England collegians, for their children. For example, Amos Kendall,
later postmaster-general, was tutor in Henry Clay's family. So-
called colleges were numerous, some of them fairly good. In 1830 a
writer made a survey of higher education in the whole western
country and reported twenty-eight institutions, with seven hundred
and sixty-six graduates and fourteen hundred and thirty
undergraduates. Less than forty thousand volumes were recorded in
the college and "social" libraries of the entire Mississippi Valley.
[Footnote: Am. Quarterly Register (November, 1830), III., 127-131.]
Very few students went from the west to eastern colleges; but the
foundations of public education had been laid in the land grants for
common schools and universities. For the present this fund was
generally misappropriated and wasted, or worse. Nevertheless, the
ideal of a democratic education was held up in the first
constitution of Indiana, making it the duty of the legislature to
provide for "a general system of education, ascending in a regular
graduation from township schools to a State university, wherein
tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all." [Footnote: Poore,
Charters and Constitutions, pt. i., 508 (art. ix., sec. 2 of
Constitution of Ind., 1816).]

Literature did not flourish in the west, although the newspaper
press [Footnote: W. H. Perrin, Pioneer Press of Ky. (Filson Club
Publications).] followed closely after the retreating savage; many
short-lived periodicals were founded, [Footnote: Venable, Beginnings
of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, chap, iii.; W. B. Cairns,
Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, in University
of Wis., Bulletin (Phil, and Lit. Series), I., 60-63.] and writers
like Timothy Flint and James Hall were not devoid of literary
ability. Lexington, in Kentucky, and Cincinnati made rival claims to