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Colleges in the Revolutionary South: The Shaping of a Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert Polk Thomson
Robert Polk Thomson*
Affiliation:
George Peabody College for Teachers
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Extract

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.

Type
Education in the South
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Winter 1970 , pp. 399 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

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