The plan would cleverly skirt the major funding issues facing both those people who wanted to build secular educational institutions and those who wanted to strengthen denominational institutions.

Alas, the trustees of Queen’s College scuttled the plan by a margin of one vote.

Even if the trustees voted the other way it probably would not have mattered. Once they heard of the plan, the Reformed Synod threatened to withhold any money they raised on behalf of Queen’s College, should it create any sort of connection with the Presbyterian school. Despite the theological overlap that had brought the two churches together in prior decades, ethnic identities remained a potent force. Before and after the Revolution, some Dutch and German communities across the mid-Atlantic were fairly insular and often intentionally separated themselves from the social and political worlds of English speakers.73

73 Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 63–6; and John L. Brooke, Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 130–6. At the very least, ethno-religious factors impacted how people experienced politics and made sense of national identity during the early republic; see Riordan, Many Identities, One Nation, 83–130. The classic ethno-cultural interpretation of nineteenth century politics is Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961); see also Ronald P. Formisano, “The Invention of the Ethnocultural Interpretation,” American Historical Review 99 (April 1994): 453–477.

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The Reformed Church’s insistence on upholding a distinct boundary between

Presbyterians and themselves ensured that the problems of the 1780s would continue to plague the colleges. The College of New Jersey, especially after the death of John

Witherspoon, entered a period of prolonged ideological stress, an identity crisis of sorts.

In order to appease multiple constituencies, the school tried to maintain a delicate balance between its religious commitment to Evangelical Presbyterianism and its Enlightenment commitment to the new republic. This crumbled under the leadership of Samuel Stanhope

Smith.74 To a large extent, though, the College’s fraught existence during the 1790s and

1800s reflected continuing institutional problems as much as anything else. In the years leading up to the Revolution, a wide swath of Presbyterians had committed themselves to support both the Church and the nation. The infrastructural crisis of the immediate- post- revolutionary years stretched thin denominational social capital and put the nationalistic and denominational goals of education into direct competition in an unprecedented way.

And so, in an effort to keep the College of New Jersey from tearing itself apart from the inside, the Presbyterian Church disaggregated the school’s two missions. Beginning in the mid-1800s, the Church developed a plan to create a separate theological seminary that would handle the work of ministerial training. The College would continue to provide a liberal education for aspiring professionals. This plan became reality in 1812. In large

74 Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 99–124. Noll has argued that after the Revolution, Protestants struggled to maintain religious faith amid their embrace of republican ideals, practices, and institutions; see America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). On the connection between religion and a vision of Enlightenment aimed, broadly, at producing stability in the republic see Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), part IV.

199 measure, the solution mimicked the 1793 plan for union between Queen’s and the

College of New Jersey, only entirely under the control of the Presbyterian Church.75

Many Church leaders preferred this outcome. Much of the College of New Jersey’s leadership shared with Jacob Green a sense that the Awakening was, at the very least, not quite over. In fact, Green’s son Ashbel took over the College presidency in 1812 and oversaw the founding of the Theological Seminary. Like his father, Ashbel Green distrusted interdenominational cooperation. In 1791, he attended an interdenominational meeting in Boston that brought together Calvinists, Arians, Universalists, and Socinians.

All this comingling ensured that “they cannot agree on any point.” In his journal, he snidely noted that while acting alone would best serve all the groups, “this plan would be esteemed by them bigotive.” To maintain civility, the interdenominational group hardly discussed religion, opting instead to eat “and talk of politics and science.”76 Green clearly saw some value both in keeping denominations distinct and separating religious and secular education.

The problems in Princeton paled in comparison to those in New Brunswick.

Queen’s College only survived one more year beyond the failed union of 1793. The

Dutch Reformed Church still also oversaw a theological seminary in New York that sat on a rather shaky foundation. The Dutch Reformed Church came to a similar solution as the Presbyterians. Balancing commitments to both ministerial and secular education bred institutional problems that required an institutional solution. The trustees mobilized to

75 Wertenbaker, Princeton, 143–50; and Howard Miller, The Revolutionary College: American Presbyterian Higher Education, 1707-1837 (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 246–50. 76 July 11, 1791, transcripts of diaries of Ashbel Green [originals closed to research], folder 2, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL.

200 revive the College in the late 1800s. A few years after Queen’s College reopened in

1807, the Reformed Church relocated their theological seminary to the campus in New

Brunswick and determined that Queen’s College would no longer serve divinity students.

At Both New Jersey colleges, the Revolution drove a wedge between secular and religious education. Even as denominations remained integral to supporting American colleges, their ability to use those colleges for explicitly denominational ends declined.

The institutional environment of the early republic challenged Jacob Green’s hope that the link between religious and secular education, as well as between religious and civil liberty, would remain.

Academies and the Problem of Denominational Competition in a Republic

A similar blend of structural, historical, and ideological factors that impacted colleges also shaped the particular influence denominations would have on academies during the early republic. Certainly the breakdown of transatlantic religious connections and the pressures of post-war rebuilding trickled down and hampered the ability of denominations to support academies. At the same time, the republican ideals of the

Revolution emphasized the value of homogeneity and bred antipathy toward anything that divided the republic, which denominational competition certainly did. Whereas in the colonial period denominations directly funded and controlled schools, during the

1780s academy trustees drew on denominational networks and their own experiences with religious education to support academies. Yet denominational considerations alone did not animate the efforts of school trustees. During the colonial period, when these trustees were students, they had used their education in denominational schools to pursue

201 their professional and political ambitions. Indeed, the pre-revolutionary academy experience propelled many of them into the Revolution and left them with a vested interest in its outcome. So while the schools they founded after the war had denominational affiliations, many trustees certainly expected that academies would help students achieve a wide range of goals. Changing political circumstances strengthened this particular vision of the relationship between religion and education.

During the 1780s, many Americans grew uncomfortable with the idea that academies should serve denominations and their factional religious purposes. Jacob

Green’s hope that education would simultaneously support denominational competition and nationalistic interests faced stiff opposition. Especially in Pennsylvania, the connection between denominations and schools became a charged issue. During the

Revolution, militant adherents to republican ideology took control of the Pennsylvania state government and ratified a radically republican constitution. Riding this wave of change in the late 1770s, Presbyterians, the denomination most ardently in favor of independence, took the reins of political power for the first time. Troubled by widespread Tory sympathies among the Anglicans they had replaced, Presbyterians in the

Pennsylvania legislature banned Anglicans from many professions, including teaching at colleges and academies. The College of Philadelphia had long been under the control of the Anglican minister William Smith, and he was one of the legislature’s main targets.

Part of a larger takeover of the state’s political and cultural institutions, Pennsylvania’s revolutionary government revoked the charter of the College and Academy of

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Philadelphia and replaced it with the new Presbyterian-controlled University of the State of Pennsylvania.77

The confusion over the College of Philadelphia stifled the development of academies in Pennsylvania for at least a decade. Pennsylvania created academies at a slower rate than nearly every other state in the mid-Atlantic or upper South, save perhaps

North Carolina. In 1782, one academy opened in Lancaster. It is unclear whether a denomination sponsored the school, but a Lutheran minister led the opening ceremonies.78 Then beginning in 1786, Hugh Henry Brackenridge—a state assemblyman who would serve as a judge on the state supreme court from 1798 to 1816—led an effort to charter an academy in Pittsburgh, which would eventually become the University of

Pittsburgh.79 Brackenridge received his early education at Fagg’s Manor Academy, before graduating from the College of New Jersey. He went on to teach at the Princeton

Grammar School and at an academy in Somerset County, Maryland, likely the school that became the Washington Academy after the war. Though trained and licensed as a minster, by the late 1770s he had grown disenchanted with the Church and denominational competition more generally. Brackenridge forsook the ministry to instead pursue a political career.80 Despite his disillusionment with the Church,

Brackenridge’s own experience with Presbyterian education probably influenced his support of the school. Moreover, the first name on the list of trustees for the school was

77 Ireland, “Ethnic-Religious Dimension,” 155–6; Bockelman and Ireland, “Internal Revolution in Pennsylvania,” 430, 435–42. 78 Pennsylvania Packet, June 20, 1782. 79 Early news of his efforts appeared in Pennsylvania Evening Herald, Dec. 20, 1786. 80 Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775, 138–46.

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Reverend Samuel Barr, a Glasgow-educated Presbyterian minister. Barr also helped to create a Presbyterian congregation in Pittsburgh at the same time as Brackenridge sought to establish an ecumenical “Christian society.”81

In between the founding of the schools in Lancaster and Pittsburgh, the Episcopal

Church responded to the transformation of the College and Academy of Philadelphia.

Episcopalians built two fairly successful academies, both of which challenged

Presbyterian educational dominance in the state. In 1785, the board of trustees of a new

Protestant Episcopal Academy of Philadelphia met to revive the old Academy of

Philadelphia.82 In the same year, the Episcopal Church also opened an academy in

York.83 It received robust enough subscriptions that the trustees committed to providing

English education to residents for free. But its plan, like that of the Philadelphia

Episcopal Academy, focused on higher-level subjects including classical and modern languages as well as history, rhetoric, and moral philosophy.84

Critics quickly began to attack the Philadelphia Protestant Episcopal Academy.

They charged that it was an inherently divisive institution, created to challenge the new state university and undermine the public good in Pennsylvania. The University’s most vocal public supporter, and the Episcopal Academy’s most vocal public critic, an essayist

81 For the list of trustees, see Pennsylvania Evening Herald, March 14, 1787. On the Pittsburgh Academy, see also Centennial Volume of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, PA., 1784-1884 (Pittsburgh: Wm. G. Johnston & Company, Printers, 1884), 20–22; and Samuel Black McCormick, University of Pittsburgh, History, 1787-1908 (Allegheny, PA: Published by the University of Pittsburgh, 1908), 2–3. 82 The first board meeting was announced in Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 31, 1784. The board first met, Jan. 3, 1785, Protestant Episcopal Academy Minutes, folder 7, Meredith family papers, HSP. 83 Maryland Journal, July 15, 1785. 84 Pennsylvania Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 10, 1785. For a description of the whole curriculum, see Maryland Journal, Sep. 20, 1785; Pennsylvania Evening Herald, Oct. 19, 1785.

204 writing under the pseudonym “Uniformity,” alleged that using the “very terms episcopal academy, amount[s] to a declaration of hostilities against all other religious societies.”

The Academy trustees, these “half whigs,” threatened to undermine the revolutionary possibility that “religious distinctions would have ceased to divide the citizens of these states.” The school’s mere existence portended a revival of “toryism.” Never mind that the University, which “Uniformity” supported, itself arose specifically to undermine the influence of Anglicans-turned-Episcopalians. As “Uniformity’s” chosen name indicates, opponents of the Episcopal Academy couched their position as disinterested.

“Uniformity” defended the University’s “catholic spirit.” He claimed that like the radical constitution, the University offered “equal privileges” to all citizens. The entire concept of a denominational academy, he continued, was as ridiculous of a notion as an

“Episcopal ship—A Presbyterian rope walk—Or a Quaker brewery.” At the same time,

“Uniformity” reminded Episcopalians that they no longer had “the hierarchy of the church of England to fly to.” In light of their “insignificant situation,” the Episcopal

Academy trustees “should remember that their hand is now in the lion’s mouth, and not to provoke him” by undermining republican unity. To end the essay, “Uniformity” proposed that all schools should have to receive a license from the superior court or the board of trustees of the state university, both of which Presbyterians dominated.85

In reality, “Uniformity’s” paradoxical stance underscored a deeper ambiguity.

When they took power, Presbyterians simultaneously attempted to use education to establish republican governance and bolster their own political standing. Yet

85 Pennsylvania Freeman’s Journal, Jan. 19, 1785.

205 denominationalism, like political partisanship, threatened the homogenizing, utopian strands of republican ideology. Denominationalism was inherently more problematic when it intersected with education because Pennsylvanians remained convinced that republicanism could only thrive in a state with a strong foundation of education.86

Notably, section forty-four of the state constitution required counties to establish schools.87 Reformers like Benjamin Rush thought schools were the only institutions capable of inculcating republican homogeneity, a belief which animated later plans for universal, state-sponsored common schools. In this way, the push for uniformity in education—or at least an illusion of uniformity—grew out of a broader push to use civil associations and the public sphere to create an aura of consensus.88 Considering the course of the Revolution took in Pennsylvania, it seems unlikely that anyone,

“Uniformity” included, believed that denominational distinctions would cease to exist.

The same Presbyterians calling for educational uniformity had done the most to undermine it in the preceding years. “Uniformity” wrote his essay partially in defense of the new University of the State of Pennsylvania whose Presbyterian leaders, under the

86 On partisanship and threats to republican homogeneity, see John R. Howe, Jr., “Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s,” American Quarterly 19 (Summer 1967): 147–165 esp. 158-9. 87 Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 is available through the Avalon Project at Yale University; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/pa08.asp. 88 On the consensual public sphere, see John L. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic,” in Launching the “Extended Republic”: The Federalist Era, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 296–309; David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 53–107; Johann N. Neem, “The Elusive Common Good: Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts, 1780-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Autumn 2004): 381–417; Albrecht Koschnik, “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775-1840 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 15–23; and Johann N. Neem, “Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic: The View from Connecticut,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (Spring 2009): 471–495.

206 pretenses of securing republican governance, ensured that denominational conflicts continued to drive cultural institution building. The rhetoric did not match the reality of the situation on the ground.

In an ironic twist, an Episcopal Academy supporter advocated most stridently that denominations should remain involved in education. “An Episcopalian” argued plainly that as “religion without learning is apt to run into enthusiasm, so learning without religion is apt to produce infidelity.” Denominational oversight of academies thus ensured that learning was moral. Most strikingly, he made this argument despite the fact that Presbyterians used schools to undermine the Episcopal Church. Indeed, “An

Episcopalian” actually reminded readers, “This plan of separate education for the youth of distinct societies, is no new thing in this country.” Specifically, he pointed out that

Presbyterians controlled a number of notable schools including, the recently-founded

Dickinson College in Carlisle. These schools allowed denominations to flourish, to inculcate their religious principals in their youth, while at the same time providing an important religious inflection in education to the benefit of society writ large. “An

Episcopalian” merely tried to argue that, in much the same way, the Episcopal Academy would “promote learning and religion in the state, without which liberty cannot long be preserved.” In this regard, he concluded that the Episcopal Academy along with

Presbyterian academies were “entitled not only to the toleration, but to the patronage of government.”89

89 Pennsylvania Freeman’s Journal, Jan. 26, 1785.

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Other writers defended “An Episcopalian’s” pluralistic belief that denominations could both support education and unite Americans. For instance, in a particularly telling essay, “A Friend to Equality of Freedom and Learning in Pennsylvania” commented that

“EVERY good man beholds with satisfaction the exertions of various religious societies within this state, to revive literature and science, since the revolution.” In Pennsylvania, he pointed to the Presbyterians’ continued interest in education, the recently founded

Episcopal academies, as well as schools in Philadelphia run by Quakers and Catholics.

“A Friend” argued that with “Every religious society” caring for the “instruction of their youth, the whole republic must undoubtedly feel the beneficent consequences, in a rapid improvement of manners.” In fact, educating students in denominational schools would cultivate “harmony and christian friendship.” In a counterintuitive way, “A Friend” suggested that educating children by denomination would actual limit sectarian conflict and nip in the bud the threat that denominationalism posed to republicanism.90

Denominational religious homogeneity would never exist in the United States. Political unity, then, depended on the ability of each denomination to provide for all the needs of the laity.

The reality was always a bit more complicated than the ideal. In most towns, people did not have a choice of academies; schools needed to serve relatively heterogeneous populations. Balancing commitments to a diverse population and the public good at the same time as a denomination proved incredibly difficult. Considering

90 Pennsylvania Evening Herald, Aug. 13, 1785. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur made a similar argument, that religious competition in the extensive republic would ensure that no single religious group dominated and, in fact, eventually eliminate religious competition altogether; see Linsley, “American Reformation,” 174–5.

208 the opposition they faced, the Philadelphia Episcopal Academy trustees had every reason to demonstrate that they could achieve this balance. Despite its patently obvious source of denominational support, the trustees guaranteed that “children of every denomination will be received” at the school.91 Plenty of Presbyterian-affiliated academies made similar claims with the hope of demonstrating their utility to the public good. A few months after these notices ran in the Philadelphia newspapers, a bookseller advertised copies of “The Church of England Catechism,” which also contained the “Prayers used in the Academy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.”92 Clumsily, the trustees revealed that while the school might accept people from other denominations, those students might not feel so comfortable. Surely dissenting groups, many of which still mistrusted the Episcopal Church, balked at having their children participate in these

Episcopalian rituals. At some level, Americans remained convinced that religion was an important part of education because it instilled morality. Exactly how schools, especially schools with known denominational connections, could claim to provide that moral education without raising fears that they would induce children to change their religious preferences, remained a problem for decades.

Fears of adversarial denominational competition died hard. Amid the Episcopal

Academy controversy, Benjamin Rush published a letter in Pennsylvania newspapers laying out some other problems that a denominational influence on educational development could create. Generally speaking, Rush believed that religion had a place in

91 Pennsylvania Packet, Jan. 20, 1785; and also March 21, 1785. 92 Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 17, 1785.

209 schools. He argued fervently that American educators should us the Bible as a school book. In this case, Rush wrote his letter to explain his opposition to the new University of the State of Pennsylvania. In particular, the manner in which the legislature effected the change in leadership of the school worried him. The legislature deprived the College trustees of the school property before summarily replacing them. In the process, the

College’s new Presbyterian leadership nearly dismantled the sanctity of charters on which the success of educational institutions, and republican governance more generally, rested. Rush thus feared for the “security of the charter of Dickinson college,” which he recently helped found, “and of all the other literary and religious institutions in the state.”

No academy or college could hope to thrive when their charter rights were not absolute.

Rush claimed that he would likewise oppose the legislature if they should decide to dismantle the state university without cause or due process. The scandal with the College of Philadelphia showed the propensity of “man to bring evil out of good.” At the same time, the controversy proved that “to God it belongs to bring good out of evil.” Indeed,

Rush concluded that academies sprouted up across the region largely because the

University directed people’s attention to the problem of education. In the short-term, the legislature’s 1779 decision stifled educational development. In the long-term, it might have convinced people of the dire need to support educational institutions. Rush argued that the Presbyterian-run Washington Academy in Somerset Maryland, another Catholic academy in Maryland, along with the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and his

Dickinson College in Carlisle—all of which had denominational backing—arose in reaction to the irregular activities of the Pennsylvania legislature. Rush believed that all

210 the schools benefited the public good in their own right. For Rush, then, denominational backing was important because it helped to create schools and spread education. But if a single denomination wielded too much power over education, it could undercut these potential benefits. Rush’s essay drove at the essential problem of American education in the 1780s. Denominational networks proved very capable of supporting academies. If the trustees served factional ends too closely, though, they might threaten the widespread support academies could receive from the community, limit the number of potential supporters, and undermine their ability to benefit republican society generally.93

The Rise of Interdenominational Academies

Recognizing the range of pressures they faced, many educators downplayed their schools’ denominational affiliations in an effort to draw wider support. The very public disputes over the University of the State of Pennsylvania, coupled with the commitment to the new nation of many trustees and teachers of denominational academies, created a world in which denominations played a role in founding schools, while the explicitly denominational or factional role of those academies declined. Academies allowed denominations to continue supporting the cultural foundations of the republic. At the same time, this settlement blunted religious leaders’ ability to use education to fight inter

93 Freeman’s Journal, March 2, 1785. On the importance of charters, contracts, and constitutions to republican governance and republican ideology, see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 259–343, on the exaggerated importance of these sentiments in Pennsylvania especially, 283–4. On the deep roots of the post- revolutionary obsession with charters and charter rights, see John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 178–217 esp. 184-91.

211 and intra-denominational battles. The trustees of the Washington Academy in Somerset,

Maryland, for instance, wanted to put the school on a “foundation which may have greater stability.”94 The trustees’ main problem was that the Academy’s connection with the Presbyterian Church ran back nearly twenty years. Its opening in 1767 coincided with the arrival of a new Presbyterian minister, and the trustees continued to rely on the

Presbyterian Synod to fill teaching vacancies after the Revolution. The trustees made a concerted effort to frame this history in the least divisive possible way, actively denying that they had any denominational affiliation whatsoever. They cited the interdenominational group of men that founded the school, and that of the 170 or more students that had come to the school, not one changed his religious affiliation. Trustees advertised their intention to continue this tradition, guaranteeing that “No preference shall be shewn to any particular religious denomination,” nor would the teachers attempt to influence or alter any students’ religious beliefs.95

In many towns and cities, trustees and teachers found it insufficient to merely disavow the factional religious origins of their schools. Denominations increasingly worked together to sponsor and support academies. Inter-denominational cooperation helped to limit the potential for conflict without depriving students of a religious education. The academy in Newark, New Jersey epitomized this shift. By the time the trustees began advertising for a new iteration of the Academy in 1792, it shed its

Presbyterian affiliation. In an advertisement in both local and New York City

94 “Act of Incorporation,” Nov. 1779, Minutes of Trustees of Washington Academy, MSA. 95 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784.

212 newspapers, the trustees notified the public that they had established a constitution and acquired a site for the academy “nearly in the centre of the town, about an equal distance from the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches.” The local ministers of both churches would always have seats on the board.96 A few months later, they held a ceremony to finally lay the cornerstone of a new academy building. The ceremony took place at

Alexander McWhorter’s Presbyterian Church. In another demonstration of interdenominational cooperation, the local Anglican minister, Uzal Ogden, gave the main oration about the importance of wisdom. Cooperation between Anglicans and

Presbyterians enabled Newark to generate enough capital to fund the school and to draw a respectable board of trustees. With a solid foundation and strong ties to two churches, the trustees advertised in New York and Philadelphia that parents could have children educated in Newark effectively and piously.97

Across the region, educators devised a range of ways to illustrate the cross- denominational appeal of their schools. Advertisements for academies conveyed the desire of trustees to “See amity reign between societies of various denominations,” both in education and society more generally.98 Often academies educated students of different denominations together, but separated them for spiritual learning and religious services. In Dutchess County, New York, for instance, an academy run by a single minister advertised that there “Are three Clergymen of reputation, of the Dutch,

Episcopalian, and Presbyterian churches” in the surrounding area that could attend to

96 New-York Daily Advertiser, Feb. 28, 1792; Feb. 3, 1792, reel 1, Newark Academy Minutes, N-JHS. 97 Federal Gazette, July 2, 1792. 98 The Mail, July 19, 1792.

213 students’ spiritual needs.99 The Catholic Church ran the George Town Academy and, while claiming to teach all students equally, maintained a separate boarding house for

Protestant students in an effort to limit tensions.100 Other schools instead tried to create ecumenical religious learning. In the early nineteenth century, one Maryland academy, which was run by a clergyman, advertised that they instructed students with prayers “As are approved of by all Christian denominations” in the area.101 Finally, other groups designed school boards that could adapt to the changing religious dynamics of the period.

Though founded mostly by Presbyterians, the Pittsburgh Academy rules stipulated that

“persons of every denomination of christians be capable of being elected trustees.” In theory, this mechanism would make it possible for the local academy board to reflect the changing makeup of Pittsburgh.102 In 1800, local leaders in Hagerstown, Maryland called on citizens from throughout the county “of every denomination, who have their own interest, the honor and advantage of their children and happiness of society at heart,” to support and fund a new academy. This plan explicitly laid out a vision for how interdenominational cooperation through education could serve a broader public good.103

Even the Newark Academy, the bastion of Old Side Presbyterianism in Delaware, adapted to the changing landscape. In 1809, concerned with alienating students and parents, the trustees resolved “not to permit the stage of the academy to be used at any time for any political purpose.” They took the opposite view in regards to religion. The

99 New-York Daily Advertiser, Oct. 24, 1792. 100 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 23, 1798. 101 Republican Star, Feb. 1, 1803. 102 Pennsylvania Evening Herald, March 14, 787. 103 Maryland Herald, Feb. 6, 1800.

214 next year, the trustees declared that “the academy shall at all time except school hours, be open for the purposes of worship to all.”104 By cooperating, denominations ensured that religion remained integral to education even after most academies shed their factional religious purposes.

Creating interdenominational cooperation often proved more difficult than some communities expected. And failures of interdenominational cooperation could sometimes completely paralyze education development. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Baltimore. In 1786, a plan for a new academy appeared in the local newspapers. The piece argued that the “Necessity of such an Institution was so manifest” that support was nearly unanimous. But even in a climate of widespread agreement about the necessity of education, denominational tensions delayed the plan. By 1786, the various religious groups seemed to have come to an understanding. The advertisement very clear specified, nine men, all “Members from the different Christian Denominations of the Town,” would prepare a plan to present at a meeting at a coffee house.105 The academy opened, though it did not have a particularly long tenure. A new Baltimore

Academy opened in February of 1796.106 Later that year, a fire ripped through

Baltimore. According to early reports, the blaze threatened to destroy a “great part” of the city. A calm night with little wind kept the fire from spreading uncontrollably.

Nevertheless, the blaze engulfed a number of private homes, in addition to the Methodist

104 Sept. 21, 1809; April 26, 1810, both in Academy of Newark Board of Trustees Minute Book, UD Archives. 105 Maryland Journal, March 31, 1786. 106 John Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day: Including Biographical Sketches of Their Representative Men (L.H. Everts, 1881), 222–3.

215 meeting house and “that magnificent structure the Baltimore Academy.” All told, the city suffered upwards of £20,000-25,000 in damage.107

A plan to rebuild the academy developed quickly, but it generated debate about the role of denominations in supporting education. The state legislature approved a

£3,000 loan over five years to allow the trustees to build a new building. Academy supporters canvassed the city to raise the £328 that the trustees still owed on the old building.108 Though there was no discussion about it when the school opened, a disproportionate number of the men who bought shares in the Academy, and thus served on the board of trustees, were also members of the local Methodist Church. Only a few days after news of the loan appeared in the papers, an anonymous essayist writing under the pseudonym “Benevolus” questioned whether the money would actually go the academy or would instead end up in the coffers of the “religious society” whose building also burned down. This essayist did not mean to challenge the right of a denomination to build and operate a school “under its own exclusive control.” He only claimed “the public should not be at the expence.” He then went on to argue that Baltimore should use the fire as an opportunity to open a new academy on a “more extensive plan.” A new school would require a new subscription. “Benevolus” hoped a wider swath of

Baltimoreans would buy into the academy and check the Methodists’ disproportionate influence on local education.109

107 Philadelphia Gazette, Dec. 8, 1796. The earliest report of the fire was published Gazette of the United States, Dec. 6, 1797; for another account, see Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, Dec. 7, 1796. 108 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 3, 1797. 109 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 6, 1797.

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The Methodist members of the board argued that “Benevolus” had entirely misread their motives. They did not support the school to secure any “exclusive right or privilege whatsoever, for themselves, or the society of which they are members.” Rather, they intended to benefit the larger community of which they were a part. They explicitly disavowed any designs on creating a denominational academy. Once they raised the requisite money, the board claimed they would call a public meeting to settle on a new plan of incorporation. Baltimoreans should not worry about a sectarian cabal.110 This essay did little to assuage “Benevolus’s” fears. He continued to decry the Methodists’ disproportionate stake in the academy. At least one other writer supported “Benvolus’s” position and encouraged him to try and implement his plan for a new academy. Yet as many people knew, building schools, especially in Baltimore, was no easy task.111

The most compelling defense of continuing the old academy under Methodist leadership was that it had worked. Another anonymous essayist writing under the pseudonym “Beneficus” praised “Benevolus’s” plan for a new academy. Yet he also remembered the “unsuccessful attempts have been made to found a seminary here and carry it on, by means of such a general co-operation as is recommended,” beginning with the original inter-denominational Baltimore Academy in 1786. Since the Methodists’

“last attempt did succeed” with fairly wide popular approval, he argued that favoring the new, “unknown plan” was a “dangerous experiment.” Moreover, he asked, “What can be more liberal” than the Methodists’ offer to relinquish their authority over the school to

110 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 7, 1797. 111 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 10, 1797; and Jan. 11, 1797.

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“the public.” While “Beneficus” might prefer a patently inter-denominational plan, the existing academy had a good track record and the trustees had agreed to conditions that ensured the academy would not function as a sectarian instrument.112 Three months later, another essay appeared arguing essentially the same point. The essayist reminded the public that “the interests of literature have been unaccountably neglected” in Baltimore until the Methodists opened this school “with a zeal and liberality that entitle them to honor and gratitude.” That the Methodist trustees relinquished any special control of the school other than the “trouble necessarily annexed with it,” was “proof of their public spirit.” In light of these facts, the essayist saw no reason not to approve public support for the academy.113 The nature of the debate changed little in the five months after the fire, but the context changed dramatically. Shortly before this second essay appeared, the trustees published a letter to the citizens of Baltimore in which they argued that if they did not receive public support they would have to sell the remaining academy property to pay off debts. In the event that this happened, the city would forfeit the money promised to the academy by the state, “together with the benefits of this seminary ‘till another be opened.” The trustees’ gambit failed.114

Ultimately, denominational tensions proved insurmountable. The Baltimore academy did not reopen. By early in the following month, in light “of the approaching dissolution of that institution,” two teachers from the Baltimore Academy announced

112 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 14, 1797. 113 Baltimore Federal Gazette, April 14, 1797. 114 Baltimore Federal Gazette, April 12, 1797.

218 their plan to open a new private academy.115 A number of other private schools opened in Baltimore during the late 1790s and into the early 1800s, many run by former employees of the Baltimore Academy.116 What precisely happened to the Academy remains somewhat unclear.117 Advertisements for a “Baltimore Academy” continued to appear in the local newspapers, but the institution was clearly not the same and certainly not as large and or as comprehensive.118

The story of the Baltimore Academy throws into high relief the vexed relationship between education and denominations in the early republic. Almost all Americans agreed about the societal importance of education. Yet their faith in the power of education was sometimes counter-productive because it convinced them that whoever controlled education wielded tremendous power. And in many communities, even growing cities like Baltimore, education depended almost entirely on the benevolence of denominational networks. Denominations, though, divided Americans. A denomination that had too much power over local education would also possess too much power over their society. Americans thus constantly had to negotiate and renegotiate the power that religious groups wielded over education amidst the shifting political ground of the early republic.119

115 Baltimore Federal Gazette, May 6, 1797. 116 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Oct. 2, 1797; May 17, 1798; April 8, 1801; March 31, 1801; Jan. 1, 1802; Jan. 27, 1803. 117 Bernard Christian Steiner, History of Education in Maryland (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1894), 244. 118 For examples of these advertisements see, Baltimore Federal Gazette, May 6, 1797; Oct. 19, 1797; Jan. 9, 1798; Dec. 4, 1801; Sep. 2, 1802. 119 As historian Daniel Walker Howe put it, “if religious diversity was a problem for education, religious energy was an asset”; Howe, “Church, State, and Education,” 23.

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Conclusion

In large measure, academy leaders during the early republic formalized the informal academy system of the late-colonial period. From the Great Awakening through the Revolution, denominations provided much of the social and financial capital that sustained academies in the absence of strong state support for education. But students used these schools to achieve a range of ambitions. Like Jacob Green, many members of these denominational networks had played an active role in the Revolution. Throughout the 1780s, these same denominational networks again provided much of the social and financial capital that allowed Americans to rebuild and expand the shattered educational infrastructure of the mid-Atlantic. Through education, then, denominational networks played a significant role in a key component of post-revolutionary state formation. In some ways, this allowed religion to maintain a privileged place in public life.

Nevertheless, Green’s vision of a symbiotic relationship between denominational education and American national development proved elusive. Unlike Green, many of the founders and administrators of post-revolutionary academies valued education for its benefits to society, independent of how it affected their denomination. Responding to political changes, funding shortages, as well as their own inclinations, academy leaders adopted either a longstanding form of loose and non-discriminatory denominational affiliations, or new models of inter-denominational cooperation. Both diluted education’s importance to denominational politics. Though happy to have denominational support, academy leaders’ first goal was, they would argue, ensuring a stable revolutionary settlement. Rooted in the denominational disputes of the Great Awakening and remade

220 in a moment of post-revolutionary nation building, academies provided the model for how Americans would use education to fulfill their political goals for decades.

