University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
SYSTEM AND THE GROWTH OF HIGHER
EDUCATION, 1871-1901

At the beginning of the War of Secession, Virginia was
well along the road to the creation of public free schools.
The growing density of population, the establishment of a
more democratic government, the increasing popular demand
for such schools, their successful operation in some localities
in the State, and the example of other states, accelerated the
movement in that direction. It would be useless to speculate
when this goal would have been reached, had war and Reconstruction
not come. It is sufficient to repeat that the public
school system of Virginia is not a blessed heritage of Reconstruction,
but the result of natural development in the State
itself. Had Reconstruction brought the public schools, the
undoing of Reconstruction would have caused their downfall.
A careful study of the history of public education leaves no
room to doubt that a large majority of the people of Virginia
were favorable to its introduction even though the constitutional
provision for a state-wide free school system was a
product of the notorious Underwood Convention.

The introduction of public schools would, however, have,
doubtless, been delayed had it been left entirely to the choice
of a native state government after the war. During the session
of the General Assembly of 1866-67, bills were introduced
to provide for common schools. A majority of the committee
to which they were referred reported that it was "impractical
and inexpedient, at the present time, to pass these bills." It
is interesting to note that a minority report strongly advocating

Agricultural High School

their immediate introduction was signed by Francis N.
Watkins of Prince Edward and J. McDowell Taylor. The
legislature felt too keenly the poverty of the State, and the
general political uncertainty, to embark on a new experiment
at that time. But in spite of these difficulties, the demands for
public schools continued. The representative of the trustees
of the Peabody Fund reported to the Convention of 1867-68
that much enthusiasm for free public education had been
expressed in a recent meeting of the Educational Association
of Virginia. He had been especially impressed by a report of
Prof. John B. Minor of the University of Virginia.[1]

Those who controlled the destinies of Virginia during
Reconstruction did not hesitate to introduce a public school
system. They were familiar with its operation in their native
Commonwealths. Since they were, for the most part, propertyless
transients in the State, they had no fear of increasing
the tax burden. They also felt the responsibility of educating
the colored people whom they had freed.

The question of free schools came before the Convention
of 1867-68 three days after it met. The Radicals both white
and colored advocated the early introduction of a public school
system. A negro member introduced a resolution giving the
"right to every person to enter any college, seminary, or other
public institution of learning, as students, [sic] upon equal
terms with each other, regardless of race, color, previous condition
of loyalty, or disloyalty, freedom or slavery." The
question of mixed schools arose continually during the debates
on education throughout the session of the Convention and
reappeared in the debates on the school law in the General
Assembly of 1869-70.

Although the colored members were insistent for such a
measure, they were not followed by their white Radical allies.

The Conservative members in the convention reflected the fear
of Conservatives throughout Virginia that the Convention
would unduly mortgage the revenue of the State and would
injure its credit. Their anxiety to prevent mixed schools, and
to guard the public credit, led them to advocate an assurance
of the necessary revenue for the support of free schools before
providing definitely for their establishment. The debates in
the Convention also show that the Conservatives were loth to
assume at this time the burden of negro education. The negro
leaders rebuked their white brethren for not advocating
"mixed schools," which they had promised the negroes in
the Radical convention of April 17, 1867, which met in the
African Church. W. A. Hodges warned the white Republicans
that but for "de bone, and de sinews, and de muscle, and de
skin, which was de colored people, de Rippublican party would
hardly be a skeleton." Another negro, Kelso, thought it
"very strange that no white Republican had spoken in favor
of" mixed schools. In answer to this, a Conservative suggested
that the white Radicals would not patronize mixed
schools themselves. And when a member from New York
stated that he had sent his children to mixed schools for four
years, a Conservative member from Virginia immediately
inquired whether or not "the gentleman's children were mixed
children." Under such unfavorable circumstances, and in the
midst of such bitterness, was the article relating to public
education (Article VIII) written into the Virginia Constitution
of 1869.[2]

Mr. Willis A. Jenkins, a veteran schoolman of Virginia,
states that this article as finally adopted was largely the work
of Dr. W. H. Ruffner, aided by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, who
"besieged the Underwood Convention" and "by indefatigable
labor succeeded in having incorporated in the Virginia Constitution

* * * much that had already been written in
the Constitution of New York State."[3]

The Conservatives in the convention were further aided in
preventing objectionable clauses by Dr. Barnas Sears, of
Massachusetts, the first general agent of the Peabody Fund
in the South.[4]

Article VIII provided a simple outline for the school system
and specified that it should be introduced before 1876.
Time limits were also set for the filling in of this outline
through the passage of the necesary laws by the general
assembly. It further provided for school districts in each
county, under a board of three trustees; a state superintendent
of public instruction, elected for a term of four years
by the General Assembly; a board of education, with power
to appoint division superintendents, high schools, agricultural
schools, and normal schools, as soon as practicable; a
permanent literary fund; and a tax for financing the schools.

The Legislature which met on October 5, 1869, the first to
assemble after Reconstruction, was given the responsibility
of creating the system of public instruction provided by the
constitution. It was made up of conservative men, who determined
to bring about political harmony by fulfilling to the
best of their ability the requirements of the new state constitution.
It contained a Conservative majority of twenty in
the Senate, and more than fifty in the House of Delegates.
Of the twenty-seven negro members, three were Conservatives.
Governor Walker, a Republican, who had allied himself
with the Conservatives, called the attention of the Assembly
to the educational provisions of the constitution. The committee
on education in the House was composed of eight Conservatives
and four Radicals, two of whom were negroes; and

that of the Senate consisted of five Conservatives and two
Radicals, one of whom was colored.[5] Although the Assembly
entertained serious doubts as to the educational provisions of
the constitution they determined "not merely to comply with"
the document "as a matter of form, but to make the experiment
in good faith."[6]

