Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year ... with Accompanying Papers

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 $12,724.95, 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 $139,403.991, 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 Fed

eral 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 auc tioneers, 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 common 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

8vo. 8 by 5 in., pp. 21+ 120 + 1 folding table.

2 Laws of 1838-39, ch. 8.

for 16 districts, $880 to Richmond County for 22 districts, and $360 to Macon County for 9 districts.

These are the first actual payments to schools from State funds of which I am

aware.

VII. THE EXPERIMENTAL PERIOD, 1840-1852.

The preceding is a summary of what was done prior to 1840, when a new law, entitled "An act for the establishment and better regulation of common schools," was passed, under which the system was reorganized.

This act provides that the net annual income of the literary fund was to be divided between the counties in proportion to Federal population. The courts of such counties as voted for schools in 1838 were to appoint not less than five nor more than ten "superintendents of common schools," who were to hold office for one year; these superintendents were to elect their own chairman and he was to give bond. The funds for each county were made due on September 1 and were payable to the chairman. The county court was "authorized and empowered" to lay a tax for school purposes "which shall not exceed one-half of the estimated amount to be received by said county for that year from the literary fund." The tax was to be collected and paid over to the county chairman. The board of county superintendents were to lay off the county into school districts. The free white electors of each school district were to choose by ballot three men as a "school committee " to serve for one year. These school committees were incorporated and put in charge of the schools. They were to provide houses, make a census (between 5 and 21), and employ teachers. "Any branch of English education "might be taught; all white children under 21 were allowed to attend and the committee was to visit the schools. The board of superintendents was to fix the number of teachers and the funds that were to go to each district, and its chairman was to report all essential facts and statistics to the literary board, having received these in turn from the school committees. Those counties which had rejected the schools under the act of 1838 were given an opportunity to vote on the question again, and those voting for schools were to be admitted to all rights and privileges. The literary board was directed as soon as it was ascertained what counties had voted against schools to invest for their future benefit "so much of said fund as said counties would have been entitled to receive under the ratio provided for in the first section of this act." This board was to prepare and distribute the forms necessary to carry out the provisions of the act, and a penalty of $50 was provided for refusal or neglect on the part of a county officer "to perform the duties required of him by law." Teachers were exempted "from performing military duty, working on the road, or serving on the jury whilst engaged in teaching.'

Little was done, as we have seen, toward the organization of the schools prior to 1840. Having reached this period, it may be well to view the situation as it then appeared.

The condition of the educational interests of the State in 1810, according to the census, was as follows:

2 This act may be considered the real beginning of the system in North Carolina. It was reported to the legislature by Jonathan Worth, afterwards governor, from the joint committee on education, of which Senator Mangum was the chairman for the senate and W. N. H. Smith, afterwards chief justice, chairman for the house.

« Previous Continue »

Books

Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of ..., Volume 2