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Chapter 4: Merit, Ambition, and Elite Formation

In 1779, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill “to conform the estates and interests of the College, Academy, and charitable School of Philadelphia … to the

Revolution and to the Constitution and Government of this Commonwealth.”1

Essentially, Pennsylvania sought to create republican education in order to sustain republican government. The 1779 bill is emblematic of how Americans believed education was central to creating an informed citizenry that would act virtuously in defense of national interests. The early historian of the American Revolution, David

Ramsay, employed similar arguments in urging Americans to build schools. Writing in

1789, Ramsay argued that “Men of liberal minds” propelled colonists into Revolution, bridged regional divisions, and created a sense of unity. So even though schools “were generally shut up during the war,” Ramsay had faith that the Revolution would result in the spread of knowledge and education. Since learning and literature benefitted the

Revolution, Ramsay reasoned, it was only logical that the Revolution would promote education. In the American context, education was an essential ingredient in creating

“Reverence for government, without which” he argued, “society is a rope of sand.” And

1 Act printed in Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 20, 1779.

222 so, among the final conclusions of his History of the American Revolution, Ramsay encouraged Americans to “Diffuse the means of education.”2

Ramsay also recognized that the colonial period provided a usable model for how

Americans might mobilize institutions, and especially education, to secure a stable revolutionary settlement.3 In fact, far from revolutionizing American social order, education became a primary means for reconciling traditional hierarchy with a republican political culture born of revolution. As the last chapter suggests, the institutions that provided education to Americans changed very little in the immediate aftermath of the

American Revolution. Before the Revolution, colonists emulated European education in order to better fit within the wider Atlantic World of European nations. Until the imperial crisis sullied colonists’ relationship with the metropole, this actually worked.

But as resistance slowly turned into Revolution, colonial educational institutions buoyed

American claims to independence. Americans believed that their ability to build these institutions testified to their sovereign statehood. Moreover, it stood to reason that continuity in educational culture might lead Europeans to recognize American

2 David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Trenton, NJ: James J. Wilson, 1811), 403, 404, 408, 452. Scholarship on both republicanism and early American education has tended to reflect this perspective on early nation education: new republican concerns bred republican innovations and a reverence for formal schooling. Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 415–74; Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 103–248; Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 3–29; Gordon S. Wood, ed., The Rising Glory of America: 1760-1820, revised edition. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 7–8; Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990), 110, 179–81; Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 49–118. 3 Peter C. Messer, “From a Revolutionary History to a History of Revolution: David Ramsay and the American Revolution,” Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Summer 2002): 205–33, esp. 211-13.

223 educational institutions as legitimate, which could actually help, not hinder, American efforts at state formation in the perilous early years of the republic.

In deference to these diplomatic and geopolitical considerations, the curriculum and educational culture at academies also changed surprisingly little in the early republic.

Under the guidance of elite networks, American academies remained indebted to a

British Atlantic educational culture that first took hold in North America during the

Awakening. From the mid-Atlantic, down all the way into North Carolina, colonial educational culture provided the roots of early national education. The American

Revolution undermined traditional hereditary hierarchies and seemed to pave the way for a meritocracy.4 While ostensibly serving nationalist ends, academies actually undermined this vision of a fluid social order. Elite networks provided the primary base of support for education, and leveraged that position to wield a profound influence over the construction of social and political hierarchies in hundreds of American communities.

Under the pretense of fostering meritocracy, academies became the primary site for defining and credentialing an American “natural aristocracy.”5

Emulating Europe and the Pursuit of “Civilized Nationhood”

From the outset of the Revolution, staunch adherents to republican ideology argued that education needed to undergo an analogous transformation to government.

Many Americans believed the prevailing academy system was entirely inadequate for a

4 For instance, historian Gordon Wood has argued that “[a]t the heart of the Revolution lay the assumption that people were not born to be what they might become.” Among other changes, a renewed attention to education would make possible this new vision of social order. See Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), quote on 470, see also 471–2. 5 On the need to create fictions that justify the rule of the few, see Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988).

224 republic.6 Thus even as academies became a seemingly ubiquitous institution, they faced strong opposition. Reformers argued that academies stifled educational innovation and reform. The clamor to create uniquely republican education grew louder as Benjamin

Rush and Noah Webster started publishing in the late 1780s. Calls for reform probably reached a climax in 1797, when the American Philosophical Society ran an essay contest asking authors to suggest plans for improving American education.7 And in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, republican criticism of the prevailing educational system provided a justification for more modern, universal forms of public education.8

This current of thought notwithstanding, Americans reconciled academy education to their national ambitions for at least the first three decades following

Independence. The men who revived colonial academies, or created new schools based on those old models, seemed share Ramsay’s sentiments about the importance of education to the nation. Trustees’ involvement in the Revolution and the nationalistic sentiments that pervaded newspaper advertisements for schools suggest that patriotism and the belief that education was essential to the strength of state and national governance motivated them. Yet given all the conflict surrounding denominationally-affiliated academies, trustees had to actively convince “the people” of the authenticity of their

6 Wood, Rising Glory of America, 7–8. From a macro-sociological perspective, Margaret Archer has argued that “Once a given form of education exists it exerts an influence on future educational change. Alternative educational plans are, to some extent, reactions to it”; see Social Origins of Educational Systems (London: Sage, 1979), 3. 7 Nancy Beadie, “‘Encouraging Useful Knowledge’ in the Early Republic: The Roles of State Governments and Voluntary Associations,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 85–102. For another perspective on the revolutionary transformation in educational ideology, see Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993). 8 Green, Education and State Formation, 35–6, 178–80.

225 nationalism. Yet this begs the question of how they accomplished that task. How did

Americans come to view academies, many of which were merely revamped colonial institutions, as important to post-revolutionary nation building?

During the early republic, the historic roots of academies could actually legitimize

American education in a way that newfangled forms of schooling might not. Many boards of trustees and teachers actively touted their ability to emulate European schooling. In 1782, for instance, a group of German Lutherans led an effort to open an academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Following the usual pattern, they advertised that the school would offer a range of subjects, from bookkeeping and other math, to writing, to the classical languages. The trustees went on to boast that “the Regulations are similar to those of the principal Academies in Europe,” and would “exercise the vital Springs of

Action, and animate the Students, with an inviolable Love and Attachment to the

Services of Almighty God, their native Country, and Fellow-men.” The trustees did not apologize for the degree to which they emulated Europe. In fact, they argued that lessons learned from Europeans would help the school to produce students who would best serve the United States.9

Many ads for academies suggest that Americans thought European approval bolstered the credibility of their schools. Trustees of the Episcopal Academy in York,

Pennsylvania bragged that the head teacher “presided with great Reputation and success over an Academy in Europe, for several Years.”10 Similarly, the trustees of the

9 Independent Gazetteer, June 29, 1782. 10 Maryland Journal, Sep. 20, 1785.

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Allentown, New Jersey Academy took pride in the fact that their teacher “was a gentleman whose character is well attested both from Europe and America, and whose ability and fidelity, as a teacher, are known and approved.”11 The trustees of the

Flatbush Academy in New York claimed that the man they enlisted as head teacher “is highly esteemed among the learned in different parts of Europe,” which “will ensure success, and give a reputation to this seminary.”12 If these men could succeed in Europe, it stood to reason they would do fine in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or New York.13

When teachers lacked experience working in European schools, advertisements touted their European education. When Patrick Murdock took over the Hackensack

Academy in New Jersey, after stints in Elizabeth Town and in Wilmington, Delaware, the trustees highlighted his degree from Edinburgh.14 In 1795, a man named Samuel Lilly advertised that, “having received a liberal and classical education in one of the most celebrated Academies in England,” he planned to open up a private school where he would teach an academy-level curriculum.15 This tendency persisted. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Teachers advertised that they received their education at the

“University of Paris,” and another at the “University of Dublin.”16

European developments even offered American educators ideas for educational innovations. One advertisement celebrated that the “English gentry” took a renewed

11 New-Jersey Gazette, Nov. 8, 1784 12 New-York Daily Advertiser, April 9, 1787. 13 Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 17. 14 New-York Packet, May 5, 1789. 15 New-York Packet, Jan. 2, 1795. 16 New York Mercantile Advertiser, May 25, 1801; Philadelphia Gazette, Dec. 28, 1802.

227 interest in agriculture, which according to the author benefited all of English society. A similar “spirit of improvement,” noted the unnamed essayist, also “animates the nobility and gentry of France.” In both countries, people started to form agricultural societies. In

Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, universities offered courses in agriculture. In Italy, there was a dedicated agricultural academy. “Where,” this writer wondered, “is there a spirit of agricultural improvement in AMERICA?—What publick—what legislative power in AMERICA, spends a penny—a thought on it?”17 This call to arms may not have resulted in a wholesale change in American priorities. But during the 1790s,

Philadelphia had at least one agricultural society, which often met at the local academy run by the Episcopal Church.18 Throughout the north, agricultural societies became important institutions for improving agricultural practices through scientific inquiry, which theoretically bolstered the republican project. At the same time, agricultural knowledge became a source of social status within the republic.19

While Americans admired European education, they balked at sending their children to Europe for that education. First of all it was expensive. They also distrusted the deeply-rooted monarchical culture of the Continent. Even before the Revolution, as colonists desperately sought to build stronger ties with London, they still worried about the negative impacts that could result from spending too much time in Europe. When traveling abroad, colonists and Americans often socialized with each other as they tried to

17 New-Jersey Gazette, March 7, 1785. 18 Federal Gazette, Jan. 14, 1791. 19 For the changing role of these societies over a long stretch of time, see Tamara Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

228 make sense of what they confronted. But the specter that the political culture, moral depravity, economic hardship, and a range of other ills might follow travelers back to the

United States, shaped American perceptions of studying abroad.20 Far from their parents at an impressionable age, there was no telling what habits young Americans might learn.21 Aspirations to create schools that met European standards grew out of these anxieties. Americans perceived a big difference between receiving a European-style education, and going to Europe for their education.

American writers identified substantive problems in seemingly logistical concerns about study abroad. It cost a substantial amount of money to send children to school in

Europe.22 Beyond that, some commentators argued that this was especially problematic because it drained capital from the United States to Europe at a time when the economy was already struggling. In a wide-ranging 1787 essay, written under the pseudonym “A

Foreign Spectator,” Nicholas Collin, a Swedish Lutheran minister and long-time

20 Adam R. Nelson, “The Perceived Dangers of Study Abroad, 1780-1800: Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Origins of the American University,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 175–97; see also Brown, Strength of a People, 72–3. On colonists in Europe, see Daniel Kilbride, Being American in Europe, 1750–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 15– 37. On colonial identity, see Jack P. Greene, “The Search For Identity: An Interpretation of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth Century America,” Journal of Social History 3 (1970): 189–220. Much of this anxiety about traveling to Europe stemmed from the fear of how the colonial environment changed and differentiated colonists from the English, a process we might call creolization. See T. H. Breen, “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” in Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, ed. Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 195–232; John Smolenski, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). On education and “creolean degeneracy,” see especially Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 78–81. 21 Maryland Journal, March 7, 1786. These fears of Europe echoed many rural colonists’ fears of sending their children to urban schools, which helped to explain, in part, why the expansion of colonial education occurred outside of cities. See above, chapter 1. 22 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 19, 1784.

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Philadelphian, made an analogous point about spending money on European fashion. He estimated that Americans spent nearly £900,000 a year on imported goods. This money left the borders of the United States likely never to return. The “Spectator” claimed that

“I am not an enemy to elegancies.” In fact, he never attacked European fashion or sartorial displays of class distinctions. Yet he still opposed Americans’ predilection during the 1780s for buying these goods. As he put it, “I would sometimes rather live on potatoes, than owe money for meat.” It was more than the drain of specie or the creation of simple fiscal indebtedness to Europe that frustrated him. Rather, this tendency to send money to Europe for fashion “mark[ed] a want of an independent spirit, which is the characteristic of a free people,” especially in a republic. Later in the essay Collin forcefully advocated developing strong, domestic educational institutions, based largely on European educational culture.23 For decades, similar fears on the local level actually drove people to build academies near their homes instead of relying on schools in neighboring counties or states. One advocate for building an academy in Hagerstown,

Maryland calculated that, beyond offering a cheap source of education for local children, the school “would be the mean of putting into circulation 10,000 dollars annually in this county” instead of wherever the closest academy was.24 Emulation could strengthen the

United States, but dependence could cripple it.

A similar calculus prevailed among leaders of American colleges. Early in a 1784 fundraising trip to Europe, a number of people explained the necessity of American

23 Pennsylvania Packet, Aug. 28, 1787. See also Kate Haulman, Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), esp. 205–9. For more on Collin, see below, chapter 5. 24 Maryland Herald, Feb. 6, 1800.

230 educational independence to John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New

Jersey. John Erskine, Witherspoon’s Scottish correspondent, counseled that it was “a great abusement of the Majesty of the United States to send a late member of Congress a begging in England for any purpose whatever.” Doing so might even be “contrary to law.”25 American diplomats wrote forceful letters to Witherspoon that echoed Erskine’s sentiments. Benjamin Franklin began his letter softly, telling Witherspoon what he told trustees of other schools: that the prospects for raising money were bleak all across

Europe. More importantly, Franklin conferred with other influential men and concluded that “the very Request would be disgraceful to us, and hurt the Credit of Responsability

[sic] we wish to maintain in Europe.” No matter how much money anyone raised, asking would inevitably signal that the United States was “too poor to provide for the Education of their own Children.” Even worse, according to Franklin, the opposite was true. He argued that if they wanted, Americans could easily support “every Means of public

Instruction.” Franklin only wondered why “our Legislatures have generally paid so little

Attention to a Business of so great Importance.” Asking for help from Europe would effectively absolve the state legislatures of their responsibility for funding education and would make the United States look impotent in the process.26

25 Erskine to Witherspoon, Feb. 5, 1784, London , folder 3, John Witherspoon Papers, N-JHS. On Witherspoon as both an evangelical leader and a political leader, see especially John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 229–33; and also Jeffry H. Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). 26 Franklin to Witherspoon, April 5, 1784, Passy, Benjamin Franklin Papers, Yale University, online at http://franklinpapers.org/franklin.

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The day after Franklin penned his letter, John Jay wrote to Witherspoon with an even sterner warning. When “our country remained part of the British Empire” Jay began, “It was natural that the younger branches of the political family should request and expect the assistance of the elder.” After the Peace of Paris, though, the “United

States neither have, nor can have, such relations with any nations in the world,” least of all Great Britain. In claiming the status of a sovereign nation, the United States implied it had the “ability to provide for all the ordinary objects of their government,” of which education was among the most important outside of fiscal-military powers. Serving abroad, Jay was acutely aware of the importance of appearances to diplomatic legitimacy.

He thus concluded that it was not “consistent with the Dignity of a free and independent

People to solicit Donation for that or any other purpose, from the Subjects of any Prince or State whatever.”27 Asking for help from Europe amounted to an admission that the

United States could not provide these “ordinary objects” to their citizens, and would undermine attempts to achieve diplomatic recognition.

Jay’s letter reflected how he and other diplomats understood the geopolitical context of the 1780s. They believed that the United States needed to aspire to, what they called, “civilized nationhood” or alternatively “civilized statehood.” According to

European customs, “civilized nations”—those that followed the law of nations and were recognized members of a global political and diplomatic community—instilled morality, taste, and manners in their subjects and citizens. Any nation-state needed to demonstrate their ability to do this, but none more so than the United States. Europeans assumed the

27 Jay to Witherspoon, April 6, 1784, Chaillot, folder 21c, John Witherspoon Collection, PUL.

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United States did not, perhaps even could not, possess the requisite civility because it was a republic. Education was a visible means by which Americans might learn the manners and conventions of both polite sociability and European diplomacy. If the United States could not provide a Europeanized education for its citizens, then other nations could reasonably conclude that the United States lacked the requisite morality to follow the law of nations. If Europe believed this was the case, then the United States would lose all claims to diplomatic legitimacy. From a geopolitical perspective, and from a certain nationalist viewpoint, it made a great deal of sense to emulate European forms of education rather than to devise entirely new pedagogical and curricular practices.28

As a longtime member of the Continental Congress, Witherspoon certainly understood the stakes of what Jay and Franklin argued. Especially in his defense of teaching Latin, Witherspoon seemed to share Jay and Franklin’s belief in the importance of education to the cultural foundations of a nation. Witherspoon railed against the

“Prejudices of the Times,” which attacked the classical languages as unimportant. He believed that the languages “are plainly the fountains both of Science & History.”

Learning classical languages would “furnish us with the Standard of Taste” that prevailed

28 On Jay and the connections between morality, cultural institutions, and the law of nations and diplomatic legitimacy, see David M. Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation: The Early American Constitution, the Law of Nations, and the Pursuit of International Recognition,” New York University Law Review 85 (2010): 958–9, 971–5. See also Leonard J. Sadosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); as well as Gould’s “The Laws of War and Peace: Legitimating Slavery in the Age of the American Revolution,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 52–76; and Tom Cutterham, “The International Dimension of the Federal Constitution,” Journal of American Studies 48 (May 2014): 501–15. Chapter 5, below, deals with this problem in greater detail.

233 in Europe.29 Witherspoon’s successor, Samuel Stanhope Smith, took a similar position.

In a letter to Benjamin Rush, Stanhope Smith bemoaned Americans’ inattention to “polite letters & science.” These deficiencies confirmed “the reproaches of foreigners … that we are a nation … without any dignity, without any enlargement of idea, without taste, without a sense of national honor.” Especially in parts of the country where they “have in a great measure banished the learned languages,” American students “come forward the most unmatriculated creatures in nature, without any habits of study.”30 A few years later, just before he took over the presidency of the College, Stanhope Smith reaffirmed his support for teaching classical languages because “The most accomplished European scholars are the greatest adepts in them.” If the United States wanted to reach that same level of national respectability, its schools needed to transcend the American propensity for “hasty & superficial” study.31

Ultimately, Witherspoon blamed his trip to Europe on the College’s trustees who had heard through some sources “that this would not be an improper Time to solicit

Benefactors for the College.” In fact, Franklin and Jay penned their letters in response to a letter Witherspoon wrote in which he anticipated their objections and arguments.

Witherspoon seemed to hold out some hope that he might be able to raise money for the school, which he added was “seated in the Center of the Theatre of the late War.” He

29 Witherspoon to St. George Tucker, May 1, 1787, Princeton, folder 16A, Witherspoon Collection, PUL. 30 Stanhope Smith to Benjamin Rush, Feb. 25, 1790, Princeton, box 1, folder 36, Samuel Stanhope Smith Collection, PUL. Similarly, Tim Cassedy has shown how opponents to Noah Webster’s lexicography argued that his plans would make America look backwards and provincial; see “‘A Dictionary Which We Do Not Want’: Defining America against Noah Webster, 1783–1810,” William and Mary Quarterly 71 (April 2014): 229–254 esp. 236-41. Political and linguistic independence, these critics maintained, did not necessarily go together. Webster also questioned the utility of Latin. 31 Stanhope Smith to Rush, Nov. 10, 1794, Princeton, box 1, folder 36, Stanhope Smith Collection, PUL.

234 assured Franklin that “I will be governed in this Matter by your Opinion and Mr. Jays and either not go to Paris at all or when there be entirely silent as to this Business.”32 When pressed, Witherspoon ultimately agreed to sacrifice the College’s immediate interests— which he still believed were intimately connected to the vitality of evangelicalism and the

Presbyterian Church—for the long-term good of the new nation.

At the same time, leaders of Queen’s College began to embrace their role in the new nation-building project. Like his counterpart John Witherspoon, Jacob Hardenbergh, the president of Queen’s College, played an active role in the Revolution. He served in the final session of the New Jersey provincial legislature and helped to draft the state’s constitution in 1776, before sitting in the new state assembly for a number of terms.33

Hardenbergh committed himself to helping the United States finish the Revolution, by which he meant creating a stable political settlement. In his 1787 commencement address, for instance, Hardenbergh argued that institutions like Queen’s College were important to “the publick weal of Society.” Constitutions required the support of “men of

Integrity” who would guard and secure “the welfare of the whole.” Here Hardenbergh singled out lawyers as an important class of educated professionals who, by systematizing and regulating legal practice, ensured societal stability and legitimacy.

Lawyers enforced contracts and gave people confidence that business dealings would happen fairly. Hardenbergh’s veneration of lawyers flew in the face of widespread popular misapprehensions about lawyers. He also made a similar case for the importance

32 Witherspoon to Franklin, March 27, 1784, London, Benjamin Franklin Papers. 33 David W. Robson, “Hardenbergh, Jacob Rutsen,” ANB.

235 of an educated clergy. Though many argued that both professions were prone to corruption, in the main, Hardenbergh believed they strengthened the bonds of the body politic. This all suggested that citizens and governments should “liberally endow” colleges.34

By the 1790s, Americans could conclude that by emulating European education they had made substantial progress in building the strength of the republic. The trustees of a female academy in Philadelphia claimed that “Ambitious to profit from all European patterns, America still is rising to an elevation above them.” In particular, the “very rapid improvement” of students was “synonimous[sic] with equal advances which our country is experiencing in her public prospects.” The trustees believed this was true not just in the abstract, but also in very tangible ways. The “synonimous” relationship between education and national advancement helped explain why “our roads improved, our communications, inland opened, our code of laws softened and ameliorated, our charitable and useful establishments augmented, and the general welfare of America promoted.”35 Independence did not sever the United States’ connection to the Old

World. Rather, Americans continued to emulate and measure themselves against

34 Jacob Hardenbergh, “The Advantages of Education,” 1787, typescript, box 2, folder 17, Elizabeth R. Boyd Historical Collection on Rutgers, RUL. On popular critiques of the legal profession, see Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 111–16; Maxwell H Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 32–58; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 281–91; and Laura F. Edwards, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 35 Philadelphia Gazette, May 17, 1794. On the connection between women’s education and national progress, see Lucia McMahon, “‘Of the Utmost Importance to Our Country’: Women, Education, and Society, 1780–1820,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Fall 2009): 475–506.

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Europe.36 The challenge of nation-building lay in directing that emulation to the benefit of the national project.

Merit, Ambition, and American Conceptions of Aristocracy

At its most radical, the American Revolution threatened the longstanding assumption that social and political power were of a piece. Most notably, every state that had allowed entail during the colonial period abolished it after the Revolution. Especially in Virginia, where entail was most entrenched, this legal change subverted the social power of the aristocratic planter elite, and in the process threatened its political hegemony, even if it did not entirely subvert it.37 Americans would no longer allow wealth or inherited distinctions, and the social power they commanded, to determine one’s political fortunes.38 Even still, many Americans continued to believe that social power and political power should remain intertwined. The problem lay in defining a way to uphold this link without appearing to reintroduce aristocratic privilege. Elites created an archetype, the natural aristocrat, whose claim to political power rested on both his innate and practiced social virtues.39 Americans invented the idea of natural aristocracy in order to justify the persistence of social and political inequality in meritocratic terms.

Academies played a major part in this process. They defined natural aristocracy,

36 Well into the nineteenth century, American colleges continued to foster “pretensions to Englishness.” See Elisa Tamarkin, Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 247–324, quote on 253. 37 Holly Brewer, “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: ‘Ancient Feudal Restraints’ and Revolutionary Reform,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (April 1997): 307–46. 38 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992), 287–305. 39 Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 471–518, 553–62; Holly Brewer, By Birth Or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo- American Revolution in Authority (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA., by the University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 126–7.

237 identified individuals as natural aristocrats, and offered them the cultural and social capital to realize that status.40 Ironically, then, European educational culture and curriculum would play a key role in creating American social and political order.

In particular, academies dictated how Americans understood two essential cultural attributes of natural aristocrats: merit and emulation/ambition. While at academies young men demonstrated their superior merit and ability to channel their ambitions for the public good. Academies thus credentialed would-be political leaders—natural aristocrats, though they did not always use this contested language. In theory, structuring a social order around natural aristocracy, and identifying natural aristocrats in large part through education, allowed the meritorious and benevolently ambitious to rise. But this created little more than a fiction of upward mobility. In practice, social standing, class, and family connections conditioned who could demonstrate their emulation and merit at academies, and thus who would be among the natural aristocrats to lead the new nation.

Rhetorically, the fixation on merit affirmed the egalitarian impulses of the Revolution while simultaneously justifying the need for an elite that was socially distinct from the rest of the people. Academies, then, defined the nature of what historian Michal Jan

Rozbicki calls “an aristocracy of merit.”41

40 On how cultural capital provides access to social capital and, in turn, real social and political power, see Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241–258; and for how this worked in early America in particular, see Mark Boonshoft, “The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Winter 2014): 561–95, esp. 564. 41 Michal Jan Rozbicki, Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 214–22. On merit and academies, see also J. M. Opal, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s-1820s,” Journal of American History 91 (Sep. 2004): 460–1.

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Conceptions of merit have changed dramatically over time. Academies rewarded

“essential merit.” Unlike more modern “institutional merit”—based on learning specialized knowledge, aptitude, and evidence of potential—“essential merit” was more or less innate. Related to honor, essential merit was an internal characteristic that explained one’s achievements; one’s achievements did not make them meritorious.

Though contrasted with institutional merit, the legitimacy of essential merit in the early republic depended on institutional connections. Among the revolutionary generation, military officers were obsessed about merit and the rank it bestowed. The Society of the

Cincinnati, made up of course of Continental Army officers, institutionalized, as clearly as anything, the connection between conceptions of essential merit, natural aristocracy, and the persistence of hierarchy. As we will see, the Cincinnati also played a prominent role in establishing elite education, which not coincidentally bolstered the credibility of essential merit.42 For instance, at a July Fourth celebration at the Wilmington Academy, presided over by the Society of the Cincinnati, that Delawareans toasted that “virtue and merit ever be the best claims to distinction and regard.”43

Even those men who most fervently believed in the widespread importance of education, also recognized that academies would not so much make merit, as reveal it.

For instance, David Ramsay wrote to Benjamin Rush—one educational reformer to

42 On ideas about merit, see Joseph F. Kett, Merit: The History of a Founding Ideal from the American Revolution to the Twenty-First Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 3–7, 27–38, 68–80. Like “natural aristocracy,” Kett argues, “Essential merit demanded rank as its reward,” 6. See also, Rodney Hessinger, “‘The Most Powerful Instrument of College Discipline’: Student Disorder and the Growth of Meritocracy in the Colleges of the Early Republic,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Oct. 1999): 237– 262. For an alternative take on the meaning of merit in early national education, see Pangle and Pangle, The Learning of Liberty, 94. 43 Federal Gazette, July 14, 1790.

239 another—to introduce a young man with whom “I have no personal acquaintance.”

Ramsay nevertheless told Rush that “I have reason to believe he is a young gentleman of merit,” largely because of “his own appearance” and the “character of the gentleman who introduced him to me.” He asked Rush to give this “Mr. Wright” advice on medical education. Merit, as Ramsay deployed the term, signified nothing that would not also correspond to birth, wealth, or social standing. Nevertheless, education offered something to Mr. Wright, who, according to Ramsay, “proposes to elevate himself.”44

Outward refinement, though, could no longer signify internal merit on its own, as had long been the case. As Nicholas Collin argued in his “A Foreign Spectator” essay,

“The inequality of civilization in America proceeds then from this: that the improvement of the human mind has not kept pace with the progress of wealth.” By this, Collin meant that “we often behold an amazing disparity of merit in persons of the same fortune and occupation; and very different civilization in the same townships.”45 English writers made strikingly similar arguments. Vicesimus Knox, an English education reformer, wrote that “Internal dignity, corresponding with external, cannot but carry with it great influence.” In England, titles and rank were clearly important. Knox argued however, that only “when it is found that they are justly due to the merit of him who is invested with them, [do] they command a degree of veneration.”46 Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to his Son, which Americans read widely, contained similar sentiments. Chesterfield wrote that young men should mingle in “Good company,” which consists chiefly (though not

44 Ramsay to Rush, Charleston, May 17, 1787, vol. 45, Rush Family Papers, LCP. 45 Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 15, 1787. 46 Vicesimus Knox, Liberal Education: Or, a Practical Treatise on the Methods of Acquiring Useful and Polite Learning, 11th ed. (London: Printed for Charles Dilly, 1795), 227.

240 wholly) of people of considerable birth, rank, and character.” That said, the social setting that “good company” connoted was important, because people of rank would not be

“very justly admitted into it, if not distinguished by any peculiar merit.” Chesterfield thus encouraged his son “to keep company with people above you,” though not “with regard to their birth; but with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.”47 According to the prevailing literature, then, merit almost always had some relationship to preexisting standing, birth, or rank, but none of those attributes necessarily guaranteed that a person possessed merit. This, as Collin and other

Americans realized, is why the concept of natural aristocracy was so important. In the final paragraphs of Collin’s lengthy, multi-part essay, he asked Americans to “exalt in a constitution by which superior merit alone will procure the sublime glory and happiness” for their young nation.48 Building a leadership class of meritorious natural aristocrats would foster the stability of elite rule but stave off the tyranny of an arbitrary, traditional aristocracy.

Considering the nature and purpose of a natural aristocracy of merit, it made sense that academies played a prominent role in defining the concept. Public education—in the eighteenth-century sense, meaning education with a group, not private tutoring—created a context in which society could measure elite young men against each other. It allowed

47 Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to His Son, on Men and Manners: Or, A New System of Education; in Which the Principles of Politeness, and the Art of Acquiring a Knowledge of the World, Are Laid Down in a Plain, Easy, and Familiar Manner. To Which Are Annexed, The Polite Philosopher: Or, An Essay on the Art Which Makes a Man Happy in Himself, and Agreeable to Others. Also, Lord Burghley’s Ten Precepts to His Second Son, Robert Cecil, Afterwards the Earl of Salisbury. (Philadelphia: Printed for T. Dobson, 1789), 22, 24. 48 Independent Gazetteer, Oct. 2, 1787.

241 citizens a chance to discern the difference between a merely cultivated elite, and a meritorious leader. While touring through Europe, “R. Sullivan” wrote and published in a Philadelphia newspaper an essay called “The Advantages and Disadvantages of a

Public and of a Private Education.” In it, Sullivan argued that education brought passions that “will have hitherto been silent, because they will not have had sufficient objects to stimulate them to action.” Individual education, tutoring, could draw out students’ “active passions.” But to focus students’ energies most productively by harnessing their passions, Sullivan argued that “something more central is required.” In a proper school setting, the student “enters into a world in miniature … The whole circle of the passions is there to combat and be combated with.” Through interactions with their peers, students come to see “the delights of goodness as well as the turpitude of baseness.” Within this regulated setting, students realized the key passion for their development. As Sullivan put it: “Pride makes him emulate his superiors. He feels an exultation in rising to be foremost of his class. His incitements to morality become equally strong. Applause attends him in every step of his career … he rises to be a man with a knowledge of books, and what is of much more consequence, with a knowledge of his species.”49 This conception of public education was not unique to the United States.

British writers grappled with similar issues. Vicesimus Knox argued that “Emulation cannot be excited without rivals.” He valued a pedagogy based on emulation because it

“counterbalances the weight of temptations to vice and idleness.”50 This was important

49 Pennsylvania Mercury, Oct. 13, 1786. 50 Knox, Liberal Education, 28.

242 for would-be elites. William Barrow, an English academy-master and writer, argued that

“If the youth be designed for any active station in publick life … I have no hesitation in giving it as my opinion that he ought to have a public education.” The “sort of publick opinion” that controls student conduct at schools could teach valuable lessons to future political leaders.51 In an academy, young men learned to harness emulation and follow their ambition in a way they could not if left on their own in the wider world.

Educational thinkers believed this was especially important in regards to training elites and measuring merit.

A similar view of the power of passions had propelled colonial academy students into the Revolutionary fold. Pride, emulation, and the urge for distinction among a group were all potentially problematic traits that could prove corrosive or even destructive to free society ran the republican argument.52 But passion also bred action. As Sullivan noted, actions made the world progress. School ideally taught people to use those passions for socially beneficial purposes. Americans tend to see education this way, as beneficial both for individuals and society. But there is still an inherent tension. The individual student pursued an academy education that credentialed them as capable servants of the public good in order to distinguish themselves as somehow different from that public, and to serve their own individual ambitions and aspirations. This sounds similar to the tenets of modern, liberal, capitalist democracies, which cast the pursuit of individual gain as the source of the common good. Historians have thus tended to see

51 William Barrow, An Essay on Education; In Which Are Particularly Considered the Merits and the Defects of the Discipline and Instruction in Our Academies (London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1802), vol. I: 90, 97. 52 Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 95–6.

243 this sort of pedagogy and the intellectual issues it brought to the fore as a nineteenth- century phenomenon, or at least something that developed after the ratification of the

Constitution. In reality, Americans have grappled with this contradiction since at least the Great Awakening.53

The religious men who ran schools continued to betray their anxieties about emulation and ambition. But some Americans thought that simply by choosing their profession, clergy “renounce[d] those prospects of emolument and worldly honor, which young men of respectable abilities might entertain from other liberal pursuits.”54 In essence, ordination exorcised all ambition. This lent credence to the idea that academies, often run by clergy, could teach students how to responsibly harness a volatile passion.

But as was the case in the colonial period, clergy attempted to justify certain types of emulation and ambition as good, in part, because those passions motivated them.