This Assembly appointed on March 2, William H.
Ruffner, D. D., the first state superintendent of public instruction
in Virginia. It could hardly have made a more fortunate
choice. There were fifteen candidates for the position.
Doctor Ruffner, who was named by Gen. Robert E. Lee, was
unanimously elected by the General Assembly. William Henry
Ruffner, who has been called the "Horace Mann of the
South," was born at Lexington, Virginia, February 11, 1824.
He was the son of Henry Ruffner, president of Washington
College, who, long before the War of Secession, was an
opponent of slavery, and one of Virginia's most earnest advocates
of public free schools. He graduated from Washington
College in 1842. For three years after graduation, he was
engaged in business. He then returned to his alma mater and
acquired the master's degree. After studying theology at
Union Theological Seminary, and at Princeton, he was chaplain
at the University of Virginia for a time. From 1851
to 1853, he was pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church at
Philadelphia. Then ill health, brought about by overwork,
forced him to retire to a farm in Virginia.

On March 28, only twenty-three days after he had qualified
as superintendent, and five days before the brief interval of
thirty days allowed by the constitution, Superintendent Ruffner
presented his plan of public instruction to the General
Assembly. At the request of the chairman of the committee
on schools and colleges in the House of Delegates, he prepared
a detailed plan for the school system written in the form of

Washington and Lee University, Lexington

a bill.[7] After a few revisions by Prof. John B. Minor, who
had been an outspoken advocate of public education for thirty
years, the bill was considered in a joint meeting of the Senate
and the House committees on April 26. The joint committee
reported it without any change to the legislature, and it was
printed. It had as its leading advocates in the Assembly two
Conservatives. Maj. Henderson M. Bell championed the bill
in the House of Delegates. It passed that body by a vote of
seventy-one to thirty-three. The debate for the bill was led
in the Senate by Col. Edmund Pendleton. Doctor Ruffner sat
next to him and aided him in answering his opponents. The
Senate approved the measure by the large majority of twenty-three
to three. There was no serious opposition in the legislature
to its main features. On July 11, 1870, it was signed
by Governor Walker and became a law.

The act entitled "An Act to Establish and Maintain a
Uniform System of Public Free Schools"[8] was both rapidly
and admirably drawn. Its author did not have to go abroad
to find his ideas. For thirty years earlier, his father,
Dr. Henry Ruffner, president of Washington College (now
Washington and Lee University), had drafted an educational
program for the State which outlined a system of public
schools almost identical with the one which his son embodied
in the Act of 1870. It included, besides free elementary and
secondary schools and normal schools, better facilities for
educating women, better school architecture, school libraries,
and other progressive features, which his son, the first state
superintendent, advocated during the whole of his administration.
There can be no doubt that Superintendent Ruffner was
greatly indebted to his father for his educational program.[9]

A centralized school system was provided which was better

suited for the needs of the State than the decentralized district
system of New England.[10] The administration was in the
hands of a state board of education, a state superintendent
of public instruction, division superintendent, and district
trustees. The state board was composed of the governor, the
attorney-general, and the superintendent of public instruction.
This board had charge of the investment and distribution
of school funds, and was given other powers that had
been vested in the board of the Literary Fund. The second
auditor, however, continued to be the custodian of the fund.
The board had the appointment, with the Senate's consent,
of division superintendents and of the trustees; it could make
by-laws, hear appeals from superintendents, and had general
supervision of the schools. But the chief responsibility of
the system was to rest on the shoulders of the state superintendent
of public instruction. He was elected for a four-year
term by a joint ballot of the General Assembly.

The division superintendents, elected by the board of education,
were to receive a salary not exceeding $350. It was
their duty to supervise the schools in the districts, to visit
schools, to send reports with statistics to the state superintendent,
and to examine teachers with questions prepared by
the state board, and to grade and grant certificates to the
teachers. The trustees in each school district (which coincided
with the township—later magisterial—district) were chosen
for terms of three years by the state board. They formed a
corporate body in each district. Their duties were to locate
and to build the school houses, provide fuel, choose the
teachers, furnish books to indigent children, act as a board
of review in questions of discipline when appealed to, and
to submit to the electors questions of district school taxes.
The next year the district trustees were organized into county
boards, which were corporate bodies that met annually for
business purposes. In 1875, a law was passed which provided

for sub-districts where they should be desired, which gave
the patrons within their limits almost complete control over
the schools. It was, however, practically a dead letter. Further
decentralization was brought about two years later by
the creation of county trustee electoral boards composed in
each case of the county superintendent of schools, the commonwealth's
attorney and the county judge. These boards
elected the trustees and served as boards of appeal from
them.[11]

Separate schools were provided for white and colored
children. Only the simple, fundamental school subjects—
spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and geography—were
allowed except under certain restrictions, since
it was felt that the financial condition of the State did not
warrant the broadening of the curriculum at that time. For
the same reason, high schools and normal schools were not
inaugurated at first. The school term should not be less than
five months, and a stated average was required for the organization
or continuation of a school.

Although provision for public schools had been made on
the statute books with creditable promptness, there were
many difficulties in the way of making the schools a reality.
The first annual reports of the county superintendents to
the state superintendent relate the chief difficulties which
confronted them. These and others which may be mentioned
can be summed up in the two words, prejudices and poverty.
One form of prejudice resulted from inertia. There are
always people in a community who oppose any deviation
from the trodden paths. Virginia without public schools had
been good enough for them. The word "free" offended others.
So long had the State maintained free schools for paupers
only, that "free schools" to many was synonymous with
"pauper schools." Another group, which was large and influential,
believed that it was contrary to sound principles of

government for the State to go into the school business. A few
years after the establishment of the school system, Prof.
Bennett Puryear, of Richmond College (now University of
Richmond), one of the ablest opponents of public schools,
while debating with another Richmond College professor,
who was one of their most brilliant advocates, argued that
the introduction of public free schools would result eventually
in State paternalism. He pointed out with convincing
logic that free schools would bring compulsory education,
and that compulsory education would force the Commonwealth
to provide free books, free clothes, and free lunches
for its children. Rev. Robert Lewis Dabny, D. D., a professor
in Union Theological Seminary, was an able ally of
Doctor Puryear. He was one of the most profound theologians
of the Presbyterian Church and had acquired additional fame
as one of the fighting preachers on Stonewall Jackson's staff,
and as a biographer of his great chief. Doctor Dabney also
pointed out with great forcefulness the evils of "agrarianism"
which would result from the free school system.

