After comparing the development of public education in the South to its development in other regions, most students of Southern history have concluded that the people of the South cared little about education. In this paper I will show that the South's educational backwardness cannot be attributed to any lack of interest in education on the part of the people of that region; rather, this educational underdevelopment was due to the lack of interest and/or commitment to public education by those who exercised political power in the South.

The average middle-class American contemplated the turn of the twentieth century from his farmhouse or his home on the city's fringe with a smug complacency. The United States had just defeated what Americans viewed as the archetype of “backward” Europe—monarchical and Roman Catholic Spain—in a war that had led to easy victory, empire, and a vastly increased self-esteem and world esteem for the United States.

Professor Astrik Gabriel perhaps comes nearest to being the present-day successor to Charles Homer Haskins. Not that they could for a moment be confused. For one thing Professor Gabriel's main focus of activity is the high and later middle ages, whereas for Haskins it centered on the twelfth century: a difference in the intellectual history of the period between maturity verging on old age and youth. Again Haskins touched lightly on the borderland of intellectual and social history, throwing out a stream of elegant and seminal suggestions and sketches, while Professor Gabriel has mainly concentrated on the social and institutional facets of university life, above all in the colleges. Yet, although their styles of presentation are also very different, both take one into the heart of university life as it was lived with a zest and sympathy which is distinctive.

When the American war for Independence began, William and Mary was the only college located in the Southern colonies. By 1800 seventeen Southern schools held charters authorizing them to grant baccalaureate degrees, and eight of them had done so. (1) At least one college had been chartered in each of the Southern states, and collegiate instruction was being offered in localities that in 1760 had scarcely supported a writing master. Freed from the restraining hand of British authority, as soon as the fighting ended a number of Southerners set out to establish colleges. But in 1800 five of the seventeen schools chartered had not yet managed to open their doors to students or had already failed. (2) The intellectual and financial plight of the others was deplorable. Not a college in the South showed real promise of leadership. So profuse a sprouting of colleges in the early spring of America's independence is sure evidence that the ground for collegiate establishment had been prepared well before the Revolution; the quick shriveling and stunted growth of the new schools reveal that they were not deeply rooted in Southern soil. Thomas Jefferson tried to avoid this legacy of weakness when he used his influence to create an entirely new institution to be the University of Virginia. Unfortunately no single action could surmount the general condition, and the role of the college long remained a limited one in the South. When, during the Revolutionary generation, Southerners initiated a sudden burst of college founding but acquiesced in an equally sudden withdrawal of public financial support for them, they made decisions that determined the function higher education would have in Southern society. Why they chose as they did requires explanation.

To offer all individuals of the human race the means of providing for their needs, of assuring their welfare, of being acquainted with and exercising their rights, of understanding and fulfilling their duties; to assure to each individual the capacity of perfecting his labour, of making himself fit for the social functions to which he has the right to be called, to develop the whole extent of the talents that he has received from nature and, by this means, of establishing among citizens a de facto equality and also to make real the political equality recognized by the law; this must be the first goal of national education and, from this viewpoint, it is a duty of justice for public authorities.

Condorcet (1792)

By the Fall of 1902, in their search for a new college president, the trustees of the City College of New York had become particularly interested in John Huston Finley, a Princeton University Professor, who had earlier served as President of Knox College in Illinois. Alexander Stewart Webb, who had long presided over CCNY (founded as the Free Academy in 1847), (1) made clear his intention to retire. It was not easy to replace him. Administering the busy College in the midst of the bustling metropolis demanded a man of ability. Yet the presidency of an institution that could hardly boast of being a center of scholarly distinction had limited appeal. To be sure CCNY functioned well as an avenue for the social mobility of New York's lower-middle class. Especially to children of recent immigrants, the free-tuition College represented a hospitable America in which dreams and ambitions could be realized. But not everyone appreciated this function.

It is a commonplace that the history of education is part of the general social and intellectual history of a period. Yet when we come to recommend to our students good educational histories which embody this precept we find a remarkable dearth of suitable works. All too often what passes for the history of education, or even the social history of education, is a chronological description of institutions with a few references to contemporary social events thrown in. No attempt is made to examine the causal factors affecting the evolution of education, nor to relate the history of education to recent interpretations of a period by other historians. There are of course some very honorable exceptions to this; but by and large the generalization holds true. The combination of qualities and interests required is rare; for most educationists are not trained historians, and most historians know little about education. Consequently the history of education is still at a relatively unsophisticated stage: statistical data is scarce and uneven; many printed sources are rare and difficult to use; and conceptual tools are rudimentary.

The early educational efforts of Massachusetts in establishing the publicly supported school are a well-known chapter in the history of American education. Not so well known are the missionary attempts carried on by the Puritan clergy to educate the Indians inhabiting the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One such effort was begun by John Eliot in 1646. Eliot had no narrow vision of quickly converting his copper-colored brethren, when in October 1646, he applied at the entrance to the wigwam of the Indian Waauban. Yet, even he did not envision the huge program which resulted in founding 14 Indian villages, complete with their own unique form of government and educational system. In effect, these villages became centers of adult education, making the Indians as much like their Puritan neighbors as was possible.

Paul Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education is now well over 50 years old, and no work of comparable scope exists at the present time in English. Although periodic requests have been made for a new encyclopedia of education in English, it is unlikely that Paul Monroe's Cyclopedia will ever be truly supplanted or its continuing value diminished. The importance of the Cyclopedia lies not only in its unchallenged comprehensiveness and scope, but preeminently in the unique contribution it made at a point in time of critical importance in the history of American education.