THE CINCINNATI "BIBLE WAR,"
1869-1870
by HAROLD
M. HELFMAN
Instructor in History, Ohio State
University
James M. O'Neill, in his able
exposition of Religion and Educa-
tion Under the Constitution, has hurled a challenge to the historian:
"The ending of the use of the
public schools as substantially Trini-
tarian Protestant schools at public
expense ... is a story in which
there are doubtless many chapters yet
to be written."1 The present
study of a decision by the Cincinnati
Board of Education in 1869
to exclude the Bible from its public
schools is such a chapter,
analyzing the move's impact upon the
course of public opinion,
secular and religious.
All America watched the course of
events in the Cincinnati "Bible
War."2 Its ultimate
outcome would be not only of significance in
Ohio, but would influence a discernible
trend nationally toward
secularization in the spirit and
content of the American school
system. Indeed, a similar deadlock
between the opponents and
adherents of the reading of the Bible
in the public schools had
cropped up in New York and San
Francisco as well. When the
question of whether or not there was a
place for the Bible in public
education was openly debated in a
Cincinnati courtroom by some
of Ohio's most competent legal minds,
the nation awaited the verdict.
The bitter clash between those
maintaining pro-Bible and anti-
Bible viewpoints was to drive both
groups into positions of no
surrender; their mutually hostile
attitudes were to be seized upon
by societies, editors, lecturers,
ministers, and politicians bent on
stirring up latent anti-Popery
passions. The board of education's
action was destined to be the focus of
a public opinion which
plunged Cincinnati into a boiling
caldron of fear and bigotry.
The practice of daily readings of
portions of the King James
version of the Bible during opening
classroom sessions had begun
1 (New York, 1949), 27.
2 Nation, IX (November 18, 1869), 430.
369
370
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
in 1829 with the establishment of the
Cincinnati school system.3
Neither note nor comment on the text of
the Scriptures was made
by the teachers.4 The reading of the
Bible in the Cincinnati public
schools went unchallenged until 1842,
when the Roman Catholic
Bishop, later Archbishop, John Baptist
Purcell, serving as a city
school examiner, caused a modification
to be enacted "that no pupil
should be required to read the
Testament or Bible against the wishes
of parents or guardians."5 When
in 1852 the board of education
codified its procedure and declared
that "the opening exercises in
every department shall commence by
reading a portion of the Bible,"
the pupils were permitted to "read
such version of the sacred
scriptures as their parents or
guardians may prefer."6
Although the board's enactment of 1842
had been intended as
a step toward removing a barrier that
ordinarily would have pre-
vented the participation of Catholic
children in the public school
structure, a separate system of
Catholic parochial schools had de-
veloped in Cincinnati in 1853,
independent of the authority of
the local board of education. By 1869
there were some twelve to
fifteen thousand Catholic children
enrolled in these privately sup-
ported parochial schools.7
The project of consolidating the two
school systems was fre-
quently discussed among the Catholic
and non-Catholic members
of the board of education. In the
midsummer of 1869, F. W. Rauch,
a Catholic, newly elected to the
forty-man board and anxious to
dispel the popular suspicion that
Catholics were enemies of a free
school system, sought the counsel of
the Very Rev. Father Edward
Purcell, vicar general of the
archdiocese and brother of the arch-
bishop. Heartened by Father Purcell's
personal disposition toward
the general idea of a merger between
the Catholic and public
school systems, Rauch and nine fellow
Catholic board members
drew up a six-point program in which
they called for the incorpor-
3 Alvin W. Johnson, The Legal Status
of Church-State Relationships in the United
States (Minneapolis,
1934), 307.
4 John B. Shotwell, A History of the
Schools of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1902), 446.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Cincinnati Commercial, September 10, 1869.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 371
ation of the church schools into the
public educational system.
Their proposition of settlement
advocated the outright purchase
and consolidation of all Catholic
schools with those under municipal
control, provided that "no
religious teaching, or the reading or
circulation of any religious books,
papers or documents shall be
permitted in them." The plan
circulated among all the board mem-
bers, and late in August 1869, with
twenty-seven signatures affixed
to it, the proposal was formally
presented to Father Edward Purcell
in the name of the interested members
of the Cincinnati school
board.8
In the light of the events to follow,
one must bear in mind the
significant fact that twenty-seven men,
more than a majority of
the board of education, were willing to
bargain the banning of
Bible-reading in the classrooms of
Cincinnati in exchange for the
return of Catholic children to the
local public schools. Father Purcell
tentatively agreed to the proposal,
although he demanded two
minor concessions from the school board
members: first, that the
Catholic schoolhouses might be used on
week-ends for religious
instruction; and second, that teachers
then employed in the Catholic
schools who possessed accredited
certificates from the state board
of examiners would be retained in their
positions.9
On September 6, 1869, at a regular
Monday evening meeting
of the board, F. W. Rauch, under a
suspension of the rules, made
the Purcell negotiations a formal piece
of board business by offer-
ing the following resolutions:
WHEREAS, There is a desire on the part
of various members of the
Catholic Church to unite certain
schools under the charge of the church,
with the Public Schools, and to place
such schools under the control of
the Board of Education; therefore,
Resolved, That a Committee of Conference, consisting of five
members, be
appointed by the Chair, who shall
report at an early day to this Board upon
what basis said schools can be
consolidated with the Public Schools. Also,
8 Cincinnati Gazette, August 27, 1869; Cincinnati
Commercial, August 27,
1869.
