CHAPTER III
BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT
IN his address to the annual council of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Indiana in 1863, Bishop Upfold spoke with much vigor against the use of flowers in the decoration of churches, and said:—
“There is no sound principle, no true doctrine involved in the practice. It is all poetry, and the very romance of poetry, the conception of romantic and imaginative minds, dictated less by religious sentiment than by a fondness for show and gaudy display. Instead of the decoration concentrating the attention devoutly on the great and glorious fact which flowers are erroneously supposed to symbolize, it is far more likely to divert it, and impair the true spiritual emotions and impressions, which the commemorative services of the day (Easter) are destined to awaken and deepen.... The practice will not be allowed in this diocese; and I now declare and desire it may be distinctly understood and remembered,—and I may as well say it, because I mean to do it—that I will not visit or officiate in any parish, to administer confirmation, or perform any other office on Easter Sunday, or on any other occasion, where this floral display is attempted.”
Bishop Upfold greatly modified his views before his death, in 1872; but this declaration is expressive of the general religious attitude of the earlier Indianians; it was Protestant, intensely Protestant. The religious phenomena observable in the State are not complex and are readily explained. The early French were, of course, Roman Catholics, and their first priests were of the heroic type that had its highest expression in Marquette and Joliet, and hardly less notably in Father Sorin of the Order of the Holy Cross, who founded, in Northern Indiana, Notre Dame University, and lived to see it one of the great Catholic schools of the continent. But the prevalent religious ideas of the Hoosiers were not inherited from the early French settlers. North Carolina contributed members of the Society of Friends to the new territory, and Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania sent Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, members of the sect established by Alexander Campbell, and German Lutherans. Episcopalians were few among the first Indiana colonists. The diocese of Indiana was created in 1838, and many earnest men have given their labor to its service first and last; but the slow progress of the Episcopal Church in the commonwealth has been due to conditions antedating the settlement of the Ohio Valley, running back, indeed, to the efforts of James I. to establish Scotch and English colonies in Ireland, the most turbulent part of his kingdom, and thus forming the base for a migration to America that was to color the life and thought of a vast area of new soil. As so large a proportion of the pioneers had rejected apostolic succession in the Old World, they saw no reason for accepting it in the Western wilderness. The rugged apostles of Methodism, and the less rugged but equally diligent and earnest preachers of Presbyterianism, were leaders in the strenuous religious labors of the early years of the century. The advance guard of these two religious bodies did not always dwell together in unity; in educational work, for example, envy, hatred, and malice were sometimes awakened. The Rev. F. C. Holliday, writing in 1872,[25] complained of the self-complacency with which the leading Presbyterians at the West had assumed authority in educational matters, and “the quiet unscrupulousness with which they seized upon the trust funds of the States for school purposes, and made these schools as strictly denominational as though the funds had been exclusively contributed by members of their own communion.” It is true that Presbyterians controlled the State University in its early years, but this was due to their zeal in education and to the exceptional fitness of many Presbyterian clergymen for teaching. Princeton extended a friendly hand to the Presbyterians who were struggling in the new State, and sent, among others, the Rev. George Bush (1796-1859), who reached Indianapolis in 1824, and two years later shocked his congregation in the malarious village by denying that there was any authority of Scripture for the Presbyterian form of church government.[26] His views became increasingly radical and in 1829 he left Indiana, accepted the chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in the University of the City of New York, and became a Swedenborgian. He was a life-long student and a writer of recognized ability.
