USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 33
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In this state of the case, the pulpit, the bar, the press, the legislator, and the teacher were all invoked to lend a helping hand. In active and efficient means to promote the cause at this period, none worked more effectively than did the Rev. Benjamin O. Peers, whose great services in the cause justly entitled him to be termed the founder of our system of common schools. The difficult task of introducing common schools into the State might well have appalled the strongest friends of the cause. How these difficulties were overcome will be stated hereafter.
In 1829, Kentucky was getting ready for the introduction of a general common-school system. In that year, the Legislature requested Benjamin O. Peers, subsequently the president of Transylvania University, to communicate to the General Assembly any information he might possess upon the subject of common schools, which might aid in the adoption of a system for Ken- tucky. This request was made because it was known that Mr. Peers had just traveled over New England, and other parts of the United States, where popular education had been made a subject of legislation. He had gone with a special view to study the educational systems of those States.
The report of Mr. Peers was made in 1836. It was thorough and able. It abounded in general observations as to the practical lessons, both of ad-
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
vice and admonition, taught by the experience of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other States. The most important inferences which he drew from the experience of those States were :
First-That the united experience of New York and Connecticut strongly dissuaded from the attempt to create a large State educational fund, as the basis of our system of common schools.
Second-That nothing could be accomplished by our State legislation upon education, unless popular sentiment was fully alive to the importance of the subject.
Third-That local interest and neighborhood effort should be relied on as much as possible, in procuring aid, expending funds, and superintending the interests of schools.
Fourth-That the division of our counties into school districts was neces- sary to the success of a school system in Kentucky.
Some of these conclusions had already been verified by the local expe- rience of our State. The wreck of our splendid system of county seminaries was largely due to the apathy of the people upon the subject of popular . education. Through like indifference and inattention on the part of the people, our magnificent landed endowments had been made a prey to the negligence of trustees, and the arts of land speculators. The early academies, in regard to which Jefferson, Madison. and Adams, had spoken so hopefully in 1822, were now mostly in a dilapidated state and fast going to ruin. Their funds had been squandered, and but a few were exerting any influence in the cause of education. Through like indifference, Transyl- vania University, our only State university, was soon after compelled to surrender its interests to the keeping of a religious denomination.
The doctrines taught in the report of Mr. Peers met with a favorable re- ception from the Legislature. They became the underlying principles of the common school law of Kentucky in 1838. Though that law was not passed until eight years later than the report of Mr. Peers, the act still finds its best exposition and defense in his report. Even the great educational report made by William T. Barry and others. in 1822, has not left such an impression upon the present common-school laws of Kentucky.
At the time the report of Mr. Peers was made, the State possessed no sufficient fund to sustain a system of common schools. It was felt, how- ever, that a longer delay in adopting a diffusive plan of education in Ken- tucky would be dangerous. During the same month of January, 1850, when the report was made, a law was proposed establishing a uniform sys- tem of education for the State. This law was not based on any general State educational fund. It adopted the principal features of the Massachu- setts school system, which was that of district taxation entirely. It gave the County Courts the power to divide the counties into suitable educational districts, and gave to these districts power to levy taxes by popular vote to sustain the schools. It left everything to the people of the school districts.
697
PASSAGE OF THE MOREHEAD BILL.
This bill was ably advocated by C. S. Morehead, and for convenience I shall designate it as the Morehead common-school bill. When this bill came up for discussion, Mr. John P. McClary, of Louisville, proposed an amendment to the effect that the schools established by it should be on the monitorial plan. This had been the plan adopted in Louisville. It was supposed to be especially recommended by its economy. The school in Louisville, run upon this plan, then had three hundred pupils, and it was believed the number would shortly go to one thousand. The salary of the two teachers employed in the Louisville school did not amount to more than one thousand dollars per annum; and it was believed by many that one thousand pupils could as easily be taught as three hundred. The monitorial system was founded on the plan of mutual instruction. The more advanced pupils taught the less advanced, and the master superintended the whole. By this plan there would be a great saving in the matter of salaries to teach- ers. But the Louisville amendment was not accepted.
Mr. Richard Hawes, of Clark county, strongly opposed the Morehead school bill. He said, as to the poor counties, the scheme would be a splen- did bauble; that there were fifteen or twenty counties where the heads of families do not average one to the square mile; that the idea of free schools among them would be wholly illusory; the districts would have to be ten miles square, and the children would require a guard to keep off the bears and wolves. He objected also because the Morehead bill proposed to give the power to levy taxes on Tom. Dick, and Harry, when they might have no property to be affected by the tax. The law passed, but it was a dead letter on the statute book. So far as we are aware, not a school district was organized and reported under it. There seems to have been no suf- ficient public sentiment in favor of education to infuse life into the law. The passage of the act was followed by a series of educational meetings in different towns and counties to arouse popular interest in the subject. These gatherings were capped by a great educational State convention, held at Lexington, in November, 1833, where the conditions and wants of the State, both as to primary and collegiate education, were thoroughly can- vassed and discussed by friends of the cause. An able address, drafted by Mr. Peers, was made to the people of Kentucky, setting forth the condition of the State in the matter of illiteracy. No practical results were as yet reached from all these efforts.