The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, August
27, 1869, omits the signatures of F. W.
Rauch and William Kuhn in listing the
members who signed the board proposal.
9 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, August 27, 1869.
372
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
Resolved, That the President and Vice President be added to this
Com-
mittee.10
Following the seconding of the Rauch
resolutions, Samuel A.
Miller, representative from the
seventeenth ward,11 moved the
following amendment to discontinue the
formal reading of the
Bible in the public schools of
Cincinnati, therewith bringing to the
board's attention the main concession
in the previously discussed
Purcell compromise:
Resolved, That religious instruction and the reading of religious
books,
including the Holy Bible, are prohibited
in the common schools of Cin-
cinnati, it being the true object and
intent of this rule to allow the children
of the parents of all sects and
opinions, in matters of faith and worship,
to enjoy alike the benefit of the Common
School fund.
Resolved, That so much of the regulations on the course of study
and
Text Books in the Intermediate and
District schools (page 213, annual re-
port) as reads as follows: "The
opening exercises in every department shall
commence by reading a portion of the
Bible, by or under the direction of the
teacher, and appropriate singing by the
pupils," be repealed.
Upon motion from the floor, it was
ordered that the Rauch
resolutions and the amending Miller
resolves be printed and made
the special order of business for
Monday evening, September 13,
1869.
The board's resolutions of September 6
were the logical climax
of a historical change that had long
been in progress. Increasing
numbers of Catholics due to European
immigration plus the multi-
plication of Protestant religious sects
had broken down the erst-
while homogeneity of the population in
southern Ohio and the
10 Full details of the September 6
meeting of the board of education, the text
of the resolutions presented, and the
subsequent voting, are to be found in the
Cincinnati newspapers appearing the
following day.
11 Bernard Mandel, "Religion and
the Public Schools of Ohio," Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, LVIII (1949), 191, refers
to Miller as
"a Catholic member of the
board," while the Cincinnati Commercial, September 11,
1869, states that Miller was not a
Catholic. The Cincinnati Gazette, September 14,
1869, in referring to a seven-man
conference committee of which Miller was a
member, identifies only two of the
conferees as Catholics, obviously F. W. Rauch
and Joseph P. Carbery, leading to the
logical inference that Samuel A. Miller was
either a Protestant or fell into the
contemporary classification of a "liberal."
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 373
pattern of Calvinist education
inherited from New England.12 With
such a divergency of religious belief
in the Ohio area, secular
education, that is in the sense of
eliminating the Protestant influence
from the public schools, was the only
common denominator on
which all faiths possibly could have
agreed. Viewed logically, was
not a public school education with a
Protestant overtone of com-
pulsory religious exercises and
Bible-reading in the classroom an
anachronism in a democratic nation that
had consistently aimed
at protecting the rights of conscience
of its minorities? The post-
Civil War mind, however, was neither
interested in immigration
statistics nor historical fact when the
issue of the Bible in the schools
was raised. To some it appeared that
the Rauch resolutions had
been introduced by a Catholic as the
enabling enactment for a
Jesuit-sponsored proposal to
consolidate the parochial and public
schools of Cincinnati, thereby giving
color to the snap assertion
that the proposition had a deep-laid,
diabolical Romanist origin
and meaning. Anti-Catholicism was
nothing new to a people who
but a decade previous had honestly
believed that the Pope was plot-
ting to take over the entire
Mississippi Valley.13 Sober-minded
Ohioans felt that by making it
difficult for Catholic children to
obtain an education, that church would
be struck a blow from
which all Protestantism might reap the
benefits. The Rauch reso-
lutions, coming in an age in which any
Catholic activity was sure
to be grotesquely misrepresented,
merely provided new grist for
the mills of prejudice. The
constitutional question of the separation
of church and state which the Rauch and
Miller resolutions raised
was completely lost sight of in an
epidemic of anti-Catholic hate.
