Read Ebook: A History of the McGuffey Readers by Vail Henry Hobart

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This Rhetorical Guide or Fifth Reader is the book that by its careful selection of specimens of the best English literature in prose and verse contributed most to the training of its readers toward the appreciation of true beauty in literature. It contained many pieces of solid and continuous worth,--many that relate closely to the great historical eras of the United States.

In the latest revision of the highest reader, made in 1879, one hundred and thirty-eight selections composed the book. Of this number sixty-one were in the original book as prepared by Mr. A.H. McGuffey.

It was an admirable collection of much material that is still prized and which, when carefully read by pupils hungry for thoughtful language, made a deep and lasting impression. In many cases the inmost thought of the author may not have been at once fully apprehended by the young readers; but with advancing years and wider experience in life the stored words became instinct with thought and feeling.

Dr. William Holmes McGuffey was born September 28, 1800, on the southern border of Washington county, Pa. The family descended from William and Anna McGuffey who came from Scotland, and landed at Philadelphia. They made a home in the southern part of York county, at which, during the Revolution, General Washington often stopped to refresh himself. In 1789 this family removed to Washington county, Pa.

Alexander McGuffey, the father of Dr. McGuffey, was six years old when the family came to America in August, 1774. In 1790, when he was twenty-two years of age, he and his friend, Duncan McArthur, afterward a governor of Ohio, were selected from five young men who volunteered to act as scouts against the Indians in Ohio who were then threatening the frontier settlements in the western part of Virginia and Pennsylvania. These two young men were selected after tests by Samuel Brady to find which could run the fastest, shoot most accurately, and were least afraid of Indians. Alexander McGuffey served in the army three years, venturing his life with small bodies of scouts in the Indian country. He took part in several fights with the Indians. When General St. Clair in 1792 marched north from Cincinnati to meet the Indians, this body of scouts was one day concealed in a swamp near the spring of Castalia, Ohio. There they saw great numbers of Indians passing to meet General St. Clair, and three of the scouts hastened through the Indian country to inform the general. They traveled only at night and hid during the day. One night they marched forty miles. They told General St. Clair what they had seen and again went out to watch the collecting Indians. Three days later St. Clair was defeated. These scouts were then twelve miles away but the retreating soldiers soon overtook them and then the "woods were alive with Indians." The scouts turned eastward and in due time reached Logstown, near Wheeling.

The next year McArthur, McGuffey and George Sutherland were again sent out by General Wayne to spy the Indians. When only seven or eight miles from Wheeling and west of the Ohio river, they came upon a trail which led to a deer lick. Just at dusk McGuffey, who was leading the party, saw in the path the gaily decorated head-dress of an Indian. It had been placed there by the Indians who were in ambush close by and were ready to shoot any white man who should stop to pick it up. McGuffey saw through the stratagem instantly; without halting, he gave it a kick and shouted "Indians!" Several Indians fired at once and one of the balls smashed McGuffey's powder horn, and passed through his clothing, but did not wound him. The three scouts retreated in safety, and the Indians did not follow them.

The wars with the Indians in that region closed in 1794, and Alexander McGuffey then married Anna Holmes, of Washington county, and became a settler. His eldest son was William Holmes McGuffey. When this son was but two years old the family moved to Trumbull county, Ohio. Here, in the care of a pious mother and father, he spent the years of childhood and of early manhood, performing the labors falling upon the eldest son in a large family of children dwelling in a log cabin on the frontier. From the heavy forest, fields were cleared, fenced and cultivated, roads were made and bridges were built, and in all these labors the sturdy son of the famous Indian scout took part.

During the first eighteen years of W.H. McGuffey's life he had no opportunities for education other than those afforded by the brief winter schools supported by the voluntary subscriptions of the parents in the neighborhood.

In 1802 Rev. Thos. Hughes, a Presbyterian clergyman, built at Darlington, Pa., the "Old Stone Academy" for the education of young men, having obtained the necessary funds by traveling on horseback throughout Pennsylvania and eastward even to Newburyport, Mass.

This seminary of learning was conducted on lines of the utmost economy to meet the needs of the boys living on the frontier. The tuition was only three dollars a year and the charge for board was seventy-five cents a week. The food was simple. For breakfast, bread, butter, and coffee; for dinner, bread, meat, and sauce; for supper, bread and milk. The only variation allowed in this bill of fare was the occasional omission of sauce or coffee.

