Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:18:07.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contested Identities: Nationalism, Regionalism, and Patriotism in Early American Textbooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Margaret A. Nash
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Immediately after the American Revolution, the founders set about the task of ensuring the continued existence of the fledgling republic. Facing a host of problems—economic, social, and governmental—some founders promoted a concept of schooling that would inculcate patriotism and forge a uniquely American identity. Noah Webster wanted to create an American language, and Benjamin Rush wanted schools to “convert men into republican machines.” Webster, Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and others all wanted to use some version of common schooling to instill in children a sense of nationalism. Textbooks used in these common schools would be a likely way to further promote a sense of American identity. What that identity should be, though, and what the “good citizen” of the new republic should look like, was sharply contested, and textbooks of this period reflect many of the fissures in the work of nation building.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , November 2009 , pp. 417 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 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

Notes

1 Rush, Benjamin “A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania; to Which Are Added, Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education, Proper in a Republic,” in Essays on Education in the Early Republic, ed. Rudolph, Frederick (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [1786] 1965), 17; Whitescarver, Keith “Creating Citizens for the Republic: Education in Georgia, 1776–1818,“ Journal of the Early Republic 13 (Winter 1993): 455–79.Google Scholar

2 Belok, Michael V. “Forming the American Character: Essayists and Schoolbooks,” Social Science 43, no. 1 (1968): 12–21; Koch, Cynthia M. “Teaching Patriotism: Private Virtue for the Public Good in the Early Republic,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, ed. Bodnar, John (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Koch, Cynthia M. “The Virtuous Curriculum: American Schoolbooks, 1785–1830” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991).Google Scholar

3 Kramnick, Isaac ed., The Federalist Papes (New York: Penguin, 1987), 91.Google Scholar

4 Messerli, Jonathan “The Columbian Complex: The Impulse to National Consolidation,” History of Education Quarterly 7, no. 4 (1967): 418; Smith Pangle, Lorraine and Pangle, Thomas L. The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 101.Google Scholar

5 Tyack, David “Forming the National Character: Paradox in the Educational Thought of the Revolutionary Generation,” Harvard Educational Review 36, no. 1 (1966): 31; David Tyack, “School for Citizens: The Politics of Civic Education from 1790 to 1990,” in E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, ed. Gerstle, Gary and Mollenkopf, John (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 336, 38.Google Scholar

6 There were exceptions to this, of course. See, for instance, Benjamin Justice, The War That Warn V: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865–1900 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).Google Scholar

7 Messerli, “The Columbian Complex,” 428.Google Scholar

8 Kaestle, Carl F. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 9.Google Scholar

9 Moroney, Siohban “Birth of a Canon: The Historiography of Early Republican Educational Thought,” History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1999): 487.Google Scholar

10 Cheng, Eileen Ka-May “American Historical Writers and the Loyalists, 1788–1856: Dissent, Consensus, and American Nationality,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 4 (2003): 493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Bodnar, John ed., Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1996); Waldstreicher, David In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).Google Scholar

12 Kramnick, Isaac “‘The Great National Discussion': The Discourse of Politics in 1787,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser 45 (1988): 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Doyle, Don H. Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question, Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Lecture Series (Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press, 2002), 36, 37.Google Scholar

14 Onuf, Peter “The Origins of American Sectionalism,” in All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions, ed. Ayers, Edward L. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996); Schoen, Brian “Calculating the Price of Union: Republican Economic Nationalism and the Origins of Southern Sectionalism, 1790–1828,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 2 (2003): 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Onuf, “The Origins of American Sectionalism,” 14–15.Google Scholar

16 Earle, Carville The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc., 2003), 343.Google Scholar

17 Duncan, Christopher M. The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995), 164.Google Scholar

18 Messerli, “The Columbian Complex,” 430.Google Scholar

19 Pangle and Pangle, The Learning of Liberty, 133.Google Scholar

20 Nietz, John A. Old Textbooks (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1961), 10–44.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.,20.Google Scholar

22 Webster, Noah A Grammatical Institute, of the English Language, Comprising, an Easy, Concise, and Systematic Method of Education, Designed for the Use of English Schools in America, 3 vols., vol. 1 (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1783), 8 (italics in original).Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 10.Google Scholar

24 Dilworth, Thomas A New Guide to the English Tongue, ed. Alston, R. C. vol. 4 English Linguistics, 1500–1800 (Leeds: The Scholar Press Limited, 1967), ii; Smith, Raoul N. “Interest in Language and Languages in Colonial and Federal America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 123 (1979): 36.Google Scholar

25 Nietz, Old Textbooks, 42.Google Scholar

26 Bingham, Caleb The Columbian Orator: Containing a Variety of Original and Selected Pieces, Together with Rules, Calculated to Improve Youth and Others in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence (Troy, NY: O. Penniman and Co., 1803), iv.Google Scholar

