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How to Write a History Textbook: The Willard–Willson Debate over History Education in the Common School Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

Peter B. Knupfer
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Abstract

The essay reinterprets the 1845–1847 pamphlet war between Emma Willard and Marcius Willson, authors of popular history schoolbooks. Willson publicly attacked the accuracy and literary quality of history schoolbooks by eight leading authors, with particular attention to Willard's, just as he was publishing his first school history. Willard and Willson practiced different kinds of history authorship that reflected their different backgrounds, intellectual milieus, and professional circumstances. This essay questions conventional readings of the debate and argues that their subsequent exchange over plagiarism, style, and sourcing illuminated important issues in the purposes of history education, the challenges of growing markets, and new theories of historiography. The debate showed that schoolbooks were not simply derivative “guardians of tradition,” but that they could be portals for new disciplinary theories in an age without a robust professional research infrastructure to test and filter them.

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , May 2019 , pp. 257 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © History of Education Society 2019 

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References

1 M[arcius] Willson, “A Critical Review of American Common School Histories,” Biblical Repository and Classical Review 59 (July 1845), 517–39. The origin of the report is discussed in detail later in this essay. The only extant full-length biography of Willard simply asserts that Willson's claims were “groundless.” See Lutz, Alma, Emma Willard, Daughter of Democracy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), 229Google Scholar. Nelson, Murry R. echoed this account in “Emma Willard: Pioneer in Social Studies Education,” Theory and Research in Social Education 15, no. 4 (Fall 1987), 253CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nelson accuses Willson of “jealousy.” Other accounts range from mildly to severely critical of Willson. For example, see Thalia M. Mulvihill, “Community in Emma Willard's Educational Thought, 1787–1870” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1995), 102–27; Mulvihill, Thalia M., “Emma Hart Willard,” in Historical Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States, ed. Eisenmann, Linda (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), 465–67Google Scholar; and Jonathan Tucker Boyd, “The Holy Hieroglyph: Providence and Historical Consciousness in George Bancroft's Historiography” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1999), 221–29. The most complete account is Joyce, Barry, The First U.S. History Textbooks: Constructing and Disseminating the American Tale in the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 119–22Google Scholar.

2 Moreau, Joseph, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nash, Margaret, “Contested Identities: Nationalism, Regionalism, and Patriotism in Early American Textbooks,” History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 4 (Nov. 2009), 427–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The otherwise rich literature on American historiography in this period rarely includes schoolbook histories, probably on the assumption that “compilers” echoed existing, rather than pursued original, interpretations. Kraus, Michael and Joyce, Davis D., The Writing of American History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 92–152Google Scholar; Ross, Dorothy, “Historical Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Historical Review 89, no. 4 (Oct. 1984), 909–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woolf, Daniel, A Global History of History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 360–74Google Scholar; Pochmann, Henry A., German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences, 1600–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 66–79, 85–152, 192–206Google Scholar; and Nadel, George H., “Philosophy of History before Historicism,” History and Theory 3, no. 3 (Jan. 1964), 291–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Callcott, George discusses school texts in his History in the United States, 1800–1860: Its Practice and Purpose (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 215–25Google Scholar. On Willard, see Baym, Nina, “Between Enlightenment and Victorian: Toward a Narrative of American Women Writers Writing History,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1991), 22–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 On contemporary conflicts over originality, see Cheng, Eileen K., The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth: Nationalism and Impartiality in American Historical Writing, 1784–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 104–52Google Scholar; and Callcott, History in the United States, 134–38.

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6 Scott, Anne Firor, “What, Then, Is the American: This New Woman?” Journal of American History 65, no. 3 (Dec. 1978), 680CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Scott, Anne Firor, “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary 1822–1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1979), 3–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fowler, Henry, “Educational Services of Mrs. Emma Willard,” in The American Journal of Education, vol. 6, ed. Barnard, Henry (New York: F. C. Brownell, 1859), 125–68Google Scholar; Lord, John, The Life of Emma Willard (New York: D. Appleton, 1873)Google Scholar; Baym, Nina, “Women and the Republic: Emma Willard's Rhetoric of History,” American Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March 1991), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lutz, Emma Willard.

