He is the author of The War That Wasn’t: Religious Conﬂict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865–1900 (2009). This article is excerpted from his edited book, The Founding Fathers, Education, and “the Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), which won the 2014 Critics Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association. Copyright 2013. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.