Holding
the schoolroom to be an important part of the national strength during
the war crisis, Southern educational leaders urged citizens to maintain
good schools “as an illustration to the world of the civilization of the
people of the Confederate States.” It was also stressed that the times
demanded the labor of teachers corresponding to the “unexampled heroism
and devotion of our soldiers . . . “
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Education Amid the Desolation of War
“Among
its many home-front problems the Confederacy faced the question of its
children’s formal education. If this posed difficulties in normal
times, it proved doubly so as the new nation fought for its existence on
the battle line. Of special concern to educators and other interested
citizens were persistent problems of maintaining support for public
schools during the exigencies of war, and providing young Confederates
with textbooks free from the taint of “foreign” views.
[Midway]
in the war, a national organization, the Educational Association of the
Confederate States of America, was formed. That its influence of
Southern education was necessarily slight does not detract from the
seriousness and inspiration of its intent. The actions resulted in the
organization of this association had their genesis in the activities of
North Carolinians who were laboring on the problems of school support
and textbooks within their own State.
Soon
after North Carolina seceded from the Union, State Superintendent of
Schools Calvin H. Wiley called a convention of teachers in Raleigh to
discuss the situation. Those in attendance agreed on the desirability of
forbidding the importation of foreign textbooks and urged the
production of locally-written books . . . [At] the 1862 meeting of that
association, Wiley announced that the South would soon be independent
“of all other countries” for its school books.
At
this meeting, members . . . adopted a resolution calling for “a general
convention of teachers throughout the Confederate States . . . to take
into consideration the best means for supplying the necessary textbooks
for use in our Schools and Colleges, and to unite their efforts for the
advancement of the cause of education in the Confederacy . . .”
The
convention was called for April 28, 1863, at Columbia, South Carolina.
Publicity and preparations were extensive . . . Newspapers [urged] a
large attendance from the South. Groups of teachers and citizens in
several cities chose delegates to represent them at the Columbia
convention . . . [and] the North Carolina Literary Board named as its
delegates [Wiley] and Richard Sterling, a board member and principal of
Greensborough’s Edgeworth Female Seminary.
Sixty-nine
person registered at the convention . . . South Carolina [sent] thirty
six delegates . . . Sixteen attended from North Carolina, ten from
Georgia, three each from Virginia and Alabama, and one from Louisiana.
Enhancing
the prestige of the convention was a letter from President Jefferson
Davis. While regretting the inability to be present, Davis expressed
his “fullest sympathy” with the purpose of the convention and extolled
the importance of school books in developing character and intelligence
in children. He expressed his joy in knowing “that the task of
preserving these educational springs in purity has been devolved upon
men so qualified to secure the desired results.”
Several
other letters, including one from North Carolina’s Governor Zebulon B.
Vance, were read to the delegates. Vance’s letter underscored President
Davis’s concern for “purity” in textbooks and he declared it a
“pleasure to see that the desolation of war does not prevent the good
the good men of the country from looking after this great and important
matter. This is certainly the time to inaugurate the system of supplying
our schools with our own books and impressing the minds of our children
with the effusions of Southern genius.”
His
closing must have served as an added charge to the convention: “May God
bless and prosper your efforts in a cause so patriotic and so greatly
to be commended by every true Southern heart.”
(The
Educational Association of the CSA, O.L. Davis, Jr., Civil War History,
Volume 10, Number 1, March 1964, State University of Iowa, pp. 67-71)
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