7 Willard, Emma, preface to Progressive Education, Commencing with the Infant, by de Saussure, Albertine Adrienne Necker, trans. Willard, Emma and Phelps, A. L. (Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1835), 9–10Google Scholar. See also Willard, Emma, “What to Teach,” Godey's Lady's Book 45 (Sept. 1852), 295Google Scholar; Willard, Emma, “Places of Education,” Ladies’ Magazine and Literary Gazette 6, no. 9 (Sept. 1833), 385Google Scholar; Nash, Margaret A., Women's Education in the United States, 1780–1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 106–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Baym, Nina, “At Home with History: History Books and Women's Sphere before the Civil War,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 101 (Oct. 1991), 289–90Google Scholar.

8 Associating past events with chronological or thematic divisions of the subject was already evident in schoolbooks when Willard applied the concept to geography. See Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 69–71. For useful overviews of the period's pedagogical trends, see Halvorsen, Anne-Lise, A History of Elementary Social Studies: Romance and Reality (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), 1–20Google Scholar; and Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 69–71. On visuals and geography education, see “Method of Making Maps,” in Willard, Emma, Ancient Geography, as Connected with Chronology, and Preparatory to the Study of Ancient History (Hartford, CT: Oliver D. Cooke, 1822), 57–58Google Scholar. Her most comprehensive statement of this pedagogy is in Willard, Emma, Guide to the Temple of Time (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1849), 11–18Google Scholar.

9 Willard, Ancient Geography; Willard, Emma, History of the United States, or, Republic of America (Philadelphia: White, Gallaher & White, 1828)Google Scholar, probably her most famous work, which she distilled into her Abridgement of the History of the United States (New York: White, Gallaher & White, 1831)Google Scholar; and Willard, Emma, A System of Universal History, in Perspective (Hartford, CT: J. F. Huntington, 1835)Google Scholar. Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 72–80; Schulten, Susan, “Emma Willard and the Graphic Foundations of American History,” Journal of Historical Geography 33, no. 3 (July 2007), 542–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calhoun, Daniel H., “Eyes for the Jacksonian World: William C. Woodbridge and Emma Willard,” Journal of the Early Republic 4, no. 1 (Spring 1984), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schulten, Susan, Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 27–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tolley, Kim, The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002), 13–34Google Scholar, supercede recent accounts that ignore Willard's contributions in this field. Willard was the only geography educator to attempt to bring the inductive method from geography into history instruction.

10 Willard, A System of Universal History, iii.

11 Lutz, Emma Willard, 116.

12 Willard, Emma, Journal and Letters, from France and Great-Britain (Troy, NY: N. Tuttle, 1833), 316–17Google Scholar.

13 On history and geography, see Willard, Guide to the Temple of Time, 13. For further discussion about women writers of history, see Baym, Nina, American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), esp. 214–39Google Scholar.

14 Willard, Emma, An Appeal to the Public, Especially Those Concerned in Education (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1847), 10Google Scholar.

15 Willson, Marcius, A Comprehensive Chart of American History (New York: George Endicott, 1843)Google Scholar; and “Willson's Chart of American History,” New York Evening Post, Sept. 16, 1843, 2. At Union College, Willson received his A.B. in 1836 and an A.M. three years later. See Raymond, Andrew Van Vranken, Union University: Its History, Influence, Characteristics and Equipment, vol. 2 (New York: Lewis Publishing, 1907), 525–28Google Scholar. Union College's curriculum did not include American history while Willson was there. See Somers, Wayne, “Curriculum,” in The Encyclopedia of Union College History, ed. Somers, Wayne (Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 2003), 200–201Google Scholar.

16 “Poughkeepsie Collegiate School,” The Rural Repository Devoted to Polite Literature 16, no. 18 (Feb. 15, 1840), 137; and Farrand, Wilson, A Brief History of the Newark Academy, 1774-1792-1916 (Newark, NJ: Baker Printing, 1916), 17Google Scholar.