The tendency of the dominant party in Congress to meddle
in the domestic affairs of the states of the South made
increasingly difficult the rebuilding of those states in an
orderly and enlightened manner. Dr. Barnas Sears, in his
report of October, 1875, to the Peabody Fund, said that,
during the previous year, "the subject of public free schools
has been more fully discussed in the South than during any
previous year. The protracted consideration of the bill contemplating
`mixed schools,' by both houses of Congress, gave
occasion to the opponents of popular education to rally their
forces and make an assault upon the whole system. The
defence by the state superintendents and others had been
equally earnest and convincing. No sensible and careful
observer supposes for a moment that the public schools in
any Southern State will be abolished."

The assault on the public school system in Virginia reached
its high water mark in a famous debate conducted through

the medium of the public press in the spring of 1876, the
year in which James G. Blaine revived the bitter sectional
hatreds in Congress and throughout the country by "waving
the bloody shirt." Its participants were eminent Presbyterian
preachers—Dr. R. L. Dabney, the leading opponent of
public education, and Dr. W. H. Ruffner, the founder of the
state public school system, and its greatest champion. The
debate began in April, 1876, with a series of articles by Doctor
Dabney against free schools, in the Planter and Farmer.
Doctor Ruffner answered with four articles in the Richmond
Dispatch and in the Richmond Enquirer. Doctor Dabney in
turn answered with four more articles in the same two papers.
Ruffner then responded in a series of seven articles in the
Enquirer.

During the course of the debate, Dabney spoke of the state
school system as a "craze" and as a "Yankee invention."
Ruffner answered that "the Yankees have sought out many
inventions, but they didn't invent public schools," and gave
facts to prove his statement. Dabney even went so far as to
assert, "If our civilization is to continue, there must be a
class who must work and not read" (referring of course to
the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water"), and he
proceeded to paint a gloomy picture of increasing race hatred
and strife which would only be terminated by Federal bayonets.
Ruffner, who championed the education of negroes,
replied, "We should not be insensible to the moral claims
these people have as human beings upon their fellow-men.
The negro, like every other organism, higher and lower, is
improvable under culture. He may be made more intelligent,
more moral, more industrious, and more skillful. He may
be taught much of his civic and social duty. And just in proportion
as he is really improved, in that proportion is he a
more orderly and productive member of society."

In answer to Dabney's argument that public education
would "only prepare the way for that abhorred fate, amalgamation,"
Ruffner replied that public schools would "foster

among the negroes the pride of race which will have a purifying
and stimulating power, and will gradually overcome that
contemptible ambition to associate with white people, which
has been instilled into their minds by the blundering policy of
the Northern people and the Federal Government. We find
negroes in our churches, our theatres, our courthouses, our
rail-cars, our halls of legislation; but there is one place where
no negro enters, and that is a white public schoolhouse. The
law separates the races in education, and in nothing else."

To Dabney's argument that the children in the public
schools would not receive religious training, Ruffner replied
that they were not receiving such instruction in the old field
schools. The superintendent then showed that, where popular
education had been introduced, crime had fled before knowledge.
Dabney now brought forward social objections to public
schools. "There must be," he said, "a mixture of the children
of the decent and the children of the vile in the same society.
* * * They must be daily brought into personal contact
with the cutaneous and other diseases, the vermin, the
obscenity, the groveling sentiments, and violences of the
gamins."

Ruffner answered that such conditions would not be
allowed in a properly regulated school system.

Dabney's most practical appeal was to poverty. The State
was still too poor and too heavily indebted to carry an expensive
school system. Ruffner argued that the State would make
no better pecuniary investment than the improvement of the
minds and the earning power of her citizens.

Fortunately for Virginia, there were very few influential
men opposed to her new school system. "Indeed," said
Doctor Ruffner, "in all my reading, I have met with but two
names since the days of Governor Berkeley recorded in opposition
to universal education—R. L. Dabney and B. Puryear.[12]

Debates on the public school system lasted for several
years. There are Virginians with the prospect of many years

of active service ahead of them who can remember these
debates, which they read in the newspapers, or heard in their
homes, at political gatherings, around the country stores, and
on street corners. The question, "Resolved, that public
schools should be abolished," furnished the youth in schools
and colleges the subject for many a forensic battle. But the
schools, like those modern subjects of debate, "trusts" and
the "gold standard," had come to stay. Unlike these subjects,
however, the public schools were never in serious danger of
losing the support of public opinion in Virginia. The negative
always had the better side of the argument. The annual
reports of the division superintendents show that prejudice
against the schools rapidly died out.

There is a tendency among some to ascribe the opposition
to the public school system to the prejudice of the "aristocracy."
This belief, doubtless, originated as propaganda of
the Readjustors, who accused their opponents, whom they
styled the "Bourbons," of opposing that democratic institution.
Although there were some individuals who were too
undemocratic to support public schools, most of those among
the well-to-do who opposed them in Virginia did so because
they did not wish to be taxed to educate the children of others
when they were already employing tutors, or sending their
own children to good private schools. I can reach but one
conclusion through a close study of this period, and through
conversations with those who lived at the time, that is, that
the successful introduction of public schools was made possible
through the earnest cooperation of all classes in the
State, led by the most substantial element—the so-called
aristocrats.

