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until 1850, and after that date, for several years, to accomplish anything worthy of note for the higher education of the children and youth.

A board of commissioners was appointed by the legislature in 1839 for the location and management of the university lands. Also, a "board of visitors of the University of Wisconsin," 21 in number, including the governor, secretary of the treasury, judges of the supreme court, and president of the university, was appointed. But, as there was no university to visit, this body was a purely ornamental group of high public dignitaries until 1850.

During the Territorial period the 46,080 acres granted by Congress for the support of a university were located, in 1840, by a committee appointed by the governor, consisting of one competent person in each of the land districts of the State. They began the work, and on the admission of the State to the Union it found itself possessed of what might have been regarded a munificent capital for all desirable purposes connected with the higher education. By a law of 1848 these persons served in each county and, afterwards, as State officials of school and university lands. This committee evidently had in view the peopling of the new State and not the higher education of the children of the people who might come. The appraisal of these lands at an average value of $2.78 per acre, $1.13 to $7.00 in different counties, was the first and well-nigh a fatal blow struck at the heart of the school-its financial basis. The board of valuation had not interested itself with the control of the fund. It was the old story of school lands sacrificed by a mismanagement that bordered on the edge of public plunder; the welfare of the parties and the highest interest of the Commonwealth sacrificed to the doubtful prosperity attendant on a rapid and indiscriminate population. A few half-hearted efforts of the legislature to resist this wholesale plunder were defeated by a popular opinion, which had not been trained to hold the idea of the higher education, but was filled with the greed for cheap land and the glory of a populous State.

The bulk of the university lands was sold at last for $3 per acre, and the sum of $150,000 was all that was realized from the 72 sections. The State of Michigan received $500,000 for a smaller grant, and a wise disposal of this great estate might have given to Wisconsin a much larger sum. A similar grant of 72 sections of saline lands, in 1848, was made, and as there were no such lands in Wisconsin, 72 additional sections were selected in 1854. But the noblest endowment is powerless before a legislature that has not risen to the comprehension of a university and is inflated with the ambition for an early and sensational progress.

The second location of 70 sections followed hard after the first, being sold for $3 per acre. As if this were not enough, the State invested the funds realized by the sale of the lands by loaning $500 to any one who would offer a mortgage on real estate. The secretary of state, treasurer, and attorney general were the board in this free and easy scheme, which was well described by the land commissioner of the State, in 1861, as "lending money to men they did not know, taking as security lands they never saw, with no better evidence of their value than the appraisal of two men of whom they knew nothing." Of course this fund "took wings and flew away," and when, in 1861, a more secure method of investment was attempted, an inroad had been made on the property, the extent of which no man was able to fathom. To complete the disorganization, the State loaned $10,000 to the regents of the university from the principal of the fund, to begin the work of the university buildings, in defiance of the fact that the grant was for the support of the university. By 1860 the income of the university had dwindled to $5,000 or $6,000 per year. Meanwhile, by the passage of the Agricultural College act by Congress in 1862, the State came in possession of 240,000 acres of public land.

It was not till 1866, according to the historians of the university, that a different spirit and policy in the people and the legislature laid the foundation of the present State University of Wisconsin.

The board of regents for a series of years had been engaged in working at the hopeless task of making educational "bricks without straw." Soon after the organization of the State government, an act of incorporation was passed and the control of the university vested in a board of regents, in addition to the president, chosen by the legislature, and authorized to elect a chancellor who should be the president of the board. In 1849 an attempt was made to act, although it seemed hopeless. Besides the primary lack of funds, there was no public opinion in the State on which to rely for favorable legislation or for a patronage of any public school of the higher sort. The different religious denominations had duly preempted the soil and were attracting all the student material. The people had taken one great step in the establishment of free elementary education, and were not interested in extending it to the upper story. Besides the exertions and privations attending the first years of the existence and rapid population of a new State, there was one black cloud rising on the Southern horizon and rapidly casting its baleful shadow over the entire North-the coming on of the great civil war. No State exceeded Wisconsin in its enthusiastic devotion to the national idea of "Liberty and Union." It was not remarkable, at a time so perilous, under circumstances so abnormal, that the people did not regard the great obligation of schooling the children as they certainly did in 1866, after the close of the war in favor of union on the basis of universal freedom.

In place of the university, the regents first established a preparatory school in the city of Madison, in a building given, free of rent, under the charge of Prof. John W. Sterling, the good genius of the institution through its period of trial and discouragement, no less than its final success, for thirty-four years. This faithful teacher began his work on a salary of $500, by teaching a group of boys according to the usual course of study in Eastern colleges, at a tuition fee of $20 per annum. A chancellor was soon elected, in the person of President John H. Lathrop, of the State University of Missouri, on a salary of $2,000 a year. A cabinet of natural history was projected and good progress made in its collections under the management of Mr. H. A. Tenney, of Madison.

