to keep up with the march of modern improvements in pedagogics it had become essential to introduce important modifications in our method of imparting knowledge." And this bringing up of a whole teaching force in a town to a high plane was the first result of Colonel Parker's work in Quincy.

Coming at a time when the State of Massachusetts was beginning to formally recognize the necessity of skilled supervision of city and town schools the object lesson set forth in Quincy, the challenging of existing methods of teaching and of school management, in the forceful, exaggerated terms presented by Colonel Parker on every opportunity, compelled the opposing forces to draw their lines of demarcation in such a way as presented the issues at stake clearly and definitely before the people. The accessories of an able and progressive and open-minded school committee in Quincy, the development and establishment of a number of ably edited school journals which presented from time to time the salient elements of the controversy, the interest of the newspapers, attracted doubtless by the new features of Colonel Parker's utterances-all these conspired to give a laudable publicity to the experiment in Quincy which every other school reform movement of our times has lacked.

Within an appreciably short time, therefore, the attitude of teachers and school officers toward the discipline in elementary schools changed in the most remarkable manner. The first result of this was the development of a new spirit in the schools, that spirit which our foreign visitors in 1893 thought so wonderful and found so general. Such a condition as is here set forth had an immediate indirect influence upon the teaching in the schools. With the development of freedom in the elementary school came the necessity for better teaching. When rigid military order was no longer possible chaos and disorder immediately appeared, unless the children were interested in their studies. The hearing of lessons, the setting of definite tasks away from and outside of the interest of the children, immediately became very much more difficult, and along the lines of least resistance came a wonderful development of skill among the teachers of the lower grades of the elementary school. The real development of the successful summer school, and the great renaissance of elementary teaching, sprang very largely from this conscious need of teachers to fit themselves for existence in this new atmosphere. Professional study was, as it were, a necessity, and those teachers who ignored this necessity were soon made conscious of their delinquencies. What might have taken twenty-five years to accomplish was rapidly gained in almost as many months.

Measured from this standpoint, Colonel Parker was incomparably the greatest force for educational good that the elementary schools of this country have ever known. To him more than any other man is due the fact that the schools of the whole country have been decrystallized and imbued with sweeter and higher ideals, and therefore raised to a higher standard of efficiency and accomplishment. He lived to see his views and phases of methods which had been characterized as "theoretical," "visionary," "impracticable," foreign to our civilization,' 'tending in the wrong direction," "leading to vast expenditures," "impossible to relate to our common schools," formally accepted by everyone in authority.

One of the most remarkable things connected with the administration of Colonel Parker as superintendent of schools of Quincy is the fact that notwithstanding the immensely bettered condition of the schools, consequent upon lifting the teachers to a higher plane in spirit, skill, and efficiency, the amount of money expended for the support of the schools in Quincy was no greater than that of the years preceding his administration. When one takes into consideration Colonel Parker's well-known weakness and distaste for financial administration, one is at a loss to understand this great achievement at the outset of his career when contrasted with his experience at Chicago. Colonel Parker, during the whole of his

life, was a tremendous indirect force acting upon the schools of the country through the education of teachers under his supervision who were continually drawn upon by school systems in other sections of the country. Great as was his influence at Quincy and in Chicago, tremendous as was the development of the schools under his charge, that growth would have been infinitely greater had it not been so impossible for him to keep any large proportion of the teachers to whom he gave new ideals and greater efficiency. Therefore both in Quincy and Chicago his teaching force was continually changing and shifting-capable and efficient teachers continually accepting better positions elsewhere and leaving their places to be filled by more or less undeveloped teachers.

Nearly all the valid criticisms that have been made against Colonel Parker's administration in Quincy and Chicago have been based upon observation of the work of some of these more or less inexperienced teachers who were in a stage of transition toward better methods.

It was a fortunate thing for the cause of education when Colonel Parker resigned in Boston that he chose the principalship of the Cook County normal school rather than the superintendency of a large city in the East. He was so constituted that he was happier and more efficient in situations where he could see with his own eyes all that was going on than where he would need to operate and direct through many intermediaries. The West, too, was more ready to listen to the new prophet, more willing to change the point of view, more ready to welcome what seemed to be an improvement than older sections of the country.

