What was the education level of the North and the South before the Civil War?

Question

Provide website sources.

Answer 1

It's very difficult to confidently draw a complete picture of the "education level" throughout the Union during the antebellum period. But there are a FEW things we can say.

1) Rates of LITERACY as well as of formal education were TRADITIONALLY high in New England, and in the states heavily peopled by settlers from New England (including the northern parts of the Midwestern states). This actually went back to the COLONIAL period... and before!! The main group of English immigrants to New England had come from a region of England in which literacy and education had long been emphasized. (The opening section of David Hackett Fischer's book *Albion's Seed* discusses this among varous "folkways" of this group of immigrants.)

2) Related to this the "common school" movement, begun around 1830 IN New England was strongest there. Far fewer Southerners (esp the "common people") had access to a common school.

3) Though the South did not have as many common/public SCHOOLS as the North, and so not as much FORMAL education, there were OTHER ways teaching was done. The ELITES, for instance, had a very high literacy rate, even if they had not attended school (or not much). Some of this was through teaching at HOME.

Also, note that that many more Southerners had some sort of MILITARY education. (This did not just include the larger number educated at West Point, but those trained at schools in the South.)

Note that at this point the focus is more on the ELITES -- those of more privileged backgrounds -- which tended to have a solid educational foundation in BOTH North and South.

Answer 2

between the main marvelous themes that each physique started the conflict substitute into slavery. So slavery had a extensive bring about the process the on an identical time as conflict, there are alos many civil conflict heroes that contributed to result on the south loosing. The south had misplaced as a results of fact they had the shortcoming of technologies truly beacsue the North substitute into extra industrialized.

Answer 3

There wasn't a whole lot of difference between the North and South.

The same God, same language, same culture and history, same songs, stories, legends, myths - different dreams. Different dreams. So very sad.

Answer 4

8 th grade