SCHOOLING FOR SALVATION: RELIGION, CULTURE, AND THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH’S REJECTION OF JEFFERSON’S EDUCATIONAL VISION by THOMAS LEE DREWRY (Under the Direction of Ronald E. Butchart) ABSTRACT Historians have frequently noted yet rarely explained the educational deficiencies of the nineteenth-century American South. Antebellum southerners responded to a variety of cultural realities that made schooling different from other regions. Though the great spokesman for the diffusion of knowledge, Thomas Jefferson failed to motivate his southern neighbors into action. This dissertation asserts that such difference should not be dismissed as intellectual backwardness, willful ignorance, or the result of sparse population density. The boundaries of learning emerged from a variety of forces that governed the South, its culture, and its peculiar institutions. Poised to exert their leadership over a southern culture increasingly refashioned according to their liking, southern evangelicals stood to benefit from a society that could read, write, and ponder its eternal salvation. Pursuit of the common good, while captivating many in other regions, never persuaded southern evangelicals to pursue a common education for all. This study seeks to elucidate the religious and cultural forces of the antebellum period that propelled southern educational difference. INDEX WORDS: Education, Evangelicalism, Antebellum South, Religious press, Sunday school, Common school SCHOOLING FOR SALVATION: RELIGION, CULTURE, AND THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH’S REJECTION OF JEFFERSON’S EDUCATIONAL VISION by THOMAS LEE DREWRY A.B., University of Georgia, 2000 M.A., University of Georgia, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2015 © 2015 Thomas Lee Drewry All Rights Reserved SCHOOLING FOR SALVATION: RELIGION, CULTURE, AND THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH’S REJECTION OF JEFFERSON’S EDUCATIONAL VISION by THOMAS LEE DREWRY Major Professor: Ronald E. Butchart Committee: John C. Inscoe William G. Wraga Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2015 iv DEDICATION This work is dedicated to all of my teachers, those who sacrificed so much to help me learn. From many, I learned to read. From some, I learned how to write. From a special few, I discovered how to think critically and deeply. Unexpectedly, several teachers became my colleagues and showed me how to invest in others with grace, compassion, and skill. My debts to their labors can never be repaid. Most importantly, though, this work is for my first and foremost teachers, my parents, Hayden and Linda, whose lessons and love are beyond calculation and words. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though much of this work was a solitary venture, no sentence was constructed alone. I am deeply indebted to so many who commented, critiqued, and cheered. No survival or success of mine is ever entirely my own, and my gratitude in this endeavor will only find solace in future investment in others. Without the aid of Ron Butchart, these efforts would have been futile. Professor Butchart endured my writing as it descended into the incoherence of student essays I incessantly grade and as it stumbled into the holy jargon of the evangelical newspaper contributors I read. I am so thankful to his long-suffering aid and close reading of all my work, from my initial thoughts and questions about the topic to the dissertation conclusion. His investment, in addition to the previous mentorship of Professor Emory Thomas, has encouraged and supported my historical scholarship and has helped me understand, interpret, and write more effectively about the past. Much gratitude is reserved for John Inscoe and Bill Wraga, both of whom helped me find my own path in historical scholarship. Both have offered encouragement, dedication, and insight during my academic life. From my first university history class to my first education course, Professor Inscoe and Professor Wraga have spurred me to think better, to appreciate historical research, and to make a difference in the lives of others. Their classes and professional examples have proven invaluable to my teaching life. This work would not have been possible without the constant vigilance of my colleagues at Oconee County High School, who, in the last eight years, inspired me to begin, demanded that I finish, and even lent their skills in brainstorming ideas and correcting improper grammar. At vi every move, I am indebted to Roger Bailey, Martha Noble, Beverly Dukes and Stacy Blomquist. Thanks to Gwen Peck for carefully reading each sentence and to Lynne Ely for commiserating over the writing process, always encouraging me to keep writing even when good words and sound argument were sometimes elusive. Cheers to Cindy Roach and Jennifer Whitaker who always knew the exact moment to applaud my success and bear my frustrations. Words cannot express how thankful I am to my friends and family for their constant vigilance and care. Finally, hurrah to parents, Hayden and Linda, who have always offered loyalty, encouragement, and understanding. All that I ever accomplish is theirs as well. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 2 KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: CHURCH, STATE AND EDUCATION .....................29 3 “THE WAY THEY SHOULD GO”: DENOMINATING THE BOUNDARIES OF EDUCATION ..............................................................................................................52 4 PALLADIUM OF VIRTUE: SOUTHERN EVANGELICALS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION ............................................................................................................106 5 THE HOME CIRCLE: FAMILY, SCHOOL AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF CONTROL .................................................................................................................155 6 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................194 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................207 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson outlined the necessity of schooling for the new nation. Inspired by the Enlightenment, he admonished readers to envision and implement an “education adapted to the years, to the capacity, and the condition of every one, and directed to their freedom and happiness.” For Jefferson, a basic education that buttressed the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic would undoubtedly insure the survival of the Republic, inhibiting the propensity of Virginians to overlook the responsibilities of citizenship, and reminding all of the moral acuity required as the young revolutionary experiment settled into an increasingly democratic unknown. For Jefferson, the people, rather than political rulers, were the “only safe depositories” of power, and education the most significant tool in constructing meaningful and just custody.1 Upon declaring independence, some founders across the American South initially agreed with such sentiment, deemed education a worthy venture, and cradled a constitutionally mandated state responsibility for the education of all. In North Carolina, the provincial legislature in 1776 required that schools, funded by the public, be established “for the convenient instruction of youth.” In Georgia, the constitution constructed the following year concurred, determining that “schools be erected in each county, and supported at the general expense of the State.”2 South Carolina and Jefferson’s Virginia, though, made no constitutional provisions for 1 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2010), 135-37. 2 Edgar Wallace Knight, ed. A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860: Toward Educational Independence, vol. II (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1950), 136. 2 the state’s responsibilities to educate children until 1835 and 1791, respectively. Some southern states later amended their laws offering attention to Jefferson’s vision. Alabama founders emphatically stated in 1819 that “schools, and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged in this State” and the legislature would be responsible for securing land and funding for such institutions, while Tennessee’s constitution explicitly created a common school fund in 1834, contending that “knowledge, learning, and virtue are essential to the preservation of republican institutions, and the diffusion of the opportunities and advantages of education throughout the different portions of the State are highly conducive to the promotion of this end.”3 State constitutions in the South seemingly embraced the vision of Jefferson, reflecting not only the unity born amid shared revolution, but also an understanding that the survival of the Republic was neither inevitable nor facile. Southern leaders generally agreed that “schools and the means of education were regarded as the moral enemy to arbitrary and despotic government” and the “surest basis of liberty.”4 Absent from this public rhetoric and state law was, as one historian surmised and contended, “an inordinate distrust of all forms of education”