Tag Archives: Ulysses Grant

Public Education Shaped by 19th Century Dispute

8 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/8/2025

Horace Mann, frequently referred to as the “father of public education”, declared that public education should be nonsectarian. He was responding to a dispute in the Protestant community between the Congregationalists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians and other Protestant sects who were threatening to separate from the common schools and form their own parochial systems. Mann countered that schools should restrict themselves to commonly shared Protestant values. He believed such values were the principles of civic ethics necessary for participation in our republican form of government. Katherine Stewart reported, “Representatives of a number of sects immediately and vigorously attacked him, but large majorities agreed with this policy, and it soon became the norm in the ‘common school,’ or public school movement.”

As long as the overwhelming majority of Americans were Protestant, this solution was workable. However, the Catholic community was growing. The 25,000 American Catholics in 1790 represented less than 1% of the population. By 1820, their 195,000 members were 2% of American people. In 1830 they were at 318,000 (2.5%), in 1840 663,000 (3.9%) and in 1850 their ranks grew to 1,600,000 (6.9%). (See “Religion in America; A Political History” By Denis Lacorne Page 64) The Catholics were becoming a bigger group with growing influence.

In his book, “Schooled to Order: a Social History of Public Schooling in America” Professor David Nasaw noted that common school textbooks were filled with racist characterization of the Irish and disdain for the Pope. The Catholic clergy were described as “libertine, debauched, corrupt, wicked, immoral, profligate, indolent, slothful, bigoted, parasitic, greedy, illiterate, hypocritical and pagan.”  Catholic parents did not want to expose their children to this and they did not like daily readings from the King James Bible instead of their preferred Douai-Rheims Bible.

Before we go on, a little background on these two Bibles. The Douai–Rheims Bible is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, and the Old Testament portion was published twenty-seven years later in 1610 by the University of Douai. The Latin Vulgate is a translation of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts, accomplished in 382 mainly by Saint Jerome.

The King James Bible is an Early Modern English translation sponsored by King James I of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611. The source material for the translation includes the Latin Vulgate plus Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts.

Although very similar to each other there are some differences. However, early 19th century bigotry trumped all differences. In her study of 19th century textbooks, Ruth Miller Elson showed that anti-Catholic propaganda was a staple of allegedly disinterested lessons on non-religious topics. In history, they learned “the Roman Catholic religion completed” the Roman Empire’s “degeneracy and ruin.” Lessons in patriotism taught that the founding fathers would never “have bowed to papal infallibility, or paid the tribute to St. Peter.” Evan textbooks that commended tolerance in matters of religion were “full of the horrible deeds of the Catholics.”

Maybe it is not so shocking how violent the Catholic-Protestant dispute became. One of the deadliest episodes in early American history occurred in 1844 when Protestants and Catholics took to the streets of Philadelphia. After two weeks of rioting, twenty-five people laid dead in the streets, more than one-hundred were wounded and dozens of homes as well as two churches were torched.

In 1859, a watershed moment occurred in Boston involving a ten-years old student, Thomas Whall. He refused to read the Ten Commandments at the beginning of his morning class at Eliot School, a Boston public school. Young Whall refused based on the fact that these Commandments were from the King James Bible. By this act he was breaking Massachusetts law. The principal “whipped” him on the hands with a rattan stick until his fingers were bleeding and Whall fainted. He would not yield. Whall’s fellow students followed his lead and refused to obey. Hundreds of them were expelled. (Lacorne Page 72)

After Whall’s father sued the principal for using excessive force, Judge Sebeus Maine found for the school and its principal. He said that Thomas’s refusal threatened the stability of the public school, “the granite foundation upon which our republican form of government rests.”He indicated the readings were free of dogma; it was all done objectively with no inappropriate comments. Therefore, there was no violation of freedom of conscience. (Lacorne Page 73)

Katherine Stewart reported:

“This incident led Catholic leaders to conclude that public schools could not serve their community. In response, they launched a movement to create Catholic parochial schools in Boston and across the nation.”

No Compromise

The disdain and prejudice against Catholics was deeply ingrained in Ohio. University of Cincinnati’s former writing coach, Deborah Rieselman quotes associate history professor Linda Przybyszewski:

‘“It was very respectable then to be anti-Catholic,’ notes Przybyszewski. ‘Neighborhoods were often segregated. In 1844, after Cincinnati newspapers carried stories of anti-Catholic riots on the east coast, a group of men threw sticks and rocks at a house occupied by Catholic clergy, according to a German priest who had immigrated to Cincinnati.”’

“Even the Rev. Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, was a vocal opponent of Catholics. Considered a progressive thinker because he was a black abolitionist and the founder of a Cincinnati seminary, Beecher preached a ‘papal conspiracy theory’ that Catholics would take over the West.”

An Anti-Catholic Cartoon

In 1869, a fierce political and legal battle erupted in Cincinnati, Ohio. For some time there had been discussions on the school board about the possibility of uniting the public schools and the Catholic system. There were more than 12,000 students in the Catholic parochial system. One of the keys to the new plan was that there would be no Bible reading in classes.

