USA > Minnesota > Freeborn County > History of Freeborn County, including explorers and pioneers of Minnesota, and outline history of the state of Minnesota > Part 28
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William Drew Washburn on the 14th of Jan- uary, 1831, was born at Livermore, Maine, and in 1854, graduated at Bowdoin College. In 1857, he came to Minnesota, and in 1861, was appointed by the President, Surveyor General of U. S. Lands, for this region. He has been one of the most active among the business men of Minneapolis. In November, 1878, he was elected to represent the 3d distriet in the U. S. House of Representa- tives, and in 1880, re-elected. He is a brother of C. C., late Governor of Wisconsin, and of E. B., the Minister Plenipotentiary of U. S. of America, to France, and resident in Paris during the late Franco-German war.
RECAPITULATION - TERRITORIAL GOVERNORS OF
MINNESOTA.
Alexander Ramsey 1819-1853
Willis A. Gorman.
1853-1857
Samuel Medary 1857
STATE GOVERNORS.
Henry H. Sibley 1858 1860
Alexander Ramsay 1860-1863
H. A. Swift, Acting Gov. 1863-1864
Stephen Miller 1864-1866
W. R. Marshall 1866-1870
Horace Anstin. 1870-1874
C. K. Davis 1874-1976
John S. Pillsbury. 1876-1882
L. F. Hubbard. 1882
TERRITORIAL DELEGATES TO CONGRESS.
Henry H. Sibley 1849-1853
Henry M. Rice. 1853-1857
W. W. Kingsbury 1837-1858
UNITED STATES SENATORS.
Henry M. Rice 1857-1863
James Shields. 1857-1859
M. S. Wilkinson. 1859-1865
Alexander Ramsey 1863-1875
Daniel S. Norton. 1865-1870
O. P. Stearns. 1871
William Windom 1871
A. J. Edgerton. 1881
S. J. R. McMillan
1875
MEMBERS UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTA-
TIVES.
W. W. Phelps. 1857-1859
J. M. Cavanaugh 1857-1859
William Windom 1859-1871
Cyrus Aldrich . 1859-1863
Ignatius Donnelly 1863-1869
Eugene M. Wilson. 1869-1871
11. S. Wilkinson 1869-1771
M. H. Dunnell. 1871
J. T. Averill. 1871-1875
H. B. Strait
1875-1879
1881
Henry Poehler 1879-1981
W. S. King. 1875-1877
J. H. Stewart. 1877-1879
W. D. Washburn 1879
STATE EDUCATION.
161
STATE EDUCATION.
BY CHARLES S. BRYANT, A. M.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
EDUCATION -DEFINITION OF THE WORD-CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATED - COLONIAL PERIOD- HOWARD COLLEGE-WILLIAM . PENN'S GREAT LAW -WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE-STATE EDUCA- TION UNDER THE CONFEDERATION-AID GIVEN TO STATES IN THE NORTHWEST.
As a word, education is of wide application and may convey but an indefinite idea. Broadly, it means to draw out, to lead forth, to train up, to foster, to enable the individual to properly use the faculties, mental or corporal, with which he is en- dowed; and to use them in a way that will accom- plish the desired result in all relations and in any department of industry, whether in the domain of intellectual research, or confined to the fields of physical labor.
State Education points at once to a definite field of investigation; an organization which is to have extensive direction and control of the subject matter embraced in the terms chosen. It at once excludes the conclusion that any other species of education than secular education is intended. It excludes all other kinds of education not included in this term, without the slightest reflection upon parochial, sec- tarian, denominational or individual schools; inde- pendent or corporate educational organizations. State Education, then, may embrace whatever is required by the State, in the due execution of its mission in the protection of individual rights and the proper advancement of the citizen in material prosperity; in short whatever may contribute in any way to the honor, dignity, and fair fame of a State; whose sovereign will directs, and, to a very great extent, controls the destiny of its subjects.