The board's proposals of September 6
touched off a no-Popery
crusade in the "Queen City"
of a fervor equal to the fanatical
bigotry of the Know-Nothingism of a
generation before.14 Zealous
12 See
J. Paul Williams, The New Education and Religion (New York, 1945),
37-41, for a scholarly analysis of
factors involved in the breakdown of early religious-
ly homogeneous communities.
13 Ray A. Billington, The Protestant
Crusade, 1800-1860 (New York, 1938), 119.
14 See
Eugene H. Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873 (History of the State
of Ohio, edited by Carl Wittke, IV, Columbus, 1944), 287 et
seq., for competent treat-
ment of the anti-Catholic overtones of the
Know-Nothingism which flourished in
Ohio during the 1850's.
374
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
arousers of sectarian prejudice
inflated the Bible-reading issue to
a magnitude out of proportion to its
actual importance. That the
movement against the Catholics did not
lead to religious riots
of Know-Nothing proportions was
scarcely the fault of "Deacon
Dick" Smith, editor of the Cincinnati
Gazette, who branded the
whole Bible exclusion movement as
"priestly craft and cunning"
aimed at disrupting the whole public
school system. Once the
board banned religious teachings in the
schoolroom, Catholics
could point an accusing finger at a
generation drifting away from
God and good. Then, reasoned Smith, the
plan of the priesthood
would unfold: to divide, distract, and
provoke bitter conflict between
the advocates of the public school
system until the institution was
destroyed, or so damaged that the
Romanist "black brigade" would
come in, administer its remains, and
demand the adoption of the
Douay Bible in the schools of
Cincinnati.15 One Cincinnati news-
paper added to the inflammatory
assertions by raising the ethical
issue that the Bible, the best
available moral textbook, would no
longer mold the impressionable minds of
local children.16 Only the
restrained Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati
Commercial, among
the local editors, saw the issue for
what it really was-a common-
sense insistence that reading the King
James version of the Bible
in the public schools infringed the
liberty of conscience, and that
removal of the Bible would effect a
merger of the Catholic and
public school structures of Cincinnati.
If passed, declared Halstead,
the Miller resolutions might result
practically in some twelve to
fifteen thousand Catholic children
enrolling in the expurgated
public school system of Cincinnati for
whose support their parents
contributed pro rata.l7
Bible defenders were many. Protestant
pulpits of Cincinnati
thundered words of warning to the
proponents of the Bible ex-
clusion plan. Indignant pastors shocked
the religious sensibilities
of their parishioners by the reflection
that the omission of the
reading of the Scriptures was
equivalent to a writ of ejectment
against its accredited Author, and that
the schools would thereupon
15 Cincinnati
Gazette, September 8, 10, 11, 13, 1869.
16 Cincinnati Times, September 14, 18, 27, 1869.
17 Cincinnati Commercial, September 10, 1869.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 375
become nurseries for the godless, mere
seminaries for atheism.18
Thousands who might not have been
strongly impressed that the
reading of a passage from the
Scriptures as a morning exercise
in the classroom contributed to the
moral culture of their children
took up the cry sounded from the pulpit
and in the press, and
joined in remonstrating against any
change in the existing regu-
lation. The Young Men's Christian
Association and the American
Protestant Association drew up
resolutions denouncing the Miller
resolutions in scathing terms.19 From
Greensburg, Indiana, came
resolutions to "the friends of the
Bible at Cincinnati," urging them
to stand firm against the combined
powers of "Romanism, Atheism,
and Infidelity," and calling upon
other western congregations,
similarly threatened, to send messages
of sympathy for the cause.20
Petitions protesting the restriction of
religious teaching circulated
at the doors of all the local
Protestant churches and in many business
places throughout the city. On
September 12 the Rev. Granville
Moody, addressing a pro-Bible mass
meeting, fervently exhorted
the assemblage to circulate their
petitions: "Names--names--
names! Get paper and go, brothers.
Names, all we want is names
--women's names--men's names--mothers'
names-sisters' names
--brothers' names. It is the last
chance. Tomorrow the vote
comes." Instead of singing the
usual concluding hymn, the protest
meeting broke up with a mass chanting
of "we won't give up the
Bible."21
The city council chamber where the
board of education met
on September 13 was crowded with
citizens.22 Petitions bearing the
signatures of approximately 2,500
children from the local Sunday
schools, and of 8,713 residents from
the twenty wards of Cin-
cinnati, all protesting against the
removal of the Bible from the
18 See
especially sermons delivered by the Rev. C. L. Thompson of the First
Presbyterian Church and by the Rev. H.
H. George of the Reformed Presbyterian
Church. Cincinnati Gazette, September
13, 1869.
19 Cincinnati Commercial, September
8, 1869; Cincinnati Gazette, September 20,
1869.
20 Cincinnati Gazette, October 6,
1869.
21 Cincinnati Commercial, September
13, 1869.