17 The pejorative “mere compend” was a common expression in the critical literature. See, for example, Hale, Sarah J., “Editor's Table. Course of Reading for Young Ladies,” Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book 34 (Nov. 1847), 269Google Scholar.

18 All of the works he reviewed were first published prior to 1832. The probable editions of the eight authors included Olney, J[esse], A History of the United States, on a New Plan (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1842)Google Scholar; Grimshaw, William, History of the United States (Philadelphia: Grigg & Elliot, 1841)Google Scholar; Hale, Salma, History of the United States (Cooperstown, NY: H. & E. Phinney, 1842)Google Scholar; Frost, John, The Pictorial History of the United States of America (Philadelphia: B. Walker, 1844)Google Scholar; Goodrich, Samuel Griswold, Pictorial History of the United States (Philadelphia: Sorin & Ball, Samuel Agnew, 1844)Google Scholar; Goodrich, Charles A., A History of the United States of America (Boston: Jenks & Palmer, 1843)Google Scholar; Webster, Noah, History of the United States (Columbus, OH: I. N. Whiting, 1841)Google Scholar; Willard, Emma, History of the United States, or, Republic of America (Philadelphia: A. S. Barnes, 1843)Google Scholar; and Willard, Emma, Abridged History of the United States, or, Republic of America (Philadelphia: A. S. Barnes, 1844)Google Scholar.

19 Substantial literature exists on common school texts and reform, for example, see Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 75–103Google Scholar; Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks; Goldberg, Alfred, “School Histories of the Middle Period,” in Historiography and Urbanization, Essays in American History in Honor of W. Stull Holt, ed. Goldman, Eric F. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1941), 171–88Google Scholar; and Boyd, “Holy Hieroglyph.” On the generational shift among compilers, see Belok, Michael V., Forming the American Minds: Early School-Books & Their Compilers (Moti Katra, Agra-U.P., India: Satish Book Enterprise, 1973), 245Google Scholar. The clashing regional biases Nash found in geographies and readers published before 1820 coexisted with larger themes of civic virtue and providential destiny that were the backbone of early history schoolbooks. See Nash, “Contested Identities.”

20 Local press reports on the Society's meetings do not support Willard's claims that Willson and his publisher manipulated the Society and manufactured the controversy in order to oust Willard. The Society was already surveying geographies and spellers and officially declared its impartiality concerning specific authors. For example, see Newark Daily Advertiser, Jan. 6, 1845, 2, and March 7, 1845, 2; “Correspondence of the Newark Sentinel,” Sentinel of Freedom 48 (Dec. 10, 1844), 2Google Scholar; “To the Public. Improved System of Teaching Geography,” District School Journal of the State of New York 5, no. 2 (May 1844), 61Google Scholar; and Editorial Correspondence, From the Globe, New York, The Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 2, no. 41 (June 25, 1847), 482–83Google Scholar; and Lana Jo Whicker, “The New Jersey Dissent: A Websterian Controversy in the Society of Teachers and Friends of Education in 1843–1844” (master's thesis, Indiana State University, 1989).

21 The list of authorities in the first edition of Willard's Republic of America was a brief exception.

22 Newark Daily Advertiser, March 7, 1845, 2.

23 Newark Daily Advertiser, March 7, 1845, 2.

24 “State Convention of County and Town Superintendents,” District School Journal of the State of New York 6, no. 3 (June 1845), [52]Google Scholar. Willard discussed Willson's Syracuse presentation in Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 4–5 and An Appeal to the Public, 19–20. Willard, Emma, “Address of Mrs. Emma Willard,” District School Journal of the State of New York 6, no. 6 (Sept. 1845), 116Google Scholar; and Meyer, Margaret R., “Emma Willard and the New York State Teachers’ Institutes of 1845,” Journal of Educational Research 44, no. 9 (May 1951), 695–701CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Willson, “A Critical Review of American Common School Histories.”

26 Willson, “Critical Review,” 517–18.

27 Willson, “Critical Review,” 532–33. Because the original manuscript is lost, we cannot check Willson's totals. I count 115 errors of dates and facts discussed in the review's published versions, distributed roughly: Willard and Hale (23 each); C. Goodrich (17); Olney (15); Frost (13); S. Goodrich and Grimshaw (10 each); Webster (4); literary “errors” (46) were almost entirely attributed to Willard.

