A Few Thoughts for a Young Man, When Entering upon Life: A Lecture Delivered Before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, on Its 29th Anniversary

62 pp. Original shoestring binding with pink wrappers. A transcript of the speech given at Blooming-Grove Church by Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Though it states this lecture was given to celebrate the Boston Mercantile Library's 29th anniversary, the BML was founded in 1820. Other speakers who lectured before this group included Rev. Henry Ward Beecher; Horace Greeley; Rev. H.W. Bellows; Rev. E.C. Holland; Rev. E.H. Chapin. "Mann, Horace (04 May 1796 - 02 August 1859), educator and social reformer, was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas Mann and Rebecca Stanley, farmers. Although earlier historical accounts that described his childhood as impoverished are inaccurate (his family was moderately prosperous), they are correct in their assertion that Mann's values were shaped during childhood by his family, his community, and in no small part by his relations with the local Congregationalist preacher, Nathanael Emmons. After a lengthy struggle with the minister's undiluted Calvinism, Mann ultimately rejected orthodox religious dogma when, following the accidental drowning of his brother Stephen in 1810, Emmons relegated his brother to the ranks of the eternally damned. Unwilling to farm for a living, Mann determined to escape Franklin's narrow confines. While college offered a means of advancement, Mann's limited secondary education (received in doses of a few weeks each winter at a nearby district school) presented an obstacle. He entered into a period of self-preparation in Latin and at nineteen took instruction in Greek from Samuel Barrett, an itinerant schoolmaster. Mann received further instruction, in mathematics, from the Reverend William Williams, a Baptist minister in nearby Wrentham. In the fall of 1816 Mann journeyed to Providence, Rhode Island, and gained admittance to the sophomore class at Brown. By dint of hard work, he not only overcame his remaining deficiencies but flourished. Eventually named president of the United Brothers, a literary society, Mann graduated at the top of his class in 1819. Determined to enter the legal field, he then read law in the office of Josiah J. Fiske back in Wrentham. Mann missed the mental stimulation of his Brown classmates and quickly became bored with the dull routine of office work. He had decided to enter Judge Tapping Reeve's renowned law school in Litchfield, Connecticut, when he received an offer to return to his alma mater as a tutor; after weighing his options, he returned to Brown in early 1820. Mann found that life on the other side of the desk at Brown held few fascinations for him. Following his earlier intentions, he entered Litchfield law school in early 1822. As New England suffered from a surfeit of lawyers, graduation from the school provided no guarantee of employment. After considering various locations, Mann moved to the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, where he read law for almost another year in the office of attorney James Richardson before passing the Norfolk County bar in December 1823. Although Mann's practice grew slowly at first (he often served as a collection agent for rural creditors), honors began to come his way. Asked to deliver Dedham's annual Fourth of July oration in 1823, he made such an impression that he was asked to give another speech in July 1826 commemorating Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both of whom died on 4 July of that year. He started receiving business from Boston firms and was sufficiently successful to lend money on the side. In addition, he entered a business partnership with another brother, Stanley, in a series of textile mills. He also entered public life, beginning as the moderator of the Dedham Town Meeting, and in May 1827 was elected to the Massachusetts General Court (the lower house of the state legislature). His most significant effort as an elected representative was to back the move to provide state support for the construction of a private railroad line between Boston and New York's Hudson River. With the passage of the legislation, Mann gained his first experience in harnessing the power of the state to achieve reform; it would not be his last. In the midst of his legislative dealings, Mann married Charlotte Messer, the daughter of Brown University president Asa Messer, in Providence in September 1830; the couple had no children. In the same year as his marriage Mann for the first time took a leading part in the reform movement that so characterized the era and that was to hold him in its sway for the rest of his life. Following reports of the shameful conditions under which the insane of Massachusetts often lived, Mann shepherded a bill through the legislature (signed into law in March 1830) that provided for the construction of a state insane asylum. Located in Worcester and possessing a capacity for 120 persons, the facility was a vast improvement over the filthy jail cells that had been the standard lot for the commonwealth's less fortunate citizens. Although totally unschooled in social work, architecture, and facility management, Mann and his fellow commissioners oversaw all facets of the facility's construction and selected its first superintendent, Dr. Samuel B. Woodward, as well. Although the new facility opened amid acclaim in January 1833, Mann was in no mood to celebrate. His wife's health, never robust, had earlier collapsed, and in August 1832 she died. Mann immediately went into an emotional tailspin from which he was years in recovering. Adding to his distress was the impending failure of his brother's businesses, for which he had cosigned several notes. After moving to Boston, he briefly lived in a boardinghouse (where he met and befriended the sisters Mary Peabody and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody - then engaged in editing as well as keeping school) before moving his belongings into his office in a further attempt to reduce his