A reason may be given for this special depart- ment of education, without ignoring any others arising from the necessity of civil government, and its necessary separation from ecclesiastical control. It must be observed by every reasoning mind, that in the advancement and growth of social elements from savagery through families and tribes to civil- ization, and the better forms of government, that in the increasing growth multiplied industries continually lead to a resistless demand for devision of labor, both intellectual and physical. This division must eventually lead, in every form of government, to a separation of what may be termed Church and State: and, of course, in such division every separate organization must control the ele- ments necessary to sustain its own perpetuity ; for otherwise its identity would be lost, and it would cease to have any recognized existence.
In these divisions of labor, severally organized for different and entirely distinct objects, mutual benefits must result, not from any invasion of the separate rights of the one or the other, by hostile aggression, but by reason of the greatest harmony of elements, and hence greater perfection in the labors of each, when limited to the promotion of each separate and peculiar work. In the division, one would be directed towards the temporal, the other toward the spiritual advancement of man, in any and all relations which he sustains, not only to his fellow men, but to the material or immaterial universe. These departments of labor are suffic- iently broad, although intimately related, to require the best directed energies of each, to properly cul- tivate their separate fields. And an evidence of the real harmony existing between these organiza-
11
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STATE EDUCATION.
tions, the Church and State, relative to the present investigation, is found in the admitted fact that edneation, both temporal and spiritual, secular and sectarian, was a principal of the original organiza- tion, and not in conflict with its highest duty, or its most vigorous growth. In the division of the original organization, that department of educa- tion, which was only spiritual, was retained with its necessary adjuncts, while that which was only temporal was relegated to a new organization, the temporal organization, the State. The separate elements are still of the same quality, although wielded by two instead of one organization. In this respect education may be compared to the diamond, which when broken and subdivided into most minute particles, cach separate particle re- tains not only the form and number of facets, but the brillianey of the original diamond. So in the ease before us, though education has suffered division, and has been appropriated by different organisms, it is nevertheless the same in nature, and retains the same quality and luster of the parent original.
The laws of growth in these separate organiza- tions, the Church composed of every ereed, and the State in every form of government, must de- termine the extent to which their special educa- tion shall be carried. If it shall be determined by the church, that her teachers, leaders, and fol- lowers in any stage of its growth, shall be limited in their acquisitions to the simple elements of knowledge, reading, writing, and arithmetic, it may be determined that the State should limit eduea- tion to the same simple elements. But as the Church, conseious of its immature growth, has never restricted her leaders, teachers, or followers, to these simple elements of knowledge; neither has the State seen fit to limit, nor can it ever limit education to any standard short of the extreme limits of its growth, the fullest development of its resources, and the demands of its citizens. State Education and Church Education are alike in their infaney, and no one is able to prescribe limits to the one or the other. The separation of Church and State, in matters of government only, is yet of very narrow limits, and is of very recent origin. And the separation of Church and State, in matters of education, has not yet elearly dawned upon the minds of the accredited leaders of these clearly distinct organizations.
It is rational, however, to conelude, that among
reasonable men, it would be quite as easy to de- termine the final triumph of State Education, as to determine the final success of the Christian faith over Buddhism, or the final triumph of man in the subjugation of the earth to his control. The decree has gone forth, that man shall subdue the earth; so that, guided by the higher law, Ed- ucation, under the direction or protection of the State, must prove a final snecess, for only by organie, scientifie, and human instrumentality can the purpose of the Creator be possibly aecom- plished on earth.
