<P> Over the years, Americans have been influenced by a number of European reformers; among them Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Montessori . </P> <P> By the early 19th century with the rise of the new United States, a new mood was alive in urban areas . Especially influential were the writings of Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Lydia Sigourney, who developed the role of republican motherhood as a principle that united state and family by equating a successful republic with virtuous families . Women, as intimate and concerned observers of young children, were best suited to the role of guiding and teaching children . By the 1840s, New England writers such as Child, Sedgwick, and Sigourney became respected models and advocates for improving and expanding education for females . Greater educational access meant formerly male - only subjects, such as mathematics and philosophy, were to be integral to curricula at public and private schools for girls . By the late 19th century, these institutions were extending and reinforcing the tradition of women as educators and supervisors of American moral and ethical values . </P> <P> The ideal of Republican motherhood pervaded the entire nation, greatly enhancing the status of women and supporting girls' need for education . The relative emphasis on decorative arts and refinement of female instruction which had characterized the colonial era was replaced after 1776 by a program to support women in education for their major role in nation building, in order that they become good republican mothers of good republican youth . Fostered by community spirit and financial donations, private female academies were established in towns across the South as well as the North . </P> <P> Rich planters were particularly insistent on having their daughters schooled, since education often served as a substitute for dowry in marriage arrangements . The academies usually provided a rigorous and broad curriculum that stressed writing, penmanship, arithmetic, and languages, especially French . By 1840, the female academies succeeded in producing a cultivated, well - read female elite ready for their roles as wives and mothers in southern aristocratic society . </P>

When was free public education established in america