Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by Sarah L. Hyde

Abstract

Reviewed by: Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by Sarah L. Hyde Hilary N. Green (bio) Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. By Sarah L. Hyde. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. Pp. 240. Cloth, $42.50.) Sarah Hyde’s Schooling in the Antebellum South is a refreshing intervention in the understanding of public education across the antebellum Gulf South states. Previous scholarship has often misconstrued a lack of pre-collegiate institutions in those states as an absence of learning and a sign that white southerners did not place cultural value on education. By examining Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, Hyde reveals that formal and informal learning was common in the region. White southerners utilized a range of private and public options, and their popular support of education prompted the statewide implementation of public schools before the Civil War. Over six chapters, Hyde argues that “the history of education in the Gulf South prior to the Civil War shows that people there valued education and made considerable progress in developing school systems that most white children could access. The story of these developments offers important insight into the worldview of the people inhabiting the region and deserves inclusion in the larger narrative of southern history” (6). Hyde begins her work with an in-depth discussion of the two most prevalent modes of learning: home instruction and private schooling. Chapter 1 explores the daily instruction that was undertaken within the home by private tutors, parents, and other family members. Although this form of schooling was often underappreciated by early scholars, Hyde takes seriously how home education allowed white southerners to overcome the obstacle of scattered settlement patterns to provide their children and other relatives with an education at a relatively low cost. Mothers, older siblings, and even white northern male tutors provided generations of children with an education ranging from the basic rudiments to the most [End Page 134] advanced curriculum. More important, home education allowed southern families to benefit from their children’s labor and life in the agricultural South. Hyde concludes that the robust nature of home instruction demonstrates neither an absence of learning nor a lack of cultural importance placed on education by white southerners. In chapter 2, Hyde moves her discussion to private schools, which she shows provided the most consistent mode of instruction in the three states under review. State legislatures, local governments, and even white planters relied on these private institutions “to carry the burden for educating the majority of southern children” (25). Even when state legislatures created public school systems, Hyde contends that private institutions remained essential. Though politics and the effects of the Panic of 1837 dictated the ability of the Gulf South states to financially support schools, Hyde demonstrates how the urban centers of New Orleans, Mobile, and Natchez functioned as the “genesis of public education” (69). Of the three cities, Hyde contends that New Orleans served as the model for the other two, as well as for the Gulf Coast states, region, and nation as a whole. All three, though, served as models for their respective states. Hyde successfully weaves quantitative charts with qualitative analyses of the typical school day, teacher salaries, curriculum, and local officials’ ability to secure both city and private funding to show how urban schools thrived before the Civil War. Collectively, white popular support of home instruction, private schools, and urban schools convinced state legislatures to establish public school laws and the necessary infrastructure once the states had recovered from the Panic of 1837. Tension between state and local control influenced the widespread expansion of public schools throughout the respective states over the following two decades. As an early pioneer, the Louisiana legislature modified the bureaucratic operational system and funding models to the detriment of most parish districts, with New Orleans being an exception. Strong local leadership and additional funding streams allowed that city’s schools to overcome the legislature’s interference. Yet the modifications made by the Alabama and Mississippi legislatures enabled a more efficient system in those states and increased civic pride in...