Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

Two seemingly enduring myths have misconstrued the history of education in the antebellum South: first, few schools existed in the antebellum South and, second, education was not a central part of southern life. Consequently, received historical interpretation concludes that education, specifically schooling, was altogether lacking in the South. In her well-written and well-researched book, historian Sarah L. Hyde debunks both of these myths, arguing that southerners were deeply invested in education. Her study focuses on three states in the Gulf South: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. To shed light on the expansion of schooling and teaching in this region from the 1820s to the 1860s, Hyde adopts an expansive definition of education that includes informal and formal learning. She posits that a belief in the necessity of education for citizenship and the central role of education in social mobility greatly influenced southern culture.

Organized in six chapters, Schooling in the Antebellum South explores a range of topics, including homeschooling, private schooling, [End Page 109] state initiatives in support of public schooling, urban public schools, and the creation of statewide public-school systems. Combing through various archival sources, from family correspondence to local and state government records to student diaries, Hyde traces how white southerners' perspectives about education changed during the antebellum era. For instance, white governors such as Abram M. Scott in Mississippi and Gabriel Moore in Alabama championed education as a way to train a republican citizenry. Still, not all officials acted to increase educational access for all white children. Hyde points out that apathetic state legislators voted to pass legislation to appropriate funds to support only private schools. By 1860, 527 academies, seminaries, and institutes existed in the South. On the one hand, this number shows that schooling was important to southerners; on the other hand, these private institutions, according to Hyde, failed to "substantially improve access" to schooling for all white children (p. 68).

Amid the rise of Jacksonian democracy, white citizens in the Gulf South began to act as boosters for free public schools. No longer was education the province of the southern elite; poor, working-class, and middle-class southerners demanded that their local and state officials act to expand educational opportunities. Hyde's analysis of the role of residents, local officials, and state legislators in establishing urban school systems in New Orleans, Natchez, and Mobile is particularly insightful. In Louisiana, for example, two progressive legislative measures strengthened schools: admitting poor white children free of charge and establishing a central school official. The city of New Orleans took advantage of these measures, creating municipalities that could levy taxes to support schools, which attracted a growing number of white children. An excellent local administration and financing from the city, in addition to community agitation, were two other factors that contributed to the success of New Orleans schools as well as other urban schools in the Gulf South. It also did not hurt that the city of New Orleans received donations from rich benefactors like John McDonogh. These local urban school systems influenced the creation and establishment of statewide public school [End Page 110] systems in the Gulf South. By 1860, 250,000 white children had been schooled in these three states.

Schooling in the Antebellum South offers a welcome corrective to the historiography on education in the antebellum South. It expands the canon on the history of American education by showing that white residents in the Gulf South placed a high value on education. This book should inspire further scholarship that connects this regional history on education with broader issues such as race and whiteness, gender, and slavery, specifically the tension between slaveholders and non-slaveholders over the establishment of state public school systems. Hyde's timely book would be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses in southern history as well as the history of...