With a knowledge of these facts Mills made and published, in the winter of 1846, “An Address to the Legislature of Indiana,” and signed it “One of the People.” The motto of this, as of his five succeeding addresses, was, “Read, discuss, and circulate.” These were all written in a tone well calculated to interest and arouse. He handled his statistics skilfully, and made clear the alarming progress of illiteracy in the State. He was as ready with suggestions as with criticisms, and his several papers show him to have been thoroughly informed as to the educational conditions existing in every part of the country. He possessed great patience, and the series of pamphlets was marked throughout by good temper. He wrote in a deliberate manner, rarely showing haste or anxiety, as if confident of the impression that would be created by fair and judicial statement, and with faith in the ultimate triumph of his cause.
In the year following the publication of his first address, a call was issued for a general meeting of educators to be held at Indianapolis. Among those interested in the movement were Ovid Butler, afterward the generous benefactor of Butler College, Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, and John Coburn. A series of common school conventions followed, and was of great value in unifying sentiment. In the roll of those who were prominent in the first meeting appeared the names of Isaac Blackford, Oliver H. Smith, Calvin Fletcher, Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard W. Thompson, Solomon Meredith, and James Blake, who were of the saving remnant of their time. As a result of the agitation by Mills, the conventions of educators, and the ceaseless activity of many friends of education, the legislature of 1847-1848 authorized the people to express their sentiments for or against a tax for the support of free schools, at the election to be held in the fall of 1848. This was a presidential year, and the Mexican War issues were discussed bitterly in Indiana and in the border States, where slavery lifted its head ominously; but the advocates of free schools forced their issue and evoked from the enemy a variety of objections which strike the sense curiously in these later years. Should the industrious be taxed to support the indolent? Should the people be made benevolent by law? There was priestcraft in the scheme; free schools were merely a bait; the real object was the union of Church and State. Free schools would make education too common, said some; but the fiercest antagonism came from the class for whom the friends of free schools were laboring—the wretchedly poor and ignorant.[36] The vote on the school question was 13,000 less than the vote for president cast the same day, but free schools won, the affirmative vote being 78,523; the negative 61,887—a majority of 16,636 for free schools. The principal opposition to free schools was manifested in the counties lying south of a line drawn across the map along the southern boundary of Marion County, in which Indianapolis is situated. The northern counties gave a majority of 18,270 for free schools; while the southern division, deriving its population chiefly from the South, gave a majority of 1634 against the proposition. Professor Boone has pointed out that “notwithstanding the denser population having the older settlements, the established industries, and all of the colleges but one, the most insistent opposition to free schools came from the southern half of the State. The influence of local seminaries and colleges seems to have gone for nothing in the movement for free elementary schools.”
Mills returned imperturbably to the attack in a third message carefully scrutinizing this vote, and showing that of the thirty-one counties voting negatively, twenty were below the general average of intelligence. The same measure and tolerance that characterized all his addresses show finely in this paper, in which he said: “Let the record of the affirmative vote stand as a proof of the existence in our State of the spirit of ’76. I rejoice that we have such indubitable evidence of it. I rejoice that we have been furnished with such proof that we are not the degenerate sons of noble fathers, but that we possess the spirit to rebuke selfishness wherever found, and however disguised—a kindred spirit to that which pledged life and fortune and sacred honor to the cause of national independence.”
A new school law was framed by the legislature in 1848-1849, which legalized public taxation for schools and changed the existing system of school administration; but the respective counties were to be free to adopt or reject the law as they might see fit, and it was only a via media, beyond which lay still much ground for the friends of education to conquer. At an election held in August, 1849, the counties exercised their privilege to pass on the new law. Friends and foes of free schools again conducted a heated campaign, both sides amplifying the arguments advanced in the former contest. The result was a majority in favor of the law of 15,767, a decrease from the majority given in the preceding election, though the two results may not fairly be compared, owing to local issues and animosities. Fifty-nine counties voted for the law and thirty-one against it, and of those that rejected it twenty were in the southern half of the State. But the battle was more nearly won than the friends of education imagined. The constitutional convention that met in 1850 prescribed in the organic law of Indiana a foundation which subsequent legislatures have built upon until a comprehensive system of schools, intelligently administered and adequately supported, is now the pride of the State.[37] The friends of education were to meet with further trials and discouragements; but the pioneer work in Indiana education closed when the new constitution had been ratified by the people. It is clear that any examination of the forces that raised Indiana into an enlightened community must comprehend a knowledge of these early struggles, and that the showier attainments of later citizens cannot obscure for the sincere student the services of those who dared to stand for the cause of free schools in the day of their peril.