The distressing poverty of the people of Virginia after
the war made the introduction of public schools a very difficult
problem. Many citizens who wanted them felt that the state
debt should be paid before the State should incur any new
financial responsibility. But the very poverty of the people
made irresistible the demand for free schools. The war and

the hard times which followed left most of the people of Virginia
without the means of educating their children. Those
who had grown from youth into manhood during that unhappy
period were determined to give to their children that training
of which they themselves had been deprived. After they had
come to see with Superintendent Ruffner that "a public school
is no more a provision of charity than a town pump," the
people of Virginia welcomed the public schools and gave to
them their loyal support.[13]

While the people of the State were discussing the merits
of public schools, Virginia's first superintendent of public
instruction was rapidly building a school system.

Dr. Henry Ruffner had said in his great report to the
General Assembly of 1841-42, "The public schools must be
good. They must be emphatically colleges for the people. If
they are not good enough for the rich they will not be fit for
the poor."[14] It was in this spirit that his son, Dr. William H.
Ruffner, began his new mission.

The constitution provided for the gradual introduction of
public schools "into all the counties of the State by the year
1874, or as much earlier as may be practicable." But they
were inaugurated long before the expiration of this time
limit.

At the first meeting of the Board of Education on July 29,
1870, twelve county superintendents were chosen. The first
of these to "take the field * * * under our new system"
was Rev. Benjamin M. Smith, D. D., of Prince Edward
County, professor in Union Theological Seminary (then
located at Hampden Sidney). Prince Edward's first superintendent
had, long before the war, been one of Virginia's most
active advocates of public education.[15]

By January 2, 1871, the board had appointed the remaining
division superintendents and the district trustees. These
1,400 assistants had been chosen with great care by Superintendent
Ruffner, for the success of the infant school system
depended upon their effective cooperation. They were all men
of standing in their respective communities, conservatives of
liberal spirit, who could command the respect of their neighbors.
But they had to be enlightened in the needs and methods
of public schools. Their leader had inherited from his father
a love and knowledge of public education, and was a constant
student of the school systems of the United States and of
other countries. The Superintendent instructed his numerous
assistants in these matters by means of letters, circulars, and
the eight pages which he had reserved in the Educational
Journal for his own official use.

Although there were no public funds available for schools
before January 1, 1871, many districts voted to lay a local
tax for school purposes. In a number of the counties,—
between a fourth and a half,—schools were already opened, or
were ready to open, by private subscriptions.

Many of these were originally private schools and had
been adopted into the public school system. But the private
subscriptions continued to be paid. And in many cases the
teachers continued their work as if no changes had occurred.
In May, 1871, before the end of the first school year, a vote
was taken in each county (Warwick excepted) to decide on
the levying of additional local taxes to secure funds for the
salary of teachers, and, in some instances, to increase the
pay of county superintendents. In seventy-three counties containing
an aggregate population of 841,584, the taxes were
voted. In twenty-five counties, having a total population of
238,105, the decision was against the additional tax. The
opposition in some of these counties was due to the fact that
the necessary money for schools had already been provided.
In others, there was a reluctance to increase taxes because
of some special tax burden that was already being carried.

Only in a very few counties was the defeat of the tax measure
due to hostility to public schools. The counties which were
opposed to increasing their school taxes were not confined to
any definite geographical section.[16]

On March 2, 1872, the Superintendent stated that in addition
to the "supplementary tax" voted in the seventy-three
counties, 372 out of 409 districts had voted a school tax for
district purposes. The rate of taxation ranged in the counties
from 2½ cents to 25 cents, and in the school districts from
half a cent to to 50 cents on $100 worth of property. In addition,
ten counties appropriated a poll tax of 50 cents as a
whole or in part for school purposes. Local expenses were
paid in many districts by private gifts.[17]

These facts give further proof that a great majority of
the people of Virginia were favorable to public education.
They give concrete evidence against the unfortunate idea,
which too often exists even among Virginians, that the public
schools of the State were an unwelcome blessing to the good
people of that time.

In the meanwhile, schools were being rapidly established.
As early as December, 1870, they had been opened by private
arrangement in about a third of the counties. "Virginia,
for the first time," said Doctor Ruffner, "is entering upon
a systematic production of the most valuable commodity
which can be possessed by a state or offered in the markets of
the world—namely, trained mind. Nothing else commands so
high a price, or produces such large results."

The Constitution of 1869 had provided that "each city and
county shall be held accountable for the destruction of school
property that may take place within its limits by incendiaries
or open violence." This clause was unnecessary, as later
events proved.

The early schoolhouses, thus jealously guarded by the constitution,
were very primitive in most cases. They represented
literally and figuratively the pioneer or log school-house era
in the history of our public schools. Of the 3,036 schoolhouses
in Virginia at the end of the first school year (August, 1871),
1,725, or over 56 per cent, were made of logs. Only 181 were
of brick or stone. About 15 per cent (452) of all the schools
were reported unfit for use. Only 190 school buildings were
owned by the respective districts.[18]

The total value of school property owned by the districts
amounted in the beginning to $211,166. The property not
owned was rented or furnished free. The furniture was usually
made by local carpenters.

In these schools, there were taught, during the first session,
131,088 pupils. The number had increased to 166,377
during the second year. Of the latter, 119,641 were white and
46,736 were colored. The percentage of the school population
(5 to 21 years of age) enrolled increased during these
two years from 31.8 to 40.5 per cent. In the first year, however,
only 27.8 per cent of the white children of school age,
and 16.1 per cent of the colored, were in average daily
attendance.

The trustees had great difficulty in securing teachers at
the meager salaries which they offered. But poverty once
more came to the aid of the public schools. Superintendent
Ruffner reported that the "reverses which have befallen so
many of our most cultivated people were incidentally converted
into blessings to the children of the State, by furnishing
a large number of accomplished teachers." More than
two-thirds of these teachers in Virginia at that time were
men. The average school term was about four and a half
months (4.66 months). The subjects taught were elementary
in most schools. The first list of text-books adopted by the
board included many written by Virginians. Among them

were Holmes's speller, reader, and a history of the United
States, McGuffey's reader and speller, which had a national
reputation even before the War of Secession, Venable's Arithmetic,
and Maury's geography.

