The different systems or sorts of physical training which were brought forward for trial and the agencies which promoted its spread in the United States during the nineteenth century fall into three groups, centered about 1830, 1860, and the decade from 1880 to 1890. The first group includes Captain Alden Partridge and his military academies;⁠[189] the introduction of the Jahn gymnastics and the opening of school, college, and city or public outdoor gymnasia under the direction of the German refugees Beck, Follen, and Lieber; the attempt to provide manual labor as a system of exercise in educational institutions;⁠[190] and the use of “calisthenics” for girls and women, by Catharine Beecher in her schools in Hartford and Cincinnati.⁠[191] Space limits have prevented the discussion of any but the second member of this group in the present volume.

The first school, college, and public gymnasia in the United States—all of them outdoor ones of the early Jahn type—were opened in the years 1825 and 1826 in Massachusetts, at Northampton, Cambridge, and Boston. All three were laid out and directed by university trained Germans, who had been active participants in the Jahn gymnastics in their student days and had left their native land for the United States in order to escape arrest or constant persecution under the reactionary policy adopted by the Holy Alliance.

One of these men was Charles Theodore Christian Follen (German, Karl Follenius or Follen), born September 4, 1796, in Romrod, a market-town north of the Vogelsberg. His father was counsellor at law and judge at Giessen, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, and he received his own early training at the classical secondary school and the university in that city. When the German War of Liberation broke out, in 1813, like most of the Giessen students he joined the army, with his brothers August (later called Adolf Ludwig) and Paul, but was taken sick with typhus fever within a few weeks, and though he returned to his regiment afterwards he was never under fire. When peace was concluded (1814) he resumed the study of jurisprudence at Giessen, and in March of 1818 received his diploma from the university as doctor of the civil and ecclesiastical law.

Like many another German student, Follen had come back from the war filled with ideas of moral and social reform. In place of the provincial clubs (Landsmannschaften), with their carousing and the duel as their only arbiter of quarrels, he desired to see the entire student body united in one Christian brotherhood, with no distinctions of class or rank, ruled by the will of the majority determined in open assembly after free discussion, and settling all disputes according to the principles of right and justice. The purity of his own life and the moral greatness of his character, the eloquence with which he urged his views, and his confident enthusiasm soon won a following of like-minded friends, in whose eyes he took on the dignity of a very prophet. The first motion toward union was taken in the late summer of 1816. A few days after the following Christmas, at a general gathering of students, a formal “code of honor” (Ehrenspiegel), Follen’s work in great part, was proposed. A majority of those present evinced their hostility to the project by withdrawing at once; but about sixty who remained organized themselves into an association, under Follen’s leadership. Looked upon with suspicion by the authorities on account of their liberal tendencies, hated and proscribed by a majority of the students, who nicknamed them “Blacks” (Schwarzen) from the dark clothing they affected and their somber demeanor, the reformers became only more extreme and uncompromising in their attitude. Reaching far beyond the bounds of the university, their plans already contemplated a great Christian republic formed of freed and united Germany. Tyranny was to be met with resistance, and Follen now taught that armed insurrection, and even perjury and assassination, were justified when other measures failed in the struggle for popular freedom. Some of the Blacks drew back at this, but others, known as “Unconditionals” in contrast with the “Moderates,” were undismayed at the radical doctrines of their revered leader.

Development of the physical powers formed an essential part of the program of the Giessen “Blacks,” just as in the case of the Burschenschaften at other universities. In the summer of 1816 a gymnastic society was formed, enrolling boys in the secondary school, young merchants and others, as well as university students. Here again the leadership fell to Follen, who is described as an excellent gymnast, a skilful hand with the broadsword, and a powerful swimmer. The “Deutsche Turnkunst” of 1816 was the guide in Giessen, as elsewhere, and Jahn’s rules formed the basis of order during the exercises. National anniversaries were celebrated, a Turnfest was held at the end of July, 1818, excursions were organized, and trips were taken with companions from Darmstadt, Heidelberg, and other places. Upon leaving Giessen students transferred their membership to Turnvereine in the new home, or sought to form such societies where they did not already exist. The efforts of Karl Völker at Tübingen have already been mentioned (p. 98) in describing Jahn’s life and work.

Upon completing his courses in jurisprudence Follen remained at the University as Privat-docent, studying at the same time the practice of law in his father’s court. Early in the fall of 1818 he undertook the cause of several hundred communities in the province of Upper Hesse which desired to remonstrate against a government measure directed against the last remnant of their political independence, and drew up a petition to the Grand Duke in their behalf. It was printed and widely circulated, and aroused public opinion to such a pitch that the obnoxious measure was repealed; but it also brought upon its author such unrelenting hatred on the part of the influential men whose selfish plans were thereby thwarted that any thought of a further career in his home city became impossible. He therefore accepted an invitation from Professor Fries to lecture on the Pandects as Privat-docent in the University of Jena, and left Giessen in October of 1818.⁠[192]

An attempt to force upon the Jena Burschenschaft his radical views regarding moral and political reform excited the opposition of all but a small minority. Friends, even, were alienated by his stern, intolerant attitude, and by the charge of weakness or cowardice with which he met dissent from the extremities to which he pushed his principles; so that the number of “Unconditionals” at Jena was never more than a small handful. One of these, however, was Karl Sand, whose murder of Kotzebue on March 23, 1819, was the logical outcome of Follen’s teaching, acting upon a mind unbalanced by fanatical zeal in the cause of popular liberty. To the authorities all student associations became objects of suspicion, and under the reactionary measures that followed the Giessen “Blacks” and the Burschenschaften at Jena and other universities suffered alike. Follen was forbidden to lecture any longer at Jena, and he therefore returned to his home in Giessen.⁠[193] Here, however, he found himself a proscribed man. Learning that the government intended to send him to prison, he left Giessen for Strasburg in the winter of 1819-20, visited for a time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Lafayette and, through him, of other distinguished men, and in the summer of 1821 settled in Basel, as public lecturer on jurisprudence and metaphysics in the recently organized University.

