Race, Religion, and Redemption: William Henry Ruffner and the Moral Foundations of Education in Virginia Author(s): Thomas C. Hunt, Jennings L. Wagoner Jr. and Jennings J. Wagoner Jr. Source: American Presbyterians, Vol. 66, No. 1 (SPRING 1988), pp. 1-9 Published by: Presbyterian Historical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23330761 Accessed: 06-01-2019 20:25 UTC

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This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Race, Religion, and Redemption: William Henry Ruffner and the Moral Foundations of Education in Virginia by Thomas C. Hunt and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr.

TODAY, IT IS COMMONLY ASSUMED IN Puryear of Richmond College and J. Wil AMERICA that the state, the civic entity, liam Jones, a Baptist clergyman who wrote has a basic right to educate, and that this a series of articles under the nom de right is to be exercised through schools plume "Civis" in the Religious Herald and that are public in access, control, and sup in the widely circulated Southern Planter port. In the nineteenth century, however, and Farmer.3 In combination, the charges the government's right to educate and to these religious spokesmen hurled against levy taxes for school support was repeat Superintendent Ruffner and the public edly questioned and often strongly re schools generated a crisis of confidence in sisted. In Virginia and throughout the public education in Virginia that quite lit South as well as in other parts of the na erally threatened its survival in its infancy tion, attempts to establish and maintain stage. public schools were fraught with contro To probe into the debates that divided versy over questions involving race, reli these Protestant Christians over the pro gion, and the redemptive or morally ele priety of public schooling is to uncover vating possibilities of nondenominational the roots of a concern that has again resur education. faced in contemporary arguments over Much of the credit for establishing a tax the nature of public education. The funda supported system of public schools in Vir mental question addressed by both Ruff ginia must go to William Henry Ruffner, neran and his critics in the 1870s was that of ordained Presbyterian minister, who thein "morality" of public schooling. These 1870 became Virginia's first Superinten debates not only brought into question dent of Public Instruction.1 Ruffner's ef the morality or "Tightness" of taxation in forts in behalf of public education, how support of common schools for blacks as ever, were severely circumscribed by well as whites even in separate schools, attacks from coreligionists. The Reverend but more fundamentally focused on the Robert Lewis Dabney of the Union The "moral foundations" of any form of public ological Seminary of Virginia and later education. Critics of public schools main founder of the Austin Presbyterian The tained that by their very nature state-sup ological Seminary, emerged as one of ported schools had to be secular and Ruffner's most vocal and hostile critics.2 In therefore could not but be immoral. Ruff the mid-1870s, Dabney joined in on an as ner and his allies argued that, although sault against Ruffner and the public school nonsectarian, public schools could and system that was being spearheaded by would in fact be guardians of morality. The Baptist opponents, Professor Bennett struggle surrounding the beginnings of

Dr. Hunt is a member of the faculty of the College of Education, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr. Wagoner is a professor in the Curry School of Education, .

American Presbyterians, 66:1 (Spring 1988)

