USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 36
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Soon after 1818, Governor Wolcott began to importune the legislature for the passage of new school laws, but he made little impression on the lawmakers, a majority of whom were country people. Not for twenty years or so was the school situation brought home to the public through the work of Henry Barnard. In the meantime, groups of public-spirited citizens tried to work some im- provement through unofficial devices; a Society for the Improvement of Common Schools was founded in 1829, under the auspices of which were held lectures and con- ventions for the discussion of educational topics. As a result of one such meeting held in Hartford in November, 1830, a concise statement of defects in the school system was agreed upon, the charges being five in number: (I) that parents were indifferent to the kind of education their children received (2) that school visitors in the societies neglected their duty (3) that the state School Fund tended to stifle local initiative in education (4) that teachers were shifted about from one school to another too frequently (5) and that teachers were paid salaries so small as to discourage talented young people from entering the profession.
In reviewing these charges it is apparent that the last two apply to the teaching profession more or less in all times and at all places, and hence are not peculiar to nineteenth-century Connecticut, but the remaining items stand in need of further explanation. The public indifference which so bothered school reformers was largely the outcome of a situation which had originally been created for the purpose of placing elementary edu- cation on a favored plane, where it would never suffer from neglect. In 1795, as a result of Connecticut's claims to western lands, the state had been enabled to build up a permanent fund, the income from which was devoted
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to the support of elementary education. Since 1810 the fund had been ably managed by James Hillhouse of New Haven, and the annual dividends had averaged over $50,000. After 1820, in fact, the returns rose to more than $62,000, so that the legislature voted to discontinue grants from the state treasury to local school societies, leaving the latter wholly dependent on the fund income unless they chose to raise additional revenue from local taxation, and since few of the societies availed themselves of the privilege of laying taxes the public schools were supported almost entirely by the permanent fund. This situation did not produce the happy results expected of it, because when the people were freed from any tax burden in connection with education they lost interest in the subject, a natural outcome of the human tendency to undervalue those benefits which are received without cost or sacrifice.
Due to the agitation begun by such reformers as Willbur Fisk and Noah Webster, the legislature appointed committees on education which, from 1830 to 1838, in- vestigated and reported but failed to secure statutory regulations. No tangible results were obtained until an example of practical reform was set by Massachusetts in 1837, the latter state then creating a central school board with Horace Mann as secretary. In the following year Connecticut established a board of nine commis- sioners, Henry Barnard of Hartford being chosen secre- tary.
Barnard ranks with Horace Mann as one of the great educational leaders of the nineteenth century. He re- ceived the inspiration to take up school reform as a career while in the Connecticut legislature where the educational problem was being debated; and shortly after 1837 he formulated a policy which can be stated
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as follows, the phraseology being close to Barnard's own:
It is necessary to prevent the public schools from being regarded as common because they are cheap, inferior, and attended only by the poor; they should be called common because they give the blessings of a good education to each and every child.
For four years after his appointment as secretary to the board of commissioners, Barnard devoted boundless energy and long working hours to the cause of school reform, but the fruits of labor were so slow in appearing that it was not until after 1850 that a marked change was evident. The Connecticut Common School Journal, found- ed by Barnard, was sent free of charge to important men in every community; local visiting boards were called upon to furnish frequent reports; and several hundred schools in the state were personally visited by the secre- tary, the mass of information so accumulated being made the basis of recommendations for new legislation. In 1839 the assembly received Barnard's first report, with suggestions for a general policy, and it thereupon passed the first significant school law since the enactment of 1650. The new regulations made some changes in the size of districts with a view to bringing about greater uniformity; districts which contained more children than one teacher could handle were permitted, as they had not been before, to employ additional teachers; schoolmasters were required to keep records of attendance; and school visitors were obliged to be more strict in the examination of candidates for teaching positions, being especially requested to make sure that such persons could give in- struction in arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history.
Legislation for school reform practically stopped at this point, although the board of commissioners tried to secure regulations for the improvement of textbooks and,
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more important still, to obtain normal school training for prospective teachers. Since the board did not get further assistance from the assembly at this time, it turned to the consideration of problems which could be dealt with in other ways; Barnard was able, through recommendations to the local boards of visitors, to secure some improvement in the interior arrangements of school buildings, particularly in the direction of better lighting facilities, more serviceable desks, and blackboards. This work was cut short in 1842 when the assembly, under control of the Democratic party, repealed the recent school laws, including the one which authorized the board of commissioners, claiming that such innovations were costing the state too much money. Undoubtedly the fact that Barnard was a strong Whig had something to do with this reversal of policy, and as the ex-secretary felt that he could not do more in the state for the time, he left for Rhode Island where he was active in educa- tional work until 1849.
