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Page Massachusetts legislature agreed to pay the expenses of twenty deaf students from Massachusetts New Hampshire, Maine,
Vermont, and Rhode Island soon followed with appropriations for students from their states.
Although Gallaudet and Clerc worked excruciatingly long and hard hours, although there were often administrative and political problems, and although Gallaudet and Clerc were often confused by the differences between themone was deaf and had been raised in Paris, the other was hearing and had been raised in puritanical New England and trained in a theological seminarytheir work together resulted in immediate success. More and more deaf students enrolled in the school, and other states modeled programs for the deaf after the Hartford school.
However, articulation and speechreading methods were also being employed in the United States, particularly in those schools founded by the Braidwoods in Virginia and in the Hopkinsville School established in Kentucky by Robert T. Anderson. The debate between proponents of oralism and sign language (also known as "manual communication) was not yet the divisive issue it would later become in fact, the American School was the first in the United States to employ a full-time speech teacher.
This decision was probably based more on pragmatic than philosophical considerations, however it was an attempt to prevent oralists from establishing a school in Massachusetts that would compete for many of the same students attending the Hartford school. Ironically, oralism gained a strong foothold in this country for almost precisely the same reason that sign language was introducedthe concern of a father for his deaf daughter. Mabel Hubbard, the daughter of a prominent Massachusetts citizen,
Gardiner Greene Hubbard, had lost her hearing at the age of five as a result of scarlet fever. Her father was reluctant to have her attend the "manual" school in Hartford and instead had her educated orally at home, where Alexander Graham Bell was one of her tutors. Her progress was so encouraging that Hubbard decided to establish an oral school. With hard work, the support of the governor of Massachusetts, and financial backing from John Clarke, the Clarke School for Deaf Mutes was established in
Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1867.

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