Grant drafted a speech “on the backs of envelopes and the stray scraps of paper at hand in his room.”74 It was a historic plea for public education and the need to save the nation’s classrooms from religious interference. Grant started out by emphasizing the importance in a republic of a knowledgeable citizenry: “The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future “the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side &
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