If we have found greater perfeetion in quality, and better adaptation of methods in the work done by these organizations since the separation, we must conelude that the triumphs of each will be in proportion to the completeness of the separa- tion; and that the countries the least shackled by entangling allianees in this regard, must, other things being equal, lead the van, both in the ad- vancement of science and in the triumphs of an enlightened faith. And we can, by a very slight comparison of the present with the past, deter- mine for ourselves, that the seientifie curriculum of State schools has been greatly widened and en- riched, and its methods better adapted to proposed ends. We can as easily ascertain the important faet that those countries are in advance, where the two great organizations, Church and State, are least in conflict. We know also, that from the nature of the human movement westward, that the best defined conditions of these organizations should be found in the van of this movement. On this continent, then, the highest development of these organizations should be found, at least, when time shall have matured its natural results in the growth and polish of our institutions. Even now, in our infaney, what country on earth can show equal results in either the growth of general knowledge, the advance of education, or the tri- umphs of Christian labor at home and abroad? These are the legitimate fruits of the wonderful energy given to the mind of man in the separate labors of these organizations, on the principle of the division of labor, and consequently better di- rected energies in every department of industry. This movement is onward, across the continent, and thenee around the globe. Its force is irresist- able, and all efforts to reunite these happily di- vided powers, and to return to the culture of past times, and the governments and laws of past ages,
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COLONIAL PERIOD.
must be as unavailing as an attempt to reverse the laws of nature. In their separation and friendly rivalry, exists the hope of man's temporal and spiritual elevation.
State Education is natural in its application. In the beginning God created the heavens and the eartlı, and every organism after its own kind. Now, in pursuance of this well known law of na- ture, that everything created is made after its own order and its own likeness, it follows that the new comers on this continent brought with them the germ of national and spiritual life. If we are right in this interpretation of the laws of life re- lating to living organisms, we shall expect to find its proper manifestation in the early institutions they created for their own special purposes imme- diately after their arrival here. We look into their history, and we find that by authority of the General Court of Massachusetts, in 1636, sixteen years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, Harvard College was established, as an existing identity; that in 1638, it was endowed by John Harvard, and named after him. But the Common School was not overlooked. At a public meeting in Boston, April 13th 1636, it was "generally agreed that one Philemon Pormont be entreated to become schoolmaster for teaching and nourter- ing children."
After the date above, matters of education ran through the civil authority, and is forcibly ex- pressed in the acts of 1642 and 1647, passed by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Col- ony. By the act of 1642, the select men of every town are required to have vigilant eye over their brothers and neighbors, to see, first, that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavor to teach, by them- selves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as shall enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, and knowledge of the Capital laws, under penalty of twenty shillings for each offence. By the act of 1647, support of schools was made compulsory, and their blessings universal. By this law "every town containing fifty house-holders was required to appoint a teacher, to teach all children as shall resort to him to write and read;" and every town containing one hundred families or house-holders was required to "set up grammar schools. the master thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the University."
In New Amsterdam, among the Reformed Prot- estant Dutch, the conception of a school system guaranteed and protected by the State, seems to have been entertained by the colonists from Hol- land, although circumstances hindered its practi- cal development. The same general statement is true of the mixed settlements along the Delaware; Menonites, Catholics, Dutch, and Swedes, in con- nection with their churches, established little schools in their early settlements. In 1682, the legislative assembly met t Chester.
William Penn made provision for the education of youth of the province, and enacted, that the Governor and provincial Council should erect and order all public schools. One section of Penn's "Great law" is in the words following :
"Be it enacted by authority aforesaid, that all persons within the province and territories thereof, having children, and all the guardians and trus- tees of orphans, shall cause such to be instructed in reading and writing, so that they may be able to read the scriptures and to write by the time that they attain the age of 12 years, and that they then be taught some useful trade or skill, that the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want; of which every county shall take care. And in case such parents, guardians, or overseers shall be found deficient in this respect, every such parent, guardian, or overseer, shall pay for every such child five pounds, except there should appear incapacity of body or understanding to hinder it."
And this "Great law" of William Penn, of 1682, will not suffer in comparison with the English statute on State Education, passed in 1870, and amended in 1877, one hundred and ninety-five years later. In this respect, America is two hun- dred years in advance of Great Britain in State education. But our present limits will not allow us to compare American and English State school systems.
In 1693, the assembly of Pennsylvania passed a second school law providing for the education of youth in every county. These elementary schools were free for boys and girls. In 1755, Pennsylvania College was endowed, and became a University in 1779.
