Ruffner, William Henry (1824–1908)

Born on February 11, 1824, William Henry Ruffner pursued careers as a geologist and preacher before turning to education. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Ruffner was selected as the first superintendent of public education in Virginia in 1870 by the Virginia legislature, with the backing of Robert E. Lee. He was given 30 days to come up with a plan for public schooling in Virginia, which he did with the help of several notables, including William Holmes McGuffey. He traveled thousands of miles on horseback on behalf of the nascent public schools in Virginia during his tenure as superintendent, which lasted until 1882. He is justly regarded as a reformer; in [Page 772]fact, some have referred to him as the “Horace Mann of the South.”

Three major challenges that Ruffner faced during his tenure are addressed in this entry. The first is the establishment of a system of public education. The second is the difficulties associated with questions of race in the recently formed public schools. (These two challenges were mixed with religious quarrels and intertwined, at times, with each other.) The third, and last, is the issue of funding the schools, the issue that led to his dismissal.

Efforts to establish public schools in Virginia had been made by a number of individuals and groups prior to the Civil War. The best known of those were by Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Charles Fenton Mercer, in the second and third decades of the 19th century, was another advocate of public schooling. He differed from Jefferson in that he wanted the schools controlled by the state, whereas Jefferson opted for local control. They were followed by Ruffner's father, Henry, in the 1840s. None of these efforts was successful at the state level, although there were some, less than a dozen, local school divisions in existence prior to the war.

The state school system was brought into existence when Governor Gilbert C. Walker signed a bill to “establish and maintain a uniform system of free public schools” in July 1870. Critics of this action abounded, and their criticism was vocal, strong, and sustained. Some charged that the law replaced the parents, educators of their children by God's will, with the “Godless” state. Others contended that the system interfered with parental liberty. Ruffner's long-time friend and colleague and a fellow Presbyterian minister who also had been educated at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Robert L. Dabney, also denounced the public school system. Among the charges he leveled at it was that it was the result of “Yankee” influence. Dabney also emphasized the primacy of the parent in the educational process and that it was the state's duty to protect the family's rights, not usurp them. True education, some of Ruffner's opponents held, demanded that it be Christian, and that the state, as a secular entity, was totally inadequate to educate. Ruffner argued that the public school system was religious and moral, indeed Christian, but not sectarian. It advanced a “common religion” that would unite all citizens and bring about moral and social unity.

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