At the close of a summer day in 1818, Thomas Hughes was riding horseback through Trumbull county. The dust on the highway deadened the sound of his horse's feet. While passing a log cabin, half hidden from the road by intervening trees and shrubs, he heard the plaintive voice of a woman who was in the garden, out of sight. The clergyman stopped his horse and listened. He heard the woman earnestly praying that some way might be opened for her children to obtain such education as should fit them for the duties of life. Riding on, the clergyman inquired at the next house regarding the inmates of the log cabin. He was informed that a Mr. McGuffey lived there. Turning back he sought the prayerful mother and learned from her the circumstances of the family. The doors of the "Old Stone Academy" were opened to William H. McGuffey and he there obtained his first start in a preparation for college. But his labor could not be wholly spared on the farm so lately won from the surrounding forest. He worked in the fields in summer, continuing his studies and walked many miles once a week to recite his lessons to a kindly clergyman.

W.H. McGuffey's father was too poor to aid his son in obtaining a collegiate education, and the latter soon turned to teaching as a means of obtaining money to support himself in college. When prepared for college he went back to his native county and entered Washington College. He was in his twenty-sixth year when he graduated with distinguished honors from that institution.

It was at Washington College that W.H. McGuffey first met with a great teacher and former of character,--Dr. Andrew Wylie, then the president. It was considered by Dr. McGuffey one of the most fortunate events of his life that he came at that time under the influence of Dr. Wylie's forceful mind and elevated character.

Dr. McGuffey was obliged to suspend his collegiate course for a year to earn more money for his support. He taught a private school at Paris, Ky., in 1823 and 1824. There he met Dr. Robert H. Bishop, the president of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. Dr. Bishop was so impressed with the character and mental power of the young teacher that on March 29, 1826, even before McGuffey received his bachelor's degree from Washington College, he received his appointment as professor of Ancient Languages at Miami University.

On March 29, 1829, he was licensed as a preacher in the Presbyterian church, and from that date he became a frequent public speaker. He never had charge of a parish as minister, but usually preached on Sunday in the college chapel to the students and to such of the public as could obtain space to sit or to stand. The preacher's unassuming manner, the clearness of his thought, and the simplicity of his language produced impressions that were enduring. He never wrote his sermons. He simply thought them out rigorously, and his mind worked so logically and in such definite lines that he could repeat on request a sermon, preached years before, in a form recognized by his hearers as substantially the same.

After ten years spent in teaching and preaching at Miami University, Dr. McGuffey resigned, August 26, 1836, and accepted the presidency of Cincinnati College.

This institution was chartered in the winter of 1818-1819 by the legislature of Ohio, largely at the solicitation of Dr. Daniel Drake. It was partially endowed by the gifts of the public-spirited citizens of Cincinnati. But its collegiate functions had been allowed to drop, although a school on the Lancastrian system was maintained.

The election of Dr. McGuffey as president of this college was a result of renewed activity on the part of the leading men in the city to found a genuine college of high character in that city. They believed that if well conducted such an institution would bring to its doors students enough to support the college by their fees.

A medical department was organized in June, 1835, with eight competent professors, a law department with three professors, and a faculty of arts with seven teachers. In this faculty, William H. McGuffey was president and professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, O.M. Mitchell was professor of Mathematics and Astronomy, and Edward D. Mansfield was professor of Constitutional Law and History. Dr. McGuffey accepted the presidency with a full knowledge that the work was experimental. A trial of three years demonstrated that a college could not be sustained without an invested endowment. Cincinnati College "was endowed with genius, and nothing else."

In 1839, Dr. McGuffey accepted the presidency of the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio, which office he held for four years. During these years his faculties were at their fullest development. He had become an experienced, scholarly teacher and a popular speaker on religious and educational subjects. The students at Athens held him in the highest esteem, and the influence of his teaching became deeper as years rolled by and experience emphasized his lessons.

In 1839 he was honored with the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred upon him by the Indiana University, of which his former teacher and friend, Dr. Wylie, was then president.

