"Providence, in the impartial distribution of its favors, whilst it has denied to the poor many of the comforts of life, has generally bestowed upon them the blessing of intelligent children. Poverty is the school of genius; it is a school in which the active powers of man are developed and disciplined, and in which that moral courage is acquired, which enables him to toil with difficulties, privations and want. From this school generally come forth those men who act the principal parts upon the theatre of life; men who impress a character upon the age in which they live. But it is a school which if left to itself runs wild; vice in all its depraved forms grows up in it. The State should take this school under her special care, and nurturing the genius which there grows in rich luxuriance, give to it an honorable and profitable direction. Poor children are the peculiar property of the State, and by proper cultivation they will constitute a fund of intellectual and moral worth, which will greatly subserve the public interest. Your committee have therefore endeavored to provide for the education of all poor children in the primary schools; they have also provided for the advancement into the academies and university, of such of those children as are most distinguished for genius and give the best assurance of future usefulness. For three years they are to be educated in the primary schools free of charge; the portion of them who shall be selected for further advancement, shall, during the whole course of their future education, be clothed, fed and taught at the public expense. The number of children who are to be thus advanced, will depend upon the state of the fund set apart for public instruction, and your committee think it will be most advisable to leave the number to the discretion of the board, who shall have charge of the fund; and also to leave to them the providing of some just and particular mode of advancing this number from the primary schools to the academies, and from the academies to the university.

"AN ASYLUM FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB.

"If there be any of our species who are entitled to the public consideration of the government, it is surely the deaf and dumb. Since the method of instructing them in language and science has been discovered, numerous asylums in different countries have been established for their instruction. While we are engaged in making provision for others, humanity demands that we should make a suitable provision for them. Your committee do therefore recommend that as soon as the state of the fund for public instruction will admit, the board who have charge of that fund, be directed to establish at some suitable place in the State, an asylum for the instruction of the deaf and dumb.

"Your committee have now submitted to the two houses their general views upon the subject referred to them. They have proposed the creation of a fund for public instruction, the appointment of a board to manage this fund, and to carry into effect the plan of education which they have recommended. This plan embraces a gradation of schools from the lowest to the highest, and contains a provision for the education of poor children-and of the deaf and dumb.

"When this or some other more judicious plan of public education, when light and knowledge shall be shed upon all, may we not indulge the hope, that men will be convinced that wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are paths of peace; and be induced by such conviction to regulate their conduct by the rule of christian morality, of doing unto others as they wish they would do unto them; and that they will learn to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before their God.

Your committee will forthwith report bills to carry into effect the several measures recommended in this report. "Respectfully submitted,

“A. D. MURPHEY, Chairman.”

This elaborate report was ordered to be printed, and a bill was prepared by the committee to carry into effect the several measures recommended. The bill even passed its first reading in both houses. It would have been difficult at that day to prepare a better, more compact, or more connected scheme for the organization of a State system, but it undertook too much; it proposed not only to educate, but also to maintain the children of the poor. This was quite beyond the power of the State to perform, for it was but sparsely settled and was still burdened with the debt of recent wars. The friends of the measure declined to eliminate this espe

1 Senate Journal, pp. 87, 88; House Journal, p. 63.

cially impracticable feature of the bill. They desired its passage as a whole; support fell from it and it failed.

There was some desultory discussion on the question of public schools during the next eight years. Governor Holmes mentions agricultural education in 1822 and complains of the "crowds of drones that hang upon the rear of the learned professions." In 1824 a committee was appointed "to digest and report to the present session a plan of primary schools," and a bill was introduced for the education of the poor. Governor Burton renewed the question in 1825.

VI. THE LITERARY BOARD AND ITS WORK, 1825-1840.

With the act for the creation of a literary fund ends what may be called the period of the private schools. From this time the common schools begin to come to the front, although it was more than a quarter of a century before this movement became important. Now for the first time did the State begin to provide for the school or schools" which the constitution of 1776 had instructed her to establish. The report of Judge Murphey had been presented to the general assembly in 1817. The initial act relating to schocls came in 1825, when the State began to accumulate a fund for the public schools, the theory being that it would not be well to depend on current taxation for two reasons then prevalent. One was that taxes were to be levied only for the support of the machinery of government, of which the common schools were not a part; the second was because these schools were looked on as of the nature of a public benevolence or charity.

