New Essay: “The Establishment Clause At The Second Founding”

My new essay in Civitas introduces novel research about the understanding of the Establishment Clause in 1868. I dug through recently digitized archives of the Freedmen Bureau. In short, a federal government agency, headed by military chaplains, worked with religious groups to establish schools in the South, and the curriculum in those classes included bible readings and prayers.

Here is an excerpt:

The regulations for Freedmen schools in Texas provided that classes would begin at 9 A.M. and “[t]he morning Exercises will commence with either the singing of an appropriate hymn, or prayer, or the reading of the Scriptures.” For Louisiana Freedmen schools, each day, “[t]he opening exercise in every school will be the reading a passage of Scripture or a prayer in place thereof.” After prayers, the students would sing “an appropriate hymn or melody.” The Freedmen school in Bainbridge, Georgia opened the day by reading one chapter from the Bible. The Freedmen school in Mobile, Alabama opened each day with a “divine service, which exercises consist of reading short selections from the Bible, after which the school repeat[s] the 23rd Psalm.” (It begins, “The Lord is my shepherd. . . .”) “Then all kneel, when a short prayer is offered by some designated teacher, at the close of which all join in the repetition of the Lord’s prayer, when the exercises are concluded by singing . . . ” 

In February 1868, a teacher at the Clinton’s Freedmen’s School in Tennessee reported to the Freedmen’s Bureau that “the prayers of the pupils is [sic] encouraging.” In October 1868, Dellie Gordon, a teacher at a Sabbath School in Prince George’s County, Maryland, wrote to Rev. John Kimball, the Superintendent of District of Columbia Schools. Gordon relayed that she “opened school on Sunday afternoon and recited the Ten Commandments which, the children had never heard before.” Gordon added that “with explaining the 2nd chap St. Matthew the afternoon passed very pleasantly.” (This chapter discusses Jesus’s birth and early childhood.)  . . . 

The purpose of teaching scripture was not merely to promote literacy. The Bureau recognized a close connection between teaching religion and promoting morality among the families of recently freed slaves. In October 1866, the Superintendent of Schools for Alabama wrote that “[e]ffort has been made to supply the moral and religious wants of the freedmen as far as possible” through the donation of 2,000 Bibles from the American Bible Society. The report observed that “portions of the Holy Scriptures find their way to households which, probably, would be reached in no other way.” Another report from Alabama explained that “[e]ffort has been made to supply the moral and religious wants of the freedmen as far as possible.” General O.O. Howard, the Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the namesake of Howard University, was told that teachers “explain[ed] the lessons of morals and christianity, so strikingly presented in every page of the Bible.”

The schools also engaged in outright proselytization. Teachers at American Missionary Association schools for Freedmen in Alabama were required to fill out a monthly report with questions about conversion: how many Bibles were distributed? How many families were “engaged in religious services, either by reading the Scriptures, singing, or prayer”; how many “hopeful conversions, if any, during the month”? One report from the Girard Freedmen School reported nine hopeful converts. . . .

The Freedmen schools, which were managed and funded by the federal government, proactively incorporated the Bible into the curriculum. Students began their day with prayer, read from the bible, and teachers were encouraged to proselytize. These actions were viewed as a critical way to develop morality among the freedmen. This history from the Second Founding should inform how the Establishment Clause would have been understood when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.

I have published here only a small bit of my research. The full load will come in a forthcoming symposium article. I encourage others to follow this path, and see what else comes up.