Contributions to American Educational History

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Chapter I. — Introductory. Page

Colonization of Lonisiana 7

La Salle 7

DlberviUe; slow development 8

TheUrsnlines 9

Charity Hospital; Capnchins and Jesuits 10

Bienville recommends a college 11

Louisiana transferred to Spain 12

The priests' quarrel .. 13

Gleams of prosperity; Louisiana in the Revolution 14

The Spanish rule 16

Sugarcane introduced.. 17

Bidiop Pefialvert on the Spanish school and the Ursuline convent _ 17

Transfer of the territory to the United States 18

Extracts from contemporary documents 19

Chapter II.— The Beneficiary Period. University of Orleans. .., 27

The College of Orleans 80

The parish academies 38

The central and primary schools of New Orleans 48

The College of Louisiana 45

The College of Jefferson 49

Subsidized academies 54

Library comx>anies and learned societies 67

Chapter III.— State Education of the Second Period, 1846-1860. Free schools 69

The State seminary of learning 71

The University of Louisiana inNew Orleans : 76

The interregnum— education during the war 79

Chapter IV.— State Education of the Third Period, 1865-1890. The State University ..L 81

The public schools since the war _ 101

High schools - _ 110

Private schools and normal schools Ill

Southern University 117

Charitable asylums. 122

Summary of appropriations 122

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter V.— Denominational Institutions. The Urstdines' Convent 123

Academy of the Sacred Heart, St. James Parish, La 131

Silliman Female Collegiate Institute _ 132

Mansfield Female College _ . 134

College of the Immaculate Conception 136

Centenary College of Louisiana 138

Jefferson College _ _. 141

Mount Lebanon University 144

Chapter VI.— The Higher Education of Freedmen. Leland University 149

Straight University 152

New Orleans University 155

Chapter VH. — Benefactors to Education 157

Chapter VIU. — Tulane University of Louisiana.

Medical College of Louisiana 161

University of Louisiana 1 168

Paul Tulane 177

The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College 220

^Appendix I. — Courses of study in the University of Louisiana 236

Appendix II.— Literature in Louisiana _ 252

Appendix IH.— Bibliography 264

Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY

COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA.

A sketch of the rise and progress of education in Louisiana needs for its right understanding some comprehension of the peculiar environment that obtained there in earlier times. Colonization in Louisiana was not the effort of settlers who had come with their families to live, thrive, and prosper in a new land; it was, at the first, the incursion of bands of adventurers, come to get gold and silver quickly and be off again. And so the school was not such an element in the count as with the Puritans, who made permanent homes from the very start. But the race that started the schools so soon was certainly not the great exploring race. The English colonies, though in the climate most suitable for advancing exploration, were at first contented with no very great reach of territory from the Atlantic slopes. The French on the north had quite outstripped them with their explorations westward, and the Spaniards to tlie south, under De Soto, had pushed their adventures very far in the same direction. It was left for the French, under Robert Cavalier de La Salle, to pass down the Mississippi River to its moutli, and so completely encircle on land the English colonies. It has been characteristic of tlie English, however, where other men have labored, to enter into the fruit of their labors. If not the adventuring race, for this portion of the continent at least, the race that early established its schools has proven to be the possessing race.

LA SALLE.

Robert Cavalier de La Salle was born at Rouen, and was educated at one of the establishments of the Jesuits in France. While but a lad he went to Canada, where his services in exploring the Great Lakes must have been considerable, for on his return to France, in 1675, he was rewarded with a patent of nobility. On May 12, 1678, the King signed letters patent commissioning La Salle to go on with his discoveries. The signature of tlie great Colbert, for whom the upper Mississippi had already been named, was on this document. Later in the same year the governor of Canada gave a further authorization to the projected explorations. Some time was required for preparation, and it was not until August 11, 1681, that La Salle and his party set

