Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:37:45.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Wonderful Time to Be a History Teacher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Donald Warren
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What follows will be a historical account of somewhat unfamiliar events and people. The aim is less to recall a nearly forgotten episode than to suggest its ironic complement to the current effort to raise standards in the teaching and learning of history. Typical for the discipline, the narrative draws upon the research of others, and several scholars have helped prepare the conceptual ground. Of the latter, four will be cited briefly by way of an introduction: John Dewey and the most recent presidents of the History of Education Society.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 1992 , pp. 175 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dewey, John, Interest and Effort in Education (Carbondale, Ill., 1975 [191.3]). See “Preface” by Wheeler, James E., ibid., vii–xvi.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 95.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 96.Google Scholar

4 Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, “The Plural Worlds of Educational Research,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Summer 1989): 185–214.Google Scholar

5 Ray Hiner, N., “History of Education for the 1990s and Beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism,” History of Education Quarterly 30 (Summer 1990): 155.Google Scholar

6 Seller, Maxine Schwartz, “Boundaries, Bridges, and the History of Education,” History of Education Quarterly 31 (Summer 1991): 195–206.Google Scholar

7 Dorr, Thomas Wilson, “Human Happiness” (1833), Dorr Manuscripts, Rider Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Coleman, Peter J., The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860 (Providence, 1963), 283; Gettleman, Marvin E., The Dorr Rebellion: A Story in American Radicalism, 1833–1849 (New York, 1973), 138; and MacMullen, Edith Nye, In the Cause of True Education: Henry Barnard and Nineteenth-Century School Reform (New Haven, 1991), 107. The New York Herald referred to it as the “Root Beer War.” See New York Herald, 1 July 1842, 2.Google Scholar

9 Wayland, Francis, The Affairs of Rhode Island (Providence, 1842); and Bolles, John A., “The Affairs of Rhode Island,” Being a Review of President Wayland's “Discourse”; A Vindication of the Sovereignty of the People, and a Refutation of the Doctrines and Doctors of Despotism (Boston, 1842), both located in the John Hay Library. See also Smith, Wilson, Professors and Public Ethics: Studies of Northern Moral Philosophers before the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), ch. 7, “Francis Wayland and The Dorr War,” 128–46.Google Scholar

10 Coleman, , Transformation, 3–25. The Charter is reprinted in Mowry, Arthur May, The Dorr War or the Constitutional Struggle in Rhode Island (Providence, 1901), Appendix A. 307–21.Google Scholar

11 Coleman, , Transformation, vii.Google Scholar

12 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 6, n. 7.Google Scholar

13 Coleman, , Transformation, 260.Google Scholar

14 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 47.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., 55.Google Scholar

16 For the two competing constitutions, see Mowry, , Dorr War, Appendices B and C, 322–66.Google Scholar

17 Frieze, Jacob, Concise History of the Efforts to Obtain an Extension of Suffrage in Rhode Island: From the Year 1811 to 1842 (Providence, 1842), 66–67.Google Scholar

18 Mowry, . Dorr War, 133.Google Scholar

19 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 141–44. The New York Tribune told of “plunder and rapine” by Dorrites; see, for example, 27 June 1842, 2. The constitution is reprinted in Mowry, , Dorr War, Appendix D, 367–89.Google Scholar

20 Quoted in Mowry, , Dorr War, 254. On the trial, see ibid., 243–54; and King, Dan, The Life and Times of Thomas Wilson Dorr, with Outlines of the Political History of Rhode Island (Boston, 1859), 189–214. Mowry described the political backlash that followed the trial. See Mowry, , Dorr War. 255–57.Google Scholar

21 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), 411; Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 135–38; Coleman, , Transformation, 288–94; Dennison, George M., The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 (Lexington, Ky., 1976), 15.Google Scholar

22 Mowry, , Dorr War, 191–94.Google Scholar

23 Dorr, Thomas W., “Memoranda,” 1 Aug. 1845, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar

24 Brownson, Orestes to Dorr, , 14 May 1842, Dorr Manuscripts. Dorr penned a postscript to the effect that “OAB” later denied any support of popular sovereignty.Google Scholar

25 Dorr, , “Memoranda.” Google Scholar

26 See Dorr, Thomas W., “Report of the School Committee of the City of Providence,” Providence Journal, 15 June 1841, 2–3.Google Scholar

27 Dorr, , “Memoranda.” See New Age and Constitutional Advocate, 26 Feb. 1841, 2.Google Scholar

28 Dorr, Sullivan and Dorr, Lydia to Dorr, Thomas W., 8 Apr. 1842, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar

29 Dorr, Henry to Dorr, Thomas W., 25 Oct. 1841, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar

30 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 12–13, n. 24.Google Scholar

31 Williamson, Chilton, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760–1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 247–48.Google Scholar

32 Dorr, Thomas W. to Calder, Jesse, 4 May 1841, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar

33 See New York Tribune, 27 May 1842. 2; ibid., 17 Sep. 1842, 2; and ibid., 22 Sep. 1842, 2.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 5 Sep. 1842, 2.Google Scholar

35 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 168n.Google Scholar

36 Dorr, to Dorr, Lydia, 6 May 1842, Suffrage Ladies of Providence to Dorr, 20 Aug 1842, Dorr to Suffrage Ladies, 24 Aug. 1842, Dorr Manuscripts. As was customary in some circles, Dorr addressed letters to his mother in care of her husband.Google Scholar

37 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 168n.Google Scholar

38 DuBois, Ellen Carol, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978), 40.Google Scholar

39 See Wyman, Lillie B. C. and Wyman, Arthur Crawford, Elizabeth Buffum Chace, 1806–1899: Her Life and Its Environment, 2 vols. (Boston, 1914).Google Scholar

40 Burghardt Du Bois, W. E., The Souls of Black Folk (New York, 1961 [1903]) 157–65.Google Scholar

41 Dennison, , Dorr War, 44; Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 53; Louis Lapham to Dorr, 16 Apr. 1842, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar

42 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 129–30, n. 85.Google Scholar

43 MacMullen, , In the Cause, III.Google Scholar

44 Coleman, , Transformation, 233–35.Google Scholar

45 Katz, Michael B., Reconstructing American Education (Cambridge, 1987), 15.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., 16. Katz seems to agree with Katznelson and Weir that “The inescapable tensions between the public and private realms, and battles at this boundary about the extensiveness of equal citizenship and popular sovereignty, took place in and were moderated in part by the system of schooling for all.” See Katznelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York, 1985), 9–10.Google Scholar