22 Full
details of the September 13 meeting of the board of education, the text
of Archbishop Purcell's letter, and the
subsequent voting, are to be found in the
Cincinnati newspapers appearing the
following day.
376 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
public schools, were received and
filed. The thirty-four board
members in attendance were read a
letter dated September 13,1869,
from Archbishop John Baptist Purcell,
signifying his willingness to
confer with a committee of the board
and expressing himself,
though somewhat ambiguously, on some of
the issues involved.
He said that he was "perfectly
satisfied" with the Catholic schools
as they were, but that he thought it
"unjust" to put "restrictions"
on the rights of Catholic children to
the benefits of the public
schools. The archbishop was "quite
prepared," however, "for a vote
against the exclusion of
sectarianism"--by which he obviously
meant the removal of the Protestant
Bible--because it would
show who the real exclusionists were.
After first rejecting a proposal by
Abner A. Frazer which would
have dictated a specific program for
the purchase of schoolhouses
and property belonging to the Roman
Catholic Church based on
evaluations made by five freeholders
selected by the local superior
court, the board overwhelmingly passed
the previously introduced
Rauch resolutions calling for a
committee of conference to work
out a plan of settlement between the
Catholic and public schools.23
The controversial Miller resolves
excluding the reading of the
Bible from the public classrooms were
not considered at this meet-
ing, the board members obviously
refraining from limiting the
conference committee to any single
program of compromise.
As the Cincinnati Volksblatt of
September 15 correctly predicted,
the meeting of the committee of seven
school board members
with Archbishop John Baptist Purcell
quickly reached a stalemate.
In their report to the board at the
regularly scheduled meeting
of September 20,24 the conference
committee made public the fol-
lowing letter dated September 18, 1869,
from Archbishop Purcell,
23 It was later revealed by Joseph P. Carbery of the board in a letter
dated
September 22, 1869, written to the Cincinnati
Commercial and reprinted therein
September 23, that Archbishop Purcell
had orally expressed his willingness to
Carbery previously "to make the
experiment with one boys' school," thereby ac-
counting for the eagerness with which
Carbery pushed for a committee of conference.
24 Full
details of the September 20 meeting of the board of education, the text
of Archbichop Purcell's letter, the
conference committee's recommendation, and
the subsequent voting, are to be found in the
Cincinnati newspapers appearing the
following day.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 377
a letter which an accompanying note
from the seven negotiators
termed "an ultimatum of the
Catholic authorities":
The entire government of public schools
in which Catholic youth are
educated can not be given over to the
civil power.
We, as Catholics, can not approve of
that system of education for youth
which is apart from instruction in the
Catholic faith and the teaching of the
Church.
If the School Board can offer anything
in conformity with these prin-
ciples, as has been done in England,
France, Canada, Prussia, and other
countries where the rights of
conscience in the matter of education have been
fully recognized, I am prepared to give
it respectful consideration.
Although the Catholic prelate had
concluded with a cautious
counter-suggestion which Catholic and
non-Catholic press empha-
sized meant the maintenance of separate
educational structures
with a proportionate division of the
state and municipal school
funds,25 the letter, in the
eyes of the board, closed the door to
further negotiations. Ignoring the
committee's written request that
the conferences be continued in view of
the archbishop's offer to
"use every effort, whilst in Rome,
to procure such modifications
of the rule as may remove all obstacles
to their [the Catholic
children's] attendance," the board
of education voted twenty-two
to fourteen to discharge the committee.
The issue still before the
board and the bar of local opinion was
the significant Miller
resolutions, actually proposing removal
of the Bible from the
public schoolrooms.
Anti-Popery advocates continued to
distort the Miller resolutions
as a Rome-controlled conspiracy against
two fundamentals of Amer-
ican life, the Bible and the public
school. The Bible had been
reverenced traditionally as the credo
of the faithful, the symbol
of the reverent. Some men used a
neo-nativistic theme, holding
that a free reading of the Bible by the
Romanists would break
25 The New York Tablet, October
13, November 13, December 4, 1869; and the
Freeman's Journal (New York), November 20, 1869, give the Catholic stand. See
Harper's Weekly, XIII (1869), 210-211, 371, 802; and the Cincinnati
Gazette,
September 8, November 12, 1869, for the
anti-Catholic position on the division of
the school fund.
