ABSTRACT
A spirit of individualism and independent localism, the dispersed population pattern, and traditional class and caste divisions worked against the establishment of state wide common school systems. Private academies became the dominant formal institutions for children of middle- and upper-class families during the post-Revolutionary decades. The South's intense spirit of localism, limited urbanization, East-West sectional rivalries, agrarian economic system, and rigid class and caste system all worked against efforts to spread education broadly among the masses, white as well as black. American Education uniformly applicable definition of "academy," especially in the nineteenth century South, is almost impossible to provide. Educational conventions publicizing the need for public schools and rallying support for the necessary expenditures were held in various localities in the 1840s and 1850s. In the pro-slavery South, concerns about social control actually worked against the development of public education. American Education South of the republican ideals that helped stimulates educational advances in other parts of the United States.