In Virginia, William and Mary College was famous even in colonial times. It was supported by direct State aid. In 1726, a tax was levied on liquors for its benefit by the House of Burgesses;
164
STAATE EDUCATION.
in 1759, a tax on peddlers was given this college by law, and from various revenues it was, in 1776, the richest college in North America.
These extraets from the early history of State Education in pre-Colonial and Colonial times give abundant evidence of the nature of the organisms planted in American soil by the Pilgrim Fathers and their successors, as well as other early settlers on our Atlantic coast. The inner life has kept pace with the requirements of the external organ- izations, as the body assumes still greater and more national proportions. The inner life grew with the exterior demands.
On the 9th of July, 1787, it was proclaimed to the world, that on the 15th of November, 1778, in the second year of the independence of America, the several colonies of New Hampshire, Massa- chusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Providence Planta- tions, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn- sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had entered into a Confederate Union.
This Confederate Union, thus organized as a Government, was able to receive grants of land and to hold the same for such purposes as it saw proper. To the new government cessions were made by several of the States, from 1781 to 1802, of which the Virginia grant was the most im- portant.
The Confederate Government, on the 13thi of July, 1787, and within less than four years after the reception of the Virginia Land Grant, known as the Northwest Territory, passed the ever memo- rable ordinance of 1787. This was the first real estate to which the Confederation had acquired the absolute title in its own right. The legal government had its origin September 17th, 1787, while the ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory was passed two months and four days before. Article Third of the renowned ordinance reads as follows:
"Religion, morality, and knowledge being nee- essary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
What is the territory embraced by this authori- tative ennnciation of the Confederate (Government ? The extent of the land embraced is almost if not quite equal to the area of the original thirteen eolo- nies. Out of this munificent possession added to the infant American Union, have sinee been earved, by
the authority of the United States government, the princely states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- gan, Wisconsin, and in part Minnesota. In this vast region at least, the Government has said that education "shall be forever enconragod." En- couraged how and by whom? Encouraged by the Government, by the legal State, by the su- preme power of the land. This announcement of governmental aid to State schools was no idle boast, made for the enconragement of a delusive hope, but the enunciation of a great truth, in- spired by the spirit of a higher life, now kindled in this new American temple, in which the Creator intended man should worship him according to the dietates of an enlightened conscience, "where none should molest or make him afraid."
The early Confederation passed away, but the spirit that animated the organism was immortal, and immediately manifested itself in the new Gov- ernment, under onr present constitution. On the 17th of September, 1787, two months and four days from the date of the ordinance erecting the Northwest Territory was adopted, the new Con- stitution was inaugurated. The first State gov- ernment erected in the new territory was the state of Ohio, in 1802. The enabling aet, passed by Congress on this accession of the first new State, a part of the new acquisition, contains this sub- stantial evidenee that State aid was faithfully remembered and readily offered to the cause of education :
Sec. 3: "That the following proposition be and the same is hereby offered to the convention of the castern States of said territory, when formed, for their free acceptance or rejection, which if accepted by the convention shall be obligatory upon the United States:
"That section number sixteen in every town- ship, and where such section has been sold, granted or disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and most contiguous to the same, shall be granted to the inhabitants of such township for the use of schools."
Tho proposition of course was duly accepted by the vote of the people in the adoption of their constitution prior to their admission to the Union, and on March 34, 1803, Congress granted to Ohio, in addition to section sixteen, an additional grant of one complete township for the purpose of estab- Jishing any higher institutions of learning. This was the beginning of substantial national recogni-
165
AID TO STATES IN THIE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
tion of State aid to schools by grants of land out of the national domain, but the government aid did not end in this first effort. The next State, Indi- ana, admitted in 1816, was granted the same sec- tion, number sixteen in each township; and in addition thereto, two townships of land were ex- pressly granted for a seminary of learning. In the admission of Illinois, in 1818, the section numbered sixteen in each township, and two entire townships in addition thereto, for a seminary of learning and the title thereto vested in the legislature. In the admission of Michigan in 1836, the same section sixteen, and seventy-two sections in addition there- to, were set apart to said State for the purpose of a State University. In the admission of Wis- consin, in 1848, the same provision was made as was made to the other States previously formed out of the new territory. This was the com- mencement.