The public schools were supplemented by the private
schools, many of which had survived the war. Of these, there
were 165 primary and high schools (academies), ten colleges
and twelve "technical" schools. Their average terms were
longer than that of the public schools. There were enrolled
in the primary and high schools about 16,300 whites and
1,476 colored children. Doctor Ruffner states that the public
schools, with few exceptions, were considered as good as, or
better than, the old private schools of like grade.

At the end of the second school year, much progress had
been made all along the line. In his report of 1872, the Superintendent
discussed almost every phase of school work and
laid plans for many needed improvements—trained teachers
and means of training them, better and more attractive
schoolhouses, libraries, better courses of study, more opportunities
for the education of women, et cetera. This program
could not be realized for many years. But a beginning had
been made, and Dr. Ruffner could now say with good cause,
"We have reason to thank God and take courage."

Courage was needed, for, during the third year, there was
a decrease in school attendance from many causes—poverty,
epidemic diseases, bad weather, bad roads, and incompetent
teachers. The decrease was also due to some extent to an
improvement in the school standards. Further discouragement
came during the session of 1873-74, when the continued
agitation in Congress of the civil rights bill threatened to give
the freedmen equal rights with the whites in all schools, hotels,
common carriers, churches, and places of amusement. The
prospect of mixed schools brought a feeling of distrust for the
public school system. Had Congress passed the bill, it would
have killed public education in Virginia. Fully one-third of
the county superintendents resigned during these three

years—a further evidence of the critical condition of the
schools.

While Republican politicians were doing their partisan
worst in Congress, nobler spirits in the North were silently
undoing their mischief to the public schools. Virginia can
never forget her debt to George Peabody and the agents and
trustees of the fund which he established to encourage education
in the South. Peabody was a native of Massachusetts.
He spent the last thirty years of his life in London and had
acquired a large fortune. In February, 1867, he gave a million
dollars and a large amount of securities for education in the
late Confederacy. The income from the fund was to be used
to aid in developing common school education. Mr. Peabody
added another million dollars and additional securities to the
fund in 1869. At that time he came to Virginia to spend the
last summer of his life.

The first general agent of the Peabody fund was
Dr. Barnas Sears, president of Brown University, and former
secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.[19] Upon
his appointment in March, 1867, Dr. Sears made Staunton,
Virginia, his home until his death, in July, 1880. During these
thirteen years, he was a warm friend and ally of
Doctor Ruffner and greatly endeared himself to the people
of Virginia. His first service was the aid which he rendered
in drafting a suitable constitutional provision for schools in
the Constitution of 1869.

Help from the fund was given only to those schools which
were willing to raise additional sums, and which would agree
to conform to certain standards. In this way, schools were

developed at numerous points in the South which served as
models to their neighbors. The income and the principal were
later devoted to the training of teachers.

This period of depression was followed by several years
steady growth. In 1874, Governor Kemper became a member
of the school board by virtue of his office. Ruffner and Kemper
had graduated at Washington College in the same year, and
both were speakers at the graduation exercises. Ruffner spoke
on "The Power of Knowledge," and Kemper on "The Importance
of a Free School System in Virginia." By a happy turn
in the wheel of fortune, they were together again—two of the
three members of the State Board of Education.

But the skies had no sooner begun to clear than another
storm arose. The state debt controversy had already overshadowed
the political horizon and soon threatened the very
existence of the public schools. Although the constitution had
set aside certain funds for school purposes, the officers of the
State had diverted them into other channels as the tax-receivable
coupons began to undermine the State's revenues.
When the subject was brought before the courts, it was held
that the payment of sufficient revenue to the schools did not
impose upon the Legislature a higher obligation than that
of paying interest on the public debt. "The people must be
educated, but they must not be educated at the price of repudiation
and dishonor. Better would be ignorance than enlightenment
purchased at such a fearful price."[20]

Superintendent Ruffner, who had called attention to this
loss in school funds in his report of 1876, worked faithfully
to protect the interests of the schools, but to no avail. In
1878, he estimated that the indebtedness to teachers amounted
to $250,000 and that many schools had closed. Governor
Holliday, who had been elected on a platform of debt payment,
vetoed the 1878 measure, which would have protected the
revenue of the school at the expense, if need be, of the bondholder.
The State, he said, had no more right than a citizen
to educate its children at the expense of its creditors.[21]

In 1879, the number of pupils enrolled, which had already
decreased 2,700 during the previous year, fell from 202,244
to 108,074. In some counties every school was closed.[22] At
this time there were 2,089 white and 415 colored teachers.
Their average school term was 5.36 months, and their average
salary was $30.05 for men and $24.73 for women.

The Superintendent had no complaint of the honesty or
faithfulness of the state officials. And he consoled himself
with the observation that the decrease of school facilities had
caused the people to appreciate their worth more fully. Doctor
Ruffner's efforts were finally rewarded by the passage
on March 3, 1879, of the Henkel Act, which secured to the
schools the revenues set aside for them by the constitution
and laws of the State. Subsequent legislation was even more
generous. By an act of April 21, 1882, $400,000 of the money
which the State received from the sale of its share of the
Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad was appropriated to
the public schools, to be paid in four equal annual installments.
It was stated in the preamble to the act that its purpose
was to restore in part the money which had been diverted
from the schools. It further stated that "the General Assembly
conceives it to be its paramount duty under the constitution"
to restore to the schools the remainder of the $1,544,765.59
which had been diverted from the school funds from
1870 to 1879.[23]

During the course of the next few years the public schools
were repaid what was due them.

