At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman was said to have asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government the delegates had created for the people. He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” What did “keeping it” require? More than anything else, education. “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other,” Jefferson warned. But if the new nation could “enlighten the people generally…tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