The Baptists organized the first Protestant church in Indiana in 1798. The Methodists formed a society in 1803, and in 1805 Peter Cartwright, one of the great pioneer Methodist evangelists, was at work in the State. The oldest Presbyterian society was formed in 1806, near Vincennes, then the capital, and William Henry Harrison, the governor, who had married a Presbyterian wife, was numbered among its parishioners.[27] The very nature of the pioneer life compelled the simplest of religious as well as of social observances. The meeting-houses were of logs, and the ministers were often tillers of the soil. One of the early Presbyterian clergymen aided the support of his family by farming, writing the deeds, wills, and other formal papers of his neighbors, by teaching singing, and by making shoes, and from all these sources of labor, including his pay as minister, he averaged only $80 a year for a period of sixteen years. Father (the Rev. James) Havens, one of the famous apostles of Methodism, who, in 1824, rode what was known as the Connersville circuit, embracing several county seats, received $56.06½ for his year’s services. This does not indicate indifference among the scattered flock, but a lack of actual money. Instances are reported of men splitting rails or working in the harvest field at fifty cents a day in order to aid their ministers. Meetings were held in wayside cabins, in which the near neighbors gathered, and after the service the housewife prepared a meal for the clerical guest, and for those of the little congregation who remained. The ministers of the day were not always profound scholars, but they were light-bearers, who went ahead of the schoolmasters, communicating to scores of the youth of the new land an interest in the world of men and books. It has been said that three-fourths of the early students of Asbury (DePauw) University came from homes that were visited by the itinerant Methodist preachers.[28]
Ministers were required to be extemporaneous speakers, and they often indulged in joint debates that aroused the greatest interest. These contests were markedly frequent during the period in which the “Campbellite” movement gathered force and began to attract members of the older religious societies. Lay discussion was common, and the free interpretation of the Bible urged by the Campbellites encouraged it. “Revivals” and camp-meetings were conducted frequently, and were often attended with great excitement. During the first quarter of the century religious enthusiasm manifested itself with an excess and abandon that were unknown in politics. “Father” was often prefixed to the names of the venerable pioneer ministers as a mark of affection, and in recognition of long service. This was not unusual among the Methodists, and even the Presbyterians occasionally bestowed the term on some of their old and worn missionaries of the early days. Many of these men lived until late in the century, and saw the theology of their young manhood altered or superseded, and amid new men and new manners became almost strangers in the land they had first known as a wilderness.
Great care had been taken to assure to the Northwest religious liberty and free schools. The ordinance of 1787 touched directly on the questions of religion and education in the Northwest Territory. “No person,” it declared, “demeaning himself in a peaceable, orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments in the said territory;” and “religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” The ordinance has clearly been one of the great guiding influences of the nation. It prepared the way in the Ohio Valley for the attitude of the people toward slavery; and its assurance of religious freedom and friendliness to learning brought to the new territory the benefit of the experience of those who had striven for such liberties and advantages in the seaboard colonies. The history of civilization in Indiana may be said to date from its passage. When, in 1804, Congress provided for the disposal of public lands in the districts of Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, the act carried with it a reservation of the sixteenth section in each township for the support of schools, and also an entire township in each land district for the use of a seminary of learning; and later, the act of 1816 that raised Indiana Territory to statehood, provided “that one entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the United States, in addition to the one heretofore reserved for that purpose, shall be reserved for the use of a seminary of learning, to be appropriated solely to the use of such seminary.” Under the first law Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, selected a township in Gibson County; and, following further the direction of Congress, Governor Harrison approved, in 1806, an act of the territorial legislature, incorporating Vincennes University, which was not, however, fully open until 1810. The territorial legislators believed that it would serve a good purpose to admit Indian youth to the privileges of the school, and the law enjoined the trustees “to use their utmost endeavors to induce the said aborigines to send their children to the University for education, who, when sent, shall be maintained, clothed, and educated at the expense of said institution.”[29] Only one Indian ever availed himself of this offer. In 1822 a law was enacted calling for the sale of the Gibson County lands and the use of the proceeds for the State seminary already planned at Bloomington. Thus the State boldly confiscated the fief of one institution and turned it over to another—an act that led to long litigation; and though Vincennes University was partially successful in the courts, its revenue was curtailed and permanent injury resulted. It continues, however, in spite of reverses a lively member of the company of Indiana schools of the preparatory type.