In spite of the improvement in the schools from the material
point of view, they were sadly lacking in good teachers.
The Superintendent officially records that, in the larger
cities of the State, "some really fine teachers may be found,"
and "sometimes in the smaller places, one meets a true, well

furnished teacher who knows his subjects thoroughly, and
has good methods of instruction and discipline * * * But
most frequently the sad spectacle of misrule and superficial
teaching meets the eye, and, what is worst of all, the teachers'
poor performance is often satisfactory to him or herself, to
the school board, and to the community."

The teachers, however, were not altogether to blame for
this sad state of affairs. The schools were not graded,
although Doctor Ruffner was constantly advocating consolidation
and grading. Attendance was irregular in many cases
and teaching facilities were inadequate. But, worst of all, the
teachers themselves had little opportunity to become "well
furnished" in their profession. The women had no means
in those hard times for attending the colleges or normal
schools for their sex outside of Virginia, and such schools
were not provided at home. The need of better methods
for teaching children, and for giving the teachers a knowledge
of them, was early recognized by a large number of leaders
in the State. They were much influenced by what was being
done along these lines in Europe. A citizen of Lynchburg,
as early as 1824, wrote in a local paper, "We hope the
time is not far distant when we shall have a State Model
School established, to which our citizens may look for an improved
and rational system of public instruction."[24]

In 1840, a memorial from the Rockbridge Agricultural
Society, presented by J. D. Ewing, President Henry Ruffner
of Washington College, and Superintendent Francis H. Smith
of the Virginia Military Institute, suggested to the Legislature
the establishment of a state normal school, in which each
student should "serve the State as a teacher five years, in
consideration of the expense of his education."[25] In the meanwhile,
Randolph-Macon College had in 1839 made an unsuccessful
attempt to inaugurate a department for training
teachers. There were other futile attempts to establish normal

schools, or normal departments, in order to provide better
teachers. The state student plan for the same purpose
was more successful. In 1830, Thomas W. Gilmer proposed
that a number of state students should be exempted from
certain fees at the University of Virginia on condition that
they should teach, after graduation, a few years in Virginia.[26]
This suggestion was afterwards adopted there and in other
institutions of the Commonwealth. The plan was introduced
at the Virginia Military Institute in 1844 by act of legislature.
State students were obligated to teach two years in
Virginia. General Smith stated in 1868 that, of the 2,390
graduates prior to that date, 390 had been state students.[27]
In relating the aims of his institution, he places first "to provide
competent teachers for the schools of the commonwealth,
as a State Normal School."

This brief excursion into the past has been made for the
purpose of showing that the teacher-training idea by normal
schools and by other means was not new in Virginia prior
to the war.

The State Constitution of 1869 had provided for the establishment
of normal schools by the board as soon as possible.
Provision for them had been made in Dr. Henry Ruffner's
plan in 1840, and it was but natural that his son, Dr. W. H.
Ruffner, should have strongly advocated them. But the
financial condition of Virginia made the founding of normal
schools impossible during the decade following Reconstruction.
In June, 1867, however, the people of Richmond organized
the first Normal School Association of Richmond, with
the purpose of establishing a white normal school and continuing
it until it could be made a state institution. As a
result of its labors, a school was opened in October of the

same year. Enrollment was limited to twenty the first year,
and to forty the second. Funds were obtained for its maintenance
of the city of Richmond, the Peabody fund, and
the Soldiers' Memorial Society, of Boston. Mr. Andrew
Washburne, of Massachusetts, who subsequently acted as the
city superintendent of Richmond, was its administrator. Its
life, though brief, was useful. When the schools were organized,
Doctor Ruffner was forced to introduce teachers' institutes.
They were organized in most of the counties and
cities in 1880. In some parts of Virginia, these had developed
into summer normal institutes, with sessions from four
to six weeks in length. They were, however, only of local
interest.

The first attempt to establish a State-wide summer normal
school was made by Superintendent Ruffner in 1880,
when he obtained permission of the University of Virginia
to use its buildings for this purpose, and secured the cooperation
of members of its faculty in the work. The chief
purpose of the institute was to give real practical instruction
along lines which bore directly upon the daily work of the
primary teacher. For this work, three public school men
were engaged as the regular faculty—Prof. W. M. Newell,
principal of the State Normal School of Maryland and state
superintendent of schools; Rev. W. B. McGilvray, of Richmond;
and Prof. A. L. Funk, of Staunton, then living in Red
Cloud, Nebraska; all men of experience and skill in the public
school work, and all familiar with the processes of the new
education.

An account of the manner in which this first summer
normal school was conducted should be of interest.

The school opened at five o'clock in the afternoon of July
14, with the address of Governor Holliday for the Board of
Education, followed by Professor Newell, who served as
principal. The next morning the regular school exercises
began, and were continued day after day successfully, and
without intermission to the close. The usual routine was to

assemble the whole body of teachers in the public hall at half
past eight in the morning, commence with short devotional
exercises, follow with two and sometimes three lectures of
forty minutes each on the science and practical methods of
school teaching, interspersed with vocal music, calisthenics,
and brief recesses. At 12 M. the school was divided into
eight sections and marched into as many lecture rooms, to
be further instructed and drilled by repeaters who were
selected teachers of ability, and in some cases county and city
superintendents, and who acted under the supervision, and
with the assistance, of the regular instructors. At 5 o'clock
P. M. the school was again assembled in the public hall to
listen to a lecture from some one of the university professors.
This order was partially interrupted by lectures from the
superintendent of public instruction.

Although its enrollment was good (there were 312 men
and 155 women) and, in the language of Doctor Ruffner,
"Satisfaction and even pleasure prevailed among the members,"[28] the institute was not continued.

A similar institute for colored teachers was opened at
Lynchburg with the cooperation of Supt. E. C. Glass of that
city on July 15, 1880.

