Reconstruction Revisited: The Republican Public Education Crusade of the 1870s

Abstract

Reconstruction Revisited: The Republican Public Education Crusade of the 1870s Ward M. McAfee The character of the second half of Reconstruction can best be seen by focusing on a public school movement that became prominent during the 1 870s. Some may disagree and argue that the enforcement acts of 1 870 and 1 871 better reveal both the strengths and weaknesses ofthe latter half of the Reconstruction program. Indeed, greater scholarly attention has been given to the enforcement legislation and its aftermath than to the education crusade of that decade. Nevertheless, without the underlying Reconstructionistjustification of reforming the nation through education, the enforcement acts would have appeared far more arbitrary in spirit than they did at the time. Indeed, the enforcement legislation was directly inspired by the Ku Klux Klan's burning of public schools. The very term "waving the bloody shirt," which became the Republicans ' chief symbolic argument in the seventies, came from Ben Butler's showmanship in congressional debates over the enforcement bills as he waved a bloodied nightshirt of a Mississippi school administrator assaulted by the Klan. For many, the enforcement acts were publicly validated as a necessary foundation for the Republicans' public education reform.1 In 1 870, the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment (which sanctioned African American male voting) encouraged a movement to bring public education to the South. Efforts involving the Freedmen's Bureau had preceded this date, but the public school movement did not move into the center of the political arena until after the Fifteenth Amendment went into operation. The anticipated reform of uplifting the nation through public education certainly had a strong racial component, but it had a broader agenda than only this.2 It also aimed to ' Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper and Row, 197 1), 294. 2 For histories of the racial component ofthe public education issue in the 1870s, see James Mcpherson , "White Liberals and Black Power in Negro Education, 1865-1915," American Historical Civil War History, Vol. xlii. No. 2 © 1996 by The Kent State University Press 134CIVIL WAR HISTORY federalize guarantees that public education in the North would never be undermined by the Roman Catholic Church, which was then growing in influence and power. Republicans hoped to funnel the children of Catholic immigrants living in the North through the public schools, then characterized by many Protestant religious practices. In this way, they sought to break both the self-imposed cultural separatism encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church as well as the potential political power of the Irish Catholics, who were the Republicans' ethnic opponents as much as African Americans were then their ethnic allies.3 Many of the emotions that had characterized the Know-Nothing movement of the 1 850s resurfaced in the Republicans' Reconstruction policy of the 1870s. Throughout that decade, Republicans trumpeted the virtues of a homogeneous Union, harmonious with traditional American Protestant mores. Similarly, they cast the Roman Catholic Church as an antinational force, as dangerous to the Union as the "slave-power" conspiracy had once been. It behooved Republicans to emphasize this theme throughout the seventies, for it helped mask the unpopular racial implications of their program to reconstruct the nation. Republicans and Democrats had different advantages in fighting over publicschool issues in the national political arena. As the Catholic Church erected its own sectarian school systems, many Protestants became concerned that immigrant children going through these parochial schools might not become fully Americanized. Protestants were also disturbed by the Catholic complaint that America's public schools were little more than tax-supported Protestant schools. As Catholics increasingly demanded that Protestant Bible-reading ceremonies cease in public education, Republicans fought back and exploited the anti-Catholic biases of the Protestant majority, especially in the North. Republicans also warned of a Catholic conspiracy to get their own parochial schools funded at taxpayer expense. The Democratic strategy regarding public education in the political arena was different. In all sections, Democrats relied on deep-seated white racism and fears that the Republican nationalizing agenda included racial integration of all American children in national public schools of the future. Of the two, the Democrats ultimately...