This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 American Presbyterians the public education system in Virginia and old, were taught reading and the fun was thus essentially a "moral struggle," a damentals of religion by white teachers" contest in which men took sides based on including Presbyterian deacon Thomas their perception of what would best serve "Stonewall" Jackson.6 Some years later, to protect or strengthen—or prevent thewhile living in Harrisonburg, he opened further erosion of—the "moral fiber" of another Sunday school for local blacks citizens, black and white. and served for a time on the Board of Di rectors of the African Colonization Soci Establishment of the Public School System ety. William Henry and his father were both Presbyterian ministers who pro Virginia, in spite of several decades fessedof belief in the unity of the human relatively intense pro-public school senti race and brotherhood of man.7 ment expressed by many of its citizens and Both before and after the Civil War, Wil in spite too of Thomas Jefferson's pro liam Henry Ruffner argued against those posal back in 1779 for a public school syswhose minds were closed on the question tem, entered the Civil War with less than of a educating blacks, but as architect of the dozen towns and counties operating pub law which established public schools in lic "common schools." There was no state Virginia, he recognized that only a dual wide system of education. Prejudice school system had any chance of surviving against the public "pauper schools" had in the racially divided commonwealth. led the wealthier whites to support private Even the idea of a "separate but equal" institutions, and half of the white children system of schools proved to be a cause of of the state had never been inside a public continuing controversy and provoked hos school. Nearly twenty-two percent of the tile attacks by conservative Virginians who white population was illiterate in I860.4 objected both to public schools in general The Act of Congress by which Virginia and schools for freedmen in particular. was readmitted to the Union in 1869 de Nonetheless, the arrival—if not the sur clared in Article VIII, Section 3, that "the vival—of a new order was announced in Constitution of Virginia shall never Julybe of 1870, when Governor Gilbert C. amended or changed as to deprive Walkerany signed into law a bill entitled "An citizen or class of citizens of the United Act to Establish and Maintain a Uniform States of the school rights and privileges System of Public Free Schools." Although secured by the constitution of said state." Walker in time proved to be less than en Thus, to the body of citizens to be edu thusiastic in his support of public schools, cated was added the entire black popula he boldly proclaimed in his inaugural ad tion recently freed from . Freed dress that "free education for all" (includ men constituted nearly one-half the ing the "colored," who have the "fran population of the state and the 1870 cenchise") would be one of the "chief tenets" sus indicated that 207,000 freedmen were of his political faith.8 totally illiterate.5 Such were the conditions Ruffner's labors during his first few confronting William Henry Ruffner when years as Superintendent of Public Instruc he took office in 1870 as the first Superin tion resulted in significant gains in the tendent of Public Instruction. number of teachers and pupils of both Superintendent Ruffner, like his father races who constituted the human capital Henry Ruffner, President of Washington of the new system of public schools. He College, had been an outspoken oppo informed local superintendents where nent of slavery. As a young man in the they might secure competent black teach 1840s, William Henry Ruffner had organ ers and encouraged white southerners to ized the first Sunday school for blacks in engage in the instruction of freedmen Lexington where "some hundreds, young "with a view to elevate their character, and

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same time to keep alive public school sup port and educational opportunity for Vir ginia blacks and whites alike.10The height ened controversy over the role of race and religion in the fledgling public school sys tem threw Ruffner and his allies into a bat tle that gained the intensity of a holy war.

War Against the Public Schools

Guerrilla attacks against the public schools that had been occurring for sev eral years erupted into an open declara tion of war against the schools in 1875. The escalation of conflict was announced by Professor Bennett Puryear of Richmond College who proclaimed in the pages of the Religious Herald that the provision for public schools amounted to state pater nalism and tended to "relax individual energy and debauch private morality." Puryear contended that the entire system of public education violated the American principle that allowed each citizen to con William Henry Ruffner and duct his own affairs without undue gov W.H. Ruffner Campbell ernmental interference. Charging that "the public school is atheism or infidelity" to adapt them to the successful discharge in that it substituted state control over the of the new duties imposed upon them by child in place of parental control, he con their changed condition." Ruffner ex demned the enterprise as a "negation of horted his local superintendents to "lead a God's authority." Moreover, Puryear held educational revival among the people" that education was both unnecessary and and compared their undertaking to a reli unwise for those who were destined to gious crusade.9 perform the menial tasks of society; if an Ruffner's crusade did not lack enemies. exceptional child should spring from the Hostile public opinion against which lowerhe social stratum, he reasoned, then and his lieutenants battled for years galva private charity could provide for his nized with threats of the impending education.11pas sage in 1874 and 1875 of a federal civil Puryear's salvo against the schools was rights bill that contained a clause mandat soon followed by an even heavier barrage ing "mixed schools." Ruffner believed, unleashed as by conservative Baptist J. Wil did Barnas Sears of the Peabody Fund liamand Jones. In a series of articles over the other advocates of public education in signature the of "Civis," published in 1875 and South, that if the civil rights bill passed 1876 and reprinted for even wider distri with the mixed school clause intact, the bution by the Southern Planter and Farmer system of public education in Virginia and in 1877, Jones expanded upon the criti throughout the region would receive its cisms voiced by Puryear. As had Puryear, death blow. Ruffner thus joined forces "Civis" declared that the political princi with those who labored to kill the mixed ples "which are invoked in the support of school clause while endeavoring at the the public school are foreign to free insti