expenses. Attempts on the part of friends to revive his spirits met with only fleeting success. Although Mann remained busy, even his work brought him little solace. Mann had long been involved with the temperance movement and by the mid-1830s had become a leader of that movement's moderate faction, which sought to eliminate alcohol abuse by use of logic and moral suasion. Having left the state legislature in 1832, he was urged by friends to return to public life. He briefly led a committee investigating the burning of the Ursuline convent of Cambridge in August 1834, only to have to resign when his health failed. Mann then reluctantly allowed his name to be placed in nomination as a Whig candidate for the state senate that fall. Elected in the Whig landslide, he became senate president in the following year. Upon returning to the legislature, Mann initially focused on reforming debtor laws. His greatest endeavor, however, began with the passage of an act creating a state board of education in April 1837. Providing for a ten-member board (consisting of the governor, lieutenant governor, and eight appointed citizens), the bill also mandated the hiring of a secretary, who was to make annual reports to the legislature. Although the sponsor of the bill, James G. Carter, was expected to be appointed to the position, Mann was chosen instead. Many of Mann's friends were openly dubious about his giving up a senate seat and a possible chance at the governorship for an enterprise that seemed nebulous at best. Mann, however, was undismayed. While he remained ambitious, his wife's death caused him to lose all interest in material attainments by this time, and he seized upon this opportunity to make his mark in service to others. The task that awaited him was daunting. Although Massachusetts had had a school district system in place since 1789, in reality the public schools were a disgrace. Exceptions existed, but classes were generally conducted in poorly equipped buildings during short, erratic wintertime sessions by teachers whose preparation for their task was as poor as their salaries. No formal teacher training programs existed on any level, and textbooks were equally varied in both content and quality. Mann viewed the establishment of a public school system as an opportunity for the uplifting of all individuals within society; indeed, in the face of increased immigration and the movement of individuals from the farm to the factory, he viewed the creation of such a system as vital to society's very survival. In his attempt to create a system of public schools that would equalize educational opportunity as well as mold individuals into more productive members of society, Mann brooked no opposition to his vision. Those who did try to thwart his quest were deemed by him ignorant, ill informed, or narrowly partisan. What Mann possessed in enthusiasm was unmatched by authority; his secretaryship, which paid a mere $1,000 annually, empowered him only to collect and disseminate information. Having gathered statistical data from around the state by circulating a written questionnaire, Mann set out on a series of local meetings across the commonwealth during his first year in office. While responses varied from location to location, he was generally successful in arousing the interest of locally influential citizens. Not content with personal appearances to advance his arguments, he began the Common School Journal, a twice-monthly magazine, in 1838 and remained its editor for ten years. As a means of informing the public, however, his twelve annual reports (1837 - 1848) while secretary were unsurpassed. Chock full of statistical data, the reports - which were widely read and circulated - presented the problems of the common schools as well as possible solutions. Mann viewed improved teacher training as a priority. Blessed with a gift of $10,000 from education benefactor Edmund Dwight, Mann anonymously presented the donation to the state legislature with the proviso that the state match the amount in providing for teacher training facilities. Local municipalities soon clamored to be chosen for the new experiment, and in January 1839 the nation's first 'normal' school opened its doors in Lexington; two more such institutions soon were established in Barre and Bridgewater. Noting that many current teachers could not afford to attend the normal schools, Mann set up local two-week training institutes as well as annual county educational conventions that allowed teachers and administrators to meet and exchange ideas. Mann's attempts at such radical reform inevitably led some to question both his motives and purpose. By seeking to create nonsectarian school systems with centralized administrations, Mann was accused on several occasions of instituting 'Godless' schools. One such controversy erupted in 1844, when a group of thirty-one schoolmasters from Boston published a sharply worded critique of his seventh Annual Report. Attacking Mann's recommendations for teacher training as well as his opposition to corporal punishment among other targets, the group soon faced Mann's wrath in the form of written rejoinders. A group of Mann's allies were elected to the Boston School Committee, and in the following year they issued a report that devastated the schoolmasters' position. Given the scope of Mann's exertions, however, it is surprising that he encountered as little overall resistance as he did. Although contemporary and later biographers cast the controversies that did erupt as pitting an enlightened Mann and his supporters against the reactionary orthodox clergy of his day, in reality Mann's proposals enjoyed a broad base of support among both orthodox and liberal clerics. In May 1844 Mann married Mary Peabody, with whom he was to have three children. The newlyweds sailed for Europe, accompanied by Mann's longtime friend and noted educator of the blind Samuel Gridley Howe. Mann was eager to learn as much as possible about local school systems abroad, particularly the vaunted Prussian system. On his return to the United States in November 1844 Mann set out to merge