8 HISTORY OF EDUCATIOX IX LOUISIANA.

forth. A rather minute account of the journey, written by the Sieur de Tonty, La Sailers gallant lieutenant, is still extant. Before the lapse of a year the mouth of the river wa« reached, and La Salle took possession in the name of the French King. He returned almost immediately and went to France to lit out an expedition for eolonizing the region. He succeeded in equipping four vessels, with which he set sail from Rochelle on the 24th of July, 1684. The entire nninber of his party was 280, 100 being soldiers. For this voyage also La Salle had a historian in the person of Joutel, who has written a very full account of it. By some mischance the ships landed too far to the west, and before it was i)08sible to get back to the mouth of the river La Salle was murdered by one of his companions in a lone Texas wilderness. The colony then came to nothing, but a few members of it made their way back to Canada.

d'ibkrvelle.

It was not until lt508, fourteen years later, that DTberville set out from France to make the second attempt at colonizing lA)uisiana, for that was the name given to the newly discovered land in the valley of the river. On this voyage D'Iberville and his brother, Bienville, reached the mouth of the river and made considerable explorations about it and the lakes, but finally settled on a white sand bank some distance to the east of its mouth. D'Iberville returned to France with the fleet May 4, 1699, leaving the colony in charge of his brother Sauvolle.

ENGLISH TURN.

The English had also set their eyes on the Mississippi, and later in the same year, Bienville, the other brother of D'lberville, met an English captain, Barr, in the river with his fleet. lie told Barr that the river he was in was not the Mississippi, and succeeded in dispatching him farther to the west. The l>end of the river from which Barr turned back is known to this day as the English Turn.

SLOW DEVELOPMENT.

On Barr's vessel was a French engineer, Secor by name, who forwarded to the King of France a petition to grant religious liberty to the settlers in Louisiana, and pledged himself to bring 400 families to the settlements on the Mississippi. This application was refused, and Louisiana was thus early robbed of an accession of strength it could ill afford to lose, and which England or the English colonies must have acquired. DTber^-ille had, to be sure, brought over more colonists in 1699 and 1701, but the growth of the colony was slow. The French were for a long time full of the notion that minerals would prove the source of sudden wealth to them, and the settlers wasted their efforts in such a vain search instead of trWng to really occupy the land and follow agriculture. Sauvolle was dead and Bienville, a

3^onth of 20, was governor of the colony. A party had been formed to represent La Salle's interest and was continually intriguing against the youthful Bienville. In 1707 he was removed from office, but the newly appointed governor died on the way to Louisiana, and Bienville was left in command. In 1712 he was degraded to the post of lieutenant-governor by Crozat, who had farmed the pro\dnce, but when, in 1718, Lows Bank, of France, superseded Crozat in the administration of the province, Bienville again took charge. The following year was a period of hostilities between France and Spain, and Bienville signalized himself by the successful prosecution of the struggle in Louisiana. When peace was restored considerable numbers of emigrants from France and Germany began to pour in. This late growth might well have begun earlier had it not been for the unsettled conditions due to the troubles about administering the colony. The site of the colony had never given satisfaction, and Bienville finally determined to remove it to the banks of the Mississippi. In 1718 a site was selected for the new settlement, but a removal could not be effected until 1722 or 1723. About this time Father Charlevoix, a Jesuit priest, was making a tour of the French colonies in the New World, and came to New Orleans, for this name had been given the new seat of government, in 1722. He has, fortunately, written an account of the town as it then appeared, and we can see how slight had been the material growth of the colony:

If the 800 fine houses and the five parishes which the newspapers gave it some two years ago are reduced at present to a hundred barracks placed in no very great order; to a great storehouse built of wood; to two or three houses which would be no great ornament to a village of France, and to the half of a sorry storehouse which they agreed to lend to the lord of the place, and which he had no sooner taken possession of but they turned him out to dwell in a tent; what pleasure, on the other hand, to see insensibly increasing this future capital of a fine and vast country, and to be able to say —not with a sigh like the hero of Virgil, speaking of his dear native place, consumed by the flames, and the fields where the city pf Troy had been, but full of a well-grounded hope — this wild and desert place, which the reeds and trees do yet almost wholly cover, will be one day, and perhaps that day is not far off, an opulent city and the metropolis of a great and rich colony.*

The year before a census of the colony had been taKen, and the white population did not number more than 5,500 souls, f If it be taken into account that these inhabitants were settled over areas several hundred miles apart it will be seen that there was not likely to be much call for any sort of education beyond the modicum that individual mothers may have been able to impart.

