Jabez (Lamar Monroe) Curry - Works

US representative and educator, born in Lincoln Co, Georgia, USA. He studied law at Harvard and was deeply inspired by John C Calhoun and Horace Mann. He served in the US House of Representatives (States Rights Democrat, Alabama, 1857–61) and then in the Confederate Congress (1861–3). As president of Howard College (1865–8), agent of the Peabody Fund (1881–1903), and director of the Southern Education Board (1901–3), he pursued his life goal of assuring universal education in the South, for blacks and whites. He was also ambassador to Spain (1885–8). Alabama placed his statue in the US Capitol.

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, (June 5, 1825 – February 12, 1903) was a lawyer, soldier, U.S. Congressman, college professor and administrator, diplomat, and officer in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. While studying at Harvard Law School, Curry was inspired by the lectures of Horace Mann and became an advocate of free universal education.

After the war he studied for the ministry and became a preacher, but the focus of his work was free education in the South. He traveled and lectured in support of state normal schools, adequate rural schools, and a system of graded public schools. From 1881 until his death he was agent for the Peabody and Slater Funds to aide schools in the South and was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Education Board. The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia is named after him.

Curry served as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Spain during 1885–1888 and as ambassador extraordinary to Spain on the coming of age of King Alfonso XIII in 1902.

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry is honored by one of Alabama's two statues in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection.

Works

Constitutional Government in Spain (1889) William Ewart Gladstone (1891) The Southern States of the American Union (1894) Difficulties, Complications, and Limitations Connected with the Education of the Negro (1895) Civil History of the Government of the Confederate States, with some Personal Reminiscences (1901)