Under a Whig administration, in 1845, the general assembly returned to a serious consideration of school problems, and created a state superintendent who was to have much the same powers and duties as had been previously entrusted to the board of commissioners. The man chosen to fill the position, Seth P. Beers, was well qualified for the task, as he had been commissioner of the School Fund since the resignation of James Hillhouse in 1825. Beers travelled about the state on tours of inspec- tion, as Barnard had done before him, and to his regret he found that conditions in the schools had not changed a great deal since 1838-there was still too much moving about of teachers from one school to another, the attend- ance of pupils was very irregular, textbooks were not uniform, nor of high quality, and parents seemed to be as
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indifferent as ever to the kind of education their children were receiving. Beers proposed a number of remedies, but the only recommendation acted on for some time was that providing for a normal school. In 1847 the super- intendent was authorized to hire the services of lecturers in pedagogy, who were to give at least four addresses in each county during the winter months, and two years after this beginning, the temporary arrangement was superseded by a normal school to be located permanently at New Britain. Beers did not wish to assume the extra duties assigned to his office, so he tendered his resignation as superintendent, but upon his retirement the state was fortunate in being able to persuade Henry Barnard to return from Rhode Island, so that the original cham- pion of educational progress again devoted the force of his genius to the multifarious duties connected with the dual position of superintendent of schools and principal of the normal institute. In carrying on the latter work he was aided by the well-known leader in women's education, Mrs. Emma Hart Willard.
Although the efforts of Barnard and Beers do not seem to have resulted in great improvements, their work brought the problem of elementary education to the at- tention of the people, and made easier the progress of the latter half of the century, the public schools being then subjected to regulation by a state board so that teaching personnel, textbooks, and the courses of instruction could be kept on a high level. In Barnard's time, too, the common schools gradually broadened their curricula, adding courses in natural philosophy, history, art, and chemistry, subjects which in the opening years of the century were taught only, if at all, in private academies and colleges. There were few high schools in the state until after 1850, although Hartford established one as
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early as 1838, and Middletown another in 1840. Yet in respect to educational reform, Connecticut was much more progressive than many other states of the Union. If the improvement of common schools dragged along at a slow pace the local academies, of which the best known are two Hopkins Grammar Schools, the Norwich Free Academy, the Hartford Female Seminary, and the Litch- field Academy, set a standard of instruction for which no apologies need be made.
All of the local colleges greatly increased the scope of their activities during the second quarter of the century, special provisions being made for courses in medicine, law, chemistry, and agriculture. The ambitions of college corporations, in fact, expanded more rapidly than did the funds for supporting new branches of study, and as none of the local institutions had endowments of any size, they sought help from the state treasury. Bishop Brownell of Washington College complained, in 1827, that his school was running badly into debt since the income received from a small body of students, only seventy, was not large enough to keep the institution alive. The legislature did not extend any assistance to Washington at this time, but in 1837 it aided the college to the extent of about $18,000. Two or three smaller grants to educational institutions were made later, but in general the state resolved to keep the colleges depend- ent on private support, a policy which some people re- garded as a shortsighted one, since Connecticut seemed to have greater opportunity for national preëminence in education than in agriculture or commerce, but the policy was at least conducive to academic freedom, since it did not reduce the colleges to dependence upon a political body which might have attempted to interfere with cur- ricula or faculty appointments.
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Equally significant with the agitation for better public schools and more liberal colleges was the spread of a desire for adult education. About 1830 Connecticut ex- perienced a mild attack of the mania for self-improve- ment which afflicted the eastern part of the United States at that time; people became convinced of the possibility of increasing indefinitely the mental capacity of every person, so that some societies were founded to educate those who had never received a formal academic training and others to "learn the learned more." An out- standing example of this movement was the lyceum, an institution which originated in Connecticut, though it de- veloped to greater lengths elsewhere. Josiah Holbrook of Derby proposed the founding of town reading and lecture clubs in towns, these to become the local units in a nation-wide system of adult education. The plan was first taken up in Windham and Hartford Counties. Lyceums relied largely on local talent for courses of instruction, though John Quincy Adams, Daniel Web- ster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other men of national prominence shared in the work. In Connecticut the lyce- um movement was directed especially to the problem of public school reform, so that many informal discussions were held on the matter of textbooks and normal school training, discussions which helped considerably in fur- thering Henry Barnard's crusade against the antiquated system of education.
