Part 3

“I believe ’tis nearly ten days since I wrote you a line. I have not felt in a humor to entertain you. If I had taken up my pen, perhaps some unbecoming invective might have fallen from it. The eyes of our rulers have been closed and a lethargy has seized almost every member. I fear a fatal security has taken possession of them. While the building is in flames they tremble at the expense of water to quench it. In short, two months have elapsed since the evacuation of Boston, and very little has been done in that time to secure it, or the harbor, from future invasion. The people are all in a flame, and no one among us, that I have heard of, even mentions expense. They think, universally, that there has been an amazing neglect somewhere.

“’Tis a maxim of state that ‘power and liberty are like heat and moisture; where they are well mixed everything prospers; where they are single they are destructive!’

“A government of more stability is much wanted in this colony, and they are ready to receive it at the hands of Congress.

“And since I have begun with maxims of state, I will add another, namely, that a people may let a king fall yet still remain a people; but if a king let his people slip from him he is no longer a king. And as this is most certainly our case, why not proclaim to the world, in decisive terms, your own importance? Shall we not be despised by foreign powers for hesitating so long at a word?”

To this Mr. Adams replied:

“PHILADELPHIA, _May 27, 1776_.

“I think you shine as a statesman, of late, as well as a farmeress. Pray where do you get your maxims of state? They are very apropos.”

All history shows how long the conception of a plan, in some acute mind, precedes the popular impulse toward it. The fertile mind of Daniel De Foe, in an “Essay on Projects,” published in 1699, suggests the plan of an Academy of Music, with hints for cheap Sunday concerts, an Academy for Military Science and Practice, and an Academy for Women.

This is the earliest project for a school of this grade, for women, and remained the only one for more than a century in England. In America, from the middle of the eighteenth century, academies were established in many towns where the law requiring instruction to fit boys for the university did not apply. Some of these opened their doors to girls, and, in a few instances, seminaries and academies for young ladies were founded, and, once inaugurated, they multiplied with constantly accelerating speed. A contemporary of these events, writing as “Senex” in “The American Journal of Education,” says: “When at length academies were opened for female improvement in the higher branches, a general excitement appeared in parents, and an emulation in daughters to attend them. The love of reading and habits of application became fashionable.”

There appear, from the first, to have been no discouragements from lack of mental capacity on the part of girls, even in the academies where they were instructed with boys.

The “Moravian Brethren” have the honor of founding the first private institution in America designed to give girls better advantages than the common schools. A female seminary was opened by them in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1749. Its service went beyond its own work, for Rev. Mr. Woodbridge records that “after the success of the Moravians in female education, the attention of gentlemen of reputation and influence was turned to the subject. Dr. Morgan, Dr. Rush,—the great advocate of education,—with others, instituted an academy for females in Philadelphia. Their attention and influence and care were successful, and from them sprang all the subsequent and celebrated schools in that city.”

It is presumed that it was of the “Philadelphia Female Academy,” which held commencement exercises from as early as 1794, that Mr. Woodbridge says, “In 1780, in Philadelphia, for the first time in my life, I heard a class of young ladies parse English.”

The “Penn Charter School” has a long and honorable record and has admitted girls for more than a century.

The Penn Charter School was founded in Philadelphia in 1697 as a public school, and has been carried on down to the present day under three charters granted by William Penn in the years 1701, 1708, 1711. These make provision, at the cost of the people called Quakers, for “all Children and Servants, Male and Female ... the rich to be instructed at reasonable rates, the poor to be maintained and schooled for nothing.” Provision is made in the charters for instruction of both sexes in “reading, writing, work, languages, arts, and sciences.”

The foundation laid is broad enough for a university for the people. As a matter of fact the girls and boys have always been educated separately, and the curriculum of the girls’ school has always been less advanced than that of the boys. The Latin school has not been opened to them, nor, it is believed, have the ancient languages been taught them.

In 1795, “Poor’s Academy for Young Ladies” became “a place of proud distinction to finished females.”

The earliest academy for girls in New England was founded in 1763, at Byfield, Mass., by bequest of William Dummer, whose name it took. In 1784, Leicester Academy, open to both sexes, was incorporated.

In the same year the “Friends” established a school which offered the higher education to girls at Providence, R. I. This has been of high repute down to the present day.

In the same city we find, in 1797, the advertisement of a gentleman who “will conduct a morning school for young ladies in reading, writing, and arithmetic,” and in 1808 Miss Brenton, at South Kingston, R. I., offers instruction which will include “epistolary style, as well as temple work, paper work, fringing, and netting.”

