morals – Words Are Meant to Sway

Maria Sanford, who was a history professor at Swarthmore at the time, gave this address at the August 10, 1875, session of the Pennsylvania Teachers’ Association meeting.¹ Whitney reports that she would frequently lecture on this topic at teachers’ institutes.²

Lessons in Manners and Morals

I do not need to prove by labored argument that good manners and good morals are valuable; the fact is conceded by all. Nor is it necessary to show that teaching morals and manners is part of the legitimate work of the school-room. This point has in theory long been admitted; it has been orthodox doctrine from the times of the fathers; and the skepticism of our own day, which has questioned all things and denied the most ancient traditions, has still recognized as sound the theory that children should be taught not only how to think but also how to live. Nor is it an obsolete doctrine, forgotten, crowded out by present, vital issues. The moral bearing of education is constantly kept before us; we are urged to educate the masses that they may make not wiser but better men and women; and the strong argument for compulsory education is the prevention of crime. Where we fail, is in the practical application of the doctrine we profess to believe.

We present the subject at our institutes, discuss it at our conventions, but there, alas! we leave it. Like the Civil Service Reform among the politicians, it is in the platform but not in the practice. ³ I do not deny that some spasmodic attempts at moral culture are made by most of us, but I believe that we all follow too closely the example of the old minister who, firstly, took a text; secondly, departed from his text; and thirdly, kept away from it.

Significant Existing Biographies

Whitney, Helen Ardell. Maria Sanford. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1922.

Whitney was a Sanford colleague, and, although she used primary sources from Sanford's papers (and the papers themselves often show the mark of Whitney's blue pencil), the account lacks citations and uncritically presents Sanford's life as she saw herself and as she publicly presented herself. Whitney's is the only book-length biography and is the basis for many of the shorter biographies that would follow.

Shapiro, Maude Shirley. "A Rhetorical Critical Analysis of Lecturing of Maria Louise Sanford." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1959.

Shapiro's PhD dissertation begins with a two-chapter biography of Sanford that primarily draws from Whitney, supplemented by details from newspaper clippings in Sanford's papers. Shapiro uses primary source material from Sanford's papers, but does so primarily in order to fill in factual details that Whitney omitted. She also provides historical context from a handful of works by popular liberal-consensus and progressive historians. Shapiro's principal goal is to analyze the rhetoric of Sanford's public addresses, and the critical shortcomings in the biographical chapters are understandable in that context; the public persona that Whitney presents is what Sanford's audiences would have known and is most important when evaluating Sanford's ethos as a rhetor. Shapiro's analysis focuses on the addresses as rhetorical acts, examining what effect they had on her audiences.

Schofield, Geraldine Bryan, and Susan Margot Smith. "Maria Louise Sanford: Minnesota’s Heroine." In Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays, 77-93. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.

First published in 1977 as part of a collection of chapter-length biographies of Minnesota women, Schofield and Smith are the first biographers to make extensive critical use of the primary source materials in Sanford's papers. They frankly address the "disharmonies" in Sanford's life along with the accomplishments that made her beloved. Although Schoefield and Smith's effort is overall laudable, they occasionally remain overly accepting of some specific aspects of Whitney's narrative (for example, regarding Sanford's impact on intercollegiate debate) that they could not reasonably have been expected to question.

Clifford, Geraldine Jonçich. "‘Best Loved’...and Besieged: Maria Louise Sanford, 1836-1920." In Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities, 1870-1937, edited by Geraldine Jonçich Clifford, 49-83. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1989.

My Relevant Publications

Feller, Phillip. "A Vast Field of Political Controversies: Gilded Age Political Rhetoric and the Construction of a Public Speaking Self-Identity." Review of Communication 15, no. 4 (October 2, 2015): 275-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2015.1106007.

Analysis of how speech education at the University of Minnesota changed during Sanford's tenure and during the six years following her retirement. In focusing on speech as a field of study that would declare itself as an independent academic discipline, I'm critical of how Sanford handled her department.

Feller, Phillip. "A Vast Field of Political Controversies: Gilded Age Political Rhetoric and the Construction of a Public Speaking Self-Identity." In Microhistories of Communication Studies: Mapping the Future of Communication through Local Narratives, edited by Pat J. Gehrke, 5-27. London ; New York: Routledge, 2017.

Reprint of my Review of Communication article as the lead chapter in a collection of microhistories.