28 Willson, “Critical Review,” 518–20.

29 Willson, “Critical Review,” 520–27.

30 Willson, “Critical Review,” 528.

31 Willson, “Critical Review,” 527, 528, 529, 532.

32 Willson, “Critical Review,” 534–39.

33 Willson, , A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” (New York: M. H. Newman, 1847), 28Google Scholar.

34 German empiricism was already influencing American historiography, mostly in emphasizing source criticism; the philosophical bases of historicism took longer to seep in. See Herbst, Jürgen, The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), 99–106Google Scholar. The English translation of seminal, Leopold Ranke's The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Austin, Sarah (London: J. Murray, 1840)Google Scholar was published in Philadelphia in 1841.

35 X. Y. [Emma Willard], “A Reply to Mr. Wilson's Review of Common School Histories,” Biblical Repository and Classical Review 60 (Oct. 1845), 765. In Appeal to the Public, 6, Willard admitted authorship of this essay.

36 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 5; and Willard, Appeal to the Public, 19–20.

37 The pamphlet version of the first report, mentioned by Willson, has not been found; see Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 8.

38 Willson, Marcius, History of the United States for the Use of Schools (New York: C. Bartlett, 1845), 12Google Scholar.

39 On the appearance of Willson's History, see “Literary,” New York Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Art 1, no. 20 (1845), 320Google Scholar. On Bartlett, see “Booksellers in New York One Hundred Years Ago,” Publishers’ Weekly 64, no. 13 (Sept. 26, 1903), 600–601Google Scholar.

40 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 5.

41 Most notably, Folsom v. Marsh, 9. F. Cas. 342 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841).

42 X. Y. [Emma Willard], “A Reply to Mr. Wilson's Review.” After the appearance of this reply, ads for her large history stressed the “originality” of the book's organization but said nothing about the originality of its interpretation or sources. See A. S. Barnes & Co., “Willard's History of the United States,” advertisement, The Teacher's Advocate 1, no. 27 (March 11, 1846), 431Google Scholar, Townsend, Lucy F. and Wiley, Barbara, eds., Papers of Emma Hart Willard, 1787–1870 (Bethesda, MD: UPA Collection from LexisNexis, 2005), reel 12, frames 243–44Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Willard Papers).

43 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 1; Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 30; Mark H. Newman & Co., “To Teachers and Others,” advertisement, Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 3, no. 3 (Oct. 15, 1847), 45Google Scholar, Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 247–48; and A. S. Barnes & Co., “Mrs. Willard's School History [and] Mrs. Willard's Histories for Schools,” advertisement, Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 3, no. 9 (Jan. 7, 1848), 45Google Scholar, Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 249–52.

44 Goodrich, S. G., Recollections of a Lifetime, vol. 2 (New York: Miller, Orton, & Mulligan, 1856), 254–55Google Scholar; and Sutton, Walter, The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth Century Publishing and Book-Trade Center (Columbus: Ohio State University Press for the Ohio Historical Society, 1961), 166–89Google Scholar.

45 Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education, the National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 172–85Google Scholar; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 104–36; Herbst, Jürgen, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 30–89Google Scholar; Davis, Sheldon Emmor, Educational Periodicals During the Nineteenth Century (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 75–82Google Scholar; Parkerson, Donald H. and Parkerson, Jo Ann, The Emergence of the Common School in the U.S. Countryside (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Spearman, Mindy, “Teachers’ Lyceums in Early Nineteenth-Century America,” American Educational History Journal 36, no. 1 (2009), 207–18Google Scholar.

46 Tebbel, John William, A History of Book Publishing in the United States: The Creation of an Industry, 1630–1865 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1972), 257–62Google Scholar.

47 Johannsen, Robert W., To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 241–69Google Scholar; and Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 294–99.

48 Gilmore, Michael T., American Romanticism and the Marketplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 12–28Google Scholar.

49 Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 294–99.

