Mann, HORACE

Mann, HORACE, American educationist, was born at Franklin, Massachusetts, 4th May 1796, graduated at Brown University in 1819, and commenced the study of law. He was elected to the legislature of Massachusetts in 1827, and succeeded in founding the state lunatic asylum. Removing to Boston, he was elected (1833) to the state senate, of which he became president. After editing the revised statutes of the state, he was for eleven years secretary of the Board of Education. He gave up business and politics, and devoted his whole time to the cause of education, working usually fifteen hours a day. In 1843 he made a visit to educational establishments in Europe, and his Report was reprinted both in England and America. In 1848 he was elected to congress, as the successor of John Quincy Adams, whose example he followed in energetic opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1853 he accepted the presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he laboured until his death, August 2, 1859. See his Life and Works (5 vols. 1898), and Hindale's Horace Mann and the Common School System (1898).