Under the act of 1816 President Monroe designated Perry Township, in the county which was named for him when, in 1818, Orange County was divided.[30] The selection of the “seminary township” became of great importance, for it determined not merely the location of the contemplated seminary, but of the State University, into which it grew. Efforts have been made repeatedly to remove the institution from Bloomington, the town that rose about it; but they have been unavailing. The site chosen by President Monroe, as it was impossible for him to foresee, was not to remain the most fortunate in point of convenience and accessibility; but Monroe County has clung tenaciously to the honor conferred upon her, and seems destined to carry her dignity through the twentieth century. The first principal of the seminary was Baynard Rush Hall (1798-1865), the son of a Philadelphia physician. He was a graduate of Union College and of Princeton Theological Seminary. He was not only an early and valuable teacher, but a pioneer author. One of his books “The New Purchase; or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West” contains a vast amount of information touching pioneer customs; and while it is not always wholly good-natured, it is written in the main with spirit and humor.[31] He declared his belief that he was “the very first man since the creation of the world that read Greek in the New Purchase”; which is extravagant, as many of the earlier Protestant ministers were doubtless learned in the languages, even if the distinction of which he boasted did not belong to some Roman Catholic missionary. Ten boys and young men were all that were admitted to the new seminary when it opened, May 1, 1824. The standards of admission seemed wholly novel and unnecessary. “Daddy says he doesn’t see no sort a use in the high larn’d things, and he wants me to larn Inglish only, and book-keepin’, and surveyin’, so as to ’tend store and run a line,” was the tone of protest heard from many applicants, as reported by Hall in the “New Purchase.” Local politicians, viewing the new school as something exclusive and aristocratic, declared that “it was a right smart chance better to have no college nohow, if all folks hadn’t equal right to larn what they most liked best.” Hall was the sole teacher employed for the first three years, and during this period the only branches taught were Greek and Latin.[32] While he thus filled all the offices of the seminary in the woods, he organized his handful of students into a literary society, which he called the Henodelphisterian, and for which he made the rule that members should drop their proper appellations while in the academic shades and assume Greek or Latin names. “Thus,” says Judge Banta, in his reminiscences, “every member of the society was an Ajax, a Pericles, a Timoleon.” Hall’s salary at this time was two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and there is ground for the suspicion that he compensated himself for deficiencies of income by the free indulgence of his sense of humor. As the young gentlemen of the Henodelphisterian were occupied out of school hours in wood-chopping and swine-herding, the joke was rather broad. Additional instruction was demanded in the third year, and a teacher of mathematics was employed. The seminary became the State University in 1838, and among the first trustees were David Wallace, Governor William Hendricks, Jesse L. Holman, Robert Dale Owen, and Richard W. Thompson, all of whom were otherwise factors in the early history of the State, and in several cases members of families distinguished in subsequent generations. The University’s influence in the State has been inestimable. It has usually been fortunate in its administrators, and it has more and more grown to be the centre of agencies related to the better life and advancement of the commonwealth. After leaving Indiana, in 1831, Hall taught academies at Bordentown and Trenton, New Jersey, at Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, New York, and in 1852 he became principal of Park Institute, Brooklyn. He received the degree of A.M. from Princeton and of D.D. from Rutgers College.
So early as 1793 W. Rivet, a French missionary, “a polite, well-educated, and liberal-minded enthusiast, banished to this country by the French Revolution,” had conducted a school successfully at Vincennes. A system of county seminaries was introduced early in the nineteenth century, and such schools were organized in about half of the counties; and between 1825 and 1850 seventy-three private and incorporated schools were opened, traces of which remain. These were known sometimes by the name of the founder, or were identified with the name of the town in which they were situated. The democratic idea that secondary and higher education could not properly be provided by the State found early and wide acceptance. It was believed that the obligation of higher education should be undertaken by private enterprise and by religious organizations; and out of this spirit came a group of seminaries, similar to those of the counties, and representing the several churches that had established outposts on the frontier. Many of these grew into colleges. Hanover and Wabash colleges thus began under Presbyterian auspices, DePauw (Asbury) University under the Methodists, and Franklin College under the Baptists; and while their beginnings were not strictly in the seminary, Notre Dame, a Catholic university, and Earlham College, an institution of high character allied to the Society of Friends, were of like origin. Late in the period during which the seminaries flourished there rose a number of schools for women, of the academic grade, and all of them private or denominational.