Among the German refugees whose friendship Follen enjoyed during his three years at Basel were the distinguished theologian De Wette, and his stepson Charles (German, Karl) Beck. Beck was born in Heidelberg August 19, 1798. His father, a merchant, died when the boy was still young, and his mother afterwards became the wife of Wilhelm De Wette, professor in the university of Heidelberg. In 1810 the family removed to Berlin, whither De Wette had been called to fill the chair of theology in the new Prussian university. There, as a student in the Werder’sche Gymnasium, Beck soon came under Jahn’s influence, began to frequent the Hasenheide Turnplatz, and owing to his natural robustness of body, and the enthusiasm with which he applied himself to the exercises, developed more than usual proficiency in all the arts of the Turner. After the assassination of Kotzebue in 1819, De Wette, who had long been a friend of the Sand family, wrote a letter to the mother, in which he endeavored to console her with the thought that her son’s act, though wicked, arose from a mistaken notion of duty. The Prussian authorities, upon learning of this letter, accused the eminent teacher of seeking to excuse the crime, and in token of their displeasure deprived him of his chair and even banished him from the kingdom. After several years in retirement he accepted, in 1822, the professorship of theology in the University of Basel, and passed the remainder of his life in that city. Beck, meanwhile, had become an accomplished classical scholar at the University of Berlin. He afterwards studied theology, was ordained to the Lutheran ministry at Heidelberg, July 7, 1822, and the next year obtained his doctor’s degree in theology from the University of Tübingen. He had been active in the movement for a true Christian Burschenschaft, and finding that his republican sentiments stood in the way of a successful career in Germany, he, too, removed to Switzerland and joined the rest of the family at Basel, where he found an opportunity to teach the Latin language and literature.

Meanwhile the allied sovereigns of Austria, Russia, and Prussia had requested repeatedly that Follen be surrendered to them for trial on the ground of complicity in revolutionary movements, and acting on the advice of friends he left the city for a few months, seeking concealment in Baden at first, and in the spring of 1824 revisiting Paris. Here he again saw much of Lafayette, who introduced him to the American Minister (James Brown) and sought his company on an approaching visit to the United States. Although longer residence in Basel appeared unsafe, he returned to his duties in the university; but on October 27, 1824 he again left the city, and three days later, travelling by mail-coach and provided with a false passport, he reached Paris. Here he found Beck, who had already left Switzerland a few days in advance, convinced that even this asylum was no longer free from danger for Germans known to cherish liberal opinions. The two men went at once to Havre, engaged passage on the vessel “Cadmus,” and sailed for the United States on the 5th of November.

They reached New York December 19. Three days later Follen wrote to General Lafayette, who was then revisiting this country at the invitation of Congress and receiving everywhere a welcome which gave to his movements the character of a triumphal procession. Acting at once on his suggestion that they go first of all to Philadelphia, they reached that city on January 12, and were soon busily engaged in the study of English. Letters from Lafayette secured them a kind reception and introduction to agreeable and influential men, among others to Duponceau, a prominent lawyer of French descent, who had been his friend for more than half a century. George Ticknor, professor of the French and Spanish languages and literature and of belles-lettres at Harvard University 1819-1835, was then visiting in Washington. Lafayette sought to interest him in the two German refugees, and on his return through Philadelphia, early in February, Ticknor accordingly hunted them up, and found in Follen’s possession a letter from Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, a friend of the Follen family and one of the son’s favorite teachers in Giessen, and afterwards professor in the University of Göttingen, where Ticknor, a student there in the years 1815-1817, had made his acquaintance.⁠[194]

Ticknor’s letter to George Bancroft, to whom De Wette had already directed a letter recommending his stepson, secured for Beck an immediate appointment as instructor in Latin and gymnastics at the Round Hill School, Northampton, Massachusetts, and by the middle of the month (February, 1825) he had left Philadelphia to take up his new duties. Except for a visit to Beck at Northampton the next summer, Follen continued to reside in or near Philadelphia, applying himself with diligence and success to his English studies, and preparing a course of lectures on the civil law, which he hoped to deliver in the following fall and winter. He had also enrolled himself with Duponceau as a law student and was reading Blackstone. But in November, owing to the efforts of Professor Ticknor, Duponceau, and others, Harvard University offered him the position of Instructor in German, at a salary of $500—the first time that subject had been included in its curriculum. Expecting to add to his income by lectures on the Roman law, to be delivered in Boston, he at once accepted the offer, visiting Beck once more on the way, and before Christmas was settled in Cambridge.