The original plan of the university included four departments-1, science, literature, and art; 2, law; 3, medicine; 4, the teaching and practice of methods of elementary education. In January, 1850, Chancellor Lathrop was inaugurated, and his attention was especially directed to the fourth department-the training of teachers for the new common schools of the State. Arrangements for the appointment of six new professors were made, but the central work of the school went on under the control of the president, Professor Sterling, and a tutor. In 1850 the effort was made to establish the department of pedagogy, including women as well as men. But the State rebelled against this movement, and the prospects of the university were not flattering. An additional professor was appointed in 1851. The State refunded the corporation money appropriated for buildings, with an additional loan for the first erected. In 1855 a second building was provided for the normal department. Loan after loan for building and the general purposes of the institution only crippled the resources of the university, which now contained about fifty students. The burden was increased by the attempt to establish a department of agriculture and mechanics, and Prof. S. P. Lathrop was given the chairs of chemistry and natural history in 1854.

In 1856 a full corps of instructors was appointed, adding to the general chairs those of medicine, law, natural philosophy, etc. An attempt was made to place the normal department on its feet by the assignment of Prof. Daniel Reed, of the chairs of philosophy and English literature, to this additional work. Two courses

of lectures were the result of this movement, addressed to 18 and 28 students. Up to 1852 the institution had only 46 students, 66 in 1852-53, and in 1858-59, 243, with 8 graduates in each of the years 1859-60.

All this time the university was slowly making its way against the steady opposition of a large class of the people. The legislature had usurped the entire control, giving to the regents and board of visitors only a nominal authority, and was driving the institution through a perpetual deficiency to the verge of bankruptcy. The denominational clergy of all the sects insisted that the university funds should be used to sustain their own institutions. The usual undefined charges of mismanagement, from irresponsible sources, filled the air. The failure of the attempt to establish the great departments of law and medicine added to the discontent. An attempt at a complete reorganization of the university failed in the legislature by a margin so narrow that the regents were forced by popular opinion to adopt a policy of administration similar to the defeated bill. Among these changes were a curriculum more in accord with the elective and practical order of studies, the establishment of the normal department, and the admission of women to the entire university. The result of the reorganization was the resignation of Chancellor Lathrop and his subsequent displacement as professor, the regulation policy of casting a Jonah overboard to save the ship demanding him as the victim.

It was doubtless with the laudable intent of calling to the presidency of the university an eminent educator, wholly unconnected with its past history, that the Hon. Henry Barnard was elected chancellor and agent of the Normal School board to conduct teachers' institutes and deliver educational addresses.

The history of his brief administration of the university has already been told. He wisely avoided any active participation in the university affairs and gave himself, with his usual ardor and success, to the more grateful work of building up the common schools through the improvement of the teachers. His connection with the university and the State was terminated February 18, 1861.

Here we leave the University of Wisconsin during the period of the civil war. The firm and faithful hand at the helm meanwhile was Professor Sterling, dean of the faculty, who acted as the executive officer. Financial embarrassments crippled the resources of the institution and compelled the limitations of expenses to the lowest possible figure. A company of soldiers was quartered in the buildings in 1861. The entire class of 1864 was in the field and no commencement exercises were held. The attendance was reduced to 50 or 60.

Meanwhile the normal department was reorganized in 1863, under the charge of Prof. Charles H. Allen, of Massachusetts. Seventy-six young women put in an appearance, and the interest of the institution seems to have been largely centered in this new departure. The public opposition was stirred up anew by the admission of women not only to the classes in pedagogy, but to nearly all the opportunities of the university. The resignation of Professor Allen, in 1865, was followed by the appointment of ex-Superintendent J. L. Pickard, in 1866. The prospects of the institution were not sufficiently hopeful to warrant his acceptance of the office of chancellor, offered in 1865, and Professor Sterling held on as vice-chancellor until a new act of reorganization, in 1866, placed the institution for the first time on a solid basis. In 1867, under conditions that recalled the great expectations of the past, Dr. Paul A. Chadborne, then president of the Agricultural College of Massachusetts, at Amherst, was called to the chancellorship, which he filled until 1870. The record of this final reorganization and the accompanying success of the University of Wisconsin will best appear in connection with a continued history of the common-school system of the State after the close of the civil war.

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IOWA.

The United States Commissioner of Education, Dr. William T. Harris, in the letter transmitting Circular of Information No. 6, 1893, of the United States Bureau of Education, to the Secretary of the Interior, entitled "Higher education in lowa," by Leonard F. Parker, professor of history in Iowa College, writes:

Besides the local interest to which such a work appeals there is much in the educational history of Iowa which is instructive to all students and observers of educational progress, since within her limits there has appeared, from the time of the earliest settlements, a noteworthy zeal in founding institutions of learning and in providing instruction for all classes of people.

Indeed, were any well-informed American called to present one of the most convincing arguments in illustration of the American republican order of government and society he would not mistake if he selected the State of Iowa as the object lesson. The governor of the State, in 1860, indorsed the declaration of a former chief magistrate to this effect: "There are not probably 50,914 square miles in one body on the globe that can offer so many broad acres of unrivalled fertility and of such high adaptation for the support of life as the State of Iowa." Until the organization of the Territory in 1838 this vast and splendid estate was variously named. In 1804-1805, it was a portion of the district of Louisiana; of the Territory of Louisiana from 1805 until 1812; from 1812 to 1821 a part of the Territory of Missouri, and, after an interregnum as an unnamed wilderness, in 1833 open, by an arrangement with the Indian possessors, to white settlement; from 1834 to 1836 Iowa was a portion of Michigan and from 1836 to 1838 an annex to Wisconsin; from 1838 to 1846 it was first known as the Territory of Iowa. On December 28, 1846, Iowa was admitted as the twenty-ninth State into the Union, with a population of 102,388.

