Horace Mann: A Citizen for Modern America

The Franklin Historical Museum is honoring Franklin’s great man. A special presentation on Sunday May 14 [museum open 1-4, presentation starts at 1:15] will mark this celebration of the life and legacy of Horace Mann who was an individual who was truly in the vanguard of human progress. He was a force for educational reform in what was already arguably the most socially progressive state in the Union. He was staunchly anti-slavery, believed in the right of all people to enjoy a good quality publicly-funded education: including women, people of color, and First Americans who had been mis-named American Indians since the days of Columbus. Horace Mann believed in total equality among all members of the one and only human race regardless of gender, creed, or race. He also acted vigorously on these beliefs during his life time of service dedicated to his high ethical principles.--JCJ

By James C. Johnston Jr.

Horace Mann was in many ways not only a man of his times, but a man for our times as well. He was a visionary who was to first see the light of day in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1796. Horace Mann was a young man on-the-make with lofty aspirations to elevate the human condition which he understood all too well. He was not ambitious for himself, but for the general human condition in this country. He was the relentless foe of ignorance, slavery, sexism, racism, and religious bigotry. In the Mid-Nineteenth Century, these views would not guarantee you any significant degree of popularity, but in Massachusetts more progressive ideas were better tolerated than in other parts of the nation.

Horace Mann once said that he knew the rugged nursing of adversity, but, “She nursed me all too well!”

Horace was a bit of a party animal at Brown in his undergraduate days, and he was no stranger to wine, and he also had eyes for the pretty daughter of the college’s president, Charlotte Messer, who was to become his first wife. Ambitious to improve his place in life, Horace Mann read law in Litchfield, Connecticut and was in short order admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. After the premature death of his young bride, a very depressed Horace Mann returned to Franklin and went into deep mourning. Horace Mann seemed to undergo a profound metamorphosis in this saddest period of his life from which he emerged with a fierce new purpose as a reformer of society. He also met and fell in love with a most modern thinking and remarkable woman who was every inch his intellectual equal, Mary Peabody.

Mary Peabody was one of a trio of remarkable women known collectively as “The Peabody Sisters”. Noted artist Sophia Peabody married Nathanael Hawthorne, and Elizabeth Peabody was a great educational reformer in her own right. Elizabeth was a primary founder of the Kindergarten Movement in the United States. The sisters also held strong abolitionist sympathies and believed in the intellectual and political equality of men and women. In Mary Peabody, Horace Mann found his soulmate as well as the future mother of his three sons.

To achieve his life goals as an educational and social reformer, Horace Mann knew that he had to break into the world of Massachusetts politics where the real power to make the much needed changes existed. Horace Mann fought, as a member of The Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for educational and other reforms and was ultimately named as the first Secretary of the new Massachusetts Board of Education. Horace Mann up-dated the sad curricula of Massachusetts’ public schools, and attempted to wipe out the reality of the one room school houses which he saw as promoting ignorance, bigotry, and educational anarchy. Horace Mann established training schools for the education of professional educators.

In those far-away days, anyone could be a teacher. There were no requirements in law stating who could teach in Massachusetts public schools or what qualifications had to be met by a potential educational instructor. For the most part, Massachusetts had been fortunate in its teachers who tended to be better educated than publicly employed school instructors in other parts of the country, but it was a sad fact that that smaller rural settlements greater care was not generally taken with the selection of teachers. The economic imperative was at work. Poor communities could not hire good instructors, and schools were not “regularly kept.” The school year for some children might be only a few weeks out of the year. And the other sad fact of life was that school attendance was not required by law.

In the mid-1640’s, The Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed The Old Deluder Law. This law was passed, because it was thought that it was the chief purpose of Satan to keep people from knowledge of “Holy Scripture.” Therefore, it was seen as an absolute necessity that the people of Massachusetts have a good working knowledge of The Bible. To that end, The Old Deluder Law was passed, and it stated that all Massachusetts towns of fifty or more households must establish schools where reading, writing, ciphering [arithmetic], and religion was to be taught to the young people, and towns of a hundred or more households were to establish secondary schools, in addition, for the instruction of older children in Latin and Greek verbs in order to prepare male students for Harvard which was originally known as The College in Cow’s Yard. Massachusetts became the first place on earth to mandate the establishment of public schools making education available to those who wanted it.