One of the most important and successful educational innovations of its time was the Round Hill School, opened on the first of October, 1823, by Joseph Green Cogswell (1786-1871) and George Bancroft (1800-1891). A descriptive circular issued a year after Beck’s appointment—it is dated March 25, 1826⁠[195]—reveals the serious purpose with which they undertook the introduction of gymnastics and other forms of physical training. “It may be impossible,” they say, “to engraft on any modern nation a system of education corresponding to that which prevailed in ancient Greece. But something must be done. Food, sleep, and exercise must be regulated, purity protected, life guaranteed against casualties, and temperance and exercise be set, even in the dawn of existence, to keep watch over health. Games and healthful sports, promoting hilarity and securing a just degree of exercise, are to be encouraged. Various means of motion are to be devised and applied; and where these are regularly used everything is done to assist nature in strengthening the youthful constitution. If in addition to regularity in the use of exercise, the kinds of it are so arranged that the several powers of the body may successively be brought into action and gradually led to greater exertions, it will not be long before the physical being assumes a new appearance, and in addition to the acquisition of a control of the body, beneficial results will be visible in general industry, deportment, and morals. The attempt, therefore, to provide the various means for gymnastic exercises merits to be encouraged; and whether the methods are by turns strange or common, complicated or simple, the best that are known should be employed. We are deeply impressed with the necessity of uniting physical with moral education; and are particularly favored in executing our plans of connecting them by the assistance of a pupil and friend of Jahn, the greatest modern advocate of gymnastics. We have proceeded slowly in our attempts, for the undertaking was a new one; but now we see ourselves near the accomplishment of our views. The whole subject of the union of moral and physical education is a great deal simpler than it may at first appear. And here, too, we may say, that we were the first in the new continent to connect gymnastics with a purely literary establishment.”

Of the nature of this “first gymnasium on this side of the Atlantic,” and the work done in it, not much direct evidence has come down to us. One former pupil (Thomas G. Appleton)⁠[196] writes: “‘Pitching the bar’ was generally done near the schoolhouse; but the regular exercise of gymnastics was upon a plateau just below the hill, where gymnastic appliances, then freshly introduced from Germany, were in abundance.” Dr. George C. Shattuck, another “Round Hiller,” is quoted by Dr. E. M. Hartwell⁠[197] as follows: “Dr. Beck, the teacher of Latin, afterward the professor of Latin in Harvard University, was the teacher of gymnastics. A large piece of ground was devoted to the purpose and furnished with all the apparatus used in the German gymnasia. The whole school was divided into classes, and each class had an hour three times a week for instruction by Dr. Beck.” A newspaper article copied in the American Journal of Education for July, 1826, states that classes begin at 5:30, others at 6:15, and breakfast comes at 7; from 7:30 till 9 the only exercises are in declamation and dancing, 9 till 12 other classes, 12 until 1 rest, dinner at 1, 2 until 5 more classes, 5 until 7 “exercise and amusement. At this time the classes in gymnastics have their instruction, when the weather permits.” The evening meal follows, and devotional exercises are held at 8, after which the smaller boys go to bed, and the rest study for an hour longer.

Indirect proof that the Round Hill “gymnasium” was only a miniature Hasenheide Turnplatz is abundantly furnished by the “Treatise on Gymnasticks, taken chiefly from the German of F. L. Jahn,” a translation of the “Deutsche Turnkunst” of 1816, which Beck completed and turned over to the publisher in January, 1828.⁠[198] In the preface he tells us that “The same causes which occasioned the publication of the original, in Germany, about twelve years ago, render a translation desirable in this country.... The school of Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft, in Northampton, Mass., was the first institution in this country that introduced gymnastick exercises as a part of the regular instruction, in the spring of 1825. Since that time, the interest for this branch of education has been rapidly increasing, and frequent inquiries have been made respecting a subject much esteemed for its expected salutary effects, but little known as to its particulars.... Wishes were expressed to me, by several of the most zealous and able friends and advocates of physical education, to translate a work which would be suitable ... or compile one.... I did not doubt to which of the two ways proposed to give the preference. I fixed upon the treatise of Jahn, for reasons contained in the preceding lines.” Jahn’s preface and Part V (containing the bibliography) are omitted altogether by the translator; Parts III and IV have been transposed, a chapter on dumb-bell exercises is introduced in Part I, and there are a few other omissions and additions suggested by recent experience. Plates VII and VIII are reproductions of the two in the original, but the sixty-three figures in the remaining six plates are new.

Leaving Beck at work in the first school gymnasium established in the United States, we have now to return to Charles Follen, waiting in Cambridge, in late December of 1825, to begin his duties as first teacher of the German language in Harvard University. Within a year he also was introducing the Jahn gymnastics in his new field, and had opened the first college gymnasium this country had seen, at Harvard University, and the first public gymnasium, in Boston. He had visited Beck at Northampton in July of 1825 and again early in December, and on March 5 of the next year, only a little more than two months after his arrival in Cambridge, used these words in a letter to his friend: “I expect our University will particularly apply to you on the subject of gymnastics. I have commenced gymnastic exercises with the students. The College furnishes the implements, and will give us a place. At present I use one of the dining-halls. All show much zeal. In Boston a gymnasium is soon to be established.”⁠[199]

The third instalment of “Reminiscences of Harvard, 1822-26,” by Rev. Cazneau Palfrey, printed in The Harvard Register of October, 1880, contains this passage: “The first movement in the direction of gymnastics made in college was made in my senior year.... The medical professors of the College published an appeal to the students, strongly recommending to them the practice of gymnastic exercises; and a meeting of all the classes was held in the College chapel (such a meeting as I do not remember hearing of on any other occasion), at which a response was made to this appeal, and resolutions passed expressing our readiness to follow the suggestions made in it. One of the unoccupied commons halls (on the first floor of University Hall) was fitted up with various gymnastic appliances; and other fixtures were erected on the Delta, the enclosure now occupied by Memorial Hall. But Dr. Follen did not confine his operations to these two localities. One day he was to be seen issuing from the College yard at a dogtrot, with all college (the total number of undergraduates at that period was not more than two hundred) at his heels in single file, and arms akimbo, making a train a mile long, bound for the top of Prospect Hill. Great was the amazement and amusement of all passersby. I was one of the bobs of that living kite; but, as I dropped prematurely, I cannot speak confidently of the end....”