In 1785 Dr. Dwight founded a Young Ladies’ Seminary at Greenfield, Conn.

About 1787, Mr. Caleb Brigham, a noted teacher, opened a school for girls in Boston. This has been spoken of as “the most vigorous and systematic experiment hitherto made, and the most systematically antagonized.” Upon opening, however, the school was immediately filled. The supply created a demand. More sought admission than could be accommodated. With the selectmen’s daughters in school female education was becoming popular.

In 1789 a female academy was opened in Medford, the first establishment of the kind in New England. This was the resort of scholars from all the Eastern States.

We get here and there, proof of the espionage exercised over young women in those days.

Mrs. Rawson was a distinguished teacher who established a boarding-school for girls. The town voted, May 12, 1800, that the second and third seats in the women’s side of the gallery of the meeting-house be allowed for Mrs. Rawson, for herself and scholars; and that she be allowed to put doors and locks on them.

In 1791–92 the Maine Legislature incorporated academies at Berwick, Hallowell, Fryeburg, Westminster, and East Machias.

In 1792 Westford (Mass.) Academy was organized. It offered a very extensive programme. The body of rules and laws for governance provides that “the English, Latin, and Greek languages, together with writing, arithmetic, and the art of speaking shall be taught, and, if desired, practical geometry, logic, geography, and music; that the said school shall be free to any nation, age, or sex, provided that no one shall be admitted unless able to read in the Bible readily without spelling.”

The impulse which single individuals often give to progress had its exemplification in this awakening period.

Two students of Yale College, during a long vacation after the British troops invaded New Haven, had each a class of young ladies for the term of one quarter. One of these students, well known later as the Rev. William Woodbridge, and before quoted here, during his senior year in college, in 1779, kept a young ladies’ school in New Haven, consisting of about twenty-five scholars, in which he taught grammar, geography, composition, and the elements of rhetoric, and the success of this school led to the establishment of others elsewhere.

Mr. Woodbridge, on graduating, took for the subject of his thesis, “Improvement in Female Education.” It would be interesting to know whether the school of Mr. Woodbridge led, as seems probable, to the following curious bit of history.

From Yale College, or from as near to it as a girl could get, issued, in 1783, the following attested certificate:

“BE IT KNOWN to you that I have examined Miss Lucinda Foote, twelve years old, and have found that in the learned languages, the Latin and the Greek, she has made commendable progress, giving the true meaning of passages in the Æneid of Virgil, the select orations of Cicero, and in the Greek testament, and that she is fully qualified, except in regard to sex, to be received as a pupil of the Freshman Class of Yale University.

“Given in the College Library, the 22d of December, 1783.

“EZRA STILES, _President_.”

Miss Foote afterwards pursued a full course of college studies and Hebrew, under President Stiles. She then married and had ten children.

Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, traveled in 1803 through New England and New York, and made careful observation of educational conditions. He reports that “of the higher class of schools, generally styled academies, where pupils are qualified for college, there are twenty in Connecticut and forty-eight in Massachusetts.” He adds: “Two of those in Connecticut and three in Massachusetts are exclusively female seminaries. Some others admit children of both sexes.” He does not say that any one of the thirteen in New Hampshire or of the twelve in Vermont was open to girls. A third of a century afterwards Massachusetts had 854 academies and private schools. Later, the advance in grade of the public school system so reduced the number of personally supported schools, that in 1886 there were but 74 academies and 348 private schools, about one-half the number of a century before. The rapid growth and as rapid decline of the academy system was due to the fact that, while personal and associated effort had taken up a work for which the people were not prepared, its success proved a rapid educator, especially as to the capacity of girls, and the free school system was steadily pressed to higher levels.

Salem established an English high school for boys in 1827; one for girls eighteen years later, in 1845.

It was in 1836, as has been stated, when the school committee of Newburyport decreed “that one female grammar school be kept though the year”; it was only six years afterwards, in 1842, that the town voted to establish a female high school. This was encouraging, but when, later, the valuable “Putnam Fund” came into use for advanced education, there was much discussion between the special committee, appointed by the town, in conference with the trustees of the fund, as to whether Mr. Putnam designed, by his bequest, to include the instruction of females, and it required a decision of the Supreme Court to sustain the position of the trustees that _“youth” might include both sexes_.

The city of Lowell, Mass., which held its first town meeting in 1826, and was not incorporated until 1836, established a high school in 1831, midway between these events, and, to its lasting credit, on a co-educational basis. The first class which it graduated gave to Lowell its first woman principal of a grammar school, and to the country General B. F. Butler. This was one of the earliest high schools, and, so far as the writer can learn, the first that was co-educational.

