Academies were a prevalent form of higher schooling during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States. The authors in this volume look at the academy as the dominant institution of higher schooling in the United States, highlighting the academy's role in the formation of middle class social networks and culture in the mid-nineteenth century. They also reveal the significance of the academy for ethnic, religious, and racial minorities who organized independent academies in the face of exclusion and discrimination by other private and public institutions. "Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley restore the private academy to its rightful place alongside common schools in the history of American education... Each of the essays in this collection draws on the growing body of scholarship on the colonial South to enhance our understanding of this vital region." -- The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 69, No. 4