Education in America benefited dramatically from improved textbooks, particularly those of Noah Webster, a Yale-educated Yankee known as. the Schoolmaster of the Republic. His "reading lessons," used by millions of children, were designed in part to instill a sense of patriotism among the newest Americans, the immigrants. Perhaps his greatest achievement was his famous American Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1828. Spending nearly twenty years of his life on the project, Webster wrote a dictionary that helped to standardize the American language. Together, his textbooks and dictionaries defined a specifically American spelling and usage that he hoped would differentiate American English from the language of its former colonial parent. Webster worked to promote universal literacy and to foster a unified national consciousness through the development of a common language.

Source: David Simpson, The Politics of American EngIish,177-6-1850 (New...