378 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
the strong ecclesiastical domination
held over Americans by a
foreign clergy.26 In fact,
when Archbishop Purcell advised the board
of education he would bring up the
subject of the combination
of the schools with His Holiness, Pope
Pius IX, at the approaching
ecumenical council, a local Baptist
minister interpreted the action
as "a foreign prince to say what
shall be done by the free schools
of Ohio!"27 Thomas
Nast's exaggerated caricatures in Harper's
Weekly gave national scope to the issue and fanned the fires
of
religious bigotry.28 The
Nastian cartoons viciously portrayed the
hostility of the Roman Catholic
priesthood to the public school
system. "Let the public school
system go where it came from--the
devil," he quoted from the New
York Freeman's Journal. From
the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph he
extracted the ominous pro-
phecy, "It will be a glorious day
for Catholics in this country when
our school system will be shivered to
pieces."29 With the debate
on the Miller resolutions had come a
new breath of intolerance
to American life.
Archbishop Purcell's letter of
September 18, in ignoring entirely
the specific issue of Bible-reading,
had officially divorced the Cath-
olic Church from authorship or even
interest in the Miller resolves
as a scheme to enable children of
Catholic parents to attend the
public schools. The prelate's
declaration meant, certainly to the
majority of the board members, that his
church would bar Catholic
children from attending the public
classrooms of Cincinnati whether
or not an unauthorized version of the
Bible was read in the schools.
His unequivocating stand was entirely
consistent with the oft-ex-
pressed Roman Catholic view of
Christian education, which con-
demned any system of instruction where
the Catholic faith was not
specifically taught, whether primary,
intermediate, or university,
as grievously and intrinsically
dangerous to the faith and morals
of the Catholic youth. To Catholics
only, and under the supreme
26 The same argument had been used a few
months before in New York City,
where the Catholics were insisting upon
a share of the public money for their
parochial schools. Harper's Weekly, XIII
(1869), 482.
27 Statement of the Rev. Mr. Smith, made
at a Bible meeting in the Mount
Auburn Presbyterian Church, September
21, 1869. Cincinnati Gazette, September
22, 1869.
28 Harper's Weekly, XIII (1869), 656, 824; XIV (1870), 121, 140, 185, 256.
29 Ibid., XIV (1870) 256.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 379
control of the church in all things
appertaining to faith and morals,
could the teaching of Catholic children
be entrusted.30 Archbishop
Purcell's emphatic statement of policy
could be no clearer; the
Catholic Church had no interest in
either the passage or the defeat
of the Miller proposals. Indeed, the Catholic
Telegraph of Sep-
tember 22 went so far as to charge that
a Catholic board member,
Joseph P. Carbery, for his continuing
to push the school settlement
question and the Miller resolves,
"sneered at authority, and criti-
cized its acts in a gross and
disrespectful manner."31
Yet the turbulent witch-hunters pressed
forward and redoubled
their crusade against what one
prominent Unitarian minister who
was also a member of the Cincinnati
school board called the attempt
of "the black brigade of the
Catholic priesthood" to "form an
ecclesiastical kingdom of God within
the Republic."32 Newspapers
of the nation devoted columns of type
to "explaining" for their
readers the Catholic stand on secular
education as that of bigoted
religionists. On September 28 an
excited audience packed Pike's
Music Hall to hear Rufus King, William
R. Ramsey, George R.
Sage, and the Rev. Benjamin W. Chidlaw,
all substantial men of
character in the local community,
castigate the opponents of the
Bible.33 Seemingly, the
"friends of the Bible" were either unwill-
ing or unable to appreciate the simple
historical truth that southern
Ohio had received such a thorough
mingling of sectarian elements
that to insist that public schools be
used to transmit the Protestant
faith to the children of the state was
a complete distortion of the
free educational system of American
democracy.
In the face of a mounting tide of
hostile public opinion, board
30
J. A. Burns, The Growth and Development of the Catholic School System in
the United States (New York, 1912), 219-230.
31 It was this charge that prompted
Carbery to write his letter of September 22,
1869, to the Cincinnati Commercial in
which he traced his role in the original negotia-
tions with Father Edward Purcell and his
subsequent conversation with Archbishop
John Baptist Purcell on the question of
the merger of Catholic and public schools.
Above, note 23. The Cincinnati
Commercial, November 4, 1869, magnified the
charges against Carbery, declaring that
Archbishop Purcell had also "denounced"
the board member "personally"
for his actions.
32 Amory
D. Mayo, Religion in the Common Schools: Three Lectures Delivered
in the City of Cincinnati, in
October, 1869 (Cincinnati, 1869), 23,
28.
33 The Bible in the Public Schools.
Proceedings and Addresses at the Mass Meet-
ing, Pike's Music Hall, Cincinnati,
Tuesday Evening, September 28, 1869; with
a Sketch of the Anti-Bible Movement (Cincinnati, 1869), 11-39.
