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Nativism and Midwestern Education: The Experience of Saint Louis University, 1832–1856

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

William Barnaby Faherty
William Barnaby Faherty*
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University
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Extract

Saint Louis University, the first university west of the Mississippi and the first American Catholic institution of higher learning to develop in a predominantly Catholic city, displayed a remarkable broad-mindedness in its policies at a time when interdenominational strife gripped the land. Unfortunately, newcomers to the Midwest and nativists elsewhere in the nation failed to match the wide tolerance of the city and of the University. Open hostility on the part of nativists brought about the disaffiliation of one of Saint Louis University's finest colleges shortly before the Civil War and retarded the growth of the entire school for half a century. This sad but significant aspect of the social history of the United States throws new light on the ghetto attitudes that sometimes characterized denominational education in the latter part of the last century.

Type
The Century of Hope II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Winter 1968 , pp. 447 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 by New York University 

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References

Notes

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