This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 American Presbyterians tutions and fatal to liberty." He main tained similarly that "the education of chil dren is not the business of government, but the sacred and imperative duty of par ents" and that state involvement in educa tion "is a wicked and dangerous denial of the reciprocal relations and obligations of parent and child, as proclaimed by nature and taught with solemn emphasis over and over by Cod, by Christ and his Apostles."12 Declaring himself a "friend of the ne gro, but a friend to him in his proper place of subordination," the author of the "Civis" articles elaborated at length upon his objections to public schooling gener ally and especially education for blacks. The "Civis" articles were steeped in racist assumptions and open endorsements of inequality. While "Civis" conspicuously refrained from making any reference to Robert L. Dabney Jefferson in his articles, like Jefferson, he frequently invoked the Creator in support the April, 1876 edition of the Southern of his view of the natural scheme of Planter and Farmer, Dabney, then on the things. Among typical invocations Union of the Seminary faculty, blasted the pub Divine in support of the doctrine lic of school in system as a "quixotic project. . . equality were these statements by the"Civis": cunning cheat of Yankee state-craft." The line of demarcation between the races is Dabney condemned the "unrighteousness" not accidental or the result of outward sur of a system that "wrung by a grinding tax roundings; it has been fixed by the finger ation of from an oppressed people" enor God. . . . mous sums for use in the "pretended edu The law of nature, which is always the cation law of of freed slaves." Expenditures for Cod, is inequality, not equality; diversity, public not education were all the more de uniformity; and the happiness of the whole animal kingdom is best subserved by plorable,this ar stated Dabney, at a time "when rangement. . . . the state can neither pay its debt nor at The whites and the negroes cannot live to tend to its own legitimate interests." As gether as equals. Why cannot this be done? our serting that many intelligent white citizens modern reformers ask. I answer: because God, were keeping their children at home to for wise reasons not difficult to be understood, labor in the fields "to raise ... taxes to give has made it impossible. It is forbidden by a law of nature. . . . 3 a pretended education to the brats of the black paupers" who "loaf and steal," Dab Unreconstructed Baptists were not ney maintained that the freedman's low alone in their battle to repel the public character, ignorance, low morals, depen school crusaders following the banner dent of nature, and his lack of ambition Superintendent Ruffner. Ruffner was couldpar not be cured by education. He re ticularly stung by the entry into the fray garded of as "utterly deceptive, farcical and Robert Lewis Dabney, his former class dishonest" the argument that the black mate at Union Theological Seminary anddeserved and required education in order one with whom he had "walked in peace to become a responsible citizen.15 as friend and brother" for thirty years.14 InJabney rehearsed the full litany of the

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perceived dangers of black education. the church should recognize the parent as Educated blacks, he asserted, would de the primary educating agent and "should velop "foolish and impossible inspira assume an ancillary instead of a dominat tions." They would become surly and in ing attitude. The state should only encour solent and disinterested in their true age individual and voluntary efforts and calling, manual labor. An even greater aid those whose poverty and misfortunes danger, Dabney prophesied was that disable of them from properly rearing their miscegenation. He charged that the own real children."17 goal of the state school board was to bring Articles, pamphlets and speeches of this about the "amalgamation" of the striperaces were rife in Virginia in the mid and he urged the state government to 1870s, act as they had been in earlier years. to thwart the plans of the Congressional Ruffner had dedicated his first annual re Radicals which would lead to the mingling port in 1871 to similar objections and was of the blood "which consecrated the bat forced to lead a counter attack again in tle fields of the Confederacy, with this sor 1876 in the face of a threat he felt could did, alien taint. . . Dabney predicted cause the collapse of the whole system of that "Yankees" would eventually experi public education. ence the "curse of mixed blood" which, like a cancer, would spread across and Ruffner and the Public "putrify" the entire country.16 School Counteroffensive Dabney's attack on black education and its consequences led him, like "Civis," Ruffner presented arguments to into a rejection of all public schooling. counter each of the objections Puryear, Dabney's anti-public school argument was Jones, Dabney and others had put for based on the theory of the family as the ward. With regard to the issue of black independent unit in society. He main education, Ruffner expressed the belief tained that the parents were, or ought to that education "would foster among the be, the sole responsible agents of the fam Negroes a pride of race which would have ily; the state's duty was to protect the fam a purifying and stimulating power and will ily, not to interfere with it, and certainly gradually overcome that contemptible not by assuming one of the family's chief ambition to associate with white people, functions, that of the training of children. which has been instilled into their minds Dabney reasoned that Cod commits the by the blundering policy of the Northern education of children to their parents, people and the Federal government."18 who alone are responsible for their intel Ruffner, like Horace Mann and others, lectual, moral, and spiritual training. used many standard arguments to support "There can be no true education without the merits and benefits of black educa moral culture and no true moral culture tion. He talked of improved efficiency in without ," Dabney contended. labor, responsible citizenship, and reduc To Dabney it was essential that teachers be tion of crime and pauperism. Rejecting professing Christians and that teaching be outright the claims that blacks were intel understood as a "spiritual function," for lectually inferior, Ruffner declared: "It is "the soul is a monad and its training can utterly denied that there is any such differ not be divided, it cannot be equipped as ence between the two races in susceptibil to its different parts at different times and ity of improvement, as to justify us in mak places." Dabney condemned "natural the ing the Negro an exception to the general ism" as "wholly inadequate." Since the conclusion of mankind in respect to the state was secular, Dabney stated, "it is to value of universal education."19 Some tally disqualified to conduct schools for all years earlier in a sermon Ruffner had the people." He argued that the state and stressed the same point: "No one . . . can

