A Second Home: Missouri's Early Schools

9. Rebuilding Missouri’s School System “Without Regard to Color”

In consequence of the war, which has with unparalleled ferocity and bloodshed devastated our state for the last 20 months, the common schools of the state are prostrated and broken up. Schoolteachers have laid down the ferrule and taken up the sword; and parents have sent their children to learn war on the battle plains, instead of letters in quiet groves of literature and science. — Mordecai Oliver, superintendent of common schools, reporting to the Twenty-second General Assembly I n the years following the war, Missouri had a desperate need for both black and white teachers. Few African Americans had been trained or allowed to teach before the Civil War. During and after the war, white teachers had to take the “IronClad Oath,” a loyalty oath affirming their innocence of eightysix different acts of disloyalty against Missouri or the Union. The oath listed such acts as giving aid or comfort to any hostile person; giving money, goods, letters, or information to the enemies of the United States; or harboring or aiding any person engaged in guerrilla warfare. Missourians who had committed any of the acts could not teach in any public or private school. Many whose sympathies were with the Confederacy had in one 103 Chapter Nine Rebuilding Missouri’s School System “Without Regard to Color” 104 way or another engaged in these activities and still had strong feelings about their loyalties. The Iron Clad Oath eliminated many qualified teachers. Officials developed the oath in different forms. The provost marshal’s office in St. Louis recorded the oath of allegiance given by Sue M. Bryant of Cooper County to the assistant provost marshall in St. Louis: [I,] Sue M. Bryant of Cooper county, State of Missouri, do hereby solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the United States and support and sustain the Constitution and laws thereof; . . . that I will discourage, discountenance and forever oppose secession, rebellion and the disintegration of the Federal union; that I disclaim and denounce all faith and fellowship with the so-called Confederate armies, and pledge my honor my property and my life to the sacred performance of this my solemn oath of allegiance to the Government of the United States of America. Subscribed and sworn to before me this 10th day of October , 1864 at St. Louis, Mo. Wm. A. Keyser, Asst. Prov. Mar. During the war, some citizens had reported acts of disloyalty by teachers. In a typical testimony, subscribed to on July 31, 1863, a Miss Kate Boone gave a sworn statement about an acquaintance of hers. The document is now preserved in Missouri’s Union Provost Marshal papers in the Missouri State Archives: I live in Danville and [am] well acquainted with Miss Susan Hughes who is teaching a school in Danville. I saw Miss Hughes on 29 inst—after she had been ordered to take the oath of allegiance and after she had taken the oath and filed it in the clerk’s office—at Mr. Winters house in Danville—she said she had been up at Head Quarters but had not taken the oath. She cheered twice for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy and said Price would be along after while. She said she had not taken the oath and would not take it, and that she would teach school too. A SECOND HOME 105 As schools opened again around the state, the majority of the teachers were men who had served in the Union Army. They had returned with a wide range of experiences, having traveled far from their local communities, and filled an immediate need. The first schools to open were crowded with young men and women who had had no opportunity to attend school during the war years, although some came for only one or two days to learn how to write their names. These earliest schools were for whites, but some residents recognized the need to educate black children as well. Lafayette County preservationist Charles Sands found evidence that in the winter of 1865–1866 the congregation of the German Methodist church in Lexington opened a school for newly freed slaves in the community. An experienced teacher, Miss M. E. Parker, taught approximately seventy students in the basement classroom of the church, assisted by Elizabeth McFarland. The school continued in the church for two years. Northern religious groups also worked to educate black children . Emma Ray, born a slave in...