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Religious Conflict in the Development of the New York City Public School System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

John W. Pratt
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Extract

History has many uses; unfortunately, polemics is not the least of them. But when argument for argument's sake, or to screen vested positions, repeats simplistic views of human nature, distorts the operations of professional politics, and generally plays fast and loose with the science of evidence, who then has gained? Certainly not historians, nor the non-historians who read history unless it is to reaffirm for many of them the well-established conviction that historians as a group are a rather addle-headed lot.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1965 , pp. 110 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © 1965, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

1. Seward, William H., Works, Baker, G. E., ed. (New York 1853–54), II, 215. This paper draws heavily upon material in the writer's article, “Governor Seward and the New York City School Controversy, 1840–1842 …,” New York History, XLII (1961), 351–64; Lawrence Cremin's account in his The American Common School: an Historic Conception (New York, 1951), 165–75, has also been helpful.Google Scholar

2. The significance of this point, seen both by supporters and opponents, was that it would have allowed district schools in heavily Catholic neighborhoods to operate virtually as parochial schools, given the organization by wards, if the matter of religion was left to local option.Google Scholar

3. Bourne, W. O., History of the Public School Society (New York, 1869), 478–82.Google Scholar

4. Randall, S. S., History of the Common School System of the State of New York (New York, 1871), 12–13; also 11, 15, 17–19 for other representative statements.Google Scholar

5. Cremin, op. cit., 97.Google Scholar

6. New York (State), Laws, 1812, ch. 242.Google Scholar

7. Laws, 1813, ch. 52.Google Scholar

8. Cremin, op. cit., 154–59; Mahoney, Charles J., The Relation of the State to Religious Education in Early New York, 1633–1825 (Washington, D. C., 1941), 134–204.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in Albany Argus, Nov. 9, 1824.Google Scholar

10. Mahoney, 124–26, cites DeWitt Clinton's statement of the Society's views on this subject.Google Scholar

11. On courting the Catholic vote, there is information in the Seward and the Thurlow Weed letters at the University of Rochester; see the notes to my article cited supra n. 1, for references to specific letters. On the education of immigrant children, see Weed's Autobiography (Boston, 1883), 483; Seward, Autobiography, Seward, F. W., ed. (New York, 1877), 460–61.Google Scholar

12. This refers to the lines in the 1840 message where Seward employs this phrase when referring to the school arrangements then in operation in New York; Seward, Works, II, 215.Google Scholar

13. Thurlow Weed put this idea somewhat more crudely in an editorial in the Albany Journal, January 18, 1840, where he writes of bestowing “an abundant, overflowing School Fund … like the dews from Heaven” on all deserving citizens.Google Scholar

14. In his annual message for 1841, after his proposal to aid religious schools had cost him considerable votes in the 1840 elections, Seward had said: “I have no pride of opinion concerning the manner in which the education of those whom I have brought to your notice shall be secured, although … amid abundant misrepresentations of the method suggested, no one has contended that it would be ineffectual, nor has any other plan been proposed.” Seward, Works, II, 279.Google Scholar

15. Seward's last annual message, January, 1842, contains a long, revealing passage on the school question, Works, II, 306–09. It is a full statement of the Governor's developing views on public control of the New York City schools, and a rationale of his conduct since 1840. With reference to schooling for Catholic children and his impending retirement, he said: “We could bear with us, into our retirment from public service, no recollection more worthy of being cherished through life, than that of having met such a question in the generous and confiding spirit of our institutions….”Google Scholar

16. The amendment was moved by the Democratic leadership to overcome opposition from New York City Senators who saw the original bill as too favorable to the Catholics and to Seward, New York (State) Senate, Journal, 1842, 456–67. The bill is in Laws, 1842, ch. 150; sec. 14 carries the amendment.Google Scholar

17. Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society, Vintage ed. (New York, n.d.), 108.Google Scholar

18. Seward, Works, II, 306–09. In this same message, the Governor said that the school issue “presents the questions … whether, in a republican government, it is necessary to interpose an independent corporation between the people and the schoolmaster, and whether it is wise and just to disfranchise an entire community of all control over public education….” The fact that such questions were now seen to be important is a measure of the impact of the school issue on thinking about education.Google Scholar

19. New York (State) Assembly, Documents, 1842, doc. no. 60, 6.Google Scholar