In 1836, the United States Congress recognized the justice of the positions taken by Kentucky, New Hampshire. and Maryland in 1821, as to the propri- ety of distributing the proceeds of the public land among the States. The General Government then distributed a large, sum of money derived from the sale of the public lands, of which Kentucky received $1, 433. 177. This fund was not appropriated by Congress to any particular purpose, but it was left for the State to decide as to what disposition should be made of it. There was then a strong desire on the part of some members of the Legislature to give
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it to purposes of internal improvements. Others were disposed to invest it in bank stocks. Finally, a compromise was reached in the act of February, 1837, by which eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars were set apart as a school fund, forever dedicated "to founding and sustaining a general system of public instruction." This was the origin, in part, of our present school fund.
In order to make this fund productive, it was invested in bank stocks and bonds of the State of Kentucky. Unfortunately, that part of the fund which was invested in bonds was used to purchase internal-improvement bonds issued by Kentucky, and the interests of the common-school system were sometimes sacrificed to those of the internal-improvement system. The idea was advanced that the cause of education and the cause of internal improvement might be made to aid each other ; that the principal of the common-school fund might be used for the purposes of internal improvement and the interest on the school debt might be paid from the dividends to accrue upon the stock owned by the State in its works of internal improve- ment. The plan worked badly, as the dividends did not turn out as favor- ably as was then supposed. This transaction afterward had many serious consequences.
On the 16th of February, 1838, the law was passed "to establish a sys- tem of common schools in Kentucky." This act set apart the interest on the eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar school fund, dedicated it to school purposes, and established in detail a common-school system. The law was drafted by Judge William F. Bullock, of Louisville. It was ably advocated by him in a strong speech explaining all its provisions. The law thus drafted contained many of the great outlines of our present common- school law, but it differed in some essential features from the subsequent law of 1845, and also from the common-school law as made by the Revised Statutes of 1852.
The object of the law of 1838 was not to establish free schools, but to create common schools, in which the children of the rich and poor might associate on terms of equality. Neither did it propose to educate the chil- dren of the State at public expense; but the small bonus given by the State was intended to act as an incentive to the people in the different school dis- tricts to impose a sufficient voluntary local tax upon themselves to educate the children of their own districts. This idea was borrowed from the New York system. and it was a part of the plan proposed in the report of the Rev. Benjamin O. Peers. It was then believed that the people of Kentucky were sufficiently anxious to secure to their children the blessings of good education to make them furnish liberally the means for that purpose. The law of 1838 made it a condition of receiving State aid on part of any school district that the district should regularly organize, procure a school-house at its own expense, and levy a local tax sufficient, when supplemented by the fund received from the State, to meet the expenses of maintaining a school in the district.
699
THE SYSTEM PARTIALLY ESTABLISHED.
At the time of the passage of the common-school law of 1838, James Clark was governor of the State. The Rev. Joseph J. Bullock was appointed first superintendent of public instruction. When the law was passed the finances of the State were deemed ample and sufficient, public confidence was firm and unshaken; but the next year a revolution took place in the monetary affairs of the State and commercial world. The terrible financial storms of 1839-40-41-42 soon followed, in which the bonds of Kentucky sank to a depreciated value, while some of our sister States sought relief in repudiation.
In 1840, the school funds of the State were seized upon and applied to the liquidation of the internal-improvement debt. Though the children of the State were the most sacred of her possessions and demanded her great- est solicitude, the roads, creeks, and rivers of the Commonwealth were im- proved at the expense of the minds of her children.
The greatest difficulty in introducing the common-school system at first was found to be in the indifference of the people and the neglect of county school officers to discharge their duties under the law. The first State superintendents, Joseph J. Bullock and Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, spent their official terms in trying to arouse a sound public sentiment in favor of com- mon schools. This was attempted by means of public addresses made in different parts of the State. The blessings of education, the evils of illiter- acy, the teachings of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Washington, Jefferson. Mad- ison, Adams, and others were urged almost in vain, without producing any general adoption of common schools. It was found that public prejudices and misunderstandings as to the purposes, objects, and practical operations of the law were exceedingly great. The law had not reached the third year of its existence when a proposition was made in the Legislature to abolish the office of superintendent of public instruction. The effort had a formid- able support, and was only defeated by the vigilant efforts of Judge William F. Bullock and other friends of the cause.
