An Essay on Education.
Cincinnati: Printed by Kendall & Henry, 1841. First edition. 8vo, contemporary (original?) full purple muslin, 123, [1] pages. Fragile muslin somewhat sunned, rubbed, and soiled; a trifle shaken, some scattered staining; a very good copy. Item #19666
Brief reforming essays on popular education from an important early Ohio historian and writer and active citizen, perhaps best remembered for his account of early Wisconsin and of the Winnebego tribe, Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien (Columbus, O., 1831). Atwater here name-checks Lyman Beecher and Calvin Stowe, includes detailed plans for a sound female education, and argues that universal education will help the expanding American nation prevail (and better employ its German and Irish immigrants) and suggests that the American history of popular tumult (from Shay’s Rebellion to lynchings in Vicksburg and attacks on abolitionist papers in Cincinnati and Alton) will civil unrest not be exacerbated “when our numbers have increased to three hundred millions, in a country so thickly settled, that millions must be unemployed, idle, and so may become worthless, and ready to engage in any wickedness?” (Education on the Northwest Ordinance model is the solution.) This copy with a Cincinnati binder’s ticket on the front pastedown, “G. Dickinson, Book Binder, Rear of 106 Main Street. Muslin work and jobs done in the neatest manner.” The innovation of cloth bindings (as here) seems evidently worth advertising as Dickinson notes here; this would presumably be the Cincinnati book binder George Dickinson. American Imprints 41-309; Morgan 349.
Price: $300.00