Anyone familiar with the appearance of a German Turnplatz of the Jahn type will readily understand the allusions made by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in his chapter on “The Gymnasium, and Gymnastics in Harvard College,” in the second volume of “The Harvard Book” (Cambridge, 1875). “One of my most impressive early reminiscences,” he says, “is of a certain moment when I looked out timidly from my father’s gateway, on what is now Kirkland Street, in Cambridge, and saw the forms of young men climbing, swinging, and twirling aloft in the open playground opposite. It was the triangular field then called the ‘Delta,’ where the great Memorial Hall now stands. The apparatus on which these youths were exercising was, to my childish eyes, as inexplicable as if it had been a pillory or a gallows, which indeed it somewhat resembled. It consisted of high uprights and crossbars, with ladders and swinging ropes, and complications of wood and cordage, whose details are vanished from my memory. Beneath some parts of the apparatus there were pits sunk in the earth, and so well constructed that they remained long after the woodwork had been removed. This early recollection must date as far back as 1830.”

In the “Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University in Cambridge,” October, 1825, appears the name “Charles Follen, J.U.D., Instructor in German, and Lecturer on the Civil Law.” The next catalogue (September, 1826) retains the name and title unchanged, but in that “for the Academical year 1827-1828” (published in 1827) he is called “Instructor in German, and Superintendent of the Gymnasium;” and in both these catalogues the following paragraph occurs: “The regular Gymnastick exercises, when the Superintendent of the Gymnasium is present, are on Wednesday and Friday, from 12 to 1 o’clock; or when the length of the day admits, after evening Commons. On Monday, the Monitors and Vice Monitors meet separately with the Superintendent, to prepare for the general exercises.” The catalogues for 1828-1829 (published in 1828) and 1829-1830 (published in 1829) make no mention of “Gymnastick exercises,” and give Follen the title “Instructor in the German Language, in Ethics, and in Civil and Ecclesiastical History.” From 1826 through 1829 this further paragraph is included: “Military exercises are allowed on Tuesday and Thursday, from 12 to 1 o’clock, or after evening Commons; with music not oftener than every other time, and liberty of a parade on the afternoons of Exhibition days.”

In a letter to Beck dated March 5, 1826, Follen had written: “In Boston a gymnasium is soon to be established.” The gentlemen interested in the project offered him a liberal salary if he would “superintend the erection of the proper apparatus and become the principal instructor,” and authorized him to engage a suitable assistant. September 26 he again wrote to Beck: “The day after tomorrow my rope-dancing begins in Boston. The gallows stand, in significant majesty, on the spot. There is no lack of gallows-birds, large and small, genteel and vulgar....” A petition had been presented to the Board of Aldermen of Boston on March 13, asking for the use of a certain piece of land “for the purpose of establishing a school of gymnastic instruction and exercise.” April 17 the city authorities granted this request. Following a call which appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June 12, a meeting of citizens was held June 15, at the Exchange Coffee House, to take steps to carry out the plan for a public gymnasium. The official report is published in the American Journal of Education for July, 1826, (Vol. I, p. 243). The meeting unanimously resolved “that it is expedient to attempt the establishment of a Gymnastic School in the city of Boston,” and appointed William Sullivan, Dr. John C. Warren, Prof. George Ticknor, Dr. John G. Coffin, and John S. Foster, with others to be selected by them, a committee to carry the resolution into effect, by securing and applying contributions from the citizens of Boston. Others mentioned as especially interested in the project are Judge Prescott, Josiah Quincy, Daniel Webster, Peter O. Thacher, John A. Lowell, Thomas Motley, and John B. Davis. Two hundred and fifty shares, at twenty dollars each, were offered by the committee, and according to Dr. Warren the contributions were “very liberal,” permitting the opening of the establishment “on a large scale.”

The open-air gymnasium or Turnplatz was ready for the public on September 28, not on the site originally selected, but in Washington Gardens, at the corner of West and Tremont Streets, opposite the Common. A notice in the American Journal of Education for October mentions “the large number of pupils of various ages, and the high gratification it seems to afford;” and the November number of the same Journal uses these words, in the course of a more extended reference: “A month’s opportunity of observing its progress and participating in its exercises enables us now to say that thus far it gives the utmost satisfaction to those who have made the experiment of taking a course of lessons. The physical effects of the gymnastic exercise, on pupils of very different ages—from ten to fifty—are surprising. Many have doubled their vigor.... Pupils belong to great diversity of situations in life—physicians, lawyers, and clergymen are intermixed with young men from the counter and the counting house, and with boys from the public schools.” Follen was assisted by George F. Turner, a Harvard student. Mrs. Follen, then Miss Eliza Lee Cabot, first met her future husband in the autumn of 1826. She says: “He accompanied us and some other ladies to his gymnasium, to see his class of boys go through their exercises. He took us, when we first entered the place, to look at a very amusing caricature of his school, particularly of his elder pupils and himself, in the act of performing some of their most difficult exercises.”⁠[200]

In June of the following year (1827) Follen resigned his position at the Boston Gymnasium. To a committee of pupils there, who sent him a letter⁠[201] expressing their appreciation of his services and their regret at losing him, he replied under date of July 3, referring to “the patriotic views to which the Boston Gymnasium owes its existence, and the efficient zeal with which these exercises have been carried on.” Meanwhile an attempt had been made to secure the services of no less a person than Friedrich Ludwig Jahn himself. Dr. Warren tells us⁠[202] that he “addressed a letter to the distinguished philosopher and gymnasiarch, Professor Jahn, through my friend, William Amory, Esq., who was at that time residing in Germany. Mr. Jahn was so situated that we could not, without obtaining more means than were at our disposition, lead him to abandon his own country and establish himself for life in ours. The idea of obtaining his aid was therefore relinquished; and I afterwards addressed Dr. Lieber....”

