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 man 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 Christian 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 education. 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 knowledge 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

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 $12,724.954, 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 expended." The sparseness of population was the great trouble. The governor felt that inlets must be opened, roads improved, canals dug, railroads built, and agriculture improved before much could come to the schools. The report of the literary board for 1833 shows $117,024.814, with no expenditures. The board had declined to invest in the United States Bank and so the entire fund was idle. This report discussed in detail the draining of the swamp lands, especially Mattamuskeet Lake. The literary board worked in full sympathy with the board of internal improvements. Both made a strong appeal for more attention to the methods of communication. It was said that the departure of so many young men from the State was due to this fact alone, for lands had ceased to have value when measured in produce, and farmers were land sellers that they might emigrate and none were land buyers.

In 1834 the fund amounted to $139,403.994, which was invested in 1,200 shares of stock in the Bank of the State of North Carolina. There were other investments in 1835. As yet nothing had been done for the schools. The literary board, in fact, seemed to look on itself as little more than an agent for the investment of funds, and its reports are almost entirely financial in character. Further, the State, corporations, and individuals looked on the fund as a reserve on which they could draw in time of need. As a result, there were none to urge the cause of the schools. Governor Spaight reported on November 22, 1836, that the estimated value of the fund was then $242,045.09.

About this time the Federal Government passed the act to distribute the surplus

revenue.

The State of North Carolina received from this distribution $1,433,757.40. The legislature provided that $300,000 of this fund should go to the redemption of the public debt; $300,000 was appropriated for stock in the Bank of Cape Fear, and $200,000 for draining the swamp lands of the State. Both of the latter investments were for the benefit of the literary fund. The amount received for the two years ending November 1, 1838, the sessions of the legislature having been made biennial instead of annual, and the reports of the State officers being changed to agree with it, was $682,984.62. This included the $500,000 received from the Federal Treasury.

The whole of the literary fund, as reported to the legislature of 1838, including stock, swamp lands, and other sources, was $1,732,485.

The special report to the legislature of 1838 reviews the permanent property as follows:

"A million of acres of swamp lands of uncertain value; 5,000 shares of stock in the Bank of the State, and 5,207 shares in the Bank of Cape Fear, subscribed at $100 per share; 500 shares of stock in the Roanoke Navigation Company, subscribed for at $100 per share, and probably worth half the sum; 650 shares in the Cape Fear Navigation Company (500 subscribed for at $50 and 100 at $100 per share), subject to a like depreciation; the dividends on 6,000 shares of stock in the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company, subscribed for at $100 per share; and 175 shares in the Clubfoot and Harlow Creek Canal Company, subscribed for at $100 per share, the latter of no marketable value."

The permanent fund from other sources of revenue were to be added:

The tax imposed by law upon the retailers of spirituous liquors, the tax on auctioneers, all moneys paid into the Treasury on entries of vacant lands (except Cherokee lands), and all profits accruing to the State for subscriptions to works of internal improvement and from loans made from the internal improvement fund.

The estimated annual income from all sources, the bank stock being above par and the navigation below, was $111,000.

1 Laws 1836-37, p. 127, and Laws 1838-39, p. 203.
*And in earlier years a tavern tax.

On November 1, 1840, the resources of the board amounted to $2,241,480.05, invested principally as follows:

The literary board, under date of December 4, 1838, made a full report to the legislature. In this report the chairman says:

"The board have given to this subject attentive and anxious consideration, and taken pains to procure all the information within their reach which seemed essential to enlightened legislation.

"They regret to be compelled to state in connection with this topic that their efforts to procure still more important information with respect to the actual state of education in North Carolina have been much less successful, and that no means at their command will enable them to obtain such facts as are indispensable to the proper discharge of the duty required at their hands.

"The reports to the senate in 1816 and 1817, by the late Judge Murphey, the letter of Charles R. Kinney, esq., communicated to the general assembly by Governor Owen in 1828, and the letters of the late President Caldwell, originally published in the newspapers and republished in pamphlet form in 1832, have been procured not without difficulty. They contain many valuable suggestions, and will well reward the labor of the most careful examination; but they are all eminently wanting in that which individual effort is incompetent to supply-the precise and minute statement of facts by which alone the accuracy of their theories can be tested.

"The memoir on the subject of internal improvements and on the resources and finances of the State, published by Judge Murphey in 1819, is the first and only essay that has been made toward the compilation of a system of statistics almost as indispensable to intelligent legislation on the leading interests of the State as a well-arranged account book to the proper management of individual affairs...."