In connection with the first and ephemeral high school for girls, in Boston, we have unusual opportunities in the “Municipal History of Boston,” by Josiah Quincy, to learn the public sentiment of the time among the most intelligent and worthy, and to observe the struggle which it cost the more progressive to persuade those in power that girls had as great need of instruction, and as real claim on the public funds, as their brothers.

In 1825 the school committee of Boston asked an appropriation from the city council for a high school for girls. A few years previous the monitorial, or mutual, system of instruction had been tried in a town school. Some claimed that it had been successful; its cost was certainly less than one-third that of the old system.

Speaking of the formation of the plan for a high school for girls, Mr. Quincy says: “There being at that time a very general desire in the school committee to test the usefulness of monitorial instruction, it was proposed that the school should be conducted on that system; and in respect of expense the report supposed that one large room would be sufficient, at least for one year.”

It was objected to the foundation of the school that the best scholars would be drawn away from the grammar schools, to the loss of their influence and of their services as monitors; in spite of this the city council voted an appropriation of $2000 to carry out the plan. “The anticipations of difficulty were, however, so strong and so plausible, that the project was adopted expressly as an experiment, if favorable, to be continued, if adverse, to be dropped, of course.”

Difficulties appeared immediately. “Before the examination of candidates occurred, it becomes apparent that the result of a high school for girls would be very different from that of the high school for boys; and that, if continued upon the scale of time and studies which the original project embraced, the expense would be insupportable, and the effect upon the common schools positively injurious.

“Instead of 90 candidates, the highest number that had ever offered in one year for the school for boys, it was ascertained that nearly three hundred would be presented for the high school for girls ... and it was evident that either two high schools for girls must be established the first year, or that more than one-half of the candidates must be rejected.”

Two hundred and eighty-six candidates presented themselves, and an arbitrary system was adopted to keep all but 130 out. “The girls admitted were the _élite_ of the grammar schools, and were among the most ambitious and highly educated of them, and of private schools, from which a majority of those admitted were derived.

“It was impossible that such a school should not be highly advantageous to the few who enjoyed its benefits.”

After six months’ existence of the school, an alarming report was sent to the school committee to the effect that according to the best calculations, the number of candidates for admission at the next examination would be 427.

Mr. Quincy notes that “the school was chiefly for the advantage of the few and not for the many, and those, also, the prosperous few,” and he regards with evident apprehension this large number of girls “to whom a high classical education (though Greek and Latin were excluded) was extremely attractive.”

“Again this experiment showed that in the school for boys the number of scholars diminished every year, whereas of all those who entered this high school for girls, not one, during the eighteen months that it was in operation, voluntarily quitted it; and there was no reason for believing that any one admitted to the school would voluntarily quit it for the whole three years, except in case of marriage.

“It was apparent to all who contemplated the subject disinterestedly, that the continuance of this school would involve an amount of expense unprecedented and unnecessary, since the same course of study could be introduced into the grammar schools.

“To meet the exigency many schemes were proposed, the principal being that the age of admission should be fourteen instead of eleven, and no female to be admitted after the age of sixteen; that the requisitions for admission should be raised; and that the school should be only for one year instead of three.

“These modifications, in which the school committee and city council generally concurred, so greatly diminished the advantages which the original plan proposed, that much of the interest which its creation excited was also diminished. The school, however, was permitted to continue, subject to this modification, until November 27, when a committee was raised to consider the expediency of continuing it, which, on December 11, following, reported ‘that it was expedient to continue it.’”

Much debate followed, in course of which “the Mayor declared that his opinion was so decidedly adverse to the continuance of the school, that he could not vote in its favor.” Largely, no doubt, through the influential opposition of Mr. Quincy, who was then Mayor of the city, and on motion of a Mr. Savage, who said that, though, “as a member of the city council he had voted for the appropriation for the high school for girls, it was merely to make a public experiment of the system of mutual instruction as regards females”; it was voted on June 3, 1826, “that the girls be permitted to remain in the English common school throughout the year.” Precisely what was meant by this vote, beyond the abolition of the high school, appears, if we recall that girls were not yet admitted to the grammar school except for half the year.