The sources of the literary fund were fixed by chapter 1 of the laws of 1825. This act was drawn by Bartlett Yancey,' then speaker of the senate, who had been in earlier years a law student in Murphey's office and was now his able and faithful coadjutor in the cause of the common schools. The fund was vested in a corporate body known legally as "the president and directors of the literary fund," but in popular parlance as "the literary board." It consisted of the governor of the State, the chief justice of the supreme court, the speaker of the senate, the speaker of the house of commons, and the treasurer, for the time being, and their successors in office. They were given corporate powers and invested with control of the literary fund. This fund, "the parings of the treasury," as Yancey himself styled it, was to be "applied to the instruction of such children as it may hereafter be deemed expedient by the legislature to instruct in the common principles of reading, writing, and arithmetic," and was defined by the same act as consisting of

"The dividends arising from the stock now held and which may hereafter be acquired by the State in the banks of Newbern and Cape Fear, and which have not heretofore been pledged and set apart for internal improvement; the dividends arising from stock which is owned by the State in the Cape Fear Navigation Company, the Roanoke Navigation Company, and the Clubfoot and Harlow Creek Canal Company; the tax imposed by law on licenses to the retailers of spirituous liquors and auctioneers; the unexpended balance of the agricultural fund, which, by the act of the legislature, is directed to be paid into the public treasury; all moneys paid to the State for entries of vacant lands (excepting the Cherokee lands); the sum of $21,090, which was paid by this State to certain Cherokee Indians for reservations to land secured to them by treaty, when the said sum shall be received from the United States by this State, and of all the vacant and unappropriated swamp lands in this State, together with such sums of money as the legislature may hereafter find it convenient to appropriate from time to time."

JOSEPH CALDWELL AND HIS MONITORIAL SYSTEM.

After the creation of the literary fund there was another pause of seven years. Then came the Letters on Popular Education, by Rev. Joseph Caldwell, president

1 See article on his work, probably by Wiley, in North Carolina Reader, revised edition, pp. 269-272.

of the university. These letters were eleven in number and grew out of the work of a standing committee appointed by the legislature from the community at large to report on the subject of general education. The committee never met. A report was prepared by the chairman, accepted by the other members, and sent in, but it called for the creation of funds so vast as to preclude its practicality. Dr. Caldwell was a member of this committee. The substance of the letters brought together in pamphlet form in 18322 had been commenced more than two years before in the Raleigh Register, under the signature of "Cleveland." The central idea in these letters was to encourage the organization of the monitorial system in the State. Dr. Caldwell begins his argument by noticing some of the obstructions in the way to the advance of education. He says:

"Another obstruction meets us in our aversion to taxation beyond the bare necessities of government and the public tranquillity. . . . A still further difficulty is felt in the indifference unhappily prevalent in many of our people on the subject of education. . . . I might mention further, as one of the greatest obstructions the scattered condition of our population. A most serious impediment is

felt in our want of commercial opportunities by which, though we may possess ample means of subsistence to our families, money is difficult of attainment to build schoolhouses and support teachers. . . .

As to the relative significance of these various obstructions, he says:

With respect to the difficulty arising from our aversion to taxation, I am ready to admit-nay, conclusively to affirm-that it must and will be fatal to every scheme of popular education to which it is made necessary. As to a spirit of hostility against knowledge and a determination upon principle to sustain the cause of ignorance and to exclude all education as a foe to human happiness and to true republicanism, the portion of our people who hold such opinions is too small to contend with the great body of our citizens, who for the honor of our State, it is verily believed, are of entirely different sentiments. Our resources doubtless fail for want of commercial privileges. But this obstacle, too, ceases if some plan for the diffusion of education can be effected by means already at our command. It will be forever vain to meditate plans of legislative action if we persist in looking to means which the people have given prescriptive evidence that they will never adopt. Why continue to press schemes from year to year, involving the necessity of taxation?... Thousands of parents are ready to second any practicable system by which education may be accessible to their children.

