Key American founders and ministers opposed the rod as early as 1786

Evidence

Not all Anglo-American voices endorsed the rod. Benjamin Rush — Philadelphia physician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the first American medical school — published Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic (1786), arguing that republican education required persuasion rather than coercion. Horace Bushnell — Congregationalist minister of Hartford, Connecticut — published Christian Nurture (1847), arguing that the Puritan original-sin-and-rod framework should be replaced by a developmental-nurturing model in which the child “grows up a Christian and never knows himself as being otherwise.” — , The Rod and the Child, 5129