As Mr. Quincy states it, “The project of the high school was thus abandoned and the scale of instruction in the common schools of the city was gradually elevated and enlarged.” As in 1834, eight years later, it was voted “that the school committee be directed so to arrange the town schools that the girls enjoy equal privileges with the boys throughout the year,” it is to be presumed that the permission voted in 1826 was inoperative until this date. But the end was gained. The school was abolished, of which Mayor Quincy said in an address to the board of aldermen in 1829: “It may be truly said that its impracticability was proved before it went into operation”; and he again refers to “this high, classical school” with the remark that “no funds of any city could endure the expense.”

It may have been that those who were parents of daughters as truly as of sons, saw this action in relation to the fact that the English High School, “for boys only,” had been supported for four years, and the Latin School, “for boys only,” for almost two centuries, both from the public funds; for, when Mr. Quincy wrote the account from which the above quotations and summary have been made, he recalled the intense opposition to his views of “a body of citizens of great activity and of no inconsiderable influence.”

In 1851, speaking of his former opinions with regard to the high school, he wrote: “The soundness of these views and their coincidence with the permanent interests of the city, seem to be sanctioned by the fact that twenty-three years have elapsed, and no effectual attempt during that period has been made for its revival, in the school committee, or in either branch of the city council.”

He did not consider that ideas of which the germ is sound have, nevertheless, their periods of incubation; but, if shades are permitted to “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” we can imagine the venerable ex-Mayor, ex-President of Harvard, and most worthy man, reflectively regarding the “Girls’ High School,” established in connection with the Normal School in 1852, almost before his words of self-gratulation had ceased to echo; and, with still more astonishment, contemplating the Girls’ Latin School, established in 1878 _to fit girls for college_.

In Massachusetts in 1888, 198 cities and towns supported high schools, most of them co-educational. The population of the cities and towns in which these schools are maintained is over ninety-five per cent. of the whole population of the State.

It is not to be understood that this marvelous progress had come without resistance at every step, or had been achieved except in the way that a plant with the growing power in it struggles to light from under the pavement.

We have seen that in the lower schools when girls, in process of time, came to be taught at all, it was out of fitting season, sometimes out of due hours, without the best instructors, with limited range of study, and always with deference to the superior claim of boys. In the endeavor of girls toward the higher education, one is too sadly reminded of the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians in Rome, when positions wrung from usurping hands, were yielded, only to be, to the uttermost, shorn of advantage.

As girls have gained successive opportunities for advanced study, the aim of the opponents has always been to keep those only analogous to, not identical with, those of boys. They have, therefore, been steadily weighted with limiting conditions, as the educational history of Boston serves to illustrate.

We have seen that the experimental high school of 1825 was, in its feebleness, hampered by, if, indeed, it was not founded for the trial of the monitorial system, and was moribund from its inception.

When, a quarter of a century later, the demand for better education for girls again took form, those most active thought it discreet to avoid the controversy of the past, and, as a more feasible measure, a Normal School for teachers was projected, and was established in 1852.

It was soon found that girls fresh from the grammar schools were not fit candidates for normal training. To remedy this difficulty a few additional branches of study were introduced, a slight alteration made in the arrangement of the course, and the name changed to the Girls’ High and Normal School. Under this name it continued until 1872, when it was found that the normal element had been absorbed by the high school, and had almost lost its independent, distinctive, and professional character. The two courses were then separated and the normal department was restored to its original condition, for the instruction of young women who intended to become teachers in Boston.

Boston had now, at length, a school for girls, devoted, like that for boys, to general culture, though still without opportunity for full classical training, such as had been freely offered Boston boys for almost two and a half centuries. But to taste intellectually, as well as physically, is to stimulate appetite.

In 1877 a society of 200 thoughtful and influential women, incorporated as the “Massachusetts Society for the University Education of Women,” supported by men of equal dignity, and prominently associated with educational and kindred movements, petitioned the school committee “that a course of classical instruction may be offered to girls in the Boston Latin School, as is now offered to boys.”

This petition was reinforced by a similar one from the “Woman’s Educational Association,” which, later, instigated and supported the Harvard examination for women. The trustees of “Boston University” officially memorialized the school board in the same interest.

The claim was urged by distinguished divines, physicians, educators, presidents of colleges, a founder of a college, statesmen, and by mothers of girls. They argued a public advantage, a public demand, and a public right. They showed that almost every prominent city and town in the State gave to girls in its public high school,—which was usually co-educational,—a chance to fit for college; while the towns that had been annexed to Boston,—Charlestown, Dorchester, Brighton, and West Roxbury, had thereby lost such advantage, which their girls had previously enjoyed. The presidents of co-educational and female colleges testified that while no Boston high school girl was prepared to enter their institutions, they were receiving well-prepared young women from the more liberal West.