THE URSULINES.

It was but a very few years, however, before the first educational impulse reached Louisiana with the arrival, in 1727, of several Ursuline

♦French's Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, III, p. 171. fQayarre, History of Louisiana, I, p. 274.

nuns, under charter with the " Company of the Indies," to care for the hospital in New Orleans and educate young girls. We shall see later (p. 125) with what enthusiasm the sisters were received, so that in their journey up the river, before they had reached the city, they were besieged with applications to admit young girls as boarding pupils.*

CHARITY HOSPITAL.

To the philanthropic mind it must afford a sincere pleasure to know that the hospital thus established at the very foundation of New Orleans has continued until now, and the Charity Hospital is to-day the most important establishment of the kind in the entire Mississippi Valley, and is well adapted to the demands of the most modem investigation and medical practice. We may be sure also that the stream of education has flowed on, though at first a mere trickling rivulet, now and again slow, like the sluggish bayou of Louisiana that seems to the eye a mere stagnancy; but, deepening and widening, the stream has flowed and will flow to reach, let us hope, a volume and a current like the Mississippi's own.

A STEP BACKWARD.

A census of the colony taken in 1724, three years before the nuns came over, shows that not only had there been no advance but rather a considerable retrogression. No wonder; the French system of colonization was vicious in the extreme, for those crops which were grown in France were forbidden to be raised in the new settlements. In a very few years the population had dwindled to about 1,700 whites, but the blacks had increased to 3,300. f Troubles, too, were brewing with the Indians, and the upshot of all this was the massacre at Fort Rosalie, an outbreak that put the colony into great jeopardy.

CAPUCHINS AND JESUITS.

We have seen that the Ursulines came over in 1727, and with them were a company of Jesuits. J There is no record of any educational work undertaken by them, as far as can be learned. Louisiana was under the spiritual direction of the Capuchins, and a member of the Jesuit order has informed the writer that they enjoyed only temporary lodgment in New Orleans in passing to and from their missions among the Indians to the westward. It is affirmed, moreover, in "The Ursulines in Louisiana," page 4, that Father Cecil, a Capuchin monk, was the first person engaged in the instruction of boys in the colony, but the writer can not say on what authority this statement is based.

* Cable, in his ** Creoles of Louisiana" (p. 2(J), thus characterizes the conditions of culture in the new town: *'Thus at the end of the first ten years the town summed up all the true though roughly outlined features of a civilized community — ^the church, the school, courts, hospital, council hall, virtuous homes, a military arm, and a commerce. "

t Gayarr^, I, p. 366, quoting De la Harpe.

t Qayarre, I, pp. 377, 380.

BIENVILLE RECOMBiENDS A COLLEGE.

The first responsible form education took in Louisiana was, then, under ecclesiastical auspices. This was not, however, the fault of Governor Bienville, who was by far the most influential man in the earlier history of the colony. His brother, D'lberville, had founded it, and another brother who was in command had died very earlj'^and left the power in Bienville's hands. The latter wielded it continuously, as governor, sometimes as lieutenant-governor, between 1700 and 1741, save an interval of eight years, 1725-1733, when he was in France in disgrace. He made repeated efforts to induce the French Gk)vemment to give the colony a first-class educational institution under the patronage of the Crown, \jrhat shape his representations took at first we can only conjecture. On the 14th of June, 1742, at a time when he was waiting for the arrival of his successor, he alludes to them himself in a letter to the French Government.