This latter gentleman, who succeeded Follen at the Boston gymnasium late in June or early in July of 1827, was Francis (German, Franz) Lieber, born in Berlin on March 18, 1800. In 1811 he became acquainted with Jahn, at the Hasenheide Turnplatz. Although too young to join his older brothers in the first campaign of the War of Liberation, upon Napoleon’s return from Elba he entered (May 26, 1815) a volunteer regiment, the Pomeranian Rifles or Kolberg Regiment, took part in the battle of Ligny, was severely wounded at Namur, and later suffered from a prolonged siege of typhus fever in the hospitals at Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne. After his return home he attended for a time the Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster, and now became one of the most ardent and tireless of Jahn’s turners, accompanying him on the month-long excursions to the Island of Rügen in 1817 and to Breslau the following year.⁠[203] In July of 1819, a few days after Jahn’s arrest, Lieber was also seized as an enemy of the state. After four months in prison he was allowed to go free, but forbidden to study in any Prussian university. The universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen also refused him admission, but he met with better success at Jena, where he received his doctor’s degree (Ph.D.) in 1820, studying afterwards for brief periods in Halle and Dresden (1821). In December of that year Lieber joined at Marseilles a band of Philhellenes, who sailed from that port to give their services in the cause of freedom to a foreign race, since the reaction at home left no opportunity there for patriotic endeavor; but disgusted with the cowardice, incapacity, and lying met at every step in Greece, he returned in a small vessel to Ancona, on the eastern coast of Italy, reached Rome about the first of June, and spent the next year as private tutor in the family of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the celebrated German historian, at that time Prussian ambassador at the Papal Court.

The Prussian King, and later Kamptz, the Minister of Police, had assured Lieber that no further persecution need be feared in his own country, and for some months after his return to Berlin, which he reached August 10, 1823, it seemed as though all was well. But in time it appeared that every movement was watched by the police. Foreseeing the fate that awaited him if he remained longer in Germany, he now took steps looking toward a career in some foreign land. Lessons in English were begun in February of 1826, and among other things he secured from Major-General von Pfuel, in charge of a swimming school in Berlin, a testimonial as to his skill in that art and his ability to conduct a similar institution with success. When all was ready he left Berlin, May 17, 1826, and ten days later reached London, travelling by way of Hamburg and Gravesend.

Although he passed a year in the English metropolis, supporting himself by private instruction in German and Italian at six shillings a lesson, Lieber’s thoughts were soon turned from this uncertain means of livelihood to the possibility of a career in the United States. As early as August his diary contains this entry: “Mrs. Austin, the authoress, introduced me to Mr. Bentham, and to Mr. Neal” (p. 248). The American Journal of Education for November of that year (Vol. I, pp. 699-701) quotes as follows from “a recent letter of our literary countryman Mr. Neal, who has taken a very active part in aiding the interests of Prof. Voelker’s establishment in London, and to whose attention we have been repeatedly indebted for intelligence on gymnastics”: ‘You know my zeal about gymnastics. I have been heartily engaged for above a year in the study and practice of them in every variety; and under a hope that I may be of use to my countrymen. I have found three men who I am told are qualified, almost beyond example, for teachers. I enclose you the proposals and the certificate of one, who was a chief personage with professor Jahn himself.’

The certificate of Professor Jahn: “Francis Lieber, Doctor in Philosophy, has during several successive years, both in summer and winter, gone through the whole course of gymnastic exercises in the gymnasium over which I, the undersigned, presided; he has also accompanied me in several pedestrian excursions, among others in 1817 to the Island of Rügen, and in 1818 to the Riesen mountains, on which travels we visited many Prussian gymnasiums. Having found him of good moral behavior, ingenious and clever, and being a good leader and teacher of gymnastics, I thought it right as early as the year 1817 to propose him to the government of the Rhenish Provinces at Aix la Chapelle for the situation of a teacher of gymnastic exercises. Beloved by the young scholars, esteemed and respected by those of the same or a more advanced age than himself, he was elected a member of the committee which was intended to represent the society of ‘Turners’ and to promote the art generally, with a view as well to the art itself as to morals and science. At the time when Dr. Lieber was daily with me he zealously adhered to those eternal maxims of truth, duty, and liberty which form the only basis of the progress of human kind. The journeys which he has performed through Germany, Switzerland, to France, Italy, and Greece, have no doubt still farther formed his understanding and enlarged his mind; but on this point I cannot judge from my own knowledge, having since lost sight of him although he lives in my recollection. At the request of Dr. Lieber I have given this testimonial, stamped according to law, written with my own hand, with my seal affixed and certified by the municipality of my present abode. Freiburg on the Unstrut, in the Prussian Duchy of Saxony. August 1, 1826. (Signed) Frederick Lewis Jahn, Doctor in Philosophy.”

“In addition to the above,” the Editor of the Journal concludes, “Dr. Lieber has a very satisfactory certificate from Major General Pfuel, who invented the new method of teaching to swim and established the Prussian Military Swimming Schools. It may be proper to add that Dr. Lieber is known and approved by Dr. Follen, Professor (!) of civil law in Harvard University and Superintendent of the gymnasium in Boston.”

