EARLY COMMON SCHOOLS.

active in the usual charitable and missionary enterprises of the day. On several visits to Europe she made the acquaintance of many eminent people, and was heartily appreciated in the highest educational circles, being the especial friend of Maria Edgeworth and the Marquis de Lafayette.

But she did not leave this world until she had crowned her long and admirable success by several years of valuable labor in the cause of common school education. The closing years of her seminary life, from 1820 to 1854, covered the central period in the development of the people's common school, which is the subject of this portion of our essay. Under circumstances so painful that many a noble-hearted woman would have fallen into despair, she found in Dr. Henry Barnard a friend and comforter. At 50 years of age she returned to her native town, and for a year, under the instruction and oversight of this great apostle of the new education, the superintendent of public schools in Connecticut, labored as a model superintendent of common schools in Kensington, a district of Berlin, with such eminent success that these four country schools became a model for the State, and nothing but the popular reaction that threw Dr. Barnard out of his position and the State back for a brief time upon the failure of the past generation prevented her from leading in the establishment of the first normal school of the State. Returning to Troy, she became at once interested in the important movement in public instruction in the State by which the system of county superintendents had taken the place of the inefficient management of the boards of township commissioners complicated with district trusteeship. She began a series of extended journeys through the rural districts of the State, in which she visited several of the more important counties, addressed great bodies of teachers and people, attended large educational conventions, and in all ways illustrated what may be done at a critical period of the school life of a community by a ministry of education which includes all the elements of a Christian civilization in its comprehensive scope. Her last years were signalized by a patriotic and most Christian effort to stay the rising tide of civil war in 1860. Relying greatly on her personal influence, not realizing fully that the country had come to the parting of the ways, where the final destiny of the people, in the language of Abraham Lincoln, was to be "all free or all slave," she went to Washington with a memorial signed by 4,000 American women in her hands, which was presented to the Senate by the distinguished Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, and by Governor Graham, of North Carolina, to the House of Representatives. But while this patriotic plea for peace and brotherhood failed of effect and was subjected to the natural misapprehension of some of the most distinguished statesmen of both sections, it was in itself an indirect testimony to the peril of the neglect of universal education through vast regions of the country, which it has been our duty to record as a part of the educational history of the colonial and early national period. Had the wise and earnest warnings of all the great fathers of the Republic-Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Marshall, and Cutler-been followed by the early establishment of an efficient system of education, reaching from the country district school to the State university, and had the higher education of the old thirteen States been developed on the broad and practical lines of advance of which Union College was the most successful experiment, this dire calamity of the greatest civil war of modern times would have been averted and the national curse of negro slavery would have been abolished through the peaceful methods of public life, to the satisfaction of all reasonable people in all portions of the Union.

But, repelled in her effort for the arrest of hostilities, Mrs. Willard fell at once into her own place as a most intense and patriotic supporter of the Union cause, as far as her advanced age and afflictions would permit. She died in 1870, at the age of 83, her life having been consecrated for sixty-six years, from the age of 17, to the grand ministry of education. It is doubtful whether any woman in American life has lived out her career in a way more womanly, with such profit to so many young women, an amplitude of influence ranging through all departments of society. beer numbered by the thousand. Her text-books had been used by

multitudes of the most influential teachers in the country. Her labors for common schools were appreciated not only in two States but known all over the land. Her seminary became the model for many schools, and her teachers carried her plans and the spirit of her instruction to every State in the Union.

Emma Willard doubtless had her limitations and weaknesses, like all who live on the high plane of human estimation. But when we met her for the first time, in 1860, still as enthusiastic as a young schoolmistress, in attendance on the annual examination of the Troy Female Seminary, we felt that it would be many a year before the country "would look upon her like again." At the death of her son and his wife the school was suspended. But its site has been adorned by a memorial statue and building in the city she served so faithfully, erected by the children and descendants of the mothers who sat under her powerful and inspiring administration of the education that educates, in the noble foundation that has just been laid for the Emma Willard College on the site of the famous Troy Seminary.

