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The Social Function of Eighteenth-Century Higher Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Phyllis Vine
Phyllis Vine*
Affiliation:
Sarah Lawrence College
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Extract

Since the appearance of Bernard Bailyn's provocative essay, Education in the Forming of American Society, scholars have been acknowledging their debt to him with the most enduring form of flattery: they have heeded his call for a re-examination of the meaning of education in American society. In the years since his work appeared students have rewritten the history of different schools, of eminent educators, and of the host of goals and purposes for education. Yet, in an important way some of the questions raised by Bailyn's work still have not been addressed. What new socializing roles did educational institutions perform as the family shed itself of old functions after 1700? This essay will attempt to deal with that question as it inquires into the social function of eighteenth-century college education.

Type
Article II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , Winter 1976 , pp. 409 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by New York University 

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References

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Educational Research Association, April, 1976, San Francisco, California, where it benefitted from David Allmendinger's criticism. Also, I would like to thank friends and former colleagues at Union College, Manfred Jonas, David Potts and Robert Wells, who offered encouragement and suggestions. Google Scholar

1. The literature which acknowledges a debt to Bailyn since the appearance of Education in the Formation of American Society (New York, 1960) is legion. The most comprehensive work which expands upon a number of Bailyn's insights is Cremin, Lawrence, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970). This work also contains an excellent and extensive bibliography. Between Cremin's bibliography, and a recent essay by Potts, David B., “Students and the Social History of American Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly, XV (Fall, 1975): 317–327, most of the literature is discussed. Relevant works published after Cremin, and not contained within the subject of Potts' essay include: Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban School System, New York City, 1750–1850 (Mass., 1973); Ellis, Joseph J., The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696–1772 (New Haven, 1973); Warch, Richard, School of the Prophets, Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven, 1973); Axtell, James, The School Upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New Haven, 1974).Google Scholar

2. The standard histories of these schools may be found in the following: For the College of New Jersey, see Collins, Varnum Lansing, Princeton (New York, 1914); Maclean, John, A History of the College of New Jersey, 2 Vols. (Philadelphia, 1877); Wertenbaker, Thomas J., Princeton, 1746–1896 (Princeton, 1946). More recently the College of New Jersey has received attention by Miller's, Howard book, The Revolutionary College: American Presbyterian Higher Education, 1707–1837 (New York, 1976); Sloan, Douglas, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Early College Ideal (New York, 1971). For King's College consult: Van Amringe, Howard, et. al., A History of Columbia University, 1754–1904 (New York, 1904); Moore, Clement Clarke, The Early History of Columbia College (New York, 1940 ed); and most recently, Humphrey, David C., From Kings College to Columbia, 1746–1800 (Columbia University Press, 1976). The history of the College of Philadelphia may be found in Cheney, Edward Potts, The University of Pennsylvania, 1740–1940 (Philadelphia, 1940); Montgomery, Thomas, A History of the University of Pennsylvania from its Founding to 1770 (Philadelphia, 1900); Turner, Thomas L., “The College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia: The Development of a Colonial Institution of Learning, 1740–1770,” University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. Thesis, 1952; Gordon, Ann D., “The College of Philadelphia, 1740–1779: The Impact of an Institution,” University of Wisconsin, Ph.D. Thesis, 1975.Google Scholar

3. For examples consult: Greene, Jack, “Search for Identity: An Interpretation of the Meaning of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth-Century America,” Journal of Social History 3 (1970): 189–220: Hiner, N. Ray, “Adolescense in 18th Century America,” History of Childhood Quarterly, 3 (1975): 252–280; Bushman, Richard, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, 1967). Works which discuss these concerns after the American Revolution are: Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, 1969); Miller, , The Revolutionary College ; Howe, John, “Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s,” American Quarterly XIX (1967): 147–165.Google Scholar