Ohio State History Teacher, Harold M. Helfman, wrote:        

“The bitter clash between those maintaining pro-Bible and anti-Bible viewpoints was to drive both groups into positions of no surrender; their mutually hostile attitudes were to be seized upon by societies, editors, lecturers, ministers, and politicians bent on stirring up latent anti-Popery passions. The board of education’s action was destined to be the focus of a public opinion which plunged Cincinnati into a boiling caldron of fear and bigotry.”

Top legal minds in Ohio fought this battle out in the courts with the Ohio Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Board of Education and their no Bible reading plan. In a subsequent election, most of the board members who voted for the plan were reelected. Unfortunately, the attempts to unify the schools systems were ended by the associated vitriol.

The anti-Catholic bias in America was deeply held by many Protestants; lasting a long time. During the Presidential election campaign of 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon, former President Harry Truman was asked about the influence of the Pope on Kennedy. He cracked, “It’s not the Pope I’m afraid of, it’s the Pop.” Kennedy became the first Catholic ever elected President of the United States.

As late as 1887, the school day still contained “sacred song,” “the literature of Christendom” and “faithful and fearless Christian teachers,” according to a speech that Cincinnati superintendent E.E. White gave to the National Education Association that year. In 1957, my second grade teacher in King Hill, Idaho read a verse to us from the King James Bible every day.

During his second term, US Grant called on states to prohibit “the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets” and ban “the granting of any school funds or school taxes . . . for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious sect or denomination.” Grant concluded, “No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community.”

James Blaine, a former Republican House Speaker with his own 1876 presidential ambitions, jumped at the political opportunity. He introduced a constitutional amendment seeking to codify Grant’s proposals. Although some argue that these provisions reflect a long and admirable history of separation of church and state advanced by the founders, others maintain that these provisions reflect hate and anti-Catholic bigotry that peaked in the 1870s with the national proposal.

Blaine’s amendment failed in the Senate but has been adopted into the constitution of 37 states. In 2020, the Supreme Court discussed the Blaine amendments in Espinoza vs. Montana. In their decision they the court described the Blaine amendments as being “born of bigotry.” This decision has significantly undermined prohibitions of tax dollars going to religious schools.

Thoughts on Protecting Schools and Children

There is little doubt that running multiple tax supported education systems is less efficient and more expensive. However, if that is what people want; it is doable. Unfortunately, many voucher schools and charter schools are not being held accountable. If we are to have these multiple systems, they must all adhere to public education standards and accountability. That means no discrimination and no turning away undesirable students. No anti-LGBTQ rules, no religious tests and no student academic qualifications when accepting tax payer money.

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John Eaton, Hero of American Education

15 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/15/2024

John Eaton (1829 – 1906) was a clergyman, soldier, philanthropist, journalist, educator, and statesman. He was born to a farmer in Sutton, New Hampshire and attended Vermont’s Thetford Academy . After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1854, he studied at Andover Theological Seminary and in 1862 was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry. Eaton also earned a Master of Arts and Legum Doctor from Rutgers University.

After Dartmouth, as a school principal in Cleveland, Ohio his success led to an appointment as superintendent of the public schools of Toledo, Ohio … a position he held from 1856-59.

On August 15, 1861, he joined the 27th Ohio Volunteer Infantry as chaplain. In September 1862, Lincoln signed Proposition 95, soon known as the Emancipation Proclamation. The next month, Major General Ulysses S. Grant appointed Eaton superintendent of freedmen and made him supervisor of all military posts from Cairo, Georgia to Natchez, Mississippi and Fort Smith, Arkansas. On October 10, 1863, Grant made him colonel of the 63rd United States Colored Infantry.

 The following month, Eaton was tasked with Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the Department of the Tennessee (Grant’s Army). From 1863-64, he opened 74 schools, all black, in places like Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Little Rock, Pine Bluff and others within the Union lines, with 13,320 pupils. (Page 296)

With this, the leading Christian denominations of the North commenced church schools, also supervised by General Eaton. As the Union army advanced, the few public schools for white children came under military control and were likewise put under his jurisdiction.

Professor Johann Neem shared, “Because of their political power and the way the tax burden fell largely upon them, slaveholding elites spread an antitax gospel to convince ordinary whites that taxes were a bad thing.” (Democracy’s Schools Page 92) Leading into the Civil War, there were no state-supported public schools in the south. Eaton’s efforts started the American common-school system in the South which, in succeeding years, led to revised constitutions in every reconstructed southern state, establishing publicly financed education.

Eaton was a force-of-nature endowed with a profound work ethic, natural ability at organizing and political acumen. He was confirmed brigadier general by the US Senate in 1866.

Post-Bellum National and International Education Leader

In 1867, he was selected superintendent of public instruction for the state of Tennessee and was instrumental in creating the state’s public education laws. This appointment allowed him to enforce them. The so-called “Eaton System” was not popular with the local population, yet for two years, he was able to establish a common-school system, servicing 185,000 Black and White students.