In 1840, the school system was but partially established in a few scatter- ing districts in the State. The people of Woodford county had adopted it in seven districts, and Franklin followed close in the wake of Woodford. The local taxation voted in the different adopting districts varied from ten to thirty cents on the one hundred dollars' worth of property. To the town of Versailles belongs the honor of having organized the first common school in the State. To the county of Wayne belongs the honor of having been the first county in the State to adopt the system entire, according to the superintendent's report of that day.
An event in the progress of the system was the apportionment of the small school fund among the adopting districts in 1840. Until then the system was not at a working level. Scarcely had the superintendent, Bishop Smith, finished his report in that year, when Governor Letcher made the startling announcement in his message that no preparation had been made
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
by the State to pay the drafts for common-school purposes soon to fall due. This announcement was almost a death-blow to the system.
In order to impart life to the schools. Bishop Smith, then superintendent, had called to his assistance the aid of the Methodist Conference, the United Baptist Association, and the Kentucky Presbyterian Synod. Every element of influence had been invoked to produce the feeble results already achieved. All was thrown into confusion by the action of the State Government failing to meet the debt due the schools.
In 1843, notwithstanding the interest due upon the school fund had been sacredly pledged for school purposes, the arrears of interest due from the State to the Board of Education amounted to $116.375. The entire prin- cipal of the school fund received from the General Government had been spent in making roads to the "Sounding Gap," or in improving the navi- gation of " Panther's creek," "Mayfield's creek," "Goose Creek," "Trou- blesome creek," and similar streams. The State was still behind on its debt to the Board of Education, and its inability to meet the drafts for that pur- pose had produced discouragement among the friends of the system. The operation of this influence was shown in the correspondence with the edu- cational department at Frankfort. In some places schools had been con- tinued five years, and received nothing from the State. Some of the county school commissioners had gone so far as to borrow money from the banks on individual credit, expecting to receive their proportion of the money in due time.
The reason assigned for not paying the interest on the bonds given by the State to the Board of Education was, that as these bonds were debts due from the State to itself, it was not deemed expedient to borrow the money to pay the interest upon them. Hard times and an empty treasury seemed to be united in an effort to starve a common-school system to death. Su- perintendents Smith, Brush, Dillard, all protested against this wrong, but in vain.
Meantime, loud complaints were made by the people against that part of the school law of 1838, allowing the districts to impose local taxation by popular vote. The complaint made was that this method of raising money necessarily led to inequality of taxation. It was asserted that rates imposed thus fell heaviest on the poor and lightest upon the rich districts.
Many other objections were also made. Early in February, 1843, Mr. George R. McKee reported a bill in the Legislature to repeal the common- school system. This effort to overthrow the common-school law was based upon the idea that the operation of the law was such that the school fund would be entirely absorbed by the cities and a few of the leading towns of the State, while it was contended that the system could not be reduced to practice in such extreme counties as Harlan, Perry, Letcher, and others.
This effort to repeal failed, but in the following November the law of 1838 was so changed that no district tax could be levied unless upon a vote
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CHANGES IN THE SCHOOL LAW.
of two-thirds of the people of the district, and that part of the law author- izing the appointment of a district collector was repealed. It was then a matter of doubt whether any district tax at all could be imposed for common- school purposes. The important and effective right of local taxation, which had been the stronghold of the Bullock school law of 1838. was thus speed- ily abandoned in Kentucky, almost without a fair test of its merits. That part of the Bullock law had already met with a like disastrous fate in the cold reception given by the people to the Morehead school law of 1830.
The severest blow was yet to come. On the 5th of August, 1845, by virtue of an act of the Legislature passed January Ioth, previous, the Board of Education surrendered to the governor the State bonds, six in number, amounting to $917,500, and they were canceled, by burning, in the pres- ence of William Owsley, Thomas S. Page, and James Davidson. No satisfac- tory reason was ever assigned for this act. The object of the Legislature in burning them is thus explained by Lynn Boyd: "The bonds were in loose pieces of paper, and the Legislature, for the better protection of the debt due to the Board of Education, caused duplicates of the bonds to be re- corded in the books of the secretary of state and second auditor, to have the same force and effect, and bear the same rate of interest, as the original bonds, and then, lest the originals might get into wrong hands, the Legis- lature caused the bonds to be burned."
Judge George Robertson, commenting upon the act, said "that in burn- ing the scrip, Kentucky was guilty of no act of robbery or injustice, but acted with commendable prudence for preventing the sale and perversion of the bonds." Charles A. Wickliffe. speaking of the burning, says "the Legislature, with a view of reducing on paper the State debt, ordered the bonds to be canceled, and thus was blotted out the school fund."
Cassius M. Clay, the leader of the emancipation party in the State, de- clared that it was "a systematic effort on the part of the slave-holders to prevent the people from education, as being, in the language of George McDuffie, incompatible with the institution of slavery."
