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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
What follows will be a historical account of somewhat unfamiliar events and people. The aim is less to recall a nearly forgotten episode than to suggest its ironic complement to the current effort to raise standards in the teaching and learning of history. Typical for the discipline, the narrative draws upon the research of others, and several scholars have helped prepare the conceptual ground. Of the latter, four will be cited briefly by way of an introduction: John Dewey and the most recent presidents of the History of Education Society.
1 Dewey, John, Interest and Effort in Education (Carbondale, Ill., 1975 [191.3]). See “Preface” by Wheeler, James E., ibid., vii–xvi.Google Scholar
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3 Ibid., 96.Google Scholar
4 Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, “The Plural Worlds of Educational Research,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Summer 1989): 185–214.Google Scholar
5 Ray Hiner, N., “History of Education for the 1990s and Beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism,” History of Education Quarterly 30 (Summer 1990): 155.Google Scholar
6 Seller, Maxine Schwartz, “Boundaries, Bridges, and the History of Education,” History of Education Quarterly 31 (Summer 1991): 195–206.Google Scholar
7 Dorr, Thomas Wilson, “Human Happiness” (1833), Dorr Manuscripts, Rider Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.Google Scholar
8 See, for example, Coleman, Peter J., The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860 (Providence, 1963), 283; Gettleman, Marvin E., The Dorr Rebellion: A Story in American Radicalism, 1833–1849 (New York, 1973), 138; and MacMullen, Edith Nye, In the Cause of True Education: Henry Barnard and Nineteenth-Century School Reform (New Haven, 1991), 107. The New York Herald referred to it as the “Root Beer War.” See New York Herald, 1 July 1842, 2.Google Scholar
9 Wayland, Francis, The Affairs of Rhode Island (Providence, 1842); and Bolles, John A., “The Affairs of Rhode Island,” Being a Review of President Wayland's “Discourse”; A Vindication of the Sovereignty of the People, and a Refutation of the Doctrines and Doctors of Despotism (Boston, 1842), both located in the John Hay Library. See also Smith, Wilson, Professors and Public Ethics: Studies of Northern Moral Philosophers before the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), ch. 7, “Francis Wayland and The Dorr War,” 128–46.Google Scholar
10 Coleman, , Transformation, 3–25. The Charter is reprinted in Mowry, Arthur May, The Dorr War or the Constitutional Struggle in Rhode Island (Providence, 1901), Appendix A. 307–21.Google Scholar
11 Coleman, , Transformation, vii.Google Scholar
12 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 6, n. 7.Google Scholar
13 Coleman, , Transformation, 260.Google Scholar
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15 Ibid., 55.Google Scholar
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24 Brownson, Orestes to Dorr, , 14 May 1842, Dorr Manuscripts. Dorr penned a postscript to the effect that “OAB” later denied any support of popular sovereignty.Google Scholar
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28 Dorr, Sullivan and Dorr, Lydia to Dorr, Thomas W., 8 Apr. 1842, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar
29 Dorr, Henry to Dorr, Thomas W., 25 Oct. 1841, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar
30 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 12–13, n. 24.Google Scholar
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32 Dorr, Thomas W. to Calder, Jesse, 4 May 1841, Dorr Manuscripts.Google Scholar
33 See New York Tribune, 27 May 1842. 2; ibid., 17 Sep. 1842, 2; and ibid., 22 Sep. 1842, 2.Google Scholar
34 Ibid., 5 Sep. 1842, 2.Google Scholar
35 Gettleman, , Dorr Rebellion, 168n.Google Scholar
36 Dorr, to Dorr, Lydia, 6 May 1842, Suffrage Ladies of Providence to Dorr, 20 Aug 1842, Dorr to Suffrage Ladies, 24 Aug. 1842, Dorr Manuscripts. As was customary in some circles, Dorr addressed letters to his mother in care of her husband.Google Scholar
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38 DuBois, Ellen Carol, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978), 40.Google Scholar
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43 MacMullen, , In the Cause, III.Google Scholar
44 Coleman, , Transformation, 233–35.Google Scholar
45 Katz, Michael B., Reconstructing American Education (Cambridge, 1987), 15.Google Scholar
46 Ibid., 16. Katz seems to agree with Katznelson and Weir that “The inescapable tensions between the public and private realms, and battles at this boundary about the extensiveness of equal citizenship and popular sovereignty, took place in and were moderated in part by the system of schooling for all.” See Katznelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York, 1985), 9–10.Google Scholar