Meanwhile, as the period of the great national revival of the common school approached its inauguration in 1830-1840, the half-conscious premonition of the people for great impending events, always evident to the careful observer of American life, was more than evident in New York. The settlement of western New York, practically the first "Great West" to the people of New England, was being rapidly stimulated by the coming of steam navigation and the building of the Erie Canal. It was a prophetic instinct of his future that sent young William H. Seward from his home in Florida, Orange County, on the Hudson, first to Union College and afterwards to Auburn, then a new village on the extreme froutier, as his place of abode. The new population of the State west of Schenectady was largely of New England origin, who brought to their beautiful new homes the peculiar habit of "spreading themselves" and "stirring up things"-chief among all things the opportunity for the education of the whole people. We have seen that a memorial from the new city of Rochester had already made a stir in the legislature. The educational journal of Francis Dwight, printed first in one of the western towns of the State, had awakened an interest. The great influence of James Wadsworth in the establishment of district school libraries and generally in the advocacy of popular schools was a powerful addition to the movement. The interesting experiment of the "public school society" in the chief city of New York had demonstrated two things: (1) That the people of that metropolis would demand a system of popular education free from ecclesiastical direction; (2) That it was becoming apparent that no private organization, however respectable and above suspicion of sinister motive, could continue to handle the educational affairs of a great city. The association met its deathblow in the great debate on "Religion in the common schools," precipitated by Archbishop Hughes in the interest of subsidizing the parochial schools of his church. The outcome of this able discussion was that, while the vast majority of the people indorsed the conclusions of the opponents of this scheme, their own argument would upset any private organization in its attempt to make the State tributary to its plan of the education of the masses. The way was thus paved for the dissolution of the public school society and its absorption into the common school board of the city. In the vote in 1851 on the acceptance of a free-school system by the State, the favorable majorities in the cities of New York and Albany were the most decisive in the Commonwealth; indeed, with a few smaller cities, constituted the entire majority. The endeavor to subsidize the academies for the training of teachers for the common schools, although a disappointment to the friends of public education, kept alive the conviction that the teaching force of the State must be improved and that only the people in their primary function of founder, supporter, and supervisor of public education was competent for its success.

In 1836 could be seen a group of important schools that were making the capital city, Albany, the most important center of education for a generation to come. Among the admirable public men whose careers make it easy to believe all that may be affirmed of the influence of the original emigration from Holland in the making

of the Empire State was Stephen Van Rensselaer, of the great family whose posses. sions included a good part of the three counties of Albany, Rensselaer, and Columbia. Born in affluence, and connected by marriage with the most conservative, social, and political class in the Commonwealth, he was in fact one of the most liberal and farseeing of the statesmen of his day. He was a member of the legislature and Congress; lieutenant-governor and candidate for governor of the State; one of the original commissioners of the Erie Canal, and an associate with De Witt Clinton in that important enterprise. He was the foremost and most important member of the State Agricultural Society and the promoter of the first geological survey of the eastern portion of the State. At the opening of the Erie Canal he sent an eminent popular lecturer on a tour of its entire extent to wake up an interest in natural science by free addresses, illustrated with apparatus and instructions for the collection of cabinets. In 1826 he projected the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, with the hope of support from the legislature. Defeated in this, like Mrs. Willard, he supported this important school of the high industrial scientific type largely at his own expense for fourteen years.

