Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward and the New York School Controversy (review)

60CIVIL WAR HISTORY esthetics, psychology, and political economy has never been so well told. Clarity, depth, and thoroughness make this a valuable piece of work. If the second half of the book seems to lag somewhat, it is an accurate reflection of the failure of the Harvard idea in contact with social realities, particularly the slavery question. Howe makes a good case for his dozen worthies as "Christian humanists," but provides plenty of evidence that the famed Unitarian conscience was, much of the time, only the Boston business community in the pulpit. Again, it does not follow that commitment to "capitalism, theism, liberalism, and optimism " is enough to make this group "very much men of their age." It simply appears that such commitment was fully compatible with being not merely men of yesterday but even the day before yesterday. It is one of Howe's merits that he understands all this better than his readers, only occasionally letting go his hold. But because Andrews Norton, who labored years on a magnum opus to prove the historicity of Scripture miracles, was not really comic does not make him tragic. People who expected, as Norton and his friends did, that "conscience and self-love would normally reach the same conclusions," deliberately located themselves in a gray middle-distance between comedy and tragedy. From thence it was easy for their foot to slide into a page-bottom reference in the work of a genuine thinker. Fred Somkin Cornell University Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward and the New York School Controversy. By Vincent P. Lannie. (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1968. Pp. xii, 282. $7.50.) Professor Vincent Lannie has produced a judicious and meticulously researched treatment of the New York City school controversy which raged across the state from 1840 to 1842. The conflict began when William Henry Seward, first Whig governor of New York, proposed much needed educational reforms. His program encompassed the extension of state funds to schools operated by the Roman Catholic diocese of New York. The proposal, emanating from Seward's humanitarian concern for the plight of immigrant children and a dedication to the concept of state responsibility for education, stirred troubled waters in the cauldron of nativist feeling. To Archbishop John Hughes, the leader of the largely immigrant Irish Catholic community of the city, the governor's proposal must have seemed as manna. As originally introduced, the plan would have poured state monies into the impoverished Catholic parochial system , solved a basic dilemma for Catholics, and increased school facilities for New York. Principled opposition, lurking nativism, and hostility from the Public School Society, a private, elitist and Protestant organization which had long held a monopolistic and deleterious control of educa- BOOK REVIEWS61 tional facilities in New York City, contributed to the defeat of the measure . Through political machinations which transcended partisan and religious labels and witnessed Hughes leading an ephemeral Catholic third party, a compromise was achieved which ended the hegemony of the Public School Society, but which did not authorize public monies for the Catholic schools. Although Hughes and, to a lesser extent, Seward , claimed victory, theirs was a mixed success. For Seward, there was the extension of the district school concept in New York; but, also, a political liability which contributed to his temporary retirement from public life and plagued him for more than a decade after the event. For Hughes, there was an intensification of his commitment to parochial education, but little assistance in the pursuit of that objective. And for the state, there was the expansion of problems incident to a dual system of education which would linger in the twentieth century. Although the details of the episode may have receded into obscurity, the central issues in the conflict are still important. At the vortex of the difficulty was the relationship between Church and State in the sensitive area of education. That relationship embraced both the question of school finance and the role of moral and religious training in the public schools of a pluralistic society. Finally, there was the issue of community control of education involving the rights of a minority group. The book offers important insights...