50 On Lord's assessment of Willard's “tranquil” life at this time, her trip, and her criticism of Willson, see Lord, Life of Emma Willard, 218–224, 226, 222, respectively.

51 A. S. Barnes to Emma Willard, Feb. 2, 1847, Willard Papers, reel 3, frames 179–83; and A.S. Barnes to Emma Willard, Jan. 18, 1847, Willard Papers, reel 3, frames 174–79.

52 A. S. Barnes & Co., “Mrs. Willard's School Histories,” advertisement, New York Evangelist 17, no. 38 (Sept. 17, 1846), 152Google Scholar; and Barnes advertisement in inside front cover of Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply. On bundling “libraries” of texts, see Freeman, Robert S., “Harper & Brothers’ Family and School District Libraries, 1830–1846,” in Libraries to the People: Histories of Outreach, ed. Freeman, Robert S. and Hovde, David M. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 26–49Google Scholar.

53 Mark H. Newman & Co., “Willson's Historical Series,” advertisement, The Literary World 12 (April 24, 1847), 285. On Newman and Ivison, see Tebbel, History of Book Publishing, 333–36; Derby, J. C., Fifty Years Among Authors, Books and Publishers (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1884), 53Google Scholar; and “Henry Ivison Retires,” New York Times, Jan. 11, 1882, 8.

54 Willson, Marcius, Report on American Histories (New York: Mark H. Newman, 1847)Google Scholar; Mark H. Newman & Co., “The Best Book on American History,” advertisement, New-York Commercial Advertiser, April 3, 1847, 2; and Mark H. Newman & Co., “Willson's Historical Series,” advertisement, New-York Spectator, May 22, 1847, 1. In the Literary World, Newman's ads claimed sales of “fourteen thousand” copies and relayed false reports that the New Jersey educational society had endorsed Willson's history. See Mark H. Newman & Co., advertisement, April 24, 1847.

55 Willson, A Reply to Mrs Willard's “Appeal,” 28.

56 Willard, Guide to the Temple of Time, 13. Barnes sought the moral high ground: “Neither the author nor publishers have attempted the introduction of these works, by disparaging the works of others,” the firm announced. “Let the pretended errors in ‘School Histories,’ be carefully examined, before any work is introduced by setting forth the faults of its competitors.” A. S. Barnes & Co., “Mrs. Willard's Histories for Schools,” advertisement, New-York Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 14, 1847, 2.

57 Willard, Appeal to the Public; Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal”; Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply; and A. S. Barnes & Co., “The Answer to Mr Willson's Reply; to the Friends of Correct Education and Truth! A Card,” advertisement, The Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 2, no. 47 (Aug. 6, 1847)Google Scholar, Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 245–246. Where the pamphlets lacked dates I have estimated publication dates from internal evidence and press reports. Mark H. Newman & Co., “Render Therefore Unto Caesar the Things Which Are Caesars,” advertisement, The Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 2, no. 41 (June 25, 1847), Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 434–35; M[arcius Willson], “Willard's History of the United States—Inaccurate or Perverted!” Sunday Dispatch, [1847], Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 436–437; A. S. Barnes & Co., “Literary Dishonesty,” advertisement, New York Tribune, June 1847, accused Willson of “literary trespass” but disavowed the charge two months later. See A. S. Barnes & Co., “The Answer to Mr. Willson's Reply; To the Friends of Correct Education and of Truth! A Card.”

58 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 15–16. A. S. Barnes & Co., “Mrs. Willard's School History.” The justness of his criticisms, Willson retorted, were independent of his motives or publishing plans; Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 3. Contra Barnes and Willard, Willson wasn't an officer or “Secretary” of the Society, a position held in Dec. 1844 by R. L. Cooke, Newark Daily Advertiser, Jan. 6, 1845, 2.

59 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 4.

60 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 5.

61 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 4, 10.

62 Willard lamented the use of her works without credit. See Willard, Guide to the Temple of Time, 12n and her preface to Woodbridge, William Channing, System of Modern Geography (Hartford, CT: Belknap & Hamersley, 1847)Google Scholar.

