To James Madison from Thomas H. Palmer, 10 March 1825
From Thomas H. Palmer
Philadelphia, March 10th. 1825.
Sir,
Knowing that you feel an interest in whatever relates to the improvement of the rising generation, I have taken the liberty of sending you a few copies of a plan of education for a small class of young ladies,1 which I flatter myself will be found an improvement on the prevailing systems. Should you coincide with me in opinion, after a perusal of the “Outlines,” it wd. confer an obligation on me, if you would hand the copies sent to such of your neighbours & friends as have daughters to educate, & are able to afford the expence of sending them to a distance.
The gentlemen to whom I refer for my character & abilities, are, no doubt, most of them known to you by reputation. Mr. Sergeant was in the Senate of the U.S. a few years ago; & Dr. Rush2 is the brother of our minister at London.
My object is not the acquisition of wealth, but merely that of securing a comfortable livelihood, with an agreeable occupation. I have accordingly put my terms, although my class is so limited, as low as the boarding-schools in the city, in which the number of pupils is unlimited, namely $300 per annum.
I have also taken the liberty of sending you “A Chart of the Constitutions of the United States,”3 which I compiled a few years ago, which you may possibly have seen in the “American Atlas,” as I allowed Mr. Carey to have the use of it for that work. I am, Sir, With much respect, Your obedt. servt.
Thos. H. Palmer4
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. No copies of Palmer’s plans for female education seem to have survived.
2. James Rush (1786–1869), son of Benjamin Rush and brother of Richard Rush, graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1805 and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1809. He studied further in Edinburgh and returned to Philadelphia to practice medicine. He wrote, among other works, The Philosophy of the Human Voice (1827) and Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect (1865). Thanks to a rich wife, Phoebe Ridgway Rush, he left the Library Company of Philadelphia his entire and substantial estate when he died.
3. “A Chart of the Constitutions of the United States,” item number 7 in [Henry C. Carey], A Complete Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas … (Philadelphia, 1822; 8252).
4. Thomas H. Palmer (1782–1861), a Scots-born Philadelphia printer, and publisher of the Historical Register of the United States (1814–16), later moved to Pittsford, Vermont, where he continued to write on and promote common-school education. In 1838 he wrote an influential essay that was awarded a prize by the American Institute of Instruction, and was later published as The Teacher’s Manual: Being an Exposition of an Efficient and Economical System of Education, Suited to the Wants of a Free People (1840). In 1845 Palmer opened the Cheshire Teachers’ Institute, which offered a four-week course leading teachers in the “great art of instructing and disciplining a school” (Looney et al., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, 5:650 n.; , 6:221 and n. 1; Daily National Intelligencer, 3 Nov. 1819; Keene New-Hampshire Sentinel, 26 Mar. 1845).