Nowhere was this conflict more apparent than among presidents of the College of New

Jersey. Samuel Stanhope Smith bemoaned how many Americans, many of his students

53 Hessinger, “Most Powerful Instrument,” 250–2; Opal, “Exciting Emulation”; Jane Fiegen Green, “‘An Opinion of Our Own’: Education, Politics, and the Struggle for Adulthood at Dartmouth College, 1814- 1819,” History of Education Quarterly 52 (May 2012): 194; Rita Koganzon, “‘Producing a Reconciliation of Disinterestedness and Commerce’: The Political Rhetoric of Education in the Early Republic,” History of Education Quarterly 52 (Aug. 2012): 403–429; Gordon S. Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness and the Ratification of the Federal Constitution,” in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Richard R. Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward Carlos Carter (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 69–112. John Fea explored these issues in the colonial mid- Atlantic, revealing how one individual, Philip Vickers Fithian, came to a very limited embrace of his passions and ambition; see The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 58–82. Richard Bushman found that the Great Awakening generally unleashed ambition and competition in Connecticut; see From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). 54 Joseph Bloomfield, “Address of the Trustees of the College of New-Jersey, to the Friends of Religion and Learning,” 1808, folder 10, Joseph Bloomfield Papers, PUL.

244 included, waste “away in the anxious pursuit of their secular business, in the turbulence of ambition, in the tumults of the passions, but equally forgetful of god.”55 Even as they reached the highest heights in their chosen careers, ministers tried to claim ambition did not motivate them. Smith’s successor, Ashbel Green contended that had never “sought nor much expected the office” of congressional chaplain, which went to another

Presbyterian minister.56

Yet at other times these men, criticized students for want “of ambition to improve.”57 Stanhope Smith praised men for “that industry & commendable ambition that promise him increasing respectability.”58 Smith tried to argue that in certain contexts ambition could actually teach virtue and disinterestedness, the very characteristics it supposedly threatened. In a funeral sermon for George Washington, he tried to draw larger lessons from the first president, who “loved glory,” but for whom “the interests of

America were dearer to him than his own fame.” “Ah! if the ambitious knew, or were willing to estimate its influence on reputation and its powerful command over the minds of men,” he argued “they would study to be virtuous from self-interest.”59 Religious educators had the power to direct ambition this way. During Smith’s tenure as president, one of Green’s friends opined to him that “I know of no more important office in this country” than the presidency of the College of New Jersey because it was the source of

55 Smith, “On the Improvement of Time for the attainment of our Salvation,” Jan. 17, 1802, box, folder 3, Samuel Stanhope Smith Collection, PUL. 56 Dec. 10, 1790, typescript transcript of Diaries, box 4, folder 1, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL, 41. 57 Smith to Benjamin Rush, Princeton, Feb. 25, 1790, box 1, folder 36, Stanhope Smith Collection, PUL. 58 Smith to Ashbel Green, Princeton, March 17, 1794, box 1, folder 20, Stanhope Smith Collection, PUL. 59 Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Oration upon the Death of General George Washington, Delivered at the State-House at Trenton (Trenton: Published by G. Craft, 1800).

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“our statesmen, Physicians, Divines.”60 Despite how ambition offended some of his religious sensibilities, as president, Ashbel Green exhorted students at the College of

New Jersey to develop benevolent ambitions, which would aid discipline at the school.

“How much more noble will be the ambition, and how much more useful to yourselves,” he asked, “to endeavor to aid and give pleasure to your teachers, and to contribute to the reputation of the place of your education”?61 Green believed, “after all, that there is a sanctified emulation which is not pride.” Rather, emulation pushed people “to strive and aim to excel in what is commendable, is a noble & praise worthy endeavour.”62 Fearful though they were of its corrosive effects, even the most religious educators found uses for emulation and ambition. Emulation allowed certain people to act in their own self- interest and pursue their political and social ambitions under the cover of the public good because they had shown an elevated ability to channel and control those passions.

Academies, Public Rituals, and Elite Formation

As they reopened academies, school trustees trumpeted the significance of their work to the broader nation-building project. Yet as the 1780s wore on and turned into the

1790s they sought to do more than just claim this. School leaders tried to publicly illustrate the connection between academies and the nation, when many of the schools channeled an educational culture rooted firmly in the colonial period and the British

Empire. During the early republic, American political leaders used parades and public ceremonies to construct a national identity. These events gave regular people the chance

60 William Hill to Green, Winchester, Jan. 20, 1804, box 10, folder 6, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL. 61 Ashbel Green, An Address to the Students and Faculty of the College of New Jersey, May 6, 1802 (Trenton: Published by Sherman & Mershon, 1802). 62 Green to Eliza Darling, Philadelphia, March 21, 1809, box 9, folder 28, Ashbel Green Papers, PUL.

246 to participate in the public performance of nationalism and to leave their mark on the cultural foundations of the nation. Always embedded in larger political conflicts, parades and ceremonies embraced political division while striving to foster a sense of belonging in a single nation. Trustees seized on these events to demonstrate the nationalistic goals of academies. Relatively effectively, trustees manufactured popular approval of their academies, even as they defied a widespread desire for more explicitly republican forms of schooling.63 Academies’ work in reshaping education and civil society at the local level would do as much or more to shape nationalism within communities than any governmental institution.64

Trustees across the region used parades and celebrations of major political milestones to demonstrate the connection between academies and the future of the new

63 David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997), esp. 8–9, 51–2. See also, Albrecht Koschnik, “Political Conflict and Public Contest: Rituals of National Celebration in Philadelphia, 1788-1815,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 118 (July 1994): 209–48; Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Benjamin H. Irvin, “The Streets of Philadelphia: Crowds, Congress, and the Political Culture of Revolution, 1774-1783,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 129 (Jan. 2005): 7–44; as well as Irvin’s Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (New: Oxford University Press, 2011). 64 Johann Neem makes a similar point about civil society more generally in “Civil Society and American Nationalism, 1776-1865,” in Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present, ed. Elisabeth S. Clemens and Doug Guthrie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 29–53. Michael Braddick’s work on seventeenth-century England is foundational for understanding how state formation and nation building depended on local-level actors; see Michael Braddick, “State Formation and Social Change in Early Modern England: A Problem Stated and Approaches Suggested,” Social History 16 (Jan. 1991): 1–17. While acknowledging that nationalism probably “motivated some early small town leaders – for example, those who had revolutionary military experience or belonged to a Masonic lodge,” Nancy Beadie argues “that the vast majority of ordinary rural households” who paid tuition and supported schools probably did so for much more personal reasons; see “Education, Social Capital, and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspective: Preliminary Investigations,” Paedagogica Historica 46 (2010): 15–32, quote on 30.

247 nation.65 When Trentonians decided to “celebrate the glorious peace lately concluded” in

1783, they planned a procession. Though it would not officially become the capital until

1790, Trenton effectively acted as New Jersey’s capital city for much of the 1780s. The

Treaty of Paris was one of the first major occasions that Americans celebrated as

Americans, and certainly the first as a recognized independent nation. The governor, lieutenant governor, justices of the state supreme court, members of the legislature, and other “magistrates” attended the celebration in Trenton. These political luminaries,

“along with the trustees, director and students of the Academy, went in procession to the courthouse” where the governor gave an oration on the treaty.66 Academy students played a similar role in a July 4th parade in 1787, while the Constitutional Convention met in nearby Philadelphia. That year, the procession began at the Trenton Presbyterian

Church and involved Free Masons, the Society of the Cincinnati, and the local militia, in addition to members of the Academy.67 In 1790, the Fourth of July celebration cast even more of a spotlight on the Academy. The procession, which began at the Society of the

Cincinnati’s meeting and again went to the Presbyterian Church, ended at dinner with a series of toasts. The organizers recognized President Washington, Congress, the

Cincinnati, and men who died fighting in the Revolution. They expressed thanks for

65 The extent to which elites controlled the nature of these public events and of “regular” people’s participation in them is a matter of debate. Among a large literature on festive culture, see Paul A. Gilje, “The Common People and the Constitution: Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century New York City,” in New York in the Age of the Constitution, 1775-1800, ed. Paul A. Gilje and William Pencak (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992), 48–73; and Newman, Parades and the Politics. On the presence of students and educators at patriotic events, see also Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 34–7. 66 New-Jersey Gazette, April 16, 1783. 67 Independent Gazetteer, April 14, 1787.

248 rising commerce and agriculture. And they also toasted “The universal dominion of reason, conscience and virtue,” which of course the Trenton Academy would foster.68

In nearby Philadelphia, students also played a conspicuous role in patriotic celebrations. During the 1780s, the University of the State of Pennsylvania scheduled five of their annual commencement exercises on the Fourth of July. Holding the events in conjunction with each other underscored both the didactic purposes of the Fourth of

July and the importance of schooling to the nation.69 Perhaps most famously, at the

Grand Federal Procession in 1788 that celebrated the ratification of the Constitution, students from Philadelphia’s colleges, academies, and other schools marched together under a banner that read, “‘The Rising Generation.’”70

With the need for enlightened leaders on the rise, schools increasingly tried to showcase their students’ capacity for productive emulation through public exhibitions and examinations. At these events, academy officials and town leaders would publicly pass judgment on which students evinced the most heightened sense of emulation, the most benevolent and controlled ambition, and thus belonged to the aristocracy of merit.

Schools held their frequent exhibitions in front of “a large concourse of respectable citizens.” When they could, academies tried to have notable public figures in attendance.

The Trenton Academy was again particularly successful, hosting the lieutenant governor of the state, many assemblymen including the speaker, Richard Henry Lee, then president

68 Burlington Advertiser, July 13, 1790. 69 Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 73. 70 Pennsylvania Packet, Jul 10, 1788.

249 of the Continental Congress, and the Baron Von Stueben at early examinations.71 The examiners themselves, trustees and “other learned gentlemen assembled for the purpose,” added to the prestige of these occasions. These men, and they were always men, served and important function. Newspapers often noted when these people “gave many signal testimonies of their approbation” of an academy.72 More than anything, visitors came “in order to excite an emulation and ambition in the Scholars,” and to direct it toward virtuous ends.73 As the trustees of the Allentown, New Jersey Academy put it, visitors came to exhibitions both “to judge of and encourage the improvement of the students.”74

Academic exhibitions placed students on stage with, and at a similar level to, public leaders. Recognition from those already in power helped indicate that students were among those who would occupy powerful offices in the future. Academies were thus a key source of both cultural and social capital for nascent elites. Schools taught both the characteristics and comportment of elites, and offering students access to rarefied circles.75

71 New-Jersey Gazette, Mar. 5, 1783; Sep. 6, 1784; Dec. 27, 1784. 72 New-Jersey Gazette, Apr. 11, 1785. 73 New-Jersey Journal, Aug. 4, 1790. 74 New-Jersey Gazette, Dec. 8, 1784. 75 Kim Tolley has shown that the prospect of creating elite connections motivated some parents to send their kids to academies; see ““A Chartered School in a Free Market: The Case of Raleigh Academy, 1801 - 1823,” Teachers College Record 107 (Jan. 2005): 59–88, esp. 71. Elite networks tend to offer more, or a more powerful form of, social capital to members by creating non-redundant connections; see Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–1380; Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 26–32; and Burt, “The Contingent Value of Social Capital,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42, (1997): 339–365. Epitomized by modern, urban ethnic enclaves, networks of non-elites tend to create redundant, bonding ties that help people sustain a certain quality of life, without the prospect of greater achievement; see Xavier de Souza Briggs, “Social Capital and the Cities: Advice to Change Agents,” National Civic Review 86 (1997): 111–17; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 22–3; Michael Woolcock, “Social

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As important as public ceremonies were for students, they also served a didactic function for public audiences. Newspapers frequently published accounts of these ceremonies in order to convince the public of the connection between education and political leadership.76 In perhaps the most conspicuous example, a group of men in

Baltimore planned to publish “a REPOSITORY OF SCIENCE and INTELLIGENCE” under the title, “The American Spectator.” Its promoters envisioned it as a clearinghouse for the histories of schools in the country, information about state initiatives to improve education, and news about educational innovations. In sum, they wanted “‘to catch, living as they rise, the Manners’ of this young but great and rising Empire.” Most interestingly, they asked for the “Assistance of those Gentlemen who superintend the great Business of EDUCATION” to inform them about “meritorious Performances of the

Youth under their Care.” The editors planned to publish accounts of exhibitions from across the country, “conceiving that such a general Display of their Abilities will tend to excite a Spirit of Emulation, and be productive of the most salutary Consequences.”

Though it does not seem to have been published, the plan for the publication helps illuminate the impact that academy promoters hoped their efforts would have even on uneducated Americans.77 Others claimed that as academies spread, so “the spirit of ambition has operated, with success in different parts of the union, and still continues to

Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework,” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 151–208, esp. 171. 76 In many ways, public ceremonies involving schools replaced militia musters as the means by which communities demonstrated the boundaries of membership in the polity. See also, Koganzon, “Producing a Reconciliation,” 416–8. On the militia, see John A. Ruddiman, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 18–26. 77 Maryland Journal, Jan. 25, 1785.

251 spread it’s[sic] wholesome influence.” As a result, “no country has ever displayed so extensive a field to rising merit.”78

Almost all academy exhibitions awarded “premiums” to select students. The main benchmark for demonstrating their merit, the premium was a commendation for excellence in a given subject. More than anything else, premiums motivated students’ ambitions. One set of trustees used “sundry premiums” for both “the encouragement of merit, and as a stimulus to future exertions.”79 Throughout the region, academies ensured that “public Examinations will be frequently held, and honorary Premiums adjudged to those who distinguish themselves by superior merit.”80 Public examinations of students’ progress, trustees reasoned, helped uncover their moral growth and their capacity for emulation because the pedagogy relied on that passion. Examinations, on the one hand, served “to inspire the youth with a laudable ambition to excel in every branch of polite learning.” Trustees offered “premiums [in this case, books] to the different competitors according as they were judged superior” to this end.81 On the other hand, students knew all along they would participate in a public examination. In that way, examinations tested how well students handled their own ambitions. During a July Fourth celebration in

1805, Virginians celebrated the Washington Academy, which they hoped would produce

“characters whose genius and virtues will qualify them to imitate the merits of its illustrious patron,” George Washington.82 But of course this was no easy task.

78 The Mail, July 19, 1792. 79 New-York Daily Advertiser, Oct. 2, 1790. 80 Baltimore Daily Intelligencer, Oct. 28, 1793. 81 Pennsylvania Packet, Oct. 27, 1784. 82 Rockbridge Repository, Aug. 6, 1805.

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Washington’s reputation as a man of merit was unparalleled, and derived in part from his stature, manners, and general gravitas. Most Americans could not even aspire to this level of merit, let alone achieve it. But academic merit was the first step. At an academy exhibition in Philadelphia, a speaker made this point. The student’s address noted that

“the passions of pride and ambition, which, when intemperately and injudiciously indulged, have caused such misery and havoc in the world.” But, he argued, if “directed to the pursuit of laudable and virtuous objects,” as at academies, these same passions could have precisely the opposite effects. And so he congratulated his fellow students on using emulation to achieve “a stamp of character, and an attestation of merit, which cannot fail to make the most favourable impression upon the publick mind.”83 Students seemed to think that academic achievement paved the way to political recognition.

Public examinations tended to focus on certain subjects even when the goal was not purely to celebrate the acquisition of particular knowledge. For instance, an academy in Georgetown—which was then located in Maryland—only publicly examined students in Latin, Greek, and French.84 In 1786, the Alexandria Academy only gave prizes for classical languages and oratory.85 This was not always the case. Many schools, awarded premiums to the best students in the math and English schools, as the Alexandria

Academy did in 1788.86 Even still, observers almost always placed the most value on the

83 United States Gazette, Aug. 7, 1805. 84 Maryland Journal, Nov. 11, 1785. 85 Freeman’s Journal, Philadelphia, May 18, 1786. 86 Independent Gazetteer, Philadelphia, May 16, 1788. The Schenectady Academy was similar; New-York Daily Advertiser, Jun. 28, 1786.

253 least practical subjects.87 Excellence in subjects became a proxy for students’ merit, which ostensibly reflected their capacity for beneficent emulation. In the process, public examinations set up class barriers to achieving educational honors.

In particular, many Americans saw an important connection between the classics and virtuous ambition. For about four years, the trustees of the Protestant Episcopal

Academy of Philadelphia kept a register of notes on exhibitions. It offers unparalleled insights into what skills and subjects trustees valued. In 1786, the Episcopal Academy only ranked the best students in the Latin classes, not in the English or math schools.

They did also note the names of the few students who could qualify for the Latin school.

Of the students who won recognition for Latin that first year, two were the children of

William Meredith, an academy trustee whose papers house the register. Those upper- level Latin classes that received rankings, where the students were put into competition with each other, included many well-connected and well-to-do Philadelphians including

Benjamin Franklin’s grandson William Bache, James Wilson’s sons Bird and William, and also Tench Coxe’s son Charles. Trustees eventually also started to keep notes of the premiums they awarded to lower level learners. But they tended to reserve the most effusive praise for the Latin students.88 As another academy master explained to his students at an exhibition that “those virtues of the antient worthies, which shine forth in

87 Some Federalists advocated unapologetically for the continued importance of the classics even Latin and Greek made education harder and thus made education less accessible; see Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 114–5. 88 Apr. 6-10, 1786, “A Register of the Quarterly Examination’s of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia,” box 36, folder 15, Meredith Family Papers, HSP.

254 the life of the illustrious Washington, awaken, in your breasts, a noble ambition.”89 The public valued students’ emulation and merit above any particular academic excellence.

Trustees, however, rooted those attributes in particularly advanced curriculum. The irony here is clear. Most Americans did not know Latin. Yet they expected to identify the most meritorious among them from their academic excellence in, especially, the classical languages.

The biggest fanfare at public exhibitions was for oratory. As one academy advertisement declared, “A taste for, and emulation to excel in public speaking, has always been a characteristic of every wise and great nation, and ought not to be neglected by those who wish to be distinguished in life.”90 Often oratory happened in the evening after the more mundane examinations concluded. This was the part of the show “which made the hearts of their parents, guardians and instructors glow with pleasure.”91 In

1787, the Alexandria Academy held this portion of their exhibition “before a large and respectable audience, among whom were present General Washington” and the other

“principal inhabitants” of the surrounding towns.92 The Georgetown Academy offered prizes only in oratory, which they saw it as deeply connected to “all the Efforts which laudable ambition and a Love of Praise could excite.”93 The York-Town Academy in

Pennsylvania highlighted student orations in their accounts of exhibitions in newspapers.

One of these speeches was entitled “on the Advantages of public Examinations,” while

89 Balance, April 13, 1802. 90 New-York Daily Advertiser, April 18, 1795. 91 Pennsylvania Packet, Sep. 29, 1787. 92 Independent Gazetteer, Nov. 15, 1787. 93 Maryland Journal, Nov. 11, 1785.

255 others focused on the work of classical authors.94 The sophistication of the topics lent themselves to students who were furthest along, often those enrolled in the Latin school.

Oratory was so important for academy exhibitions and examinations, it seems, because of its broader role in the process of class formation. As Carolyn Eastman has argued, regardless of the sentiments of a speech—democratic as they might be—oratory

“help[ed] demarcate class, racial, and gender boundaries when it was delivered by a privileged member of society.”95 Oratory at academy exhibitions translated the social authority of elite children into nascent public authority. Newspaper accounts of a July

Fourth exhibition at Erasmus Hall Academy, in Queens, New York, noted that three students “delivered orations suited to the day … being fully expressive of patriotism and virtue,” essential characteristics for future leaders.96 Orations put pressure on students precisely because of their wider importance. When his teachers appointed him to give a prominent oration at a July Fourth event, Daniel Mulford, a student at the Morristown

Academy, noted that “I am always pleased with distinction.” But he hoped that “the honor bestowed on me will not expose my ignorance to shame.” If he faltered, it could destroy his ambitions. Success, though, could validate his ambitions.97 Roger Taney, the

94 Maryland Journal, Jan. 3, 1786. 95 Carolyn Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 9. Eastman deals with a slightly later period, after “newspapers began reporting on exhibitions in the early nineteenth century,” 33. This earlier period that she leaves out was far less welcoming to “participation by nonelite men and women” than she suggests, 18. 96 Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser, July 9, 1799. 97 June 2, 1807, Diary of Daniel Mulford, typescript copy, North Jersey History Center at the Morristown Public Library, original at Yale University, 130.

256 future chief justice, believed that he entered public life when he graduated Dickinson

College and gave the valedictory oration.98

Before they could adequately use oratory to demonstrate their measured ambition and merit on a public stage, students had to sit through years of high-level classical education. Class and wealth conditioned who could excel in the subjects that allowed them to demonstrate the requisite emulation to illustrate their merit.99 For the most part, students’ success in higher-level academy curriculum depended on their earlier education and thus their parents’ financial standing. How much their parents spent or could spend on early education bore directly on success in academy curriculum. The trustees of the

Protestant Episcopal Academy believed the cause “for the inferiority of [the] standing” of one of their classes owed to the fact that the students “have been but a short time in the academy; into which they were admitted from some private schools in this city, which have of late been dissolved.”100 These smaller, private “venture schools,” spread widely in the 1780s. They might offer access to education, but academy teachers and trustees did not hold these schools in particularly high regard. Some teachers of high-level academy students believed that good early education should only concern a very exclusive group. John Lowe, an academy master in Stafford County, Virginia, required

98 Kett, Merit, 74. 99 Similarly, French historians have argued that discourses of merit and emulation could actually limit who could gain access to leadership. For instance, Nira Kaplan argues that “Old Regime society accepted the potentially disruptive connotations of competitive merit because the concept of emulation implicitly circumscribed the types of individuals who could compete”; in “Virtuous Competition among Citizens: Emulation in Politics and Pedagogy during the French Revolution,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (Dec. 2003): 241–248, quote on 242. 100 Apr. 6, 1786, “A Register of the Quarterly Examinations,” box 36, folder 15, Meredith Family Papers, HSP.

257 prospective students to provide “sufficient testimony of their natural talents, and unwearied application to study,” without which he would not admit them. He reasoned that “he has already frequently been under the disagreeable necessity of dismissing young gentlemen from his tuition, being conscious that they might otherwise be better employed, and that their continuance with him was only robbing their parents of a sum of money, which might have been employed to a better purpose.”101

The deck was stacked against aspiring, upwardly-mobile middling people in other ways. Often subscribers, people who donated money to academies, had the right to vote for trustees. In setting academy policy, the trustees were obviously more beholden to these people than to the parents of aspiring children who merely attended the school.

This was the case at the Baltimore Academy. The board stipulated that if they had too many students, “the Children of Subscribers and Contributors shall always have a preference” over children whose parents did not subscribe.102 In some instances, subscribers garnered even greater special treatment. The Philadelphia French Academy for young women stipulated that “no lady unacquainted with English grammar, can be admitted, except the children of members, or such as they shall particularly elect, at quarterly meetings.”103 Financial, cultural, and social capital allowed the already well- connected to bolster their children’s status, but limited the prospects of upwardly-aspiring students.

101 Virginia Journal, Dec. 30, 1784. 102 For instance, six pounds bought you a vote in the Baltimore Academy; Maryland Journal, Apr. 21, 1786; Mar. 7, 1786. 103 Pennyslvania Mercury, June 8, 1787.

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Educators took social distinctions as a given. Academy teachers devised separate curricula for different groups of students depending on their social standing and, in turn, likely future profession. American educators believed that without drawing distinctions, emulation and ambition could not possibly motivate students in the correct way. That

“lads who are not intended as pupils for an university should receive a different management from those, who are to be qualified for that purpose” was an accepted understanding of educational hierarchy in the 1780s.104 Another school “carefully divided” the students into four “classes.” Sorting the students made possible “exciting emulation in youth … without which no person is capable of conveying instruction to advantage.”105 Burgiss Allison of the Bordentown Academy advertised “that gentlemen may have their children either fitted for any particular class in a public seminary, or such as a prefer a private school, have their education finish’d.” Allison took pride that his academy was “chiefly made up of gentlemen’s sons from your city and Philadelphia.”106

Allison hoped that his Latin curriculum would “steal upon their fancies and draw out their young minds in pursuit of knowledge, and love for literature.”107 English writers made similar assumptions about education. Vicesimus Knox, for instance, wrote that

“the minds of the great have more influence in the regulation of affairs, than those of the lower orders; and I proceed to conclude, that it is therefore a most valuable object, to secure to the great a solid and comprehensive education.”108 Despite how the rhetoric of

104 Gazette of the United States, Jul. 15, 1789. 105 American Citizen, Aug. 26, 1801 106 Pennsylvania Packet, Oct. 13, 1784; Independent Journal, May 5, 1784. 107 Pennsylvania Packet, Oct. 13, 1784. 108 Knox, Liberal Education, 228.

259 emulation seemed to celebrate mobility, academy curriculum did as much, if not more, to maintain hierarchies as it did to challenge them.

A young man’s education did not so much create their status, as reflect it. Even schools that aimed at a more middling clientele embraced these assumptions, which modern educational reformers call tracking. Night schools, especially, assumed they would serve students with certain career trajectories, namely “pupils intended for the

Counting House.”109 They offered their “practical curriculum” at hours that would “not interfere with their business.”110 The Baltimore Academy trustees believed that

American academies “for the most part calculated to answer the views of youths destined to fill some learned profession, without sufficiently regarding others, who only aim at being prepared to discharge the ordinary occupations and employments of life.” They did not propose to equalize or standardize education across class but rather to teach a course without classics that would be “beneficial and ornamental to the Trader, the Farmer, or

Private Gentleman.”111 This education, they reasoned, “qualif[ied] Youth for the ordinary Business of Manhood, the Course of their Studies, and the Objects of their

Attention shall invariably be such, as will tend to prepare them for their destined

Employment in active life.” This curriculum was only six pounds, compared with ten for the classical track.112 In Baltimore and elsewhere this continued into the nineteenth century. Many students at the Baltimore Academy “having acquired such learning as was thought requisite for them, have entered upon various pursuits and professions in life.”

109 Independent Gazetteer, Apr. 11, 1787. 110 New-York Daily Advertiser, Oct. 26, 1785. 111 Maryland Journal, Mar. 7, 1786, my italics. 112 Maryland Journal, Jul. 7, 1786.

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Many “Others, destined for a more extensive course of education, have spent part of that time in going through an enlarged plan of classical reading, and are now prepared to commence the proper studies of a college.”113 That education should befit a students’ destiny was a common trope. Another set of trustees celebrated how students who best demonstrated emulation fulfilled a foreordained “high destiny,” which was part of their progress toward eventually serving as “fair candidates for office.”114 Despite the rhetoric, education did not actually foster new ambitions for all that many people. Rather it offered to teach young men the skills they needed to fulfill a preordained station.

Education for poor and middling whites offered bleak prospects for upward mobility, though there were some opportunities. Students who excelled in the English grammar school of the Philadelphia Protestant Episcopal Academy, for example, had the opportunity to proceed to either the Math or Latin school if their “parents or guardians shall desire it.”115 But again, making this decision forced parents and students to reconsider their pre-existing expectations of the station they, or their child, would occupy. Choosing to enter the Latin school might open doors but it was also impractical, especially compared with the math school. Yet if academies kept putting Latin students front and center in exhibitions, and building that mental link between those subjects and elite status, then Americans would still associate the less practical subjects with achieving the highest levels of power and prestige. So even when schools offered some middling

113 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Sep. 2, 1802. 114 Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 11, 1803, my italics. 115 Apr. 10, 1786, “Register of the Quarterly Examinations,” box 36, folder 15, Meredith Family Papers, HSP.

261 people the opportunity for upward mobility, they did so in a way that did not challenge the prevailing assumptions of cultural authority.

Trustees and elite academy patrons provided themselves with cover for their hierarchical curricular structure by attending to some of the educational needs of middling and poor people. During one of the Trenton Academy’s examinations, which focused a large portion of the program on the oratory of the school’s most advanced scholars, “[t]he friends and proprietors of this Academy” announced their intention “to establish a fund for the tuition of poor children.” They claimed that “in this laudable undertaking they have met with considerable encouragement.”116 Other academies found

“great success in procuring subscriptions for the endowment of [their] English school, so as to make education in it entirely free.”117 Students at the Baltimore Academy performed “Cato” at Baltimore theater to raise money for “charitable purpose[s].”118

This kind of activity certainly made it more difficult for people to make a full-frontal assault on the hierarchical aspects of American education. To do so would constitute an attack on the very men who also provided much of the education for the poor.119

As education reinforced class hierarchies among whites, it also created distinct divisions between whites and blacks. The language of ambition, citizenship, and civic leadership that ran through discourses about white education differed markedly with how

116 New-Jersey Gazette, Jul. 4, 1785. 117 Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 10, 1785; also Federal Gazette, Nov. 5, 1788. 118 Maryland Journal, Feb. 4, 1785. 119 For an excellent case study of how the decline of one academy impacted elementary education in a community, see Tolley, “Chartered School in a Free Market,” esp. 77-81.

262 whites discussed black education.120 The abolitionists who ran the New York African

Free School often betrayed their racist assumptions about black Americans’ capacity for citizenship. The School’s rules hardly trusted students to motivate each other through emulation. Instead they assumed that black children would more likely corrupt each other. Rules required that students “attend to their business in silence, avoiding unnecessary whispering and moving from seat to seat.”121 In contradistinction, poems read at white academy exhibitions hoped that “Within these walls may friendship reign;

Trustees, and tutors join; And pupils, hand in hand attain Those arts which all refine.”122

In white society, the benefits of education depended on student relationships. The creation of networks and social capital was a central goal. At the New York Free School, students teachers reminded students “not to quarrel,” and made them “vow to live in love and friendship,” as though it could not occur naturally. Unlike the rarified environment cultivated at many white academies, black students had to clean the Free School

“according to the direction of the master.”123

120 On how academies helped construct a white vision of citizenship in antebellum America, and on black efforts to challenge this, see Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Kabria Baumgartner, “Intellect, Liberty, Life: Women’s Activism and the Politics of Black Education in Antebellum America” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2011). To the contrary, Paul J. Polgar argues that education was part of a program of black “civic integration” undertaken by early national antislavery activists; see “‘To Raise Them to an Equal Participation’: Early National Abolitionism, Gradual Emancipation, and the Promise of African American Citizenship,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Summer 2011): 229–258 esp. 230-32. Most recently, Craig Steven Wilder has demonstrated the profound influence that slavery and slave capital had on elite higher-education in the United States, and in the creation of a white elite; see Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013). 121 Nov. 15, 1787, Records of the New-York Manumission Society, BV Manumission Society, N-YHS, 83- 4. 122 New-York Journal, May 9, 1792. 123 Nov. 15, 1787, Records of the New-York Manumission Society, 84.

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Public rituals involving academies also cemented the civic distinctions between black and white children. During a ratification celebration in 1788, twelve students from the York Academy had the honor of carrying white flags each of which had had the name of one of the “twelve states which had been represented in the grand convention.” The rest of the students from the academy followed behind in a double-file line. The Rhode

Island flag “was black, and carried by a negro boy in the rear of the procession.”124 This procession conveyed how education would structure the hierarchies of political life.

Certain students would lead the way while their fellow educated citizens showed them support. Meanwhile, blacks did not participate; indeed they were relegated to a place outside of the bounds of civil society. To be a non-citizen was to be black, and to be black was to be different from white students. The procession threatened that Rhode

Islanders of all races and classes would suffer the same fate if the state continued to oppose ratification and national unification.

Even though academic merit reinforced already existing hierarchies, affirming that hierarchy through schools served a larger social purpose.125 If academies played a key role in the development of political leaders, Americans assumed that those leaders would feel compelled to support education in the future. As one advertisement declared,

“The ambition which operates in the bosoms of many of our countrymen to represent their fellow subjects in the legislature of their country, should stimulate them to furnish

124 Pennsylvania Packet, July 18, 1788. 125 United States’ Gazette, Aug. 7, 1805.

264 their children with the rudiments of wisdom.”126 In essence, education-based political aristocracy was relatively acceptable because it lent support to the idea that education mattered to citizenship and social order. Even as education created hierarchy, it also held out the possibility of breaking down those hierarchies. In perhaps the most striking example, many of the children who attended the New York African Free School went on to become leading abolitionists later in the nineteenth century. Their educational experience played a part in their early politicization, and the networks they formed at school provided a foundation for collective action.127 Likewise, proponents of female academies in the early republic hoped to use education to give women a semi-public role that also reinforced their subordinate status. By the middle of the nineteenth century though, academy-educated women took the lead in moral reform efforts and made their political voice heard in civil society.128 In the meanwhile, education would continue to create and recreate an American “aristocracy of merit.”