This concentration of schools of the secondary and higher education around the capital city, Union College, the Rensselaer School of Technology, and Mrs. Willard's seminary at Troy, with the Albany male and female academies, was making Albany the most important educational center of the State. The growing interest in historical literature shown by the increasing importance of the State library, under the directorship of Dr. Homes, one of the most valuable collections for the use of a public man in the country, the establishment of the medical and law departments of the projected State university, the foundation of the geological and other scientific surveys of the State illustrated by the fine collections in Geological Hall, the annual gathering in the city of the most accomplished and influential body of people around the legislature, the appearance on the field of politics of a younger generation of public men, Thurlow Weed, and the famous group that followed the fortunes of William H. Seward, reinforced later by Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond, representing the rising power of the new metropolitan journalism, itself almost a department of the common school, the rise of the corresponding agency, the popu lar lecture that culminated in the period of the great civil war, the appearance in Albany of a remarkable group of young artists, Page, the Harts, Palmer, Boughton, Thompson, and others, the great influence of the large body of capable political speakers in which New York then surpassed all States and sections of the Unionall these developments of a broad culture were prophetic of a revival of the people's common school as the corner stone on which the fabric of the secondary, higher, and all true education must rely for its permanent foundation.

The board of regents still held on at the capital city a respectable, almost venerable, testimonial in behalf of what should be attempted by the Commonwealth. And, finally, the great uprising in the East in favor of popular education, responded to by the corresponding revival in the new Northwest, was calling as with a thousand voices to the Empire State to add to all its previous honors the crowning distinction of the leadership of the American people in a new organization and administration of the American common school.

NEW JERSEY.

A popular historian of New Jersey prefaces the first chapter of his elaborate account of the schools of the State by the flattering announcement: "From the first, New Jersey was in advance of every American State in education." The record of the educational achievement of this colony previous to the Revolutionary epoch already made in a previous essay will explain the significance of this remark and illustrate the patriotic intention of the average local American historian to magnify his own beloved Commonwealth at the expense of its neighbors. In one respect it may possibly be said that New Jersey, from the first, was in advance of

all other of the American States. This was in the persistence with which the ecclesiastical idea of the sectarian parochial schools was kept before the people by the leading clergy and the churches of every religious body for more than two hundred years.

The history of education in New Jersey, among the older colonies, in one respect is almost an anticipation of the record of the State of Indiana in the new Northwest. In both these important States the American common school fought its way up to its complete establishment against the intense and persistent opposition of a hostile party composed of the most influential classes of the Commonwealth. In Indiana the conflict was greatly complicated for a term of years by the efforts to establish negro slavery as a permanent institution, although the jealousy of the Southern religious leaders was an important feature in the contest. But in New Jersey there was a long delay of two hundred and fifty years in securing the possession of a system of free common schools for the masses of the people, which brings us down to the year 1871.

We have already seen how at once on the settlement of the colony in 1638 the Dutch, Swedish, and afterwards the Quaker settlers established, in connection with each of the churches, a school of the sect, though in many of the communities the people relied on the clergy for the secular schooling of their children. We have also seen how absolutely inefficient was this method of overcoming the illiteracy which, in the early period of colonization, was the most dangerous foe of civilization, and how abortive were the efforts of the people, up to the era of the Revolution, to obtain a good working system of instruction outside the limits of sectarian domination. We have also borne testimony to the praiseworthy efforts of the Presbyterian people in the establishment of the College of New Jersey and the building up of several important academic schools, as well as the extended influence through the Southern colonies of eminent educators sent from Princeton to the headquarters of the Southern higher education. The statement that the appropriation of an island opposite the present city of Burlington, N. J., for educational purposes in 1683 was the first school fund in America, is disposed of by the fact that in every American colony from the first similar appropriations for local purposes were constantly being made. The permissive law passed by the colonial legislature in 1693 has also been shown to have been practically of no avail. The same influence that persisted until 1838 against the founding of a public school system and, even until 1850, left the common school in a state that exposed it to the contempt of its friends, could be trusted to nullify the success of any permissive scheme of public schooling. Indeed, until 1838 the entire school legislation of the State was retarded by the provision which required that the State moneys distributed to the towns should be expended only for the elementary schooling of children of paupers and the poorer class of the people.

