I am still struggling to replace This Country of Ours.  The biggest obstacle: avoiding anti-Catholicism in the text and/or the author.  First, let me make clear that I do not believe the places I am looking, like Baldwin Project, for example, are knowingly anti-Catholic.  It is only from understanding the role of anti-Catholicism in the history of our American public education system that this becomes apparent to me.  Let me also make clear that a Protestant-view book that is not anti-Catholic is just fine (though this is hard to find, indeed) and Catholic anti-Protestant books are not acceptable, either.  (Though I have not found one, I’m sure they’re out there.)

First, what is the role of anti-Catholicism in our books and educational system?  As I have blogged before, Stephen Prothero’s book Religious Literacy explains this in detail.  Our Protestant country created a deeply faith-based public education system.  During the 19^th century, two things happened.  One was massive Catholic immigration.  Catholics had suffered hatred and discrimination from the start (Maryland was founded by Catholics) but they were few in number before the 1830s.  Another incident was the Second Great Awakening, when Protestants no longer felt education and doctrinal training was necessary to be a minister, only passionate preaching from the Bible (which was the start of Evangelicalism.)  The public school system, in order keep Protestants united against Catholics, eliminating teachings that distinguished Protestants from one other while forbidding anything that was particular to Catholics.  For example, bibles had to be King James versions without annotation and prayers had to be recited in particular ways.  Prothero goes on to show how this led to our collective religious illiteracy of today.  (FYI, the Catholics joined in with the religious collective in the 1950s when all Christian faiths banded together against Communism.)

I see how this history led to the anti-Catholic contents of just about every history book I’ve looked at written at the turn of the 20^th century—the ones that fill the Baldwin Project.  It was well accepted by the public educational system at the time that Catholicism needed to be discouraged.  Sometimes it is blatant, sometimes subtle; often it is pointing out where Catholics have gone wrong while ignoring Protestant missteps.  Here are some examples:

An Island Story by H. E. Marshall, see Mater Amabilis notes http://www.materamabilis.org/OIS.html

This Country of Ours by H. E. Marshall, in talking about Maryland, fails to mention the significance of the colony’s name and states it “was not founded like the Puritan colonies for religious purposes, but, like New Hampshire, merely for trade and profit.”  She talks about how the Virginians harassed Maryland, but ascribes it strictly to land disputes.

I picked up a book at my favorite used book store called The Story of the United States by Elbridge S. Brooks.  My internet research revealed Brooks to be a hugely popular writer in the late 19^th century, and his book The True Story of Columbus is still read today.  His story of Columbus puts a strong emphasis an all that was wrong or bad about him, like:  “…he is really the man who, started the slave trade in America…Even the great war between the northern and the southern sections of our own United States…was brought about by this act of the great Admiral Columbus hundreds of years before.”  It’s all Columbus’s fault. (Brooks apparently really liked the Federalists, too.  One page in his Story of the United States has a large picture of Alexander Hamilton with the caption, “Father of the Constitution.” So much for Madison!)

I was excited to find American History Stories by Mara L. Pratt at the Baldwin Project.  After copying volume 3 for us to use, I researched Mara L. Pratt.  I found one of her excerpts in an Ideal Catholic Reader, in which “Most of the selections have been taken from authors whose standing in the literary world is unquestioned.”  While the Reader was published in 1916, Mara L. Pratt wrote the blatantly anti-Catholic novel Stella and the Priest in 1874.  I guess it didn’t hamper her career any.

These examples are not meant to impugn the writers so much as the times.  As far as I know, these writers may have been exercising restraint compared to their contemporaries.  I am also certain that the good people that read these books and put together curricula like Ambleside Online have no knowledge of this, either.  My whole point is that it’s hard for a 21^st century Catholic mom to find living history books that are not dull and don’t make the Catholic in me squirm just a bit.  As for Catholic publishers, they offer textbooks or Catholic-focused histories.  And modern books have no faith in them at all; in fact some are outright anti-Christian.

I am now looking into all those wonderful books written in the 1950’s by Random House, American Heritage, and Golden Books.  Perhaps instead of a continuous narrative I can find events and biographies that will fill out what I need for the first 3 years.  I better look ahead in Mater Amabilis to see what the next cycle of American History looks like.  At least I know I have the Bennett books for when then kids get to be teenagers!