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that included the whole country for years after the exhausting struggle for independence; during the stormy first quarter of a century, when the government and people were deeply agitated by the French Revolution and worried by British aggression, culminating in the war of 1812; while the emigrants to the new portion of the country in the West were still cultivating their fields and worshiping God with one hand on the rifle and one eye on the track of the treacherous savage; when the whole population of the Union was scattered through a territory almost as large as that occupied by the swarming millions of Europe, and hindered by laborious methods of transportation from social intercourse and industrial cooperation; went steadily to work to lay up a treasure in the strong box of almost every State against the time when they could do more than at present for the schooling of the children. There is a moral sublimity, not only in the devotion of the great men of every State, but in the persistent effort of thousands of little poverty-stricken communities, to push this one interest amid all the distractions of rival claims. It will be well to keep in view, at every subsequent step of our reading of this "great and wondrous story," this original gathering of public opinion in a current steadily increasing in power and volume, just as the majestic career of the "Father of Waters" may be predicted by one who sits on its wooded shores up in the wilderness of the mysterious borderland out of which it issues, gathering breadth and depth and majesty at every mile of its resistless journey downward to the sea.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

EDUCATION IN THE NORTHWEST DURING THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC, 1790–1840.

By Rev. A. D. MAYO, A. M., LL. D.

We are now prepared to begin a more detailed examination of different portions of the Union in their dealing with education during the first half century of the Republic. And by far the most interesting portion of the new nationality in this respect is the new Northwest. For here, at the earliest period, we find illustrated the facts we have already noted: (1) That only by the intense and persistent purpose of a whole people and its willingness to make a yearly sacrifice for the children can the American common school ever be placed on its feet, much less nursed up to its full stature. (2) We shall see how, even during their earliest years, the four Northwestern Commonwealths that had been admitted to the Union before 1810 were developing certain advanced ideas and broad methods of dealing with the entire subject of universal education which have become more powerful with the passing years, and, at present, are felt as one of the most decided modifying influences in the school systems of all the original States.

But we shall do great injustice to the people of these settlements in the boundless wilderness of the Northwest of 1790 if we estimate their progress in the establishment of an effective system of popular education by reference to the condition of the same communities within the period of the memorable era since 1860. The close of the civil war in 1865 left the group of Northwestern States by far the most conspicuous figure in the reconstructed Union. They had furnished nearly 1,000,000 soldiers, one-third the entire body of the Grand Army of the Republic. Their foremost military commanders had steadily gained the confidence of the people during these critical years, and the three who, in succession, held the supreme position in the national Army were natives of Ohio. With the exception of two Vice-Presidents called to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic by the providence of God and one President afterwards elected, the Presidency of the United States from 1860 to 1892 has remained in the narrow circle of the three North western States first admitted to the Union. It was well-nigh impossible for the elderly Eastern visitor to the city of Chicago in the late memorial year to place himself back in the period of his own boyhood when the New England family was stowed away in the old-time emigrant wagon and the interminable journey "out West" began with a religious service in the old church, and home and neighborhood prayers and tears mingled with the "great expectations" and aspirations of its occupants. But if we can briefly run over some of the more evident obstacles to the establishment of a satisfactory arrangement of the general educational training of the children during the first thirty years after the settlement of Ohio, in the four States that then constituted the Northwest, we may better appreciate what was really accomplished against obstacles almost insurmountable.

1. First must be considered the original movement of the rival ecclesiastical forces of the old East to capture this new "land of promise" and preempt, especially, the ED 95-48*

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secondary and collegiate departments of the educational field as the most efficient agency of denominational religious propagandism. It is not just to impute to the leaders of this movement any save the highest motives, from their own point of view, in their attempt to cover the new country with their churches and schools, which would become the most important annex to the religious establishment.

We have already seen that the unanimity of theological belief and ecclesiastical polity, until the period of the Revolution, was one of the most favorable elements in the establishment of the common school system of the original Eastern States; since the "religious question," which is largely the question to what extent each religious body shall be able to use education as a factor in its own upbuilding, was thereby entirely eliminated. We have also seen how the diversity of religious sects in the Central and Southern Provinces made the establishment of anything like a satisfactory public educational system impossible, until many years after the formation of the United States Government. But the war for independence, like all similar upheavals of society, had, for the first time, introduced into New England the seeds of theological dissent and sharp ecclesiastical competition. At once, from all the older States east of the Alleghanies, the different religious bodies and the active apostles of what was then called “infidelity," made haste to take possession of the promised land. The result was that before the school lands could be made to yield an income sufficient for even a meager common school, the country had been occupied by private denominational and so-called "collegiate" seminaries, chiefly available for the families of the more prosperous sort.