Notwithstanding the burning, the system was still administered by able superintendents, but the small pittances allowed by the Legislature for edu- cation had more the appearance of charities, than legislative provisions made by a great Commonwealth to meet the intellectual wants of one hun- dred and seventy thousand children. Instead of imparting life and vigor to the system, the niggardly sums given tended to imperil the cause of popular education. The people were becoming impressed with the belief that the Legislature did not intend doing anything worthy of the character of the State.
In 1845, the Bullock common-school law was thoroughly overhauled, and many important changes made in its essential features. So many objections had been made to district taxation, that the plan of raising money by pri- vate subscription was adopted as a substitute for the Bullock plan. The
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
most vital feature of the law of 1838 was thus abandoned. As will be shown hereafter, it was not until March 2, 1865, that the plan of raising money by district taxation again reappears in the Kentucky school system. The result of all this hostile action on the part of the Legislature, and of these serious changes in the law, was greatly to weaken the confidence of the people in the stability and permanency of our common schools.
Other States were making great progress in the cause of education, while Kentucky was falling behind. Even old Virginia was beginning to shake off her sloth, and behold with shame and confusion sixty thousand of her white population unable to read and write. The young States of Ohio and Michigan, so liberally aided by the United States Government in the estab- lishment of both their schools and colleges, were making rapid strides to the front.
The administrations of Governors Clark, Letcher, and Owsley, had come and gone in Kentucky, with no substantial practical results from our common-school system. The entire outcome of ten years' legislation and flattering talk upon the subject of education in Kentucky was, that we only had a law upon the statute books. It had not taken root in the affections and life of the people. The system had a precarious existence, and fears were entertained of the repeal of the law.
It is a noteworthy fact, that while common schools were at such a low ebb in Kentucky, eight hundred of our young men were in attendance upon colleges within the State, and about one hundred receiving collegiate educa- tion out of the State. Transylvania University, Centre College, Georgetown College, Augusta College, St. Mary's College, and Bacon College, were all well-manned and crowded with students. There were pupils in academies and grammar schools to the number of four thousand nine hundred and six ; while, at the same time, there were over two hundred thousand children of the State not in attendance at school.
It is difficult to say why collegiate and academical education for the few should so flourish, when common schools for the many should so languish. It was accounted for in the Northern States by assuming that the institution of slavery created a spirit of pride which made the masters of many slaves unwilling to place their children on a level with those of the poor, and sub- mit to the neighborhood regulations requisite to success for the common schools. So far as Kentucky was concerned, this idea was repudiated by all our superintendents, except Dr. Dillard, who vaguely said in one of his reports, that this tendency of the people of Kentucky to give collegiate education to their children while so many of the poor were uninstructed. was not because a majority of the wealthy and independent citizens were opposed to education, but because they needed more a sense of equality and less of distinction and exclusiveness.
In 1847, Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge was appointed superintendent of public instruction. The system soon received the vitalizing touch of his
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CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1849.
genius. Shortly afterward Governor Crittenden announced that the common schools had recently made great progress throughout the State. By act of the 29th of February, 1848, the governor was directed to issue a new bond for arrears of interest due the board of education. A bond was accord- ingly issued for $368,768.42, payable at the pleasure of the Legislature. Soon afterward a vote was carried before the people, giving the school fund the benefit of an additional tax of two cents on the hundred dollars' worth of property. The unwillingness to impose taxation, arising from a fear of lcsing popularity on part of the law-makers, was thus skillfully met. This has been the uniform practice since, when politicians are unwilling to lose their popularity by levying a tax for education. The next duty to which the new superintendent devoted himself was the settlement of the principle that the State should no longer use the school fund for the ordinary expenses of the government. This question was settled favorably for the cause of education. The superintendent then directed his attention to the retraction of the policy of February 10, 1845, by which the State bonds were ordered to be burned, and to the re-establishing of the school fund upon a perma- nent and effective basis. These great results were successfully achieved. The school fund was thus virtually rescued from destruction by the superin- tendent.
Meanwhile, the constitutional convention of 1849 had met, and a change in the organic law of Kentucky was under consideration. The burning of the school bonds in 1845, the failure to meet the interest on the school debt, the appropriation of the money due to education to internal improvements, had become a matter of the deepest concern to the friends of education. The experience of eleven years had demonstrated the necessity of securing the school fund against the rapacious spirit of the Legislature, which had not hesitated to lay violent hands upon it whenever the emergency seemed to require. A clause was inserted in the new constitution directing that the capital of the common-school fund should be held inviolate for the purpose of sustaining a system of common schools. The same clause directed that the income of the school fund should be appropriated in aid of common schools, but for no other purpose. The Legislature was thus deprived of all power to apply the money coming to the Board of education either to internal im- provements or to defray the ordinary expenses of government.
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