Page 13 - 2015_Cabin Days curriculum booklet

• ". . . The free communication of thoughts, and opinions, is one of the invaluable rights of
man; and every Citizen may freely speak, write, and print on any subject . . . ."
These bold guarantees of liberty and this confidence and trust placed in the fundamental
wisdom of ordinary Hoosiers constitute a central achievement and a great gift from our
pioneer generation. If there ever was frontier democracy, here it is.

State House, Corydon, Indiana.
Indiana Division, Indiana State Library.
Beyond this bill of rights there are all sorts of other appealing features. The Constitution of
1816 outlawed slavery. It promised a penal code "founded on principles of reformation and
not of vindictive Justice." And most impressive to many today it offered hope for "a general
system of education, ascending in regular gradation, from township schools to a state
university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all."
What a bright blueprint for the future of pioneer Indiana and for all Hoosiers. Did Hoosier
pioneers live up to this high ideal, to its grand commitments and lofty promises? Of course
not. It's naive to think that any people could.
The place of the Constitution of 1816 in the lives of pioneer Hoosiers is far more ambiguous
than the actual language of the document and more ambiguous too than our celebrations of
it might suggest.
Pioneers failed miserably to create a system of free public education all the way to a state
university, equal for all. Indeed, one ambiguous, even unhappy story here is that Indiana
had a rate of adult illiteracy, as reported in the 1840 census, higher than that of any
northern state. The pioneers did not deliver fully on the education promise of 1816. Nor
have we at the end of the twentieth century, from rising tuition at the state universities to
school textbook fees to wide differences in our public schools.
Did the pioneers live up to the commitment to equality? Of course not. The most obvious
example is contained in the lives of African-American Hoosiers. Our histories and our