Textbook legislation from 1900 to 1917 followed the trend of other legislation of the time. As the curriculum of the social studies expanded, laws dealing with textbooks were made to include more subjects for which there was to be a uniform series selected. State history and civil government, both local and national, as well as foreign history and other social studies, were found more frequently among the subjects enumerated. The reaction which had set in against the enforced nationalism of the Reconstruction period in the South continued to express itself in those states in which there had hitherto been no open remonstrance.
In 1904, the Mississippi legislature instructed the textbook commission to select a uniform series of textbooks in United States history, civil government, state history and other subjects, and took occasion to prescribe that “no history in relation to the late civil war between the states shall be used in the schools in this state unless it be fair and impartial,....”[216]
Presumably of like character was the action of North Carolina in 1905. In “An Act to Promote the Production and Publication of School Books relating to the History, Literature or Government of North Carolina for use in the Public Schools,” there was appropriated $5,000 for the years of 1905 and 1906 for the state board of education “to encourage, stimulate and promote the production and to procure the control and publication of such books as in the judgment of the board properly relate to the history, literature and government of North Carolina.”[217]
Florida’s sectionalism was openly avowed in her “Act for Providing a Method of Securing a Correct History of the United States, Including a True and Correct History of the Confederacy, and Making an Appropriation for such Purpose.” The act declared: “Whereas, no book called History, which does not tell the truth or withholds it, is worthy of the name or should be taught in public schools; and,
“Whereas, the South is rich in historical facts that are either ignored or never mentioned in the so-called histories taught in our schools; and,
“Whereas, the Southern States have been derelict in their duty to posterity in not having provided for past and future generations a history that is fair, just and impartial to all sections”; therefore it was enacted that Florida appropriate $1500 as her share toward a fund of $16,500 to be offered as a prize to the person writing the “best history of the United States in which the truth about the participation of the eleven states” be told.[218]
In the creation of a textbook board in 1907, Texas regarded it essential that a uniform series of books be selected among which there should be textbooks on the history of Texas, civil government and United States history, in which “the construction placed on the federal constitution by the Fathers of the Confederacy shall be fairly presented.”[219]
A uniform series of textbooks not of a partisan character were prescribed by laws in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas, and included the subjects of United States history, state history, and civil government.[220] Louisiana, Indiana, and Kansas added ancient, medieval and modern history textbooks to others previously prescribed.[221] In 1901 Nevada included the history of the United States among the textbooks to be prescribed by the state board of education,[222] and Idaho, in 1907, imposed the choice of a civil government textbook and one in United States history upon her State Board of Textbook Commissioners and the superintendent of public instruction.[223] In 1913, California directed her state board of education to revise the state series of textbooks which included United States history.[224]
Three states, Ohio, New Mexico, and West Virginia placed laws upon their statute books regarding state history, Ohio accepting Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio as a reference book,[225] and New Mexico limiting to one dollar a volume the price of a state history which was to be prepared by a “known historian of the state.”[226] Davies’ Facts in Civil Government, by an act of 1901 of West Virginia was again endorsed and the price fixed at 55 cents.[227]
Four states, during the period, in addition to three commonwealths which named “partisan” textbooks, enacted laws to exclude histories held to be sectional in spirit. Legislation in all other cases dealt with provisions for a uniform series of textbooks. The statutes of Louisiana, Indiana, and Kansas showed the expansion of the social study curriculum in providing for textbooks in ancient, medieval and modern history. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kansas regulated the purchase of textbooks in state and national history and in civics. In California, Ohio, New Mexico and West Virginia provisions were made relative to state history textbooks, and Idaho and Nevada in their laws recognized a need for textbooks in civil government or United States history.