The Civil War disrupts educational institutions in Southern Baptist life. As the new school year approaches, Baptist colleges face severe shortages of students, many of whom are now enrolled in the Confederate Army.
Yet the educational crisis is present beyond Baptist life. Throughout the South, public and private schools have witnessed an exodus of teachers as many, originally northerners, have returned to the North because of the war. In response, Baptists’ Mary Sharp Female College in Winchester, Tennessee announces the creation of a Normal School (that is, a School of Education), to help meet the demand for new school teachers in the South. As the Tennessee Baptist newspaper reports:
There will be hundreds of female teachers needed to take the places of those who have left for the North to return no more. Hundreds of our schools must stop unless the daughters of the South will step forward and prepare themselves for this noble branch of science. Teaching is a science that can be studied and taught. Well qualified teachers will command fine salaries.
A Normal School Department will be opened at the Mary Sharp College, Winchester, Tenn., for all those young ladies wishing to prepare themselves for teachers, and especial instruction and training given them in the art of successful teaching.
A young lady who will prepare herself for a teacher, can readily command a salary of $500 to $800 per annum.
This should encourage a large class to prepare themselves to serve their country in this her day of need.
The president of Mary Sharp College is Z. C. Graves, brother of James Robison Graves, popular newspaperman (editor of the Tennessee Baptist), preacher, and leading advocate of Landmarkism, a school of thought holding that Baptist churches are the only true churches and can be traced back to the New Testament. Under Z. C. Graves leadership, Mary Sharp, a pioneering southern female college that had been founded in 1850, survives the war and prospers.
Sources: “Normal School for Female Teachers,” Tennessee Baptist, August 3, 1861 (link); J. J. Burett, Sketches of Tennesee’s Pioneer Baptist Preachers. Nashville, Tenn.: Press of Marshall & Bruce Company, 1919, pp. 200-207 (link)