It is long since the inhabitants of Lonisiana made representations on the necessity of their having a college for the education of their children. Convinced of the advantages of such an establishment, they invited the Jesuits to undertake its creation and management. But the reverend fathers refused, on the ground that they had no lodgings suited for the purpose, and had not the necessary materials to support such an institution. Yet it is essential that there be one, at least for the study of the classics, of geometry, geography, pilotage, etc. There the youths of the colony would be taught the knowledge of religion, which is the basis of morality. It is but too evidently demonstrated to parents how worthless turn out to be those children who are raised in idleness and luxury, and how seriously expensive it is for those who send their children to France to be educated. It is even to be feared from this circumstance that the Creoles thus educated abroad will imbibe a dislike to their native counti*y, and will come back to it only to receive and convert into cash what property may be left to them by their parents. Many persons in Vera Cruz would rejoice at having a college here, and would send to it their children.^

It is truly gratifying to observe from this letter that the inhabitants of the colony felt, and had long felt, the desire for an advanced education for their children, so much so that the habit of sending them to France for this purpose had been formed. The growth of the colony had been discouraging, but an ideal of culture had been formed, and education was beginning to assert its claims.

But even this forcible memorial was disregarded by the French Grovernment, on the ground that the colony was ''too unimportant for such an establishment." f We must in fairness admit that there was ground for this refusal, if we consider the immense area over which a population of 3,500 was spread out. J t A misconception might here arise as to the attitude taken by France toward education in her colonies. A college was established in Quebec by the Crown as early as 1635, a few years earlier than Harvard College. In 1638 Ursuline nuns, sent by the Duchess d'Alguillon, had formed another educational institution in Canada. (Martin s History of Louisiana, I, p. 61.)

LOUISIANA TRANSFERRED TO SPAIN.

In 1761 negotiations began between France and Spain on the subject of the defense of Louisiana against English aggressions. On the 3d of November of the following year a treaty was signed at Fontainebleau —

ceding to the King of Spain and his successors forever, in full ownership and without any exception or reservation whatever, from the pure impulse of a generous heart, and from the sense of the affection and friendship that has ever existed between the royal families of France and Spain, all of the conntry known under the name of Louisiana.*

What a gift ! It surpasses the legends of the East in its magnificence. This transfer was not- made public for some time, however. It was not till 1765 that the first Spanish governor, Ulloa, arrived, and an arrangement was effected whereby the administration was still ostensibly in the hands of Aubry, the French governor. This arrangement soon bred trouble, for a meeting of citizens and a decree of the superior council of the colony expelled Ulloa from the country and appealed to the King of France to resume his control.

THE REBELLION — LAFRENI^RE.

The interest of this event for the student of the history of culture lies in the intelligence and resolution that the protestants displayed. Three documents are extant relating to this event — the protest of the large meeting of citizens, a report on this by Messrs. Huchet de Kernion and Riot de Launay, to whom it had been submitted as a council and commission, and, finally, the decree of the superior council, with a protest from Governor Aubry. The ability displayed in these documents is unquestionable, and so is their dignity and candor. If Louisiana had no college, she had educated men who combined prudence with courage of a very high order. Of the address of Lafreni^re, king's attorney, who delivered the report of the commission. Gay arre declares : f

There is a passage in Lafreniere's address of which Lonisiana may well be prond and of which she can boast as spoken by one of her children in 1768, before the voice of 1776 was heard.

** In proportion," said Lafr^niere, ** to the extent of both commerce and population is the solidity of thrones. Both are fed by liberty and competition, which are the nursing mothers of the State, of which the spirit of monopoly is the tyrant and stepmother. Without liberty there are but few virtues. Despotism breeds pusillanimity and deepens the abyss of vices. Man is considered as sinning before God only because he retains his free will."

It is not hard to see between the lines that the project of forming a republic was close to the minds of these rebels, but Spain was too prompt for the rather tardy action of the colonists consequent upon

Ulloa's banishment; a strong force under Greneral O'Reilly took possession of the city, put to death and imprisoned about twelve of the principal citizens concerned in the movement, and so the matter ended. Cable, in his Creoles of Louisiana (p. 70), thus statues the circumstances :

At length the project of forming a republic was revived and was given definite shape and advocacy. But priceless time had been thrown away, the opportune moment had passed, an overwhelming Spanish army and fleet was approaching, and the spirit of the people was paralyzed. The revolt against the injustice and oppression of two royal powers at once by the first European colony that entertained the idea of proclaiming her independence was virtually at an end.