4. Burr, Aaron, A Discourse Delivered at New-Ark (New York, 1755), pp. 28–29. For background consult: Kemmerer, Donald L., Path to Freedom: The Struggle for Self-Government in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (Princeton, 1940), chapter X; Pomfret, John E., The New Jersey Proprietors and Their Lands, 1664–1776 Princeton, 1964), chapter X; and, Pomfret's more recent work Colonial New Jersey: A History (New York, 1973), chapter 7; Olson, Alison B., “The Founding of Princeton University: Religion and Politics in Eighteenth-Century New Jersey,” New Jersey History, LXXXVII (1969): 135–150.Google Scholar

5. Livingston, William, et. al., The Independent Reflector, ed., Klein, Milton M., (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 55–59. Background on New York may be found in Dillon, Dorothy R., The New York Triumvirate; A Study of the Legal and Political Careers of William Livingston, John Morin Scott and William Smith, Jr. (New York, 1949); Katz, Stanley Nider, Newcastle's New York: Anglo American Politics, 1732–1753 (Mass., 1968); Bonomi, Patricia, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York, 1971); Higgins, Ruth L., Expansion in New York, with Especial Reference to the Eighteenth Century (Ohio, 1931); Bailyn, Bernard, The Origin of American Politics (New York, 1967), pp. 107–114.Google Scholar

6. Franklin, Benjamin, “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Among the British Plantations in America,” in Lemisch, L. Jesse, ed., Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings (New York, 1961), 210.Google Scholar

7. Burr, , Discourse, 33; Witherspoon, John, “An Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica,” in Works (Edinburgh, 1815), VIII: 311; Other examples of this attitude may be found in John Witherspoon to Nicholas Van Dyke, May 12, 1786, Mss., Firestone Library, Princeton University; Charles Nisbet to the Trustees of Dickinson College, July 9, 1799, Founders Collection, Dickinson College. At Union College, President John Blair Smith went so far as to argue that there were more immoral influences at home than at school. See “Inaugural Address, 1795,” Shaffer Library, Union College.Google Scholar

8. Peters, Richard, A Sermon on Education, Wherein Some Account is Given of the Academy (Philadelphia, 1751), 5, 6, 11–13, 14.Google Scholar

9. Smith, Samuel Harrison, Remarks on Education … (1797) in Rudolph, Frederick, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, 1965), 207. Smith, William, A General Idea about the College of Mirania (1752), in Discourses on Public Occasions (London, 1822), 80. For a discussion of the role of emulation in pedagogical practice see Erenberg, Phyllis Vine, “Change and Continuity: Values in American Higher Education, 1750–1800,” University of Michigan, Ph.D. Thesis, 1974, 123–141.Google Scholar

10. Witherspoon, , “Letters on Education,” in Lectures on Moral Philosophy (Philadelphia, 1822), 225.Google Scholar

11. [Pemberton, Ebenezer], “A Short Account of the rise and State of the College in the Province of NEW JERSEY, in America,” The New American Magazine XXVII (March, 1760), 103; Burr, , Discourse, 28; Smith, , Mirania, 42; Edward Antill to Samuel Johnson, December 13, 1758, College Papers, Columbia University Library.Google Scholar

12. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy debated whether reason was an innate or an acquired faculty. Even though the basic orientation of these theories differed significantly, colonial educators betrayed an eclecticism borrowing from each school to make the point that from reason came judgment. Several works discuss the history of psychology in the eighteenth century. For an emphasis on colonial America, see Riley, I. Woodbridge, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907); Roback, A. A., History of American Psychology (New York, 1952), 3–55. To place the colonial context in a larger perspective see Brett, George Sidney, A History of Psychology, Vols. I and II (London, 1921).Google Scholar

13. Peters, , A Sermon, 5–6.Google Scholar

14. Minutes of the Governors, March 1, 1763, Columbia University Library; Princeton University Trustee Minutes, September 30, 1789, Princeton University Library; Thomas, Milton Halsey, “The King's College Building,” New York Historical Society Quarterly XXXIX (1955), 429; Herbert, and Schneider, Carol, eds., Samuel Johnson, President of King's College (New York, 1929), IV: 59–60.Google Scholar