The first constitution of the State, established in 1787, when the new Commonwealth had a population of 184,000, made no mention of education. The first step to establish a permanent State school fund was made in 1816, when the sum of $15,000 was appropriated for that purpose. In 1817 this was raised to $114,000. In 1820 "the first general act to authorize towns to raise money for the support of schools" was passed in the form of a statute that remained in force till 1838, to tax the public to educate the children of paupers and poor people.

In 1824 the legislature provided that one-tenth of all State taxes should go to the increase of the school fund. In 1828 the people of the towns were authorized to raise money in town meeting for the building of schoolhouses. In the same year, 1828, the friends of an efficient school system seem to have made their first important demonstration. A committee of education appointed a "central committee" to work in connection with local committees to canvas the State and collect statistics of general educational import. The result was another demonstration, if such were needed, of the inability of any system of parochial schools either to furnish the means of education or to persuade the people to avail themselves of what was on

the ground. It was found that more than one-third the children of the State were in no school. Some of the counties in their reports showed an advanced spirit. Essex advised the establishment of a State normal school.

The same result of the sectarian system had been reached in New York and Pennsylvania. After a two hundred years' experiment in the city of New York it was found in 1805 that a large proportion of the children of the city were not in the denominational schools, and the famous Public School Society was established by an association of the most distinguished men of the city to meet this crying need. This association, the most important and unselfish of all the private combinations to support public education ever formed in our country, went to its destruction on the same reef of denominational jealousy. The same contention of sects delayed the coming of the common school in the great and wealthy State of Pennsylvania until a period later than the educational revival in New England in 1830-1840.

The fact, always ignored or contradicted in the plan of the advocates of this method of supporting universal education in this Republic, is that, like many other things passably good in their day and generation, this is a method that can only be used effectively under the union of state and church. All its proposed modifications in our country lead the community to the oid notion that the State shall take cognizance of the different religious sects and either stand behind one exclusively, as in the medieval days, or, as in Great Britain at the present time, divide its bounty among a large number, or, as now proposed here, extend a subsidizing charity to all. But when "the people of the United States" in the organization of their General Government distinctly ignored and rejected all connection with ecclesiastical affairs, and when the people of almost every State placed a similar clause in their constitution, the deathblow was given to this system of public education. All attempts to introduce it during the past one hundred years by indirection, as in Connecticut and New Jersey, and in local and city systems of schools, have been in open defiance of the fundamental American idea that no distinctions of religious creed or polity shall be recognized by the State or nation. It was not remarkable that a body of colonists, trained in the imitation of the ideas of the Europe of three centuries ago, should use all the machinery of their powerful church systems to influence State and city governments to evade or override the express will of the people; but although the contest may be prolonged, as it was till 1838 in New Jersey, the final result will always be the same. In this State, once relieved from this system, the people took the field, and since the civil war have placed New Jersey among the foremost of all States in the most ample provisions for the schooling of the masses, while her colleges, academies, professional and scientific schools, rank high in the general record of the whole country.

The startling revelations of the "central committee" of 1828 resulted in the inauguration of what has been styled "the first comprehensive and practical school legislation" in the State. The school law of 1829 contained some important provisions, though still clinging to the mischievous idea that free education is only to be offered as a public charity to pauperism and poverty. It included: (1) A provision for an annual State appropriation of $20,000, to be divided among the towns in proportion to their tax valuation; (2) a body of town school commissioners, empowered to district the town for such purpose, examine teachers, inspect the schools, and report annually on their quality; (3) an election of school trustees in each district, who were authorized to provide schoolhouses and take the full control of schools; (4) the school age was fixed at 4 to 16, as a guide in the local distribution of State school funds.

But as in all similar contentions between the mass of the people and the powerful organized party of its opponents, the inevitable results came. In 1831 the ecclesiastical forces captured the legislature and swept from the statute book every provision for a practical common school system. By this law the State funds were to be paid not to the trustees of school districts, but directly to all sorts of schools in session in the town, including, of course, private and church institutions. The