This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms American Presbyterians assign any limit to the improvement which servatives of the intellectual equality of may be effected under suitable culture; blacks, and even "liberal" University of and there can be no reasonable doubt that Virginia Professor John Minor informed the Neero has abundant capacity for all Ruffner of his reservations regarding the ordinary affairs of human life, includ Ruffner's tendency to "dogmatize upon a ing self-government, and may attain to as subject where experience has as yet high a degree of civilization as any other taught little. . . ,22 race." In this same sermon (1852), Ruffner It is not surprising then, that when faced counseled: "Remember, the Negro is our with the threat of the mixed school clause brother and our ward; and Cod will hold in the civil rights bill, Ruffner, with Sears us responsible for his training and for his and other educational reformers, strained end, temporal and eternal. He may, by to kill the offensive measure. In an article suitable effort, become a blessing and an in Scribner's Monthly in 1874 on "The Co ornament to the earth. . . ,"20 Education of the White and Colored Races," Ruffnor tried to inform the North AFRICA'S REDEMPTION. that forced integration would undo all the progress that had been made in the South. He asserted that in both ancient and mod ern history power had destroyed slavery, AFRICAN COLONIZATION but the same force had not been able to legislate the psychological attitudes of the free born toward the ex-slave or the exist ut m KUSOTAKT unm, in ai m ulatkw το lumr ají» ληυτχΜ. ing moral, intellectual, and cultural gaps between the two classes. Only "the disin tegrating work of time" could eliminate these attitudes and differences. At pres ent, said Ruffner, there existed in the WILUAJf HXXBT EÜTFJíKK, South "a most aggravated case of social riiTti. aversion on the part of the whites toward In his 1871 Report, Ruffner the colored proclaimed races. . . ,"23 that evidence of the improvability Ruffner observed of the that the situation in Negro abounds. He noted thatthe North millions was not much of different, even native Africans had learned to read Arabic. though there blacks were fewer in num Benjamin Banniker's Almanac, which berhad and had enjoyed freedom for a longer greatly impressed Jefferson, also, said period of time: "The social repugnance Ruffner, offered proof that the Negro's between the races has not been obliter mind could pursue "abstract investiga ated anywhere. . . Integrated schools in tions." The flowering Republic of Liberia, Boston are "barely tolerated" he ob whose founding Ruffner had worked for, served, and they are "avoided by large eave further evidence of progress, he classes of the people."24 asserted. Attendance records and study Ruffner also put forward a moral reason habits in Freedmen's Bureau schools for opposing mixed schools. However showed the Negro's "desire for education much he believed in the brotherhood of and capacity for learning." Ruffner man noted and the potential for progress on the also that many antebellum slaves and part free of the black, he stated in this 1874 Negroes exhibited a shrewdness, enter article that Negroes as a class "move on a prise, and "noble spirit and superior ca far lower moral plane than whites." Given pacity" that their descendants continue to the observable gap in manners and morals evidence.21 between whites and blacks, Ruffner con These and other arguments certainly eluded that it was understandable that did not convince Dabney and other con whites in the South would "refuse to asso