These institutes were made possible through the aid of
the Peabody Fund. Contributions from this fund were later
used in maintaining Peabody normal institutes for white and
colored teachers in several cities of the State.

The impetus which Doctor Ruffner gave to the training
of teachers continued to develop in strength in spite of the
fact that the Superintendent himself was swept out of office
by the political storm that had gathered, and was forced to

leave the completion of his great work to less able hands.
In February, 1879, the Readjuster party was created. Under
the leadership of Mahone and Massey, it was an exceedingly
active body from the beginning. Since the Funders had been
unwilling to repudiate their obligations to the creditors, even
though the public schools might suffer, the Readjusters, with
some success, attempted to make it appear that their opponents,
the "Bourbons," as they called them, were hostile to
public free schools. It was false propaganda. While the
campaign in the fall, 1879, was in progress, the Superintendent
wrote that, "in the furious political canvass which is
now going on as I write, each of the three parties in the field
is trying to prove that its views, of all those advocated, are
the very views, and the only views which will protect the
school system from spoliation."

The following statistics of the year 1880[29] show the conditions
of the schools near the end of Ruffner's administration:

       

	School population (5 to 21 years)	Pupils enrolled	Percentage of school population enrolled	Average daily attendance	Percentage of school population in average daily attendance
White	314,827	152,136	48.3	89,640	28.5
Colored	240,980	68,600	28.5	38,764	15.3
Total	555,807	220,736		128,404

Pupils enrolled in private schools

         

	Pupils over 21 years old	Number studying the higher branches	Primary schools	High schools and colleges	Teachers in private schools
					Male	Female
White	400	6,627	16,581	5,179	504	1,071
Colored	151	635	4,616	94	64	61
Total	551	7,262	21,197	5,273

Teachers in the public schools

       

	Male	Female	Total	Average salary		Average months taught
				Male	Female
White	2,478	1,610	4,088	$29.20	$24.65	5.64
Colored	531	254	785

In addition to the original subjects taught in the schools
(reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar),
there had been added United States history and often
Virginia history. Vocal music, calisthenics, and drawing,
were also taught to some extent in the primary schools.
In many schools, the patrons supplemented the teachers'
salaries in order to have higher subjects taught—geometry
and algebra, Latin, French or German, and one or more
branches of physical science. There were in 1880, 7,262 pupils
studying these subjects as a whole or in part.

The Readjusters captured the General Assembly in 1879
and elected the governor of the State in 1881. Doctor Ruffner
was at heart a Funder, but he not only scrupulously avoided
politics himself, but also sent a circular letter to his division
superintendents urging them to keep party politics out of the
schools. Yet as early as 1880 there were signs that the school
system would fall a prey to Mahone's machine. "What has
all the figuring about the debt and the revenue to do with
school teaching anyway!" exclaimed the Superintendent in
his report of that year. "To threaten school officers and
teachers with the loss of their places because they fancy one
scheme rather than another of settling the public debt, is as
merciless a tyranny as was ever practiced by the legions of
Islam."

But the school system with its many officers and teachers
and its well organized machinery, which reached to every
district and fireside in the State, was too well adapted to
partisan use to be ignored by the Readjusters. Superintendent
Ruffner had united all factions and parties in support
of the public schools. Politics had played no part in his

policies. It had been the rule of the Board of Education
to keep division superintendents in office as long as possible,
and Doctor Ruffner could say in 1880, "nearly one-half of
our county superintendents have served from the beginning
of the school system."

If one should read the list of county and city superintendents
of 1880, and then turn to that of 1885, one would
find a new group of men. The Readjusters had come into

possession of the spoils (or the "loot," as the Funders
would probably have said). The slaughter of the superintendents
began when eighty-four whose terms had expired on
July 1, 1881, were considered for reappointment by the legislature
in December. Of more than half a hundred who failed
to receive the approval of the Senate at this time alone, two
score had served with Doctor Ruffner from the inauguration
of the first public schools. As others came to the end of
their terms, men from the party in power took their places
until the work was done. Boards of educational institutions
fared likewise.

Doctor Ruffner gave place in 1882 to a Readjuster, R. R.
Farr, a veteran twice wounded in the War of Secession, who
had served in the legislature since 1870. It is hard to get

a just estimate of Superintendent Farr because of his close
association with General Mahone, which cast a shadow over
him. He was openly accused of being lacking in education.
On the other hand, Willis A. Jenkins writes, "While Mr. Farr
was not the great educational leader that his predecessor
was, still he put forth much effective effort to promote the
public schools, and accomplished much that benefited them."
One of the leading Funders, Dr. J. L. M. Curry, wrote in
1885, "In my work as Peabody agent I found no superintendent
more devoted to the cause of public schools, more
energetic, more faithful, more efficient than Mr. Farr."[30]
And Doctor Ruffner himself stated in 1885, "So far as our
school matters are concerned, there has been nothing revolutionary
in the temper of the present administration, whilst
there has been vigor and a laudably progressive spirit."[31]

In 1883, Superintendent Farr called together and organized
the "Virginia Conference of County and City Superintendents
of Public Free Schools." This organization and
similar organizations which followed aided in developing a
professional spirit among public school men. The county superintendents
were still paid such small salaries that they looked
upon their office as an adjunct to some other profession.
Doctor Ruffner had called such a conference early in his
administration, but it was not made a permanent institution
at that time.

The most important development during Farr's administration
was the founding of two normal schools, the Normal
and Industrial Institute at Petersburg for training colored
teachers, and the Farmville State Normal for the whites.
In creating these schools, the State was continuing Doctor
Ruffner's program.

On March 31, 1879, just before the Readjuster storm

descended on the school system, a resolution adopted by the
Senate stated that no provision for the higher education of
women had yet been made by Virginia, and requested Superintendent
Ruffner to give in his next annual report an account
of what other commonwealths and countries were doing along
these lines. The Assembly wished this information to guide
it in making the necessary legislation for educating the women
of the State.

