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on unchecked and even increasing in the intervening years. In boundless wealth of soil and mine and forest nature has favored us, while all races of men of every nationality and climate have contributed their good blood to make the nation what it is. From 3,929,214 in 1790 our population has grown to upward of 62,000,000 in 1890, and our estimated population to-day made by the governors of the states is 77,803,241.

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"We have gone from thirteen states to forty-five. We have annexed every variety of territory, from the coral reefs and cocoanut groves of Key West to the icy regions of Northern Alaska- territory skirting the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific and the Arctic and the islands of the Pacific and Carribean sea and we have extended still further our jurisdiction to the faraway islands in the Pacific. Our territory is more than four times larger than it was when the treaty of peace was signed in 1783. Our industrial growth has been even more phenomenal than that of population or territory. Our wealth, estimated in 1790 at $462,000,000, has advanced to $65,000,000,000.

"Education has not been overlooked. The mental and moral equipment of the youth upon whom will in the future rest the responsibilities of government have had the unceasing care of the state and the nation. We expended in 1897-98 in public education, open to all, $202,115,548; for secondary education, $23,474,683; and for higher education. for the same period, $30,307,902. The number of pupils enrolled in public schools in 1896-97 was 14,652,492, or more than 20 per cent of our population. Is this not a pillar of strength to the republic?

"Our national credit, often tried, has been ever upheld. It has no superior and no stain. The United States has never repudiated a national obligation either to its creditors or to humanity. It will not now begin to do either. It never struck a blow except for civilization, and has never struck its colors. Has the pyramid lost any of its strength? Has the republic lost any of its virility? Has the self

governing principle been weakened? Is there any present menace to our stability and duration?

"These questions bring but one answer. The republic is sturdier and stronger than ever before. Government by the people has been advanced. Freedom under the flag is more universal than when the Union was formed. Our steps have been forward, not backward. From Plymouth Rock to the Philippines the grand triumphant march of human liberty has never paused. Fraternity and union are deeply imbedded in the hearts of the American people. For half a century before the civil war disunion was the fear of men of all sections. That word has gone out of the American vocabulary. It is spoken now only as an historical memory. North, south, east and west were never so welded together, and while they may differ about internal policies they are all for the Union and the maintenance of the integrity of the flag."

II DEVELOPMENT OF POPULAR EDUCATION

As the early efforts to educate the Negroes of the sixteen southern states, after the war of the rebellion, in 1865,they were declared no longer to be slaves, but human beings with souls to be saved and intellects to be cultivated, to the end that they might be the better prepared to discharge the serious obligations of manhood and citizenship,— are intimately connected with the development of the common school system of New England, it will be necessary here to describe in as brief a manner as possible the growth of popular education in those states. If this principle of popular education had not been so firmly rooted in the heart and conscience of the people of the New England states by the Pilgrim fathers, the history of education of the Negroes would have been distinctly different and, perhaps, not possible at all. The spirit which actuated these sturdy pioneers from the old world, who have blazed the way for American civil and religious liberty and the development of a system of popular education which has come to permeate the entire republic-forty-five mighty states, each sovereign in all

matters of its internal policy-was prophesied by Bishop Berkeley, in the lines that follow, which have endeared their author's memory to all lovers of education and liberty in America:

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime

Barren of every glorious theme,

In distant lands now waits a better time
Producing subjects worthy fame.

In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by Nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true;

In happy climes, the seat of innocence,

Where Nature guides and virtue rules,
When men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools

There shall be sung another golden age,

The rise of empire and of arts,

The good and great inspiring epic rage,

The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

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Westward the course of Empire takes its way;

The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day.
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

Our country is now divided into four distinct groups of states the New England, the middle, the southern and western states- but it can of truth be said that all of them have drawn their theories of education, of theology and statesmanship, from the ten states in the middle and New England group, especially from the latter. The sixteen states in the southern group have not profited so much from this source as the nineteen states in the central and western group, but they have been influenced in a very marked way since the war of the rebellion, and are being more and more influenced now, by the work of New England men and women engaged in the active work of education among the Negroes of the southern states.

The development of the common-school principle kept pace with that of the population in New England from the

earliest settlement of the colonies, through the period of the revolutionary war, and for some time after the colonies had achieved their independence of Great Britain and established the Federal Union. During this period many academies and colleges, notably Harvard and Yale, were founded, to meet the growing demand for higher and more thorough education of the people. But from 1810 to 1830 there was a notable decline in the character, extent and efficiency of the public school system in New England. Massachusetts and Connecticut had always been foremost in the maintenance of the system. As far back as 1647 a Massachusetts statute "compelled every township of 50 families to establish a public school for all children, and every town of 100 families to set up a grammar school, where youth might be fitted for Harvard college." This was the first law ever passed by which a self-governing community was authorized to offer the elements of knowledge to all children and youth. In 1683 every town of 500 families was required to sustain two grammar and two writing (or elementary) schools. On this broad foundation the original people's common school of the colony of Massachusetts Bay stood during the one hundred and thirty-eight years of colonial life, until the organization of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, in 1780.

"The support of the common school through all the ' grades, including the university at Cambridge, was incorporated in the constitution of 1780. By a constitutional amendment in 1855 it was ordered that no public money should be used for the support of the schools of any religious sect."

There was continuous development of the public school system in New England in this direction up to 1834, when the general school fund of Massachusetts was established.

Dr. A. D. Mayo, M. A., LL. D., among the most reliable and popular authorities on educational subjects in the United States, from whom I have quoted in the preceding paragraphs, says further:

"It is plain from this brief record that the American common school was as practically organized in all essential respects in 1837 as to-day, when the state assumed additional responsibility by establishing the first board of education, of which Horace Mann became the first secretary. This fact disposes of the statement, somewhat industriously propogated, that Horace Mann virtually created the present common school system of the country by his administration of twelve years as secretary of the Massachusetts board of education, from 1837 to 1849. There was, doubtless, ample need that Mann and his illustrious group of co-workers should accomplish the reformation of the public schools of that day. But the foundation had been laid, and there was no call for the destruction of anything; only for the return to the original habit of town supervision, additional legal authorization of all that then existed, and especially the waking of the people to the call of the new time for the more vital and generous support of their own system of public education, reorganized according to the improved methods of a progressive age. In nothing was the educational statesmanship of Horace Mann more evident than in his immediate grasp of the solution, his estimate of the points of attack, and his commanding influence over the foremost public men and wise manipulation of the legislature of the commonwealth during his entire administration."

The honors which belong to Horace Mann, as head of the educational system of Massachusetts, in awakening among the people renewed interest in their common schools, and in securing such legislation as was necessary to place the system upon an effective and assured foundation, were shared by some of the best and ablest men in the commonwealth. Their combined enthusiasm and labors aroused popular interest in the cause of public education throughout the New England and the middle states, which gradually spread to the splendid states of the western group.

What Horace Mann accomplished in the public school system of Massachusetts Henry Barnard accomplished in

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