But the final outcome of any system depends on the question, To what an extent is it a vital part of the best life of the whole people? If through the schoolhouse, though but a log shanty in the wilderness, flows broad, deep, and clear the current of the most intense faith, energy, and consecration of a body of immigrants, just beginning the creation of a new state, that school, spite of a hundred defects of management and an antiquated style of instruction, will produce the great men and noble women that build republican states and make history in a new world.

Whatever may be said, and a good deal can be said, of the numerous defects in the colonial system of popular education herein described, it was, to a far greater extent than the present common school, in a daily and hourly vital connection with the whole body politic. Instead of a government by boards of officials, elected at long intervals amid the confusing and exasperating conflicts of partisan politics, the people of old Boston, Roxbury, Hartford, New Haven, and all lesser towns had their hand on every thing going, even to the "stiff and proud" deportment of deacon, deputy, occasional preacher, and schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever. The tremendous concentration of life upon public affairs, church, school, and state, set the entire force of a powerful community behind the humblest common school. The children might partake of a diet of conic sections, Latin, the Bible, and the hornbook, as the common diet in school was; but all the while they were going through the first drill of the "awkward squad" which, through the often ludicrous experiences of "training day" and the muster field, brought out the soldiers that fought at Louisburg, Bennington, Saratoga, and Yorktown, and, under the lead of a crowd of extempore rural generals, assisted powerfully at the later "bushwhacking" of the British Empire across the Atlantic and beyond the forty-ninth degree of north latitude.

It was not alone the superior intelligence of the New England people that accounts for the magnificent outbreak of fighting patriotism at Lexington and Bunker Hill; for the hoisting of a whole section of the Tory "upper crust" of New England out of the country "for good and all" at the evacuation of Boston, and for the profound influence upon the new Republic of these colonies, inferior in population and in several kinds of influence to their powerful central and southern neighbors. It was the phalanx-like organization of New England society for one hundred and fifty years, a concentrated community of people who knew just what they wanted and proposed to get it at all hazards. For more than half a century before the memorable day of Lexington these people had virtually lived with arms in their hands. At one time one-sixth of the entire population was on the northern border, among the dark woods and gleaming waters of the Adirondack wilderness, in New York, braving the threat of imperial France to cut off that mischievous New England from the remainder of the British colonies and destroy them in detail. When Burgoyne marched forth from Canada on the same errand, to sever the concentrated brain from the long-extended body of the colonial revolt, the same relentless phalanx of "embattled farmers" blocked his way, leading him and his captured army back in sight of the Old South Church and Faneuil Hall.

The war of the Revolution was largely fought out by the people of the northern colonies, and the supply of fighting men was in almost exact ratio to the activity of the provinces in the education of the people. Massachusetts and Connecticut, the two foremost provinces in the school, sent to the field, in militia and continental troops, 130,000 men; more than half the soldiers that fought through the war, which, added to the contingent of New Hampshire and Rhode Island, 25,000, make 155,000 of the 218,000 soldiers enlisted for the war, from New England.

New York sent 21,000, Pennsylvania 33,000, New Jersey 16,000; in round numbers, 70,000 from the three middle provinces. The entire southern colonies, almost equal in population to the northern, furnished a group of magnificent civic leaders and the one supreme military commander; but, in fighting men available for field duty, outside the home and border guard, furnished in all 75,000; Virginia furnished

nearly one-half, and South Carolina 6,417. It was one of the historical parallels that are more than accidents that Lexington Green, where first the old and new Anglo-Saxon world met in arms, is now overlooked by the monument commemorating the fallen heroes of that "glorious day" and by the modest building where Horace Mann, more than sixty years later, on the 4th of July, opened the first State normal school in America, with three students. Six years ago the same town, Lexington, made the great step forward that will span the gap between the rural and city common school by building a model schoolhouse and making arrangements by which the children of the town may all be carried daily at public expense to receive the best instruction in the power of the people to afford.

General Washington, on arriving at Cambridge, Mass., as commander in chief of the revolted colonies, was somewhat worried at the off-hand, independent, free and easy ways of his Yankee recruits. But he soon discovered the metal of his new soldiery. He said: "At the end of the war the army was practically composed of New England soldiers." After his retirement from the Presidency he said to a visiting Englishman at Mount Vernon: "I esteem the New England people greatly. They are the stamina of the Union and its greatest benefactors. They are continually spreading themselves, too, to settle and enlighten less-favored quarters. Dr. Franklin is a New Englander." The outcome of this "spreading themselves" above the southern boundary line of Connecticut was due, in no small degree, to the intelligence and mental activity generated in the old colonial common school, academy, and college. And beyond that was the fact that every New England man or group of good people that has "gone west" for the last one hundred years has carried along the prayers, the personal confidence, and financial good will of a prosperous, intelligent, and determined community left behind. Thus the five elements of the old New England civilization, declared by John Adams to be "Free labor, a free church, the district school, town meeting, and training day," have been planted anew on virgin soil, first in western New York, later in the northern section of the original Northwest, thence onward to the Pacific Slope, where, enlarged to meet the exigencies of a cosmopolitan population, they have borne a new crop of mighty Commonwealths that will "forget the rock from which they were hewn" in any day of evil omen to

never

come.