Mills is an especially admirable and winning figure. He was hardly equalled for sagacity and suavity among his contemporaries, and he brought to bear upon his great task a steadfastness and quiet energy that no defeat could overcome. The State recognized his abilities and rewarded his services by confiding to him the office of State superintendent of public instruction, of which he was the second incumbent. He was deeply though sanely patriotic, and during the Civil War his zeal for the Union cause was so marked that one of his associates pronounced him the best recruiting officer in Indiana. He belonged to Wabash College, and continued in its faculty until the end of his long life (October 17, 1879), giving his last years, with characteristic unselfishness and devotion, to the organization of the college library.
The early Hoosier school-teachers were often poorly trained, and sometimes were adventurers from England, Scotland, or Ireland. Occasionally they were intemperate, and frequently they were eccentric characters, whose vagaries made them ridiculous before their pupils; but there were competent instructors among them. One of the most charming figures in the history of cultivation in Indiana is Mrs. Julia L. Dumont (1794-1857), who was born in Ohio, but for forty-three years resided at Vevay, in Switzerland County. Among all the light-bringers of the first half of the century in the Hoosier country Mrs. Dumont was one of the most distinguished; and she was easily the woman of most varied accomplishment in the Indiana of her day. She possessed an instinct for teaching, and Dr. Eggleston remembers that after she was sixty a schoolroom was built for her beside her husband’s house, and that she taught the Vevay High School in her old age, when no properly qualified teacher appeared to take charge of it. Dr. Eggleston draws her portrait from memory:—
“I can see the wonderful old lady now, as she was then, with her cape pinned awry, rocking her splint-bottom chair nervously while she talked, full of all manner of knowledge; gifted with something very like eloquence in speech, abounding in affection for her pupils and enthusiasm in teaching, she moved us strangely. Being infatuated with her we became fanatic in our pursuit of knowledge, so that the school hours were not enough, and we had a ‘lyceum’ in the evening for reading ‘compositions’ and a club for the study of history. If a recitation became very interesting, the entire school would sometimes be drawn into the discussion of the subject; all other lessons went to the wall; books of reference were brought out of her library; hours were consumed, and many a time the school session was prolonged until darkness forced us reluctantly to adjourn. Mrs. Dumont was the ideal of a teacher because she succeeded in forming character. She gave her pupils unstinted praise, not hypocritically, but because she lovingly saw the best in every one. We worked in the sunshine. A dull but industrious pupil was praised for diligence, a bright pupil for ability, a good one for general excellence. The dullards got more than their share, for, knowing how easily such an one is disheartened, Mrs. Dumont went out of her way to praise the first show of success in a slow scholar. She treated no two alike. She was full of all sorts of knack and tact, a person of infinite resource for calling out the human spirit.”[38]
Her natural grace and refinement gave to her discipline many a novel turn. She endeavored, and most happily succeeded in the attempt, to link the life of the time and place to “high thought and honorable deeds.” Once, during her administration of the Vevay High School, a game of ball proved so absorbing that the boys were an hour late in reporting after the noon recess. They found the teacher calmly enthroned in her rocking-chair. She did not ask for an explanation, but spoke to them firmly of their indifference; they had humiliated her, she said, before the whole town. No recesses would be allowed for a week, and an apology must be forthcoming the following day. The apology was duly submitted in writing. The remainder of the incident is best described in Dr. Eggleston’s own words:—
“The morning wore on without recess. The lessons were heard as usual. As the noon hour drew near, Mrs. Dumont rose from her chair and went into the library. We all felt that something was going to happen. She came out with a copy of Shakespeare, which she opened at about the fifth scene of the fourth act of the second part of King Henry IV. Giving the book to my next neighbor and myself, she bade us read the scene, alternating with the change of the speaker. You remember the famous dialogue in the scene between the dying king and the prince who has prematurely taken the crown from the bedside of the sleeping king. It was all wonderfully fresh to us and to our schoolmates, whose interest was divided between the scene and a curiosity as to the use the teacher meant to make of it. At length the reader who took the king’s part read:—
“‘O, my son!