the best that he found in European educational systems with the principles of the growing American common school movement. Within a few years, the results were remarkable. Having already succeeded at increasing the term of the school year to six months in 1839, Mann oversaw the expenditure of more than $2 million by the state in pursuit of better schoolhouses and equipment. Teacher salaries improved by more than 50 percent, and fifty new high schools opened during his tenure as secretary. Desiring uniform instructional materials, the board of education commissioned a Boston publisher to print 100 different titles of common school textbooks. Concerned with the physical condition of the students, Mann made sure that at least an hour a day was devoted to exercise and health education. While Mann had been occupied with the development of public schools, political controversies such as the potential spread of slavery within the United States continued to mount on the national level. Following the death of Representative John Quincy Adams, the former president, in February 1848, Mann was elected that April to the U.S. House of Representatives to complete the remainder of Adams's term while remaining as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Elected with the support of both Conscience Whigs (antislavery) and Cotton (those willing to equivocate on the issue) Whigs, Mann sought to tread a fine line in Congress. Opposed to slavery - though not an abolitionist - and the Mexican War, Mann feared that entering into partisan debates would harm not only his work on behalf of public education but would erode his attempts to check the advance of slavery as well. His efforts to rise above the fray pleased neither half of his constituency, and he added to his workload by agreeing to direct the legal defense of Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayers, who were charged with aiding escaped slaves in the District of Columbia. Although initially convicted, the two men were eventually released after lengthy appeals. After being reelected to the House in the fall of 1848, Mann prepared his twelfth and final report as school secretary and resigned the post shortly thereafter. During his first full congressional term, Mann was appointed a visitor at West Point and tried to assist Nathaniel Hawthorne, his wife's brother-in-law, when the author lost his position at the Salem (Mass.) Custom House. The slavery issue, however, would not go away, and by placing himself in opposition to Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850 Mann alienated many in the Whig party, none more than Senator Daniel Webster, whose support of the compromise floored Mann. Forced out of the Whig party by Webster's supporters, Mann sought vindication under the banner of the Free Soil party in 1850. Narrowly reelected, he was unable to mount an effort to repeal the odious fugitive slave law of 1851; the following year he failed to win the Massachusetts governorship as the Free Soil candidate. Content to leave the turmoil of Congress behind him, Mann, after considerable thought, accepted the presidency of the newly founded Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded by a religious group called the Christian Connexion, the college was to be coeducational as well as nonsectarian, making it doubly unusual for the time. When he arrived on campus in September 1853, he faced as great a challenge as any he had encountered. Most of the students were ill prepared for college, and the school's physical facilities were barely half-completed. Because the president's house was unfinished as well, Mann and his family temporarily lived in a dormitory without running water. Worst of all was the abysmal state of the college's finances. Shoddy accounting by the school's treasurer was compounded by the school's ill-advised attempts to raise money by selling scholarships to potential students to the college at a pittance ($100 for perpetual rights) that did not even begin to cover the college's expenses. Doomed to endless struggle to pay even faculty salaries, Mann was forced to travel constantly on behalf of the school in a largely fruitless effort to raise additional funds. Despite the financial burdens, Mann was determined to mold the college after his own ideas. He himself taught courses in political economy and moral philosophy and insisted that all faculty members actually teach, rather than deliver memorized recitations as was then common in American higher education. Accordingly, he made the inclusion of teacher education courses a priority at the school. More unusual still was the practice of allowing students to select courses that interested them after they had completed a basic core curriculum. Perhaps most typical of Mann was his firm intention that a diploma from Antioch would stamp its holder as both a moral and an educated human being. The years of financial struggle led, however, to the college being sold at auction and reorganized in 1859. Exhausted by his protracted burdens, Mann gave what was probably his greatest speech at the commencement exercises that year. After exhorting the graduates to aim at self-improvement and service on behalf of others, he closed by imploring the graduates to 'be ashamed to die until you have won some great victory for humanity.' Mann became ill shortly after commencement day and died at his home in Yellow Springs. Known as the 'father of the American public school,' Mann was worthy of that title. In an era when the perfectibility of man was a widely shared dream, Mann was a leading prophet. Obsessed with reform, he made contributions in many areas and by example encouraged others (such as Henry Barnard) to undertake like-minded reforms in other parts of the United States. Although modern-day failings in the public education system have led some to criticize Mann as the creator of an institution that stifles, rather than rewards, creativity and initiative, he nevertheless deserves a great deal of credit for bringing about badly needed reforms in a number of areas of American life." - American National Biography