Writing in De Bow’s Review of 1855, one alarmist declared: “Our text-books are abolition works. They are so to the extent of their capacity, and though the poison of anti-slavery dogmas has not found its way into arithmetic and mixed mathematics, yet we should not be surprised to find that some work is now in progress in which the young learner will find his sums stated in abolition phrases, and perhaps be required to tell how many more sinners might have gone to Heaven if Abraham, the ‘father of the faithful and the friend of God’ had not been a slave holder and a dealer in human chattels; ... and so long as we use such work as Wayland’s Moral Science and the abolition geographies, readers and histories, overrunning as they do, with all sorts of slanders, caricatures and blood-thirsty sentiments ... [they will] array our children by false ideas, against the established ordinances of God,....”[416]
Another writer could not condone the indifference of his section to the existence of such conditions. “When the public mind of our section was divided as to the justice and propriety of this institution [slavery] ...,” he remarked, “it was not then to be wondered at that we should remain indifferent to the views presented to our youth on the subject, and that we should carelessly allow them to peruse, even in their tender years, works in which slavery was denounced as an unmitigated evil, and the universal race of Ham’s descendants were blazoned forth as a set of dusky angels and martyrs. Such a course may have been defensible at that period, but tell me, what show of propriety is there in its continuance at the present day? We have become awake to the rightfulness and justice of our stand; we have come to know that we are more sinned against than sinning; and we have witnessed the complete failure of many quixotic attempts to transform negroes into prosperous and thriving freemen. Why then should we wish that the rising generation, who are to frame and control public opinion, after we have passed from being, should be on this question of vital importance taught doctrines which are in direct conflict with what we now believe?”[417]
Because “southern life, habits, thoughts, and aims” were “so essentially different from those of the North,” another protagonist of “home education” maintained that a different character of books and training was required to “bring up the boy to manhood with his faculties fully developed.”[418] Nor could this “true man” be developed if he must sit “at the feet of some abolition Gamaliel of the North,” but he must have “books and teachers of history from the South who should point out the destiny of the South.”[419]
As a result of the agitation of the press, the commercial conventions, which met during the years from 1853 to 1860, committed themselves with one accord, to the Southern educational program. The Memphis Convention of 1853 demanded the employment of native teachers, the encouragement of a home press, and the publication of books adapted to the educational wants and the social conditions of the section.[420] The following year, the Charleston Convention passed a resolution which urged the production of textbooks by Southern men “with express reference to the proper education of the Southern youth.”[421] The resolution declared that “this Convention earnestly recommends all parents and guardians within these states, to consider well, that to neglect the claims of their own seminaries and colleges, and patronize and enrich those of remote states, is fraught with peril to our sacred interests, perpetuating our dependence on those who do not understand and cannot appreciate our necessities and responsibilities; and at the same time fixing a lasting reproach upon our institutions, teachers and people.”[422]
In 1856, the Savannah Convention issued to “The People of the Slaveholding States” an address advocating joint action on the part of the Southern legislatures. “It will be well, at least, to look to our school books,” they declared. “Can the making of these be entrusted exclusively to those, who by instilling an occasional heresy, dangerous to our repose, imagine that they serve at the same time God and Mammon—their consciences and their pocket? The State Legislatures at the South alone are competent to heal this mischief. Property will submit to any amount of taxation for such a purpose. A system can and ought to be matured at the South by which the most ample encouragement shall be given to its educational system and its press. Withdraw at once the contributions which are returned too often to us now in contumely and insult.”[423]
At the same convention the committee upon the subject of “Text Books for Southern Schools and Colleges” reported that “the books rapidly coming into use in our schools and colleges at the South are not only polluted with opinions adverse to our institutions, and hostile to our constitutional views, but are inferior in every respect, as books of instruction to those which might be produced amongst ourselves, or procured from Europe....”[424] The Committee proposed that the convention take the matter “under their auspices and select or prepare such a series of books, in every department of study, from the earliest primer to the highest grade of literature and science, as shall seem to them best qualified to elevate and purify the education of the South.”[425] The Committee further recommended that “when this series of books shall have been prepared, the Legislatures of the Southern States be requested to adopt them as text-books.”[426]
The committees appointed at the Southern conventions evidently failed to obtain results, for De Bow’s Review of 1858 querulously remarked that the committees seemed to have dropped into repose after their appointments.[427] Newspaper agitation, however, continued without abatement, The Constitutionalist suggesting, in 1858, that Georgia by law should compel her schools to use Georgia school books in which information was given regarding the early history of the state, and which contained “eloquent and patriotic emanations from the gifted pens” of some of their “ablest writers.”[428]
History textbooks held a conspicuous place in most of the discussions. Peter Parley’s History, extensively used at this time, came in for much adverse criticism because, in the opinion of the Southerner, it “insulted” and “misrepresented” the institutions of the South.[429] “If it is important for us to have a home literature of our own in the lighter departments of reading and knowledge,” one critic remarked, “how much more vitally essential it is to our best interests that the books from which our children imbibe their earliest lessons in history and political economy should be written by those who are able to expound and vindicate, instead of misrepresenting and defaming the institutions under which they are to live and be educated.”[430]
Further criticism of the same textbook is found in an article on “Wants of the South” in De Bow’s Review for 1860. “Our schools have long been groaning under the burden of questionable orthodoxy, and in some instances decided hostility to the institutions which her public instructors, of all others, may reasonably be expected to advocate and defend,” said one writer. “... no teacher or pupil who has used Peter Parley’s Histories, or any of the popular ‘Readers’ and ‘Orators’ from which juvenile disciples of Demosthenes have learned to spout so glibly eloquent invectives against slavery, the slave trade, will fail to recognize the long-deplored existence of this deadly evil.”[431]
Other books of an historical nature, which were especially obnoxious to the South, were Gilbert’s Atlas and Appleton’s Complete Guide of the World, which contained “hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite.”[432] “This book and many other northern school books scattered over the country come within range of the Statutes of this State [Louisiana], which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of a penalty of death upon any person who shall publish or distribute such works ...,” declared one writer.[433]