A History of Education in Louisiana During the Reconstruction Period, 1862-1877
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1957 A History of Education in Louisiana During the Reconstruction Period, 1862-1877. Leon Odum Beasley Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Beasley, Leon Odum, "A History of Education in Louisiana During the Reconstruction Period, 1862-1877." (1957). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 191. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/191 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA DURING THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD, 1862-1877 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Education by, ... Leon Odum Beasley B. A., Baylor University, 1948 M. A., University of North Carolina, 1953 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The writer wishes to express his appreciation of and his gratitude for the guidance and helpful criticisms which were given by Professor John A.- Hunter, under whose direction the study was made. To Professor John Oliver Pettiss and Professor Edwin A. Davis a special word of gratitude for their many valuable suggestions and criticisms. Professors Mitchell, Fulmer, and Deer provided the full complement to the committee which was of real benefit to the writer. The members of the staff of the Hill Memorial Library and the staff of the Howard-Tilton Library of Tulane Uni versity were most patient and helpful. Miss Lucy Foote and Miss Marcell Schurtz of the Louisiana Room and Department of Archives of Louisiana State University gave valuable aid in the location of many materials which contributed greatly to the study. To the writer's wife, Marjorie, and to those others who in a personal way have given encouragement the writer is grateful. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENT ....... .......................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................ vi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .................................. 1 II. WARTIME RECONSTRUCTION ....................... 45 Administration of General Benjamin F. Butler. ....... ................. 45 Negro education. .......................... 60 Wartime legislation. ............. 64 III. THE PERIOD OF RESTORATION, 1865-1868 . 75 End of restoration ........... 94 IV. SPECIAL AREAS OF EDUCATION DURING THE RESTORATION PERIOD . ............ 99 Negro education and the Freedman's Bureau . .. 99 Special and higher education . 122 v. t h o m a s T wT c o n w a y a n d t h e s t a t e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n OF EDUCATION: 1868-1872 . 128 Thomas W. Conway . 128 ; Ac t 121. * * . ........ *■ ■ . ” . 13 3 CHAPTER PAGE Later legislation. ...................... 143 Spoliation in education....................153 Departure and investigation............... 156 VI. SPECIFIC PROBLEMS RELATING TO EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA: 1868-1872.................. 165 Mixed schools and Negro education.........166 The Normal School of New Orleans .........174 Teacher institutes ..................... 177 Conventions and associations ............... 181 Divisional activities.......... 183 The Peabody Education Fund . 185 Higher education 191 VII. WILLIAM G. BROWN AND THE STATE ADMINIS TRATION OF EDUCATION: 1872-1876. ...... 195 William G. Brown and the 1872 election . 197 W. G. Brown, 1873-1877 ............... 200 Reports of the period. ..... 202 Brown's program and policies ..... 208 State school lands and funds . 211 The Negro question . 211 Last days of Reconstruction. ..... 215 VIII. SPECIFIC PROBLEMS RELATING TO EDUCATION: iv CHAPTER PACE Teacher institutes ................... 220 Teacher conventions and associations .... 223 Model schools............................ 225 Teachers and teaching.................... 229 Buildings, health, and sanitation........ 241 Higher education ............................ 246 Problems and opinion ........................ 251 A new e ra..................................... 257 BIBLIOGRAPHY . .......... 259 APPENDIX ........... 275 VITA......................... 312 ABSTRACT A general treatment of education in Louisiana during the period of Reconstruction, 1862-1877, formed the basis for this study. The War Between the States having shattered the political, economic, and social life of the State, dealt a severe blow to the embryonic educational system which ex isted in 1860. Through the use of the historical method the major developments in the. field of education are recorded in four major periods: during the war, 1862-1865, restoration, 1865-1868, the Conway administration, 1868-1872, and the Brown administration, 1872-1877* In 1860 approximately forty-five thousand students were in school. Annual expenditures from all sources was slightly over one million dollars. Negroes composed only one half of one per cent of the school attenders. Despite the progress made in public education, many, people in the State favored the idea of public funds for indigent pupils only. In New Orleans the public schools were well organized and attended. There sixteen thousand attended in 1860. New Orleans fell to the Union forces in the spring of 1862. General Benjamin Butler, the military commander, actively supported the schools. He was succeeded by General ;/Y: ■ ^ ' Nathanial P. Banks, who, early in 1863, began the establish- raent of schoolff^'f&r the Negroes. Schools for the Negroes established by the military were taken over by the Freedman's Bureau and later by local school authorities. Rapid advances were made in organizing Negro schools. Civil government under military occupation was re established under the Constitution of 1864. Participants in politics from 1864-1868 were conservative and the educa tional program of the period was largely a continuation of pre-war policies. John McNair and Robert M. Lusher served as State Superintendents of Education during the period. With the coming of Congressional reconstruction events followed the radical tendencies of politics. Racial equality was legislated into existence in law in the Constitution of 1868 and the schools were ordered open to all alike. Thomas W. Conway, a carpetbagger who had been associated with the Freedmen's Bureau was elected State Superintendent of Edu cation in the first administration under the new organic law. Compulsory mixed attendance by Negroes and whites was made a matter of State policy in the early days of his tenure. Op position forced the abandonment of the policy on the State level. Subsequent attempts were usually of local origin. A new comprehensive school law was passed in 1869 and modified by the Legislatures of 1870 and 1871. During this period the Louisiana Seminary was moved to Baton Rouge, teacher,institutes were begun, the first educational conven tion held, the Peabody Fund initiated, along with other ad vances in education. Corruption was in evidence throughout the State and Conway himself was found to be guilty of theft. The Radical Republicans captured the State's offices in 1872, bringing William G. Brown, a mulatto, as State Superintendent of Education. He was thought to be faithful and honest but his color prevented his providing positive leadership. Education during the latter period of Reconstruction showed signs of progress. Probably about sixty-nine thousand pupils were in the public schools alone. Thirty thousand were Negroes and thirty-nine thousand were white. Education for the whites suffered most extensively in the rural areas. Public education received almost three-quarters of a million dollars annually from local and state sources, being res pectively 50/2, 40/%, and the remainder from interests on school funds. Private education received an amount similar to pre-war times, giving a total of well over a million dollars annually. » newly named Louisiana State University suffered greatly during the latter period but was able to remain in l viii Military forces were withdrawn from the State in April of 1877 and in the same month Robert M. Lusher returned as State Superintendent of Education. Thus did Reconstruction end. In so far as education was concerned its chief ac complishment was the publicity that it had received and the passage of some of the older ideas that served to retard the progress of education in a democracy. ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the day when the keeper of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves low, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out the window be darkened. Ecclesiastes 12:3 The memory of war is a memory of sound and scent. Across the fertile reaches of Louisiana, across the.placid r * bayous, through the pine thickets, hanging sullenly over canebrakes, welling up from the din of the city, came the sound and scent that foretold doom for Louisiana. Smolder ing cotton, burning at the hand of the enemy torch, or the owner's determination to deny the victor the spoils, or yet possibly the remnant of a last defense, filled the air with its undeniable presence. Giant cane rollers, rusting from disuse, robbed the land of that sound which had spelled prosperity to the thirteen hundred sugar