The Sectional Conflict in Southern Public Education, 1865-1876
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This dissertation has been 61— 5130 microfilmed exactly as received V A U G H N , William Preston, 1933- THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHERN PUBLIC EDUCATION: 1865-1876. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 History, mo d e r n University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by William Preston Vaughn 1962 THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHERN PUBLIC EDUCATION 1865-1876 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Qraduate School of The Ohio State University B y WILLIAM PRESTON VAUGHN, A. B., M. A. The Ohio State University 1961 Approved by V Adviser Department of History PREFACE The educational problems of the Southern States in the 1960*8, centering around a series of crises over integration, unfortunately have well-established historical precedents in the Reconstruction Era. In that period, certain Northern groups regarded education, particularly that of the newly emancipated Negro, as the keystone to a reconstructed South that was to be rebuilt along New England lines. Waves of missionary teachers descended upon the Southern States and founded thousands of schools for Negroes. Their often- unconpromising attitude toward well-established Southern social patterns, combined with the fact that they were engaged in teaching a race which certain Southerners did not want to be educated — least of all, by Yankees, created a furor in the late 1860‘s and early 1870*s and resulted in a hostile antagonism toward Northern “missionaries" which persists even today. The public school systems that were founded or re-established after the Civil War existed on foundations of quicksand until the turn of the century, as far as public favor and support were concerned. That these school systems survived the mal administration, corruption, lack of financial and moral support of the substantial white citizens and outlived crises over such controversial questions as mixed schools seems a miracle. ii ill This study is concerned with topics which produced a sectional conflict in the field of Southern public education after the Civil War: the agitation caused by the presence of Northern teachers and the differences of opinion among the Southern whites as to the idea and practice of educating the Negro, Four chapters deal with the most burning educational problem of the reconstructed South — that of mixed schools, and how this question assumed national prominence in the struggle over the Civil Rights Bill introduced by Charles Sumner in 1870, and involved the administration of the Feabody Fund, Southern state universities were not without their problems and a chapter i concerning this phase is included to complete the picture of conflict. The Reconstruction Bra in the South is one“of the most complex phases of American History and this writer believes that, too often, historians of the period have confined themselves too largely to political and economic subjects. As this research will endeavor to prove, a "social" question, such as public school education, often developed into as controversial and important a matter to contemporaries as the more infamous and better remembered political struggles of the period. This study, for the sake of brevity and cohesion, has been confined to the eleven Southern States that seceded, with the addition of the District of Columbia, which forms an interesting and vital comparison to the states. The years 1875-1876 have been set as chronological limits, for with the return of the Southern States to white conservative control in 1877 most of these educational problems were resolved. This dissertation does not pretend to be a history of public school systems in the South during the ten years after the War, their corruption and lack of efficiency, a story ably recorded by Edgar W. Knight, Stephen B. Weeks and others, but it is an account of those problems in the area of public education which intensified the bitterness and acrimony of Reconstruction. The writer wishes to express his appreciation to the staffs of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, The Ohio State Museum Library, and the Main Library of The Ohio State University Libraries for assistance accorded him while doing research. Special thanks is given to Miss Jane W. Gatliff and her staff of the Interlibrary Loan Division of The Ohio State University Libraries for the numerous materials obtained from other institutions. Especially am I grateful to Dr. Henry H. Simms, who aided me in the selection of this topic and has given me constant and invaluable assistance during its evolution. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. The Etaotional Basis for the Sectional Conflict .............................. 1 2• Agitation Occasioned by the Presence of Northern Teachers and Missionary Societies in the South .......................... 21 3. The Southern Reaction to the Education of the N e g r o .................................. 87 ii* The Controversy over Mixed Schools.................. 127 5. The Mixed School Problem in L o u i s i a n a ................ 170 6. The Relationship of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Conflict in Education.................................... 202 7. The Peabody Fund Administration as a Conservative Force in the Educational Problems of the S o u t h ............................ 2lj.O 8. The Crisis in Public Higher E d u c a t i o n ................ 263 9* Conclusions.................................. 291 Bibliography . .......................................... 297 Autobiography............................................ 309 v CHAPTER I THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT Northern contemporaries in the period following the Civil War were prone to blame the causes of the recent conflict on many factors - slavery and its expansion into the territories, the declining political importance of the South and its attempt to retain an economic "stranglehold" on the American economy. These reasons, and others generally related to political and economic matters, often overshadowed equally prejudiced views on the subject of public education - or the lack of it - in the ante-bellum South, and how this was involved in producing an armed sectional conflict. Certain Northern groups and leaders seemed to believe that the Southern affection for private school training and the lukewarm support given to existing public school systems, combined with the legal proscriptions against educating the slaves, were primary causes for leading the South to war in 1861, In 1870, the New York Times commented upon the paucity of public school systems in the South before i860 and the prevalence of academies and private tutors, and said that: It was this which checked labor emigration ••• and turned it into the free West, where the descendants of New England had carried the school house. The result was, that the South became an oligarchy in which political power was wielded by the few, while the North became the prosperous home of free labor and of educated political ideas. These ideas finally prevailed at the polls, and led to that sectional political ascendency which the South pretended drove it into rebellion. Two years after the war ended, Reuben Tomlinson, an Assistant Freedman's Bureau Cbmmissioner in South Carolina, bluntly stated in the publication of the American Missionary Society that, "It was the ignorance of the great mass of the Southern whites, produced by the existence of a privileged class of slaveholders, which enabled the 2 leaders to carry the South into rebellion in behalf of slavery." Another "benevolent society"3 publication asserted that it was the ignorance of the masses of the South, and the "consequent disproportion of authority in the hands of ambitious men" that brought on the rebellion.^ At teachers1 conventions and in the education journals, extreme sentiments were uttered concerning the great ignorance of the mass of the Southern population, and how the uneducated poor whites had been forced into a war by a tyrannical slaveholding oligarchy. Francis Wayland, former President of Brown University, in 1865 wrote to Samuel S. Greene, President of the National Teachers' Association, that the war had tested the value of education for it had been "a war of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism.""’ In the 1865 edition of the Journal of Proceedings and Lectures published by ^The American Missionary, XI, 9 (Sept., 1867), 209. 3Vide, Ch. 2. j*The Freedman's Record, II, 5 (May, 1866), 81** ^National Teachers' Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (Washington: National Teachers' Association, 1865),15. Hereafter, this will be cited as National Teachers' Association, Proceedings. the National Teachers1 Association, it was stated that one class in the South, because of the dominance of its slaveholding members, was secure only in the ignorance of the poor whites, who were too down trodden to improve themselves, and in the ignorance of the slaves, who were prohibited from learning to read.6 In the years after the war, certain Northern historians and educators continued to insist that virtually no public schools had ever existed in the Southern States prior to i860. General 0, 0# Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, incorrectly stated in his autobiography that before the war, North Carolina had never had a free-school system, "even for white pupils," and that "the death of slavery unfolded the wings of knowledge for both black and white to 7 brighten all the future of the 'old North State,"' He remarked (erroneously) that in South Carolina, as in her sister-state to the North, there was no state system of schools before i860, and that beyond the limits of Charleston "there was not a single free school g in that state," In 1865, the President of the National Teachers' Association patronizingly said that there had been no common school 9 systems in the states where slavery prevailed. As late as 1912 ^Andrew J, Rickoff, "A National Bureau of Education," National Teachers' Association, Proceedings, 302, ^Oliver 0, Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, II (N,Y«, 1908), 338, Hereafter, this work will be cited as Howard, Autobio ^Samuel S.