128 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The map on the previous page reflects the creative
energy of antebellum reformers, who used every
means at their disposal to rid the country of alcohol.
The same spirit that animated temperance also infused
contemporary efforts to modernize schooling. Among
the leaders of this movement was Horace Mann, who
broadened access to education and experimented with
new methods of instruction. Typical of these reformers
was the Bostonian Samuel Gridley Howe, who
dedicated himself to educating blind students.
In 1832 Howe founded the Institution for the
Education of the Blind, the first school of its kind
in the United States and now known as the Perkins
School for the Blind. Such schools had long existed
in Europe, but Howe broke with tradition by insisting
that blind students could direct their own education
by learning to read. In the era before Braille, such
a task was easier said than done. Howe hoped to
cultivate literacy through innovative teaching and
learning materials that improved upon French
techniques of raised script. In 1835 he designed his
own raised typeface, which replaced curves with
streamlined narrow and angled letters to facilitate
tactile identification. This Boston Line Type was used
in all of the learning materials at the Institution.
Throughout the 1830s Howe developed new
instructional materials, and he made geography
a foundation of his institutional curriculum.
Initially, those techniques relied on a tutor, who
would explain the arrangement of the states and
then ask the student to do the same. Yet this
required a sighted interpreter, and Howe wanted
blind students to learn on their own. Working with
the printer Samuel Ruggles, he created a massive
globe that measured almost five feet in diameter.
The globe still stands in the Perkins History Museum,
though blind students had difficulty grasping—both
literally and figuratively—the overall geography of
the world on such a large apparatus. This inspired
AN ATLAS FOR THE BLIND
Samuel Gridley Howe and Samuel
Ruggles, map of Vermont for the
blind, 1837
Ruggles to produce an atlas that would enable blind
students to explore geography at their own pace and
through their own efforts.
This map of Vermont is from one of the few
surviving copies of that atlas. Ruggles and Howe
used dotted lines to mark state and national
borders and solid lines to trace rivers. They added
a second parallel line to denote the widening of
the Connecticut River as it flowed south. Elsewhere
on the map, unique symbols indicate distinct
physiographical features. Small hachuring is used to
mark the mountain ranges across the state, while the
waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George are set
off from land by subtle horizontal ridges. Individual
letters throughout the map reference towns listed
and described on a separate page. The spare
markings on the page are designed to maximize
tactile legibility for the reader.
Whether Howe’s atlas was useful to students is
hard to say, for some found Boston Line Type difficult
to master. In spite of that, it quickly became the most
widely used raised typeface in the country. By 1840
Howe and Ruggles had published forty-one books
with Boston Line Type, including the New Testament
and four geography texts. Tracts extolling the virtues
of temperance were also published, reflecting Howe’s
own evangelical and moral convictions. A committed
opponent of slavery, Howe married Julia Ward,
who famously penned the overtly Christian “Battle
Hymn of the Republic” just after the outbreak of the
American Civil War.
Howe insisted that Boston Line Type was superior
to coded systems such as Braille. To his mind, the
latter only further segregated and isolated blind
readers by using an arbitrary set of symbols instead
of embossed letters that could be read by those with
sight and without. But by the turn of the century,
Boston Line Type and several other systems were
overtaken by Braille.
Howe’s atlas—like the schoolgirl map on
page 118—underscores the concerted effort in the
antebellum era to widen access to education and
reach new segments of the population. This drive
bore significant fruit by the end of the century, when
nearly every state had established a system of
common and public schools.