“Encouraging Useful Knowledge” in the Early Republic: The Roles of State Governments and Voluntary Organizations

“Constitution of Pennsylvania—1776,” Section 44, as printed in Francis Newman Thorpe, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Organic Laws, 1492–1908 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), vol. 5, 3083.Google Scholar

Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (Philadelphia: Franklin and Hall, 1749), facsimile reprint (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1931), 6–7.Google Scholar

Margaret A. Nash, Women’s Education in the United States, 1780–1840 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 41–49.Google Scholar

See chapters 1 and 4 in this volume. See also Benjamin Justice, “‘The Great Contest’: The American Philosophical Society Education Prize of 1795 and the Problem of American Education,” American Journal of Education 114 (February 2008): 191–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1998);Google Scholar

Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York: Norton, 1972, ca. 1969).Google Scholar

Several recent popular histories describe examples of such contests. For example, Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (New York: Penguin, 2000);Google Scholar

Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (New York: Walker Publishing, 1995);Google Scholar

and Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York: Vintage, 2005).Google Scholar

Edward C. Carter II, “One Grand Pursuit”: A Brief History of the American Philosophical Society’s First 250 Years, 1742–1993 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993).Google Scholar

See Ronald Seavoy, The Origins of the American Business Corporation, 1784–1855: Broadening the Concept of Public Service During Industrialization (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982).Google Scholar

For a comparative analysis of education preambles and provisions in state constitutions, see David Tyack, Thomas James, and Aaron Benavot, Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785–1954 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), esp. Chapter 2, Thomas James, and Aaron Benavot, Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785–1954 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), esp. Chapter 2, “Education as the Fourth Branch of State Government,” 43–76. As Tyack et al. note, one of the most influential statements of the civic value of education was that synthesized in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, written by John Adams and modeled on the earlier Massachusetts provisions, which specified the terms upon which territories north of the Ohio River would be governed and organized into states. As part of the portion of the document devoted to defining the rights of citizens and the responsibilities and limits of government, the ordinance declared: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Coupled with an earlier act of 1785, which specified that certain portions of the lands in western territories should be reserved “for the maintenance of public schools,” the Northwest Ordinance set a precedent for subsequent state support of education in the United States. For a relatively concise compilation of texts of education provisions in state constitutions collected in a single volume, see Franklin B. Hough, “Constitutional Provisions Relating to Education, Literature, and Science in the Several States of the American Union,” in Circular of Information of the Bureau of Education for the Year 1875 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877), 543–672.Google Scholar

Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd. Ser., 50, n. 1, Law and Society in Early American (1993): 51–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Ibid.; Nancy Beadie, “Education, Social Capital and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspectives: Preliminary Investigations,” Paedagogica Historica 46:1–2 (February–April 2010): 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography (New York: Vintage, 1990), 114–116.Google Scholar

Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York: Penguin, 1990 [Viking, 1938]), 139.Google Scholar

Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 29.Google Scholar

David Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts,” in Knud Haakonssen (ed.), Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 36; D. C. Martin, “Former Homes of the Royal Society,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (The Royal Society) 22:1/2 (1967): 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

J. M. Opal, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s-1820s,” Journal of American History 91:2 (September 2004): 445–470; Edward Herring O’Neil, “Private Schools and Public Vision: A History of Academies in Upstate New York, 1800–1860” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For an in-depth discussion of the political significance of Freemasonry in the State of New York as well as a case study of its significance for educational initiatives at the local level, see Nancy Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), especially Chapter 10, 158–175.Google Scholar

Edward Potts Cheyney, History of the University of Pennsylvania, 1740–1940 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940), 129–150.Google Scholar

On the culture and politics of Philadelphia during the ten years that it was the location of the nation’s capital, see Kenneth R. Bowling, “The Federal Government and the Republican Court Move to Philadelphia, November 1790–March 1791,” and Anna Coxe Toogood, “Philadelphia as the Nation’s Capital, 1790–1800,” in Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon (eds.), Neither Separate Nor Equal: Congress in the 1790s (Ohio University Press, 2000), 3–33 and 34–57.Google Scholar