PEDAGOGUES AND DEMAGOGUES.
Education—Colleges—School-Days—William and Mary—A Substitute— Boarding Around—Rough Diamonds—Caste—George M. Troup—A Scotch Indian—Alexander McGilvery—The McIntosh Family—Button Gwinnett— General Taylor—Matthew Talbot—Jesse Mercer—An Exciting Election.
The subject of education engaged the attention of the people of Georgia at a very early day subsequent to the Revolution. Public schools were not then thought of; probably because such a scheme would have been impracticable. The population was sparse, and widely separated in all the rural districts of the country; and to have supplied all with the means of education, would have necessitated an expense beyond the power of the State. A system was adopted, of establishing and endowing academies in the different counties, at the county-seat, where young men who intended to complete a collegiate education might be taught, and the establishment and endowment of a college, where this education might be finished, leaving the rudimental education of the children of the State to be provided for by their parents, as best they could. Primary schools were gotten up in the different neighborhoods by the concentrated action of its members, and a teacher employed, and paid by each parent at so much per capita for his children. In these schools almost every Georgian—yes, almost every Southerner—commenced his education. It was at these schools were mingled the sexes in pursuit of their A, B, C, and the incidents occurring here became the cherished memories of after life. Many a man of eminence has gone out from these schools with a better education with which to begin life and a conflict with the world, than is obtained now at some of the institutions called colleges.
Young men without means, who had acquired sufficient of the rudiments of an English education, but who desired to pursue their studies and complete an education to subserve the purposes of the pursuit in life selected by them, frequently were the teachers in the primary schools. From this class arose most of those men so distinguished in her earlier history. Some were natives, and some were immigrants from other States, who sought a new field for their efforts, and where to make their future homes. Such were William H. Crawford, Abram Baldwin, and many others, whose names are now borne by the finest counties in the State—a monument to their virtues, talents, and public services, erected by a grateful people.
These primitive schools made the children of every neighborhood familiar to each other, and encouraged a homogeneous feeling in the rising population of the State. This sameness of education and of sentiment created a public opinion more efficacious in directing and controlling public morals than any statutory law, or its most efficient administration. It promoted an esprit du corps throughout the country, and formed the basis of that chivalrous emprise so peculiarly Southern.
The recollections of these school-days are full of little incidents confirmatory of these views. I will relate one out of a thousand I might enumerate. A very pretty little girl of eight years, full of life and spirit, had incurred, by some act of childish mischief, the penalty of the switch—the only and universal means of correction in the country schools. She was the favorite of a lad of twelve, who sat looking on, and listening to the questions propounded to his sweetheart, and learning the decision of the teacher, which was announced thus: "Well, Mary, I must punish you."
All eyes were directed to William. Deliberately he laid down his books, and, stepping quickly up to the teacher, said, respectfully: "Don't strike her. Whip me. I'll take it for her," as he arrested with his hand the uplifted switch. Every eye in that little log school-house brightened with approbation, and, in a moment after, filled with tears, as the teacher laid down his rod and said: "William, you are a noble boy, and, for your sake, I will excuse Mary." Ten years after, Mary was the wife—the dutiful, loving, happy wife of William; and William, twenty years after, was a member of the Legislature, and then a representative in Congress, (when it was an honor to a gentleman to be such,) and afterwards was for years a Senator in the same body—one of Georgia's noblest, proudest, and best men.
Can any one enumerate an instance where evil grew out of the early association of the sexes at school? In the neighborhoods least populous, and where there were but few children, the pedagogue usually divided the year into as many parts as he had pupils, and boarded around with each family the number of days allotted to each child. If he was a man of family, the united strength of the neighborhood assembled upon a certain day, and built for him a residence contiguous to the school-house, which was erected in like manner.
These buildings were primitive indeed—consisting of poles cut from the forest, and, with no additional preparation, notched up into a square pen, and floored and covered with boards split from a forest-tree near at hand. It rarely required more than two days to complete the cabin—the second being appropriated to the chimney, and the chinking and daubing; that is, filling the interstices with billets of wood, and make these air-tight with clay thrown violently in, and smoothed over with the hand. Such buildings constituted nine-tenths of the homes of the entire country sixty years ago; and in such substitutes for houses were born the men who have moved the Senate with their eloquence, and added dignity and power to the bench of the Supreme Court of the nation, startled the world with their achievements upon the battle-field, and more than one of them has filled the Presidential chair.
Men born and reared under such circumstances, receive impressions which they carry through life, and their characters always discover the peculiarities incident to such birth and rearing—rough and vigorous, bold and daring, and nobly independent, without polish or deceit, always sincere, and always honest.