The Yankee Leviathan Collects Statistics: Federal Education Policy During Reconstruction

Andrew Donnelly

doi:10.1162/99608f92.d35b59a0

Abstract

The Yankee Leviathan Collects Statistics: Federal Education Policy During Reconstruction

Highlights

In December, Minnesota Republican congressman Ignatius Donnelly1 proposed a national bureau that would “enforce education without regard to color” as “an essential and permanent part of any system of reconstruction”
Michael Steudeman, who is writing a book on the educational rhetoric of the Reconstruction Congress, connects these shaming techniques to those being used by th-century schoolmasters to discipline aberrant pupils
Radical Republicans believed that the Civil War had settled whether they lived in a nation or collection of states; during that crisis, they nationalized currency, established a national bank, conscripted a national army, and amended the Constitution to define national citizenship

Summary

Introduction

In December , Minnesota Republican congressman Ignatius Donnelly1 proposed a national bureau that would “enforce education without regard to color” as “an essential and permanent part of any system of reconstruction” By looking at the early statistics collection at the federal level in late nineteenth-century America, he argues that educational data have always been political and politicized. A year later, Representative James Garfield, with the endorsement of a group of school superintendents in hand, proposed a Department of Education “for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several states and Territories”

Results

Conclusion