Whereas promoters of lyceums were concerned about the intellectual needs of the common man, other indus- trious individuals furthered the establishment of societies for more special designs. Between 1820 and 1850 there came into being a great number of institutions and clubs, such as the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connect- icut Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American
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Geological Society, the activities of which help to fill the void created by the absence of literary men of the first rank. After the passing of the Hartford Wits, a group of writers who were at their best about 1800, Connecticut could not lay claim to any authors of real genius until the days of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, though several well-known writers, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Jared Sparks in particular, passed their early years in the state only to achieve a national reputation while residing elsewhere. The second quarter of the century was an age of societies and organizations, not the least important of which were dedicated to philanthropic or humanitarian causes.
Aid societies, organized by church people, appeared with great rapidity. A few years before 1820, four chari- table societies were founded in New Haven, and in Hart- ford the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb was established. Before long many of these societies had occasion to ask for state cooperation in caring for needy cases, and the attitude of the legislature to philanthropic work affords an interesting study in the history of New England charities. When the deaf and dumb asylum was proposed the assembly voted $5,000 for its establishment, but after that time the state proved to be less liberal in its treatment of requests for financial aid. The major problem confronting private societies was this-that their financial resources were not great enough to care for many poor patients, and under such circumstances, how great a burden for the support of pauper cases could they safely assume? In 1828 the legislature agreed to pay for the care of fifteen deaf and dumb students at the Hartford asylum, but as this arrangement cost the state over $3,000 a year, a sum considered excessive, the as- sembly soon after reduced its appropriation so that the
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state would support only the number of cases that could be accommodated for $2,000 a year. In 1838 a similar provision was made for blind children, the governor being permitted to send as many poor pupils to the New Eng- land Institute for the Blind, in Massachusetts, as could be supported on an annual appropriation of $2,000. In regard to insane paupers the state made a third bargain of similar character, as in 1842 the governor was allowed to spend $2,000 a year for the support of poor patients at a private asylum, the Hartford Retreat, which had been opened to paying cases in 1824.
In none of these instances did the small sums appro- priated, usually $2,000, enable private institutions to care for the number of unfortunate paupers that should have been accommodated, but until well past the middle of the nineteenth century the assembly continued to limit the number of patients to appropriations rather than to increase such grants to meet the needs of charity. Insane paupers and other unfortunates unable to find funds to pay for their support had to drift into town and county poorhouses; a state institution for the insane was not authorized until 1866, and a school for the blind not until 1893.
Strangely enough, the assembly showed a more tender regard for convicts than for more worthy objects of charity. Since Revolutionary days the common place of detention for state prisoners had been located at New- gate, in the town of Granby, a vile institution consisting of a few small buildings erected over an abandoned cop- per mine. Some prisoners were housed above ground, being crowded into rooms that were excessively hot in summer, while others were kept below ground in the dark passageways of the mine where they suffered from impure air and continual dampness. Not only did the
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prison inflict severe physical hardships on the inmates, but it was expensive to maintain, so that a combina- tion of humanitarian motives and desires for econo- my resulted in the building of a new state prison at Wethersfield, in 1827. This was a much superior place, modeled on the New York experiment made a few years earlier at Auburn, and it met both requirements the legislators had in mind, as it not only provided comfort- able and sanitary living quarters but proved to be cheap- er to operate. Within a few years of its opening, indeed, the Wethersfield prison ceased to be a financial liability and became a source of profit because of the sale of articles made in the prison workhouse.
From the foregoing consideration of changes taking place in Connecticut's economic and social habits, it becomes evident that during the second quarter of the nineteenth century the state was gradually losing its colonial characteristics and beginning to favor new methods of business, a more liberal spirit in church activi- ties, and a broader outlook on problems of philanthropy. In the field of politics this changing civilization brought about a number of important innovations. For ten years after the making of the constitution, to be sure, no great progress in political customs was discernible, but from 1828 on the assembly sanctioned, usually under pressure from the Democratic party which was associated with the national interests of Andrew Jackson, a number of departures from traditional practices.
The constitutional amendments ratified during this period gave the people a greater control over the choice of public officials. The first amendment, adopted in 1828, made a number of changes in the upper house of the legislature; the state was divided into districts, a subse- quent enactment of 1830 fixing the number at twenty-
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one, for the election of senators. This amendment largely did away with the choice of senatorial candidates by caucuses made up only of assemblymen, the nominees for the upper house being henceforth chosen at county meetings, or primaries, at which party bosses found it difficult to manage the selection of candidates. The third constitutional amendment, ratified in 1836, provided for the popular election of the state comptroller, that officer having earlier been chosen by the general assembly, and the fifth amendment, of 1838, brought about the popular election of county sheriffs. Later alterations subjected probate judges and justices of the peace to popular choice, and limited the terms of Superior Court judges to eight years. These alterations, which comprised a majority of all those ratified between 1828 and 1856, par- took of the democratic tendencies which had originated in Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier communities of the early nineteenth century, and later spread into the older states of the East. From a political point of view, therefore, it is certain that a very radical change in Con- necticut traditions had occurred by the middle of the century, especially if to the amendments just noted there be added another, of 1845, abolishing the long standing property qualification for suffrage.