Conclusion

In academies, Americans found an institution that fostered an educational culture which met European standards. Academies were, after all, rooted in a British Atlantic intellectual world. But it was also an institution deeply embedded in the mid-Atlantic’s revolutionary history. Even as academies created class distinctions that flouted strict

126 The Mail, July 19, 1792. 127 Sarah Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom: Gradual Emancipation, Black Legal Culture, and the Origins of Sectional Crisis in New York, 1759-1870” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Chicago, 2014), esp. chapter 3, “In the Laboratories of Freedom: Generational Ties in New York City’s Schools and Streets.” 128 Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

265 republican ideas about social order, Americans continued to view schools as nationalist institutions. Ultimately, as the story of education makes clear, Americans proved willing to sacrifice some revolutionary principles in the name of achieving European recognition of their statehood. As the next chapter will show, they could do so in ways that undermined some of the most foundational and impulses of civic republicanism. All the while, though, this allowed the republic to survive and eventually to thrive in a hostile world.

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Chapter 5: French Schools and Polite Manners: Class, Gender, and Geopolitics after the

American Revolution

Americans failed to reform the curriculum of “academical education” to the extent they expected they would after the Revolution. More egregiously, beginning in

1780 Americans began to attend “French academies” that taught the “polite arts.” In addition to language instruction, the “polite arts” that Americans learned at French schools included dancing, singing, fencing, drawing, and painting. These “ornamental” skills were important markers of elite status all across ancien regime Europe, and hardly fit with the new model of republican education that Americans envisioned.1 This was an extreme manifestation of the same process that stalled the development of new, republicanized “academical” curriculum.

During the 1790s especially, it is clear that shared republicanism fostered cultural interactions between the United States and revolutionary France and shaped national

1 For previous work on French schools, see Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Sarah Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies: Women and Elite Formation in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008); Daniel Kilbride, An American Aristocracy: Southern Planters in Antebellum Philadelphia (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 53–77; and Kim Tolley, “The Significance of the ‘French School’ in Early National Female Education,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Kim Tolley and Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 133– 54.

267 identities in both countries.2 The effects of Franco-American interactions are less clear in the ten or so years leading up to the storming of the Bastille, when monarchical France ingratiated itself in the United States. In fact, French émigrés arrived in early national

Philadelphia expecting to find a republican oasis. Instead, they found an American city steeped in French aristocratic culture, thanks in large measure to the work of French dancing masters and educators. Though this tendency was especially pronounced in

Philadelphia, which was home to a vibrant community of Frenchmen, the fascination with French manners and culture pervaded the early national mid-Atlantic and upper

South.3 That France influenced American culture in the 1770s-80s is not surprising given

2 For recent work on French-US relations in the 1790s and beyond, see Matthew Rainbow Hale, “Neither Britons nor Frenchmen: The French Revolution and American National Identity” (Ph.D. Diss., Brandeis University, 2002); Philipp Ziesche, Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Seth Cotlar, Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011); and Rachel Hope Cleves, The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). The existing literature on the United States and France during the 1780s is very old; for instance, see Howard Mumford Jones, America and French Culture 1750-1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1927). Some historians also read the international dynamics of the 1790s back into the 1780s. For instance, writing about the 1780s, Ronald G. Paulston argued that “American acceptance of French influence was supported by the long philosophical leadership of French philosophes in the Enlightenment tradition and in the concepts of republicanism that had justified American colonial rebellion.” French education was thus a viable alternative to English education, which Americans saw as “elitist, reactionary and not fit for a nation of free people;” see Roland G. Paulston, “French Influence in American Institutions of Higher Learning, 1784-1825,” History of Education Quarterly 8 (July 1968): 229–245, quotes on 230. Even granting that French republican thought and its influence on education predated their Revolution, and that many of the French who chose to come to the aid of the United States did so for idealistic reasons, this argument is anachronistic at best. French schools hardly signaled a turn toward a more inclusive and practical form of republican education. If anything, the French influence on American education from the waning days of the Revolutionary war through the 1790s ran against the current of most republican educational reform, which began in earnest with the restructuring of the College and Academy of Philadelphia in 1779. Consider especially, republican fears of luxury; see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 107–13; Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740- 1790 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 247–51. 3 On the French community in Philadelphia, see François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2014), 95, 104. Also see Doina Pasca

268 the wartime alliance. During the 1780s and beyond, French aristocratic and monarchical culture influenced the shape of American education in numerous communities, playing a key role in the interrelated processes of state formation and nation building.

So why did French and ornamental education spread across the young United

States? Many Americans, especially those who supported ornamental education, wanted to see the United States take its place within the dominant global community of “civilized states,” to become a “treaty worthy” nation. These same considerations propelled the movement to create the Constitution, and shaped early American diplomacy and the powers of the federal government. Yet there were also cultural expectations that civilized nations needed to meet, a performative side of state-formation.4 Ornamental accomplishments were recognizable manifestations of civility and refinement all across

Europe. In this way, dancing might have seemed ornamental, but it possessed deep diplomatic significance.5 If England provided the United-States with a model for the

Harsanyi, Lessons from America: Liberal French Nobles in Exile, 1793-1798 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), which looks at a similar cast of characters. 4 The phrase “civilized state” comes from David M. Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation: The Early American Constitution, the Law of Nations, and the Pursuit of International Recognition,” New York University Law Review 85 (2010): 943, see also 972–5. Similarly, Eliga Gould has argued that diplomatic goal of making the United States a “treaty worthy” nation animated the efforts of early American state builders. See Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). See also Robbie J. Totten, “Security, Two Diplomacies, and the Formation of the U.S. Constitution: Review, Interpretation, and New Directions for the Study of the Early American Period,” Diplomatic History 36 (Jan. 2012): 77–117. For a good historiographical assessment of this international turn, see Tom Cutterham, “The International Dimension of the Federal Constitution,” Journal of American Studies 48 (May 2014): 501–15. The foundational works in this vein are Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas G. Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993); David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 5 On the political function of dancing, see also Kate Haulman, “Rods and Reels: Social Clubs and Political Culture in Early Pennsylvania,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (Winter 2014):

269 fiscal-military state, France provided the model of the cultural mores of statecraft and diplomacy. Polite education cultivated and refined American elites in ways that met

European standards and bolstered American claims to geopolitical independence. At the same time, this sort of education flew in the face of republican ideals about luxury, class, and especially masculine gender norms.6

The Development of French Schools in the Critical Period

Alexandre-Marie Quesnay de Beaurepaire led the charge to bring polite education to the new United States. Quesnay was the grandson of François Quesnay, who had been

King Louis XV’s physician, and more famously helped found the physiocrat school of economics. The younger Quesnay came to North American as captain in the French army. He served briefly during the Revolutionary war, though illness cut his tenure short. Residing for a time in Virginia with John Peyton, a militia colonel from

Gloucester, Quesnay began to think seriously about opening a French Academy. Peyton and Lt. Governor John Page, among others, had initially suggested this to Quesnay upon his arrival in Virginia three years earlier. After recovering, Quesnay set off to

Philadelphia to open a school.7

143–173. Serena Zabin has shown how colonists used dancing assemblies to demonstrate their connection to the British Empire; see Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 97–100. On dance as cultural diplomacy, see also Naima Prevots, Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998). 6 Catherine Allgor discusses similar issues in the context of the republican court. See Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006). 7 The most comprehensive work on Quesnay is all fairly old; see John G. Roberts, ed., “An Exchange of Letters between Jefferson and Quesnay De Beaurepaire,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 50, (April 1942): 134–142; John G. Roberts, “The American Career of Quesnay de Beaurepaire,” The French Review 20 (May 1947): 463–470; Paulston, “French Influence in American Institutions,” 234–6. More

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When he arrived in Philadelphia in late 1779, Quesnay took note of “The pleasure and satisfaction which the Public appear to take in learning the FRENCH LANGUAGE.”

This, he wrote, “cannot but encourage the subscriber,” and so Quesnay opened an academy where “LADIES” and young men would attend at separate hours.8 Quesnay continued his French academy in Philadelphia throughout the early 1780s.9 In 1782, he moved to a larger location to open “his ACADEMY of POLITE SCIENCE, in

Southwark”—located in present day Queen Village, and just south of where most French

émigrés lived and worked. Always hoping to associate himself with Philadelphia’s polite society, he added that the opening occurred “in presence of a very brilliant and numerous concourse of ladies and gentlemen of the first rank.”10 As time wore on, Quesnay set his sights beyond Philadelphia. He expanded first into Trenton, New Jersey. Then in the summer of 1784, he opened up an academy for a planned four-month stint in Elizabeth

Town and Newark, the centers of revolutionary resistance in New Jersey. The towns were “agreeable and wholesome places,” near enough to Manhattan for New Yorkers to send their children for the summer. Impressed with “the gentility and politeness with which their inhabitants have treated” him, Quesnay hoped that holding the academy there

recently, Quesnay makes brief appearances in Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976), 446–7; David S. Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 309–11; Adam R. Nelson, “The Perceived Dangers of Study Abroad, 1780- 1800: Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Origins of the American University,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 175–97, esp. 182-3, 190-1. 8 Pennsylvania Packet, Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1779; Jan. 4, 1780. 9 Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 13, 1781. 10 Pennsylvania Packet, Jan. 17, 1782.

271 would “prove very useful to the inhabitants, who will have a good opportunity to give their children that genteel education for which THEY are so distinguished.” He hoped to reopen the school there every spring for six months at a time. This would not come to pass.11 Quesnay moved next to New York City, where he rented a large house from

William Alexander. Lord Stirling, as Alexander fashioned himself, was a general from the New Jersey line and the rare Continental officer to actually claim a title of nobility during the war.12

Over time, Quesnay attempted to offer an increasingly comprehensive range of the “polite arts” in his schools. In addition to teaching French, Quesnay intended to provide instruction in the “Art of Fortifications,” as well as in “Painting likenesses, landscapes, flowers, &c.” He also invited musicians to teach in his school. In exchange for their services, he instructed the musicians in the modern languages and visual arts.13

By the time he acquired a newer, bigger building in Philadelphia in 1782, Quesnay and his assistants taught French and “polite languages,” many varieties of painting and drawing, as well as fencing, all under one roof. That new building used to be a theater.

He apologized for that. Calling attention to his connection with the Continental officers, he claimed that “as a foreigner and friend to America, [he] has at all times used his utmost endeavours[sic] to promote and furnish useful amusement for those gentlemen of the army, who have sustained innumerable hardships, and bravely ventured their lives in

11 Political Intelligencer, June 1, 1784. 12 Independent Journal, Nov. 3, 1784. His title rested on a shaky foundation, see Paul David Nelson, The Life of William Alexander, Lord Stirling: George Washington’s Noble General (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 36–41. 13 Pennsylvania Packet, Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1779; Jan. 4, 1780.

272 service of their country.” He promised the public that “the pit will be raised level with the stage; the scenery dismantled, and the whole will form a most capacious and elegant ball-room.” This change in scenery signified changes in the type of leisurely pursuits that would go on in the building.14 Dancing schools quickly became a big part of Quesnay’s operations. His employees held a female dancing academy “at the Freemason’s Lodge, in Lodge Alley” as well as “An evening school for the gentlemen … at the sign of the

White Horse, in Chestnut Street.” A bit later, Quesnay hired a new dancing teacher, a

Frenchman named Louis D’ Orsiere, who operated a dancing school independently for a time.15 The multiple locations and the night school offered flexibility for aspiring young men and women, especially students who went to more traditional schools during the day. Quesnay wanted to dominate the market for refined education in Philadelphia. For his dedicated students, he offered that “Any person after continuing the space of one year

… shall have free access to the different schools (drawing excepted) till he is perfected.”16

In particular, Quesnay marketed his services to Continental Army officers and their families. He often made special provision that “The Academy will be open to the

American officers at all times.” Usually he was more stringent in admitting students, at one point advertising that “Except gentlemen of public character, no person will be admitted without being presented by some Academician.”17 The same rules applied for admission to his dancing schools. All prospective students needed a recommendation,

14 Pennsylvania Packet, Jan. 17, 1782. 15 Independent Gazetteer, Philadelphia, Sep. 24, 1782. 16 Freeman’s Journal, Jan. 23, 1782. 17 Pennsylvania Packet, Jan. 4, 1780.

273 but “with respect to gentlemen of the army, their commissions, on being produced, will serve as a recommendation.”18 Quesnay’s connection with Continental officers stretched back to his service in the War. His commitment to educating them and their children would continue during his entire career in America. Throughout the war, the officer corps had shown a deep interest in refining themselves and cultivating elite status.

George Washington, for instance, was famous for his dancing skills.19 The nascent elites in the Continental officer corps also came to admire the masculine self-control and polite manners of their opposition. Most notably, John André’s manners, calmness, conduct, grace, and even his artistic skill as he awaited execution, endeared him to the Continental officers. The enlisted men, however, could not wait to see him hanged.20 The officers’ pretensions were not lost on Americans. In 1787, Royall Tyler wrote The Contrast, a play which critiqued the aristocratic ambitions of some American elites and raised many questions about the nature of authority in the post-revolutionary republic.21

18 Freeman’s Journal, Jan. 23, 1782. 19 The classic work on the status aspirations of the Continental Army officer corps is Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1979); but see also Sarah Knott, “Sensibility and the American War for Independence,” American Historical Review 109 (Feb. 2004): 19–40; and more broadly Knott’s Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 20 Silverman, Cultural History of the American Revolution, 377–82; Knott, “Sensibility and the American War for Independence,” 24; Robert E. Cray, “Major John André and the Three Captors: Class Dynamics and Revolutionary Memory Wars in the Early Republic, 1780-1831,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (Oct. 1997): 371–397 discusses the class tensions André’s execution elicited; as do Gary J. Kornblith and John M. Murrin, “The Dilemmas of Ruling Elites in Revolutionary America,” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, ed. Gary Gerstle and Steve Fraser (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 37–8. 21 See especially, the editor’s instruction to Royall Tyler, The Contrast: Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic, ed. Cynthia Kierner (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

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Quesnay was not the only person teaching the polite arts in the mid-Atlantic.

While he tried to offer a comprehensive curriculum, numerous entrepreneurial teachers opened small schools teaching one or two of the subjects that Quesnay offered. Andrew

Brown’s school in Philadelphia was fairly typical. In 1784, when Quesnay was in New

York, he “annexed” a drawing and dancing school to his French Academy.22 Brown competed with Benjamin Blyth, who opened one of the first schools dedicated solely to the visual arts in 1784. Blyth’s advertisements mentioned no practical uses for the skills he taught.23 Indeed, the sort of visual art instruction that proliferated in the 1780s was unmistakably ornamental. James Cox, for instsance, opened a painting and drawing school “at the request of several respectable characters.”24 Generally, art instruction was similar for men and women. Students learned to paint and draw portraits, miniatures, and landscapes. Schools taught students to work with a variety of materials in addition to paper, including silk, glass, satin, and calico, as well as “shading in India ink.”25 Female students also often learned various types of needlework and embroidery.26 Of those teaching the ornamental visual arts, only Quesnay also consistently offered architecture— one of the most practical forms of drawing. Teaching architecture along with fortifications was probably aimed at the military clientele to whom Quesnay frequently

22 Independent Gazetteer, Philadelphia, Sep. 25, 1784. 23 Pennsylvania Packet, May 15, 1784. 24 Pennsylvania Packet, Sep. 11, 1789; and Oct. 6, 1789. 25 New-York Daily Advertiser, Jul, 8, 1789; May 20, 1788; Federal Gazette, Sep. 11, 1789. 26 Maryland Journal, Nov. 24, 1786, and Dec. 1, 1786; New-York Journal, May 20, 1788. Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies, 71.

275 pandered.27 One other teacher in New York offered architecture “to enable the apprentice to obtain that part of instruction they so much stand in need of.”28

Dancing was probably the most recognizably European ornamental skill.

Dancing masters tended to teach whatever was “most in fashion” in Europe, “both in the

English and French modes.”29 When Quesnay hired D’Orsiere, he advertised that he would “teach all sorts of dances most in fashion in Europe.”30 The bodily comportment that dancing taught was recognizable all over the world. It gave “to the human form, the power of displaying its natural beauty, and symmetry. A skill in this art … enables young people to join in a diversion, which, in decent company is as innocent as it is pleasing,” read on advertisement.31 Knowing how to dance, then, allowed a young person to take part in elite society wherever they went. As the curriculum of dancing schools indicates, there were not so many respectable styles of dance that they would differ markedly from place to place. The way dancing taught individuals to give “grace and manners” to their physical movements was widely recognizable.32

Dancing also offered students the best opportunity to display their refinement in public.33 This was important. “To create emulation among the scholars”—a healthy level of competitiveness—Quesnay asked parents and other interested people to visit

27 Independent Journal, Nov. 3, 1784. 28 New-York Packet, Nov. 28, 1785. 29 New-Jersey Gazette, Jan. 22, 1783; New York Packet, Sep. 9, 1784; also Maryland Journal, Apr. 11, 1786; and Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 24, 1782. 30 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 24, 1782. 31 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 25, 1784. 32 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 24, 1782. As Serena Zabin has argued, aristocratic, court modes of dance taught this sort of refined comportment; see Dangerous Economies, 91–3. 33 Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 178–82.

276 once a week and gauge his students’ improvement.34 Schools generally scheduled lessons so that the male and female students learned separately, but as often as once a week, dancing teachers would open their ballrooms to the public “[f]or the advantage and amusement of his Scholars, and the Ladies and Gentlemen of the city.” The entire process served to separate the “respectable” attendees and students from the general mass of people. One dancing teacher went so far as to install “a new staircase … in order that

[students] may pass to it without” having to enter through a tavern.35 Reports on the events focused on the social status of the attendees. After Quesnay held a particularly successful ball, a newspaper reported that it “was filled with ladies of the first rank and beauty.” It went on to highlight “the great variety of elegant dresses, with which the fair visitors were adorned.” To the writer, it “afford[ed] a pleasing presage of what may be expected from the exercise of [Quesnay’s] superior abilities” in refining young men and women.36 Dancing assemblies gave the Continental officers and other young would-be elites a chance to put their refinement, cultivation, and civility on display for a respectable public audience.

34 Independent Journal, Nov. 3, 1784. On the importance of public appraisals of student progress, see William J. Reese, Testing Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 8–37. On emulation and ambition and education; see J. M. Opal, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s-1820s,” The Journal of American History 91 (Sep. 2004): 445– 470. 35 New-York Packet, Sep. 6, 1784. 36 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 29, 1784. On fashion, see David Waldstreicher, “Federalism, the Styles of Politics, and the Politics of Style,” in Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Barbara G. Oberg and Doron S. Ben- Atar (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 99–117; and especially Kate Haulman, “Fashion and the Culture Wars of Revolutionary Philadelphia,” William and Mary Quarterly 62 (Oct. 2005): 625– 662; and Haulman Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

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Dancing academies often doubled as fencing academies. A Frenchman named Le

Maire was the most widely advertised fencing teacher. He claimed that fencing, like dancing, “gives also grace, ease and vigor to the body.”37 “[I]t gives motion to every limb, and throws the whole frame into the most noble motions. It produces a generous confidence in those who know its excellencies.” In short, fencing was another way to learn how to physically convey gentility and status.38 During the early republic, this emphasis on bodily control and grace in motion became an important part of oratory.

Observers expected that public speakers, especially politicians, could show restraint and make their gesticulations look natural and planned.39 Fencing, of course, also had a military connotation. Ever eager to please his military clientele, Quesnay almost always offered it. Le Maire fashioned his fencing academy a place to learn “military science.”

But the military function of fencing was never divorced from its role in refinement. The

French teachers, some of whom served in the Revolution, might have provided cover for the officers’ embrace of European refinement.

37 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 18, 1787. Thomas Turner ran a fencing and dancing academy in New York; see Independent Gazetter, Dec. 27, 1783; New-York Packet, Sep. 6, 1784. Most fencing teachers tended to be French; in addition to Le Maire, Monsieur Villete taught fencing, see New-York Daily Advertiser, Sep. 28, 1789. At one point, Quesnay hired Charles Busslot, “a gentleman particularly recommended by the Marquis La Fayette;” see Independent Journal, Jan. 8, 1785. 38 Independent Gazetteer, Jan. 29, 1787. 39 Carolyn Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 24–8. Also useful here is Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Ommohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2008), esp. 190, 197; and Sandra M. Gustafson, Eloquence Is Power: Oratory & Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Williamsburg, VA. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2000). The emphasis on control and dispassionate speech contrasts sharply with the forms of rhetoric and address that helped propel the colonies into revolution; see, among a large literature, Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 34 (Oct. 1977): 519–541; and Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 267–8.

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Dancing masters tried to illustrate their patriotic intentions in an effort to head off criticism. Quesnay offered free instruction to thirteen children every year. These

“children are to belong to respectable inhabitants of this State, whose private fortunes may have been injured by the war, and those of officers and soldiers of the army of the

United States.”40 Teachers also gleefully reported support they received from men whose patriotism was beyond reproach. Quesnay happily recounted that at one of his assemblies, “The amiable marquis de la Fayette was present at the last entertainment, and expressed his determination to support the interests of the academy by every means in his power.”41 At another assembly, Quesnay’s students’ performed “La Fayette’s Departure, an English Country Dance.” Later they danced “Washington’s Resignation” to celebrate the general’s virtuous decision to relinquish his power and return home to his plough like the great Roman, Cincinnatus.42 In another instance, shortly after Washington took office as president and the new federal government went into operation, a dancing academy held a ball in his honor.43 Academies gave students a public stage to demonstrate their prowess in front of local elites and associated them with the most heralded leaders of the

Revolution through published accounts in newspapers. If Lafayette wanted to promote these students and their school, it followed that so too should the people.44

40 Independent Journal, Dec. 8, 1784. 41 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 29, 1784. 42 Independent Journal, Jan. 1, 1785. 43 New-York Packet, May 9, 1789. 44 For instance, Lafayette recommended one fencing teacher in New York; Independent Journal, Jan. 8, 1785; and he appeared at one of Quesnay’s dancing assemblies; Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 29, 1784. Jackson Turner Main argues that the Federalists used Washington’s support and prestige to great effect in convincing people that they were on the right side of the ratification question; see Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists; Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1961),

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Gender, Class, and Critiques of Polite Education

In 1787, the Pennsylvania Freeman’s Journal published an attack on European ornamental education. The writer bemoaned how in England and France, frivolous manners and behaviors conveyed so much about an individual’s social standing. In order to claim a certain stature, the letter-writer wrote, “[i]t is however necessary … to study a long time in the academy of compliments. No man here dares to venture into the presence of his superiors, or attempts going in or out of a room without a previous education on that purpose.” Men needed training to “salute in the street, walk gracefully, present any thing to another.” A woman could not “even venture to move her fan, without being previously taught.” A lack of ornamental education could paralyze someone’s aspirations to enter European polite society. This critique intended to illustrate some of the differences between European and American culture. The author began the essay by claiming that “Notwithstanding all that has been said, and all I had read of London, I was perfectly sick of it in three weeks.”45 Inadvertently, however, it also critiqued the rise of polite education in the United States. The essay reminded readers that, despite the Revolution, the United States continued to embrace many of the mores of ancien regime Europe.46

253–4. During the early republican period, leaning on the prestige of “great men” became an increasingly problematic political strategy; see Simon P. Newman, “Principles or Men? George Washington and the Political Culture of National Leadership, 1776-1801,” Journal of the Early Republic 12 (Winter 1992): 477–507. 45 Freeman’s Journal, Nov. 21, 1787. 46 More than any other old regime practice, European-style court culture was built into structure of American democracy; see Allgor, A Perfect Union, 9–10.

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Despite attempts to imbue their work with patriotic and nationalistic overtones, teachers of ornamental subjects could not convince everyone of their beneficent motives.

The conception of masculinity that polite education inculcated was one of the starkest ways in which French schools clashed with American revolutionary ideals. The whole project of ornamental education, but especially dancing and art, feminized elite formation and gave women an active role in cultivating status distinctions in postrevolutionary

America. During the Revolution, elite men justified their status by touting their civic and martial virtue, republican attributes that were understood as strictly masculine.47 In embracing ornamental education and Old-World, elite military culture, the Continental officers and other elites blurred the distinction between male and female markers of status in a number of ways. Men and women attended the same schools, even if at different times. Heterosocial dancing assemblies, especially, put them on a similar level.

In taking these classes, men intentionally embraced what they had long understood as a feminine curriculum.48 Even as female education grew more and more serious and academically focused over the early nineteenth century, it still usually differed from male schools. Other subjects that people argued were frivolous, like Latin, retained a masculine connotation.49 Finally, ornamental education was a luxury in traditional

47 On the gendering of republicanism, see Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13 (Autumn 1987): 37–58; and Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (Oct. 1987): 689–721. 48 Sarah Fatherly argues that during the eighteenth century, women began to focus much more on academic subjects, and marginalized ornamental education. Nevertheless, these subjects were a part of the broader part of urban female elite formation; see Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies, 88–9. 49 Kim Tolley, “Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys’ and Girls’ Secondary Schools in the United States, 1794-1850,” History of Education Quarterly 36 (July 1996): 129–153; Margaret A. Nash, “‘Cultivating the Powers of Human Beings’: Gendered Perspectives on Curricula and Pedagogy in Academies of the New Republic,” History of

281 republican terms. It brought pleasure and enjoyment, but nothing substantive. Worse still, dancing and the like could lead to other vices. Quesnay, for instance, had to warn his “enemies” that he intended to prosecute anyone who sought to disgrace him by bringing “any Woman of ill-fame” into his academy.50 In republican thought, luxury was antithetical to virtue. If virtue was masculine then luxury was, by implication, feminine.51 In taking these classes, men intentionally embraced something that they understood as antithetical to republican masculinity, but did so to stake a claim as the leaders of a republic.

Criticism of ornamental education came from elites and non-elites alike. Some

American leaders—who valued, above all, the construction of uniquely American ideals, practices, and identity—embraced “republican preferences for virtue over elegance and socially useful education over ornamental education,” as Richard Brown has argued.52

The opinions of these elites sometimes overlapped with more popular criticisms of the

Europeanized education that gained ground during the 1780s. Even Noah Webster put forth an educational vision not entirely at odds with popular reformers.53 Webster argued that societies existed on a continuum. Education’s role changed as it helped societies progress beyond simplicity. At some point however, education could become a source of

Education Quarterly 41 (July 2001): 239–250; Siobhan Moroney, “Latin, Greek and the American Schoolboy: Ancient Languages and Class Determinism in the Early Republic,” The Classical Journal 96, (Feb. 2001): 295–307; and Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 22–3. 50 New-York Packet, Dec. 20, 1784. 51 Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 418; Bloch, “Gendered Meanings of Virtue,” 44. 52 Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 72–3. 53 Siobhan Moroney, “Birth of a Canon: The Historiography of Early Republican Educational Thought,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Dec. 1999): 476–491, esp. 84-5, offers a profound critique of the historiographical tradition unduly inflating the importance Webster and other canonical writers.

282 corruption. This grew especially likely when, for the “opulent part of civilized nations,

[education] is directed principally to show and amusement.”54 Some popular writers agreed with Webster. One satirist advertised a fake academy teaching dice and cards to

“fashionable youth” and “young Men of Fortune and Family.” If the writer’s meaning was not clear enough, the ad went on to call “gaming” a “polite art.”55 Another writer advertised “An academy for instructing young gentlemen in the science of hair-dressing.”

Mocking the propensity of teachers to emphasize their cutting edge methods, the writer added that he developed his methods “agreeably to the most approved authors and latest discovers made in that valuable branch.”56 Another critic concocted a character,

“Superficialis,” as “a mirror in which the great of the literary world may see themselves” and “may discern every feature of their insignificance.” His “lively sense of his own external excellence” through “flattery and indiscretion at length swelled into vanity.”

“Under the watchful eye of his preceptor, while at Academy,” he “wished and always idolized, profound masters in the profound arts of dress and address.” By the time he finished school, “Superficialis, though in reality contemptible, in appearance commanded some attention.” As polite culture continued to spread, he found it ever easier to hide

“his real littleness.”57

54 Webster, “On the Education of Youth in America,” in Frederick Rudolph, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 44–5. On Webster, see also Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 96–104. 55 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 26, 1787. 56 Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser, Jan. 20, 1791. 57 New-York Packet, Sep. 14, 1790.

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Popular satirists also took aim at language instruction, which was perhaps the most useful part of polite education. One satirical academy would offer “Oriental

Languages and a Hebrew Professor for those who, having finished their studies, have occasion to do business with the Jews.”58 Webster also took issue with foreign language instruction, unsurprising considering his career-long effort to systematize and propagate a uniquely American form of English. His concern with tempering the importance of ancient languages and ornamental branches was not solely about keeping the United

States from sliding into corruption. He argued that at a moment when “our national character is not yet formed,” education needed to teach uniquely American values, culture, and language.59

These critiques of ornamental education were hardly baseless. Quesnay, for his part, tried to downplay its reactionary effects and offered the most trenchant public defense of the curriculum. Anticipating republican critiques, Quesnay claimed that he did “not mean to introduce the LUXURIES, manners or fashions of Europe, but only to support a proper decorum in the Academy.” He argued that his goal was “to convince the inhabitants of the United States of the sincere esteem I entertain for them, and that my only desire is to be useful to them.”60 Quesnay believed it was useful to teach those

“branches of education common in Europe, [which] are wholly unknown, or light attended to, in this country; and in the circle of polite arts to accomplish a youth, you

58 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 26, 1787. 59 Webster, “On the Education of Youth in America,” in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 46–7. 60 Independent Journal, Jan. 1, 1785.

284 have heretofore been under the necessity of sending them to Europe.”61 Beyond keeping

American youths in the United States, Quesnay believed there were compelling geopolitical reasons for the United States to support polite education.

Manners and Diplomacy in the 1780s

More often than not, the larger political purpose of French polite education went unexplained. Advertisements for schools were usually short and not particularly descriptive. But in 1786, Quesnay returned to Virginia to undertake his most ambitious project yet. He chose “Shockoe-Hill” in Richmond as the site to open his “Academy of

Polite Arts.” The Richmond Academy received great fanfare from the outset. Quesnay obtained the financial support of a host of important Virginians to build his own building—he always rented previously. The local lodge of Free Masons supported “this laudable undertaking, founded on the plan of enlarging the education of our youth in the polite personal accomplishments.” And the Masons led a ceremony to lay the

“foundation stone” of the academy “under a salute of cannon.”62 Quesnay based the curriculum on his observations of a multitude of European academies, and would include languages, math, drawing, civil and military architecture, painting, sculpture, engraving, music, “horsemanship,” and dancing among a range of science, history, and common academic subjects.63 The plan was similar to Quensay’s schools in New York,

Philadelphia, and New Jersey, but on a much grander scale. He envisioned the Richmond

61 Independent Journal, Nov. 3, 1784. 62 News of this ceremony spread well beyond Virginia. This account is from the New-York Packet, Jul. 13, 1786. See also, Silverman, Cultural History of the American Revolution, 446–7. 63 Alexandre-Marie Quesnay, “Memoir Concerning the Academy of the Arts and Science of the United States of America at Richmond, Virginia,” in Eighteenth Annual Report of the Library Board of the Virginia State Library, 192-1921, trans. Roswell Page (Richmond: Davis Bottom, 1922), 19.

285 academy to be comprehensive and centralized, with “branch” schools throughout the mid-Atlantic.64

In 1788, Quesnay returned to France to recruit faculty, raise money, and generate support for the Academy. To that end, he published a memoir that discussed his previous schools, explained his vision for the new one, and laid out the broader purpose he thought that polite education served. Though written in support of an exceptionally ambitious project, Quesnay’s Memoir offers more general insights into the goals of polite education in the United States more broadly. That said, Quesnay wrote it for a French audience.65

Earlier in his career Quesnay explained to the American public that “Europe already view[sic] with astonishment, your abilities in the fields of war and politics.” The necessary next step was to “convince them also of your taste for the polite arts and sciences.”66 French manners were particularly important in this regard. As one English writer noted, French manners spread well beyond France’s borders. He argued that “it is certain that [the French] wish to be the arbiters, amongst the nations around them, in taste as well as in principles; in literature and science, as well as in government and morals.”

Academies thus readied “youth to appear with advantage in the world.” In particular, he cited the polite arts, “The principal of these, in the language of schools, are Dancing, the

64 Roberts, “The American Career of Quesnay de Beaurepaire,” 468–71. 65 It was originally published in French as Le Chevalier Alexandre Marie Quesnay de Beaurepaire, Mémoire, statuts et prospectus, concernant l’Académie des sciences et beaux-arts des Etats-Unis de l’ Amérique, établie à Richemond... Présentés à L. L. M. et à la famille royale, par le chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire (Paris: Cailleau, 1788). On its publication history, see Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, “Alexandre-Marie Quesnay De Beaurepaire’s: Mémoire et Prospectus, Concernant l’Académie Des Sciences et Beaux Arts Des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique, Établie À Richemond, 1788,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 63 (July 1955): 280–285. I have relied on a translation done in 1922 by the Virginia State Library. 66 Independent Journal, Nov. 3, 1784.

