The founders of the United States—anxious about the fragile republican experiment they’d embarked on—knew that the nation needed an educated citizenry. They did not know, however, how to get there. The American decision to educate its citizens at public expense was an idea as radical as the revolution itself. The story of public education in Minnesota, then, tells about the aspiration, invention, and development of a great national idea into a state-wide practice and about women’s key role in carrying out that great idea.