He then discusses the methods that were ordinarily followed to provide for popular education. One was voluntary, where the matter is left entirely to the people; a second was by the intervention of the legislature; a third was a combination of the other two. The first had been followed in North Carolina. had disadvantages:

This

"The evil which is really the greatest of all is the want of qualified masters. It may be difficult to obtain a teacher at all, but it is pretty certain in the present state of the country not one is properly fitted for the occupation. Do we think that of all the professions in the world that of a schoolmaster requires the least preparatory formation? If we do, there can not be a more egregious mistake. For if any man arrived at years of maturity, who can read, write, and cipher, were taken up to be trained to the true methods of instructing and managing an elementary school by a master teacher who understood them well, he could scarcely comprehend them and establish them in his habits in less than two years. .

In the present condition of society and of public opinion the occupation of a schoolmaster, in comparison with others, is regarded with contempt." It would be wonderful were it otherwise, when we look at the manner in which it is very often, if not most usually filled. Is a man constitutionally and habitually indolent a burden upon all from whom he can extract a support? Then there is one

1 According to Governor Holden this committee consisted of Duncan Cameron, Peter Browne, and Joseph Caldwell. The date of its appointment is uncertain.

2 Letters on popular education, | addressed | to the people of North Carolina | [7 lines quotation] Hillsborough: | printed by Dennis Heartt | 1832.

8vo, pp. iv+51, with an appendix of "explanatory and documentary papers on education," pp. 1-48-+-folding table.

way of shaking him off; let us make him a schoolmaster. To teach a school is, in the opinion of many, little else than sitting still and doing nothing. Has any man wasted all his property or ended in debt by indiscretion and misconduct? The business of school keeping stands wide open for his reception, and here he sinks to the bottom for want of capacity to support himself. Has any one ruined himself and done all he could to corrupt others by dissipation, drinking, seduction, and a course of irregularities? Nay, has he returned from a prison after an ignominious atonement for some violation of the laws? He is destitute of character and can not be trusted, but presently he opens a school and the children are seen flocking into it, for, if he is willing to act in that capacity, we shall all admit that, as he can read and write and cipher to the square root, he will make an excellent schoolmaster. In short, it is no matter what the mau is, or what his manners or principles, if he has escaped with life from the penal code, we have the satisfaction to think that he can still have credit as a schoolmaster...

He then reviews the public-school methods of Connecticut and New York and enters into a computation to show what would be the cost of supplying the counties of North Carolina with a given number of schools. There were 64 counties in the State. If these counties were given one school each, at a cost of $50 each per year, there would be an expenditure of $3,200, representing, if capitalized at 6 per cent, a fund of $53,333. If 16 schools were allowed to the county, which it was estimated would place a school in each 8 square miles of territory, the principal needed would be $853,333. If these schools cost $100 per year, instead of $50, the principal would be $1,706,666.

To raise a fund of a million and a half of dollars, we must be taxed to the amount of a hundred thousand dollars annually for fifteen years. Is this within the limits of probability? It is presumed that no one will pronounce that it is. . . Our habits are at variance with taxation for any purpose beyond the bare necessities of governmental subsistence. . . It is now submitted to the dispassionate consideration of those who look to New York or Connecticut for plans of popular education, whether the proposal and discussion of them is likely to be attended with any other consequences than apprehension in the general mind that the whole subject of education is hopeless.

"I have mentioned some difficulties in the way of making provision for general education, most of which it is probably in our power to supersede. But one there is of which in our present situation this is not to be said. and until it is removed it would prove alike fatal to all that could be proposed. It is the want of teachers qualified for the business of instruction, whatever be the mode of instituting and maintaining schools. . . . It will be seen in the course of these letters that an institution for preparing schoolmasters for their profession is regarded as a necessary and in the first instance at least as a competent provision in our own State for general education.

