The People of the Old West weren't That "Stupid" afterall.

[Tsalagidave]

One thing that I have always bridled at was how people who call themselves "Living Historians" and teachers alike have grossly misrepresented mid-nineteenth century Americans as a bunch of illiterate buffoons. This betrays a terrible dearth in their own research and understanding of the period mindset. It is true that the percentage of the populous who graduated college in 1850 amounts to a mere fraction of the statistical amount of people who graduate today but this should in no way allow anyone to discount their ability to read and write.

I was looking over the US Census for 1850 and this post won't do justice to the information I am digesting at the moment but (at the request of a friend), I pulled some interesting facts on literacy in the US during that time. America had an excellent public school system since early in its history (until the NEA and political quotas ruined that).  This accounted for the astonishingly high literacy among the average citizens.

After pulling California's 1850 statistics, I found that there were 92,597 Americans listed with a literacy rate at over 94%. (5235 people polled were illiterate). This is something to consider the next time you try to represent a person of the period as not even able to write his/her name...chances were that they could.


I found more information on literacy in other states by the time of the 1850 census and the results were about the same. I deducted the population of slaves counted in the Southern States because they were not evaluated for literacy. However, the rest of the population represents that of white people, black "Freedmen", along with other racial minorities and/or foreigners. Below is the amount of non-slave residents & citizens along with the recorded amount of literacy.

* (Slaves not counted)

New York (3.097 million) 96.8% literacy
Virginia (949,133 people*) 93.26% literacy
Pennsylvania (2.312 million) 96.7% literacy
Arkansas (162,797 people*) 89.58% literacy
Texas (154,431 people*) 93.14% literacy
Ohio (1.980 million) 96.7% literacy
Missouri (594,622 people*) 93.81% literacy

Although there are well known cases such as Albert Richardson's (1868) accounts of places like rural Arkansas where he reported the people to "suffer terribly from ignorance" due to the lack of schools, this should be regarded as noteworthy because the majority of the population did not. Bayard Taylor's (1850) memoirs noted during his travels through Mexico that the local people were fascinated by the fact that literacy was so prevalent among the ranks of average Americans.

This is why I have little tolerance for morons who depict the average westerner to be a blithering idiot when doing their so-called "living history" impressions. Not to say that there weren't idiots then as there are now, but I feel that we often times lose touch with the ideal that people 150+ years ago pretty much pondered the same themes while going about his or her typically mundane day in a manner not dissimilar from how we go about ours today.

*Note, For more information on the topic, see article IX of the 1850 Census for each of the corresponding states.

-Dave

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Dave,

I so agree about the literacy level in California .... but being a member of the 'Know Nothings' was like having half of one's brain removed ... literate and educated, but ignorant by choice ...

Then we won't even go into the anti-catholic, anti-Irish movements of the time ...

But I do agree with you ... and I can't fathom a reenactor that does not understand the difference between the two ....

[Tsalagidave]

I agree Wadd,

Although my moral convictions compel me to bridle at things such as nativism and other forms of xenophobia, I can also understand the fear and misgivings that compelled so many to join with such movements. Luckily, I travel internationally on a frequent basis and I get to experience the viewpoints of so many people in so many different places.  Although we criticize our own culture for its past demonstrations of racism and intolerance, I have never encountered another culture that  struggles with it any less than we do here in the US. Actually, Americans are among the best I have seen at overcoming the challenges of diversity and reasonably tolerating the particularities of one another as a general rule.

In past centuries, technological limits in both media and transportation effectively maintained a sense of mystery and isolation between various cultures so it was natural for any culture of people to favor themselves before others and maintain a reasonably wary outlook toward strangers and outlanders.  Because of this, whenever a large group of people from one culture traveled into the land of another, a wide spectrum of responses from commerce, cross-cultural kinship and intermarriage to mutual distrust and inevitable violence of some sort was predictable.

I found Horace Bell's book to shed a lot of insight to the dynamics of intercourse between the "gringo" and Californio cultures in 1850's California. In many cases, there was mutual cooperation, friendship and even marriage.  In other cases, there were outrages that the "Anglos" and "Californios" also inflicted upon one another regularly.

This is a good discussion. I'm enjoying it. Always good to hear from you Wadd.

-Dave

[TwoWalks Baldridge]

Great discussion, that I am not qualified to add too, but would also choose too add these two items to the discussion.

1. Writing with ink and quill, the handwriting of the day was far superior compared to today. 

2. Wisdom:  A very old man, when I was a very young man said to me...

A wise man can see how things are the same.
Fools only see how they differ.

[The Elderly Kid]

At the founding of the U.S. one of the wisest and most far-sighted policies ever envisioned was instituted - free education for all children, with strict enforcement of truancy laws. Education among the masses had not been encouraged in the Old World, where an uneducated populace kept the upper classes wealthy and secure. From the Revolutionary War we have exactly one book-length account written by a common soldier - Joseph Plumb Martin's "Private Yankee Doodle." From the Civil War, less than a century later, we have hundreds if not thousands, plus countless letters and articles. Such was the effect of universal education.

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Tsalagidave,

I had started to say that it is too bad that we don't live nearer, but I would probably be a pest if I was that close .... but you are always welcome at my campfire; in fact, if you come to Sackatomatoes you would be very welcomed at my house for your stay ...

As both an AF Brat and as an Active AF person in my own right, I have found similar situations ... that people from the US are usually fairly decent about dealing with the diversities they deal with daily ... that is not that, like you, I do not see the weaknesses of our people, but more embrace the good and bad in it .... and I have not had a reason not to reach down and kiss US ground upon each return from a foreign soil ....

[Tascosa Joe]

The perfect example of an illiterate population is Afghanistan and the consequences there of is happening today.