380 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
members supporting the Miller
resolutions, though confident of
an eventual numerical majority,
hesitated to push the matter to a
final vote. The issue dragged through
the months of September and
October of 1869. Weekly meetings of the
board of education were de-
voted to endless defenses of position
and readings of petitions. The
session of October 25, in particular,
was enlivened by personal
mudslinging and bitter rancor bandied
between two board members,
the Rev. Amory D. Mayo and Herman
Eckel. At that time Mayo
called his opponent a "materialist
and an atheist" and passionately
posed the question, "If we raise
the flag on the school house,
shall the Star Spangled Banner be
entwined with the black flag
of atheism?" Eckel retaliated by
opining that "the people of Cin-
cinnati would be blind until they made
it impossible for any clergy-
man to sit on the School Board."34
At midnight of November 1,
1869, as if in answer to the Cincinnati
Commercial's editorial plea
to "bring the matter to issue upon
its legal rights,"35 the board of
education voted twenty-two to fifteen
in favor of the exclusion
of the Bible from the public schools of
Cincinnati.36
All the vials of public wrath now
poured out upon the board's
action. The Cincinnati Gazette, the
most virulent of the local
journals, published a "black
list" in which it pointed an accusing
finger at the twenty-two board members
who had so "grossly and
impudently misrepresented their
constituents."37 Out-of-town edit-
ors, apprehensive lest the Cincinnati
struggle be the precursor of
what would soon be attempted in their
own school systems, con-
demned the board's action almost to a
man.38 Some journals repeated
the libel of a "scheming
priesthood deliberately provoking popular
hatred.39 Editorial comments
were endless, but all harped on the
34 Cincinnati Gazette, October
26, 1869.
35 Cincinnati Commercial, October 27, 1869.
36 Shotwell, History of the Schools
of Cincinnati, 444, erroneously lists the board's
vote as twenty-two to sixteen. All
Cincinnati newspapers agree that the margin
of victory for the anti-Bible forces was
seven votes.
37 Cincinnati Gazette, November 3, 1869.
38 This
fear was the theme most frequently used in the pro-Bible editorials to
be found in such prominent papers as the
Cleveland Leader, Philadelphia Bulletin,
Baltimore American, Buffalo Express,
and New York Sun.
39 Among the newspapers playing up the
sectarian angle were the Toledo Com-
mercial, Dayton Journal, Washington
Chronicle, Albany Journal, and Philadelphia
Press.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 381
same string: the Cincinnati decision
was the initial movement in
an organized plan of attack upon the
American public school
system.
Passage of the Miller resolutions
brought the "Bible War" to
its climactic heights. On November 3
thirty-seven spirited Cincin-
natians, convinced that the resolutions
were against public policy
and morality, petitioned Judge Bellamy
Storer of the Superior
Court of Cincinnati for an injunction
to restrain the board from
carrying out its action. Issuance of
the temporary injunction trans-
ferred the heated bitterness to the
more impartial cloisters of the
courtroom. The "Bible Case"
was scheduled to be tried on Monday,
November 15, in a special session of
the superior court. During
this eleven-day interim, successive
journalistic jibes did not let the
storm of resentment simmer. A letter
from "A LAWYER" to the
Cincinnati Commercial sought to disqualify Judge Bellamy Storer
from hearing the case by accusing the
justice of having supervised
the original drawing up of the
injunction petition and of having
given advisory opinions to the
"Bible defenders."40 The charges
were branded as preposterous by George
R. Sage, the attorney
who had prepared the request for the
restraining order, and by
A. T. Ritchie, secretary of the Western
Tract and Book Society,
at whose office the petition had been
drafted.4l These printed
accusations were serious enough,
however, to force Judge Storer
to issue a public refutation and to
demand that the case be re-
scheduled for Monday, November 29, and
be heard in general
session before all three members of the
court--Judges Marcellus B.
Hagans, Alphonso Taft, and Storer.42
The actual trial lasted five days and
was a fight to the finish
in which opposing counsel mercilessly
exposed each other's mistakes
and neither sought nor granted quarter.43
Correspondence from
40 Cincinnati Commercial, November
5, 1869.
41 Ibid., November
6, 1869; Cincinnati Gazette, November 6, 1869.
42 Cincinnati Gazette, November 8,
1869; Cleveland Herald, November 9, 1869.
43 See The Bible in the Public Schools. Arguments in
the Case of John D. Minor
et al. versus The Board of Education
et al. Superior Court of Cincinnati. With the
Opinions and Decisions of the Court (Cincinnati, 1870) for a complete record of
the trial. So keen was the public
interest in the "Bible debate" that the Cincinnati
Commercial published a six-page supplement of the judicial
proceedings which went
through two printings.
382 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
Kelley's Island and Sandusky in Ohio,
and from New York, Chi-
cago, and San Francisco indicated that
the court fight would be
closely followed by the citizens of
those areas since there the
question of religion in the local
schools had broken out, though
not with as much virulence as in
Cincinnati.44 Three of Cincinnati's
most prominent leaders of the bar,
William R. Ramsey, George R.
