homes without cost, and many had done so. Lands had been 

 -ranted by the Federal Government, by the State of North Caro- 

 lina, by the State of Tennessee and by the Indians; and trans- 

 fers had been made by many owners and settlers, some with 

 record, many without record. Hence it happened with loose 

 habits of local organization and government that prevailed, to- 

 gether with the active opposition of many who were influential 

 and the indifference of the lower white classes, that public edu- 

 cation failed to become popular. On the contrary, attempts 

 to carry out the provisions of the "cession" met with fierce op- 

 position on the part of a people who could not endure to sur- 

 render their hard won lands for a vague educational benefit to 

 future generations. 



Again, it was found impossible to sell the lands for $2.00 per 

 acre, the price fixed by Congress, w r hen fifty cents per acre for 

 wild lands was deemed an extreme sum. 



This war, or clash of interests, continued for a whole genera- 

 tion, although the germ of a common school system was formed 

 in 1829 when a statute was passed requiring that school districts 

 should be laid out and their population ascertained. 



The Constitutional Convention of 1834, also, which called 

 for reforms, did all in its power for the school interests of the 

 State and tied up the school fund as tightly as the fundamental 

 law could do it. This convention adopted the Constitution under 

 which mainly the State of Tennessee is conducting its govern- 

 ment to-day; for the Constitution of 1870 is virtually that of 

 1834 with the changes made necessary by the results of the Civil 

 War. 



From 1840 to 1861, when the Civil War began, the history of 

 the public schools of Tennessee is largely a record of legislative 

 provisions for the preservation and the issuance of State school 

 funds, and it may be stated parenthetically that more than three 

 hundred acts have been passed by the Legislature of Tennessee 

 on subjects growing out of the relations of the school lands to the 

 school fund of the State and its proper protection. Yet during 

 the same period there was little provision for such an efficient ad- 

 ministration of public schools as would warrant the liberality of 

 expenditure which was contemplated, and therefore large sums 

 were paid out without any appreciable advance towards an ade- 

 quate system of public schools. So notoriously was this the case 

 that Governor Neil S. Brown said in 1847: 



"The effort for popular education has slumbered and lan- 

 guished and pined, and exists now rather as a memento of the 

 past than as a living system of future growth and expansion." 



And yet, while popular education was at a stand-still for a 

 long period in Tennessee, it would be the acme of injustice to say 



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