This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms William Henry Runner 7 cíate their children with [blacks] in the public education in Virginia was grounded intimate relations of a school." Ruffner as not only in racism, but also in the belief serted that the moral and wide social dif that, as a Methodist minister phrased it in ferences between the races made the at 1874, public schooling breeds "infidelity tempt to mix the races in the schools bothand atheism. . . ,"29 No doubt some of "vain and foolish . . . base and malicious." Ruffner's critics were drawn to this cri He was convinced that legislated mixed tique in recognition of the fact that public schools would result in parents keeping schools were pulling children away from their children out of the schools and private, church-supported secondary would force their eventual closing. If schools. the As today, however, there were mixed school clause passed, he said, also pub those who maintained that schools lic education in the South would last supported"just by a secular state were by defi as long as would be required to go nition and constitutional constraint pre through the forms of law needed to de vented from providing sound religious stroy it." to Ruffner, the choice was sim and moral instruction. ple: dual schools or no schools.25 In annual reports, speeches, and arti Ruffner was optimistic about future re cles Ruffner repeatedly endeavored to ar lations between the races and hinted at gue that public schools could be and were the possibility of integration in coming in fact moral agencies and that while generations. "Our children will be suffi schools "cannot be made up to teach the ciently progressive," he declared. "The particular religious views of any [individ prejudices which disturb us now will ual]run man or any [single] church," public their natural course. . . . Unquestionably schools could and should "formally teach the tendency of mankind is toward the the recognized morality of the country, obliteration of race-distinctions."26 and the will of God as the standard and Conditioned by place and time, Ruffner ultimate authority of all morality. . . In thus championed universal public educa an 1876 response to one of Dabney's dia tion as a moral and social necessity. While tribes, Ruffner suggested a strong kinship his statements and his actions, both be with Martin Luther by proclaiming that fore and during his superintendency, "every teacher has an ethical work to per caused him to be labeled a "Negrophile,"27 form, which is second only to the work of he found it necessary and expedient to the Christian pastor. ..." Ruffner has argue for segregated education. Ruffner tened to add, however, that "the school maintained that blacks have a "moral teacher's business is Christian ethics, not claim" on society and that it would be Christian un . . . ."30 just as well as unwise to place them Ruffner"out was in solid company with nine side the pale of our Christian sympathies." teenth century educational reformers who Ruffner reasoned further that the state fervently believed that the common educates for the same reasons that it pun school could be infused with a "common ishes, that is, to promote order, honest religion" that would unite "not only all industry, and the development of its citi professing Christians and Jews, but unbe zens for its own advancement. He con lievers of every grade."31 In his First An cluded that blacks were "improvable nual un Report Ruffner defined this common der culture" and that there were the same religion as consisting of the cardinal reli redemptive reasons for educating blacks gious doctrines, and a complete code of as for educating whites: members of both the highest and purest morality. . . The races could "be made more intelligent, common American religion embraced rec more moral, more industrious, and more ognition of the "existence and govern skillful."28 ment of God" which "constitutes its great As the attacks by Puryear and Dabney controlling feature, and from that is devel made clear, opposition to the system of oped the whole code of moral duties."32