The report, after considering the size of North Carolina, her diversity of population, and the probable amount of illiteracy, reviews the permanent property and other sources of revenue that was committed to the board for school purposes, and continues:

"To devise a system, then, which shall secure instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic for 150,000 children dispersed through the State in the ratio of three to every square mile, with the resources stated, would seem to be the precise duty required of the board by the last general assembly. Our condition is not unfavorable to the establishment of common schools. We have the necessary resources, and need nothing but the will to apply them liberally and the intelligence to apply them with discretion. ..."

The board then unfolds its scheme for the organization of the schools of the State and considers the difficulties in the way of the same.

"The districts having been designated and the requisite schoolhouses erected, the difficult question returns upon us, How are instructors to be provided? No one capable of forming correct opinions upon the subject and conversant with the state of things around us can suppose for a moment that we can find 1,250 properly qualified instructors in North Carolina or any considerable proportion of this number. They can not be had from the North, if it were desirable to employ others than those reared in our State, for the difficulty of obtaining them is much more loudly complained of in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and even in Massachusetts, than here. What, then, is to be done? We will be compelled to adopt the course crowned with such perfect success at Hofwyll, in Switzerland, in Prussia, and Germany, and which is now in the progress of successful experiment in New York, and about to be adopted in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusettsa scheme pressed with so much earnestness and ability on the attention of the citizens of this State by President Caldwell, in his volume of letters published in 1832, and which indeed constituted his only plan and hope for the improvement of our cominon schools. We must establish normal schools for the education of our own teachers, and we need entertain no hope of accomplishing the favorite object of the State in any other way..

"If a system of common schools of this or similar extent should find favor with the general assembly, it will next become necessary to inquire more particularly into the amount of expenditure it will involve and the manner in which the requisite funds can be provided.

"The net annual revenue of the literary fund, as at present constituted, can not, as before remarked, be less than $100,000, and will probably exceed that sum. The act of 1825, creating the fund, provides that it shall be distributed among the several counties in proportion to their white population. No illustration can be necessary to show that this sum, unassisted from other sources, is wholly inadequate to the maintenance of any general system of education. The distribution of the fund set apart for this purpose, however, should not be made until the citizens of each county shall have decided in favor of the scheme at the ballot box and the justices of the county court shall have levied and collected twice the amount that the county shall be entitled to receive from the State..

"To superintend, direct, and control the whole of this complicated but not inharmonious machinery, a superintendent of common schools must be selected. Perhaps there is no office in the State so difficult to fill well, as there is certainly none of such incalculable importance. For such a station no character is too exalted, no amount of learning too varied and extensive, no talents too commanding, no benevolence too active or expansive. He must direct the normal schools, visit and examine every section of the State, devise the principle on which it shall be districted, furnish the model of the schoolhouses, devise the mode for examining and licensing teachers, select the series of text-books and see that they are invariably used in every school, devise forms of reports, to be required annually from each instructor, that shall contain all that is necessary to be known with respect to the condition, government, and police of the school, and prepare a systematic digest of the whole, to be submitted to the general assembly...."

As a result of this report the legislature, by a resolution relative to common schools, adopted January 7, 1839, directed the secretary of state to have printed the Report on Elementary Public Instruction in Europe, by Prof. C. E. Stowe, which had been made to the general assembly of Ohio on December 19, 1837. This report dealt mainly with the schools of Russia, of Prussia, and of some of the other German states. To the North Carolina reprint various other documents were attached.1

The concrete result of the effort made at the session of 1838-1839 for common schools was "An act to divide the counties into school districts and for other purposes." This act provided that the matter be submitted to vote. In counties which voted for schools the justices of the county courts were to elect not less than five nor more than ten persons as superintendents of common schools. These superintendents were to divide the county into common-school districts of not more than 6 miles square, and were to appoint for each school district not less than three nor more than six school committeemen, whose duty was to assist the superintendents in matters pertaining to the schools in their respective districts. It was provided that the county courts of the counties which voted for schools should levy a tax to the amount of $20 for each district in the county. This levy was to be supplemented by double that sum, or $40, to each of these districts from the State. Provision was made also for a school census.2

Under the provisions of this law the literary fund contributed during the years 1839-40 to Tyrrell County $520 for 13 school districts, $640 to Cherokee County

11. Professor Stowe's report. | II. Proceedings of a Meeting at the Capitol of the United | States, | Called to consider the subject of Common School Education. | III. Report of the President and Directors of the Literary | Fund. | IV. Act of the General Assembly establishing a System | of Common Schools. | V. Plan of a Common School-House. | Prepared and published | In obedience to a Resolution of the last General Assembly, under the su- | perintendence of the | Secretary of State. | Raleigh: | printed by Thomas J. Lemay. | 1839.

8vo. 84 by 5 in., pp. 21+120+1 folding table. *Laws of 1838-39, ch. 8.