2. This enterprise wrought along the lines of the social currents that were formed in these States at the very beginning of their existence. Although the mutual companionship of hardship and peril in a new country favored a certain democracy in public affairs, yet nowhere are the social lines more strictly drawn than in the original occupation of such a region as our new Northwest. New England was by no means a social democracy at the close of the war of the Revolution; and there were families and families among the emigrants from Massachusetts and Connecticut in the little society that was represented at the first "ball" in Marietta, Ohio, where fifteen ladies, "as conspicuous for politeness as elsewhere," appeared as the original "upper ten" of the Buckeye State.

But after the first spirt of emigration, largely from the soldier class of the East, the majority of the emigrants for an entire generation were from the Southern and Central States, where social discrimination was even more strongly marked. The bulk of the population of the Northwest, for the first twenty-five years, was strung along the 450 miles of the northern shore of the Ohio River. Of the 47 members of the convention that framed the constitution of Ohio, 16 were from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, 9 from New York and New Jersey, and only 8 from New England. There was less enthusiasm for the new Western life in the New England than in the Southern and Central States. Both Massachusetts and New York had large tracts of land on sale, and were in no haste to build up rival Commonwealths beyond the mountains. Until a generation later, when the growing tide of New England emigration was propelled through the new Erie Canal and the Lakes to the Northern section, the new West was largely a new South, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The people who came from this portion of the Union were unaccustomed to the common school and naturally fell into the home ways of educating the children according to the methods in vogue from the beginning in their own colonies.

3. The extreme poverty of the people, for all purposes save the actual supply of the necessaries of life, was a powerful obstacle to the early establishment of public schools. The New England contingent, respectable and progressive in ideas as it might be, was largely composed of families, left at the close of the war in absolute necessity of some "paying" occupation, with no resources save the indefinite land bounties and "certificates of indebtedness" issued by a Government representing an impecunious new Republic; a 20-shilling certificate not being equal to 5 shillings of available currency for actual use. Their one hope was to realize from this almost

hopeless source of support a new home in the far West. And, while the fruitful lands and genial climate of their new abode were an assurance against starvation, the history of the settlement of any American State, previous to the last fifty years, is a record of hardship, poverty, sacrifice, trial, fearful sickness and death, only paralleled by the waste of war. Amid these trials it is not strange that, outside a few village settlements, it was next to impossible to support the common school for all.

4. Even the possession of a generous endowment of school lands at first was little more than a prophecy of hope for an indefinite future. These public school lands were at first leased at low rates, especially in Ohio, were slowly taken up, and from lack of experience in such operations, often sacrificed. In time the generous provision of two townships for the support of a university was lost, except the saving of the meager income of a few thousand dollars a year; and the greatest of the Western Commonwealths was compelled to wait another half century before its final State university could be established. Col. Rufus Putnam, of Marietta, Ohio, informs Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of Massachusetts, at an early period of the settlement, that the entire resources of the common-school lands were but $3,000, and Dr. Cutler, as agent for the Ohio company, sends on a few hundred dollars to pay the first minister and teacher of the new colony. Ohio has never reaped any advantage from her educational fund of school lands comparable with the remaining four States of the original group of the Northwest.

5. Until the close of the second war with Great Britain, in 1815, these States were terribly worried by the peril from hostile Indians. This was only overcome by the decisive victory at the battle of the Thames, and the destruction of British influence through the entire region. Previous to the purchase of Louisiana there was the constant danger, emphasized by Washington and felt by all well-informed public men, of a revolt of the entire Western section, and the establishment of a rival government to the United States. One of the urgent reasons for the sale of the great track of land to the Ohio company, repeatedly enforced on public attention, was the advantage of sending to the banks of the Ohio a colony of ex-Revolutionary soldiers, under their honored commanders, of undoubted patriotism, knowing no other country than that for which they had given their past eight years of service to preserve and defend as a heritage. There can be little doubt that Virginia and the South were reconciled to the prohibition of slavery in these five new States, by the hope of protection for their settlements on their exposed northwestern border, as well as by the expectation of trade through the proposed channels of interior commerce suggested by Washington. This chronic state of border conflict was followed by the breaking out of the war of 1812, in which the entire territory of Michigan and the whole northern frontier, were for a time in the possession of the common enemy. Notably, the first twenty-five years of the Northwest was a period of "wars and rumors of wars," in all ages unfavorable to the organization of any save the few superior schools which are always established where a body of educated and well-todo people is found.

6. The difficulty of this position in a country like the Northwest can only be partially understood, even by comparison with such a country as New England remained until a quarter of a century ago. Instead of the tolerable roads of a country founded and developed under the advantages of a compact township government, these new settlers on the "bottom lands" of the Ohio and its tributaries found themselves, during six months of the year, dwelling in a weltering continent of mud, and were always staggering through a wilderness, with none of the modern appliances for personal movement or the transportation of crops. Dr. Manassel Cutler, in 1788, spent thirty days in his "new sulky" and on horseback in his first journey from Ipswich, Mass., to the new settlement of Marietta, on the Ohio. It was thirty-five years from this settlement before the construction of the Erie Canal in New York, and forty years before the Great Lakes and the Ohio River were connected by a new water highway. First, the track of the buffalo; then the

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