63 Baym, American Women Writers, 239.

64 Boyd, “Holy Hieroglyph,” 221–29.

65 The authors’ extensive exchanges over “errors” of fact (such as the discovery of Newfoundland and the settling of the Carolinas) in Willard's histories resolved little of substance besides demonstrating the relative scarcity of reliable sources and hence are not discussed here.

66 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 13; and Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 120.

67 Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 21–22. See also Mark H. Newman & Co., “To the Public,” advertisement, Teacher's Advocate and Journal of Education 2, no. 41 (June 25, 1847), Willard Papers, reel 12, frames 434–35Google Scholar.

68 Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 23–24.

69 Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 121; and Boyd, “Holy Hieroglyph,” 221–29.

70 Willard, Emma, History of the United States, or, Republic of America (Philadelphia: A. S. Barnes, and Co., 1828), i, vGoogle Scholar, describes her method. Other compilers used similar assembly-line methods. See Goodrich, Recollections, 287–88; “Frost, John,” in The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, vol. 4, ed. Johnson, Rossiter (Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904)Google Scholar.

71 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 28. Willard frequently cited the approval of historical celebrities like her friend the Marquis de Lafayette as proof of the accuracy of her accounts. For example, see “Advertisement” in Willard, History of the United States or, Republic of America (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1856), iiGoogle Scholar; and Emma Willard to Lyman C. Draper, Nov. 10, 1855, Lyman Draper Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

72 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 13.

73 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 14.

74 Despite suggesting in her 1835 Universal History that future editions might list the “original writers” she drew from, none ever appeared. See Willard, Emma, A System of Universal History, in Perspective (Hartford, CT: F. J. Huntington, 1835), ivGoogle Scholar. On the other hand, the first edition of her Republic of America included a select list of thirty-five authorities. See Willard, Emma, History of the United States, or, Republic of America (New York: White, Gallaher & White, 1828), 7Google Scholar. The 1831 edition listed fifty-three, which disappeared from the 1843 and 1846 editions and were never in the abridged versions. See Willard, Emma, History of the United States, or, Republic of America (Philadelphia: A. S. Barnes, 1831), xliii-xlivGoogle Scholar.

75 Willard, Answer to Marcius Willson's Reply, 18.

76 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 13–14.

77 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 25–26.

78 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 25. See also A. S. Barnes & Co., “Mrs. Willard's and Mr. Willson's History of the United States and Mrs. Willard's Appeal to the Public,” advertisement, Literary World 1, no. 19 (June 12, 1847), 433Google Scholar. On maps, see Schulten, “Emma Willard and the Graphic Foundations of American History,” 564.

79 Willard, Appeal to the Public, 10.

80 Ilhyung Lee, “Toward an American Moral Rights in Copyright,” Washington & Lee Law Review 58 (2001), 795–854.

81 See Emma Willard, preface to Woodbridge, System of Modern Geography, xx.

82 Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 13. Barry Joyce judges his chart inferior to Willard's progressive maps. See Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 80. For a different assessment, see Rosenberg, Daniel, Grafton, Anthony, and Staff, Princeton Architectural, Cartographies of Time (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013), 169–71Google Scholar.

83 Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks, 114–19.

84 Schulten, “Emma Willard and the Graphic Foundations of American History,” 547; and Cheng, Plain and Noble Garb, 10. A grand narrative that departed significantly from the Bancroft tradition appeared two years after the Willard–Willson fracas. See Hildreth, Richard, The History of the United States of America (New York: Harper, 1849)Google Scholar.

85 Joyce, First U.S. History Textbooks.

86 Samuelson, Pamela, “The Quest for a Sound Conception of Copyright's Derivative Work Right,” Georgetown Law Journal 101 (2013), 1505–9Google Scholar; and Geoffrey E. Buerger, “The Owl and the Plagiarist: Academic Misrepresentation in Contemporary Education” (PhD diss., Dalhousie University, 2002), 7–18.

87 Willson, Marcius, Outlines of History, University Edition (New York: Ivison & Phinney, 1854), ivGoogle Scholar.

88 Newman & Co., “Willson's Historical Series,” May 22, 1847.

89 Willson, A Reply to Mrs. Willard's “Appeal,” 11; and “The War of Histories,” New York Evangelist 18 no. 25 (June 24, 1847), 100.

