For education, likewise, there was a growing regard.
Nowhere did the devotion of the Western people to the twin ideas
of democracy and enlightenment find nobler expression than in the
clause of the Indiana constitution of 1816 making it the duty of
the Legislature to provide for "a general system of education,
ascending in a regular gradation from township schools to a state
university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to
all." This principle found general application throughout the
Northwest. By 1830 common schools existed wherever population was
sufficient to warrant the expense; academies and other secondary
schools were springing up in Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis,
and many lesser places; state universities existed in Ohio and
Indiana; and Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians had begun to
dot the country with small colleges. Literature developed slowly.
But newspapers appeared almost before there were readers; and
that the new society was by no means without cultural, and even
aesthetic, aspiration is indicated by the long-continued rivalry
of Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, to be known as "the Athens
of the West.
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