THE priests' quarrel.

Shortly after the colony had become quiet again under the rule of the Spanish governor, Unzaga, a religious quarrel arose, founded upon national differences. The Capuchins were the spiritual caste to whom religion in the colony had been committed from the earliest times. When Spanish Capuchins came into the field quite a lively priests' quarrel ensued, in which we find the Spanish governor doing all he could to help the French monks in a spirit every way commendable. From the documents in this case we obtain quite instructive glimpses of the condition of the populace during this period:

The people here will remain quiet as long as they are gently treated, but the use of the rod would produce confusion and ruin. Their dispositions are the result of the happy state of liberty to which they have been accustomed from the cradle and in which they ought to be maintained so far as is consistent with the laws of the Kingdom. * * *

The people here are neither vicious nor addicted to debauchery nor opposed to our habits, although in many respects those habits disagree with their taste. They have some of their own, as other people have, to which they are much attached, and this is very natural. Those habits are not in conflict with the primordial obligations of society; they are not to be eradicated at once, but must be removed gradually and almost imperceptibly. * * *

What they [i. e. , the French Capuchins] may do in their cells and what their secret sins may be I can not tell, but I know that they give no bad examples, and that they inculcate no unsound doctrine. And how many times does it not happen that the preacher's sermons and his acts are at variance! How comes the prelate to be acquainted with the existence of crimes which, monstrous as they are represented to be, 1 have not been able to detect, although I am on the spot? * * ♦

An enlightened prudence and a good deal of toleration are necessary here, for although this is a Spanish province, and although Count O'Reilly endeavored to make its Inhabitants forget the former domination under which they had lived so long, still I can not flatter His Majesty so much as to say that the people have ceased to be French at heart, and that in them is not to be found that spirit of indei>endence which causes resistance to oppressive laws. But I will affirm that they are susceptible of being submissive and loyal subjects, that they entertain great veneration for their ancient laws, and that the state of felicity which they now enjoy is a guaranty to me that they are not to be suspected of being disposed to fail in their duties toward the Crown. Therefore do I endeavor to keep them in the colony and to secure their love and services to the King, without caring in the least for what I deem to be fooleries. After the blow which the colonists drew upon themselves by their late revolution, the infliction of another wound would be tantamount to utter destruction.*

The quarrel was peacefully arranged. For us its importance is in the glimpse we have of the people and the clergy at that period.

GLEAMS OF PROSPERITY.

The prosperity of the colony had been no greater under the Spanish administration during its earlier portion than under the old regime. In 1768 the population of New Orleans counted only 3,500 whites. Governor Galvez, who succeeded Unzaga in 1777, was in a position to see greater growth. In the preceding year a treaty had been made with France allowing trade with the French Windward Islands, and commissioners of that nationality had been appointed to regulate this trade in New Orleans. Unzaga had been winking at British violations of the laws regulating commerce; Galvez fostered this trade through a French medium. For the first time the Spanish Government exhibited an inclination to foster the colony. The King undertook to buy $800,000 worth of tobacco yearly, or more if a larger crop should be raised. The sum of $40,000 annually was devoted to bringing in new colonists, whom they tried to draw from France or the French colonies in the Indies. In 1779 Galvez reported the accession of 499 colonists from the Canary Islands who had been sent at the King's expense. Some of the emigrant families, besides the lands, cattle, rations, and other aid given them, received the splendid donation of from $3,000 to $4,000.

LOUISIANA IN THE REVOLUTION — GALVEZ.

