and likewise, for the most part, poorer. The combination of an improvident and shiftless family placed on a sterile or rugged farm does not yield a valuable product either in men or in produce. Poverty was a chronic complaint with most of these backwoodsmen, and the state of material want bred a spirit of restlessness and dissatisfaction. Out from among these classes came many of the early settlers who migrated to the southern portions of Indiana and Illinois.1 The inhabitants of the northern portions were of a different stock and temperament and came into these territories largely from Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania. Still, perhaps the predominating influence in those early days was exerted by the southern type of immigrant.

Social conditions being thus, one is not surprised to read that Illinois for many years passed through a vacillating school policy, and that she established a state educational system rather late in her history.

In the constitution under which the state was admitted to the Union in 1818 not one word respecting schools and education is to be found. Nor is there mention made of the subject in any of the territorial laws previous to this time. The authorities seem to have gone on the theory that whatever education was needed in the territory could best be attended to, privately, by the families interested.

Nevertheless Illinois, like the other states, was granted by the Federal Government the sixteenth section of land for school purposes. To protect and conserve these lands the legislature in 1817 did enact a law that may be regarded as the first school law of the state. At the same

1 It will be recalled that Abraham Lincoln was one such product of these conditions.

2 Samuel Willard, "History of Education in Illinois" in the 15th Public School Report of Illinois, for 1833 and 1834, p. CIX.

time the legislature incorporated two academies,— one at Edwardsville called the Madison Academy, and one at Carlyle called the Washington Academy.1

In 1825 a "free-school" law was passed in which provision was made that one fiftieth of the net taxes of the state should be appropriated to education, but the following year the law was repealed. In 1829 the legislature "still further tinkered the school law in a small way, more completely making the creation of a school an affair of voluntary union or subscription. On this basis it remained till 1850."2

During this period, however, several "colleges" and seminaries were chartered, and the funds derived from the salt lands were distributed to them. Thus, although the state did not during all this time take an aggressive stand for popular education, opportunities for instruction were not entirely lacking. The more enterprising towns of course had their common schools, and the state as a whole was abundantly supplied with private and denominational academies and seminaries. Still, there was little system or unity found anywhere. Textbooks were scarce and of various authorship and publications. In 1835, for example, De Witt had but three spelling books to serve a class of thirty pupils. In the schools pupils of the same class made use of any text that by chance happened to be available or had been handed down by older children of the family or community. Some of the books most frequently found were: The Pleasant Companion; the New Testament; Murray's English Reader; and Murray's Introduction. These all served as readers. Occasionally copies of Weem's Life of Marion, and Weem's Life of Washington were used. The other

1 Ibid., p. CIX. 2 Ibid., p. CX. 3 Ibid.

more common works were Morse's Geography, Murray's or Kirkham's Grammar, and Pike's Arithmetic.1

So far then as secondary education is concerned, down to 1850 none was given in Illinois save in connection with seminaries, academies, and colleges; and in the light of circumstantial evidence one can well believe that, generally, this was not of a high grade.

Although the title of this chapter hardly warrants the consideration here of the schools of Wisconsin, still, for the sake of convenience, we may speak briefly of them. This state did not pass through the prolonged and vicarious experiences that Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois suffered. Of the five states that were made from the old Northwest Territory, Wisconsin was the last to be admitted into the Union. It was settled largely by immigrants that were considerably unlike the early settlers of Indiana and Illinois, and, with numerous exceptions, not closely similar to those of Ohio and Michigan. Being a younger state, she profited immensely from the experiences of her neighbors, and thus was able to shape her educational policy so as to gain most of the advantages possessed by the older states and at the same time to avoid the mistakes and difficulties experienced by them. Suffice it for our purposes to say that from near the outset of her territorial history attention was given more or less systematically to the question of education and to schools.

1 Willard op. cit., p. CX.

2 Wisconsin, became a state in 1848.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY MICHIGAN

HE early history of Michigan is not greatly dis

THE

similar to that of the other states in the Northwest.1 Here, too, the French obtained a foothold early in the seventeenth century. In fact, portions of Michigan were visited by the adventurous representatives of this nation earlier than was any other district in this part of the world. The routes of these explorers and priests lay through Canada westward of what is now Montreal and Quebec. Lake Huron and Lake Superior were therefore discovered prior to Lake Erie, and settlements were made at Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac long before the English had set foot in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or Wisconsin, and considerably previous to the French explorations there. Father Marquette, La Salle, Hennepin, and Joliet had opened regular courses or trails across Michigan as early as 1680. Cadillac established a post at Detroit in 1701. Until the close of the French and Indian War in 1763 these two allied peoples, the French and the Indians, were completely masters of the whole northwest region. With the results of that war and the subsequent changes of authority in the Northwest, we are already familiar. For some strange reason England, after the Peace of Paris in 1763, opposed the immediate colonization of the western territories and, by royal decree, forbade further migration into them. This order was not, however, obeyed. Nevertheless, until after the close of the Revolutionary

1 For much of the thought incorporated in the early portion of this chapter I am indebted to various general and special histories which deal with this region some of these are the works of Bancroft, McMaster, Cooley, Campbell, and Lanman-also to the Michigan Pioneer Collection Volumes.

War the westward movement had not reached beyond the Ohio River.

The Peace of 1763 eliminated one nation from the Northwest Territory; the Treaty of 1783 nominally banished another. There was only one other human contestant left the Indian; and, truly, he was never permanently subdued until practically exterminated. Nevertheless the victories of Wayne in 1794 and 1795 brought him sufficiently under subjection to encourage migration, and from this date the Northwest rapidly developed.

But even with the French entirely ousted as a political power, the English nominally excluded, and the Indian temporarily conquered, not all enemies and dangers had disappeared. There were other perils before which any but strong hearts and steadfast spirits would have quailed. There were streams to cross, forests to clear, roads to make, and homes to build; there were wild animals to drive away and prowling Indians to watch; there was scantiness of food and clothing and a greater scantiness of mental nourishment; there were dangers from diseases common to all irregular and unhygienic modes of life and especially common to portions of the Northwest, owing to the low elevations of land and the presence of numerous swampy, marshy, and stagnant waters. These dank and dark sections polluted the air with noxious germs; gave birth to hordes of noisome and poisonous insects, creeping things, and reptiles; and filled the system with malarial affections. Add to these material and physical hardships, the lack of means of communication, of near-by friends and neighbors, of books, papers, and magazines, of schools and churches, and one gets perhaps a general, though miniature, picture of what pioneer life in the Northwest really was.