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Military Exercise, Fencing, Drawing, and Musick.”67 Quesnay contended that promoting the “fine arts” was “sound policy” for the United States.68 Polite education, in short, had a diplomatic function. This simple formulation guided Quesnay’s ambitions for the

Richmond Academy, which he argued provided a mechanism for realizing this important goal. He argued that “Academies are capitals of the sciences, of which it is not believed that the capitals of empires should or even can be deprived.”69 In essence, even as

Americans looked inward, Quesnay thought they also needed to look outward, to consider the appearance that the nation projected on the global stage. The grandeur of

Quesnay’s vision for the school—branch campuses and all—reflected his belief that institutions like the Richmond Academy spread their influence broadly throughout the

United States.

Quesnay’s plan made sense in the diplomatic and geopolitical context of the late eighteenth century. Part of what connected the dominant European nations across religious, economic, and ethnic differences, was a shared culture of arts and education.

Quesnay positioned the Richmond Academy as an early foray into the official global world of cultural institutions. Article IV of the academy guidelines required school officials to “correspond with the Paris royal Academy of Sciences, Painting and

67 William Barrow, An Essay on Education; In Which Are Particularly Considered the Merits and the Defects of the Discipline and Instruction in Our Academies (London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1802), 124, 250, 251. 68 Quesnay, “Memoir,” 23. 69 Ibid., 16. Quesnay’s perspective might also explain why he often offered architectural education. Architecture was clearly a practical skill for individuals, but it also had a nation building purpose. Washington D.C. was meant to look recognizable and legitimate to European audiences. On the French architectural influence on the United States see Roger G. Kennedy, Orders from France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780-1820 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1989).

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Sculpture, the Royal Society of London, the Royal and Imperial Society of Brussels, and other learned societies of Europe.”70 In this way, the Richmond Academy, Quesnay argued, would “form that much needed bridge over the divide which separates Europe from America.”71 In his mind, official learned societies exploited a shared culture of

Enlightenment to function quasi-diplomatically. Quesnay thus made a strong case that

Americans who hoped to “see the bonds of the various nations of Europe with America perpetuated,” needed to think of education as a major part of that project.72

Quesnay also argued that polite culture would foster commercial interactions between nations. In some measure Quesnay had to make an argument like this in order to induce Frenchmen to support his school. Quesnay freely acknowledged his own desire to increase “the relations of France with America, and of binding America to my country by new bonds of gratitude, similarity of tastes, and very intimate intercourse.” Quesnay’s

French supporters saw commercial interchange as among the most useful outcomes of his plan. They suggested that institutions like the Richmond Academy “must promote light and knowledge in all parts of the world, and may even become very useful to commerce, especially in diffusing a spirit of peace, and at length in ensuring by the friendly interchange of the sciences and arts the bonds of which, for the happiness of humanity, ought to unite all nations.”73 Americans also would welcome access to French markets and capital at this point in time. Until the Jay Treaty stabilized relations with England in

70 Quesnay, “Memoir,” 24. 71 Ibid., 16. 72 Ibid., 23. 73 Ibid., 15–6.

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1795, the United States had a vexed relationship with Great Britain.74 Before then, they needed access to French capital. But Quesnay and his supporters both realized that cultivating these shared tastes would not only benefit the United States’ commercial relationship with France. In the same way polite arts built diplomatic bridges with nations other than France, they might build commercial bridges too. All exchange was good exchange.

Some teachers at French ornamental academies also began marketing their schools to aspiring merchants. Dating back to Benjamin Franklin’s Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth, published in 1749, Americans recognized that modern languages often had practical implications for commerce.75 Andrew Brown was one of the most widely advertised French language teachers in Philadelphia. In addition to his day school, Brown offered instruction at night “for the convenience of Gentlemen engaged in business.”76 He aimed at a middling clientele, not necessarily only those learning French for leisure. Joseph Carrier also offered French instruction at night. Carrier, who was from Marseilles, taught pre-teen boys French alongside Italian, and myriad subjects from

Latin and Greek, to fencing, dancing, and navigation. The unifying purpose for Carrier was that all these branches—practical, refined, and ornamental—were “calculated for the inhabitants of a City of Commerce.”77 By fitting men for Atlantic commerce, French evening schools helped integrate the United States into the dominant community of

74 On French capital in the early republic, see Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French, 227–348. 75 Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Printed by Franklin and Hall, 1749), 24–5. 76 Pennsylvania Packet, Aug. 30, 1783; and Sep. 6, 1783. 77 Pennsylvania Packet, Aug. 26, 1783.

289 nations. American nationalists employed a multi-faceted approach to building the legitimacy of the United States on the global stage. French and polite education drew together culture, commerce, politics, and state formation.78 Quesnay’s main contribution, indeed the contribution of French schools of all sorts, was to help Americans cultivate the culture that underpinned the United States’ connection with Europe.

Polite Education and the Creation of a Federal Union

A year before Quesnay published his memoir in France, Nicholas Collin penned

“An Essay on the Means of Promoting Federal Sentiments in the United States, by a

Foreign Spectator.” Collin was a Swedish Lutheran minister, member of the American

Philosophical society, and, by virtue of his rank in his church, an ex officio member of the board of trustees of the new University of the State of Pennsylvania. Though he called himself “foreign,” he had lived in the mid-Atlantic since 1770. The essay did not explicitly mention or defend Quesnay and his academies. But it made a similar argument about the importance of civility, politeness, and manners to the United States’ claims to national legitimacy on a global stage. Printed serially in Philadelphia newspapers from

August to October of 1787, during the waning days of the Constitutional Convention and the early weeks of the ratification crisis, the essay is something of a curiosity. Collin’s essay considered a range of topics, from the problem of fashion and luxury to the need

78 For instance, see Daniel J. Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 204–5. Here am I trying to channel an older conception of the political divisions of the 1780s— between “cosmopolitans” and localists”—into a more up-to-date historiographical context. For these divisions, see Jackson Turner Main, Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 1973).

290 for a stronger national fiscal-military state. The unifying theme was his desire to cultivate “Federal Sentiments” within a “SENTIMENTAL POLITICAL UNION.”79 By this, Collin meant that Americans—elites, at least—needed to feel connected to each other across the vast expanse of the new nation. The union and nationalizing institutions could not exist without these emotional bonds.80

Even more directly than Quesnay, Collin drew connections between polite culture, manners, and the challenges of establishing stable governance. His essay often clumsily connected certain cultural practices with the capacity of the United States to build physical infrastructure and a workable federal union. He acknowledged that “this will appear nonsense to some grave sensible people; but I appeal to competent judges.”

“Without disputing about particulars,” Collin argued that “rational, innocent, ingenious, social amusements are of great consequence to manners and national felicity.” He went on to suggest that “An Assembly room in every township … would excellently promote civilization” in very tangible ways.81

Collin worried, in particular, about what he called the “defective police.” He lamented that “The most frequented roads are often impassable in the winter - public bridges are often for years out of repair, and sometimes till passengers have been in great danger.”82 Collin used the term “defective police” to encompass a range of

79 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 26, 1787. 80 Kate Haulman argues that the essay was part of a much larger effort among Americans to appear “at once appropriately republican and legitimately powerful to various audiences—local, national, and international.” See Haulman, Politics of Fashion, quote on 181, for Collin, see also, 204–9. Sarah Knott also discusses Collin in Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution, 250–2. 81 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 12, 1787. 82 Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 15, 1787

291 infrastructural deficiencies that plagued the young nation.83 Even more broadly, to most

Americans, the “internal police” connoted government’s basic power of regulating society to the benefit of the public good. Though rooted in early modern European governance, Americans grew obsessed with the idea in the aftermath of the Revolution.

The emergence of republican governments gave the people an unprecedented degree of power in framing the meaning of the public good, and determining the power of the state to regulate individual behavior in service of that public good.84

Confused jurisdictions and inconsistencies in legal cultures across space, what

Collin called a “multiplicity of laws,” exacerbated the problems of “defective police.” To

Collin, both were bad omens. “What idea must this give a reflecting person of the government,” he wondered, if it had “not the sense or power to redress the grievance?”85

Both problems—a “defective” internal police and the “multiplicity of laws”—laid bare the difficulty of creating a workable national union in the United States. According to

Collin, westward expansion into territories, which lacked the civilizing institutions of the

East, would only exacerbate the problems of the ‘defective police’ and ‘multiplicity of laws.’ Without careful planning “this part of the union can neither be civilized,

83 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 12, 1787. 84 The foundational works on the idea of internal police in early America are Christopher L. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35– 59; and William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). Also see Laura F. Edwards, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). And on how partisan political cultures shaped ideas about internal police, see John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 178–217. 85 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 17, 1787.

292 governed, nor secured.” From Collin’s perspective, then, the United States’ biggest strength was also its greatest vulnerability. The breadth of the nation embodied its future potential, but it also depended on cooperation between states and regions, which proved difficult. Space often undermined uniform law and, in turn, effective governance and union.86

Collin’s focus on these problems grew out of fears about the United States’ precarious geopolitical position. “If there are any foreign enemies, or domestic foes to this country,” Quesnay guaranteed Americans that “all their arts will be employed to effect a dissolution of the union.”87 Respectable nations did not have to live in fear of sudden attack, but internal vulnerabilities invited it. The multiplicity of laws internally raised questions from abroad about the viability of the American national project.88

Problems of internal governance could undermine the United States’ ability to abide by the law of nations, an essential part of achieving international recognition as a civilized nation or state.89

Collin saw polite education as a solution to these problems, arguing that “Laws have a near connexion with manners, and thereby a great influence on government.”90

He was not alone in this regard. Cesare Beccaria, the famous Italian philosopher,

86 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 17, 1787. 87 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 7, 1787. 88 On the interconnected problems of union and security, see Hendrickson, Peace Pact. 89 Here I follow Golove and Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation,” 975, 985–6. Their work reinterprets Madison’s famous “Vices of the Political System” to highlight the international context in which it was written. This document has long been central to the historians who interpret the founding as a moment when Americans attempted to create a political system that allowed republicanism to thrive; see especially Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 391–468. 90 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 12, 1787.

293 believed that “the sciences, education, good order, security and public tranquility,” should be “all comprehended under the name of police” and as an “object of public economy.”91 As Collin understood the United States’ position in the late 1780s, it was a lack of manners across the young nation that led to the multiplicity of laws which undermined its efforts to claim the status of a ‘civilized state.’92 A society in which the people generally have cultivated manners, could capably harness law to ameliorate societal ills. Manners mattered especially to national aspirations of the United States because, for a host of reasons not the least of which was the way white Americans interacted with slaves and Indians, Europe viewed American claims to civility with skepticism. The United States could say all the right things on the diplomatic stage, but it would matter very little if their communities looked uncivilized on the ground.

Europeans would still not consider the young nation worthy of respect if Americans could not govern effectively across all their territory. By arguing for the centrality of politeness to westward expansion, Collin confronted this dilemma head on. Politeness and polite education would provide a discourse for justifying, and a mechanism for enacting, colonization.93

Like Quesnay, Collin hoped that the United States would create substantial institutions to teach politeness at a grand scale.94 To that end, the “Foreign Spectator”

91 Quoted in Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology, 43. 92 Golove and Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation,” 975. 93 See Eliga H. Gould, “The Laws of War and Peace: Legitimating Slavery in the Age of the American Revolution,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 52–76. 94 For an essay that considers Quesnay, Collin, among a host of other writers interested in national plans for education, see Nelson, “Perceived Dangers of Study Abroad.”

294 essay supported plans for a federal university. Cutting right to the problem of creating effective governance in a large union, Collin argued that “The public education throughout the states, is a great federal concern, as without it no state can be well governed, nor act its part in the confederation with dignity, honor and a federal spirit.”95

In particular, he worried about cultivating the belles lettres. These subjects deserved

“particular attention … because they humanize and refine the human heart.” They “are not merely ornamental,” he added, “but extremely useful by innobling those affections which are the bands of civil society.” Collin thought this was so important, that he also proposed “an academy of Belles Letters … under the patronage of Federal Power.”96 “In proportion as elegant learning is cultivated,” Collin argued, “it will structure manners, religion, laws, and government.” Such institutions would reform American behavior in the aggregate and effectively challenge European critiques of their civility.97

The proposed academy of belles-lettres would also combat the problems of defective union because it would play a role in “qualifying men in several respects for all the important offices of government.” In particular, the belles-lettres cultivated “political eloquence,” which Collin argued “is absolutely necessary in republics.” Political eloquence, he added, “is the offspring of strong sense, great knowledge, sublime fance[sic], warm sensibility, and above all, a noble heart.”98 Those that possessed political eloquence had the capacity to feel and spread federal sentiments. “When after a

95 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 13, 1787. 96 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 15, 1787. On American conceptions of civil society and civilized states, see Golove and Hulsebosch, “A Civilized Nation,” 937–9. 97 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 17, 1787. 98 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 15, 1787.

295 finished education they depart to their different stations, and places of residence,” he wrote, these men “will be so many capital links of the federal union … so many powerful centripetal forces to give it stability.”99 Collin envisioned the alumni of this academy, then, as the agents who would overcome the problem of federalism and institutionalize stable governance across the union. As he put it

When the public education shall distinguish many by political abilities and a polite taste; and enable great numbers to esteem these qualities; the most eminent character will be chose[sic] for the legislature, civil administration, and military command—consequently the government will not only in reality be so much better, but acquire that love and respect from the people, so necessary for its efficacy.100

As they spread throughout the nation, these leaders would combat the problems of

“Defective police” and the “multiplicity of laws.” In turn, this would eliminate one of the main vulnerabilities that Collin feared European nations saw in the United States.101 If that was not enough, Collin reminded his readers that “In foreign negotiations a great deal depends on the address, wit and genius of a minister.” 102 American leaders trained in the belles-lettres would be well-prepared to handle European diplomacy. Like

Quesnay then, Collin’s envisioned that national polite education would socialize some

Americans into European culture in order to bridge the gap between the continents. At the same time, it would also develop American civil society and governance in ways that would command respect from European nations.

99 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 13, 1787. 100 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 13, 1787. 101 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 17, 1787. 102 Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 15, 1787.

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“An Assembly room in every township” Realized

Quesnay felt optimistic about the Richmond Academy’s potential. Richmond’s polite society had “warmly patronized his academy.”103 But the Richmond Academy failed. The French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, the Paris Royal academy of Sciences, the French Academy, and Louis XVI all pledged support for Quesnay’s plan, but the French Revolution threw these institutions into a state of upheaval. Nevertheless, enough funding materialized, and the academy building was erected and served as the site of the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788. In 1789 though, Quesnay himself took an active role in the French Revolution first as a pamphleteer and then as a soldier, finally realizing his unfulfilled martial ambitions. He never returned to the United States.

Without Quesnay at the helm, the school never operated as designed. Shortly after it was finished, the building became a theater, and so it remained into the nineteenth century.104

His propensity for bad timing did not only affect the Richmond Academy. When

Quesnay first started teaching in Philadelphia in late 1779, he entered a city rife with cultural warfare. Philadelphia’s longstanding polite society and salon culture butted up against Pennsylvania’s republican radicalism. Divisions over elite culture exacerbated growing class tensions within the city. This culminated in the so-called Ft. Wilson Riot

103 From an address Quesnay gave to the Royal Society of London, reprinted in Independent Gazetteer, Sep. 6, 1788. 104 Roberts, “The American Career of Quesnay de Beaurepaire,” 468–71; Duveen and Klickstein, “Alexandre-Marie Quesnay De Beaurepaire’s,” 281–2; John G. Roberts, “François Quesnay’s Heir,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 50 (April 1942): 148–50. Like academies, theatres in the early republic were critical sites where elite nationalists attempted to reconcile old-world traditions with republican political culture; see Heather S. Nathans, Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 5–6, 37– 70.

297 about three months before Quesnay opened his first school. During the early 1780s, elite

Philadelphians attempted to make amends and bridge the city’s divisions. Most starkly, the Philadelphia Ladies Association formed to raise money for Continental troops. These elite women physically traversed the city, knocking on the doors of rich and poor

Philadelphians alike, appealing to common cause. In this perilous context, Quesnay’s elitist brand of schooling seemed dangerous. It had the potential to inflame these cultural and class conflicts yet again. Philadelphians would again embrace the elite court culture later in the 1780s. But it took time.105

In the 1780s, New Yorkers had to contend with the aftermath of the burning of the city as well as a long British occupation. Many people focused their attention and money and more pressing matters. In addition, liked Philadelphia, New York had a long and fraught relationship with dancing balls and schools. They served a central function in determining status in the commercial city, especially as traditional sartorial and consumptive means of distinction proved less trenchant amid the consumer revolution.

At the same time, elite New Yorkers used the culture of dance to further integrate themselves, at least culturally, into the British Empire. They did so on rather aristocratic terms, emphasizing court rather than country styles of dance.106 Dance was also a noticeable part of the opulent social life that loyalists and British officers shared during

105 On cultural and class tensions in revolutionary Philadelphia, which tended to be very gendered, see Haulman, “Fashion and the Culture Wars”; and Emily J. Arendt, “‘Ladies Going About for Money’: Female Voluntary Associations and Civic Consciousness in the American Revolution,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Summer 2014); and on dancing schools in particular see Haulman, “Rods and Reels,” 164–7. On the reemergence of polite society in Philadelphia see Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies, 179–84; and Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 106 Zabin, Dangerous Economies, 91–3, 95–100.

298 the occupation of New York. This social world contrasted poignantly with the suffering of revolutionary New Yorkers, most of whom had to leave after the city was burned.

Dance had a troubling legacy in New York, one which future dancing masters in the city would have to overcome.

Elizabeth Town and Newark were among the most urbane towns in New Jersey, in part because of their proximity to New York City. In that way, Quesnay chose wisely when he picked those towns to open schools. But again, the lukewarm reception he received owed much to problems emanating from revolution. Newark and especially

Elizabeth Town suffered during the “forage war” that wreaked havoc across New Jersey during the Revolution. The basic civil and religious infrastructure of these places demanded the attention of residents, likely to the detriment of Quesnay’s plans.107

Quesnay’s grand plans for big institutions teaching a comprehensive curriculum of polite arts simply proved untenable, Collin’s too for that matter. Instead, smaller

French academies teaching less comprehensive curricula, usually combining one or two ornamental subjects, paved the way for the future of polite education in the United States.

These schools began opening their doors around when Quesnay started teaching in

Philadelphia. Though Quesnay looked down on the entrepreneurial men who ran them, these schools seem to have contributed to achieving some of the same geopolitical ends his schools pursued. Collin’s vision of “An Assembly room in every township,” which

107 David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 345–6, 415–8. See also chapter 2, above. On refinement in New Jersey, see Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 223–37.

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“would excellently promote civilization,” took shape in a completely decentralized manner.108

In fact, despite Quesnay’s spectacular failure in Richmond, ornamental education became even more ingrained in mainstream educational culture for both men and women as the 1780s turned into the 1790s. Historians have tended to emphasize the

Enlightenment ideals that drove the expansion of female education and increased the academic rigor of these schools during the early republic. The republican influence on education, historians suggest, was nowhere more evident than in female academies.109

But during the late 1780s, as these changes started to bear fruit, female academies also offered polite and ornamental subjects.110 In 1788, newspapers carried advertisements for a French and painting academy for women in New York City. Young girls at this school spent the morning working on academics and the afternoon attending to non- academic subjects including needlework, drawing and music. Some took additional

108 Pennsylvania Gazette, Sep. 12, 1787. 109 The literature on female education is extensive. See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980); Lynne Templeton Brickley, “Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy, 1792 - 1833” (Ed. D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1985); Margaret A. Nash, “Rethinking Republican Motherhood: Benjamin Rush and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (Summer 1997): 171–91; Margaret A. Nash, Women’s Education in the United States, 1780-1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Lucia McMahon, Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); Mark Boonshoft, “The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Winter 2014): 561–95. 110 See also Tolley, “Significance of the ‘French School.’” For the antebellum period, see Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle, 33–68; Kilbride, An American Aristocracy, 53–77. For a case study of one woman’s attempts to reconcile many visions of female education, including both French and republican, see Catherine Kerrison, “The French Education of Martha Jefferson Randolph,” Early American Studies 11 (Spring 2013): 349–394.

300 lessons on instruments later on, before ending the day with prayer.111 In Philadelphia, a female boarding school teaching “useful Learning and ornamental Accomplishments” opened in 1788. The school taught reading, writing, geography, needle-work, French, music, and dancing. The proprietor also advertised that “Distinct from the above Plan” but open to the students of the school, “the Drawing Academy [was] to be continued as usual.”112 Female boarding schools combined traditionally polite education with the growing academic curriculum directed at young women.

Though grand plans like Quesnay’s fell by the wayside, small schools thrived.

The number of entrepreneurial French, dancing, painting, and drawing teachers increased in major and minor urban centers during the 1790s. Immigrants largely, though not exclusively, from France ran many of the schools. In 1791, a dancing teacher who claimed to come from the Royal Academy of Paris held three dancing balls in

Philadelphia. Weeks later, a “French Painter” advertised in Philadelphia that he planned

“to teach a few students in any branch of drawing.”113 He was not alone. In 1794, two

French architects came to Philadelphia from Paris offering classes and individualized instruction in drawing.114 Another teacher, “from Cape François,” fled the Haitian

Revolution to open a French school in Philadelphia in 1793. His timing could not have been worse. Philadelphia was in the middle of a devastating epidemic of Yellow Fever.

Nevertheless, by the end of the year he was competing for business with another

Frenchman who left Richmond for the vibrant educational marketplace of Philadelphia.

111 New-York Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1788 112 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 27, 1788. 113 The Mail, Dec. 19, 1791; Pennsylvania General Advertiser, Jan. 4, 1792. 114 Philadelphia General Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1794.

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The Haitian immigrant survived the challenge and was still in business three months later.115 Philadelphia drew the most French educators largely because it had an established French neighborhood. But urban centers elsewhere fostered large markets for polite education. New York welcomed a private academy in which a team of foreign teachers offered an incredibly wide range of ancient and modern languages, including

“HEBREW AND ORIENTAL LANGUAGES.” One hailed from Edinburgh, the other from France.116 In the next year, a fencing teacher came to New York from the Academy of Paris.117 Finally, Thomas Adderly, “a professor of Eloquence” from Trinity College,

Dublin offered to teach young students to speak and write French and English “with ease, grace and accuracy.” The educational marketplace in American cities beckoned entrepreneurs from all over.118

Cities in the upper South saw a similar influx of immigrants who opened schools.

As was this case in Philadelphia and New York, these men claimed impressive credentials. “Rev. Dubourg” came to Baltimore from Paris, where he said he ran an academy. In Baltimore, he taught French, English, and Spanish to a small group of students. Baltimore’s female academy advertised that their French teacher had been president of a “college” in France.119 Barring impressive credentials, schools seemed eager to advertise when their French teachers were actually native Frenchmen.120 By

115 Federal Gazette May 22, 1793; Federal Gazette, Nov. 25, 1793; Philadelphia Gazette Feb. 11, 1794. 116 New-York Daily Advertiser, May 7, 1793. 117 New-York Daily Gazette, April 1, 1794. 118 American Citizen, Aug. 16, 1800. 119 Federal Intelligencer, March 2, 1795; Gazette of the United States, Sep. 29, 1795. 120 Federal Intelligencer, Dec. 29, 1795; Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 1, 1796; Baltimore Federal Gazette, March 17, 1796.

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1798, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Alexandria had teachers offering some combination of drawing, dancing and French. Two separate dancing schools, one of which also offered fencing, competed for business on Maryland’s eastern shore.121

Dancing schools emerged in small northern cities as well. Both Lansingburgh and Albany, New York had schools for a time. The Albany school existed partly because of the entrepreneurial and mobile existence of teachers. Mr. Griffiths, who ran the

Albany school, worked for Quesnay in New York City during the 1780s, before heading upriver on his own. Charles Cruzeau, who taught in Lansingburgh, sustained himself by offering his services to schools in nearby towns, in addition to running a series of balls out of an assembly room.122 French architecture also transformed the landscape of the upper Hudson. French architects who initially did business in New York City came north to build country homes for a number of elite families.123 The entrepreneurial spirit and mobility of small-scale French émigrés brought French culture and polite education to a wider range of places than historians might expect at first blush.

The quality of the services that entrepreneurial schools provided is largely unknown. Hoping to convince the public of the need for his school, Quesnay argued that most other teachers of the polite arts in the United States were not reputable. He alleged that many emigrated because they had been chased out of their home countries for

121 Federal Gazette, July 17, 1798; Virginia Chronicle, Feb. 23, 1793; Alexandria Daily Advertiser, Nov. 9, 1801; Rights of Man, Sep. 5, 1798; Rights of Man, Oct. 4, 1798. 122 Albany Gazette, Jan. 22, 1796; American Spy, Sep. 20, 1796. 123 Kennedy, Orders from France, 59–78; John L. Brooke, Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 51.

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“recklessness or misconduct.” These hucksters traveled “from town to town … [and] leave behind them pupils whom they are able to teach nothing more, and to whom often they have taught nothing.”124 There is probably some truth to Quesnay’s statements.

Surely too, some of the titles that foreign teacher claimed were contrived. Nevertheless, teachers built some semblance of competition, a marketplace for polite education, which must have chased out some of the more nefarious characters.

Especially in major cities, certain teachers had long and relatively distinguished careers. Their profile must reflect, at least to some extent, their abilities. James Cox, the teacher who sold his microscope and became a painting teacher, had an incredibly long career in Philadelphia. Early on, however, he honed his craft bouncing around outside of

Philadelphia, including a stint in Albany. By 1798, Cox could thank Philadelphians for supporting his ventures for fourteen years.125 Competition raged among dancing instructors, especially every winter when balls and assemblies happened frequently. Mr.

Sicard ran a dancing assembly in Philadelphia as early as 1793. In 1796 he competed for business with a “Mr. Quesnet.” In 1798, Sicard’s announcement for his seasonal academy sat alongside advertisements for two of his competitors. Sicard’s academy remained in operation in the early nineteenth century, outlasting many of his competitors.126 Likewise, a pair of brothers, Archibald and Alexander Robertson, educated New Yorkers in the visual arts for over a decade. Archibald arrived first. The

124 Quesnay, “Memoir,” 20. 125 Federal Gazette, Sep. 11, 1789; Porcupine’s Gazette, Feb.26, 1798. 126 Philadelphia General Advertiser, Nov. 26, 1793; Philadelphia Gazette, Sep. 21, 1796; Aurora General Advertiser, Nov. 28, 1798; Aurora General Advertiser, Nov. 7, 1803.

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“limner” promptly opened a school, which he christened the Columbian Academy.127

Announcing his brother’s arrival, he touted Alexander’s credentials, noting that he came to the United States from the Royal Academy of Painting in London. Their competitors do not seem to have fared well. In 1797, an artist from Copenhagen floated the idea of opening a drawing academy specializing in portraits and decorations, the Robertsons’ specialty. His business never took off.128 Though they eventually taught separately, the

Robertsons dominated visual arts instruction in New York for decades.129

Reputation meant everything to French teachers and schools. Southern correspondents with knowledge of Philadelphia’s educational marketplace informed their colleagues about where “the fashionable accomplishments may be acquired” and which teachers ran the “fashionable Academy.” Their opinions were shaped by not only by observation but by personal experience. One Philadelphia female academy was a

“particular attraction for me,” explained one man, because his wife received her education there. He went on to note that “the children who frequent it, belong to families among the most wealthy and respectable of the Community.”130

More traditional academic schools, including many denominationally affiliated academies, also adopted French and ornamental subjects into their curriculum. This was significant for the long term viability of polite education in the United States.

Denominations, and alumni of denominational schools, provided some of the steadiest

127 New-York Daily Advertiser, Oct. 15, 1791. 128 Commercial Advertiser, New York, Oct. 2, 1797. 129 New-York Daily Gazette, Oct. 10, 1792; New-York Gazette, April 19, 1802. Archibald Robertson eventually published Elements of the Graphic Arts (New York: David Longworth, 1802). 130 R. Walsh to General Harper, Philadelphia to Annapolis, Sep. 18, 1816, roll 3, Harper-Pennington Papers, MHS. See also Kilbride, An American Aristocracy, 53–77.

305 support for education in the early years of independence. For these schools, with denominational and colonial roots, the decision to adopt ornamental education was necessarily a conscious one. Polite education was in some ways the antithesis of the educational culture that had propelled many students and teachers into leadership roles during the American Revolution. Moreover, these academies illustrate how political changes during the 1790s influenced support for polite education in the United States.

French Academies and Party Politics in the 1790s

As the French Revolution reshaped American party politics during the 1790s it also changed the politics of polite education. Using New Jersey as a case study, it is fairly clear that French polite education caught on first in towns that leaned toward the

Federalist Party through the election of 1800.131 This makes sense considering the particular vision of nationalism that undergirded defenses of the polite arts. The Trenton

Academy was among the first to offer French instruction in New Jersey.132 By 1790, the

Elizabeth Town Academy offered French instruction by a teacher named Patrick

Murdock. Not long after Murdock arrived, a dedicated French school opened in an

“upper room” of the Academy.133 And by the summer of 1791, Elizabeth Town claimed a French boarding school for ladies, which taught French as well embroidery and other arts. The teacher, Madam Capron, began teaching some of Murdock’s students “The art of drawing flowers,” among other skills, for two dollars per quarter. The trustees also

131 All election data comes from the “New Nation Votes” Project, spearheaded by Philip J. Lampi at the American Antiquarian Society, available online athttp://elections.lib.tufts.edu/. 132 Sep. 30, 1785, Trenton Academy Records, Trenton Free Library, 49-50. 133 New-York Packet, May 5, 1789; New-York Daily Advertiser, May 18, 1789; New-Jersey Journal, July 21, 1790.

306 added a female boarding school department to teach polite subjects.134 In 1795, the

Princeton Academy advertised that they offered a similar range of subjects to Elizabeth

Town. The school taught French as one option in their language curriculum. They also

“engaged” reputable teachers to instruct interested students in dancing, singing, and drawing. Le Maire, who taught Fencing in Philadelphia for many years, offered “this liberal Education” for at least one short stint in Princeton as well.135 All three of these schools had various levels of affiliation with the Presbyterian Church. Princeton of course was the site of the New Side College of New Jersey. Elizabeth Town had been the first site of the College, and the local Presbyterian Church founded the academy and directly oversaw it into the 1770s.

Jeffersonian Francophilia changed the political dynamics of polite education.

Though another staunch Presbyterian town and former home of the College of New

Jersey, Newark was a staunchly Jeffersonian enclave in Essex County. As they took care of last minute arrangements before opening the school, the Newark Academy trustees commenced a search for a French teacher.136 Party politics seems to have guided the trustees’ decision to offer French. The school regularly took part in Republican partisan politics, which often focused on the party’s connection with revolutionary France. In

1795, Americans “and a number of the French republicans, at present residing in this place,” held a procession that began at the Academy, celebrating an American victory

134 New-Jersey Journal, June 8, 1791; New-Jersey Journal, March 27, 1793. 135 American Minerva, May 20, 1795; Pennsylvania Packet, Sep. 4, 1790. 136 Jan. 13, 1795; March 9, 1795; and March 30, 1795, all in reel 1, Newark Academy Minutes, N-JHS.

307 over “Western Insurgents.”137 A few years later, the trustees reveled in the success of

French language instruction in the school and the political statement it made. The trustees proudly hosted a number of native Frenchmen at their 1797 student exhibition.

Their guests claimed that the Newark Academy taught French “on easier, more familiar and more useful principles, than in any seminary they had ever seen in this country.”138

The Union Hall Academy—located in Jamaica, New York, in Queens County—was another school in a staunchly Republican town that vested French education with a political purpose. There, French proved more popular than Latin among American students, despite the fact that it cost a dollar or two (twenty-five percent) more per quarter. These students learned French alongside young French immigrants.139 Students at the Bordenton, New Jersey Academy also had French immigrants as classmates.140

Another academy in Philadelphia served as the meeting site for a society that assisted recent immigrants to the United States. Considering that the notice appeared in 1795 and in Benjamin Franklin Bache’s paper, it seems likely that society was Republican and worked mostly with French people.141 In a moment when virulent political controversy over the French Revolution abounded and centered on issues of immigration, this was a powerful statement.

137 American Minerva, Jan. 22, 1795. 138 Greenleaf’s New York Journal, April 22, 1797. 139 This information was published in the annual report of the New York State Board of Regents, which took stock of the progress of chartered academies in the state; American Minerva, March 13, 1795. 140 A French student died in Bordenton; Federal Gazette, July 1, 1790. The French teacher for a time was Anable-Louis Roze de la Fitte du Courteil; Porcupine’s Gazette Philadelphia, May 18, 1797. 141 Aurora General Advertiser, Feb. 26, 1795.