27 Canter, Granville “The Active Virtue of The Columbian Orator “ The New England Quarterly 70, no. 3 (1997): 463.Google Scholar

28 Belok, Michael V. Forming the American Minds: Early School-Books & Their Compilers (1783–1837) (Moti Katra, Agra: Satish Book Enterprise, 1973), 21–22, 189, 96.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 23, 221; Lyman, Rollo English Grammar in American Schools before 1850 (Washington: Bureau of Education, 1921), 80.Google Scholar

30 Spafford, Horatio Gates General Geography and Rudiments of Useful Knowledge. In Nine Sections. Digested on a New Plan, and Designed for the Use of Schools (Hudson: Croswell & Frary, 1809).Google Scholar

31 Ibid, 165.Google Scholar

32 Kilbourn, John A Compendious System of Universal Geography: Designed for Schools and Youth in General (Worthington, OH: Putnam and Israel, 1813), 169–70 (italics in original).Google Scholar

33 Morse, Jedidiah A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, or a View of the Present State of the World (Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1814), 101.Google Scholar

34 Parish, Elijah A Compendious System of Universal Geography, Designed for Schools. Compiled from the Latest and Most Distinguished European and American Travellers, Voyagers and Geographers (Newburyport, MA: Thomas & Whipple, 1807), 27.Google Scholar

35 Ibid, 27–28.Google Scholar

36 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 201.Google Scholar

37 O'Neill, John A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy; or, an Introduction to Universal Geography (Baltimore: Dobbin & Murphy, 1808), 113.Google Scholar

38 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 27.Google Scholar

39 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 79.Google Scholar

40 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 231.Google Scholar

41 Watson, Harry L. Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 57, 70–71.Google Scholar

42 Menschel, David “Abolition without Deliverance: The Law of Connecticut Slavery, 1784–1848,” The Yale Law Journal 111, no. 1 (2001): 183–222; Moss, Simeon F. “The Persistence of Slavery and Involuntary Servitude in a Free State (1685–1866),” The Journal of Negro History 35, no. 3 (1950): 289–314; Washington, Margaret ed., Narrative of Sojourner Truth (New York and Toronto: Random House, 1993), xiv–xxii.Google Scholar

43 Doyle, Nations Divided, 74.Google Scholar

44 Whitescarver, Keith “School Books, Publishers, and Southern Nationalists: Refashioning the Curriculum in North Carolina's Schools, 1850–1861,” The North Carolina Historical Review LXXIX, no. 1 (2002): 38.Google Scholar

45 An Easy Introduction to Geography, with a Brief View of the Solar System, & C By Way of Question and Answer. Adapted to the Use of Schools and Private Tuition (Charleston, SC: J. J. Evans & Co., 1803).Google Scholar

46 The Southern Reader: Or, Child's First Reading Book; a Collection of Easy and Instructive Lessons Adapted to the Capacities of Young Children (Charleston, SC: Babcock and M'Carter & Co., 1839).Google Scholar

47 Nietz, Old Textbooks, 216.Google Scholar

48 {Whitescarver, “School Books, Publishers, and Southern Nationalists.”Google Scholar

49 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 27.Google Scholar

50 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 178–79.Google Scholar

51 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 83.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 94.Google Scholar

53 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 201.Google Scholar

54 Hubbard, John The Rudiments of Geography (Walpole, NH: Thomas & Thomas, 1803), 94.Google Scholar

55 Belok, Forming the American Minds, 64.Google Scholar

56 Dwight, Nathaniel A Short but Comprehensive System of the Geography of the World, by Way of Question and Answer. Principally Designed for Children and Common Schools, 1st New Jersey ed. (Elizabethtown, NJ: J. Woods, 1801), 153.Google Scholar

57 O'Neill, A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy, 65. Google Scholar

58 Fisher, George The Instructor, or American Young Man's Best Companion, Improved. (Philadelphia: Bioren, 1812); Gleason, Benjamin Geography on a New and Improved Plan (Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1814), 67.Google Scholar

59 Spafford, General Geography, 205.Google Scholar

60 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 48.Google Scholar

61 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 57.Google Scholar

62 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 156–57.Google Scholar

63 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 169–70.Google Scholar

64 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 150.Google Scholar

65 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 38.Google Scholar

66 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 166.Google Scholar

67 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 148.Google Scholar

68 Dwight, A Short but Comprehensive System of the Geography of the World, 172.Google Scholar

69 0'Neill, A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy, 98–99.Google Scholar

70 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 61. Hubbard repeats this assertion in his 1805, 1807, 1808, and 1814 editions.Google Scholar

