William Paca’s Education in Context

Plate from Birch’s Views of Philadelphia 1800

The city of Philadelphia was the perfect city for founding schools in the 18^th century. Being commercially wealthy and active, it was possible for more schools to survive as there was a larger middle class with the stability and motivation to pay for education. Importantly, it was a cosmopolitan city, where people could learn English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as Classical Latin and Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.[1]

William Paca and his older brother, Aquila, were sent to the Philadelphia Academy and Charity School in 1752.[2] From this advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, printed in December 1750, we get a sense of the education they would have received:

Youth will be taught the Latin, Greek, English, French, and German Languages, together with History, Geography, Chronology, Logic, and Rhetoric; also Writing, Arithmetic, Merchants Accounts, Geometry, algebra, Surveying, Gauging, Navigation, Astronomy, Drawing in Perspective, and other mathematical Sciences; with natural and mechanic Philosophy, &c. agreeable to the Constitutions heretofore published, at the Rate of Four Pounds per Annum, and Twenty Shillings, entrance.[3]

Maryland Gazette for 27th February 1751

The curriculum of the Philadelphia Academy and Charity School may look very out-dated, but it was cutting-edge for its time. While many schools in colonial America tried to imitate European systems, the Philadelphia Academy was decidedly more innovative. The curriculum was shaped by important authors on education in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin and William Smith, who both encouraged a strong, artistic education, but also placed a huge emphasis on the pragmatic side of learning. This was to prepare men for the unique conditions of colonial life. 

Benjamin Franklin founded the academy and college in 1749-50 in buildings that had acted as an underdeveloped charity school. It was also in this year that he published his pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania.

William Smith was a Scottish educator from Aberdeen who was in correspondence with Franklin. After winning Franklin’s approval of his own theories of a progressive education he was appointed to the position of provost in 1755.

Franklin’s Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (1749) discusses the need for mixing Classical, ‘ornamental’, and practical, ‘useful’ subjects:

As to their STUDIES, it would be well if they could be taught every Thing that is useful, and every Thing that is ornamental: But Art is long, and their Time is short. It is therefore propos’d that they learn those Things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental. Regard being had to the several Professions for which they are intended.[4]

by David Martin (1767)

 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

The basics were clear handwriting, arithmetic, accounts, and the principles of geometry and astronomy. In addition, instead of just teaching Classical languages and the famous authors for the sake of it, Franklin clearly states that even the artistic side of education must have a purpose. For instance, reading ‘universal history’ will ‘furnish them with Matter for their Letters, &c.’ and be ‘of great Use to them, whether they are Merchants, Handicrafts, or Divines.’[5] ‘[T]rue Merit’ should be the aim of every youth, ‘as consisting in an Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends and Family; which Ability is (with the Blessing of God) to be acquir’d or greatly increas’d by true Learning; and should indeed be the great Aim and End of all Learning.’[6]

William Smith’s A General Idea of the College of Mirania (1753) is slightly more severe. He divides education and the boys who should receive it into two distinct groups, which suggests a different education was necessary for those of the thrifty middling classes than that intended for the young men who were required to develop ‘eloquence.’

First, the ‘Mechanic Professions’ course lasting nine years, which Smith believed was ‘the shortest Way of forming Youth to act in their proper Spheres, as good Men and good Citizens.’[7] The curriculum primarily consisted of ‘Mathematics, Ethics, Oratory, Chronology, History, the most plain and useful Parts of natural and mechanic Philosophy’, then ‘something of Husbandy and Chymistry’.[8]

Gilbert Stuart, Dr. William Smith, (1801-1802) University of Pennsylvania Museum

The second type of education was ‘The Latin School’. Smith theorised that ‘Knowledge of the learned Languages [Latin and Greek], as the Means of acquiring other useful Knowledge, is indispensibly necessary to the first Class [Latin school]. To the Second [Mechanic school], the Time thus spent is entirely thrown away, as they never have any Occasion to make use of those Languages.’[9] The Latin School devoted the first five years to learning Latin, ‘Declensions, Conjugation, St. Luke’s Gospel, Lucian’s Dialogues, &c.’,[10] before moving on to Greek and mathematics, including geometry, astronomy, chronology, surveying, navigation, ‘and the other most useful Branches of the Mathematics.’ Logic and metaphysics were also included, but were not a major focus as they were less advantageous.

