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Textbooks, Teachers, And Compromise: The Political Work Of Freedmen Education, Ashley Marie Swarthout

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

After the end of the Civil War, Northerners flooded into the South in order to participate in the education of freedmen. While many, perhaps most, of the individuals who worked in freedmen education had the best interests of the freedmen in mind, freedmen education in of itself was inherently political; therefore, all contributors to freedmen education were also sponsors of Southern Reconstruction politics. It is my argument that the aid organizations (particularly the American Missionary Association and the American Freedmen's Union Commission), the writers and printers of freedmen-specific textbooks (the American Tract Society and Lydia Maria Child), and the teachers …