The Setting.

New York City in 1805 had 141 teachers for a population of 75,770. Most of these teachers maintained private schools, while others taught in the charity schools run by churches, the African Free School, or the school for girls established in 1802 by the Association of Women Friends for the Relief of the Poor. About one hundred children attended the Roman Catholic school, eighty-six the Trinity Church school, and seventy a school run by the Dutch Reformed Church. Though these schools were open to all children, each religious group believed it essential to inculcate all children with religious values as well as with a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mayor DeWitt Clinton, nephew of New York governor and Vice President George Clinton, and other community leaders worried that even with these private charity schools many children were missing out on an education...