15. For illustration of changing patterns of land distribution and declining patriarchalism, see Greven, Philip, Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Mass. (Ithaca, 1970), 222–258, 272–273. For other indications of perceptions of increasing inability to control adolescents see Smith, Daniel Scott and Hindus, Michael S., “Premarital Pregnancy in America, 1640–1970: An Overview and Interpretation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History V (1975), 537–570; Hiner, , “Adolescence in 18th Century America.” I am indebted to Robert Wells for allowing me to read his forthcoming article, “Illegitimacy and Bridal Pregnancy in Colonial America,” which will appear in a collection of essays edited by Laslett, Peter. Also see Musgrave, F., “The Decline of the Educative Family,” Universities Quarterly XIV (1960), 337–405.Google Scholar

16. Izard, Ralph to Johnson, William Samuel, December 20, 1787, in Schneider, and Schneider, , Johnson, IV:196.Google Scholar

17. Witherspoon, , “An Address to the Senior Class Preceding Commencement, September 23, 1775,” in Lectures, 182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Antill, to Lispenard, Leonard, February 19, 1761. Antill to Johnson, December 13, 1758. Both are located in College Papers, Columbia University Library.Google Scholar

19. Witherspoon, , “Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica,” in Works, Vol. VIII (Edinburgh, 1815), 311.Google Scholar

20. Franklin, , “Proposals,” 210–211. On this point see an article by sociologist Turner, Ralph, “Modes of Social Ascent through Education: Sponsored and Contest Mobility,” in Halsey, A. H., Floud, J., Anderson, C. A., eds., Education, Economy and Society (London, 1967), 121–139. Also see Stone, Lawrence, “Social Mobility in England, 1500–1700,” Past and Present 33 (1966), 16–55.Google Scholar

21. This is discussed in Kaestle, , The Evolution, 11.Google Scholar

22. Rush mentioned Stockton's efforts in a letter to Jonathan Bayard Smith who was Rush's classmate. Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed., Butterfield, , I:38–43. The efforts to attract Witherspoon may also be found in Maclean, , History, I: 285–300; Butterfield, L. H., ed., John Witherspoon Comes to America (Princeton, 1953). For Rush's life see Hawke, David Freeman, Benjamin Rush, Revolutionary Gadfly (Indianapolis, 1971), especially 139–140 for details of the courtship.Google Scholar

23. Information on Armstrong and the other students from the College of New Jersey comes from student files in the Princeton University Archives. I would like to thank James McLachlan for graciously allowing me to use the material which he and his staff collected in preparation of the forthcoming biographical dictionary of Princeton's early students.Google Scholar

24. Hofstadter, Richard, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College (New York, 1955), 150. For students from the College of New Jersey, see ibid. Information on students from the College of Philadelphia comes from Dictionary of American Biography; University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue of the Matriculates of the College, 1749–1893 (Philadelphia, 1894); Maxwell, W. J., ed., General Alumni Catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania, 1917 (Philadelphia, 1917); Montgomery, Thomas, The University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1900); Gordon, , “The College of Philadelphia.” The network of marriage patterns among students parallels the pattern which exists among the trustees as well. Gordon's recent study indicates that when the Academy opened in 1749 only two of the trustees were related through marriage. Between 1751 and 1779, however, of the thirty-one who were appointed, twenty-three were related somehow (p. 14).Google Scholar

Data on students from King's College comes from Fuld, Leonard F., “King's College Alumni-II,” Columbia University Quarterly 9 (1907), 54–60; Thomas, Milton Halsey, comp., Columbia University Officers and Alumni, 1754–1857 (Columbia University Press, 1936); Barrett, Walter, The Old Merchants of New York City (New York, 1885), I: 67; Morris, Richard B., ed., John Jay, The Making of a Revolutionary (New York, 1975) 81, 331–332. Through David Humphrey's discussion of King's College another aspect of the marriage alliances emerges. Humphrey notes the high incidence of students who were related to the Governors. During the 1750s about sixty percent were related as sons or nephews; by the 1770s the figure fell to less than twenty percent. See From King's College, 117, 137, passim.Google Scholar