Pearson, in his National Life and Character, points out that in England the mental attitude toward any new invention or new process is always, "This can not amount to anything, or it would have been discovered long ago;" while in the United States and in England's colonies the attitude is, If this invention is a good thing and this process is valuable, we want it." The West, with few vested rights, with little self-complacency, with less settled society, with fewer recognized great names in education, is not always discriminating in its welcome to new prophets, but is always open minded. The time, too, was ripe for the appearance of a new force. More or less stability had been given to the scattered forces in the schools of the West through the efforts and influence of John Hancock, in Cincinnati; Andrew J. Rickoff, in Cleveland; William T. Harris, in St. Louis; A. C. Shortridge and George P. Brown, in Indianapolis; Richard Edwards and E. C. Hewitt at Normal, Ill., and J. L. Pickard, in Chicago.

The impulse toward improved methods and better schools which had emanated from these centers had extended so far through their ever-broadening circles of influence that a general agreement had been almost reached, and the schools were proceeding in a steady and slow movement upward. It was at this time that Colonel Parker, with his enthusiasm and beautiful personality, appeared to disturb this general feeling of satisfaction which was fast possessing educators in the West.

The Cook County normal school was then a most excellent school, limited in various ways and provincial in others. Under Colonel Parker's management the standards for admittance were raised; the attendance largely increased, coming from almost every State in the West. The quality of the teaching in the school kept improving constantly in all of the elements which go to make up enthusiastic and scientific teaching. With a school growing largely in numbers, extending its influence so that it became truly national, drawing to its corps of instructors teachers with reputation and ability, it was certain that the cost of such a school would continually increase. Because of this fact and because of Colonel Parker's singleness of purpose to elevate the school, he came in contact with both conservative and reactionary forces to such an extent as would have discouraged any man with less hope and less enthusiasm and less strenuousness in his nature; but not

withstanding these troubles which seemed to gather around him, his magnificent personality carried the school in its accomplishments and efficiency higher and higher until it was the recognized professional school for teachers in the West. During this period of his career his addresses before county and State teachers' associations, his connection with some of the great summer schools, continually widened and added materially to his increasing reputation. He therefore became really a national character-the one great leader whom teachers in elementary schools recognized as their apostle.

Every movement which has affected for good the efforts of the teachers in our elementary schools in our time certainly gained potency largely from the influence derived from Colonel Parker's life work.

Every pupil in these schools has been given advantages and opportunities, and every teacher has been influenced in her struggle for more light, by the great educational movement for which Colonel Parker will ever seem to stand sponsor. His judgment of men and women who taught with him has been wonderfully borne out by their rise and influence. Indeed the history and development of the new education in the United States might easily be written from the growth and influence of those teachers now living who have been associated professionally with Colonel Parker.

We in our time shall not see his like again.

CHAPTER V.

THE WORK OF CERTAIN NORTHERN CHURCHES IN THE EDUCATION OF THE FREEDMEN, 1861–1900.

By A. D. MAYO, LL.D..

CONTENTS.-The American Missionary Association.-The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.-The Presbyterian Church (North) in connection with the schooling of the freedmen.-The Protestant Episcopal Church in the education of the colored race. The Society of Friends in the education of the colored people of the South.-The Baptist Church of the Northern States in the education of the colored race in the South.

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

The first and still the most notable of the several great missionary associations for the training of the negro race in the Southern States, through schools of every grade and the ordinary methods of mission work employed by the Evangelical Protestant churches in the Northern United States, was the American Missionary Association. It was incorporated January 30, 1849, with a constitution containing ten articles. Article I announces its purpose to conduct Christian missions and educational operations, and diffuse a knowledge of the holy Scriptures in our own and other countries which are destitute of them, or which present open and urgent fields of effort." Its active and voting membership was limited to persons of “Evangelical religious opinions, who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not slaveholders or in the practice of other immoralities." An additional fee of $30 constituted a life member; although "children and others who have not professed the faith may be constituted life members, without the privilege of voting." In a footnote, the term "Evangelical faith" is explained as in accordance with the Puritan creed. In Article VIII the antislavery clause of the organization is emphasized by the declaration that all its operations shall tend "particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its fellowship those who hold their fellow beings as slaves."

