“The Schoolmaster Is Abroad”

This chapter fills out the picture of early American schools by surveying developments in several fields of education, ranging from charity institutions to elite academies, including those for the deaf and blind, as well as those aimed distinctly at boys and distinctly at girls. Tracing the transatlantic trips of different educational leaders—John Griscom, Thomas Gallaudet, Samuel Gridley Howe, Joseph Cogswell, George Bancroft, Henry Dwight, Sereno Edwards Dwight, and Emma Willard—this chapter focuses on the religious rhetoric underlying attempts to introduce new types of schooling to the American landscape in the early years of the Common School Awakening.

Dual Citizenship

Why did states once abhor dual nationality? Dual nationality was once considered a threat to morality and to the international order. As the American diplomat George Bancroft remarked in 1849, states should “as soon tolerate a man with two wives as a man with...