71 Bingham, Caleb An Astronomical and Geographical Catechism for the Use of Children (Boston, MA: S. Hall, 1795), 21.Google Scholar

72 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 32.Google Scholar

73 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 57.Google Scholar

74 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 49.Google Scholar

75 Spafford, General Geography, 223.Google Scholar

76 Bingham, An Astronomical and Geographical Catechism for the Use of Children, 26.Google Scholar

77 Bingham, Caleb An Astronomical and Geographical Catechism for the Use of Children, 7th ed. (Boston: David Carlisle, 1803), 29–30.Google Scholar

78 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 93 99.Google Scholar

79 Spafford, General Geography, 248.Google Scholar

80 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 66.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., 81. This passage is repeated verbatim in each edition of Hubbard examined; it is on p. 81 of the 1803 edition. Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography.Google Scholar

82 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 83.Google Scholar

83 Spafford, General Geography, 289.Google Scholar

84 Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 87.Google Scholar

85 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 131.Google Scholar

86 Ibid.,201.Google Scholar

87 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 121.Google Scholar

88 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 86.Google Scholar

89 Henderson, Thomas An Easy System of the Geography of the World by Way of Question and Answer. Principally Designed for Schools (Lexington, KY: Thomas T. Skillman 1813), 51.Google Scholar

90 Dwight, A Short but Comprehensive System of the Geography of the World, 150–51.Google Scholar

91 O'Neill, A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy, 60–61.Google Scholar

92 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 91.Google Scholar

93 Ibid., 128Google Scholar

94 Henderson, An Easy System of the Geography of the World, 51 (emphasis added). The same precise sentence also appears in Dwight, 1801, p. 151.Google Scholar

95 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 30.Google Scholar

96 Fisher, George The American Instructor, or Young Man's Best Companion, Revised and Corrected, 9th ed. (Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall 1748); George Fisher, The Instructor, or American Young Man's Best Companion, Improved (Philadelphia, PA: Bioren, John 1810), 227; Fisher, The Instructor, George Fisher, The Instructor: Or American Young Man's Best Companion, 2nd Worcester ed. (Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1786) 301.Google Scholar

97 Belok, Michael V. “The Instructed Citizen: Civic Education in the United States During the Nineteenth Century,” Paedagogica Historica 18, no. 2 (1978): 258–60.Google Scholar

98 Spafford, General Geography, 160.Google Scholar

99 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 103.Google Scholar

100 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 49–50 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

101 Ibid., 83.Google Scholar

102 Spafford, General Geography.Google Scholar

103 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 71.Google Scholar

104 Wolin, Sheldon S. “ E Pluribus Unum: The Representation of Difference and the Reconstitution of Collectivity,” in The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution, ed. Wolin, Sheldon S. The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 134.Google Scholar

105 O'Neill, A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy, 223.Google Scholar

106 Parish, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 129.Google Scholar

107 Cohen, I. Bernard Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), 195.Google Scholar

108 Bingham, The Columbian Orator, iv (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

109 Alexander, Caleb The Young Gentlemen and Ladies’ Instructor (Boston: E. Larkin and W. P. and L. Blake 1797), 163–69; Carey, Matthew The Columbian Reading Book, or Historical Preceptor (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1802), 112; Webster, A Grammatical Institute, 62.Google Scholar

110 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 72.Google Scholar

111 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 132.Google Scholar

112 “Hubbard, The Rudiments of Geography, 54–55.Google Scholar

113 Spafford, General Geography, 223.Google Scholar

114 O'Neill, A New and Easy System of Geography and Popular Astronomy, 86.Google Scholar

115 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 183.Google Scholar

116 Ibid, 189.Google Scholar

117 Fields, William S. and Hardy, David T. “The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History,” American Journal of Legal History 35 (1991): 393–431.Google Scholar

118 Spafford, General Geography, 162.Google Scholar

119 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 89.Google Scholar

120 Bingham, The Columbian Orator, 300.Google Scholar

121 Adams, Daniel The Understanding Reader: Or, Knowledge before Oratory, 8th ed. (Dedham: Mann & Co., 1816), 12.Google Scholar

122 Winterer, Caroline “From Royal to Republican: The Classical Image in Early America,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1267.Google Scholar

123 Spafford, General Geography, 207–8.Google Scholar

124 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 119. This story is also told in Kilbourn, 104.Google Scholar

125 Ibid., 125.Google Scholar

126 Spafford, General Geography, 230.Google Scholar

127 Morse, A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, 250.Google Scholar

128 Kilbourn, A Compendious System of Universal Geography, 209.Google Scholar

129 Schudson, Michael The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 72.Google Scholar

130 Adams, Hannah An Abridgement of the History of New England for the Use of Young Persons, 2 ed. (Boston, MA: Etheridge & Bliss, 1807), 47–48.Google Scholar