The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s
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In Ward McAfee's Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s, the issue of public school lay at the heart of the Republican-Democrat rivalry and the Reconstructionist vision. Although the mandates of the Republican-sponsored Congressional Reconstruction enabled all Americans to vote, regardless of wealth or race, the Republicans felt that more work needed to be done to propel America forward in the latter half of the nineteenth century (McAfee 22). The Republican Party believed that public schooling was the key instrument that would transform the American nation. It would also create an educated middle-class that would thrive in the capitalist system (McAfee 3). Thus, they sought to diminish the influence of the Roman-Catholic church and its schools in the North and overcome the inherent prejudices of white racism against African-Americans in the South. In the 1870s, the Reconstruction was a colossal attempt by the Republican Party to create a culturally homogeneous culture. The Northerners believed that cultural unity would enable the backward South to progress; together with the North, the South would form a solid foundation for the dynamic progress of the capitalist system established in the North (McAfee 5). In addition, the education of the recently freed blacks would provide a new pool of supporters for the Republican Party and also effective workers for the capitalist system (McAfee 5). According to the Republican Party, the ob
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t characterized the American society. According to George Frisbie Hoar, Republican Representative of Massachusetts, who introduced the bill "To Establish a National System of Education," politicians from both parties considered the problems of illiteracy in the South to be the problem of some other group of people (McAfee 106-107). Lincoln's ideal of one nation, one people, was not celebrated by all American people. Instead, racial prejudice deeply divided the people. In Southern states with Republic majorities, whites were resentful of the fact that they were compelled to pay for African-American schools (McAfee 107).
The passage of Charles Sumner's Supplementary Civil Rights Bill, that mandated mixed schools for the country, ultimately demonstrated the degree of white racism. The Republicans' support for the bill would be instrumental in destroying Reconstruction. Albion Tourgee, a civil-rights worker, foresaw the devastating impact of Sumner's bill and stated that forced integration would set back the "rehabilitation of the South ten or twenty years" (qted. in McAfee 127). He knew that this bill would do little in the deeply racist South except antagonize the white people and provoke their fears about the greater expansion o
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Approximate Word count = 1638
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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