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Arguing that even unbelievers would not were parents who objected to the pres be offended by the general tenets of the ence of their children at these exercises, American common religion, Ruffner as said Ruffner, then religious sessions serted that "Huxley admires the Bible as should be held at the first or last periods of much as did Rousseau" and that he had each school day and the children of the "never heard of a man, except James objectingMill, parents should be excused from who did not wish his child to be taught attending. to If even these adjustments pre reverence the Deity, however radical sented criticism, then all such public prac might be his philosophy."33 tices should be omitted, Ruffner declared. Ruffner maintained that the infusion of In the final analysis, Ruffner reasoned that this "common religion" into the public the common religion could survive and schools enabled them to be "morally ele even perhaps thrive without overt reli vating," not simply "morally neutral." The gious displays. "There is no need to legis common religion was, in his words, "highly late Christianity into the schools of a ethical," able to train the child in "habits Christian people," Ruffner asserted: "it of reticence, order, industry, truth, self will go in of itself, as do salt and leaven. As sacrifice, and good behavior, including law need not put it in, so law cannot keep good manners." Ruffner professed a "reli it out. All that law can do, and all that it gious common law accepted by every ought to attempt, is so to regulate volun body" which he believed "will yet be em tary religious observances that the rights bodied in the textbooks in every school of minorities shall not be trampled on." without offense."34 Ruffner's deep-seated belief in the perva Far from seeing the public schools as in siveness of the American common reli any way subversive to formal religion, gion led him to conclude: "Schools under Ruffner asserted that to the contrary pub despotic governments might antagonize lic schools complemented the work of the the religion of the people; schools main church and family. He reasoned that since tained by free, popular governments of God had intended the Bible to be for all necessity express and conserve the reli people, universal literacy was a funda gion of the people."38 mental requirement of the common reli To Ruffner, what Virginians fundamen gion. Public schools, by producing univer tally desired was "moral work from moral sal literacy, were thus instrumental teachers."39 in Since Ruffner held that the carrying out the divine plan since illiteracy "true end and aim of education is the de was viewed as one of the great "hinder velopment of character in its broadest ances to the progress of the Gospel."35 sense,"40 he maintained that all children, From a contemporary perspective, whiteone and black, believer and unbeliever, might argue that Ruffner's advocacy of should a be prepared in public schools for common religion acceptable to all waslives "fully rounded in character, and well somewhat compromised by his advocacy equipped morally as well as mentally for in the public schools of traditional Protes all the duties of citizenship."41 If his faith tant Christian practices such as Bible read in the transforming power of education ing, psalm singing, and recitation of and the the universalism of the common Lord's Prayer. Ruffner cited with approval American religion strike our ears with schools he had observed in Pennsylvania tones of embarrassed naivete, we might and Connecticut in which such practices do well to consider the alternative pro reflected a "full and hearty Christian posed by his detractors in the 1870s. The tone."36 Ruffner urged, however, that suchsocial and moral order envisioned by activities be employed "in an edifying Dabneyand and his allies embraced eco inoffensive way" so as not to counter nomic, "in racial and sectarian divisions far dividual rights of conscience."37 If there more deliberately contrived and unapolo