April 13, 1827, in response to an invitation just received, Lieber wrote accepting a position as Follen’s successor at the Boston Gymnasium, and agreeing to establish a swimming school in that city. June 20 of the same year he landed in New York City, and proceeded at once to the scene of his new duties. The Boston Medical Intelligencer of July 3 (Vol. V, p. 118) announces his arrival “to take charge of the gymnasium in Washington Garden and to open a swimming school;” and an advertisement in the same journal, dated July 14, gives notice that “Dr. Lieber’s Swimming School, situate on the north side of the Mill Dam, will be opened for the reception of pupils on Wednesday next, 18th inst....” The swimming school seems to have proved a successful venture from the start, and was still in existence at least as late as the season of 1832. The popularity of the gymnasium, on the other hand, soon waned. From a sketch of the life of William Bentley Fowle contained in Barnard’s American Journal of Education for 1861 (Vol. X, p. 607) we learn that “about four hundred gentlemen attended at the opening term. Mr. Fowle was chosen treasurer, and was in fact the chief executive officer. When Dr. Follen resigned Dr. Lieber was invited over from London; but no talent could keep the gymnasium alive after the novelty had ceased, and some of the gymnasts had been caricatured in the print shops. The institution lingered about two years, when, only about four gymnasts remaining, Mr. Fowle closed its accounts.”⁠[204]

Beck left the Round Hill School in 1830, to take part in establishing another boys’ school, in Phillipstown, on the Hudson River opposite West Point. Two years later he was elected “University Professor of Latin, and Permanent Tutor,” in Harvard University, and for eighteen years discharged the duties of that position in a manner which won the respect and affectionate regard of pupils and colleagues. Upon resigning his chair, and until his death, which occurred suddenly on March 19, 1866, he was occupied with literary pursuits and classical studies, and also held various offices of public trust, representing Cambridge for two years in the State Legislature.⁠[205] Bancroft, too, had withdrawn from the school at Northampton in 1830.⁠[206] For some years longer, in the face of financial losses and in spite of failing health, Cogswell struggled to maintain its efficiency. In the spring of 1834 he finally gave up the attempt, and after two years at the head of a boys’ school near Raleigh, North Carolina, turned his back forever on a profession in which he had been in many ways singularly successful.

Follen, as we have seen, resigned his position at the Boston gymnasium early in the summer of 1827; the title “Superintendent of the Gymnasium” at Harvard is given him only in the catalogue for 1827-1828, which also contains the last reference to “gymnastick exercises.” August 21, 1828, the Corporation of Harvard College appointed him “Instructor in Ethics and in Civil and Ecclesiastical History” in the Theological School, in addition to his work in the College. Two years later he received a five-year appointment as Professor of the German Language and Literature, three friends having guaranteed a portion of his salary for that period. The professorship was not renewed in 1835, and his connection with the University came to an end. In the summer of 1833 he became interested in the Anti-slavery Society which had been formed the year previous in Boston, and soon joined it, assisting later in the formation of a similar society in Cambridge, and at one time serving as a manager of the Massachusetts Society. As early as the winter of 1826-1827 he formed the acquaintance of Dr. William Ellery Channing, and decided to prepare himself for the ministry with the assistance of that distinguished Unitarian clergyman. On January 13, 1840, three days after completing a well-attended course of six lectures on German literature under the auspices of the Merchants’ Library Association of New York, he left that city for Boston on the steamboat “Lexington.” About fifty miles out, on the Sound, the vessel caught fire, and Follen, together with all but four of the crew and passengers, met his death. Charles Sumner, who had been his pupil, wrote to a friend “Dr. Follen is gone; able, virtuous, learned, good, with a heart throbbing to all that is honest and humane;” and Dr. Channing “said of him that he was, on the whole, the best man he had ever known.”⁠[207]

The career of Francis Lieber in the United States was more notable than those of either of his compatriots. A testimonial from Niebuhr, and his own force of intellect and character, secured him at once a very cordial reception on this side of the Atlantic, and upon the recommendation of the same distinguished patron a half-dozen leading periodicals in Germany appointed him American correspondent. At the close of his first season at the swimming school he turned with great energy to literary labors, and soon made up his mind to edit an encyclopedia, modelled after the seventh edition of the Brockhaus Conversations-Lexicon and in part a translation of that famous German work, but adapted to English readers and supplied with numerous additional articles by distinguished American contributors. The first volume of the new “Encyclopædia Americana” appeared in 1829, and the thirteenth and last in 1833. It proved a successful venture financially and brought him also the acquaintance of prominent men in all parts of the country. In September of 1833 he moved his family from Boston to Philadelphia, and by October 19 had finished the draft of a constitution for Girard College. June 5, 1835, he was unanimously elected Professor of History and Political Economy in South Carolina College, at Columbia. May 18, 1857, he was elected Professor of History and Political Science in Columbia College, New York City, but later, in July of 1865, was transferred by the trustees to the chair of Constitutional History and Public Law in the Law School. Here he continued in active service until his sudden death, October 2, 1872.⁠[208]

The outdoor gymnasia at Northampton, Cambridge, and Boston, although for the historian they possess the greatest interest, were not the only ones established during the period (1825-1830) under consideration. Each had its imitators, and there were other attempts of a similar nature which seem to have been more or less independent, or inspired by direct contact with European models. The following information deserves a place as a contribution to this study of beginnings, and it is offered in the hope of arousing a curiosity which will result in additions to our present knowledge of the subject.