Institutions for higher education often precede schools for primary and intermediate training; and in Indiana care had been taken to provide seminaries and colleges before the important matter of establishing a common school system had received intelligent attention. David Starr Jordan, long identified with education in Indiana, has remarked that “the growth in educational systems is from above downwards. In historical sequence Oxford must precede Rugby, and the German University must come before the gymnasium.” Nearly half a century after the organization of the first territorial government, no system of common schools had been perfected in Indiana. Efforts had been made and the subject had not been wholly overlooked by the lawmakers, but a prejudice existed in the minds of many against free schools as undemocratic. The principle that enlightenment must be a condition precedent to the intelligent exercise of citizenship was not grasped by the populace; and as a result of inattention the Hoosier, as Eggleston’s schoolmaster found him, was appearing on the scene. And yet, in 1837, while this type was increasing, a member of the legislature declared, during the discussion of a proposed school tax, that “When I die I want my epitaph written, ‘Here lies an enemy to free schools.’”[33]
But while many enemies of common school education were blocking the way, an unheralded champion was to appear, whose identity was not generally known for several years after he took the field, and whose services entitle him to first place among all who have striven for the advancement of learning in Indiana. This was Caleb Mills, a native of New Hampshire (1806) and a graduate of Dartmouth (1828) and of Andover Theological Seminary (1833). In 1831 he had made a tour of the Southwest in the interest of Sunday-schools, and the social and intellectual conditions that he found had deeply impressed him. It was a kind providence that led him back to Indiana in 1833, and that gave to his adopted State the benefit of his sympathy, intelligence, and spirit to the end of his life. Among his classmates at Dartmouth were Milo Parker Jewett, who helped to mould the common school system of Ohio, and later became the first president of Vassar College, and Edmund O. Hovey, associated with Mills as a founder of Wabash College, and long a member of its faculty. Others of his Indiana contemporaries may have appreciated the gravity of the situation as fully as he, but it was left for Mills to sound the alarm and lead the charge. In the first year after he entered the State it was averred by a reputable witness that “only about one child in eight between five and fifteen years is able to read.” Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, the honored president of Wabash College for nearly a third of a century, described the condition of affairs in these words:—
“In 1840 there were 273,784 children in the State of school age, of whom only 48,180 attended the common schools. One-seventh of the adult population could not read, and a large proportion of those who could read did so imperfectly. In spite of the constitutional provision of the State and the famous ‘sixteenth section,’ the common schools of Indiana were in bad condition. As late as 1846 the State rated lowest among the free States as to its popular intelligence and means of popular education. Even the capital of the State did not have a free school until 1853, and then one was kept open only two months.”[34]
The census of 1840 showed the illiteracy of Indiana to be 14.32 per cent. The return made by Illinois at this time was but little better, while Ohio, on the eastern boundary, showed only 5.54 per cent of illiterates. Omitting Illinois and Indiana, the illiteracy of the Northern States was only one in forty; in Illinois and Indiana it was one in seven. In twenty-two counties of Indiana the average illiteracy was more than 26.5 per cent. Montgomery County, the home of Wabash College, returned at this time one-fifth of her adult population as illiterate, and Putnam County, the seat of Asbury College, returned one-sixth of her adult population as belonging to the same class.[35]
With a knowledge of these facts Mills made and published, in the winter of 1846, “An Address to the Legislature of Indiana,” and signed it “One of the People.” The motto of this, as of his five succeeding addresses, was, “Read, discuss, and circulate.” These were all written in a tone well calculated to interest and arouse. He handled his statistics skilfully, and made clear the alarming progress of illiteracy in the State. He was as ready with suggestions as with criticisms, and his several papers show him to have been thoroughly informed as to the educational conditions existing in every part of the country. He possessed great patience, and the series of pamphlets was marked throughout by good temper. He wrote in a deliberate manner, rarely showing haste or anxiety, as if confident of the impression that would be created by fair and judicial statement, and with faith in the ultimate triumph of his cause.