The income of the Ohio University came chiefly from the rents of two entire townships of land which had been given it for an endowment. This land was lawfully revalued at the end of ten years. The revaluation was contested in the courts by the tenants. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the university; but the farmers induced the legislature in 1843 to pass a law which fixed the income of the university from these lands at a sum so low as to cause the doors of the institution to be closed for five years.

Dr. McGuffey returned to Cincinnati and was for two years a professor in Woodward College, now Woodward High School.

In 1845 he was appointed professor of Natural and Moral Philosophy in the University of Virginia. This position he filled with credit to himself and with great acceptance to the students in that institution for more than a quarter of a century and until his death on May 4, 1873.

Dr. McGuffey once told a pupil that he had preached three thousand sermons and had never written one. Until late in life he had never written his lectures. Shortly before his death he began the preparation of a book on Mental Philosophy. This was never completed.

In 1837 Professor Calvin E. Stowe went to Europe to investigate the organization and method of elementary schools. On his return he published, in 1838, his report on the Prussian system. Subsequently Dr. McGuffey labored in Ohio with Samuel Lewis and other public-spirited men for the passage of the general school law under which the common schools of Ohio were first organized. He carried to Virginia the same zeal for the education of all the children of the state to prepare them for the duties of life. One of his first acts on assuming the duties of his professorship in the university was to make a tour of the state advocating the introduction of a public school system in Virginia. To this first appeal for common schools, open alike to rich and poor, there was then but a feeble response; but, twenty-five years later, Dr. McGuffey had the satisfaction of seeing the public schools organized with one of his own friends and a former pupil at its head,--Hon. W.H. Ruffner.

Dr. McGuffey was a man of medium stature and compact figure. His forehead was broad and full; his eyes clear and expressive. His features were of the strongly marked rugged Scotch type. He was a ready speaker, a popular lecturer on educational topics, and an able preacher. He was admirable in conversation. His observation of men was accurate, and his study of character close.

After the Civil War and while the reconstruction was in progress it was extremely difficult in the North to obtain a correct view of the situation in the South. State governments had been established in which "carpet-baggers" had more or less control. Nearly all the whites in the South had taken part in the war. They were largely disfranchised and their former servants often became the legal rulers. The Klu Klux Klan had begun their unlawful work, of which the papers gave contradictory reports.

As business men, the publishers of McGuffey's Readers desired to learn the truth about the situation of the South and its probable future. They asked Dr. McGuffey to take a trip through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and make report to them at Cincinnati. This he did, visiting all the larger towns where he was usually the honored guest of some graduate of the university. He saw the legislatures in session, met the governors, and studied the whole situation. He then came to Cincinnati and told his story. He had made no notes, but he never hesitated for a name. He repeated conversations with unquestioned accuracy and described with humor the gross ignorance and brutality of some of the southern legislators, the looting of the capitol at the end of the session, the indirect robbery that was under way, the reversal of all the conditions of life, and the growing unrest of the men who had heretofore been the rulers.

It was such a picture as at that time no Northern paper would have dared to print--it was the truth. For days he held his listeners captive with the story--the writer never heard a more interesting one.

While Dr. McGuffey was still at Oxford, Ohio, he took part in the formation of probably the first extended Teachers' Association formed in the West. There had been a previous association of Cincinnati teachers organized for mutual aid and improvement. This was about to be given up; but at their first anniversary on June 20, 1831, Mr. Albert Pickett, principal of a private school in Cincinnati, proposed a plan for organizing in one body the instructors in public and private schools and the friends of education. Circulars were sent out and the first meeting of the College of Teachers was held October 3, 1832. A great number of teachers from many states of the West and South attended these meetings and took part in the proceedings. Throughout its continuance Dr. McGuffey took an active part in the work. In the years 1832-1836 fifty-seven addresses were delivered to the College by thirty-nine speakers. Of this number Dr. McGuffey prepared and delivered three.