90 Nash, Women's Education, esp. 78–82; and Preston, Jo Anne, “Domestic Ideology, School Reformers, and Female Teachers: Schoolteaching Becomes Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century New England,” New England Quarterly 66 no. 4 (Dec. 1993), 531–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Willard's pamphlets had cost Barnes $800, but his subsequent accounts blame larger economic conditions for variations in sales. A. S. Barnes to Emma Willard, Jan. 24, 1848, Willard Papers, reel 3, frames 242–45.

92 Willard, History of the United States (1843), 232. Although, as Nina Baym details, many antebellum female authors emphasized women's role in history, Willard did so consistently in fearless and lively prose for mixed-gender school-age audiences throughout her publishing career. See Baym, American Women Writers, 217–38; and Willard, Emma, Universal History in Perspective (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1856), v, 101n, 127nGoogle Scholar, 163–64, 199–200, 226–27, 498, 525–26.

93 M. Willson, “Teachers Agency and Exchange, For Providing Teachers with Schools, and Schools with Teachers,” broadside (New York: Ivison & Phinney, Jan. 1, 1858); G. S. Woodman & Company, “Amer. Educational Bureau,” advertisement, New York Times, May 14, 1862, 3; and “Vineland's Noted Author at Ninety,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 9, 1903, 3.

94 Willson became a devotee of Herbert Spencer and of object pedagogy, the subject of several manuals he coauthored. See, for example, Willson, Marcius, “Educational Tendencies of the Age,” The Educational Bulletin 1, no. 7 (Feb. 1861), 1Google Scholar; and Willson, Marcius, A Manual of Information and Suggestions for Object Lessons (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1863)Google Scholar.

95 Willson, Marcius, American History (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, & Phinney, 1846), 107–9Google Scholar.

96 Willson, American History, 107–9.

97 Contrast with Woodbridge, System of Modern Geography, 353, wherein “the character of nations” is due more to “the influence of moral causes—government, religion, and the state of society” than to “the peculiarities of the race to which they belong.” See also Tolley, Science Education, 25–27. On history as descriptive, see Willard's remarks, Ancient Geography, vi.

98 Willson critiqued biblical chronology while harmonizing the “new science” of geology with the story of creation. See Willson, Outlines of History, esp. 601–25.

99 Willson, Marcius, “History as a Science. No. 1,” School and Home Journal of Literature, Science, and Education 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1858), 2Google Scholar.

100 Willson, “History as a Science. No. 1,” 2.

101 Marcius Willson, “History as a Science. No. 2,” School and Home Journal of Literature, Science, and Education 1, no. 2 (Oct. 1858), 19.

102 See Horsman, Reginald, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Stanton, William, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Fredrickson, George M., Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 49–96Google Scholar.

103 The best-selling series, contracted in 1859, attracted severe criticism, both from educators opposed to content-based literacy instruction and from one of the nation's leading natural scientists, who called Willson a “charlatan” and campaigned behind the scenes against its adoption. See Haldeman, S. S., Notes on Willson's Readers (Philadelphia?: n.p., 1864)Google Scholar.

104 For American historians’ balancing act on the tension between philosophy and empiricism in the writing of history, see Herbst, German Historical School, 53–71, 101–4. On philosophy and history, see the opening chapters of Durant, Will, Our Oriental Heritage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935)Google Scholar.

105 One departure to this literature is McInnis, Edward Cromwell, “History's Purpose in Antebellum Textbooks,” American Educational History Journal 39, no. 1–2 (Jan. 2012), 129–30Google Scholar.

106 Draft letter, in Marcius Willson, Manuscript Notebook, 1865, Gottesman Libraries, Teachers College Archives, Columbia University, New York; and Examiner [Marcius Willson]“Reading as a Branch of Common School Education,” The Illinois Teacher: Devoted to Education, Science, and Free Schools 10, no. 12 (Dec. 1864), 444Google Scholar. Willson's manuscript notebook contains a draft of the “Examiner” essay.