No school of the period attracted more attention or enjoyed greater prosperity than did the New York High School, a private institution for boys, which the son of its founder⁠[209] calls, at the time of its organization, “the first and the only pay school in this country established on the professed principle of cheap and efficient instruction based on ... the adoption and employment of the monitorial system, by which one teacher can communicate his knowledge to a large number of pupils.” It was located in New York City, on Crosby Street, above Grand, and opened March 1, 1825, with about 250 boys; but the numbers rapidly increased to more than 600, and there were still about 400 at the time of its discontinuance, near the close of 1831. The founder was John Griscom (1774-1852), who during a year of foreign travel had examined many famous European schools, and refers in the published account of his observations⁠[210] to the gymnastic exercises which he saw in Paris, at the school of Amoros⁠[211] (August 27, 1818), and in Switzerland at the schools of Fellenberg, in Hofwyl (October 2 and 3, 1818), and Pestalozzi, in Yverdon (October 8 and 9, 1818). In writing of the visit to Amoros he remarks: “A systematic course of instruction, with proper exercises, on the right use of their limbs, I have long thought would be very advantageous to boys;” and his opening address at the New York High School⁠[212] contains the following: “I shall refrain from dwelling longer on the literary pursuits of this seminary; but I cannot dismiss my subject without adverting to one branch of instruction which it is equally the wish, I believe, of the trustees and principals to establish as a constituent part of our general plan, from a conviction of its advantages to the bodily vigor and of course to the intellectual strength and activity of our pupils. I allude to gymnastics.” The second annual report of the Trustees⁠[213] informs the public that “Gymnastic exercises have been introduced, under the superintendence of an experienced and careful teacher, and they have been attended with evident advantage to the spirits and health of the pupils.”

Other schools which introduced gymnastic exercises, or planned to do so, during the period under review, were the New Haven Gymnasium, conducted by two sons of President Timothy Dwight of Yale; the Berkshire High School, at Pittsfield, Mass.; the Mount Pleasant Classical Institution, at Amherst, Mass.; the Livingston County High School, near Geneseo, New York; the Buffalo High School; Gideon F. Thayer’s private school for boys, in Harvard Place, Boston; the Noyes School, at Andover, New Hampshire; Walnut Grove School, at Troy, New York; a High School in Utica, New York; the Brookline (Mass.) Gymnasium; Mount Hope Literary and Scientific Institution, near Baltimore, Maryland; and the Classical and Scientific Seminary at Ballston, New York.⁠[214]

After Harvard, Yale College seems to have been the first to introduce gymnastics among its students. A letter received from the University Library states “that the idea was taken from the gymnasium recently established at Harvard; that Tutor William M. Holland was sent to Cambridge in the summer of 1826 to procure the apparatus, and that he superintended the exercises, which was begun with the opening of the fall term of 1826.” At a meeting of the Corporation held September 12, 1826, it was “Voted that a sum not exceeding three hundred dollars, to be expended under the direction of the faculty, be appropriated to the clearing and preparation of grounds for a Gymnasium and to the erection of apparatus for Gymnastic exercises, with a view to the promotion of the health and improvement of the Students.”

A book entitled “Student Life at Amherst College,” compiled by George R. Cutting and published at Amherst in 1871, contains the following account of a similar movement at that institution: “In the summer of 1826 the students of the college petitioned the Faculty for a holiday in which to clear up the college grove. The petition was granted, and a second day was given for further completion of the work. Thus logs, stumps, and rubbish were removed, and the students had a fine grove at their command for outdoor exercise. Several months afterward a Gymnastic Society was formed, whose chief object was the erection and support of gymnastic apparatus in this grove. The first president of the society was Joseph Howard, M.D., of ’27. The Faculty concurred in the plans of the society, and as a result of their efforts a variety of useful apparatus was placed here, which was eminently serviceable to the students and contributed not a little to their health and happiness. By the enthusiasm and public spirit of the society a bathing house (10 × 12 feet) was also erected, in the southwest corner of the grove. Here shower-baths were provided for the members. This was afterwards burned down. In 1827-1828 the society contemplated the erection of bowling alleys, but the Faculty would not suffer the innovation.... Addresses were occasionally pronounced before the society, in the chapel, upon ‘physical culture.’ The society did not really cease to exist until 1859-1860, when the present (Barrett) gymnasium was erected. Its apparatus, ever and anon increased and repaired by the liberality of the students, was not removed from the grove until after that time.” Dr. E. M. Hartwell, in his “Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities” (Washington, 1886), tells us that “One who entered Amherst as a student in 1829 describes a gymnasium which consisted of ‘a few horses and parallel bars, with one or two swings in the grove, but even these belonged to a society of students who guarded their property with jealous care.’”

May 9, 1827, the Trustees of Williams College voted “That a sum not exceeding one hundred dollars be appropriated to the procuring and erection of apparatus necessary to the practice of the gymnastic exercises, if the Faculty should think proper to introduce the same at this College.” At a meeting of the Faculty held June 15 “The President and Tutor (Mark) Hopkins,⁠[215] a committee who had been appointed for this purpose at a former meeting, reported a plan of a gymnasium, and recommended a site for its location. The same committee were authorized to prepare the ground according to the plan reported.” The Trustees, again, on September 5, of the same year, voted “to appropriate a sum not exceeding $50, in addition to the $100 granted at the last meeting, to be expended on the Gymnasium.” The Boston Medical Intelligencer for September 25, 1827 (Vol. V, p. 311) contains this note: “A traveller observes, ‘On a portion of the College grounds, in Williamstown, I perceived one day a large number of students at work, headed by their venerable President, and on examination found that they were preparing a Gymnasium. Here is a fine spot for exercise, and we may hope that our students will no longer, as in former years, leave college with emaciated frames and pallid countenances, through want of proper exercise.’”

