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Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
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Jim Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
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Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:43:53 EST
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Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
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The comments regarding southern colleges in the antebellum era  certain have 
a basis in fact, as do the comments about their  denizens.  The literacy rate 
in the South was quite small compared to  that of the North.  The number of 
southerners who acquired enough  preparatory education to think realistically 
about college was even  smaller.  

And while there were schools that were free, or the tuition was  limited, 
potential scholars and their parents still faced the opportunity  costs of 
attending -- something that kept almost ALL schooling the  province of the "elites" 
in both sections.  The exceptions seem to  have been those "mechanics" of the 
South who "made good," and were  determined that their sons would "work with 
their heads" rather than their  hands.  The fathers often had the money -- and 
occasionally the  slaves -- to match the planter elite, but they lacked the 
education.   They determined their sons should have it.  "Scholarships," as we  
tend to think of them, were few and far between. 

At the same time, there was quite a debate going on between, say,  1819 
(UVA's founding) and the introduction of the Morrill Land-Grant Act  to Congress in 
1858 as to what a college education should be.  The  Yale Report of 1828 
backed the "classical" education.  If one peruses  the pages of southern 
newspapers of the era, one will be struck by the  number of ads for academies that, for 
boys anyway, offer Latin, the sine  qua non for higher ed -- pun intended -- 
indicating that WAS the  market.  Francis Wayland, president of Brown, said 
this was bunk in  1850, and argued for more "practical education."  That was,  
essentially, the basis of the land-grant schools.  The problem was,  no one 
wanted to attend college to be a "practical" farmer, and  engineering was an 
apprentice-based occupation until after the War. 

Madison did suggest a course of agriculture for UVA in 1822.   Philip St. 
George Cocke gave $20,000 to endow a professorship in  agriculture at UVA in 
1857; few attended.  Francis Smith of VMI also  backed agricultural education in 
the late 1850s, as did DeBow's.  The  problem was that they assumed that 
education would consist mainly of  learning to manage estates -- and slaves.  Justin 
Morrill, a Vermont  Republican, seems to have forgotten about slavery when he 
offered his  bill.  Moreover, when Buchanan vetoed the original Morrill Act 
he  noted, in a rather snide obiter dictum, that "no father would incur the  
expense a son to one of these instutitions for the sole pupose of making  him a 
scientific farmer or mechanic." 

In any event, few attended ANY land-grant institutions UNTIL they  took on 
the trappings of traditional, belletristic, gentry-geared  colleges.  And even 
then, southern attendance was limited to the few.  

Sorry to be so long-winded. 



Jim Watkinson 



James D. Watkinson, Ph.D. 
History Department 
Virginia  Commonwealth University 














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