This content downloaded from 199.111.241.10 on Sun, 06 Jan 2019 20:25:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms William Henry Ruffner getically advocated than did the social and (April, 1876), 251 ff. Cf. Fraser, WHR: Liberal," pp. 416//. and Charles William Dabney, I, pp. 151 ff. moral order envisioned by William Henry 16 Robert Lewis Dabney, "The Negro and the Com Ruffner. That our schools and our society mon Schools," pp. 257 ff. continue to reflect the tensions and divi 17 See Charles William Dabney, 1,155. The debate between Robert Lewis Dabney and Ruffner was initi sions that characterized the Virginia ated de with the Southern Planter and Farmer article and bates in the 1870s underscores the depth included rejoinders by both men in the Richmond and moral intensity of the struggle as well Enquirer, Richmond Dispatch, and the Educational Journal of Virginia. In all, Dabney published five and as the class, racial, and religious differ Ruffner twelve articles during the spring and summer ences that we will allow to divide us. of 1876. 18 Ruffner as quoted by Charles William Dabney, I, p. 160. 19 William Henry Ruffner, First Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of Virginia for the Year Ending August 31, Ί871 (Richmond, 1871), pp. 108 f. 20 William Henry Ruffner, Africa's Redemption: A NOTES Discourse on African Colonization in its Aspects, and in its Relation to Slavery and Abolition, 1 The most useful study of Ruffner and an invalu (Philadelphia: William S. Martien), 1852, pp. 8, 48. able source for material in this essay is Walter Jarvan Cf. Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," pp. 209-15. Fraser, Jr., "William Henry Ruffner: A Liberal in the 21 Ruffner, First Annual Report, pp. 109-15, 117/. Old and New South" (Ph.D. dissertation, University Cf. Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," pp. 338/. of Tennessee, 1970), hereafter cited as "WHR: Lib 22 John B. Minor to Willilam Henry Ruffner, 28 eral." See also Walter J. Fraser, |r., "William Henry February 1872, as quoted in Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," Ruffner and the Establishment of Virginia's Public p. 342. School System, 1870-1874," The Virginia Magazine of 23 William Henry Ruffner, "The Co-Education of History and Biography, 79 (July, 1971), 259-79, hereaf the White and Colored Races," Scribner's Monthly, 8 ter cited as "WHR: Establishment." (May, 1874), 86/. 2 See David Henry Overy, "Robert Lewis Dabney: 24 Ibid., p. 88. Apostle of the Old South" (Ph.D. dissertation, 25Uni Ibid., pp. 88/. versity of Wisconsin, 1967). See also Charles Reagan 26 Ibid. Wilson, "Robert Lewis Dabney: Religion and the27 Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," p. 363. Southern Holocaust," The Virginia Magazine of 28His William Henry Ruffner, "The Public Free School tory and Biography, 89 (January, 1981), 77-89. System," reprint of articles in the Richmond Dispatch Attribution of "Civis" to Jones is made by Fraser, and Enquirer, April and May, 1876, p. 9, in Ruffner "WHR: Liberal," p. 415. Papers. 4 Charles William Dabney, Universal Education 29 in Lexington Gazette, 9 May 1874, clipping, Scrap the South, I (Chapel Hill: University of North book, Caro Ruffner Papers. lina Press, 1936), p. 132. 30 Ruffner, "The Public Free School System, pp. 5 Ibid. 27f.; William Henry Ruffner, "The Bible in the Public 6 Ibid., p. 145. Schools," Ruffner Papers. 7 Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," pp. 86f. 31 Ruffner, "The Free Public School System," p. 8 Dabney, I, 148; Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," p. 314//.; 28. See also David B. Tyack, "The Kingdom of Cod The Educational Journal of Virginia, 1 (October, and the Common School: Protestant Ministers and 1870), 394 f. the Educational Awakening in the West," Harvard 9 The Educational Journal of Virginia, 2 (February, Educational Review, 36 (Fall, 1966), 447-69 and Timo March, May, 1871), 155/., 191, [272], [280] (Decem thy L. Smith, "Protestant Schooling and American ber, 1870), 72ff. Cf. Fraser, "WHR: Liberal," p. 326 Nationality, 1800-1850," journal of American History, and 321; Fraser, "WHR: Establishment," p. 267. 53 (March, 1967), 679-95. 10 See Dabney, p. 153 ff. 32 Ruffner, First Annual Report, p. 57. 11 Puryear's comments as cited by Fraser, "WHR: 33 Ruffner, "The Free Public School System," p. 28. Liberal," pp. 414/. 34 Ruffner, Eighth Annual Report, T878, p. 60; 12 Civis [J. William Jones], "The Public School in Its Ruffner, First Annual Report, p. 56. Relations to the Negro," reprint from The Southern 35 Ruffner, First Annual Report, p. 59. Planter and Farmer (1877), p. 3, in William Henry 36 William Henry Ruffner, "What Are Normal Schools Ruffner Papers, Historical Foundation, Montreat, in Fact?", Ruffner Papers, p. 8. North Carolina, hereafter cited as Ruffner Papers. 37 Ruffner, First Annual Report, p. 56. Cf. Educa 13 Ibid., pp. 4, 8f., 16, emphasis in original. tional Journal of Virginia, 5 (April, 1874), 261 and 6 14 William Henry Ruffner to Robert Campbell, 27 (November, 1874), 6-11. May 1898, as quoted in Fraser, "WHR Liberal," p. 90, 38 Ruffner, "The Free Public School System," p. 32. 420; Richmond Dispatch [? April 1876], clipping, 39 Ibid., p. 2. Scrapbook, Ruffner Papers. 40 Ruffner, "What Are Normal Schools in Fact?" 15 Robert Lewis Dabney, "The Negro and the Com p. 12. mon Schools," The Southern Planter and Farmer, 37 41 Ruffner, First Annual Report, p. 58.

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