The following extracts are taken from a long letter⁠[216] to the editor of the Boston Medical Intelligencer by a correspondent who signs himself “G. F.” and writes under date of September, 1827. “Having lately been in Providence, Rhode Island, I have had the best opportunity of informing myself with respect to the success of the Gymnastic Exercises in Brown University, and knowing the interest you take in this subject I submit to your disposal some remarks on it. On the 11th of June last, near the commencement of the present term, the exercises opened under the most auspicious and flattering circumstances. Nearly all the students, with the exception of the senior class, to the number of about seventy, presented themselves on the exercise ground. The exercises were countenanced, and consequently enlivened, by the presence of the president, professors, and tutors of the university.... The officers, as I stated, appeared with the students, and under the direction of the teacher of gymnastics performed the exercises.... The students have taken a great interest in the exercises throughout the term, though not so much at the latter part of it as at first....” Late in July of 1827 Charles Follen spent a day in Providence on his way to Newport, and refers to the visit as follows in a letter to Beck: “I was for the most part with Dr. Wayland,⁠[217] and my ex-assistant Haskins, and held in the evening a strict Gymnastic review. I spoke much with Dr. Wayland on education. He stated many fine views and seemed to be respected and beloved by the teachers. He exercises with all.” The University catalogue of 1827-1828 announces that “a very complete Gymnasium, with every variety of apparatus for exercise, has lately been erected on the college grounds;” and the Treasurer’s Reports contain these items:

President Jasper Adams, D.D., of Charleston College, Charleston, S. C., is thus quoted in the Quarterly Review and Journal of the American Education Society for May, 1830 (Vol. II, p. 244): “A system of bodily exercise was adopted three or four years ago, and suitable apparatus was constructed; but it was not found useful, and the apparatus has been destroyed.”

In speaking of Lieber’s year in England reference has already been made (p. 240) to an American, John Neal,⁠[218] who was at that time residing in London. Neal had spent his early life in New England, in 1815 established himself in business in Baltimore, studied law in that city and was admitted to the bar in 1819, and meanwhile, in order to support himself, had been writing articles for the Portico and had followed these with a two-volume novel and a book of poems. A whole series of novels was produced within the next few years, and some of these were reprinted in London. Late in 1823 he left America to try his fortune as a pioneer of American letters in the British metropolis, and during his residence in London, from January of 1824 until April of 1827, became a frequent contributor to the most important magazines and reviews, residing much of the time at the house of Jeremy Bentham, by invitation of that distinguished jurist and philosopher. While still in Baltimore he had been moved by signs of mental overwork to take lessons in boxing, fencing, and riding; in London these were continued, and when Carl Voelker⁠[219] (German, Karl Völker), like Beck, Follen, and Lieber, a German refugee, opened there his gymnasia patterned after the Jahn Turnplatz Neal became one of his most enthusiastic pupils and supporters. Returning to America in the summer of 1827 he opened a law office in Portland, Maine, where the remainder of his life was passed. The following words from his autobiography (pp. 333-335) evidently refer to the first year (1827-1828) of this residence:

“The late Governor Enoch Lincoln was my mother’s nextdoor neighbor. Having understood that I was familiar with gymnastics, which he wanted to have introduced here, he proposed a lecture. A lecture! I had never been guilty of such a thing, in all my life; but as soon as my mind was made up about staying here I determined to establish a gymnasium, take charge of it myself, and refusing all compensation see what could be done for the people in that way. Our first gathering was in the upper story of the old town-hall, which I asked of the authorities; and succeeded in obtaining for certain purposes, though vehemently opposed by such young men as the late Colonel John D. Kinsman, then exceedingly popular with the militia power.... From the old town-hall we went to Silver Street, where we succeeded in obtaining a large hay magazine. There we set up our ladders, and ropes, and masts, parallel bars, wooden horses, etc., with such success that before a month had gone over I had under my charge at least fifteen or twenty full classes. Among these were many capital gymnasts. After this, when the spring opened, we took the old fort on the top of Munjoy Hill, and established another gymnasium there, with ditches and leaping-poles; and then, having got into other and better business, with my law and literature, and fencing and sparring classes, at my office, I threw up these gymnasia; being, to say the truth, heartily sick of them after I found how little the members were inclined to do for themselves; not one of the whole being disposed to let me off, although I had trained forty or fifty for class-leaders, and they understood that I had my own living to get in other ways. Meanwhile I had established a gymnasium at Brunswick,⁠[220] which has continued to this day (he is writing late in December, 1868), with two or three long interruptions, and another at Saco; and all this without asking or receiving a penny for my time and trouble; nay, more, at considerable expense to myself....”⁠[221]

Dr. John Collins Warren, who had helped to start the gymnasia at Harvard University and in Boston, bore reluctant testimony to the brevity of the period now under review in a lecture “On the Importance of Physical Education,” delivered at Boston in August of 1830 before the convention which organized the American Institute of Instruction. After urging the importance of suitable bodily exercise, for young women as well as young men, he adds: “The establishment of gymnasia through the country promised at one time the opening of a new era in physical education. The exercises were pursued with ardor, so long as their novelty lasted; but owing to not understanding their importance, or some defect in the institutions which adopted them, they have gradually been neglected and forgotten, at least in our vicinity. The benefits which resulted from these institutions, within my personal knowledge and experience, far transcended the most sanguine expectations.” And he still believes that “the diversions of the gymnasium should constitute a regular part of the duties of all our colleges and seminaries of learning.”