After he left Tennessee in 1869, the state legislature swept away the “Eaton System.” (Page 296) Eaton anticipated this outcome and in his final report to Tennessee’s Governor wrote:

“No state in the Union is now satisfied without an efficient system of free public schools. If this one, which has been inaugurated at such cost and with such care, is destroyed in Tennessee, it will necessarily be revived. It must be. Nothing can prevent it in any American state. ” (Page 297)

He was prescient. The system was temporarily checked but its essential features were soon re-adopted.

Author and clergyman A. D. Mayo (1823-1907) summed up the work of General Eaton:

“For more than twenty years, from 1862 to 1882, no man in the United States contributed more to the final establishment and increasing importance of the common-school system in the South than he. … Whatever may have come of his tremendous labors and those of his faithful assistants during these early years, working under a military supervision, it cannot be reasonably doubted that any competent reader of the educational literature thrown up in this period, with the commentary of subsequent events, will be forced to acknowledge that then and there was laid a permanent foundation for the new departure of a system of common schools in the South .” (Page 297)

General Eaton Goes to Washington

A new Department of education was created by Congress in 1867 with Dr. Henry Barnard as Commissioner. The public fear of dangerous centralization became so great that in 1870, the Senate changed it from a department to a bureau, attached to the Department of the Interior.

When U. S. Grant was inaugurated president (March 4, 1869), he discovered Commissioner Barnard wanted to leave. Grant decided to bring General Eaton to Washington and appointed him Commissioner of Education on March 16, 1870.

When Eaton arrived, appropriations for the National Bureau of Education had been reduced from $20,000 to $6,000 a year. He had a staff of two clerks, with the existence of a Bureau of Education threatened. (Page 298)

Employing phenomenal powers of organization, political acuity and work ethic, Eaton set out to build a National Bureau of Education, recognized favorably in the US and worldwide.

Dr. William T. Harris, who succeeded Eaton as Commissioner, stated:

“General Eaton was the true founder of this Bureau, in the sense that he established as the chief work of this Bureau, the annual collection of statistics by means of statistical schedules, which were sent to all institutions and all general officers to be filled out and returned to the Commissioner from year to year. In this way he trained educators to keep original records of their operations and made these records available for analysis and comparison.” (Page 299)

Eaton’s innovations in expanding public education included initiating kindergarten in the US, introducing domestic science, industrial and manual training, creating commercial, agricultural, art, and nurse-training schools, women in higher education, schools for the blind, for the learning-disabled, technical schools, free libraries, etc. (Page 300)

His influence went beyond the boundaries of the United States. He was tendered an honorary membership in the French “Ministry of Public Instruction,” which he declined because it was improper. The Department of Education of England also sought his advice. When the governments of Japan, South Africa, Egypt, Bulgaria, Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Chili, and Argentina awoke to the importance of educating the masses, General Eaton was solicited to map a suitable school system and expended great efforts to help these countries. (Page 301)

These labors undermined his health and in November 1886, against the wishes of the President, he felt compelled to resign his commission. In 1870, the Bureau had two clerks of low grade, 100 volumes in its library, $6,000 for maintenance and was considered a failure. By the time he left, the Bureau of Education had 38 paid clerks and 9,000 unpaid volunteer assistants in the United States and foreign lands collecting statistics. There were 18,000 volumes and 47,000 pamphlets in the library, the most extensive and complete pedagogic collection in existence at the time, with $102,284 for the maintenance of the Bureau. Its stellar global reputation was declared “the most influential educational office in the world.”

During the years from 1875 to 1886, General Eaton wielded a larger influence on educational affairs than any other person in America. (Page 301)

After Washington DC

From 1886 to 1891, Eaton was president of Marietta College. In 1895, he was appointed president of Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska and in 1898, he became president of Westminster College in Salt Lake City. He also served as Councilor of the American Public Health Association, Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of the Association of Social Science.

In 1899, owing to his experience organizing educational systems of several South American republics, the US Government called on him to reform the education system in Puerto Rico. General Eaton successfully replaced the Spanish system which profited certain privileged classes and abolished the “substitute system,” in which a person could draw the full salary of a teacher and employ a cheap substitute to do the teaching. The school curriculum was also reformed and the “fee system” eliminated, enabling children of poorer classes to attend school. He required educating girls as well as boys, changing an ancient, effete school culture into a modern one, founding the American school system in Puerto Rico.

General Eaton passed at home in Washington DC on 2-9-1906, survived by his wife Shirley, daughter Elsie Newton and two sons, Joseph Shirley Eaton and John Quincy Eaton.

His obituary in The Evening Star noted,

“In the death of Gen. Eaton the cause of public education meets with a severe loss, it is pointed out and his death will be regretted, not only by a host of friends in this city and elsewhere, but by many educational Institutions throughout the country.” 

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