The curriculum then moved on to philosophy in the third year, with Plato, Cicero, Locke, and Hutchinson. In the fourth year rhetoric was studied in the works of Tully and Quintilian. Pupils were reading these works to learn ‘eloquence’, with the ambition that reading these works made the students ‘apprehend its Plan, Series, Delicacy of Address; the Strength and Disposition of the Proofs; the Justness of the Tropes and Figures; the Beauty of the Imagery and Painting; the Harmony and Fullness of the Periods; the Pomp and Purity of the Diction; and, in fine, the Grandeur of Thought; that astonishing Sublime; the Torrent of Eloquence; which, moving, warming, seizing the Soul, sweeps all irresistably down before it.’[11]

Smith wants his students to achieve ‘a certain Elevation of Thought’, through both practical, advantageous, and useful subjects, but also learning the ornamentations that would make his students seem a class above the rest.

[1] L. B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies: 1607-1763 (Dover, 1957), 109.

[2] J.B. Russo, William Paca’s Education: The Making of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and American Patriot, Historic Annapolis Foundation (Annapolis, 1999), 2-3.

[3] Maryland Gazette (27^th February 1751), 3.

[4] B. Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (Philadelphia, 1749), 11.

[5] Ibid., 26.

[6] Ibid., 30.

[7] W. Smith, A General Idea of the College of Mirania: A Sketch of the Method of teaching Science and Religion, in the several Classes: and Some Account of its Rise, Establishment and Buildings (New York, 1753), 14.

[8] Ibid., 16.

[9] Ibid., 14.

[10] Ibid., 17.

[11] Ibid., 20. 

The rocky road to the American Constitution

William Paca spent the better part of fifteen years in his Annapolis house before selling it in 1780 and moving to the Eastern Shore. During his time here he famously signed the Declaration of Independence and established his political career as a leading patriot. His time in the William Paca House was also his time in the political mainstream of the revolutionary movement. It wasn’t until the 1780s, however, when the debates around the Constitution arose that Paca and his good friend Samuel Chase broke away from the majority opinion. In what is perhaps the most intriguing part of his political career, Paca became a vocal Anti-Federalist. Let us explore the rocky road to the American Constitution and the continuation of Paca’s political life beyond Prince George Street.

It is easy now, two hundred or so years on, to see the American Constitution as the natural progression of American independence and a unifying bastion of the promotion of liberty and equality. Back in the 1780s, however, this was certainly not the case. Much like the path to independence, the ratification of the American Constitution was a long, drawn-out process immersed in quarrels and disagreement. 

Conflict was no longer aimed at an antagonistic empire overseas, seeking to impose top down control on American citizens. It became an internal struggle between individuals and groups with different ideas on what representation means and what independent America is meant to look like in practice. Rather than concord, the final product illuminates the very productivity of discord and political debate.

Depiction of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, Copy of lithograph by Sarony & Major, 1846. This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the ARC Identifier (National Archives Identifier) 532892.

Shortly after the 1774 Boston Port Act, which called for the complete blocking of the port, seventy-eight men gathered in Annapolis to declare that Boston was now “suffering in the common cause of America.”[1] Annapolis then joined the boycott of goods to and from Britain, with an appointed committee including Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William Paca and Samuel Chase. On August 2, 1776 all of the aforementioned attended the Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia to sign what we now refer to as the Declaration of Independence (although this name is not used in the document at all!).

View of detail of Signers of the Declaration of Independence, reproduction of the 1936 Faulner mural by Romanian Artist, Gabriel Prundeanu, under commission of Stan Faryna. Location: Bucharest, Romania. Source: flickr.com, user: stan.faryna

Not without struggle, but certainly with an overwhelming majority united in pursuit of independence, the declaration was an “us” against “them” campaign, which was easier to argue, pursue and conceptualise.

Once independent, the 1770s saw a wave of individual state constitutions produced by local legislative bodies. Maryland’s own asserted that the legislative, executive and judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from one another.[2] Maryland’s constitution was accompanied by a Bill of Rights, which was longer and more thorough than that of any other states attempting a similar document.[3]

So far so good? Not exactly.