In the year following the publication of his first address, a call was issued for a general meeting of educators to be held at Indianapolis. Among those interested in the movement were Ovid Butler, afterward the generous benefactor of Butler College, Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, and John Coburn. A series of common school conventions followed, and was of great value in unifying sentiment. In the roll of those who were prominent in the first meeting appeared the names of Isaac Blackford, Oliver H. Smith, Calvin Fletcher, Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard W. Thompson, Solomon Meredith, and James Blake, who were of the saving remnant of their time. As a result of the agitation by Mills, the conventions of educators, and the ceaseless activity of many friends of education, the legislature of 1847-1848 authorized the people to express their sentiments for or against a tax for the support of free schools, at the election to be held in the fall of 1848. This was a presidential year, and the Mexican War issues were discussed bitterly in Indiana and in the border States, where slavery lifted its head ominously; but the advocates of free schools forced their issue and evoked from the enemy a variety of objections which strike the sense curiously in these later years. Should the industrious be taxed to support the indolent? Should the people be made benevolent by law? There was priestcraft in the scheme; free schools were merely a bait; the real object was the union of Church and State. Free schools would make education too common, said some; but the fiercest antagonism came from the class for whom the friends of free schools were laboring—the wretchedly poor and ignorant.[36] The vote on the school question was 13,000 less than the vote for president cast the same day, but free schools won, the affirmative vote being 78,523; the negative 61,887—a majority of 16,636 for free schools. The principal opposition to free schools was manifested in the counties lying south of a line drawn across the map along the southern boundary of Marion County, in which Indianapolis is situated. The northern counties gave a majority of 18,270 for free schools; while the southern division, deriving its population chiefly from the South, gave a majority of 1634 against the proposition. Professor Boone has pointed out that “notwithstanding the denser population having the older settlements, the established industries, and all of the colleges but one, the most insistent opposition to free schools came from the southern half of the State. The influence of local seminaries and colleges seems to have gone for nothing in the movement for free elementary schools.”
Mills returned imperturbably to the attack in a third message carefully scrutinizing this vote, and showing that of the thirty-one counties voting negatively, twenty were below the general average of intelligence. The same measure and tolerance that characterized all his addresses show finely in this paper, in which he said: “Let the record of the affirmative vote stand as a proof of the existence in our State of the spirit of ’76. I rejoice that we have such indubitable evidence of it. I rejoice that we have been furnished with such proof that we are not the degenerate sons of noble fathers, but that we possess the spirit to rebuke selfishness wherever found, and however disguised—a kindred spirit to that which pledged life and fortune and sacred honor to the cause of national independence.”
A new school law was framed by the legislature in 1848-1849, which legalized public taxation for schools and changed the existing system of school administration; but the respective counties were to be free to adopt or reject the law as they might see fit, and it was only a via media, beyond which lay still much ground for the friends of education to conquer. At an election held in August, 1849, the counties exercised their privilege to pass on the new law. Friends and foes of free schools again conducted a heated campaign, both sides amplifying the arguments advanced in the former contest. The result was a majority in favor of the law of 15,767, a decrease from the majority given in the preceding election, though the two results may not fairly be compared, owing to local issues and animosities. Fifty-nine counties voted for the law and thirty-one against it, and of those that rejected it twenty were in the southern half of the State. But the battle was more nearly won than the friends of education imagined. The constitutional convention that met in 1850 prescribed in the organic law of Indiana a foundation which subsequent legislatures have built upon until a comprehensive system of schools, intelligently administered and adequately supported, is now the pride of the State.[37] The friends of education were to meet with further trials and discouragements; but the pioneer work in Indiana education closed when the new constitution had been ratified by the people. It is clear that any examination of the forces that raised Indiana into an enlightened community must comprehend a knowledge of these early struggles, and that the showier attainments of later citizens cannot obscure for the sincere student the services of those who dared to stand for the cause of free schools in the day of their peril.