In his report of that year, Doctor Ruffner gave a lengthy
account of the development of education for women both in
America and in Europe. Men, he said, had "denied her means
of intellectual improvement, and then disparaged her intellect."
She needed education for her own pleasure and to
make a better companion for her husband and children. The
Superintendent had no words of praise for "the small class
of strong-minded women, who plagued society by their vulgar
audacity. But well-developed culture," he said, "will never
prevail among us until a women is regarded, and regards
herself, as complete in herself; and not as the necessary
adjunct and complement of some man. She is in, and of
herself, a perfect being, capable of a noble life, and of making
provision for her own wants. Self-culture is her first duty
and self-support her only indispensable purpose. Then,
if there is opened to her the prospect of a dignified and happy
career in the married state, she will be prepared to take advantage
of it. But if not, she will neither be impelled by a
morbid imagination, nor forced by conscious helplessness, to
risk her future on doubtful chances. She will remain an honored
and useful member of society."

Virginia already had a number of excellent private academies
(the seminaries) in which there were, in some cases
"an approach to collegiate study and instruction." But they
did not fill the need for higher institutions of learning for
women.

The Superintendent then suggested three possible schemes,
and discussed each one in turn—coeducation, coordination,

and separate normal schools for women. Coeducation, he
said, had been tried in other states and countries with successful
results. He predicted that the time was not far distant
when "superior institutions generally" would dispense their
"high privileges without distinction of sex." But at that
time, the idea was "repugnant to our prejudices." He
advised the legislature to build separate halls for women
near institutions of higher learning for men in order that

William and Mary College

the men and women could be taught by the same faculty in
each case. This arrangement, he thought, could be made "in
such a way as to be agreeable to public sentiment in Virginia."
If this arrangement could not be made, the Commonwealth
should create a thoroughly equipped state college like Smith
and Vassar.

His last suggestion, and the one which he considered most
apt to be adopted, was the establishment of normal schools
as required by the constitution. These schools should not only
have courses in methods of school organization and instruction,
but should also provide the courses necessary for a liberal

cultural education—real colleges which provided professional
normal courses for teachers. This plan was adopted.

On October 30, 1884, the State Female Normal School at
Farmville began its first session in an old academy building.
The State had given a meagre $5,000 for equipment and a
$10,000 annuity. An additional $2,000 was contributed by the
Peabody fund. The attendance during the first session was
about 120. Doctor Ruffner, who had served in a lucrative
position as a geologist since leaving the public school system,
was elected principal of the school. His friend, Doctor Curry,
was made president of the Board of Visitors. The Act of
March 7, 1884, creating the first of several institutions in Virginia
for training teachers, was not passed without a struggle
in the Assembly. There were many in that body who felt
that teachers were born, not made, and who ridiculed the
"Yankee idea of teaching teachers how to teach." Under the
leadership of Henry Robinson Pollard, Frank N. Watkins
and other liberal spirits, a majority for the measure was
secured. Since that time, other normal schools have been
established without opposition.[32]

Provision was made for giving normal training to men in
1888 by act of April 5 of that year, "to establish a normal
school at William and Mary College in connection with its
collegiate course." The State appropriated annually $10,000
to the college, and in 1906 assumed entire control over the
institution. This great old college had, like many people in
Virginia, lost during the war almost everything but its courage
and faith. It had suffered two conflagrations—in 1859
and in 1862—within a short period. It had twice arisen from
its ashes, but poorer each time. The soul of the college had
been Col. Benjamin S. Ewell, who, though a veteran of the
war, now labored earnestly to revive its body. He was armed
with a letter from his recent foe, General Meade, the hero of
Gettysburg, which described the burning of the college by

Federal troops as "unnecessary and unauthorized," and
which recommended with pleasure the appeal of Professor
Ewell to all those who had the means and the disposition
to assist him in the good work in which he was engaged.

"A few thousand dollars were subscribed," wrote Prof.
Herbert B. Adams, "by benevolent, whole-souled people in
New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington,
and elsewhere; but most generous of all gifts were those
from Virginia, for there, in the decade following the war,
men and women were less able to give to colleges and universities
than they are now. Enough money was contributed
to restore the main building of William and Mary, and to
organize the faculty anew, with departments of Latin, Greek,
mathematics, modern languages, natural science, philosophy,
and belles-lettres. But the annual expenses exceeded the
annual income. Old endowments had been lost; new ones
proved inadequate. At last, the professors were all dismissed
because their salaries could not be paid. Consequently, students
disappeared. The president alone remained at his post.
During one year he had one student, but even he has gone.
The president remains still at the college. At the opening
of every academic year in October, he causes the chapel bell
to be rung."[33]

In England, as early as 1866, the Virginia poet, John R.
Thompson, gave as "a labor of love" his services as a representative
of the college in asking funds. After much exertion
he succeeded in securing only a small sum of money and
a few books. The most substantial gift was twenty pounds
contributed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mr. Thompson
ascribed his failure to the "waning interest felt by the English
people in the affairs of any of the late Confederate States,

since the unhappy close of our war for independence; and the
fearfully depressed monetary condition in England."[34]

In order to apply the annual proceeds of the small endowment
to the payment of its debts, the college suspended its
activities for seven years, until this was accomplished.

During the latter part of the war, after the college had
been burned, there was some talk of removing the college
from Williamsburg. There was also danger that the college
might lose some of its vouchers in the numerous raids to
which the State was then subjected. President Ewell, in a
letter to Hugh Blair Grigsby, said that if these evils could
be thwarted the college "would in a reasonable time be more
prosperous than ever. If I could contribute to this, I should
think I had lived to some purpose." His labor was rewarded
when the doors of the college were again opened on October
4, 1888, with a faculty of six men. Doctor Ewell became
president emeritus and was succeeded by Dr. Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, son of President Tyler.[35] The life of the college was
now assured.