Sage, and Rufus King, appeared as
principal attorneys for the
adherents of the Scriptures. The
defense enlisted the talents of
a matchless triumvirate: Judge Stanley
Matthews, destined to serve
as a United States Senator and as an
associate justice of the United
Sates Supreme Court; Judge George
Hoadly, elected governor of
Ohio in 1883; and Judge Johann Bernhard
Stallo, later United
States Minister to Italy. Excitement
ran high as people flocked
to the local courtroom to see and hear
the clever antagonists
hurl their legal and theological barbs
at each other. Prestige and
a principle were at stake.
One cannot help but admire the high
motives which inspired the
defense counsel to throw themselves
into a struggle that trans-
cended questions of party and policy.
Matthews, Hoadly, and
Stallo were compelled by conviction to
choose the unpopular course
they took. They were willing to trust
the principle of noninter-
ference with conscience to any extent,
however perilous its immedi-
ate effect in the instance might seem.
Judge Matthews, an elder
in the Presbyterian Church and publicly
regarded as one of its
staunchest pillars, was bitterly
assailed for his action.45 Judge
Hoadly, a Unitarian, was possibly
sacrificing a promising political
future; while Judge Stallo, a
recognized scientist and philosopher
but a member of no church, became the
"devil's advocate" to the
unreflecting, a hated symbol of atheism
and immorality. Although
theological tirades might call them
consorts of the "irreligious,
profane, licentious, drunken,
disorderly and criminal portions of
44 Cleveland Herald, November 17, 30, 1869; Cleveland Leader, December
4,
1869.
45 Acceptance of the case gave rise to
such hostile criticism against Stanley Mat-
thews' "Christian character and
reputation" that he offered to resign as elder of
the First Presbyterian Church in
Glendale, Ohio. Matthews to the Rev. W. H.
Babbitt, November 18, 1869, in Matthews
Manuscripts, Historical and Philosophi-
cal Society of Ohio Library, Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 383
our population,"46 these
three men conscientiously believed that
the question involved was not the
bigoted blind of anti-Catholicism,
but one affecting the constitutional
liberty of conscience. Their
duty as lawyers dictated that they aid
those who held similar con-
victions, especially when called upon
to do so in a professional
capacity. As Judge Matthews announced
in his pleadings, these
men had taken the side of the case
against the legal right of the
Bible in the schools solely because
their hearts were in the cause,
believing it the stand of religious
liberty.
Questions to be raised during the
five-day trial gave the American
public cause for considerable
reflection. Does the reading of the
Bible make the public school a house of
worship? If so, are the tax-
payers supporting a house of worship
under the guise of public
education? Is the King James version of
the Bible a sectarian work?
Does the reading of the Scriptures
without comment constitute a re-
ligious service, or, at least,
religious instruction? Does the daily
reading of the Bible and singing of
hymns in the schoolroom
violate the usual constitutional and
statutory definitions of religious
liberty ?
With forceful eloquence the attorneys
for the plaintiffs put
forward two propositions: first, that
religious instruction was, in
contemplation of history and law, an
essential element in the
common school education, requiring the
establishment of schools
in which "religion, morality and
knowledge" could be promoted
in accordance with the Ordinance of
1787; and second, that the
board of education of Cincinnati did
not have the power to subvert
the declared policy of the state and to
prohibit all religious instruc-
tion in the schools of that city. The
Bible, they argued with
consummate logic, was the foundation of
religion, and religion
was essential to good government, and
both were, therefore, under
the protection of the constitution. The
board's passage of the
Miller resolutions was, as a
consequence, in violation of the card-
inal principles of law and government
and a usurpation and abuse
of power.
46 Statement
made by Dr. Reuben Jeffery of the Ninth
Street Baptist Church,
Cincinnati. Cincinnati Gazette, November 19,
1869.