The nature of each independent state constitution posed questions about the meaning of representation. What remained unclear was the purpose or role played by a constitution in each of these states. Was the constitution another statute confirmed by a congress of representatives? Was it a judicial statute – a law? If it was a law, and it ordered that judicial and legislative powers are separate, why was it always issued by a legislative power, therefore inherently contradicting its own principles? Was the constitution binding universally and permanently or was it, like the English common law, a document intending to evolve and be moulded by the times and people?

It was amongst these questions that Maryland underwent a “constitutional crisis”[4] illuminated by a series of discourses surrounding a paper money bill approved by Congress, but shut down by the house of senators. These public arguments were between men like William Paca and Samuel Chase, who defended the integrity of congress arguing against the constitution, and men like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who asserted the integrity of the house of senate. It only took twelve years of independence, therefore, for Paca, Chase and Carroll to join opposing political camps. Once no longer united by a common enemy, Americans began to realise that they had very different ideas of what America should look like.

John Vanderlyn (1775–1852), James Madison,  The White House Historical Collection. Public domain.

A national constitution, the child of Madison, Jefferson (who is out of the country at that particular time) and the like, was not the natural progression from independence. For many it was unfair and controversial.

These debates were not confined to Maryland. Philadelphia and Virginia, too, experienced the fervent public debate. On 18 October 1787, in what is amongst the Teaching American History’s collection of the 50 Most Influential documents of American history, an anti-federalist under the pseudonym Brutus addressed the Citizens of the State of New York. He declared that “when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force.”[5] This, for him, was what a national constitution demanded – that the people part with power.

Page of the first printing of the Federalist Papers, 1788. Authors: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Source.

In fact, on 28 November, 1787, a Maryland farmer published a letter in the Maryland Gazette demanding that the constitution be given over to the people to be discussed. This was not because of his personal principle. It was because he noticed that “in very different parts of the continent, the very same objections have been made, and the very same alterations proposed by different writers, who [he] verily believe[s], know nothing of each other.”[6]

The constitution proposed at the Philadelphia convention was national, but it was also nationally disputed. Each side claimed to be the correct interpreter of the ideological underpinnings of the constitution. Each side would call upon Classical authorities, canon law, theological writing, the English dissenters of the 17th century and the pillars of the Enlightenment (Locke, Hume, Montesquieu etc.). 

Fundamentally, however, what the constitutional debates revealed was that the two sides which formed around them relied on different ideas of ‘representation’ and ‘constitution’. America’s founding fathers of 1774 wanted independence. Less than two decades later, they realised that what they wanted were different independencies. 

Written by OUIIP intern, Mirela Ivanova

To find out more about the Constitutional Debates in Maryland, and the path to the ratification of the American constitution come along to Mirela's talk “Laws without their consent: Paca and the Constitutional Debate” on Thursday, 21st August at 99 Main Street.  The talk will be preceded by a wine reception at 5.30pm.

Bibliography

Bailyn, B. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992)

Haw, J., Beirne, F.F., Beirne, R.R. and Jett, R.S.  Stormy Patriot: the Life of Samuel Chase (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,1980)

McWilliams, J.W.  Annapolis: City on the Severn ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)

Papenfuse, E.C. ‘With what dose of Liberty? Maryland’s Role in the Movement for a Bill of Rights’ (Paper to the University of Maryland given February, 1988)

Rakove J. N. The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009)

Wood,G. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975)

Yazawa, M.  Representative Government and the Revolution: the Maryland Constitutional Crisis of 1787 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975

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[1] J.W. McWilliams, Annapolis: City on the Severn ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) pp.87

[2] G.Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975) pp.150

[3] E.C. Papenfuse, ‘With what dose of Liberty? Maryland’s Role in the Movement for a Bill of Rights’ (Paper to the University of Maryland given February, 1988)

[4] M. Yazawa, Representative Government and the Revolution: the Maryland Constitutional Crisis of 1787 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) 

[5] Brutus I to the Citizens of the State of New York, 18 October 1787 (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/brutus-i/, last accessed August, 2014)

[6] Maryland Farmer to the Citizens of the State of Maryland, 28 November, 1787, (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/maryland-farmer/ , last accessed August, 2014)

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