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As at first organized, during the twelve years previous to the opening of the civil war, the operations of the American Missionary Association do not especially concern the object of this essay, since there could evidently have been no field through all the fifteen slave States for the operation of an association that even refused to accept the money or the personal cooperation of slaveholders. Up to 1861 it was a general missionary association of the strict antislavery type, including all persons of the different evangelical denominations desirous of using a society freed from cooperation with one specified class. But the breaking out of the civil war and the drifting of large numbers of negroes from the plantations of Virginia to the army of Gen. B. F. Butler, with headquarters at Hampton, for the first time opened a wide door for missionary activity, which during the past forty-one years has never been closed. It has been stated in a paper which appeared in the preceding Report of this office that the first school for the "contrabands

was opened

by a woman, Mrs. Mary Peake, at Hampton, under the guns of Fortress Monroe. At the close of a three-years' service as agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in ten counties of east Virginia, Gen. S. C. Armstrong found a school of 1,500 colored pupils housed in the old hospital barracks and in the Butler School in that vicinity. During the fourteen years after this first appearance in the schools for the colored race the work of the American Missionary Association grew apace. Between 1866 and 1870 it received $243,753.22. The Freedmen's Bureau, on its retirement from educational work, passed over a large sum of money to it, which was expended in the erection of the first buildings of the schools at Hampton, Va., Nashville, Tenn., Charleston, S. C., New Orleans, La., and other places. It is estimated that the people of Great Britain contributed not less than $1,000,000 in money and clothing for the colored people during these years. During this period the foundations of several of the association's most important schools were laid. Its first report after the close of the war appeared in 1869-70.

At an important convention held at Chattanooga, Tenn., November 24-26, 1869, reports were received from the churches established by the American Missionary Association (all open to a mixed membership of white and colored) and representatives from the schools already established appeared. At this initial period the new public-school system of the South, though recognized in the revised constitutions of all the reconstructed States, was not in a condition to supply the wants of any class. Indeed the aspirations, especially among the lower orders of the white people, and the discontent among the better sort with the policy of reconstruction, largely under negro rule for four years, found constant vent in opposition to the teachers and directors of the schools. If the negroes were to be educated at all, it seemed necessary that the work should go on under the direction of the same agency that since 1862 had been so active among great numbers of the colored But from 1870 to 1876 the association failed to receive the assistance of the National Government, either by supplies or by personal protection from the remnant of the Army of the United States gathered at military posts through these States. The well disposed among the white people and the new State governments were greatly shorn of their power or influence to prevent a reign of disorder.

masses.

It was a mercy, under such conditions, that educational work should be in connection with a missionary enterprise, and really under one direction. And, although the people and clergy of most of the great Northern religious bodies had long since outgrown the church parochial system of schooling the masses at home, yet under the patronage of the educational missionary societies for the colored people a system of parochial schools for the negroes was placed upon the ground that is not yet abandoned. The American Missionary Association, now practically one of the great missions of the evangelical Congregational Church (the denomination under which the common school originated and was developed during the entire colonial period in New England), had never used this parochial church system of schooling to any great degree, and retired from it earlier than any other. It can not but be regarded as a misfortune that this system should have been so early associated with popular education in the minds of the better class of the Southern negroes that it has been very difficult to eradicate it, and at present, in many ways, it acts as a serious obstacle to the improvement and proper working of the common school of the American type in every State of the South.

But good things can not always be done, in the beginning, in the most approved fashion. The American Missionary Association took up the work among the negroes as it came to hand. It found the churches far more disposed to contribute funds, and teachers were more willing to go forth to a life of toil and sometimes of peril, uniformly of social and religious neglect by the Southern people of their