Under the guidance of the land companies immigration poured into the country like a flood from southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the northern border of the South; later from Pennsylvania, New England, New York, and northern Ohio, with a large contingent from the more substantial immigrating classes of Europe. From 1840 to 1850 the per cent of increase was 345 and from 1840 to 1860 1,465 per cent, when the new State contained 673,779 inhabitants of almost unmixed white American and European stock. In 1890 Iowa had risen to be one of the more prominent States of the Union, with a population of 2,000,000, and is still moving upon a tide of almost uninterrupted prosperity. With the exception of the Providential interruptions and backsets that are inevitable in a new country, where the most active young people of the world are running over each other in the pursuit of comfort and wealth, this Commonwealth has enjoyed a remarkable reputation for social respectability, peaceful development, and the high administrative ability of its public men. This great personal and political capacity has been shown more than once by its influence upon the ten new States of the Northwest beyond the Mississippi, besides the high character and influence of its representation at Washington.

That a people so thoroughly representative of the better elements of the whole country and the new life of the Republic should, from the first, have been deeply interested in education and, in their own best way, gone about helping themselves to it even before there could be a Territorial organization promised well for the future. It is only necessary to repeat that as soon as there were white people enough to be gathered under a roof there was a school. In 1824 Mr. Berryman Jennings seems to have been the pioneer pedagogue, with "a very large school district, extending to Canada on the north and to the Pacific Ocean on the west, where there are now some thirteen or more States and Territories;" Master Jennings presided over this vast wilderness in his little log schoolhouse near the pres

ent site of Keokuk, and for a year directed the first "shooting of the young idea" in Iowa.

Before 1838, when the Territory first obtained its own place and name, there are said to have been no less than 40 teachers who taught school in Iowa, in a region now divided into nine of the present counties of the State. The log schoolhouse was the representative of civilization, set up where the settlers halted, and stood for not only the school, but the church and government, the building being used for all public purposes. The first frame schoolhouse in Iowa was built in 1840 and the first brick schoolhouse at the same place ten years later, 1850. In 1862 there were 893 log temples of science in Iowa, with a population of 674,000, whereas in 1854 half the schoolhouses had been of this sort. In 1890 only 30 were reported in the State. These schools were, at first, private ventures and the school buildings generally private property.

In 1835 the Territory of Michigan, of which Iowa was then a part, created the office of superintendent of common schools. But the distant back yard, the new Territory, was none the better for this visitation. Wisconsin, which succeeded Michigan as the nursing mother of Iowa, tried to do more, with more legislation, but with no settled result. In 1838 the legislature established, on paper, an ambitious scheme of "seven seminaries for both sexes, to teach science and literature," all of which turned out educational "castles in the air."

Four days after this effort the legislature voted to establish a college, with the learned and grotesque name of "The Philandrian," besides a manual-labor college at Davenport. This institution, “The Philandrian,” was to be established in the town of Denmark, in Des Moines County. It was the private enterprise of a Scotch Presbyterian family from Illinois, which finally went to financial wreck by its zeal in establishing colleges and manual-labor schools. The charter provided for absolute religious freedom in teachers and students. The Leeper family sent to the East to secure 12 young men to establish as many academies as feeders to the Philandrian and the Davenport manual-labor colleges. But the whole scheme, like so many others conceived in the brain of unpractical philanthropy, came to nothing. The seminaries voted into existence by the Territorial legislature fared no better. Neither money nor men, students nor buildings responded to the call. "At that period there were not youth of both sexes of sufficient number and advancement to constitute a collegiate preparatory department or even a high school in all the Territory."

During the independent Territorial existence of Iowa, from 1838 to 1816, there was a decided effort to plant on the soil a system of education. The Territory was increasing in population, from 22,000 in 1838 to 102,000 in 1846, and its Territorial governors, for the day, manifested a commendable zeal in education. The first, Robert Lucas, was a friend of Samuel Lewis, first superintendent of public schools in Ohio, and from 1838 till 1840 had as private clerk Mr. Theodore S. Parvin, formerly an assistant of Superintendent Lewis. In his first message to the Territorial legislature, January, 1838, Governor Lucas urged the immediate establishment of "a well-digested system of common schools." He also recommended the township system, not for the first time, as is suggested, since both Connecticut and Massacushetts began and held on in that way for 100 years before they "fell from grace into the slough of despond" of the isolated district system. The legislature responded with a law which authorized the voters of every district (township) to tax not to exceed $10 for each person for a system of common-school instruction.

The second legislature enlarged the scope of the statute even to the creation of the office of superintendent of education, which was held for a year by Dr. William Reynolds. An inevitable reaction abolished this office and for several years the Territory waited for a more favorable state of affairs. Still, the larger towns

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