Catharine Beecher Quotes (1800-1869)

“All must see that the surest, as well as the most peaceful method of bringing to an end all social evils, all wrong, and all injustice, is to train the young children of our nation “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.””

“While every intelligent man in the Union is reading and saying every day of his life that unless our children are trained to intelligence and virtue, the nation is ruined; yet there is nothing else for which so little interest is felt, or so little done”

“Two millions of American children are left without any teachers at all, while, of those who go to school, a large portion of the youngest and tenders are turned over to coast, hard, unfeeling men, too lazy or too stupid to follow the appropriate duties of their sex.”

“Permit me first to present some facts in regard to the situation of an immense number of young children in this land, for whom your sympathies at this time are sought. Few are aware of the deplorable destitution of our country in regard to the education of the rising generation, or of the long train of wrongs and sufferings endured by multitudes of young children from this neglect.”

“The daughters of wealth have there intellectual faculties and their sensibilities developed, while all the household labor, which would equally develop their physical powers, and save from ill-health, is turned off to hired domestics, or a slaving mother. The only remedy for this evil is, securing a proper education for all classes, and making productive labor honorable, by having all classes engage in it.”

“It is to be lamented that the principle of national patriotism has had very little nourishment in our country, and, instead, has given place to sectional or state partialities. The South and the North, the East and the West, instead of uniting to cherish common interests and a common amor patriae, have rather been thrown apart by clashing interests and jealousies, while this sacred principle has been drawn around only some small portion of our common country.”

“Another cause which deeply affects the best interests of our sex is the contempt, or utter neglect ad indifference, which has befallen this only noble profession open to woman. There is no employment, however disagreeable or however wicked, which custom and fashion cannot render elegant, interesting, and enthusiastically sought. A striking proof of this is seen in the military profession. This is the profession of killing our fellow-creatures, and is attended with everything low, brutal, unchristian, and disgusting; and yet what halos of glory have been hung around it, and how the young, and generous, and enthusiastic have been drawn into it! If one-half the poetry, fiction, oratory, and taste thus misemployed had been used to embellish and elevate the employment of training the mind of childhood, in what an altered position should we find this noblest of professions!”

“Our two millions of little children, who are growing up in heathenish darkness, enchained in ignorance, and in many cases, where the cold law provides for them, enduring distress of body and mind greater than is inflicted on criminals, whee is the benevolent association for their relief? Where is there a periodical sported by the charitable, to tell the tale of their wrongs! Where is there a single man sustained by Christian benevolent to operate in their behalf? Instead of spending time and money and employing agents to save the children of our country from ignorance and sin, the whole benevolent energies of the Christian world are engaged to remedy the evils that spring from this neglect. Children are left to the full influence of ignorance and neglect till moral health and strength are ruined, and then the cure is sought in temperance lectures, Bibles, tracts, colporteurs, and home missions. If all the labor and money spent for these objects at the West, for the last twenty years, had bene employed in securing, for the generation now on the stage, six hours a day of good moral and intellectual training by well qualified teachers, who will firm that the result would not have been better?”