Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
James Bryce observed in 1888 that “he who would understand the changes [in] the American democracy will find far more instruction in a study of the State governments than of the Federal Constitution.” So neglected was the subject, he found, that it could not even be called a field: “it is rather a primeval forest, where the vegetation is rank, and through which scarcely a trail has yet been cut.” Although Bryce himself cut one such path in The American Commonwealth, much of the terrain of state government in the nineteenth century remains unexplored to this day.
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4 Some works that illustrate the richness of such topics are: Kaestle, , Pillars; Kaestle, Carl F. and Vinovskis, Maris A, Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (New York, 1980); Jorgenson, Lloyd P., The Founding of Public Education in Wisconsin (Madison, 1956); Wollenberg, Charles, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855–1975 (Berkeley, 1976); and Hendrick, Irving G., The Education of Non-Whites in California, 1849–1970 (San Francisco, 1977).Google Scholar
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11 Bryce, , Commonwealth, 2: 138; for angry denunciations of corporations by members of the Workingmen's Party, see Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California… 1878–79, 3 vols. (Sacramento, 1880); Swisher, Carl B., Motivation and Political Technique in the California Constitutional Convention, 1878–79 (Claremont, Calif., 1930).Google Scholar
12 West Virginia report quoted in Bryce, , Commonwealth, 2: 131, note 1; Keller, Morton, Affairs of State: Public Life in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 323–26; McVey, Frank L., “Past and Present Sticking Points in Taxation,” Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Proceedings, 1909–10, 3 (1911):348–60.Google Scholar
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36 Report of Proceedings, Michigan, 1850, 548; Illinois delegate quoted in Cole, Arthur C., ed., The Constitutional Debates of 1847 (Springfield, Ill., 1919), 901; for an illuminating discussion of how children encountered republican ideology in schools, see Baker, Jean H., Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), ch. 2; see also Kaestle, Carl F., “Conflict and Consensus Revisited: Notes toward a Reinterpretation of American Educational History,” Harvard Educational Review 46 (Aug. 1976):390–96; Kaestle, , Pillars, 148–58 discusses localist opposition to centralization.Google Scholar
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38 A fascinating example of borrowing from northern states, particularly Massachusetts, in the Reconstruction conventions occurred in South Carolina in 1868; see Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, Held at Charleston, S.C., Beginning January 14th and Ending March 17th, 1868 (Charleston, 1868), 2: 707, 690, 692, 706, 747; Lide, Edwin S., Constitutional Basis of Public School Education, U.S. Office of Education, Leaflet No. 40, July 1931 (Washington, D.C., 1931).Google Scholar
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50 There are many ways to approach the topics we have suggested here. These are some preliminary forays: on the work of urban educators as leaders at the state level—James, Thomas, “State Constitution-Making and Educational Policy in Nineteenth Century America: The Case of California,” paper presented at the Organization of American Historians, Minneapolis, April 20, 1985; on moral reform legislation—Tyack, David and James, Thomas, “Moral Majorities and the School Curriculum: Historical Perspectives on the Legalization of Virtue,” Teachers College Record, 86 (1985): 513–37; on the relation between state legislation and professionalization—Gilb, Corinne L., Hidden Hierarchies: The Professions and Government (New York, 1966); on state legal issues concerning race—Wollenberg, , Segregation; Hendricks, , Non-Whites; Tyack, David and Lowe, Robert, “The Constitutional Moment: Reconstruction and Black Education in the South,” American journal of Education, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar