Reading, writing and rebellion: levels of formal education in the confederate army.

• Author: Knight, James Thomas

Introduction

The Confederate Soldier and the South he defended have been the subject of research and the object of adoration or hatred since Fort Sumter. The opinions about him, his time and his place have reflected one bias or another generally causing oversimplification of his vices and virtues depending largely upon what one cares to believe, and on occasion, what the evidence shows. After the slavery issue, it is education that brings out the greatest biases of section, politics or ancestry.

This study is intended to examine comparisons of education across several different planes: branch of service, state of enlistment or the part of a state from which the soldier was from, rank held or gained, and age.

Historiography

The two most important scholars of Southern educational history, Edgar W. Knight and Charles William Dabney viewed the growth of Southern education as in keeping with traditional Jeffersonian notions of small government applied to a predominately rural area. Additionally, Dabney saw not a neglected educational system but one in a region that fought specific problems unique to the South that caused inhibition of education efforts. (1) In making these allowances, both Knight and Dabney were agreeing with Lawrence, Cremin who wrote, "The southern states, with the exception of North Carolina, tended to lag behind [the New England and Midwestern states] and did not generally establish popular schooling until after the Civil War" (2) While the view of a lag with reason has gained credence within much of antebellum Southern social history, much is still made of the immediate post-war vitriol of Northern writers. Henry Adams declared in the nineteenth century, "Without Church, university, schools, or literature in any form that required or fostered intellectual life, the Virginians concentrated their thoughts almost exclusively upon politics." One hundred years later Howard K. Beale said political rulers of the antebellum South, "had fastened ignorance or inexperience on millions of whites as well as Negroes.... Wealthy Southerners...seldom recognized the need for general education of even the white masses." In a more recent application of this "misanthropic planter thesis of Southern History" Daniel J. Boorstin declared, "Colleges and military academies for the sons of ruling planters flourished." (3) The implication of such histories upon study of the army implies semi-literate men led by and fighting for great planters with little in between. The memoirs of many ex-Confederates discuss literacy of former comrades in such a manner as to suggest the reaction to an affront. (4)

The single greatest student of the common Confederate soldier, Bell I. Wiley, believed there were extremes of education within the Army but saw most lay between the extremes, "neither learned nor illiterate." (5) The questions are: What were these extremes? How common were they? And what was in the middle?

Educational Options

There were, not considering colleges and universities, four different types of schools available to the generation of Southerners that would fight the war. In all states the common schools, the lowest form of formal instruction available, offered fifty-four days to six months of the year. (6) Total months of instruction for one student seldom varied from seven through thirty-six. (7) The teachers were generally farmers with some modest intellectual attainment. Subjects were mostly limited to Reading, Mathematics, Spelling and Penmanship. On this same plain were the subscription schools across the South so called because a number of parents would subscribe for a teacher's instruction of their children for a number of weeks or months. This might supplement this basic level of instruction ten or twelve weeks each year. For many it was the only source of instruction. The curriculum was elementary and plebeian.

The old-field schools were local affairs usually with only one instructor and were essentially academies without the lineage or prestige. The intention here was to educate at any level demanded, but to do so more thoroughly than in the common and subscription schools. The academies were the height of precollegiate instruction. Tuition varied from fifteen to fifty dollars depending upon what was taught and the prestige of the institution. (8) Time spent varied from two to nine years in the old-field schools and academies depending upon family wealth and degree of instruction desired. (9) The school year was typically eight to ten months.

The number of colleges throughout the South was greater than any other section of the country at the beginning...