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Federalists, generally speaking, were more comfortable with the polite and refined culture of which ornamental education was a part. This created an odd dynamic.

Federalists supported polite education, but cracked down on the French immigrants who most frequently taught it.142 For a time, Republicans supported French immigration to the United States and Republican educators found French language instruction politically useful. But they shied away from other ornamental subjects that often came with French education. They thus supported the immigrants themselves, but were uncomfortable with one of the chief ways that individual Frenchman made a living. Ultimately, this confused situation and these peculiar partisan dynamics ensured that students in both Federalist and

Republican strongholds would have access to both French language and polite education by the turn of the nineteenth century.

Information available for the curriculum of twelve of the fifteen academies founded in New Jersey by 1795 indicates that seven offered French or ornamental instruction. There is strong extant evidence about the curriculum of two the remaining six academies. For a number of years, both of these schools included foreign languages but not French in their curriculum. Two more schools that did not offer French were located in Bergen County, which still felt the lingering effects of Dutch and German settlement. In neighboring New York, people in Dutch areas often actively avoided integrating themselves into the dominant mores of Anglo-American civil society.143

142 Furstenberg describes how American Republicans’ support of the French Revolution exceeded the moderate sentiments of many of the French émigrés in Philadelphia; When the United States Spoke French, 115–6. This added another layer to the confused the partisan dynamics of support for French polite education. 143 Brooke, Columbia Rising, 133–6, 264–6.

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Finally, there is scant evidence about one academy, which only advertised in the mid-

1780s and did not offer French at the time. The majority of academies in New Jersey offered at least the French language, which kept French teachers employed and left open the possibility that their influence might spread and their curriculum broaden.144 Indeed in 1801, after the Republicans soundly defeated the Federalists and took control of

American politics, Newark welcomed “Trigant De Beaumont and M. O’Duhigg,” two

Frenchmen intent on opening a dancing school.145

In most cases, academies offered ornamental subjects in addition to, not as part of, the main curriculum. Schools often advertised that they made arrangements to instruct students dancing, singing, fencing, or visual arts “at the usual prices, by the most eminent masters,” hired by the schools.146 Some schools added French to the general language course of Latin and Greek. More often schools offered it as something extra. For instance, one academy advertised that “The French language will be taught at such hours as will not interfere with those generally appropriate to ordinary studies.”147

144 As I mention above, the Hackensack, Trenton, Princeton, Newark, Elizabeth Town, and Bordenton Academies all taught French. So did the Morris Academy in Morristown; New-York Daily Advertiser, May 25, 1795; and the Trenton Academy; Sep. 30, 1785, Trenton Academy Records, Trenton Free Library. The Orange Dale Academy did not provide any foreign language instruction early on. Later, the school offered only Greek and Latin; New-Jersey Journal, Oct. 16, 1793; Centinel of Freedom, May 12, 1801. The same was true of the Woodbridge Academy; New-Jersey Journal, Oct. 8, 1794. The Columbia Academy in Bergen County also offered classical languages, but not French; Mercantile Advertiser, Dec. 21, 1801. The one advertisement for the Schralenburg Academy in Bergen County makes no mention of French; New- Jersey Journal, May 27, 1795. Nor does the one advertisement that outlines the curriculum of the Allentown Academy; New-Jersey Gazette, Nov. 8, 1784. I have found no information on the curriculum of the Bridgetown, Burlington, or Middletown academies. 145 Centinel of Freedom, Sep. 8, 1801. 146 New York Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 1, 1798. 147 Philadelphia Gazette, Oct. 17, 1801.

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Separating the subjects out added to the cost of school. Education was expensive and already hard to imitate for middling people. The most expensive part of an academy education was the boarding costs, which could be four or five times more than tuition.148

For those students who lived in a town or city with an academy, but would not have been able to go otherwise, taking ornamental branches in addition to a language or math curriculum could prove difficult. French, though sometimes included with Latin and

Greek, could be expensive when it was not. The George-Town Academy in Washington

D.C. offered a fairly comprehensive curriculum, both academic and ornamental. For a year, the academic curriculum cost twenty-six dollars, twenty-eight if the student did not board at the school. Drawing instruction cost an additional nine dollars every three months, dancing classes an additional eight.149 These were not insignificant expenses.

That these subjects existed as something extra also reinforced the notion that they accomplished something different than academic subjects.

Even after the French Revolution, polite educators continued to argue that they created connections between American elites and European-style refined culture writ large. The longstanding idea that French and “the European languages” were ‘so useful to those in the mercantile line, and ornamental to the private gentleman” remained.150

Teachers still touted their European connections. A team of dancing masters in

Baltimore, for instance, advertised that “they have had the honor of introducing in

London and many fashionable circles of Europe.” Another dancing instructor in

148 For example, in 1790 the Elizabeth Town Academy charged 20£ for boarding and only 5£ tuition. 149 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Jan. 23, 1798. 150 Philadelphia Gazette, Oct. 17, 1801; Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, April 1, 1802.

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Philadelphia bragged that he “has lately received from Paris the particulars of the New

Mode of Tuition, and intends to instruct his Scholars in a manner entirely different from that which has been heretofore in use.”151 Artists, too, continued to advertise that they painted miniatures “in the present London style” and could teach it to interested students.152 Most starkly, Americans’ veneration of Major John Andre remerged during the early republic. “A MONODY on the unfortunate MAJOR ANDRE,” was made available to “Country merchants, Academy’s, and Public Library’s … on the most reasonable terms” by an art teacher in 1792.153 The drawing teacher at an academy in

Bordentown, New Jersey hewed most closely to the line of argument that Collin and

Quesnay made. Amable-Louis-Rose De Lafitte Du Courteil disparaged parents who

“refuse to their children the exercise of horse, dance, fencing, drawing, music, &c. all of which are agreeable and often useful arts.” He argued that Americans should learn from the French. In France, “academies or societies of men of letters patented by the king, a number of which received a maintenance premiums” proved the benefit of polite arts to the nation. He thus challenged Americans to “naturalize the arts and sciences in your own country,” which would bring “glory to a polished nation.”154 Though he did his part

151 Baltimore Federal Gazette, Oct. 10, 1798; Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, Oct. 31, 1803. 152 Morning Chronicle, Jan. 22, 1805. Kariann Yokota has argued that material culture, of which art is clearly a part, laid bare the peculiar dilemmas of settler post-colonialism. The United States sought to balance their urge to “unbecome British” and cultivate a new identity, with the desire to prove their civility on European terms. See Kariann Yokota, “Postcolonialism and Material Culture in the Early United States,” The William and Mary Quarterly 64 (Jan. 2007): 263–270; and more broadly, Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 153 New-York Daily Advertiser, Oct. 20, 1792. 154 Amable-Louis-Rose De Lafitte Du Courteil, Proposal to Demonstrate the Necessity of a National Institution in the United States of America, for the Education of Children of Both Sexes. To Which Is Joined, A Project of Organization (Philadelphia: Printed for G. Decombaz, 1797), 30, 28, 32.

312 by teaching polite arts at a local academy, Courteil revived the argument that Americans should create a national institution for the purpose.

Europeans still provided the innovations in American dance, art, and models of polite culture more broadly. This served a very specific end. In 1803, a Philadelphia dancing teacher explained that “One day every fortnight will particularly be developed to instruct his pupils in the graces and manners necessary to be observed in all genteel societies.”155 By the early-nineteenth century, the United States had survived twenty years of independence, a change in constitution, the geopolitical morass of balancing relations with both France and England during the French Revolution, and a peaceful transition of power between political parties. Yet many Americans still believed that

American elites needed to emulate Europe in an effort to garner geopolitical respect for the young United States.

Conclusion

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the American Revolution and the development of the American sate and law occurred in an international context. Polite education is illustrative of how the matters of diplomacy and geopolitics also reached down to shape cultural, social, and political life on the ground in many American communities. Americans believed that Europeanized education would help secure

American independence in a hostile world. In Philadelphia and later Washington D.C., the sort of ornamental accomplishments that French schools taught proved important for creating the court culture and political theater that republicans so feared but European

155 Aurora General Advertiser, Nov. 7, 1803.

313 diplomats required.156 Yet at some point the logic became inescapable: though adopted to culturally legitimize the United States in the world, ornamental education had come to shape American patterns of elite formation and political culture. The polite arts provided another way for elites to separate themselves from the body of the people during the early republic.157 In the name of independence, polite education left standing some of the old world behaviors, distinctions, values, and gender norms that the Revolution had supposedly helped to destroy.

156 See Fredrika J. Teute, “Roman Matron on the Banks of Tiber Creek,” and Jan Lewis “Politics and the Ambivalence of the Private Sphere,” both in Donald R. Kennon, ed., A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic (Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1999), 89–121, 122–54; Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America, 327; Allgor, Parlor Politics, 46, 63; Allgor, A Perfect Union; Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames, 133–6; and Boonshoft, “Litchfield Network.” 157 See also Tamara Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 17–22. Thornton observes a similar trend among the Boston elite who cultivated a demonstrable elite social identity through horticulture and the construction of landed estates based on British models. She argues this was in part a reaction to the separation of social power and political power that accompanied the American Revolution. The classic statement of the process of separating social and political power is Jackson Turner Main, “Government by the People: The American Revolution and the Democratization of the Legislatures,” William and Mary Quarterly 23 (July 1966): 391–407. Though focused on quantifiable differences in the makeup of officeholders, Main argues that there was also an intellectual shift in how Americans conceived of the proper relationship between ruler and ruled, esp. 399, 407.

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Chapter 6: Feigning Consensus: The States, Civil Associations, and Counter-Revolution

In academies, nationalistic elites created a locally-grounded institution that served

American geopolitical interests. Yet the Revolution had also unleashed an idealistic reform impulse that threatened academies. Especially in a world devoid of legal hereditary distinction, education necessarily played an outsized role in constructing social and political order in hundreds of communities throughout the United States. To meet the needs of a new republic, and all that republican governance entailed, many Americans would argue that the United States needed a new, state-sponsored, and more democratic type of education that taught ordinary people how to act as responsible citizens.

Implicitly and explicitly, these calls for reform challenged the prevailing academy system, which focused predominantly on training elites and credentialing them as political leaders. While some scholars have credited republican ideals and the Revolution with spurring on the development of more inclusive—at least for white males—common schools, it took until well into the nineteenth century for this to become the norm. In the interim, academies thrived thanks to support from state governments and powerful, nationalistic civil society associations. The decision of states and leading association to favor—in practice if not in principle—schools organized and run by well-connected elites had profound consequences. Their support created an illusion of consensus around academies, and legitimized the hierarchies they created.

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In recent decades, scholars have debated the nature of the relationship between education and state formation. Across geographic boundaries, this literature has focused on the emergence of educational systems that offered widespread access to education in early national contexts.1 Some scholars have argued that differences in educational systems from nation to nation are a product of varying trajectories of state formation and ideological idiosyncrasies in a given society.2 To the contrary, other scholars have argued that schools systems are born of social conflict, that the formation of national education is a fundamentally political process.3 From this vantage, it becomes apparent that local associations within civil society at times created educational markets that surpassed the state in its ability to provide education. By spurring on educational development, local organizations actually infused the state with social and financial capital and expanded its capacity to govern. Over time, the state co-opted these organizational models to serve the educational needs of citizens, and eventually to provide widespread public education. The origins of state-run education, and perhaps even the modern state itself, lay in civil society.4 Civil associations were absolutely essential to the development of education during the early republic. Yet in early

1 For a broad overview, see the essays in Kim Tolley, ed., Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 2 Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990). 3 Margaret S. Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems (London: Sage, 1979). 4 Nancy Beadie, “Education, Social Capital, and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspective: Preliminary Investigations,” Paedagogica Historica 46 (2010): 15–32; for the American context, see Carl F. Kaestle, “Common Schools before the ‘Common School Revival’: New York Schooling in the 1790’s,” History of Education Quarterly 12 (December 1972): 465–500; Nancy Beadie, “Toward a History of Education Markets in the United States An Introduction,” Social Science History 32 (Spring 2008): esp. 64; and Nancy Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 16, 158–75, 320.

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America, the state played a central and often unacknowledged role in this process.

Throughout the region, state legislatures passed laws and granted privileges that provided support to certain schools and not others. The decision by states to offer limited support and funding to certain schools—which also drew support from certain voluntary associations— determined which civil associations and schools would thrive in the first place. In practice, the states funneled support to academies founded by elite networks that tended to serve elite interests. Privately-run academies, and the civil society associations that supported them, exerted a powerful influence over the process of state formation in the early United States precisely because state governments supported education only in a very limited way. This coordinated action shaped education’s influence on the social and political development of the early republic more than the initial, halting, attempts at creating widespread public common schooling.

The Politics of Big Government and the Failure of Educational Reform

By the end of the 1780s, academies dotted the landscape of the mid-Atlantic.

Though initially most had their roots in academies and networks from the colonial period, their success spread the institutional form to new audiences. The rise of the academy as the dominant educational institution in the post-revolutionary United States was far from inevitable. For the most part, Americans simply assumed that groups would create, sustain, and attend academies and colleges without those institutions receiving government support. Most people who thought about education paid scant attention to academies. Rather, Americans’ republican ideology and their revolutionary experience gave new life to the ideal of an informed citizenry. Education for common people was

317 especially important to achieving this ideal, and where academies failed most clearly. So

“[i]f American leaders were going to lay the institutional foundations for an informed citizenry, they would have to invent them.” Thomas Jefferson proposed the quintessential plan of this sort, which would have created a two-tiered school system in

Virginia to train both elites and the common informed citizenry. This never passed the legislature. Indeed, bills to fund relatively inclusive and widespread public education fell through time and again.5 During the late 1780s and into the 1790s, elite reformers increasingly turned to national plans for educational systems. Benjamin Rush, George

Washington, and many others advocated a national university. These plans foundered even more spectacularly than ambitious plans at the state level.6

Ironically, elite reformers who wanted to create an informed citizenry, and the average Americans who wanted better education for their children, shared common goals but could not create common cause. For example, Noah Webster—a fairly elitist educator, reformer, magazine editor, and Federalist spokesmen—took issue with the classical language instruction that tended to dominate academies. Most of “the people,” who reformers wanted to convert into an informed citizenry, would have shared this

5 Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 74–82, 85–6, 98–100, quote on 74; Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan, Men of Letters in the Early Republic: Cultivating Forums of Citizenship (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA., by the University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 105–6; and Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 471–4. 6 Rita Koganzon, “‘Producing a Reconciliation of Disinterestedness and Commerce’: The Political Rhetoric of Education in the Early Republic,” History of Education Quarterly 52 (Aug. 2012): 403–429, esp. 412-7; Jonathan Messerli, “The Columbian Complex: The Impulse to National Consolidation,” History of Education Quarterly 7 (Dec. 1967): 417–431; and Adam R. Nelson, “The Perceived Dangers of Study Abroad, 1780-1800: Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Origins of the American University,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 175–97.

318 distaste. Latin and Greek did not offer them much of practical value. Webster’s rationale for deemphasizing the dead languages did not come from any egalitarian sentiments.

Rather, it grew out of his life-long effort to systematize and document an American form of English. He believed that at a moment when the nation’s government was in limbo and “our national character is not yet formed,” education needed to “not only diffuse a knowledge[sic] of the sciences, but … implant, in the minds of the American youth, the principles of virtue and of liberty; and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government.”7 Webster envisioned the United States’ national identity as republican and

English-speaking. Learning foreign languages diverted students’ attention. In similar ways, Webster advocated teaching American students the geography of the United States.

His vision for geographical education privileged the nation state above the local or the cosmopolitan.8 Webster was not inherently imposed to the idea of an entrenched elite, but his critique of language instruction echoed popular critiques of prevailing education.

Benjamin Rush, who proposed the creation of a universal school system in

Pennsylvania, also recognized the pitfalls of emphasizing Latin and Greek. The

“common people,” Rush argued, “do not despise scholars, because they know more, but because they know less than themselves.” Rush believed that certain scholarly pursuits required specialized knowledge, and he never advocated eliminating classical education.

Rather, he disagreed with the prevailing assumption that knowledge of Latin and Greek

7 Webster, “On the Education of Youth in America,” in Frederick Rudolph, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 44–5; Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 26, 1787. 8 Martin Brückner, The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity (Chapel Hill: Published for the Ommohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 142–59.

319 was uniformly the pinnacle of knowledge. For as long as this way of thinking persisted, education “will always be confined to a few people.” Rush argued that “It is only by rendering knowledge universal, that a republican form of government can be preserved in our country.” Ultimately, focusing on classical languages was counter-productive.

Instead of creating a general desire among “the people” for education, the classical languages bred animosity toward formal schooling. Rush concluded that limiting the importance of the classical languages “will have a tendency to destroy the prejudices of the common people against schools and colleges.” Expanding educational access for “the common people” would limit the opposition to more advanced learning. Basic education would then teach people the value of more advanced education.9

Nevertheless, the broader worldview of many elite reformers undermined the popular appeal of their educational ideas. Though many reformers believed that basing social and political power on ornamental learning was unsustainable, they worried less about these abuses than about curbing the ignorance of non-elites. For many elites, the need for educational reform rose out of the democratization of the state legislatures during the Revolution, which brought a host of—to their mind at least—uneducated country bumpkins into office. Rooting their push to spread education in their disdain for popular government was a fairly difficult position to defend. Indeed it was self

9 Benjamin Rush, "Observations Upon the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages..." in Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, ed. Michael Meranze (Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 1988), 15, 25. Rush and Webster, like many Americans, limited their attacks to the Latin and Greek languages, while still revering classical history; see Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 29–31, 42–3. On the importance of Roman history to American revolutionaries, see Eran Shalev, Rome Reborn on Western Shores: Historical Imagination and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009).

320 defeating.10 Elite reformers advocated a more inclusive and expansive vision of education in order to tame the democratic tendencies unleashed by state legislatures, the exact bodies that could feasibly enact reform and create public education.11

Elite plans for state-sponsored education thus stoked many Americans’ existing fears about the undemocratic potential of active government. At the very same time as

Rush, Webster, and others advocated educational reform, they also supported the ratification of the United States Constitution, a national political solution designed, in part, to rein in the excesses of democracy at the state level.12 Not incorrectly, many

Americans came to associate the policies of elite educational reformers with Federalists’ attempts to roll back many of the gains that ordinary white men had made during the

10 Peter S. Onuf, “State Politics and Republican Virtue: Religion, Education, and Morality in Early American Federalism,” in Toward a Usable Past: An Inquiry into the Origins and Duplications of State Protections of Liberty, ed. Paul Finkelman and Stephen E. Gottlieb (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 91–116, quote on 107. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 391–468, remains the best discussion of elite cultural anxieties during the 1780s. For an analysis that rejects the connection between fears of instability and visions of education in the founding era, see Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 1–2. 11 Jackson Turner Main, “Government by the People: The American Revolution and the Democratization of the Legislatures,” William and Mary Quarterly 23 (July 1966): 391–407. 12 The idea that the Constitution was a counter-revolutionary document goes back to Charles Austin Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913); but see also Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 391–467. More recently, Woody Holton has shown that while certain proponents of the Constitution believed it was necessary to check the democratic excesses of the states, other Americans actually believed the state governments were not responsive enough to the people; see “An ‘Excess of Democracy’: Or a Shortage?: The Federalists’ Earliest Adversaries,” Journal of the Early Republic 25 (Oct. 2005): 339–382; “Did Democracy Cause the Recession That Led to the Constitution?,” Journal of American History 92 (Sep. 2005): 442–469; and for a fuller account, see Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). These conflicting views of the 1780s notwithstanding, Terry Bouton has shown convincingly that many average Americans’ experiences on the ground in Pennsylvania led them to view the Constitution as an integral part of a broader effort to use government institutions at all levels to stem the tide of post-revolutionary democracy; see “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania,” Journal of American History 87 (Dec. 2000): 855–87; as well as Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Revolution. No matter how much they agreed on education, most populist advocates of educational reform would never trust people who also supported Federalist constitutional and institutional nationalism. Their sensibilities clashed with the elite reformers on virtually every substantive issue besides schooling. They could not agree on the proper role or optimal size of government, the relative importance of local or national attachments, or on how responsive government should be to the people.13

Popular opposition to state support of academies actually reflected these concerns about governmental overreach. In 1785, the Maryland state legislature considered a bill to raise $3,000 for two “colleges,” though they were probably actually academies. An opponent quickly registered his complaints in the local newspaper. Revealing his distaste for the elitist pretensions of academies the essayist poked fun at the “pompous accounts of [academies] in all the News-Papers.” Mostly, though, he voiced concerns about allowing government to undertake such a big project. He questioned how effectual public funding for education had ever been, even for free grammar schools. But he found this proposal especially troubling. The essayist claimed that the ultimate ambition of legislature was to use these schools as the roots of a state university system. He conjured up an of the institution “striding across the bay like a huge coloss.” For this reason, above all, the essayist concluded that the proposal was “an idle foolish whim.”14 Painting the institution as a “huge coloss” likely stirred up more general fears about the

13 Onuf, “State Politics and Republican Virtue,” 102–7. For the impact of localism and fears of big government on education reform, see Theodore R. Sizer, The Age of Academies (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, 1964), 45; Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); and Brown, Strength of a People, 85–6. 14 Maryland Journal, May 20, 1785.

322 consolidation of governmental power.15 In fact, concerns about the size of government overshadowed the congruity between elite and popular ideas about republican education and undermined broader efforts to reform education and challenge the importance of academies.

The Rise of State Support of Academies

The failure of elite and popular educational reformers to build a consensus left a vacuum in which the academy emerged as the leading type of educational institution.

The impetus among Americans to provide some semblance of state support for schools did not die with plans for state education systems. Instead, Americans harnessed the power of state legislatures to double down on academies, the very institution they hoped to overhaul or supplant. In similar ways, both by design and happenstance, state legislatures used lotteries, incorporation law, and funding schemes to support academies.

All of these means of support tended to favor already-existing institutions, and rarely

15 Often, Americans used the phrase ‘consolidation’ as short-hand for the nefarious potential of governmental power. For instance, Jackson Turner Main has shown how opponents of the Constitution used ‘consolidation’ as a rhetorical tool to criticize what they saw as the excessive power that the new national government would wield; see The Antifederalists; Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 120–9; see also Jack P Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607- 1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 160–1. Historians tend to think that Americans fought about the reach of the state and its reach into society at the national level. Recent scholarship has shown that during the Confederation period and early republic, Americans fought similar battles about the power that state governments should wield over local institution building and civil society; see for instance Brian Phillips Murphy, “Empire State Building: Interests, Institutions, and the Formation of States and Parties in New York, 1783-1845” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Virginia, 2008), 2–42; Johann N. Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 10–32; Douglas Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); and John L. Brooke, Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 48–56.

323 emboldened new groups to build schools from scratch. Elite networks did the heaviest lifting, marshalling and channeling enough social capital behind academies to warrant the state’s attention and backing. While academies remained under the control of small groups of elites during the 1790s and 1800, many would carry the official imprimatur of state governments.

Beginning in the 1780s, but with increasing frequency during the 1790s and

1800s, state governments authorized academies to hold lotteries.16 American experiments with lotteries date back to well before the Revolution. During the colonial period groups used lotteries to raise money for various municipal improvements.

Sometimes lotteries operated without public sanction. State-authorized lotteries, though, lent credence to claims that the object of a lottery would serve the public good. During the early republic, lotteries continued to fund infrastructure, such as roads and canals. In the absence of establishment or tax support for denominations, churches also increasingly turned to lotteries to raise fund. Nevertheless, lotteries remained a somewhat subversive technology. People remained cautious about playing the lottery. Projects that seemed to have stable backing and would likely benefit the public good would receive the most widespread support. Academies with elite support were a better bet, quite literally, than many other sorts of schools. They had a public board of trustees that lottery players

16 Scott King-Owen, “The People‘s Law: Popular Sovereignty and State Formation in North Carolina, 1780-1805” (Ph. D. Diss., Ohio State University, 2011), 230; Beadie, “Toward a History,” 55–6. On lotteries generally, see Neal Elizabeth Millikan, “‘Willing to Be in Fortune’s Way:’ Lotteries in the Eighteenth-Century British North American Empire” (Ph. D. Diss., University of South Carolina, 2008).

324 could hold accountable. And often they already had raised significant capital.17 So while academies frequently used lotteries to generate capital, projects to build common schools and free schools rarely did.

Generally speaking, academy trustees asked to hold a lottery when subscriptions, tuition, and the usual fundraising mechanisms proved inadequate. Though states did not directly fund academies through lotteries, the privilege to hold one enabled the trustees to accomplish something they could not without state intervention. In this way, lotteries allowed governments to step in and exert a great deal of support for a school without actually spending tax dollars. Lotteries themselves were not above critique, but they did not burden citizens to the extent that direct taxes for education would.

Maryland seems to have authorized the first lotteries in support of academies in the years after the Revolution. As enrollments at the Washington Academy grew precipitously during the first half of the 1780s, the trustees envisioned an ambitious plan for improving the school. They hoped to erect a bigger building, expand the library, and purchase cutting-edge mathematical and scientific equipment. To do so, they found that they needed both a subscription and a lottery.18 The George Town Academy attempted to use a lottery to raise £1400, with the goal of purchasing a schoolhouse. The initial

17 There is a dearth of work on lotteries in early America. For the most compelling analysis of lotteries in the period, on which I base my discussion here, see Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), 68–70. On the importance of lotteries in one particularly dramatic moment during the mid-eighteenth century, see Jessica Choppin Roney, “‘Ready to Act in Defiance of Government’: Colonial Philadelphia Voluntary Culture and the Defense Association of 1747– 1748,” Early American Studies 8 (2010): 358–385. For a survey, see also Millikan, “Willing to Be in Fortune’s Way.” 18 William Smith, An Account of Washington College, in the State of Maryland. Published by Order of the Visitors and Governors of the Said College, for the Information of Its Friends and Benefactors (Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph Crukshank, 1784), 49.

325 drawing occurred in the autumn of 1784 and the Academy held another lottery in the summer of 1785.19 Virginia and North Carolina acted slower, but ultimately began to use lotteries to help fund academies. North Carolina adopted the practice by the late 1790s, while the first lotteries to support academies in Virginia seem to have happened in the early 1800s.20

In Pennsylvania, the state’s radical revolutionary history made the question of lotteries particularly tense. In 1788, the state council blocked a bill that would have prohibited lotteries. The council reasoned that the bill “was calculated to prevent benefactions to the Academy and exclude polite literature.”21 Nevertheless, the state legislature remained hesitant to grant requests to run lotteries. In 1789, the York

Academy asked to hold a lottery to help pay off the remaining debts they incurred in trying to build the school. The local Episcopal Church organized the effort, but they had trouble securing all the subscriptions that people promised. The legislature tabled the request.22 In the mid 1790s, John Poor petitioned the legislature for permission to hold a lottery and raise funds for his female academy. Despite the success of Poor’s famous

Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, which legislature incorporated in 1792, they

19 Virginia Journal; Sep. 16, 1784; Nov. 18, 1784; and Maryland Journal, May 31, 1785. 20 Charles Lee Coon, ed., North Carolina Schools and Academies, 1790-1840: A Documentary History (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton printing Company, state printers, 1915), 17–8. The Washington-Henry Academy, which first came together in 1778, held a lottery in 1802. For the school’s founding, Jan. 26, 1778, subscriptions folder, Washington-Henry Academy Trustee Records, VHS. For the lottery, Virginia Argus, July 24, 1802. After the Washington Academy held theirs, notices for lotteries benefitting academies became much more commonplace in Virginia newspapers. The Virginia Assembly granted the Belfield Academy permission to hold a lottery two years later; Petersburg Intelligencer, March 6, 1804. The Richmond Academy held one the next year; Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 12, 1805. 21 Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 27, 1788. 22 Independent Gazetteer, Nov. 21, 1789.

326 denied Poor’s petition.23 Just a few years later, though, the Pennsylvania legislature proved much more eager to support academies. In 1798, the legislature authorized the

Lower Dublin Academy to hold a lottery to raise up to $5,400 dollars.24 Within the next two months, the legislature funded a number of schools outright; the Pittsburgh Academy received $5,000, while another $4,000 went to fund an academy and free schools in

Bucks County.25 Even as the Pennsylvania legislature seemed to grow more comfortable supporting education, the state’s factional politics remained deeply contested. Into the nineteenth century, academies faced the real prospect that the legislature would deny their petitions for support. Neither the legislature’s records nor the records of academies’ expound at length on why petitions failed or succeeded, but certainly the political situation explains a great deal.26

In New Jersey, the revolutionary histories of a number of academies paved the way for the legislature’s early support of lotteries. Many of the earliest lotteries in the state indemnified a town or association for damages to academies that occurred during the war. In 1791, for instance, the assembly authorized Elizabeth Town to hold a lottery

23 Poor’s school was the first incorporated female academy in the United States. For the incorporation, see The Mail, Feb. 16, 1792. The legislature’s rejection of the petition is in, Carlisle Gazette, Jan.6, 1796. Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 22–3. 24 Gazette of the United States, Feb. 9, 1798. 25 For Pittsburgh, New York Commercial Advertiser, March 31, 1798; for Bucks County, Carlisle Gazette, April 11, 1798. 26 For instance, the legislature denied the Frankford Academy’s petition to hold a lottery in 1806; see Dec. 26, 1805; and July 26, 1806, Frankford Academy Minute Book, HSP. The importance of political conflict to civil society had a long history in Pennsylvania by the early republic. In Philadelphia during the colonial period changing political circumstances bred contestation over the founding of voluntary associations; see Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: Origins of American Political Practices in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 80–103.

327 to raise money to rebuild both the local courthouse and academy, which they noted

“during the late war were occupied for the use of the United States, and burnt by the enemy.”27 The assembly passed the bill, and the council unanimously concurred a few days later.28 The trustees of the Newark Academy used a nearly identical line of argument first in an effort to get Congress to indemnify them. They also petitioned the state assembly for permission to hold a lottery. The trustees argued that funds raised through the lottery would “enable them to complete the Academy, which was destroyed during the late War by Fire, while it was appropriated by the late American Army as a

Guard-House.” The vote passed the assembly with an overwhelming twenty-nine to six majority.29

The overwhelming support in the legislature notwithstanding, using lotteries even to help rebuild academies damaged during the war still elicited criticism. After the legislature granted them permission to run a lottery, the trustees of the Newark Academy

27 New-Jersey Journal, Dec. 14, 1791. 28 Votes and Proceedings of the Sixteenth General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a Session Begun at Trenton on the 25th Day of October, 1791, and Continued by Adjournments. Being the First Sitting (Burlington, NJ: Printed by Isaac Neale, 1791), 23–4; A Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislative- Council of the State of New-Jersey, Convened in General-Assembly, at Trenton, on Tuesday, the Twenty- Fifth Day of October, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-One (Burlington, NJ: Printed by Isaac Neale, 1791), 8–9; Acts of the Sixteenth General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a Session Begun at Trenton the 25th Day of October, 1791, and Continued by Adjournments. Being the First Sitting. (Burlington, NJ: Printed by Isaac Neale, 1791), chap. 347. 29 Votes and Proceedings of the Seventeenth General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a Session Begun at Trenton on the 23d Day of October 1792, and Continued by Adjournments. Being the Second Sitting (Trenton, NJ: Printed by Day and Hopkins, 1793), quote on 113, and for the vote, 123. For the trustees’ plan to ask for restitution from Congress, see Sep. 26, 1792; and for the decision to ask for a lottery, see April 13, 1793, both in Newark Academy Minutes, NJHS, 12-3. Congress delayed answering the trustees; see Federal Gazette, Feb. 8, 1793. Congress ultimately approved the petition; see National Gazette, Feb. 13, 1793. The Wilmington, Delaware Academy also passed legislation through Congress “to compensate the corporation … for the occupation of, and damage done to the said school, during the late war”; see The Mail, April 14, 1792; and April 16, 1792.

