Shaping the American Voice Through Education: 

A Comparative History of Harris’ Primer and Webster’s Speller

Books played a significant role in the life of colonists, both prior to and during the war. Early Americans “read widely and thought deeply about the principles of freedom and government.”¹ However, “almost all of the books read by colonials came from England.”² This included many of the primers taught in early American schoolhouses. At an early age, Noah Webster recognized the importance of education and its potential to shape the American voice.  Webster’s textbook, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, was intended as an alternative to British-based primers.When comparing two seminal textbooks used in American classrooms during the Revolution– one by British author Benjamin Harris, and one by American author Noah Webster, one can argue that the switch from the Harris to the Webster textbook is directly responsible for changing American education and led to a unified American voice.

Prior to and during the Revolution, Benjamin Harris’s The New England Primer was the most read school textbook in the colonies.³ Although schoolhouses were typically poorly run and disorganized, this was a staple textbook for early American school teachers. Harris was born in England and lived in the colonies. However, his British heritage caused him to take inspiration from English texts. Through Harris’ book, children learned stories of prominent Englishmen such as “Mr. John Rogers,” minister of the London gospel.⁴ Other lessons from this book include phrases meant for students to recite, such as “I will fear God, and honour the King,” stories based in Puritan tradition, and a list of popular British names.⁵ British influence was heavily ingrained in the school lessons for children. By instructing students in the ways of British learning styles, the colonists were raising British citizens- not American ones. This disparity between the nation’s desire for independence and British cultural projections on young citizens is what inspired Noah Webster to create uniquely American texts.

While American-based literature was rare, it did still exist. Early Americans such as Thomas Paine and Cotton Mather published many successful and influential texts meant to inspire and unite the American people behind the ideals of independence and inalienable rights. However, American literature often came in the form of escapist adventure novels.⁶ An Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major-General Israel Putnam by David Humphreys was considered to be the first biography of an American ever written. Humphreys, an aide-de-camp for George Washington, wrote General Putnam, “as brave and as honest a man as America has ever produced,” with the intent of providing an “imitation of a respectable model of public and private virtues.”⁷ In writing an exciting, adventurous book, Humphreys told the story of a hero meant for Americans to attach themselves to and look up to. Later, Noah Webster would recognize the impact that this story had on young Americans and would adapt it for his own American school textbook.

The task to create new American literature for students was pertinent and encouraged by many of the Founding Fathers even prior to the publication of Webster’s Blue Backed Speller. Benjamin Franklin was acutely aware of this important task, as outlined in a letter from Franklin to Samuel Cooper, a Boston minister. In the letter, Franklin remarks that, “our Cause is the cause of all Mankind, and that we are fighting for their Liberty in defending our Own.”⁸ Without a solid education system, British influence under the Harris textbook would continue, and the American voice of Liberty could wane. Webster, who later befriended Franklin, viewed Franklin’s sentiments as a call to action. His response was to reform education, thus leading to a palpable change within the country’s education system.

Noah Webster grew up around these sentiments during his formative years as a student in the West Division of Hartford, Connecticut. Many historians, such as Harlow Unger, believe that Webster’s experiences with the British during his formative years shaped his beliefs surrounding the needs of American education. Webster saw schooling as more memorization and recitation than learning or thinking, recalling reading mostly from the St. James Bible and hearing references to British culture and history.⁹ Historian Joshua Kendall explains that Webster held a negative view of the British early on in his life. In addition to his own father being tricked by British troops during the French and Indian War, the young Noah was greatly impacted by violent acts at the hands of the British, such as watching British armies burn over 300 New York homes.¹⁰

From this, he was inspired to write his own school textbook, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. Nicknamed the Blue Backed Speller, Webster’s speller was published in 1783 as an early American textbook intended to teach schoolchildren. Unlike British primers of the past, Webster’s speller focused on lessons that go beyond spelling, with a goal of teaching students about America’s values, language, important figures, and geography.  The Blue Backed Speller was a revolutionary document in its effort to combat cultural groundwork laid by the British and establish an American identity in the colonies.

The final section of Webster’s textbook features the geography of “The United States of America,” including state names, capital cities, and census information.¹¹

Comparing Webster’s Speller with Harris’ Primer changes major historiographical arguments regarding Webster’s reasoning for creating a speller. Some historians have questioned Webster’s motivations for his work. Namely, historian Tim Cassedy’s “A Dictionary Which We Do Not Want” critiques Webster’s status in American History as pioneering an American language. His argument features a collection of letters from early American citizens, touting Webster’s work as “wrong and dangerous.”¹² Additionally, he argues that Webster’s Speller was not in fact very different from British textbooks of the time,¹³ again citing a letter from a citizen arguing against Webster’s common language, stating, “We already possess the admirable lexicon of [Samuel] Johnson.”¹⁴ As Kendall mentions, Webster’s prickly attitude turned many of contemporaries from his way of thinking. However, Webster was not merely a savvy marketer and businessman, as Cassedy argues. To Webster, creating uniquely American texts was essential to the sustained success of the new nation. Webster’s views of the British were clear. In the introduction to his Speller, Webster admits to enjoying the “pleasure of separation” from England, and manages to critique and suppress other spellers of the time, particularly Thomas Dilworth’s A New Guide to the English Tongue, which was a clone of Harris’ Primer.¹⁵

“While the Americans stand astonished at their former delusion and enjoy the pleasure of a final separation from their insolent sovereigns, it becomes their duty to attend to the arts of peace, and particularly to the interests of literature; to see if there be not some errours to be corrected, some defects to be supplied, and some improvements to be introduced into our systems of education, as well as into those of civil policy.”¹⁶

Through his writing, Webster continued sharing his inspirations for publishing his new Speller. In his 1789 essay, “The Reformation of Spelling,” he argues for a uniform education, saying that this uniformity “would make a difference between the English or orthography and the American. I am confident that such an event is an object of vast political consequence.”¹⁷

What shapes Cassedy’s argument, and as a result, presents a major oversight in his work, is a failure to connect Webster’s publications within the context of Harris’ speller, and the veil of British influence of the time. The landscape of American education changed drastically following the end of the American Revolution, as referenced by Wood’s “intellectual movement,”¹⁸ and Carleton’s “great educational awakening.”¹⁹ Without Webster’s speller, students impacted by the educational awakening of the mid 19th century would have been influenced by the British texts available pre-Webster. These texts told stories of British heroes, language, and overall, contained a layer of nationalism towards British culture and monarchy. Webster was particularly interested in creating a catalog of American educational resources to compete with, and later replace, existing British ones.

Comparing Harris and Webster’s approach to education highlights the formation and progression of the American voice. Analyzing the differences between the two spellers shows how American educators responded to the Revolution and used education to establish a unified American identity. While Harris’ speller was meant to emulate and reinforce the British educational system, Webster’s method of education was uniquely American and was designed to grow with the new nation, selling well over 100 million copies in the first 100 years of its publication. All in all, the comparison of these two seminal textbooks shows that Webster’s Blue Backed Speller allowed the American voice to drift from its British origins and emerge as a strong, unique perspective in the years following the war. Webster’s publications helped sustain America’s independence and ensured the long lasting success of the Revolution.