These five States completed the list of States which could exist in the territory northwest of the Ohio River. Minnesota, the next State, in part lying east of the Mississippi, and in part west, takes its territory from two different sources; that east of the Father of Waters, from Virginia, which was embraced in the Northwest Territory, and that lying west of the same from the " Louisiana Pur- chase," bought of France by treaty of April 30, 1803, including also the territory west of the Mis- sippi, which Napoleon had previously acquired from Spain. The greater portion of Minnesota, therefore lies outside the first territorial acquisi- tion of the Government of the United States; and yet the living spirit that inspired the early grants out of the first acquisition, had lost nothing of its ferver in the grant made to the New Northwest. When the Territory of Minnesota was organized, Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, then a Senator in Con- gress from the state of Illinois, nobly advocated the claims of Minnesota to an increased amount of Government aid for the support of schools, extend- ing from the Common school to the University. By Mr. Douglas' very able, disinterested and gen- erons assistance and support in Congress, aided by Hon. H. M. Rice, then Delegate from Minnesota,
our enabling act was made still more liberal in relation to State Education, than that of any State or Territory yet admitted or organized in the amount of lands granted to schools generally.
Section eighteen of the enabling act, passed on the 3d of March, 1849, is as follows:
"And be it further enacted, That when the lands in said Territory shall be surveyed under the direc- tion of the Government of the United States, pre- paratory to bringing the same into market, sec- tions numbered sixteen and thirty-six in each town- ship in said Territory, shall be, and the same are hereby reserved for the purpose of being applied 'to schools in said Territory, and in the States and Territories hereafter to be created out of the same."
As the additions to the family of States increase westward, the national domain is still more freely contributed to the use of schools; and the charac- ter of the education demanded by the people made more and more definite. In 1851, while Oregon and Minnesota were yet territories of the United States, Congress passed the following act:
" Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of America, in Congress assembled : That the Governors and legislative assemblies of the territories of Oregon and Minnesota, be, and they are hereby authorized to make such laws and needful regulations as they shall deem most expe- dient to protect from injury and waste, sections numbered sixteen and thirty-six in said Territories reserved in each township for the support of schools therein.
(2.) "And be it further enacted, That the Secre- tary of the Interior be, and he is hereby anthorized and directed to set apart and reserve from sale, ont of any of the public lands within the territory of Minnesota, to which the Indian title has been or may be extinguished, and not otherwise appropri- ated, a quantity of land not exceeding two entire townships, for the use and support of a University in said Territory, and for no other purpose what- ever, to be located by legal subdivisions of not less than one entire section."
[Approved February 19, 1851. ]
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STATE EDUCATION.
CHAPTER XXIX.
STATE EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA-BOARD OF RE- GENTS -- UNIVERSITY GRANT-AID OF CONGRESS IN 1862-VALUE OF SCHOOLHOUSES-LOCAL TAXA- TION IN DIFFERENT STATES-STATE SCHOOL SYS- TEM KNOWS NO SECT-IGNORANCE INHERITED, THE COMMON FOE OF MARKIND-CONCLUSION.
When Minnesota was prepared by her popula- tion for application to Congress for admission as a State, Congress, in an aet authorizing her to form a State government, makes the following provision for sehools:
(1) "That sections numbered sixteen and thirty- six in every township of public lands in said State, and where either of said sections, or any part thereof. has been sold or otherwise disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and as contiguous as may be, shall be granted to said State for the use of schools.
(2) "That seventy-two sections of land shall be set apart and reserved for the use and support of a State University to be selected by the Gov- ernor of said State, subject to the approval of the commissioner at the general land office, and be appropriated and applied in such manner as the legislature of said State may prescribe for the purposes aforesaid, but for no other purpose." [ Passed February 26, 1857.]
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