The proceedings of the College of Teachers were published in annual pamphlets which together formed two large octavo volumes. The topics which were then under discussion are best shown by the titles of a few of the addresses, with the name of the speaker and the year of delivery:

On Introducing the Bible into Schools, Rev. B.P. Aydelott, 1836; Importance of making the business of Teaching a Profession, Lyman Beecher, D.D., 1833; The Kind of Education Adapted to the West, Professor Bradford, 1833; Qualifications of Teachers, Mr. Mann Butler, 1832; Physical Education, Dr. Daniel Drake, 1833; On Popular Education, John P. Harrison, M.D., 1836; On the Study and Nature of Ancient Languages, A. Kinmont, 1832; On Common Schools, Samuel Lewis, Esq., 1835; On the Qualifications of Teachers, E.D. Mansfield, Esq., 1836; Reciprocal Duties of Parents and Teachers, Rev. W.H. McGuffey, A.M., 1835; General Duties of Teachers, Albert Pickett, 1835; Philosophy of the Human Mind, Bishop Purcell, 1836; Utility of Cabinets of Natural Science, Joseph Ray, 1836; Agriculture as a Branch of Education, Rev. E. Slack, 1836; Education of Emigrants, Professor Calvin Stowe, 1835; Best Method of Teaching Composition, D.L. Talbott, 1835; Manual Labor in the Schools, Milo G. Williams.

Some of these topics are still engrossing the attention of teachers at their annual meetings for the discussion of live educational questions.

While Dr. McGuffey was at Oxford, teaching mental philosophy to the pupils in Miami University, he prepared the manuscript for the two lower readers of the graded series which bore his name. To test his work while in progress, he collected in his own house a number of small children whom he taught to read by the use of his lessons.

It is evident that these readers were prepared at the solicitation of the publishers and on such a general plan as to number and size as was desired by the publishers. Dr. McGuffey was selected by them as the most competent teacher known to them for the preparation of successful books. He did not prepare the manuscripts and search for a publisher.

On April 28, 1836, he made a contract with Truman & Smith, publishers of Cincinnati, for the preparation and publication of a graded series of readers to consist of four books. The First and Second readers were then in manuscript, the Third and Fourth readers were to be completed within eighteen months. They were both issued in 1837. Dr. Benjamin Chidlaw, then a student in college, aided the author by copying the indicated selections and preparing them for the printer. He received for this work five dollars and thought himself well paid.

These four books constituted the original series of the Eclectic Readers by W.H. McGuffey which in all the subsequent revisions have borne his name and retained the impress of his mind.

The First Reader made a thin 18mo book of seventy-two pages, having green paper covered sides; the Second Reader contained one hundred and sixty-four pages of the same size. The Third Reader had a larger page and was printed as a duodecimo of one hundred and sixty-five pages. The fourth Reader ranked in size with the Third and contained three hundred and twenty-four printed pages. Each was printed from the type, which was distributed when the required number for the edition came from the press.

When, after the Civil War, these readers attained a sale which became very profitable to the firm then owning the copyrights, the partners, without suggestion or solicitation, fixed upon an annuity which was paid Dr. McGuffey each year so long as he lived. This was a voluntary recognition of their esteem for the man and of the continued value of his work.

Before Dr. McGuffey completed the manuscripts of the Third and Fourth readers he left Oxford and went to Cincinnati. Here he found himself in close touch with a community fully alive to the claims of education. Cincinnati, in 1837, was the largest city in the West excepting New Orleans and was the great educational center of the West. The early settlers of Cincinnati were generally well educated men and they had a keen sense of the value of learning. The public schools of Cincinnati were then more highly developed than those of any other city in the West. Woodward High School had been endowed and Dr. Joseph Ray, the author of the well known arithmetics, was the professor of mathematics there. The Cincinnati College was then bright with the promise of future usefulness. Lane Seminary was founded and Dr. Lyman Beecher was inducted professor of Theology on December 26, 1832, and became the first president. He went to Cincinnati with his brilliant family. His eldest daughter, Catherine, had already won a high reputation as a teacher, acting as principal of the Hartford Female Institute. His younger daughter, Harriet, married, in January, 1836, Calvin E. Stowe, then one of the professors in Lane Seminary. It was while in Cincinnati that she gathered material and formed opinions which she later embodied in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In 1834 Henry Ward Beecher graduated at Amherst College. He and his brother, Charles, then went to Cincinnati to study theology under their father. While pursuing his studies Henry Ward Beecher devoted his surplus energies to editorial work on the Cincinnati Daily Journal. These were some of the people of Cincinnati interested in the problem of education who took part with Dr. McGuffey in the discussions of the College of Teachers and labored zealously for the promotion of education in every department. While president of Lane Seminary. Dr. Beecher was also the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati where W.B. Smith was an attendant.