A final note on this point comes from work on Yale. In a recent study Richard B. Warch notes that of the 386 students who attended between 1701 and 1740, the daughters of Yale alumni married 87 other Yale graduates. See School of the Prophets, Yale College, 1710–1740 (New Haven, 1973), 276.Google Scholar

25. Bell, Whitefield Jr., “A Portrait of the Colonial Physician,” in Bell, Jr., ed., The Colonial Physician & Other Essays (New York, 1975), 31; Paterson, William, Glimpses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton College, 1766–1773 , Mills, W. J., ed., (Philadelphia, 1903); also see relevant Princeton sources in ibid. Google Scholar

26. Fithian, Philip Vickers, Journal and Letters, 1767–1774, ed., Williams, John Rodgers (Princeton, 1900), 287; Gordon, , “The College of Philadelphia,” 133–134 also discusses this point.Google Scholar

27. Jay, John to Morris, Robert, October 13, 1782, quoted in Mintz, Max M., “Morris and Jay on Education,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 74 (1950), 343.Google Scholar

28. Quoted in Humphrey, David, From King's College, 209. The reference is probably to Edward Nicoll (A.B., 1766). See McDougall, Alexander to Jay, John, 20 March, 1776, in Morris, , ed., John Jay, 240 fn. 1, 331–332, 87, 113–114.Google Scholar

29. Smith, William, “A Charge to the Graduates,” in Discourses, 130–131; Johnson, Samuel, “To the Graduates,” in Schneider and Schneider, Johnson, Vol. IV: 278.Google Scholar

30. Samuel Eliot Morison notes that the “incorporation of a newcomer into the society of masters, and his formal entrance upon his functions by the actual performance of its duties” was a part of Roman law which was essential for all forms of investiture. By the time Harvard College was founded the original significance of the ‘Act’ had been forgotten.” See Harvard College (1935), 12–13, fn. 2, 34, 72–73.Google Scholar

31. Increase Mather to [Rev. James Pierpont], Sept. 15, 1701, in Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, ed., Documentary History of Yale College (New Haven, 1916), 7. Also see the early proposals for Yale College which stipulated: “Let there be no such expensive Commencements, as those in other Universities,” in ibid., 3.Google Scholar

32. Morison, Samuel Eliot, et. al., “Harvard College Records,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXI (1935): 332–334, 380–383; XVI (1925): 551, 562, 722, 746, 751, 761, 772, 819.Google Scholar

33. Morgan, Edmund, Visible Saints (New York, 1965 ed.), 88–89, 61, 62. Perry Miller notes that by the end of the seventeenth century the new world ritual had become a communal chant, and the minister's role depended “not upon a scholastic definition of their place in the hierarchy of being, but upon a revived community, upon the ability to evoke from year to year an answering chorus.” See The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961 ed.), 116, 118.Google Scholar

34. On the significance of public behavior and communal experience see Isaac, Rhys, “Dramatizing the Ideology of Revolution: Popular Mobilization in Virginia, 1774 to 1776,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., XXXIII (1976), 357–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Morgan, Edmund, Valedictory Oration Pronounced at the Commencement in Nassau-Hall, in New Jersey, September 26, 1759 (New York, n.d.), 4–5.Google Scholar

36. Witherspoon, , “Address to the Inhabitants,” 320.Google Scholar

37. College of Philadelphia Trustee Minutes, January 24, 1775, May 23, 1776; Morgan, Edmund, The Gentle Puritan, A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven, 1962), 361; New York Journal and Weekly Register, April 13, 1786.Google Scholar

38. Walett, Francis G., ed., The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman (Worcester, 1974), 6, 49, 38, 66, 80, 120, 179, 219, 278; Butterfield, L. H., ed., The Adams Papers: Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (New York, 1964), Vol. III: 263.Google Scholar