If we have seemed to dwell with undue emphasis and elaboration on the early colonial educational history of New England, it is because of our conviction that here were laid the broad and deep foundations of the American common school. To the preservation of that most original of American institutions must the people of the United States look, through all time to come, for the support of a democratic republican government, in the American sense of these words of many uncertain meaningsRepublican and Democratic. But it will now be a not less agreeable task to trace the more leisurely evolution of the common-school idea of the 9 colonies of the center and the south during the same period. It will appear that the difficulties in their case were not so much the hostility or indifference of their people to education, either in a general or popular sense, as uncontrollable conditions in their original settlement. All but one of them was projected and established on a commercial basis. Their immigrants represented such a variety in nationality, class, religion, and political ideas that the public energy, available in New England for a united educational, ecclesiastical, and social life, was absorbed for more than a century in learning the great American art of living together. This was an achievement in its way as important as anything in the new nationality, and sure, "in the fullness of time," to bring every Commonwealth into line with the only institution competent to educate the generations into a national civic union-the American common school.

ED 9443

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOL IN THE CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN BRITISH PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA BEFORE THE WAR OF INDEPEND1607-1776.

ENCE.

EDUCATION IN VIRGINIA AND THE PROVINCES OF THE SOUTH.

The relation of the four leading New England colonics to the nine British provinces beyond the Hudson River and bordering the Atlantic coast, in the inauguration of the American common school, may be fitly regarded under the figure of the orchestra and the opera in one of the majestic musical dramas of Wagner. First appears the orchestra, and through an elaborate introduction announces the theme. Then follows the inspiring drama, a marvelous combination of musical, artistic, scenic, and architectural effects, emphasized by the uttermost achievement of the human voice, to present the conception of the great composer. But all through the long-drawn evolution of the splendid creation the orchestra again and again reappears, recalling the wearied and confused listener to the radical theme, as if there were imminent danger that, out of the splendor of its abundance, the glorious spectacle of human destiny enacted on the stage would overpower and obscure the profound central idea of the master of many arts.

Thus, for more than a century and a half of provincial life, from 1620 to 1776, it would seem that the providential mission of the New England British provinces of North America was an elaborate experimenting on the radical idea of the coming Republic; that the people are competent of themselves, without the intervention of priest and king, to initiate and control, through their own elected representatives, all the fundamental institutions and agencies of human society. In its way the situation of the Puritan people during this period was not dissimilar to that of the Hebrew people in Palestine, or the people of Great Britain sixteen centuries later-shut up to themselves to work out a religious and civic polity, with only an occasional interference from without, which never amounted to a suppression and only acted as a stimulant to their intense and original activity.

In no respect was the providential call of the Puritan fathers of American civilization more evident than in their experimenting with the bottom fact of human society-the education of the children. Like all the colonies, the parents of New England brought to their new home the old educational forms of parental instruction. They brought the parochial church school; the "free grammar" school or academy, chiefly a private corporation, but open to students of every creed, not free from tuition, at times subsidized by the State, often chained to the creed and polity of an exclusive church; and the college, a group of which constituted the English organization of the university. As far as this and almost everything that could be evolved from the British European idea of education in the seventeenth century is considered, the New England colonies were not essentially in advance of their neighbors except in the vigor of their educational public spirit, the intensity of educational interest in the family and church, and the number and quality of all sorts of schools.

But, just at this point, comes in the chronic misapprehension of the majority, even of educational American historians, concerning the development of the educational life of this early period. The numerous authors of the almost innumerable histories of the United States are generally confused and sometimes misleading on this point. A recent life of Thomas Jefferson, published in the interesting series of American Statesmen, devotes less than 5 of its 350 pages to the most cursory mention of the educational ideas and labors of the author of the Declaration of Independence. The local historians of American education too often appear like men crawling through the dense underbrush of a vast forest realm, lost to themselves and hidden from their readers, never appearing upon the open hilltops of observation, where an intelligent overlook of the entire field can be obtained and the tendencies and characteristics of educational affairs be apprehended.

It is to this chronic failure to obtain the real point of view that we must ascribe the controversy that periodically breaks out between the educators of different portions of the older States on the claim of priority in the beginnings of the American common school. The one element that the American people has added to the combination out of which this institution has been developed is the initiative of the people in the establishment, organization, support, and supervision of the education of every generation for the high functions of American citizenship.

Here, beyond question, the New England colonies have "the right of way," praetically, for the entire century and a half before the Revolution. There were schools, and often good schools, of many sorts, supported by the church, by colonial legislative grants, by taxation of the people, by private corporations, by associations of neighbors, by family tutorship, in all the American colonies before that date. But in no colony beyond the Hudson River prior to the declaration of American independence was there anything like a colonial system of common schools for all children, organized, supported, and supervised by the whole people through their duly elected representatives, always in their own hands for revision, improvement, or modification of any and every sort. And in giving this fundamental idea to the original school life of the country the New England colonies contributed the one indispensable motive power that has made the present system of American education essentially different from that of all other Christian nations; the one essential element that, while preserved, can be relied on to overcome all defects of quality and method, and “in the fullness of time” make the educational life of the Republic, like the Republic itself, a model for every free people on the globe.