384 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
Arguments for the defense met head-on
the dual allegations
of the opposition. From the state
constitution both Article I, section
7, that "no preference shall be
given, by law, to any religious
society; nor shall any interference
with the rights of conscience be
permitted," and Article VI,
section 2, that "no religious or other
sect or sects shall ever have any
exclusive right to, or control of,
any part of the school funds of this
state," were quoted to show
that religious instruction was
constitutionally forbidden in the public
schools of Ohio. Moreover, since the
state legislature had delegated
the management of the public schools to
the exclusive control of
municipal boards of education, the courts
had no rightful authority
to interfere by directing what
instruction should be given or what
books should be read in the local
educational system. The plead-
ings of Judges Stallo, Hoadly, and
Matthews were withering de-
nunciations of an attempt to trample on
the rights of the minority
and the written law of the state, and
to wrest an easily interpreted
statute to an illegal end so as to
satisfy religious prejudice. The
defense counsel spoke not to the
narrow, crowded courtroom, but
to the country-at-large, confident that
they would eventually secure
a verdict from their fellows that would
rectify the whole system
of injustice that they were then
combatting. Judge Matthews' speech,
in particular, was a forensic gem,
called by one journal "a masterly
effort" and described by another
as "the strongest argument given
during the trial."47
The pleadings concluded on December 3;
Cincinnati and the
rest of the nation sat back to await
the decision., Although the
"Bible Case" had been given a
priority on the docket of the superior
court in order to expedite the
predicted appeal to a higher tribunal,
the justices, strangely enough, delayed
some two months before
rendering their verdict.48 By
that time, the decision of the court
was to be a veritable anticlimax. On
February 15, 1870, by a vote
of two to one, Judge Alphonso Taft
dissenting, the tribunal "saved
47 Cincinnati Commercial, December 3, 1869; Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, December
3, 1869.
48 The present author's
search of records and miscellaneous files remaining after
the Cincinnati courthouse fire of 1884
disclosed no clue to explain the court's
delay in reaching its decision.
The Cincinnati "Bible
War" 385
the Bible," holding that the
board's action had trespassed upon
the sacred character of the Scriptures
and that the exclusion of
all religious instruction from the
public schools was contrary to
the constitutional recognition of
Christianity as an essential element
of good government.49 The
majority decision completely bypassed
the question of whether the board of
education legally possessed
the power to ban the reading of the
Bible in the Cincinnati public
school system. Judge Taft's minority
stand, on the other hand, saw
in the board's action no violation of
the rights of conscience. His
opinion held that the Miller
resolutions had not abused, profaned,
or degraded the Bible; the Cincinnati
public schools were simply
to be confined to secular instruction.
Although the decision could have been
used as a text, the an-
tagonists found no new grounds for
battle. By mid-February, 1870,
the temper of the community was more
judicial; men had had time
to mull over the issue and to digest
the court proceedings. Passions
had cooled; thoughtless excitement had
passed away; an expanding
community had seen new issues coming to
the fore. Editors formerly
hostile to the Miller resolutions had
now come to realize that the
reasoning of the dissenting opinion was
"more liberal and just,"
and that Judge Taft represented
"the direction in which the average
of all opinion is gradually moving."50
Some journals made one
last attempt to stir up the remains of
anti-Catholic prejudice in
their editorial columns,51 but, in the
main, the matter was abruptly
dropped as the past history of
yesterday's news. The tidal wave
of no-Popery had subsided to a barely
perceivable trickle. As
before, anti-Jesuitism had had its
brief hour in history and had
bowed to popular reason.
The court decision was only a temporary
setback to the non-
sectarian cause, which continued to
press forward throughout Ohio
49 It
is amusing to note that the reporters, telegraph operators, night editors,
and the compositors handled badly the names of Judges
Hagans and Storer in the
newspaper accounts of the decision. Judge Hagans was
called Hogan, Hogans, Hogano,
Higgins, Hayens, and Huggins. The Chicago Times, to
cite one case, used three of
these names indiscriminately. Judge Storer was
variously referred to as Stone,
Stoarer, Story, Stover, and Staver.
50 Chicago
Journal, February 16, 1870; Chicago Times February 16, 1870.
51 Cincinnati Gazette, February 16, 1870; Cleveland Leader, February
16, 1870;
Chicago Post, February 16, 1870.
386
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
and the nation, winning converts among
public school authorities,
churchmen, and public officials. In the
municipal election of April
4, 1870, eight members of the
Cincinnati board of education who
had voted for the Miller resolutions
ran for reelection, with five
of them emerging victorious over their
so-called "Bible Party"
opponents. The anti-Bible vote in this
election exceeded the pro-
Bible count by more than 1,600, thereby
belying the Cincinnati
Gazette's headline, "Triumph Of The Bible."52 When,
in 1873,
the supreme court of Ohio unanimously
reversed the decision of
the superior court and held that the
school board had acted within
its authority in eliminating the Bible
from the Cincinnati public
schools,53 the decision
received little newspaper mention. Within
five years a general movement toward
state legislative enactments,
constitutional revisions, and favorable
court decisions in regard to
the various public school systems was
definitely under way.54 Al-
though the issue was to reappear later,
the Cincinnati "Bible War"
was the last time that the advocates of
Bible-reading in the public
schools could ever muster a favorable
majority of public opinion.
The years 1869-70 marked the immediate
turning point in the
trend toward the secularization of
American education.
52 Cincinnati
Gazette, April 5, 1870.
53 The Board of Education of the City
of Cincinnati v. John D. Minor et al.,
23 O.S. 211.
54 William C. Bower, Church and State in Education (Chicago,
1944), 26.