Objection may be raised that this liberalism was one which favored only the male sex, since women were not allowed to vote or to participate directly in the selection of any candidates for office, but this consideration did not weigh heavily upon the men or the women of the day. Those champions of women's rights who represented at some time in their career a typically Connecticut point of view, that is, Catherine Beecher, Emma Willard, and Sarah Porter, were not greatly concerned about the right of suffrage; rather did they wish to have women
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given educational advantages equal to those enjoyed by men, and to have the housewife's station made a re- spected one. Domestic and civil rights, not political privilege, constituted the rallying cry of Connecticut feminists, and the agitation bore good fruit in the years following the constitutional revolution of 1818. Catherine Beecher founded at Hartford, in 1824, a Female Academy which became one of the best private schools in the state; Sarah Porter opened her Farmington school in 1846. Women were freed from the penalty of imprison- ment for debt in 1826, eleven years before men were granted a similar concession, and in 1845 and 1846 laws were enacted protecting the property of married women and their wages from any process for debt instituted against the husband. With these rights in their posses- sion, the women of Connecticut were quite content, and they did not for some time clamor for the additional boon of suffrage. In the seventies, two maiden ladies of Glastonbury, Abby and Julia Smith, refused to pay taxes because they were not allowed to vote, but their protests were viewed by neighbors, men and women alike, as being eccentric but harmless bids for publicity, and the Smiths were forced to pay their taxes when some of their cows were seized by the town collector and sold at auction.
Signs of liberalism appeared in other fields from time to time, though there was never evident for the state as a whole a steady drift away from conservative customs, nor did an avowed liberal party ever materialize in local politics. In general terms the Democratic party, which came into existence about 1828 as an offshoot of the Jacksonian movement in the country at large, tended to be more progressive than any other group, but its popu- larity was curtailed in later years by the animosities of
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Civil War times. Because of this national conflict, Con- necticut lost an opportunity to develop a truly liberal party. During the middle years of the century, however, the Democrats controlled local affairs for a number of administrations, enacting several progressive measures. In 1833 clergymen were deprived of exemption from poll taxes, an action intended to signify the complete aboli- tion of ministerial privileges foreshadowed in the con- stitution of 1818, and restrictions on recreation on public fast days were removed. Conservatives were especially bitter against the latter enactment, claiming that the administration had discarded a useful statute merely because it was imperfectly enforced, but the Democrats suggested that there was nothing in the law to prevent individuals, who were so inclined, from observing Sun- days and fast days as religiously as they desired.
Attempts were made in 1835, and for some time there- after, to limit the tenure of Superior Court judges, five years being suggested as a maximum, but this movement for greater popular control over the judiciary did not find favor with the assembly until a constitutional amend- ment, establishing an eight-year term, was ratified in 1856. A very much needed piece of legislation was se- cured by the Democrats in 1833, when a general incor- poration law, ordinarily called the Hinsdale Act, per- mitted the chartering of small companies by the secretary of state without the inconvenience of formal action by the assembly. In 1836 the requirement that jurors should be freeholders was abolished. Three years later a Whig administration instituted the registration list, an item which has become a regular feature of party machinery today, and one so essential as to be taken for granted, but before 1839 no provision had been made for supplying the officers at polling places during elections with correct
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lists of eligible voters. In 1842 under the leadership of a Democratic governor, Chauncey F. Cleveland, the as- sembly enacted a child labor law which prohibited the employment of children, under fourteen years of age, for more than ten hours a day in cotton and woolen mills, this safeguard against overworking of young people being later extended to other lines of manufacture. Efforts to abolish capital punishment were unsuccessful, being op- posed by conservatives in both major parties, a promi- nent Democrat, John Cotton Smith, Jr., maintaining that, regardless of advantages which penal reform might gain from life imprisonment as a substitute therefor, capital punishment was required by the law of God.
In 1843 the Democrats promoted a measure enlarging the scope of religious equality in the state by extending to Jews the protection of earlier laws safeguarding the integrity of ecclesiastical societies and the preservation of order at church exercises. Proceedings in divorce cases were also simplified at this time, when the jurisdiction over cases involving intemperance or intolerable cruelty was taken away from the legislature and given to the Superior Court. Shortly afterward another concession to liberal sentiment was made in the form of a new alien land law, supplementing that enacted in 1824, whereby foreigners who had made a declaration of intention to become citizens were permitted to purchase, hold, or convey, real estate without having to petition the Su- perior Court for permission to do so.
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