1 & 2. Education was “central to the Republican vision of America” because, Jefferson called benignly for a national “crusade against ignorance.” The Republicans believed in the creation of a nationwide system of public schools to create the educated electorate they believed a republic required. Some states endorsed public education for all in the early years of the republic, but none actually created a working system of free schools. The republicans argued that all male citizens should receive free education; with this in thought the *Republican ideology effected the education in the United States because, this left schooling to become very heterogeneous. Such as the responsibilities’ of private institutions’, which were only open to those who could afford it and many private schools were secular and ran by religious groups. They trained students to become a part of the nation’s elite. They had few schools open to the poor, but the education the poor received was inferior to that provided by most schools.
3. The “cultural independence” that Jeffersonian Americans sought another form of nationalism with great fervor. Winning political independence from Europe, they aspired to a form of cultural independence. In the process, they dreamed of American literary and artistic life that would rival the greatest achievements in Europe. Americans believed that their “happy land” was destined to become the “seat of empire” and the “final stage” of civilization, with “glorious works of high invention and of wond'rous art.” The means of expression that this “independence” found was among other places in early American schoolbooks. The author of Geography Made Easy; Jedidiah Morse stated the country must have its own textbooks to prevent aristocratic ideas of England infecting the people. Noah Webster, a schoolmaster and lawyer argued similarly that American students should be educated as patriots, and their minds filled with