Mills is an especially admirable and winning figure. He was hardly equalled for sagacity and suavity among his contemporaries, and he brought to bear upon his great task a steadfastness and quiet energy that no defeat could overcome. The State recognized his abilities and rewarded his services by confiding to him the office of State superintendent of public instruction, of which he was the second incumbent. He was deeply though sanely patriotic, and during the Civil War his zeal for the Union cause was so marked that one of his associates pronounced him the best recruiting officer in Indiana. He belonged to Wabash College, and continued in its faculty until the end of his long life (October 17, 1879), giving his last years, with characteristic unselfishness and devotion, to the organization of the college library.
The early Hoosier school-teachers were often poorly trained, and sometimes were adventurers from England, Scotland, or Ireland. Occasionally they were intemperate, and frequently they were eccentric characters, whose vagaries made them ridiculous before their pupils; but there were competent instructors among them. One of the most charming figures in the history of cultivation in Indiana is Mrs. Julia L. Dumont (1794-1857), who was born in Ohio, but for forty-three years resided at Vevay, in Switzerland County. Among all the light-bringers of the first half of the century in the Hoosier country Mrs. Dumont was one of the most distinguished; and she was easily the woman of most varied accomplishment in the Indiana of her day. She possessed an instinct for teaching, and Dr. Eggleston remembers that after she was sixty a schoolroom was built for her beside her husband’s house, and that she taught the Vevay High School in her old age, when no properly qualified teacher appeared to take charge of it. Dr. Eggleston draws her portrait from memory:—
“I can see the wonderful old lady now, as she was then, with her cape pinned awry, rocking her splint-bottom chair nervously while she talked, full of all manner of knowledge; gifted with something very like eloquence in speech, abounding in affection for her pupils and enthusiasm in teaching, she moved us strangely. Being infatuated with her we became fanatic in our pursuit of knowledge, so that the school hours were not enough, and we had a ‘lyceum’ in the evening for reading ‘compositions’ and a club for the study of history. If a recitation became very interesting, the entire school would sometimes be drawn into the discussion of the subject; all other lessons went to the wall; books of reference were brought out of her library; hours were consumed, and many a time the school session was prolonged until darkness forced us reluctantly to adjourn. Mrs. Dumont was the ideal of a teacher because she succeeded in forming character. She gave her pupils unstinted praise, not hypocritically, but because she lovingly saw the best in every one. We worked in the sunshine. A dull but industrious pupil was praised for diligence, a bright pupil for ability, a good one for general excellence. The dullards got more than their share, for, knowing how easily such an one is disheartened, Mrs. Dumont went out of her way to praise the first show of success in a slow scholar. She treated no two alike. She was full of all sorts of knack and tact, a person of infinite resource for calling out the human spirit.”[38]
Her natural grace and refinement gave to her discipline many a novel turn. She endeavored, and most happily succeeded in the attempt, to link the life of the time and place to “high thought and honorable deeds.” Once, during her administration of the Vevay High School, a game of ball proved so absorbing that the boys were an hour late in reporting after the noon recess. They found the teacher calmly enthroned in her rocking-chair. She did not ask for an explanation, but spoke to them firmly of their indifference; they had humiliated her, she said, before the whole town. No recesses would be allowed for a week, and an apology must be forthcoming the following day. The apology was duly submitted in writing. The remainder of the incident is best described in Dr. Egglesto