328 published a plan for administering it.30 An essayist calling himself “A Friend of the

People” attacked the lottery in print. The bulk of the essay focused on a discrepancy that

“A Friend” noticed between how much money the legislature authorized the trustees to raise, and how much money the plan actually seemed to raise. By his calculation, the trustees would take in around £400 more than they should have. The discrepancy should make the public “know and feel the necessity of circumspection.” Channeling the conspiratorial rhetoric of the day, “A Friend” argued that while governments possessed the “power to confer certain privileges” to individuals and groups, when they exceeded the grant of power, “evil consequences” were sure to follow. More generally, “A Friend” also reminded his readers that “lotteries are not only impolitic, as they injure the community, but also immoral.” With this final rhetorical flourish, “A Friend” took aim at the trustees’ most important argument in favor of the lottery: that by benefiting their academy, it served the common good.31

Another essayist writing under the pseudonym “A Farmer” defended the Newark lottery managers. The essay began by dismantling “A Friend’s” argument that the lottery

30 The plan for the lottery was published as a broadside; “Scheme of the Newark Academy Lottery, (of Only One Class) to Finish and Compleat an Academy in the Town of Newark, Agreeably to an Act of the Legislature of the State of New-Jersey,” 1793. On fears of special privileges granted to incorporated non- governmental associations in the context of the American transition to self-government, see Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” William and Mary Quarterly 50 (Jan. 1993): 51–84. 31 New-Jersey Journal, Aug. 21, 1793. The foundational work on the conspiratorial nature of American politics is Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: And Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). On the ways that republicanism shaped this sort of discourse, see Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (July 1982): 401–441; and Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Enlarged Edition. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 144–59. On the political mechanisms and privileges that gave rise to these republican fears, see Bailyn’s The Origins of American Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968).

329 would raise more money than the legislature authorized. “A Farmer” then went on the offensive, countering that A “Friend was a dangerous member of the community.”

Dismissing critiques of lotteries “that have been published for ages past,” “A Farmer” wondered what might cause “A Friend” “to come forward at this time, to oppose this particular lottery.” Jealousy, he concluded, motivated his opponent’s invective. Surely

“A Friend” possessed “a malevolent heart, fraught with malice and envy, at seeing an elegant and beautiful academy, erecting in a neighboring town, which may probably exceed the one in the town he lives in.” “A Farmer” then compared “A Friend’s”

“diabolical disposition” with the “philanthropic soul” of the Academy’s trustees, who acted “purely to serve the public.” Even still, “A Farmer” acknowledged the importance of checking potential abuses of power especially when “public monies” were involved.

Both sides of this debate, then, recognized the deep significance of state support, even through something as indirect as a lottery. Granting privileges to an association raised questions about corruption and the state’s power to favor certain institutions and groups over others.32

These debates aside, the New Jersey legislature continued to grant lotteries in support of academies. Six months after the debate between “A Farmer” and “A Friend of the People,” newspapers advertised lotteries for academies in Orange-Dale, Hackensack, and Burlington, as well as Newark, all within a ten-day span.33 The legislature had recently passed a single bill granting seven academies permission to hold lotteries.

32 New-Jersey Journal, Sep. 18, 1793. 33 New-Jersey Journal, March 26, 1794; Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser, March 28, 1794; Diary, April 3, 1794.

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Support for the bill was hardly unanimous, but it convincingly passed the assembly twenty-two to fourteen, and the council eight to four.34 Two years later, though, when the Woodbridge Academy applied for a lottery, the legislature denied their request unceremoniously, without bothering to record the yeas and nays.35

Details on the debates in the assembly are very limited. It is difficult to ascertain what went into making decisions about which lotteries to grant. Some legislators undoubtedly shared “A Friend to the People’s” skepticism of lotteries generally. Others probably allowed local jealousies, which “A Farmer” accused the “A Friend” of possessing, to drive their votes. Indeed, the 1794 bill that simultaneously approved seven academy lotteries, originated as seven separate petitions. Consolidating the petitions could have limited local prejudices because the bill founded academies from throughout the state. Using the 1800 House of Representatives election—the earliest in which many county returns were tabulated at the town level—the academies also split fairly evenly between Federalist and Republican towns and counties.36

What is clear is that the state granted most lotteries to academies and not other schools. The majority of the seven academies covered by the 1794 bill taught a standard academy curriculum, with heavy emphasis on Latin and Greek. Only the Orange-Dale

34 For the votes, see Votes and Proceedings of the Eighteenth General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (Trenton, NJ: Printed by Isaac Neale, 1794), 111; in the final bill, the legislature added three academies to the list authorized to hold lotteries, bringing the final total to seven, see 118–9; Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislative-Council of the State of New-Jersey. Convened in General Assembly at Trenton, on Tuesday the 22d Day of October 1793. Being the First and Second Sittings of the Eighteenth Session (Trenton: Printed by Matthias Day, 1794), 24–5. 35 Votes and Proceedings of the Twentieth General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (Trenton, NJ: Printed by Isaac Collins, 1796), 2nd sitting, 30. 36 Election date comes from the “A New Nation Votes Project,” http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/, which was spearheaded by Philip J. Lampi at the American Antiquarian Society.

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Academy explicitly catered to the children of “farmers and mechanics” who wanted to

“avoid … studying the dead languages, and yet obtain a complete English education.”

The school maintained this curriculum for the first couple years of operation leading up to the lottery. Two years later, however, the trustees advertised that they also offered

“learned languages.”37 Teachers at the Hackensack Academy also sought to limit the importance of, but not entirely jettison, classical languages from the curriculum.38 In

Newark, an essayist writing under the pseudonym “Public Good,” boasted that in addition to the Academy, the town had three English schools and multiple female academies.39

But only the Academy received approval to hold a lottery. Despite a curriculum focused far more on elite formation than teaching ordinary citizens, academies received preferential treatment from the New Jersey legislature.

New York State passed the most elaborate plans for supporting education in the period.40 In 1788, finding that they were short about £300, the trustees of the North

Salem Academy in Westchester County petitioned the state legislature to hold a lottery.41

The committee tasked with reviewing the petition denied the appeal, and there was never

37 New-York Packet, April 28, 1791; New-Jersey Journal, Oct. 16, 1793; and June 1, 1796. 38 American Minerva, May 15, 1795. 39 Centinel of Freedom, April, 17, 1798. 40 For a summary of these efforts, see George Frederick Miller, The Academy System of the State of New York (Albany, NY: J.B.Lyon Company, 1922), 19–30. New York State took a particularly active role in shaping political economy generally during the early-nineteenth century. Though he does not discuss education policy, see L. Ray Gunn, The Decline of Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York, 1800-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). 41 Feb. 20, 1788, North Salem Academy Minutes of the Trustees, typescript, Westchester County Historical Society, 2; New-York Journal Sep. 5, 1789.

332 a vote in the assembly.42 Despite this, the North Salem Academy went on to have a very long history. A few years later the legislature granted the North Salem Academy trustees’ petition for an outright loan of £300, the same amount they hoped to raise through a lottery a few years earlier.43 Relying far less on lotteries than other states, New

York opted to provide direct funding to towns and boards of trustees.

During the 1780s and 1790s, the New York legislature passed a series of laws to support schools. Nearly all of these disproportionately benefitted academies. When the

War ended, reforming the former Anglican bastion of King’s College was New York’s top educational priority. The 1784 bill that changed the school’s name to Columbia

College also provided for the creation of a Board of Regents to oversee education in the state and to charter and endow new colleges.44 Recognizing in 1787 that “Academies for the instruction of youth in the Languages and other branches of useful learning, have been erected and instituted in different parts of this State, by the free and liberal benefactions of corporations,” the legislature codified how the state should support these undertakings as well. In essence, boards of trustees would apply to the Regents who would have the power to incorporate academies and grant charters. Boards could then

42 Journal of the Assembly of the State of New-York, at Their Twelfth Session, Begun and Holden at the City of Albany, the Eleventh Day of December, 1788 (Albany, NY: Printed by Samuel and John Loudon, printers to the state, 1789), 46. 43 New-York Daily Advertiser, Jan. 24, 1792; Journal of the Assembly of the State of New-York. Fifteenth Session (New York: Printed by Francis Childs and John Swaine, printers to the state, 1792), 36. The trustees decided to make this request at a meeting on Oct. 21, 1791, North Salem Academy Minutes, Westchester County Historical Society, 7. 44 Laws of the State of New-York, Passed at the First Meeting of the Seventh Session of the Legislature of Said State; Beginning the 12th Day of February, 1784, and Ending the 12th Day of May Following (New York: Printed by Elizabeth Holt, printer to the state, 1784), chap. 51.

333 own real and movable property and sue and be sued. They would have legal standing to do what they needed in order to put academies on solid financial footing.45

New York was not unique in this regard. Academies incorporated in most states, usually by special permission from the legislature. New Jersey passed a law allowing groups “to Incorporate Societies for the Promotion of Learning” without receiving special permission from the legislature, essentially a general incorporation statute. Incorporation itself was important to boards of trustees because it certified, in theory if not always in political practice, that their academy did serve the public good. At the same time as incorporation legitimized associations and granted them privileges, it constrained them to act within the boundaries set out in state constitutions. Both the New York and the New

Jersey incorporation statutes also specified that academies could regulate themselves so long as they did not contradict state law.46

45 Laws of the State of New-York, Passed by the Legislature of Said State, at Their Tenth Session (New York: Printed by Samuel and John Loudon, printers to the state, 1787), chap. 82. 46 Acts of the Nineteenth General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a Session Begun at Trenton on the 28th Day of October 1794, and Continued by Adjournments. Being the First Sitting (Trenton, NJ: Printed by Matthias Day, 1795), chap. 499. For the assembly vote, Votes and Proceedings of the Nineteenth General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (Elizabeth-Town, NJ: Printed by Shepard Kollock, 1794), 92. The literature on incorporation and the state’s role in civil society institutions, begins with the literature on commonwealth; see Handlin and Handlin, Commonwealth; Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948); and see also Harry N. Scheiber, “Government and the Economy: Studies of the ‘Commonwealth’ Policy in Nineteenth- Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (July 1972): 135–151. For emblematic work on corporations in the early republic, see Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780- 1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), esp. 111–14; and Maier, “Revolutionary Origins.” For considerations on this problem framed by a theoretical literature on civil society and state formation, see Michael Schudson, “The Public Sphere and Its Problems: Bringing the State (Back) In,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy 8 (1994): 529–46; Theda Skocpol, Marshall Ganz, and Ziad Munson, “A Nation of Organizers: The Institutional Origins of Civic Voluntarism in the United States,” American Political Science Review 94 (Sep. 2000): 527–46; William J. Novak, “The American Law of Association: The Legal-Political Construction of Civil Society,” Studies in American Political Development 15 (Oct. 2001): 163–188; William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113 (June 2008): 752–772; Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners, 27–8; Kevin Butterfield, “A Common Law of Membership: Expulsion, Regulation, and Civil Society in the Early

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What differed in New York was that Regents gave academies advantages against their competition that went beyond the mere benefits of incorporation. The Regents would oversee and visit academies. Based on these visits, the Regents could declare that certain academies were good enough that their graduates could enter Columbia College immediately as either sophomores or juniors, instead of as freshman.47 In addition, the law laid out a procedure by which successful academies could apply to the Regents to become colleges.48

During its early years, the Board of Regents spent much of its time raising capital and investing it. In 1790, the legislature granted control of state lands around Fort

George, Ticonderoga, at Crown Point near Lake Champlain, and the entirety of

Governors Island to the Board of Regents. The Regents could lease the lands as they saw fit and use the profits to fund schools.49 The very same day that the legislature passed the act, the Regents met and created a committee for “the management and disposal of the

Lands & property granted to the Regents.”50 A few months later, the Regents held a public auction at which they agreed to lease Governors Island for £93 per year. During

American Republic,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 133 (July 2009): 255–75 esp. 267- 9; and Beadie, “Education, Social Capital and State Formation”; King-Owen, “The People‘s Law:,” 315– 18; Douglas Bradburn, “‘The Great Field of Human Concerns’: The States, The Union, and the Problem of Citizenship in the Era of the American Revolution”; and John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” both in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 77–112, esp. 89–90, 178–217, esp. 192–6. 47 In effect, this is similar to how modern state governments have the power to determine what AP scores count for credit at state universities. 48 NY Laws, 10th Session, 1787, chap. 82. 49 Laws of the State of New-York. Volume the Third. (New York: Printed by Francis Childs and John Swaine, printers to the state, 1790), chap. 38. 50 March 31, 1790, Journal of Meetings of the Board of Regents of the State University of New York [NYSBOR], reel 1, New York State Archives, Albany, NY, 22.

335 the same meeting at which they approved this lease, the Board also decided to invest in a foreign “Bill of Exchange for £475 Sterling.”51 Almost three years later after the initial land grant, the Regents held an auction and leased the plots at Fort George and

Ticonderoga for £56 and £66 per year respectively.52

In 1792, a few months after the legislature approved the North Salem Academy’s loan, New York made an even more direct commitment to fund academies. The legislature gave the Regents £1,500 per year, for five years, to distribute among academies “as now are or hereafter may be created” in the state. The law empowered the

Regents to distribute the money “as they shall judge most beneficial, for the several academies and most advantageous to literature.” Columbia College also received guaranteed financial support for the same five-year term.53 In the first year that the state distributed funds from under this act, the North Salem Academy received £176.54

These laws did not create schools from scratch. Like lotteries in other states, New

York laws during the 1780s and early 1790s effectively subsidized existing schools founded usually by elite networks. The Regents supported groups that had or could muster the necessary social and financial capital to create an academy, or a viable plan for one. They did not see founding schools outright as part of their mandate. In recognition of these high standards, when groups applied to the Regents for an academy charter, they furnished the Board with a list of subscribers, a list of trustees, and an

51 Aug. 2, 1790, NYSBOR, 26. 52 Jan. 29, 1793, NYSBOR, 66. 53 Laws of the State of New-York. Fifteenth Session (New York: Printed by Francis Childs and John Swaine, printers to the state, 1792), chap. 69. 54 Feb. 7, 1793, NYSBOR, 73. The Regents’ report was reprinted in newspapers; see for instance New- York Daily Advertiser, March 6, 1793.

336 account of how much money they already raised. The Regents checked these materials quite carefully. Every time they approved an academy, the Regents noted in their minutes that the subscribers “are benefactors for more than one half in value of the real and personal estate collected or appropriated for the use and benefit of the said academies.”55 Associations needed to meet this minimum standard in order to receive state support. The Regents asked for similar documentation for other procedures as well.

They denied an application from the Schenectady Academy to become a college, for example, because they “have no documents whereby to ascertain the annual product of the real property proposed by the application as a fund for the support of the college.”

Without these, the Regents claimed they “cannot determine whether the funds subscribed as set forth in the application are adequate.”56

So as to discourage poorly-funded groups from attempting to incorporate academies, the Regents even limited what parts of academy budgets they would fund. In early 1793, the Regents noted that many of their academies had applied for money to expand buildings or to finish ongoing construction projects. They worried that approving these applications would lead to “much embarrassment,” because “persons who, tho’ they had not secured funds adequate to the support of such institutions would … solicit incorporation in the hope of assistance from the Regents.” The committee charged with reporting on the issue recommended that the Regents only appropriate funds to academies to augment teacher salaries, pay the salaries of additional teachers, or purchase “such

55 The language was usually identical. For instance, Feb. 29, 1792; and Jan. 29, 1793, in NYSBOR, 53, 65. 56 March 27, 1792, NYSBOR, 59.

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Philosophical apparatus and books as are indispensably necessary.”57 Though they did not use these criteria for disbursing the money in that year, the Regents agreed to follow these rules in the future. This was a high bar. A board of trustees had to have already raised money to cover its largest capital expense—erecting a building—before the

Regents would even consider subsidizing their academy.

It was readily apparent that all the laws passed in New York during the first decade after the War benefitted elite education.58 Even as the Regents constructed policies that created, or at least exacerbated, this problem, they tried to fix it. In the meeting before they agreed to the new funding criteria, the Regents asked the legislature to give the same attention to common education as they had academy education. In particular, the Regents wanted the power to fund schools that instructed “our children in the lower branches of education, such as reading their native Language… arithmetic as enable them when they come for in active life.” They argued, “with all deference,” that providing for the education of poorer and middling New Yorkers would “secure the rational happiness and fix the liberty of the People on the most permanent basis, that of knowledge and virtue.”59 It took active government involvement to create an informed citizenry that could sustain republican governance. The populist Governor George

Clinton, who also served as the president of the Board of Regents, certainly favored this plan. Clinton bemoaned that by focusing their attention on academies, the state had only supported education for “the children of the opulent,” while “a great proportion of the

57 Feb. 7, 1793, NYSBOR, 72-3. 58 Jurgen Herbst, “Nineteenth-Century Schools between Community and State: The Cases of Prussia and the United States,” History of Education Quarterly 42 (Oct. 2002): 317–341, esp. 327-8. 59 Feb. 5, 1793, NYSBOR, 70.

338 community is excluded.” At the same time, the world of the First Great Awakening was not far from New Yorkers’ minds. The earliest plan to create public schools in the state, which emerged in Clermont in 1791, bore the influence of William Livingston’s

Independent Reflector. Published during the King’s College controversy of the 1750s, it extolled the virtues of Scottish seminaries and grammar schools. Through his nephew, the state Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, William Livingston’s argument migrated down the Hudson to influence a new school bill proposed by the legislature in New York

City.60

In 1795, the legislature passed a law that provided funds to towns and counties to support schools where students could receive, specifically, “an English education.” The law emanated from a part of the state where lots of German-speakers lived, and who academies did little to serve. The bill apportioned £20,000 a year for five years, divided up among the counties. It also stipulated that counties had to match half of what they received from the state, likely through a tax. While academies offered a classical curriculum, most also contained an English school and thus qualified as “schools … in which the children … shall be instructed in the English language.” Aware of this,

Clinton and his allies included language that the funds could not “extend to any college or academy, which now is, or hereafter shall be incorporated under the authority of the regents of the university.”61

60 Clinton quoted in Brooke, Columbia Rising, 241, on Livingston, 240. 61 Eighteenth Session, of the Laws of the State of New-York (New York: Printed by Thomas Greenleaf, 1795), chap. 75.

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To his chagrin, revisions to Clinton’s 1795 bill ultimately allowed academies to tap into this funding source. A few months after the bill’s passage, the Federalist John

Jay replaced Clinton as Governor of New York. In April of 1796, just under a year after it initially became law, the legislature amended Clinton’s school bill. The amendment clarified a confusing procedure for funding schools supported by people from multiple towns or counties. More importantly, it stipulated that students who learned English reading and writing and any other “useful and necessary subjects” in an academy, “shall have the like benefit as other scholars belonging to the common schools.” In short, academies that taught English—so all of them—could claim a piece of the funding from the 1795 bill.62 This diluted the original purpose of the bill, which was to fund schools that were not academies. Moreover, the original bill stipulated that towns and counties should use the money for “encouraging and maintaining” schools, a fairly vague mandate. Once academies had access to a piece of the pot, the state would have little standing to oversee how academies used the money, or to ensure that it only benefitted the English schools within academies.63 Unfortunately, no detailed accounts of how the state spent this money survive.64

The legislature did not renew either the 1792 bill supporting academies or

Clinton’s 1795 bill when their five-year terms came to an end. By 1800, academies

62 Nineteenth Session, of the Laws of the State of New-York (New York: Printed by Thomas Greenleaf, 1796), chap. 49. 63 NY Laws, 18th Session, 1795, chap. 75. See also Brooke, Columbia Rising, 240–1; Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital, 129–30. 64 Samuel Sidwell Randall, History of the Common School System of the State of New York, from Its Origin in 1795, to the Present Time: Including the Various City and Other Special Organizations, and the Religious Controversies of 1821, 1832, and 1840 (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & co., 1871), 9.

340 flourished in New York but a public system of universal “English education” lay in the future. The expansion of common schooling that accompanied the 1795 bill quickly came crashing down.65 But New Yorkers learned that the state could wield significant power over education. During the 1790s, when the state government actively supported academies, New Yorkers founded more than twice as many academies as any other state in the region save Pennsylvania. There, the expansion of academies made up for the stunted development of education in Philadelphia and its hinterlands during the 1780s, and also followed the rapid pace of westward colonization.66

State 1780-1784 1785- 1790- 1795- 1800- Total 1789 1794 1799 1805 New York 2 5 9 10 2 28 New Jersey 4 5* 3 6 6 24 Pennsylvania 1 3 6 8 2 20 Delaware 4 - - - - 4 Maryland 3 1 0 4 4 12 Virginia 6 3 1 2 8 20 North Carolina 1? - 4 1 3 9 TOTAL 21 17 23 31 25 117 Table 1: Academies Founded by State, 1780-1805

Note: This table comprises every academy I have identified through archival sources and newspaper advertisements. Sometimes I could not find the actual founding date of an academy. In those cases, I have sorted them by the first appearance of the school in a source. * Ebenezer Elmer’s raised money for a sixth academy in 1785 though it is not clear it ever went into operation so I did not count it.

65 Fletcher Harper Swift, A History of Public Permanent Common School Funds in the United States, 1795- 1905 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911), 165; Randall, History of the Common School System, 9–10. 66 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 150–1; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 10–11; Brown, Strength of a People, 103–4. For the emergence of common schools in New York City in particular, see Kaestle, “Common Schools before the ‘Common School Revival’”; and more broadly, Kaestle’s The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973).

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In 1812, New York passed the earliest and most comprehensive common school law in the region. The rest of the mid-Atlantic and upper South moved even slower to create common school systems. Maryland devised schemes in the early-nineteenth century to fund schools to fund free schools, but none proved sustainable in the long term. It took until 1843 for the state to pass a common school bill. Similarly, Virginia failed to create a workable public school system in the antebellum period, despite the fact that Jefferson first proposed one in 1779. It took New Jerseyeans until the 1810s to even begin to formulate ways to support schools other than academies. In 1818, the state had a fund to promote free schools. Twenty years later they had only settled on the skeleton of a system, which the state would amend and elaborate, for using these funds to promote common schools. Some state constitutions contained vague stipulations about promoting education. Even then, creating workable plans for carrying this out proved to be a long process of trial and error. Pennsylvania took until 1834 to create a system of free schools while North Carolina did not even pass a general “literary fund”—which in many states provided some means of raising money usually to support library companies and schools, usually academies—until the 1820s. Delaware made inroads earlier, funneling money from marriage and tavern licenses into a school fund. Around 1817, the state distributed some of the funds, though an annual system of funding did not emerge until 1829 at the earliest.67

67 Miller, Academy System, 19–30; Nelson R Burr, Education in New Jersey, 1630-1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), 215, 242–73; John A. Munroe, History of Delaware, 5th ed. (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 110–13; Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876, 158–9; Brown, Strength of a People, 74; Swift, History of Permanent Common School Funds, 238–9.

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The ascendance of academies did not forestall the development of so-called

English education. In New York, many Presbyterian and Reformed congregations in rural areas opened schools that taught basic literacy, while charity schools thrived in New

York City.68 In many communities during the years between the American Revolution and the rise of systematic public education in the nineteenth century, though, academies were a main source of lower-level education. Also, by the second half of the eighteenth century, an ever-growing number of amateur teachers ran small, tuition-based schools.

These tended to teach English skills and some math especially in towns where academies had a limited presence. By virtue of their structure, these venture schools, as historians have termed them, responded much more quickly than academies to changing demand.

Towards the end of the end of the colonial period, though, denominational academies started to appropriate some of the curriculum of venture schools. As schools like the

Newark Academy embraced the need to do more than provide ministerial education, this trend only generated more momentum. The reemergence of academies in the wake of the

Revolution channeled this model, fusing venture school and traditional academy curricula. Academy officials still believed their main duty was to provide advanced language training and high-level math and writing—in the main, trustees’ children availed themselves of the more advanced forms of education available at academies. Yet they continually appropriated prevailing venture school curricula.69 In so doing, academy

68 Kaestle, “Common Schools before the ‘Common School Revival.’” 69 On venture schools, see Miller, Academy System, 12–6; Sizer, The Age of Academies, 4–6; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 6; Kim Tolley, “The Rise of the Academies: Continuity or Change?,” History of Education Quarterly 41 (July 2001): 228–38; Kim Tolley, “Mapping the Landscape of Higher Schooling, 1727-1850,” in Kim Tolley, “Mapping the Landscape of Higher Schooling, 1727-1850,” in Chartered

343 trustees undermined the essence of a venture school, its adaptability to markets.

Academy control over venture school curriculum ensured that education for non-elites depended, institutionally, on the persistence of elite education.

In the long-run, academies actually stifled curricular development, especially at the lower levels. In New York, for example, academies statewide offered only nine new subjects between 1787 and 1825. During that time, nearly every academy offered classical languages. In the following decades, the expansion of public common schooling and the creation of new laws setting curricular guidelines pushed academies to adopt a much wider set of subjects.70 Even still, well into the early-nineteenth century, an academy-system established during the heady days of the 1780s, one long attacked as inadequate, played an outsized role in shaping nearly every level of education.

Some Americans realized the power that academies amassed during the 1780s and

1790s. In 1795, the Pennsylvania legislature considered a law to provide for the

“permanent provision for the education of youth.” The law would create a system of trustees who oversaw schools at the county level and provided limited funding to schools and academies to cover parts of teachers’ salaries. Writing under a particularly populist- sounding pseudonym, “A Citizen,” one Pennsylvanian argued that the state’s plan would hardly provide enough funding for any school to even pay the salary of one good teacher.

Instead of providing for new schools, “A Citizen” claimed the bill effectively declared that “The people themselves may, if they please, erect and support academies!”

Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925, ed. Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley (New York: Routeledge Press, 2002), 19–43; Beadie, “Toward a History,” 50–1; Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital, 108. 70 This statistic comes from, Miller, Academy System, 111–2.

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“[I]ndeed,” he continued, it seemed that “the bill never intended the promotion of an academy in the state” at all. The bill was wholly inadequate. Under this type of plan, academies were prone “to fluctuating with the warm zeal of a few abettors,” namely elites that banded together to build institutions. This, in brief, was the prevailing policy of most states. Pennsylvania’s plan, and by implication most every plan proposed by states in the region, “put it out of the power of any, except the opulent, to give a liberal education to their children.” Elites simply had far too much power over formal schooling.71

Through their limited support of education, states imbued academies with major power to shape the boundaries of participation in the public sphere and wielding formal political power in the new republic.72 According to “A Citizen,” in order to counteract this tendency states needed to ensure that academies were “permanent institutions.” With more control, states could also “provide for the moderation of the terms of the education in them,” to ensure that academies “may not be altogether out of the reach of the middle or lower class of citizens.” This would benefit the entire society because middling people were more “industrious” and had more to offer in terms of creating “useful improvements.” Allowing elites to continue to hold a “monopoly” on academy education

71 Philadelphia Gazette, Jan. 18, 1796. Democratic critiques of academies extended to the elite assumptions that lay behind privileging education in evaluating status. Ultimately, though, even some of the most radical proto-democrats recognized the need for schooling, see Wood, Empire of Liberty, 716. 72 John L. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic,” in Launching the “Extended Republic”: The Federalist Era, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 296–309. Over time, elites found that the modes of organization that the consensual public sphere relied upon, ultimately held the potential to upend their conservative vision of civil society, see Johann N. Neem, “Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic: The View from Connecticut,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (Spring 2009): 471–495.

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“would be a dangerous policy, and might be productive of the most fatal consequences” for the republic. The wealthy, he told his readers, sought education for “mere personal embellishment, and title of honour.”73 “A Citizen’s” critique did little to change states’ posture towards academies. It does, however, underscore how academies shaped power distinctions in a society that lacked legal and hereditary markers of status.

Nearly all the institutions that provided academies with support—state legislatures, governors, and bureaucratic agencies like the New York Board of Regents— based their commitment to these schools on some vague commitment to social

“improvement.” In order to receive state support, boards of trustees generally had to create the impression that their school served a broader public good. In many instances, the states did it for them. By simply lending their support to academies, states added to the sense that academies served the public good. That is not to say, however, that schools did not serve certain interests over others. In fact, by funneling most of their support to academies, states supported the most elite, and arguably the least democratic, type of school. As privately-run institutions, they tended to most benefit the children of the elite men who supported them with capital or served as trustees. Moreover, academies were sites that produced and reproduced an American “aristocracy of merit.” Thanks to state governments, academies became perhaps the most widespread bulwark of the ideal of gentry rule. Beginning in the 1780s, but accelerating in the subsequent decades, certain civil associations that were committed to perpetuating gentry rule began to funnel their

73 Philadelphia Gazette, Jan. 18, 1796.

346 support to academies. Education offered these groups a democratic means to realize undemocratic policy aims.

Academies, Civil Society, and Counter-Revolution

All across the mid-Atlantic, academies became central nodes in a wider web of civil associations and institutions. Though this process accelerated during the early republic, it actually began during the colonial period. The College and Academy of

Philadelphia, in particular, provided a public meeting space where associations could meet. During the Seven Years’ War, militia associations convened at the College and

Academy in opposition to the Quaker ruling elite’s pacifism.74 During the early republic, academies served as a meeting place for a range of political activities, from meetings of partisan and non-partisan associations alike, to hosting elections and civic rituals. Most frequently, associations that favored gentry rule connected themselves to academies.

Some academy trustees were members of these same associations. Others just eagerly welcomed their support and donations. To the associations, academies served two purposes. First, by supporting academies these civil associations could claim to support the public good. Second, academies could shape future generations. Thus, these associations believed that in order to realize their long-term goals they needed to harness the power of education.

In many places, academies were a necessary precondition to the emergence of other civil associations and the public sphere. Residents of Washington County,

Pennsylvania, for instance claimed that for many years, people there “in appearance,

74 Pennsylvania Gazette, March 4, 1756. See also, Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition, chap. 4.

347 dress, and manners could with difficulty be distinguished from the Indians.” They credited the construction of the local academy with precipitating a stunning overhaul of local society. After the academy opened, the county produced gifted orators who would go on to serve in the assembly. The refinement of American oratory, which happened in schools, created particularly stark and easily identifiable evidence of societal progression.

In this way, the influence of the academy reached beyond students. Some academies actually doubled as lyceums, which brought new scientific discoveries and philosophical ideals to the general public, socializing them into the intellectual debates of the period.75

The Washington Academy also increased participation in a growing print public sphere.

One bookseller in the area received an order for fifty sets of two major magazines, the

American Asylum and the Columbian Magazine. Some observers believed that this change in culture “will have a more favorable influence than any thing else in maintaining a spirit of freedom, and thus securing to us the blessings of good government” in the region.76 This narrative of societal progress from some caricatured state of nature to stable community capable of governance was a fairly common trope, aimed at answering European doubts about North American society. Written in urban seaports with deep cultural connections to the Atlantic World, magazines played a key role in shaping this narrative and transmitting into hinterland places like Washington

County.77 Academies were important conduits for bringing urban literature to rural areas.

75 Philadelphia Gazette, April 14, 1794; The Times, Nov. 10, 1798; Federal Gazette, March 30, 1799. 76 Extract of a letter reprinted in Albany Gazette, July 8, 1790. 77 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Dis-Covering the Subject of the ‘Great Constitutional Discussion,’ 1786- 1789,” Journal of American History 79 (Dec. 1992): 841–873; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity (Chapel Hill: Published by the Ommohundro Institute

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The vast majority of academies were located in hinterland areas, where parents could board their children relatively cheaply and not have to worry about the corrosive moral effects of city life or the increased potential for disease. The Burlington Academy published an advertisement that conveyed these values, noting that “with respect to health, proximity to, and convenience of communication with Philadelphia” and the attention to student morals make the town a good place to for an academy. Rural academies taught large numbers of children the necessary skills for participating in urban public life.78

Though Americans recognized the impact that education could have on whole communities, academies often seemed to promote partisan goals. Academies continued to provide meeting spaces for voluntary associations, which they had long done. Only by the mid-1790s, some voluntary associations became more overtly factional, if not outright partisan.79 Meetings held at academies reflected these changes. In the mid-

1790s, the Baltimore Academy allowed the local abolition society to meet at their

of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Carolyn Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 78 Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser, June 21, 1792. Historians of New England have most fully examined the relationship between cities and the emergence of print culture and voluntary associations in the hinterlands; see especially Richard D. Brown, “The Emergence of Urban Society in Rural Massachusetts, 1760-1820,” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 29–51; David Jaffee, “The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820,” William and Mary Quarterly 47 (July 1990): 327– 346. It bears mentioning that while academies broadened markets for printed material and, in so doing, expanded the ranks of those who could capably participate in the public sphere, this did not necessarily produce a more democratic political culture that empowered non-elites. 79 Brooke, “Ancient Lodges”; Albrecht Koschnik, “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775-1840 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007); Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners; Neem, “Creating Social Capital.”