Dr. McGuffey left Cincinnati in 1839, and when the publisher, Mr. Winthrop B. Smith, found it necessary to add to the four McGuffey's Readers another more advanced book, he employed for its preparation, Mr. Alexander H. McGuffey, a younger brother of Dr. McGuffey. Mr. Alexander H. McGuffey had, in 1837, prepared for Messrs. Truman & Smith the manuscript of McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book, and although the nature of this task was very different from the preparation of a reader for the highest grades in the elementary schools, the result showed that the publishers judged wisely in selecting a man competent to prepare a selection from English literature.

Mr. Alexander Hamilton McGuffey was born August 13, 1816, in Trumbull County, Ohio. He was sixteen years younger than his brother, William, and when only ten years of age was placed under charge of his brother at Oxford, Ohio. There he studied Hebrew before he had any knowledge of the grammar of his mother tongue. He was a brilliant student, and he graduated from Miami University at the age of sixteen. Soon after graduation he was appointed Professor of Belles Lettres at Woodward College. In this field of labor his knowledge of English literature was broadened and he acquired a love for the classic English writers that lasted through life. But Mr. McGuffey determined to become a lawyer and, while still teaching English literature in Woodward College, he read law. He was admitted to the bar as soon as he reached his twenty-first year, and became a noted and wise counsellor. His labor for his clients was in keeping them out of the courts by clearly expressed contracts and prudent action. He was seldom engaged in jury trials; but was expert in cases involving contracts and wills. In such suits his knowledge of the principles of law and his power of close reasoning were valuable. He was often placed in positions of trust, and was for more than fifty years the watchful guardian of the interests of the Cincinnati College.

He prepared the manuscript of the Rhetorical Guide after the close of his labor as a teacher. The work probably occupied his leisure time in a law office before he acquired remunerative practice in his profession.

The contract between Mr. A.H. McGuffey and W.B. Smith, dated September 30, 1841, provided for the preparation within eighteen months, of the manuscript of a book to be called McGuffey's Rhetorical Reader, or by any other appropriate name which Mr. Smith might select. It was to contain not less than three hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages nor more than four hundred and eighty. Mr. Smith paid five hundred dollars for it, in three notes payable in three, twelve, and eighteen months after the delivery of the manuscript. The book was issued in 1844 as McGuffey's Rhetorical Guide. Its material, revised by its author, later became, in modified form, the Fifth Reader in the five-book series, and again much of the same material was used in the Sixth Reader published first in 1855.

Mr. A.H. McGuffey was a noteworthy figure in any assemblage of men. He was tall, slender and erect. His manner was urbane and reserved. He served on many charitable and educational boards and was attentive to his trusts. He was an active member of the Episcopalian Church, being many years a warden in his parish, and frequently a delegate to the Diocesan Convention, where he was a recognized authority on Ecclesiastical Law.

In a life of nearly eighty years in which he was active in many educational and beneficent enterprises his early work in the preparation of the Rhetorical Guide probably exercised the widest, the best, and the most enduring influence. Many of the newspapers in all parts of the country published notices of his death, recognizing in kindly terms the service that had been rendered the writers by the schoolbook of which he was the author.

THE PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS.

Since the McGuffey Readers became at an early day the absolute property of their publishers, they became responsible for all subsequent revisions and corrections of the books.

The firm of Truman & Smith was organized about 1834 by William B. Truman and Winthrop B. Smith. Both had had some experience in the business of selling books. It is highly probable that this firm became for a short time the Western agent for some schoolbooks made in the East. But Mr. Smith soon perceived a distinct demand for a series adapted to the Western market and supplied near at hand. He had the courage to follow his convictions.

Mr. Winthrop B. Smith was born in Stamford, Conn., September 28, 1808, the son of Anthony and Rebecca Smith. He was, in his youth, an employee in a book-house in New Haven. At the age of eighteen he went to Cincinnati, declaring that he would not return to his home until he was independent. He labored there fourteen years before he returned, not rich, but established in an independent career. He often declared that until 1840, he was "insolvent, but no one knew it."

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