It is now the place to examine, as briefly as the great importance of the investigation for the purposes of this essay will permit, the educational ideals and habits of the American colonies beyond the Hudson River during the colonial period. This includes the three central provinces, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and the six, usually regarded as the Southern or the slaveholding States till 1865, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

We shall best appreciate the educational position of New England during this formative period by contrast with the colonies that were in some essential respects farthest removed from the ideas and policy of the Puritans. Of these six Southern provinces, Virginia was earliest settled and, until the close of the great civil war, incomparably the most powerful and influential in national affairs. Here we shall best discover the prevailing idea of education brought from England, and here can we trace the carly beginnings of the common-school idea until it flamed forth in the splendid conception of a State and national system of education in the magnificent but abortive plan of Thomas Jefferson, the foremost educational statesman of that early time.

But, first, let us endeavor to understand the fundamental idea of society that appeared in the settlement of Virginia and thence was reproduced through all the States of the South for the two hundred and fifty years before the great civil war of 1860-1865. We shall then better appreciate the social ideals of the people of this and the neighboring provinces; better appreciate the growing conflict between the old and the new and the outcome of the contending forces of society in the schooling of children and youth.

In more than one respect Virginia is the most characteristic representative American State. It was the first American colony, settled in 1607. In 1630 its western county, Orange, included the entire region from the Blue Ridge Mountains along an indefinite southern boundary line toward the setting sun. Later a treaty with France reduced its domain to the immense realm east of the Mississippi, including the present Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the five original Northwestern States.

At the close of the Revolution, Virginia ceded her somewhat visionary right in this entire region north of the Ohio River, beyond West Virginia, to the Nation, and recog

nized the new State of Kentucky. In 1861 West Virginia, following the example of the mother State, "seceded" from Virginia and became a vigorous companion of the great Northwest. The Virginia of to-day is still one of the most favored of American States in situation, climate, boundless resources, and undeveloped opportunities, capable of supporting a population of 10,000,000 with no hindrance to any reasonable aspiration of future eminence.

Its history is the central romance of American life; a mighty drama, wrought ont amid a wonderland of natural beauty and sublimity by a people not inferior in original capacity, ambition, and persistence to any in modern history. But its special interest to us in the present study of the American common school is its representative character and office in the making of the nation. It was the first experiment of Old England to reproduce itself in the New World. Virginia was not colonized on any theory, but was, for one hundred and fifty years from its settlement, a great "shining shore" across the western sea toward which streamed "every sort and condition" of the Protestant English people. In its order of society, form of government, established church, and sharp distinction of social classes, it was a fair representation of Protestant Great Britain before the great English revolution of 1689.

But no Anglo-Saxon people can remain an annex or imitation. Immediately this new colony took up the radical conflict of "the classes versus the masses," of which Mr. Gladstone talks to-day. With characteristic pertinacity the Old Dominion stuck to that text, elbowing off successive empires of territory that would embarrass, keeping outside the entire drift of later European immigration that would compromise, and only holding fast to the negro, whose status of slavery for two hundred and fifty years gave incredible advantage to the dominant class. As in every European nation, this conflict finally exploded in civil war; the powerful and persistent class that had ruled Virginia and led the entire slaveholding section of the Union, staking everything, even to the dissolution of the Union, on the perpetuation of its control of the only nation in which it was willing to abide. Never was this great battle of the ages more splendidly fought out; never by a more illustrious representative of the aristocratic order; never by the more potent magnetic power of the superior class to confuse and use the masses of the people; never with more phenomenal courage in its soldiery or higher personal character and more consummate military skill in its commanders, than in the four terrible years through which Old Virginia defied the great Republic in sight of the dome of the national Capitol.

And never was victory more decisive than in the annihilation of that magnificent dominant class as a rival power in American affairs in the fall of Richmond, a generation ago. To-day Virginia is a people's State, only governed by its dominant party as long as it does the will of the white masses. And here is being wrought out, more completely than elsewhere, the destiny of the negro-first landed on its shores as a savage, a pagan, and a slave; now endowed with all the rights of citizenship; educated in the common schools; on the whole, perhaps, better off than anywhere else. And most amazing of all the wonders of American history is the spectacle of new Virginia striking hands with the Northern Christian people and the National Government in the training of the negro and the Indian for American citizenship in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, in full view of the beach smote by the prow of the first Dutch slave ship in 1620.

How this wonderful conflict has gone on-the prolongation of the old English fight among the people most thoroughly Anglo-Saxon on this continent-and what its final issue portends, as an object lesson to motherland across the sea, is beyond comparison the most instructive, thrilling, and suggestive story yet told in the New World. What may be in store through the coming years for a Commonwealth that, after this fashion, has fought out the tremendous problem of the classes versus the masses to its finish, is one of the most interesting and inspiring themes of moral speculation and social philosophy. Out of the Old South, represented by the Virginia of the past, is to come the most thoroughly original literature of the American