On the 8th of May, 1779, Spain declared war against Great Britain and Louisiana was put in a state of defense. Galvez was not content with mere inaction, but marched first on the English at Manchac, taking the fort and a few prisoners. On the 21st of September, Baton Rouge, strong as its fortifications were, was captured, and a force of nearly 400 men surrendered. The result of the entire campaign was flattering to the Spanish arms. Eight vessels had been captured and three forts, all with little loss to the Spaniards. Of the behavior of the native troops of Louisiana, Gayarre (Vol. Ill, p. 131) says, on the basis of information taken from the contemporary newspapers in Madrid :

The Louisiana militia behaved with extraordinary discipline and fortitude. It . was diflacult to restrain their ardor, particularly that of the Acadians, who, at the sight of the British troops, being inflamed with rage at -the recollection of their old injuries, were eager to rush on those who had desecrated their hearths, burned

*Gayarr6 III, p. 91 et seq., citing from a letter of Governor Unzaga to the Bishop of Havana.

their paternal roofs to the ground, and driven them into exile like miserable outlaws and outcasts.

The further achievements of Galvez were the capture of Mobile and of Pensacola, and in all these operations he was assisted by Louisiana troops. So great was his success that he was rewarded with the governorship of Mexico when still a young man of about 25 years of age.

His wife was a native of Louisiana and had been educated in the Ursulines' convent.

PROSPERITY REALIZED.

This period was certainly the heyday of prosperity for a colony that had rooted itself so slowly. At the close of Galvez's administration the population of the colony, black and white, had reached the number of 31,433, but it must be always kept in mind that the limits of the colony were as widely separated as the Gulf of Mexico and the upper Missouri one way and the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains in another, and while what is now Louisiana contained the bulk of the population, the settlements were, however, very widely separated. About 12,000 of the inhabitants were gathered within New Orleans. In the year 1787 the import and export duties from this port reached the sum of $72,000. On March 21 of the following year almost the entire city was consumed by a fire, the losses from which were set down by Governor Miro, in his report to the Spanish Government, at over 12,500,000.

THE SPANISH SCHOOL.

Reports of the same governor shed light on the condition of the schools in the colony at this time:

It seems that in 1772 there came from Spain Don Andreas Lopez de Armesto as director of the school which was ordered to be established at New Orleans, Don Pedro Aragon as teacher of grammar, Don Manuel Diaz de Lara as professor oi the rudiments of the Latin language, and Don Francisco de la Celena as teacher of reading and writing. But the governor, Don Luis de Unzaga, found himself greatly embarrassed as to the establishment of those schools, because he knew that the parents would not send their children to them unless they were driven to it by fear of some penalty. Considering, however, that it was not proper to resort to violence, he confined himself to making the public acquainted with the benefits which they would derive from the education which the magnanimous heart of His Majesty thus put within their reach. Nevertheless, no pupil ever presented himself for the Latin class. A few came to be taught reading and writing only. These never exceeded 30, and frequently dwindled down to 6. For this reason the three teachers taught nothing beyond the rudiments.*

The schoolhouse employed by these Spanish teachers was destroyed by the fire, and a citizen of New Orleans, Don Andres Almonaster, offered a room 12 by 13 for the temporary use of the school. The number of pupils had been reduced from 23 to 12 by the fire, for many families had retired to their country homes. The governor proposed the construction of a more suitable building for the school, at a cost of $6,000.*

* Gayarre, III, pp. 204-205.

16 HISTOKY OF EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA.

THE FRENCH SCHOOLS.

In the same repoi*t mention is made of the private schools that were frequented by the children of French descent :

The introduction of the Spanish language in this colony is an object of difficnlt attainment, which it will require much time to accomplish, as the like with regard to any language has always happened in every country passing under the domination of another nation. All that has been obtained so far is that all the proceedings of the courts of justice in the town be conducted in Spanish. But we have not succeeded so well in the other posts and dependencies, where French alone continues to be spoken. Even in this town the books of the merchants, except of those Spanish bom, are kept in that language. For this reason, as those who have no fortune to leave to their sons aspire to give them no other career than a mercantile one, for which they think that reading and writing is sufficient, they prefer that this be taught them in French, and thus there were, before the fire, eight schools of that description, which were frequented by 400 children of both sexes.