School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present time

by John W. Moore

CHAPTER LIII.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STATUS.

A. D. 1852 TO 1859.

The election of General Franklin Pierce to the Presidency, in 1852, was considered by many as a rebuke to those who had been so clamorous in the North against the compromise of 1850. He was a warm supporter of the rights of the individual States, and the knowledge of this fact brought repose to the minds of Southern men.

2. North Carolina had just entered upon a career of rapid development in her mineral resources. The incorporation of a clause extending the right of suffrage in the State Constitution, the completion of the great central railway, the opening of the asylums and the large addition to the number of schools, were evidences of progress and widespread prosperity. Capitalists, for the first time, began to invest their wealth in cotton and woolen factories.

1853.

3. The creation of the office of Superintendent of Common Schools, in 1853, and the appointment of Calvin H. Wiley, of Guilford, to that position, marked an extraordinary advance in the matter of popular education. Mr. Wiley soon evinced so much discretion and devotion to his duties that his propositions of improvement were adopted, and his views and wishes soon became those of the State government. The same year was further signalized by the Normal School, under charge of Mr. Craven, being empowered by the Legislature to grant literary degrees and the assumption of the full dignities of a college. After nearly thirty years of usefulness, this institution, now known as Trinity College, is still accomplishing great good under the auspices of the Methodists of the State.

4. With the new lines of railway and the restoration of the old routes, there was a large advance in the value of real estate and in the amount of productions sent abroad. The use of Peruvian Guano and other concentrated fertilizers was just being introduced, and the example of Edgecombe county in the use of compost heaps was being followed in every direction and adding immensely to the yield of exhausted fields.

5. It was a notable thing in the political history of the country, that in the Presidential contest of 1852 the candidates for Vice-President, of both the Whig and Democratic parties, were born in North Carolina and educated at Chapel Hill. Ex-Governor William R. King, Democrat, then of Alabama, was chosen over ex- Governor Graham, who had been Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet of President Fillmore.

6. The churches were prospering under their increased attentions to education. A larger culture was coming to those who filled the pulpits at home, and devoted men like Dr. Matthew T. Yates were going to heathen lands to spend their lives for the good of other races. The Episcopal Church had abundant compensation in the wisdom and virtues of Bishop Atkinson for the loss of Bishop Ives, upon his leaving that communion for the Church of Rome. The great slavery controversy was bringing trouble and division to the Baptists and Methodists, and thus, not only statesmen and politicians, but ministers of the Gospel, were also set at variance.