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Destroying the Republic: Jabez Curry And the Re-education of the Old South
 
 
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Destroying the Republic: Jabez Curry And the Re-education of the Old South [Paperback]

John Chodes (Author)

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Book Description

0875864015 978-0875864013 September 30, 2005
Jabez Curry was an aristocratic Alabamian. In the ante-bellum South he had a distinguished career in both the Alabama Assembly and the United States Congress. He tirelessly advocated the principles of state sovereignty and limited Federal Governmental power. As an active promoter of education, he staunchly believed that this important function was entirely each state s responsibility and completely outside Washington s sphere.
And yet, in the years following the Civil War, in a complete reversal of philosophy, Curry became the top executive of the Peabody Education Fund, the largest educational philanthropy of the 19th century, which united private Southern schools with the anti-Southern carpetbag state governments which were committed to eradicating the culture of rebellion from the minds of the ex-Confederates children. By the 20th century, this plan had turned on itself and emptied out Northern children s minds as well. This transformed the US republic in the 21st century into an emerging dictatorship.
The War for Southern Independence and the problems of Reconstruction have been the subject of more than 20 articles and three monographs published by John Chodes. The Paradox of Jabez L.M. Curry: State Sovereignty to Federalized Schools led to the writing of the current work. In The Constitution and State Sovereignty, Mr. Chodes condensed the classic book by Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which documents the fact that the United States Constitution was only ratified on the condition that secession would be an accepted alternative in case the Federal Government overstepped its mandated powers. Chodes s third monograph, The Union League: Washington s Klan, demonstrates that the federal government s agency, the Union League, equaled or surpassed the Ku Klux Klan in brutality toward Southern freedmen.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

A significant book that uncovers the neglected history surrounding the rise of state-sponsored education in the South during Reconstruction and the years following…It joins the growing number of quality books on the history of the harm caused by state-sponsored public schools. Chodes relates the tragic story of the rise of state-sponsored public education and what he called the "nationalizing" of the South's mostly private or religious schools. He parallels these events with the life story and contributions of Jabez Curry. A Confederate officer who rode with General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Curry served as a member of the US and Confederate Congresses, as a Baptist minister. a lawyer, an author, the President of the Baptist Richmond College in Virginia. and as US ambassador to Spain. In the period of time from the War Between the States until the 20`th Century, Jabez Curry may have been considered one of the South's most important personalities. Although not a household name in the South today, Cum deserves to be remembered for his success as well as for the role he played in converting the South's mostly private-school system into public or state-funded schools. While the Unitarian. Horace Mann. of Massachusetts is rightly called the "Father of K-1? public education in America," Jabez Curry played a similar role as "The Horace Mann of the South." --E. Ray Moore, Jr., Th.M., for Southern Patriot,

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry of Alabama (1825 1903) was one of those fairly numerous 19th century Americans whose lives of astounding talent and energy put to shame the diminished leaders of the U.S. in the 21st century....
Mr. Chodes's libertarian work on Curry's career is a rich source of understanding. The chapter on "Reconstruction as Re-Education" is alone worth the price of the book. .... Chodes shows that Reconstruction was more than a horror of military domination and economic exploitation. It was also a program of ideological and ethnic cleansing which continues to damage the American people in our own time.
The many observers who seem to think that militarism and abuse of citizens is an innovation of the Bush administration have evidently not familiarized themselves with President Grant and the Reconstruction Congress. Those who think that federal control of education was an invention of the Democrats and the Great Society have a lot to learn...
Behind it all, as Chodes shows, was a commanding assumption and necessity. As one New England promoter of federal education put it, "But for ignorance among the nominally free, there would have been no rebellion." If Southerners had not been too ignorant to understand the benefits of patterning themselves after New Englanders, there would have been no bloody war. To prevent decentralization in the future, Southern whites had to be cleansed of their "ignorance," that is of their un-New England thoughts. Federal public schooling was also needed to confront the "hordes coming from beyond the great oceans." It had nothing to do with learning and everything to do with control of the population by their betters. ...
It has long been an accepted article of faith among Americans that education is a good thing. That, indeed, it is a necessity for a free and self-governing people. But when and by whom was it determined that this desirable thing was to be universal, compulsory in attendance and tax support, "free," and devoted to inculcating government-coerced conformity? Destroying the Republic provides much of the answer to this vital question.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com --Clyde Wilson for LewRockwell.com

DESTROYING THE REPUBLIC gives us a marvelous insight into irony working in history, the kind of revelation officially denied to academic historians. On one level, a most valuable one, it is a study of the career of a southern aristocrat, both before and after the Civil War, focusing particularly upon his role in helping to bring about a gigantic institution of forced instruction the familiar "system" of schooling we have with us today, But on a more profound level it is the account of a major turning point in the unique American libertarian experiment, the destruction of an ethic of personal freedom of choice and its replacement by a strong state, Hobbesian organization. That one of the important actors in this transformation was a man deeply committed to liberty and local sovereignty is a profound lesson in the contradictions which beset human nature, now as then and a warning to each of us that our moral certainties, without pitiless and frequent reexamination, stand ready constantly to betray us. Mr.Chodes has done a grand service to all of us who seek to understand the dull nightmare of modern schooling. Chodes book gives us insight into irony working in history, something no academic historians would be likely to stress with a consequent loss of our understanding of Jabez Cury and his relationship to the schools we suffer under; that they were visited upon us in good measure by a dedicated liberty-loving aristocrat is a profound discovery and a useful warning against judging a book by its cover. --John Taylor Gatto, former New York State Teacher of the Year; author, The Underground History of American Education

About the Author

John Chodes has had twenty articles and three monographs published related to the War for Southern Independence and Reconstruction. One of the monographs was The Paradox of Jabez L.M. Curry: State Sovereignty to Federalized Schools. His next book is on Abraham Lincoln (Algora 2008).

In the second monograph, The Constitution and State Sovereignty, Mr. Chodes condensed the Jefferson Davis classic book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which describes how the United States Constitution was ratified on the basis of secession being an accepted alternative if the Federal government over-stepped its mandated powers.

The third monograph, The Union League: Washington s Klan, the Federal government s agency, the Union League, which equaled or surpassed the Ku Klux Klan in brutality toward Southern freedmen.

The articles, mostly relating to the history of the federalizing of Southern education, culture and property, have appeared in Chronicles, The Freeman, Social Justice Review, The New York Tribune, Southern Partisan, and Southern Events.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
political exile, state suicide, guerrilla war, unknown newspaper
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jabez Curry, United States, New York, Curry Papers, Bureau of Education, Freedmen's Bureau, South Carolina, John Dewey, Jefferson Davis, New Psychology, Andrew Johnson, Supreme Court, Peabody Fund, Robert Winthrop, Stanley Hall, Barnas Sears, John Eaton, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Blair Bill, Curry's Background, General Agent, General Johnston, Curry Goes, New Orleans, Congressional Globe
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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