"It is well known to have been an object for many years past in British India to discover and put in practice the most effectual methods of diffusing Christ.an civilization among the population of that country. It was in the prosecution of this object that Bell instituted his system of mutual instruction. It was soon considered as the most successful plan of instruction in elementary schools. Its peculiarities were so various, and so much depended upon familiar acquaintance in the teacher with these peculiarities, that few could adopt them from description, and none could fully understand and apply them in practice without witnessing the processes through which the pupils were passed in the whole course of their edu cation. It was on this account deemed expedient to establish institutions called 'central schools,' whose purpose was to train up teachers qualified to take charge of schools as they might be formed in every place and conduct them with the necessary skill. The reason why they were denominated central schools obviously occurs. They were points of emanation, fountains of light, from which know!edge was to be propagated in every direction till it should reach the extremities of the empire.

"It is in our power without delay to commence an efficient plan of popular education, by providing such a corps of instructors and offering them to the people upon terms to which few or none could think beyond their ability. We have a literary fund to the amount of $80,000 or $100,000. Let it forthwith be profitably invested. Let its annual interest be applied for the erection of a central school; that is, an institution for preparing schoolmasters upon the most improved methods of instruction. Let a head teacher be selected, with time and opportunity for inquiry, from the whole field of the United States, and a salary be allowed him, to

take charge of the institution, and in the central school let him train men sent to it from all the counties of the State. . . ."

Dr. Caldwell then discusses the organization and the form the administration of the central school should take:

"The literary fund of North Carolina amounts, if I mistake not, to $100.000. This is amply sufficient for the creation and support of the institution of which we speak.

"Whether grounds should be annexed for manual labor and to aid in the subsistence of the candidates is an inquiry worthy of consideration.

"The school commissioners being appointed, they are to govern themselves by the rules prescribed by the legislature. For a limited time, previously published, they will receive the names of such applicants for education to the profession of teachers as shall choose to offer. From these they will select as many as the county will consent to support at the central school at $100 each per year through the time required for completing an education. If more than $100 be necessary, let it be added by themselves or their friends.

The candidates, before admission, may be required to enter into bond with competent security to the county commissioners, that should they afterwards desert the profession for which they are thus educated at the public expense, they shall replace the sum expended by the county upon their education.

"The central school should always have one or more primary schools of children and young persons connected with it, for exemplification to the candidates of the instruction in such schools. These being conducted under the direction of the principal who receives a salary, should afford tuition gratuitously to the pupils.

"It is evident that when the masters educated in the central school return to their counties, their services are supposed to be for the benefit of such neighborhoods as will erect schoolhouses, and proffer the sum requisite by law for the tuition of their children."

THE GROWTH OF THE LITERARY FUND.

After the letters of Dr. Caldwell, the next movement was the act of 1836–37, “to drain the swamp lands of this State and to create a fund for common schools" (chap. 23), and the act "to provide for the draining of Mattamuskeet Lake" (chap. 25). The first of these made some change in the composition of the literary board, providing that it should consist of the governor and of three other members appointed by him with the advice of his council; enumerated the property that was to be turned over to the literary board; appropriated $200,000 for its use in draining the swamp lands and authorized them to employ an engineer for the work. For the draining of Mattamuskeet Lake, $8,000 was appropriated. The same legislature instructed the board to digest and report on a system of public schools. This was made in 1838, and is summarized further on (see p. 1420). The legislature of 1838 passed an act under which organization of the schools began. This was superseded in 1840 by a better act. In the meantime it may be interesting to trace the growth of the literary fund from its beginning November 1, 1825, until 1840.

The literary board was organized January 16, 1827, under the law of 1825. It consisted of Hutchins G. Burton, governor, as president; John Louis Taylor, chief justice; Bartlett Yancey, speaker of the senate; James Iredell, speaker of the house of commons, and John Haywood, treasurer. The receipts, income, of the fund on February 1, 1827, amounted to $12,724.951, and on November 1, 1828, the fund itself amounted to $77,811.624, mostly'in bank stock. In 1829 there were no disbursements, and the income arising from receipts, interest, etc., for the year was $16,308.18. In 1830 it was $30,152.881; in 1831, including special gift from the legislature, $74,476.484; in 1832, $88,156.614, with no expenditures. In his message to the legislature on November 18, 1833, Governor Swain said that the aggregate amount of the literary fund was as yet "too small to justify our entering upon any general system of education. Indeed, were this fund much larger, it may be well doubted whether the period has yet arrived when it can be judiciously