349 building.80 A number of academies also hosted meetings of local Democratic-Republican societies, which colored how the public perceived the academies and teachers. John

Poor, who for years ran the famous Philadelphia Young Ladies’ Academy, came under attack because his “academy has long been a rendez-vous for the Democratic society and the United Irishmen.” After taking Poor to task for his support of these groups, the writer attacked his teaching as well, ridiculing the “contemptible pomposity” that Poor encouraged in his students. In particular, the author derided public accounts of graduation ceremonies during which the school conferred “‘diplomas’”—he clearly thought they were meaningless pieces of paper—and supporters and students gave orations about the value of female education.81 Students also often took part in political activities while at academies. While at the Morristown Academy in New Jersey, Daniel

Mulford actively took part in political rituals. Mulford took advantage of an opportunity to hear the famous Baptist minister John Leland preach “on his return from Washington, where he had been to deliver Mr. Jefferson the mammouth cheese.”82 A month later, during a school exercise, Mulford “spoke the first part of Mr. Brackenridge’s speech for

80 Maryland Federal Gazette, July 27, 1796. For contrasting views on the nature of early national antislavery societies, see Richard S Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Paul J. Polgar, “‘To Raise Them to an Equal Participation’: Early National Abolitionism, Gradual Emancipation, and the Promise of African American Citizenship,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Summer 2011): 229–258. For the place of slavery in the class structure of Baltimore during the early republic, see Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 81 Porcupine’s Gazette, March 26, 1799. For another example of a Democratic-Republican Society meeting at an academy, see Aurora General Advertiser, Dec. 20, 1794. 82 Feb. 9, 1802, Diary of Daniel Mulford, North Jersey History Center, Morristown Public Library, 11. On Leland and the mammoth cheese, see Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic,” in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, ed. Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 31–56.

350 the abolishing of the additional Judges of the Federal Courts.” With the Judiciary Act of

1801, John Adams used to pack the federal judiciary with Federalists at the very end of his presidency. The reorganization of the federal judiciary was among the most pressing and divisive political questions of the period.83 Federalists also brought politics into local academies. In 1798, during the Quasi-War with France, an academy in Washington,

Pennsylvania served as the venue for a speech that decried “the crimes and enormities practiced by France towards all the states whom she has republicanized.”84

More often than not, though, groups who used schools to promote gentry rule proved adept at couching their connection to academies in a rhetoric of consensus.

During the American Revolution, Freemasonry transformed itself into a nationalistic organization. To bolster its republican credentials, the Masons cultivated connections with academies.85 In New Jersey, both the Newark and Trenton Academies drew a great deal of support from local Masonic lodges, and the Newark Academy provided Masons with a lodge room for an indefinite period of time. In Cooperstown, New York, the

Masons seemed to have had a similar deal with the local academy as they did in Newark.

83 March 9, 1802, Diary of Daniel Mulford, 12. On the judicial politics of the period, see Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). 84 Albany Centinel, June 5, 1798. 85 On revolutionary-era Freemasonry, see Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, VA by The University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and also Brooke, “Ancient Lodges.” For the connection between Masonry and education, see Nancy Beadie, “‘Encouraging Useful Knowledge’ in the Early Republic: The Roles of State Governments and Voluntary Associations,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 85–102, esp. 92-6.

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In the late 1790s, they held a number of meetings and ceremonies at the school.86 In its early years, the Fayetteville Academy in North Carolina operated out of a room in the local Mason lodge for a nominal fee of five shillings per year.87 Finally, Masons in

Alexandria, Virginia in 1785 led “all Lovers of Literature” in supporting a new academy.

Like many public parades, the one in honor of this school began with a procession and ended with a dedication. Lodge no. 39 left their mark on the foundation stone of the academy, which “Was laid the 7th of September, 1785, in the ninth year of the

Independence of the United States of NORTH AMERICA.” The marker showed passersby that the continued viability of the republic would depend, in part, on the academy’s continued success. The school’s life would always be measured against the republic’s.88

As the connection between academies and nationalism became entrenched, the schools themselves became subjects of celebrations. When new academies opened, towns held fetes to honor the occasion. These events followed similar scripts to other patriotic celebrations. Connected as they were with the nation-building project, academy buildings themselves also often featured prominently in patriotic celebrations. In 1790, for instance, the Fourth of July celebration in Wilmington, Delaware included all of the usual participants from the militia, the Cincinnati, and local government. Though the

86 Otsego Herald, Dec. 22, 1796; Jan. 4, 1798. See also, Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1995), 209–10. 87 June, 24, 1798, sec. A, box 48, Freemasons Fayetteville, NC, Phoenix Masonic Lodge No. 8 Records, Rubenstein Library, Duke University. 88 Virginia Journal, Sep. 15, 1785. On the politics of time in the early republic, see Matthew Rainbow Hale, “On Their Tiptoes: Political Time and Newspapers during the Advent of the Radicalized French Revolution, circa 1792–1793,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Summer 2009): 191–218.

352 newspaper account makes no mention of students participating, the orations and prayers occurred in the Wilmington Academy.89 Associations and organizations could strengthen their own patriotic credentials by demonstrating their connection with the expansion of education, something that Americans generally supported as an ideal.

As a group reared in popular Enlightenment traditions, the Masons’ support for educational institutions makes sense. Yet it also makes a great deal of sense that the

Masons supported relatively hierarchical schools like academies.90 Originally drawing support from men who leaned to the Federalist Party, American Masonry saw itself as

“an antidote to partisan strife.” Under Federalist control in the immediate wake of the

Revolution, American Masons believed they could best serve the general public good by creating an ostensibly non-partisan national institution that instilled character in leaders and ensured the persistence of stable patterns of governance at the national and state levels. These aims required influencing both cultural and political domains. Masonic conservatism persisted well after the Federalist monopoly over the institution dissolved.

Following the party realignments of the 1790s, which saw the Federalists take an increasingly reactionary stance, Jeffersonians effectively took over American Masonry.

Despite the democratic origins and rhetoric of the Jeffersonians, they used Freemasonry to “perpetuate rule by a benevolent gentry for another quarter century.”91 This continuity

89 Federal Gazette, July 14, 1790. 90 On the importance of voluntary associations to social differentiation, see Jason Kaufman, “Three Views of Associationalism in 19th-Century America: An Empirical Examination,” American Journal of Sociology 104 (March 1999): 1296–1295; and Kaufman, For the Common Good?: American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 91 Brooke, “Ancient Lodges,” quotes on 274, 359; see also Steven C. Bullock, “The Revolutionary Transformation of American Freemasonry, 1752-1792,” William and Mary Quarterly 47 (July 1990): 347–

353 existed in the Masons’ connection to education as well. When George Washington died in 1799, staunchly republican Newark, New Jersey held a memorial service for him at the

Newark Academy. A published account of the ceremony and the orations drew special attention to “the fraternity of Free Masons whose share in the Procession attracted every eye, and gave solemn dignity to the whole.”92 In academies, the masons found a widely popular cause—education—to which they could tether their fairly counterrevolutionary and hierarchical ambitions for post-revolutionary society.

The Masons developed a blueprint for using education to infuse a certain class of people with social capital. In the absence of hereditary claims to elite status, education could bring elites together under patriotic pretenses. But in bringing elites together, and with political leaders superintending the schools, academies offered students access to a set of networks, advice, and perhaps patronage that would elude most Americans.

Moreover, educated men would recognize common social and cultural characteristics derived from education that drew students together and explained their status. Thus for

369; and Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood. On Jeffersonian democracy, see Andrew W. Robertson, The Language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, 1790-1900 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995); Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001); and Robertson, “Myths of the Lost Atlantis: Did the Election of Andrew Jackson Usher in the ‘Age of the Common Man,’” Common- Place (October 7, 2008), http://www.common-place.org/pasley/?p=704. On the similarities between Federalist and Jeffersonian ideas about “gentry governance,” see Robert H. Wiebe, The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1984), xiii, 7–66. 92 Alexander MacWhorter, A Funeral Sermon, Preached in Newark, December 27, 1799. A Day of Public Mourning, Observed by the Town, for the Universally Lamented, General Washington, Late President of the United States. Who Died the Fourteenth of the Same Month. To Which Is Subjoined, His Last Address, to His Beloved Countrymen (Newark, NJ: Printed and sold by Jacob Halsey, 1800), iii.

354 the Masons and other groups, education offered a means to transmit their conception of gentry rule across generations.93

Nationalistic—and counter-revolutionary—voluntary associations used academies to achieve political ends, but attempted to paper over the underlying partisanship. The

Society of the Cincinnati did this even more effectively than the Masons. As an organization of former Continental officers, the Society’s roots obviously lay in the

American Revolution. Its founding members, though, never intended the Cincinnati to be a mere alumni association. The Cincinnati arose because its members shared a similar view to the Masons of the problems facing the United States in the Confederation period.

Founded as a hereditary society, the Cincinnati clearly wanted to prolong the influence of a certain type of stable, trustworthy, and virtuous—all by their standards—elite.94 And so they took an active interest in education. Continental officers, especially those reared in

93 Academies fostered what sociologists call “weak ties.” Unlike strong ties, such as family or ethnic connections, weak ties offer people access to new connections and new pools of social capital; see Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–1380; Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 26–32; and Burt, “The Contingent Value of Social Capital,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997): 339–365. Epitomized by modern, urban ethnic enclaves, networks of non-elites tend to create redundant, bonding ties that help people sustain a certain quality of life, without the prospect of greater achievement; see Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 22–3; Michael Woolcock, “Social Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework,” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 151–208, esp. 171. In one scholar’s incisive phrasing, non-elites use social capital to “get by,” while elites can use it to “get ahead”; see Xavier de Souza Briggs, “Social Capital and the Cities: Advice to Change Agents,” National Civic Review 86.2 (1997): 111–17, esp. 112. On the ways in which social capital can create common culture among certain groups, see Claude S. Fischer, “Network Analysis and Urban Studies,” in Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting, ed. Claude S. Fischer (New York: Free Press, 1977), 19–37; Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 415–444. 94 Minor Myers, Liberty Without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983); Marc L. Harris, “‘Cement to the Union’: The Society of the Cincinnati and the Limits of Fraternal Sociability,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 107 (1995): 115–40; Koschnik, Let a Common Interest; Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners, 40–3; Benjamin H. Irvin, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (New: Oxford University Press, 2011), 229–38.

355 pre-revolutionary denominational academies, played an integral role in the establishment of educational institutions during the 1780s. At many academies, the Society was a regular presence at exhibitions. They also regularly invited academy students to patriotic events that they hosted.

The educational mission of the Cincinnati took on increasing importance after popular blowback forced the organization to disavow their plan for hereditary membership. While in some states the Society reverted to the original hereditary plan once the clamor died down, the Virginia Society did not reinstitute hereditary membership until its revival in the late-nineteenth century. With the Virginia Society not long for the world, and with pension payouts to members’ families taking only a small part of the endowment, the membership realized they needed to do something with the remaining funds in their coffers before the original members all died.95 Without really entertaining other possibilities, the Society’s members agreed that the money should benefit academy education in Virginia. They came to this conclusion largely because

George Washington, their undisputed leader, gave generously to a number of schools late in his life.96 In his will, he left £1200 for the “Education of Poor and Orphan children” at the Alexandria Academy. More importantly for the Cincinnati, Washington received a gift of $20,000 worth of shares in the James River Company—a company that made improvements to aid navigation and commerce along the river. He left all of this stock to

95 Edgar Erskine Hume, “The Virginia Society of the Cincinnati’s Gift to Washington College (Continued),” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 42 (July 1934): 198–210 esp. 201-3. 96 For a contemporary source crediting Washington with influencing the Cincinnati’s decision, see New- Jersey Journal, Jan. 18, 1803.

356 the Washington Academy—formerly Liberty Hall Academy—in Rockbridge County.97

The Society decided to follow suit. In late 1802, the Virginia Cincinnati committed all of its money to the Washington Academy. This ignited a controversy that lasted nearly a year. Ultimately, though, the money did go to the Academy.98

When news spread that the decision to fund the Washington Academy was not final, the trustees of both the Washington Academy and the Hampden-Sidney Academy sent petitions requesting the Cincinnati’s support. For their part, the Washington

Academy trustees claimed that in supporting their school, the Cincinnati’s money would

“produce the greatest public benefit.” The Hampden-Sidney trustees were a bit more modest, simply assuring the Society that their donation would put the school on solid footing and cement its reputation as one of the “most respectable” academies in the region. A few members of the Cincinnati served on the Hampden-Sidney board and signed the letter.99 By that point, it was fairly clear that “every member of the Cincinnati

Society, are convinced of the propriety of giving funds to some Seminary of learning in the State of Virginia.”100 The question was which academy. Only a select few members of the organization argued that the money should revert back to the donors. Even then, they expressed approval for supporting education in principle—though some thought that

97 Centinel of Liberty, Jan. 7, 1800; Federal Gazette, Feb. 8, 1800; Edgar Erskine Hume, “The Virginia Society of the Cincinnati’s Gift to Washington College,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 42 (April 1934): 103–115 esp. 111-14. 98 For the initial decision, see Dec. 15, 1802, in Edgar Erskine Hume, Papers of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia, 1783-1824 (Virginia: Published by the Society of the Cincinnati, 1938), 56. 99 The petitions are reprinted in Hume, “The Virginia Society of the Cincinnati’s Gift to Washington College (Continued),” 203–7, quotes on 206, 207. 100 This language was included in a circular letter sent by the Washington Academy trustees to all of the members of the Virginia Cincinnati, March 6, 1803, in Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia Papers, VHS

357 it was foolish to confine their support to a single school—but questioned whether it was contractually legal for the Society to use the money in this manner.101 Another individual member wanted his contribution returned, though he also thought education was a worthy cause.102

The disinterested-sounding rhetoric about serving the public good notwithstanding, it is also clear that the long-term goals of the Cincinnati impacted the debate over which academy to fund. In early 1803, the Washington Academy trustees appealed to the Cincinnati’s emotions and patriotism in an attempt to secure the funding.

They claimed that in supporting their school, the society would play an integral role in creating a permanent “literary monument, in which your names will be enrolled with that of your immortal and beloved GENERAL.”103 At least one member supported the decision because he was “happy that we have it so amply in our Power of following the

Example of our Illustrious Washington.”104 Yet many of the opinions offered by members of the Society also betrayed their interest in continuing a system of gentry rule in the United States, particularly if it benefitted their own children. Some members supported giving the money to the Washington Academy. Others favored Hampden-

Sidney, while others still suggested different schools that they thought might benefit from

101 Letter from a number of members to the President of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, Dec.1, 1803, in Hume, Papers of the Society, 267–71. 102 Richard Claiborne to Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, April 14, 1803, Washington City, in Hume, Papers of the Society. 266–7. 103 Circular letter sent by the Washington Academy trustees to all of the members of the Virginia Cincinnati, March 6, 1803, in Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia Papers, VHS. 104 Robert Beale to the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, Nov. 27, 1803, Richmond, in Hume, Papers of the Society, 264.

358 the Society’s support.105 These disagreements were not about whether they should use education to deepen their influence, but rather about best using the funds to ingrain their principles and their influence across as wide of a swath of the state as possible. One member, Alexander Balmain, clearly articulated these goals. He began one letter by arguing that the “Majority of the whole Society have no right to alienate the fund” and put it to a use other than “the relief of distressed officers, their widows and children.”

Nevertheless, the writer revealed that he wanted to take his contribution and donate it to an academy in Winchester, Virginia. He argued that, were Washington alive, he would not think the funds “should be confined to a particular spot,” especially one that

Washington himself had “so amply endowed.” Balmain thought that the Cincinnati could do the most good by spreading its influence throughout the state rather than concentrating it in one place.106 This was a perfectly valid interpretation of the Society’s model for establishing its hold over American society.

From the outset, the Society organized itself by states—and then even had debates about carving up the states into smaller districts—not because they feared centralization, but because they saw this as the best way through which to diffuse their influence. These interconnected hubs would ensure that their influence extended uniformly across the

United States and that they could ably pursue the goal of national centralization. Balmain

105 Some of the letters from members offering their opinions on how to spend the money are reprinted in Edgar Erskine Hume, “The Virginia Society of the Cincinnati’s Gift to Washington College (Continued),” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 42 (October 1934): 304–316; see also Hume, Papers of the Society, 261–77. 106 Alexander Balmain to the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, Nov. [?], 1803, Winchester, in Hume, Papers of the Society, 263.

359 basically argued that the Cincinnati should apply this model in Virginia, using academies to fill the void of the fast-declining Society.

The members certainly envisioned that their own children would benefit from the

Cincinnati’s support of schools. One member wrote that he “long, and anxiously wish’d the funds of the Cincinnati of Virginia to be appropriated for the benefit of useful knowledge.”107 Similarly, another member wrote that he was delighted by the prospect of Cincinnati funding the Washington Academy because “it has long been, & still is, my determination to commit my Boys” there for their education.108 Ultimately, the organization decided on the other course. They ended up reaffirming the initial decision to send all the funds to the Washington Academy. The school could then do some of the work that hereditary membership would originally have done. A number of the opinions reflect a sort of self-interested view of the public good. Members argued that by supporting something that benefitted them and their family, it would benefit the rest of the country. The Cincinnati found one last way to cement a connection with the public good. They put the state treasurer in charge of disbursing the funds once the Society crumbled. The money would pass through the hands of the state before reaching the

Washington Academy. This final touch made the Cincinnati appear as much like benefactors of the state as of a school that would spread education and serve their own familial and political interests.109

107 Thomas Posey to the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, June 18, 1803, in Ibid., 274. 108 Robert Quarles Fluvanna to the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, March 29, 1803, in Ibid., 277. 109 For this vote and the plans they made to distribute the funds, see Hume, “Virginia Society of the Cincinnati’s Gift (contd. II),” 307–16.

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A similar overlap of elite self-interest and concern for long-term governmental stability animated early American legal education The Presbyterian educational culture of the mid-Atlantic, rooted especially in Newark and Elizabethtown, New Jersey, was the source of some of the earliest organized efforts at legal education in the United States.

Proponents of this same Presbyterian educational world founded one of the earliest moot court societies in colonial America, run by William Livingston and based out of New

York City. More importantly, Tapping Reeve famously controlled the Litchfield Law

School from 1784 to the early 1820s, before one of his protégés took it over. Reeve was a product of New Side schools that emerged after the Great Awakening, before graduating from the College of New Jersey. He taught for a time at the Elizabeth Town

Academy before moving to Connecticut with his wife, Sarah Burr Reeve, the daughter of

Aaron Burr, Sr., a former president of the College of New Jersey. Reeve’s school trained nearly 1,000 students, many of whom became influential political and judicial figures during the early republic. In addition to a systematic legal education, the School created a network that offered students a wealth of advice, information, at sometimes patronage, which they could use to build their influence. This interconnected elite stitched together the nation in a similar manner to the Masons and Cincinnati.110

In 1783, just before Reeve opened his Law School, a number of men with similar backgrounds started a moot court society in Newark and Elizabeth Town, which they called the Institutio Legalis. The society followed fairly standard moot court practices.

110 Mark Boonshoft, “The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Winter 2014): 561–95.

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The members took turns serving as judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors. They debated a range of cases from criminal suits to matters of constitutional interpretation. In addition to rendering a verdict, the judge would critique the attorneys’ performance and offer suggestions for improvement.111 Many of the founders were the sons of men who belonged to religious and military networks that founded academies throughout New

Jersey. Richard Stockton Jr.’s father served on the board of the College of New Jersey.

Aaron Ogden served as an officer in the Continental line after teaching at the Elizabeth

Town Academy. At least two of the other remaining five had relatives who served as officers in the New Jersey line as well.112 The Institutio continually remade itself when members finished legal clerkships and left there area to start their careers. But the association with the Presbyterian educational world never left. Though not a founding member, Alexander McWhorter’s son joined the Institutio in 1785, as did another

McWhorter in 1794.113 When the society reorganized itself again in 1802, George

Clinton Barber—the son of Francis Barber, who was Reeve’s successor as the Elizabeth

Town Academy’s principal—joined the rolls.114 The society often met at the Newark courthouse or at the Newark and Elizabeth Town Academies, though sometimes at Elisha

111 The Institutio has received little scholarly attention. For the fullest account, see Don C. Skemer, “The Institutio Legalis and Legal Education in New Jersey: 1783–1817,” New Jersey History 96 (Autumn/Winter 1978): 123–134. 112 The founding agreement and list of founding members is in, June 27, 1783, Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS, 1. 113 There is a handwritten list of members that is broken down by dates of membership in the Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS, 6. A list of members is also published in Skemer, “Institutio Legalis,” 134. 114 Jan. 11, 1802, Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS, 230-1.

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Boudinot’s office as well.115 A large number of the members clerked for Elisha

Boudinot—a trustee of the College of New Jersey and of the Newark Academy—when they joined the society. As time wore on, more and more of the members clerked with former members of the society, which created a network of attorneys in northern New

Jersey and beyond.116 The society thus connected young attorneys with legal luminaries throughout the state. The society also caught the attention of other prominent people.

For instance, Edward Shippen, who would become the chief justice of the Pennsylvania

Supreme Court, oversaw one of the society’s meetings as a guest judge.117 The Institutio

Legalis provided a sizable proportion of New Jersey’s legal elite with their initial socialization into the culture of the state bar and offered young men access to social capital that could help them to reach the highest ranks of the profession.118

Membership in the society was fairly exclusive. Members could bring friends to hear the arguments, but required that they “withdraw as soon as it is finished” so the society could discuss their business. Members could also nominate their friends as new members, though only two nay votes from current members ended any bid for membership.119 On the one hand, this helps to explain the tight knit group that seemed to control the Institutio. On the other hand, exclusivity underpinned the group’s power and

115 The early plan was to meet at the Newark Courthouse, but by the mid 1790s, they tended to meet at one of the Academies or Boudinot’s office; see for example, June 27, 1783; May [?], 1795; July 25, 1795, Oct. [?], 1795, all in Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS, 2-3, 195, 196, 199. 116 Skemer, “Institutio Legalis,” 126–7, 131–2. 117 Aug. 1787, Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS, 138. 118 On the importance of social capital to professional success, see James D. Montgomery, “Social Networks and Labor-Market Outcomes: Toward an Economic Analysis,” The American Economic Review 81 (1991): 1408–1418. 119 June 27, 1783; also Jan. 11, 1802, in Institutio Legalis Record Book, N-JHS 4-5, 234-5.

363 kept membership valuable. The founders saw the society as a real chance to improve, and would fine members for non-attendance or for poor performance. Admitting lackluster people to their ranks would hurt the quality of debate and lessen the value of membership.120 The Institutio Legalis and the Litchfield Law School both emerged during a period when the legal profession faced major political opposition. Elite attorneys used both institutions to systematize and perhaps, from their point of view, stabilize the practice of law in a way that democratic state legislatures would not. Doing so through an educational institution transmitted this perspective across generations.

The overt and covert ways in which voluntary associations used their connections with academies to serve factional ends could not erase the overriding sense that education served the public good. Americans still saw academies as institutions that mattered to the health of the entire republic. In the 1790s and 1800s, some state and local governments held elections at academies. The schools remained relatively neutral public sites, despite how groups used them to pursue very particular political aims.121 As integral parts of the fabric of civil institutions, but also funded by the states, academies were institutions that naturally mediated between state and society. This connection was precisely what the

Masons, Cincinnati, and other associations tried to exploit for their own benefit.

120 One member was fined, for instance, “for having neglected to bring up practice,” Feb. 1784, Institutio Legalis Record Book. 121 The “judges” of elections for the U.S. representatives came from two counties to meet at the Cannonsburgh Academy, Carlisle Gazette, May 28, 1794. New York gubernatorial elections were held at the Columbia Academy in Kinderhook, Albany Centinel, April 24, 1801; a number of elections were held at the Newburgh Academy, New York Rights of Man, April 9, 1804.

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Conclusion

Driven by nationalistic and geopolitical concerns, networks of revolutionary elites led the way in developing educational institutions at the local level. In their hands, academies became institutions that cemented social hierarchies and undermined some of the democratic potential of the revolution that seemed to threaten the connection between social and political power. Despite constitutional provisions that ostensibly compelled many state governments to create education systems, politics intervened and made that impossible. Yet state governments still helped support elite-run academies. In courting and gaining the support of state governments, and through the active efforts of nationalistic civil society associations, school trustees created an illusion of consensus around academies. But beneath the veneer of nationalism and the rhetoric of communal improvement that supporters used to justify academies, lay a rationalization of gentry rule.

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Epilogue

Over forty years after he began his diplomatic career, John Quincy Adams won a contentious presidential election over Andrew Jackson. Much about the United States had changed during that time. Perhaps nothing underscored this point more than meteoric political rise of Jackson himself. Adams, for his part, continued to sound many of the same notes he had as a young man. In his 1825 annual message to Congress,

Adams laid out his famous plan for an “American System,” which he hoped would fund not only internal improvements and infrastructure, but also the moral improvement of the

United States.1

As ever, Adams understood American domestic development in a geopolitical context. In one revealing passage, Adams argued that in “assuming her station among the civilized nations of the earth” the United States committed to “her share of mind, of labor, and of expense to the improvement of those parts of knowledge which lie beyond the reach of individual acquisition.” Adams commended “the generous emulation with which the governments of France, Great Britain, and Russia have devoted the genius, the intelligence, the treasures of their respective nations” to human improvement. In light of this, Adams opined that it was time for the United States “to contribute our portion of

1 Charles Grier Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 270–1; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 259; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 251–3.

366 energy and exertion to the common stock.” It was not as though Adams thought the

United States was in imminent danger if they did not.2 He claimed that in the aftermath of the War of 1812, “the United States, in the general scale of civilized Nations, increases in the estimation of all Europe, quite as rapidly as in reality.”3 As a consequence, the

United States in fact enjoyed a remarkable period of “peace with all the other nations of the earth.”4

As Adams realized, the fact that Americans had managed to secure their place among “civilized nations” meant they had done enough to provide for education in the

United States. But Adams also noted that other nations “are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improvement.” If the United States did not follow suit, he asked, “would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority”?5 To stay competitive, Adams believed Americans had to develop a new system of public support for education and domestic improvement. For example,

Adams congratulated American colleges for furthering scientific discovery and numerous state governments for funding public universities. But he thought that it “would be honorable to our country if the sequel of the same experiments should be countenanced by the patronage of our government, as they have hitherto been by those of France and

Britain.” The federal government could certainly accomplish feats “important to the

2 John Quincy Adams, “First Annual Message,” Dec. 6, 1825, in James Daniel Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), vol. 2: 312. 3 Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, London, July 17, 1815, Early Access Document from Founders Online, National Archives (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-2902. 4 Adams, “First Annual Message,” in Richardson, Compilation, vol. 2: 299. 5 Ibid., vol. 2: 316.

367 whole and to which neither the authority nor the resources of any one state can be adequate.”6 Adams made an analogous argument about the military. He lauded militias for protecting the United States in its early years. Yet Adams still characterized

American armed forces as “a body of dislocated members.” The American military, according to Adams, existed “without the vigor of unity and having little of uniformity.”7

The same description could easily have applied to American education in the period.

In the message, Adams laid out a constitutional and moral argument for federal intervention in domestic affairs. He urged Congress to build an astronomical observatory, expand the Army Corps of Engineers, and found a national university.

Together, these innovations would improve agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, and promote “mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound.”8 Only an expansion of federal involvement could make possible the necessary set of internal improvements and domestic development that would sustain the United States’ privileged place within the global community of civilized nations. Adams placed perhaps the most famous passage of the message in this context.

The spirit of improvement is abroad upon the earth. It stimulates the hearts and sharpens the faculties not of our fellow citizens alone, but of the nations of Europe and of their rulers. While dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition

6 Ibid., vol. 2: 313, 316. 7 Ibid., vol. 2: 303. 8 Ibid., vol. 2: 316.

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that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.9

Adams’s plan for a national university and a larger system of federally funded internal improvements would not come to pass, though the Morrill Land Grant Act of

1862 marked a major expansion of federal intervention in education. Instead, infrastructural and intellectual development continued to occur mostly at the state level, subject to the whims of partisan and regional differences. Support for business corporations, transportation improvements, and state-run common school systems were strongest in northern states, and particularly among Whigs. These political networks dovetailed with supporters of evangelical moral reform.10 In the era of the Second Great

Awakening, evangelicals built national denominational networks to generate support for temperance, Sabbatarianism, and Sunday schools, and to disseminate children’s literature and bibles.11 Even with the efforts of evangelical Whig reformers, in most places

9 Ibid., 316. 10 Ronald G Walters, American Reformers, 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 214–7; Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 154–7; Sellers, The Market Revolution, 367–9; Daniel Walker Howe, “Church, State, and Education in the Young American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Spring 2002): 1–24; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 449–5; John L. Brooke, “Patriarchal Magistrates, Associated Improvers, and Monitoring Militias: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” in State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, ed. Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 178–217, esp. 192-203. 11 Donald G. Mathews, “The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis,” American Quarterly 21 (April 1969): 23–43. There is a growing sociological literature that also finds the origins of large-scale reform movements in religious organization, especially in Britain and the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; see Michael P. Young, Bearing Witness Against Sin: The Evangelical Birth of the American Social Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Peter Stamatov, “Activist Religion, Empire, and the Emergence of Modern Long-Distance Advocacy Networks,” American Sociological Review 75 (2010): 607–628; and Stamatov, “The Religious Field and the Path-Dependent Transformation of Popular Politics in the Anglo-American World, 1770– 1840,” Theory and Society 40 (2011): 437–473.

369 education still depended on support from voluntary and religious associations that, while enmeshed in national networks, also remained rooted in local and state cultures.

State systems of public common schools reflected the democratic educational ideals of the Revolution more than anything that came before. At the same time, they institutionalized a new repressive and racialized vision for white, middle-class, and

Protestant citizenship. Academies kept pace, indeed thrived, alongside the education reforms designed to supplant them. This was largely because the de-centralized system of networks that undergirded the common school movement and support for state-level internal improvements did not differ substantially from what led to the initial proliferation academies. The two-tiered system, in which academies continued to serve elites, further blunted the democratic potential of education, reinforcing the notion that lower-level education existed largely to control non-elites.12

Most importantly, Adams’s biggest fears were realized during the second third of the nineteenth century. He had envisioned a network of educational institutions and infrastructure that would more firmly bind citizens directly to the nation-state itself.

Adams hoped that doing so would take the onus of national unification off of an informal institutional web, which had served Americans well for a time, but remained unstable.

The failure to realize Adams’s vision for the American system meant that local civil and

12 Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Kabria Baumgartner, “Intellect, Liberty, Life: Women’s Activism and the Politics of Black Education in Antebellum America” (Ph. D. Diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2011). Here I acknowledge “radical revisionist” educational historians’ critique of the undemocratic flaws of early public education. Yet by situating the emergence of state systems of public education in the context of the educational landscape they supplanted, their limits seem comparatively less glaring.

370 religious associations continued to provide the foundation for the most explicitly national networks and overtly nationalistic institutions, and thus remained the main binding agent of the union. The institutions—churches, political parties, voluntary associations, and schools—that drew the nation together in a way the federal state could not, were also among the first to fragment along explicitly sectional lines. Beginning with denominational schisms and ending with the emergence of sectionalized political parties, the very institutions that had built a symbiotic relationship with the nation state ultimately undermined the union. By the early-nineteenth century the United States may have been a civilized nation in the eyes of Europe. But the negotiated settlement that made this state of affairs possible also anticipated the breakdown of the federal union itself.13

Americans have still never achieved the level of centralized education that Adams championed. Yet the conviction that education is integral to national cohesion and strength has never abated. Education remained a critical component of the expansion of national power in nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. Education’s influence on the expansion of state power underscores the extent to which cooperation between civil associations and government persisted as a viable model for structuring state power well into the nineteenth century. According to one scholar, the “geographically diffuse

13 Robert H. Wiebe, The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1984), 229–32, 291–320, 353–75; Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 113–50; John L. Brooke, “Cultures of Nationalism, Movements of Reform, and the Composite–Federal Polity: From Revolutionary Settlement to Antebellum Crisis,” Journal of the Early Republic 29, (Spring 2009): 1–33, esp. 13-33; Johann N. Neem, “Civil Society and American Nationalism, 1776-1865,” in Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present, ed. Elisabeth S. Clemens and Doug Guthrie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 29–53; Johann N. Neem, “Taking Modernity’s Wager: Tocqueville, Social Capital, and the American Civil War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41 (Spring 2011): 591–618.

371 complex of institutions,” especially colleges, “provided a ready-made administrative network” that undergirded the development of the Progressive and New Deal states.

Education reconfigured people’s conceptions of citizenship and how they understood their relationship to the nation-state.14 An even more expansive network of state-run public high schools, which expanded both the population of college-ready students and literate and skilled workers, sustained the rise of universities.15 Adams attempted to create a more democratic educational system in the United States by harnessing the power of democratic government to create domestic development. American fears of state power made this impossible. Ironically, then, Adams’s intellectual heirs resurrected the model of associative action that underlay the development of academies in the colonial and revolutionary eras.16

14 Christopher P. Loss, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 3. On the associative state as a model for the New Deal, see also Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 352–400, and on education in particular, 390–3. 15 Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Human Capital and Social Capital: The Rise of Secondary Schooling in America, 1910-1940,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 683–723; and also Goldin and Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). 16 For this long argument, see Peter Dobkin Hall, The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of American Nationality (New York: New York University Press, 1982).

372

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