Few towns on the fringes of the more recently settled parts of the Commonwealth were not well supplied with educated people to fill the role of school-master or mistress. This situation was to be remedied by setting up educational seminaries for the instruction of teachers. The first three of these Massachusetts educational institutions were located at: Salem, Framingham, and Bridgewater. Today these institutions of higher learning are flourishing as universities which have raised Massachusetts to the forefront of educational professionalism and reform. Thanks to Horace Mann and the progressive tradition of The Commonwealth, Massachusetts is the nation’s leader. With a bequest of a vast library consisting of six-hundred-plus books by a young minister and intellectual, John Harvard, what would become Harvard University was founded in Cambridge in 1636, as The oldest college in the United States.

Horace Mann decided to make his cause of educational reform a national crusade. He knew that in order to do this, he needed a real national bully pulpit. Knowing this, Horace Mann ran for the United States House of Representatives and brought his fight to Washington, D. C. While there, he pushed for many national reforms in Congress. As a lawyer, Horace Mann also represented escaped slaves in court pro bono, supported woman’s rights, and fought against slavery even when he had to challenge Massachusetts’ Senator Daniel Webster over such monumental pieces of legislation as the Fugitive Slave Act which called for the return of run-away-slaves, as if they were merely self-stolen property to their white masters.

By 1852, with the passing of The Great Compromise of 1850, and The Fugitive Slave Act, and other pro-slavery legislation, and seeing the Whig Party continually back-down and compromise with the pro-slavery faction in the House of Representatives, Horace Mann sought a new venue to fight for the heart and soul of meaningful social reform.

Horace Mann looked to the West and saw a great chance to make a real difference in the quality of life in the Nation by educating a new generation of Americans to their real social and civic responsibilities. In 1853, Horace Mann turned his back on the East and went west to Antioch, Ohio to take up the challenge of the Presidency of Antioch College. The college was founded just three years before in 1850 and was floundering when Horace Mann took over the administration of the school. He upgraded the core curriculum, and opened the doors of Antioch to women, Black Americans, and Native Americans. Traditionally the official colors of Antioch are Crimson, white, and black. The meaning is obvious and meant to reflect the cultural diversity of the student body and the faculty of the college itself. Never had anyone been such a courageous pathfinder in American Education as had Horace Mann. These radical ideas of recognizing; Women, Black People, and Native Americans on a basis of real intellectual equality flew in the face of the notion of the intrinsic superiority of White European Males. This was nothing short of revolutionary. It is a concept which is still not universally accepted today which is truly frightening and shows just what an advanced thinker Horace Mann truly was.

Indeed, Antioch College became a beacon of light in a nation fighting against ignorance, sexism, slavery, and blind racism in 1853. It was in the vanguard of human progress, and it was led by Horace Mann. The battle for equality is a good fight that still rages on today a hundred and seventy years later in this land of the free and home of the brave, and this fight for human dignity is still the good fight that Horace Mann took on almost two centuries ago. This is the fight that all good citizens must embrace today as racism and hatred seem to raise their ugly heads even in Ohio, with the tacit, and sometimes not so tacit, support of those who exercise real political power in Congress in Washington.

The dreams, hopes, and social causes of Horace Mann are still and will forever be bright beacons of hope for a better America, and his worthy thoughts should be embraced by every right-thinking American Citizen. Horace Mann is an American Hero for today reminding us that we should never become a nation of small minded bigots who do not concern ourselves with the well-being of our fellow citizens. Like Horace Mann we should see our free society as all-embracing, both in our lives, and before the law. We are a people deserving of a decent education and all of the full advantages of inclusion as citizens of the greatest nation and socio-political experiment the world has ever seen-United States of America.

It should be the hope of every citizen of Modern America that we can aspire to embracing the hope that we can make a positive difference in the life of our nation no matter how small. For no good deed, or casual act of kindness, is ever really insignificant. As Horace Mann said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”