NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS MODIFY EACH OTHER. 351

improved by the contact, and development in England was hastened. So the French in America have mingled with the citizens and improved the character of the downright, eager, business-like Anglo-Saxons; the Germans have brought physical stamina and mental equanimity, and the Irish quick blood and careless joviality.

All these and other special characteristics of the several races meet and mutually modify each other in society and business, by intermarriage, and by various modes of contact. They give and take, or, at times, perhaps, neutralize each other in the mental chemistry of the product, and make the AngloAmerican nation richer in aptitudes, better balanced in mind and action, broader and more just in judgment. This has been the evident tendency. The larger flow of immigration has been comparatively recent, and the fusion, so far as much of it is concerned, is still very incomplete; but the process has been long in operation; it commenced with the first settlement of the colonies; it has been proceeding on a large scalesince 1820, and the result is fairly evident. The digestion of the Anglo-American body politic is strong; foreigners have not endangered the Republic, have not upset public schools, have not sought to raise up an aristocracy. Evils have been abundant but not as harmful or permanent as they seemed.. Time will dispose of them all.

CHAPTER XX.

EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS IN THE VALLEY.

A Republic is dependent, beyond any other form of government, on the intelligence of the people as a whole. The enduring excellence of its institutions, springing immediately from the people and constantly subject to their control and revision, can not exceed the combined wisdom of the majority. Should that majority consent to allow superior individuals to organize them, it must be capable of appreciating excellence; otherwise they will fail in submission, in continuously appointing equally wise administrators, or in preserving the excellent features long enough to allow them to produce their appropriate results. In a popular government the wisdom of the statesmen must be fully supported by the clear, steady intelligence of the populace.

So far as we have examined we have seen this to be the case in the Valley, in a general way, and that the wisdom of the people increased more rapidly in proportion than the growth of the country. Elements of danger and difficulty multiplied on every hand as population from without poured in; yet the people proved themselves masters of every situation, solved every difficulty in harmony with the principles first adopted, and made eminent progress in every direction. Whence they derived this intelligence, and how they perpetuated and increased it for three generations, are questions of interest. If they receive but a general and partial answer here it is because this was only a Period of Beginnings, and in following out their results at a later time, it will be more interesting and impressive to make the view of educational progress in the Valley fairly complete then. To notice when and where the tree, that afterwards bore noble fruit, was planted, and

ORIGIN OF POPULAR EDUCATION.

353

from what sources its roots drew nourishment, falls in with the present plan and is essential to a full comprehension of the character of this epoch.

Almost as soon as there came to be educated men in the Greek republics, nearly 500 years before the Christian Era, the importance of general education was perceived by the more thoughtful; but they were too far ahead of their times to be able to give prevalence to their views. The Christian church had no sooner emerged from its early persecutions than it began to educate the common people; but the disorders of the time allowed them small success. Serious efforts were made by Charlemagne to promote study, and the church, from 800 to 1200, issued frequent decrees, through Popes and Councils, ordering the establishment of schools for the children of the poor, without pay; but the disorganized and miserable state in which society was held by the Feudal System defeated these efforts. Besides, until the multiplication of books by the discovery of the printing press, in 1440, their scarcity and high price made progress almost impossible.

The religious reformers of the sixteenth century, a hundred years later, availed themselves of the press to promulgate their views, and naturally took much interest in the spread of education among the common people. Protestantism was an appeal from the authority of the few to the private judgment of each individual among the masses of the people. This appeal assumed previous instruction, the facilities for gaining it were now great, and education spread widely, especially among the Germans and Anglo-Saxons. The religious and political disorders of England prevented its taking the lead in well organized school systems, and Germany had the honor of making the first persistent and successful attempts to. organize general education.

At an early period, in England, numerous grammar schools had been established by persons of wealth and eminence, which were largely increased from time to time, after the

destruction of monastic establishments; and, for three centuries before the establishment of American Independence, sums that would be equivalent to three or four millions of dollars were expended annually on grammar schools and free schools, in educating the English people. Parochial schools were established in Scotland in 1696, which contributed greatly to general education. The wealthier classes in England have been educated, for many centuries, in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Holland and Sweden had taken pains to promote general instruction before the period of English settlement in America; and thus the nationalities which sent the most of the emigrants who aided in founding the Thirteen Colonies, sent with them the habit of, and the desire for, popular education.

The Puritans of New England immediately ordered schools to be established in all the townships, and all the other colonies, from New York to Georgia, followed their example, more or less closely, or rather, brought with them from England, Holland, Sweden, Huguenot France and Germany, schoolmasters and books, as a necessity of life.

Before 1776, there were eleven Colleges in existence in the colonies which remain to this day; and nine academies, founded between 1665 and 1774, are still in operation. Before 1800 twelve more colleges and twenty-eight academies, that are still flourishing, were founded. Out of New England, the want of common schools, organized by the government for teaching the rudiments of education, was supplied by church, or parochial, and private schools. In 1776 there were twenty-nine libraries in the thirteen new made States, and thirty-seven newspapers. The latter increased to 150 by

1800.

Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and all the statesmen who acted a distinguished part in founding our institutions, urged the greatest diligence in providing for universal education, and the framers of the ordinance of 1787 were mindful

EARLY HINDRANCES TO COMMON SCHOOLS.

355

of this point, when they insisted, in this fundamental law which controlled the foundation of five great States, on "the means of education" being provided "and the encouragement of schools." In 1802, the Congress of the United States gave effect to this provision, by presenting the sixteenth section in each township, or the thirty-sixth part of the public lands, to the State of Ohio for the support of common schools, besides three whole townships in support of colleges. This became a common provision in forming the new states ever after.

The settlers, then, brought across the mountains a sense of the importance of education. During the Indian wars and the disturbed and scattered state of the settlements, they could do little to give effect to this feeling; but Kentucky and Tennessee made provisions for educational establishments as soon as they had organized governments, and Ohio imitated New England, from the first, as far as the scattered condition of the settlers and their limited means permitted. These two last mentioned obstacles were an almost insuperable bar to the advancement of education, in the newer and more thinly settled sections of the Valley, for more than fifty years. In the towns and more prosperous settlements, which were commonly near the navigable streams, these difficulties were soon conquered, to a considerable extent, and where a number of families lived near each other, and found a sufficient market for labor or produce to raise the means, they combined to support a school.

Often, however, they lived far apart, the State had small cash resources for distribution, or none at all, and multitudes of the young grew up with no means of education. Books were scarce and dear, and money scarcer still; therefore much of western society was, for a long time, wild and rude. A love of isolation and solitude, combined with the hope of bettering their fortunes and the spirit of adventure to introduce on the frontiers the habit of selling "improvements," as pop